Are you a big fan of Fraggle Rock, but you've always felt like it had too darn many Fraggles? Well, the Jim Henson Company has just the show for you.

Kidscreen and various other websites are reporting the announcement of a new animated Doozers TV series, which will follow the adventures of three young Doozers named Baxter, Puzzlebea, and Daze. I guess it'll be sort of like Scrubs, but with apprentice Doozers instead of medical interns, and probably fewer sex jokes.

Of course, the Doozers were way ahead of their time in the area of green construction. All their buildings on Fraggle Rock were made of material that was completely biodegradable, and heck, edible. So it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch when the press releases say this new show will focus on "ecological concepts." As long as Captain Planet doesn't show up at the end of every episode to deliver a sermon about the week's environmental message, they should be fine.

The show will be animated, so that apparently means no puppetry. I'm okay with that, especially because the Doozer in that picture up there looks just like a Doozer from Fraggle Rock, albeit with more hair and a touch of huge-headedness.

We've been talking about this announcement on the Tough Pigs forum, and we have lots of questions: Will there be any Fraggles, Gorgs, or humans? Will there be any kind of tie-in to the upcoming Fraggle Rock movie? Why aren't these three characters named after tools like all the other Doozers? Will we see any familiar Doozer characters (e.g. Cotterpin) on the new show? And will there be songs?

With any luck, we'll get answers in the months to come. This new show is an unexpected move from the Henson Company, but there were some pretty good Doozer-focused episodes of Fraggle Rock, and if they're going to make a spinoff based on any of the supporting characters, the Doozers make the most sense by far... A Doc & Sprocket show wouldn't have the young kid appeal, a Gorg show wouldn't work because as far as we know there are only three Gorgs, and... I don't know, who else is there? The Trash Heap? She never moves from her spot in the garden.

So anyway, it'll be interesting to see what they come up with. And who knows? This just might be the perfect time for a television series about tiny naked green people who are obsessed with engineering.

Click here to talk about Doozers on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: Fraggle Rock, in development, jim henson company, news

The following review was written by Tough Pigs' close, personal friend Peter Papazoglou. Here, Peter shares his thoughts on the Jim Henson Company's live stage musical version of Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, which completed its run at the Goodspeed Opera House in Haddon, Connecticut on January 4. Take it away, Peter!

I have a confession to make. Until a couple of hours ago, I had never seen Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Worse yet, it’s not for lack of opportunity; I’ve had in my possession for over three years now not only the HIT! Entertainment-released DVD (gifted to me by my then-girlfriend, now-fiancé, and sometime-Tough Pigs contributor Leah) but also a copy of the much sought after original cut of the 1977 HBO special.

When I shared my secret with Tough Pigs’ own Joe and Ryan last month, they were, of course, shocked. After all, in certain Muppet fan circles, this surely amounted to nothing less than blasphemy. But luckily for me, they had a touch of the Christmas spirit about them, and rather than run me out of Riverbottom, they took their seats beside me as I was introduced to Russell and Lillian Hoban’s story in a brand new way - on stage.

And having finally seen the television special, I can confirm that Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, the new musical produced by the Goodspeed Opera House in association with the Jim Henson Company, adeptly and (for the most part) faithfully adapts its source material.

The story, for those of you fellow cretins unfamiliar with it, tells of Emmet Otter and his ma, Alice, two of the poorest residents of rural Frogtown Hollow, where bartering is common practice and even fifty cents can make a difference. Since the death of Pa Otter, the two have barely managed to sustain themselves with odd jobs and a laundry service. But just as they resign themselves to another year without gifts beneath the Christmas branch, word comes out of nearby and newly electrified Waterville that Doc Bullfrog is hosting a talent contest with a first prize of fifty dollars cash.

In a plot twist that borrows from O. Henry’s short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” Alice and Emmet, both inspired by Pa Otter’s legacy of foolhardiness, decide to enter the contest so they can afford a treasured gift for the other - for him, a guitar with mother of pearl inlays; for her, a down payment on a used piano. But when Alice hocks Emmet’s tool chest to buy fabric for a dress to perform in and Emmet puts a hole in Alice’s only washtub to fashion a makeshift bass for his jug band, they put their only sources of income at risk. So when the Riverbottom Nightmare Band, a devilish but talented rock quintet (whose incongruous style foreshadows the juxtaposition of the funky Electric Mayhem with the vaudevillian setting of The Muppet Show) wins the contest, Emmet and Alice are left to put a brave face on their impending destitution.

This being a Christmas story, all ends well for the Otters when Jane, who had previously sacrificed her place in the talent contest roster to Alice, who had showed up moments too late to register, realizes that the songs performed by Alice (“Our World”) and Emmet’s Frogtown Jubilee Jug Band (“Brothers”) could be performed in counterpoint as “Brothers in Our World,” just in time to convince Doc Bullfrog to hire the newly formed quintet to perform nightly at the Riverside Rest.

What’s that? You don’t remember Jane? Oh, come on. Jane. You know...little girl? About eleven, maybe twelve. Short. Brown hair. Human?

That’s right. Human.

I guess I forgot to mention Jane. You see, it’s Christmas in Jane’s world, too - the first since her mother’s passing - and she’s pushing her father, Russ, away. What has this got to do with Emmet Otter, you ask? Well, it was (conveniently, of course) her favorite book when she was a child, one that her mother had read to her and left a heartfelt inscription in. So when her father suggests he read it to her, she grudgingly concedes.

And before you can say deus ex machina, Jane is magically transported to Frogtown Hollow, where nobody seems to notice that she’s the only one around without her species as a last name. So, quite naturally, she sings a song, solves a plot complication that wouldn’t have existed if she had never showed up in the first place, saves the day, and then - get this! - wakes up.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in a plot line lifted straight from a short story I wrote when I was eight years old, in which Alice (of Wonderland fame) fell into the wrong rabbit hole and ended up in Sherwood Forest instead, our heroine wakes up at the end of the story to discover that the whole thing was just a dream; she had never been to Frogtown Hollow at all. What a cop-out.

I want to be clear. What bothers me about Jane is not that Timothy A. McDonald and Christopher Gatelli, who adapted the work for the stage, felt that the story needed a framing device. After all, the original special was bookended by scenes featuring Kermit the Frog, who could obviously not be reused here due to copyright issues. It’s that the playwrights don’t trust their material.

Because the rest Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is wonderful and remarkably complex. Like all good Christmas stories, it weaves together themes of commercialism, charity, and sacrifice. But unlike so many stories written for today’s children, its protagonists are passionate and reckless, sympathetic but tart. Its lessons are far from simple; the villains, after all, walk away with first prize. And its grief is real. Emmet and Alice don’t miss Pa in some abstract way; they reminisce about him and obsess about him. They blame him for their predicament and look to him for a way out. Nothing about Emmet Otter is simple, so it’s a testament to the strength of the source material that the play shines in spite of the framing device, which is at best an unnecessary way to give children a way into the story.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the production is beautifully designed.

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas uses a costume-based approach for the majority of the main characters, who wear full-body outfits that only expose the actors’ make-up laden faces. The costumes, impeccably designed by Gregg Barnes (Fred Lizard, Harrison Fox, and Wendell Porcupine are favorites), achieve the aesthetic of the original puppets while also allowing the actors the physical versatility to perform their roles. The only snag, and it’s a minor one, is that the furry, mittened hands are distracting, pushing the costumes just a bit in the direction of the theme park variety.

More minor characters like Doc Bullfrog, Yancey Woodchuck, and Old Lady Possum are performed as bunraku-style puppets, with their performers either hidden among the scenery or dressed in black against a black background. Doc Bullfrog, in particular, is meticulously recreated and expertly performed by Tyler Bunch. And Yancey Woodchuck is built so that his puppeteer, the talented David Stephens, can effortlessly change from rod-operated hands to live ones to play the banjo on “Barbeque” at the talent show.

The remaining characters are performed as hand puppets based on the original Muppet creations. These include Howard Snake, who is seamlessly handed off from one onstage character to the next; Catfish, who spews water in other characters’ faces after appearing in the most unexpected of locations; George and Melissa Rabbit, and a quartet of gibberish-speaking squirrels who steal the show in their quest to grow a Christmas tree from scratch overnight. Even woodland creatures that appear only momentarily in the television special have been faithfully recreated for the stage: the ducks on the river in “The One Bathing Suit,” the egret at the end of “Ain’t No Hole in the Washtub,” and the owl at the end of “When the River Meets the Sea,” to name a few.

It is of note that while the majority of the puppets were recreated for this production at a larger size, so as to be more easily viewed by the audience, the puppets of Alice and Emmet that bookend the production are, in fact, the refurbished puppets from the original production.

The sets by Anna Louizos are versatile and make adept and surprising use of the small stage, most impressively conveying the illusion of Alice and Emmet rowing along the river on their way to and from Waterville. And the lighting by Brian MacDevitt effectively conveys the woodland mood while also carefully obscuring the puppeteers as necessary, particularly in the talent show climax in the second act.

As with recent adaptations of children’s films, the book and score for Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas has been expanded in order to fill the longer running time required of a stage musical. Composer/lyricist Paul Williams does an admirable job of matching the style of his new musical numbers to the ones ported over from the original score. And the revisions to the book do quite a bit to flesh out the history of Alice and Pa Otter, explaining, for example, the significance of Emmet’s wanting to give his mother a piano for Christmas. The additional material also serves to more fully develop the residents of Waterville and Riverbottom. And while the television special is remarkably efficient in its exposition, the pacing in the musical is definitely an improvement over the original, which now feels a little rushed by comparison.

Although there is some consolidation of minor characters (Yancey Woodchuck, for example, serves as the fruit stand owner in the stage version; and Will Possum’s role has been greatly reduced, split between Yancey and Old Lady Possum), only Shirley and Nat Muskrat (and their act, Carrots the Dancing Horse) appear to have been cut entirely. Most minor roles have been expanded, especially musically. Harrison Fox, performs the bouncy new song “Waterville” ; his jealous wife, Gretchen, attempts to sabotage the talent show with an incognito aria; and the heretofore unnamed Mrs. Mink gets two musical numbers - the brand new “At the Music Store,” the most lackluster and, frankly, unnecessary of the additional songs (which was also hindered by unfortunate staging that caused her to be constantly upstaged by the set), and the delightfully burlesque “Born in a Trunk,” which was written and recorded for but ultimately cut from the original special. Even Jane gets to sing with the scene-stealing squirrels, and “Trust” is one of those moments where you almost forget that she doesn’t belong in the story in the first place.

Aside from Jane and Russ, two brand new characters round out the cast. The first, Madame Squirrel, now leads the formerly haphazard acrobatic squirrels. The more notable addition, however, is the ghost Pa Otter, who appears to sing the lovely ballad, “Alice, Keep Dreaming,” when his widow has been disqualified from competing in the talent contest and is at her lowest. Tony Award nominee Alan Campbell, who appropriately doubles as Russ, captures Pa’s mischievous and compassionate spirit in his subtle, understated performance.

The rest of the cast is similarly talented, bringing vitality to roles that could easily suffer under the weight of their costumes or become mere caricatures. It is, unfortunately, the younger characters who have the most trouble. Instead of seeming like children, Daniel Reichard as Emmet, Jeff Hiller as Charlie Muskrat, and Daniel Torres as Harvey Beaver, all seem a little older, at least in part because of their height. And in trying to play the correct age, they sometimes come off as slower than they ought to be.

Out of the Frogtown Jubilee Jug Band, only the intentionally dimwitted Wendell Porcupine is spared this fate, in part because performer Robb Sapp so fully captures the character and voice created by Dave Goelz. Still, they all do admirable jobs, and their performances, especially Reichard’s, ring emotionally true if a little physically and vocally awkward.

And finally, even though it is, by definition, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, the show at the Goodspeed Opera House belonged to understudy Lisa Howard as Alice Otter, a role usually played by Cass Morgan (Howard usually performs Gretchen Fox). If Reichard’s Emmet runs a bit on the older side, Howard’s Alice is a more youthful creation than Frank Oz and Marilyn Sokol’s original, artfully melding the character’s maturity with an impish playfulness on display in numbers like “Ain’t No Hole in the Washtub.” Howard inhabits the role completely and is especially heartbreaking in “When the River Meets the Sea” (arguably the best song in Paul William’s score), in which she sings, in her lilting soprano, of birth fulfilling itself in death, invoking the truest meaning of Christmas.:

Like a baby when it is sleeping
In its loving mother's arms
What a newborn baby dreams is a mystery
But his life will find a purpose
And in time he'll understand
When the river meets the sea

Word on the street is that Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas may return as a perennial Christmas performance, with the hope of expanding nationally. If the production at the Goodspeed Opera House is any indication, it’s poised to be a classic. Let’s just hope its creators trust the story of Emmet and Alice Otter to tell itself, unencumbered by the modern trappings that threatened to drag down the first incarnation of this beautiful tale.

Our thanks to Peter for his review. Click here to discuss the Emmet Otter musical on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: christmas, guest bloggers, jim henson company, other muppet/henson shows, review

Back for more of your daily Steve Whitmire interview? Don't forget to check back to parts one, two, and three!


ToughPigs: Feel free to not answer this question, but how does your relationship with Disney work, contract-wise? If they decide to make a Muppet production, are you contractually obligated to perform?

Steve Whitmire: No, we’re freelancers. We’re still freelancers, just as we were with Henson. And that’s nice. Jim was always about a handshake, and while things would certainly be more formal with a big corporation like Disney, but it’s very laid-back, very easy-going in that respect.

TP: And you have a similar relationship with Sesame Workshop?

SW: Yeah, we’ve always been freelancers.

TP: There’s one glaring omission from the recent Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock DVD sets that have been coming out over the last few years, and it’s that there’s no commentary. If they would have asked you, would you have contributed commentary to a few episodes?

SW: That would have been fun, yeah.

TP: Too bad they didn’t ask then.

SW: Treasure Island, we did one, I think. And Muppets From Space.

TP: When Elmo makes public appearances, he makes reference to the fact that he doesn’t know he’s on a TV show. Is that a Sesame Workshop decision?

SW: I think on Sesame Street, they try to play it off like it’s a real street, that that’s really real life for those guys. And I think for Sesame, it kind of makes sense. Because Elmo’s so young, he’s meant to be young, in our world he really is, but I mean he’s meant to be a little kid. So Kevin just tries to keep him like a little kid. But I’ve heard Kevin do interviews with more funny, adult things, not just adult humor but in adult interviews where Elmo breaks out of character a little bit, and it’s always funny.

TP: Yeah, we saw him at the Long Island Huntington event where Gonzo was flirting with Zoe, and Elmo was kind of in the middle of that. It was the kind of thing you’d never see on Sesame Street.

SW: (Laughs)

TP: I have a few questions from some of the ToughPig forum members that are not Muppet related. Anthony wants to know who your favorite superhero is.

SW: Oh my god. Probably Batman. And probably the original, the original being the Adam West show. By all means. And it’s really funny, we’ve had the opportunity to run into him a couple of times and Eric Jacobson and I are like drooling groupies. You know, we did the TV Land Awards a few years ago and Eric and I were like stalkers. There was an interview online with Adam West later where you see my hand reach out from behind and I snap a picture with my phone. Very nice guy, we met him and talked to him. And I started thinking about it, and you know, Batman, when I was 10 years old, he’s this guy who has this true identity, which is a little like us when you think about it. He puts on his mask, we put on these puppets and nobody knows who you are. Maybe that was part of the warped childhood I had that led me here (laughs).

TP: Carolyn from our forum wants to know, “How is your work with cats going?”

SW: That’s a good thing to mention, especially since we’re online. I’m on the board of this place called the Shambala Preserve, which is Tippi Hedren’s place. She’s a very dear friend, I’ve probably known her for 15 years now. I do a lot of video editing for them. In my spare time with her in LA, I go to the preserve and I shoot, which is fun for me, I shoot all this video and edit it into these little pieces they can use for fund raising. In fact, I’m in the middle of one that we’ll put on YouTube once we’re finished with it. So you ask me if I work outside of Muppets: Yes, I’ve got my volunteer work at Shambala. But that’s big cats. My wife Melissa and I did almost a year of intensive work at a local humane society outside of Atlanta in 1987. We had almost that whole year off from Muppet work. Really hands-on work, cleaning the cat cages and giving injections to the cats. At the end of that, we had 13 cats of our own. And at one point, we had 36 cats that we were fostering (laughs). We were crazy, we were insane.

TP: Did you name them all?

SW: They all had names, but they all had stupid names, because we knew people were going to adopt them. It was a ridiculous thing to do, but good for the cats. So I don’t do that stuff so much anymore, but I still do the Shambala stuff when I can.

TP: Speaking of your wife, Melissa, I noticed on the Muppet Wiki that she’s puppeteered a few times with the Muppets. I don’t know much about her; is she a professional puppeteer as well?

SW: I don’t think she’d think of herself as a professional. She’s not one of those people who decided she wanted to work with the Muppets when she was a kid like us. She basically decided to do it because she’d be sitting around on set in the early days, and it just sort of made sense. It’s something she kind of picked up, we needed extra people and she never had any aspirations to be a big Muppet star with a main character, so sometimes we’d need people to do background characters. She worked intensively on The Dark Crystal with Kathy Mullen. She was Kira’s right hand for the whole film. So any time you’d see Kira’s right hand, that was Melissa. And she worked on Muppets Take Manhattan as one of the background puppeteers. Kermit’s Swamp Years I think she puppeteered a little bit. And she worked on a few things where she didn’t get credit in the end.

TP: If you let us know what they were, we can make sure she gets credit for them on the Wiki.

SW: I’ll let you know, I can’t remember offhand (laughs).

TP: Kynan from our forum wanted to ask you about tractors. Care to explain?

SW: (Laughs) Kynan cruised through LA and we met, and we owed him a slight debt of gratitude [for the Save the Muppets campaign]. Tractors, yes. I have several. I’m a farm guy. Not a legitimate farm, but I do a lot of mowing when I’m not with the Muppets. I’m a bit of a homebody. I mow about six acres a week. So John Deere is very important to me. (Laughs) Hard to imagine, I guess, but that’s what I do when I’m not working. They’re green, the John Deere tractors.

TP: What other interests do you have besides puppetry?

SW: There’s an author named Ken Wilber who most people haven’t heard of, but he’s the most translated author in the world. He’s an amazing guy, he’s just a thinker. And for the last few years, he’s written on what he calls “integral theory.” It’s the idea that everyone is right on some level, whether it’s politics, math, science, the world at large, puppets, showbiz, being a lawyer, whatever. Everybody brings a piece of the puzzle that makes the world up to the same table. And it’s a matter of choosing those things and integrating all of that together, which is a huge part of what’s happened to Disney in the last five years. And I’ve been reading his stuff for maybe 8-10 years, and I met him a couple years ago, and he’s a terrific guy. And his stuff is extremely academic to wade through. But yet, it’s a pretty simple idea. It’s the idea that the more you can integrate things together in your life, the better chance you have at getting through your life. And he calls himself a mapmaker. And he literally has taken every discipline in the world, and I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but he’s brought all that into one place, and he’s integrated it together in his books. It’s not conservative, it’s not liberal, it’s every point of view. And it goes all the way from the lowest levels of everything up to these spiritual places. It fits the Muppets perfectly. And I can look at the characters that we’ve created, and that Jim created, and they all fall under these different levels of development. It’s not something any corporation will look at and say, “We should look at that map,” but for me, and from the Muppet point of view, I use it every day.

TP: So where do Kermit and Rizzo fall on that level of development?

SW: Well, now we’re really getting complicated. Rizzo is very egocentric, in that he is very much about himself. There’s all these levels of development: there’s egocentric, ethnocentric, world-centric. As people develop through their lives, they go from being totally focused on themselves to being focused on their immediate family or group to being focused on the entire world, where they slowly accept that we’re all a part of this big machine, and beyond, whatever that might be. So Kermit’s a little bit by the world-centric and above level, while Rizzo is much more egocentric. It’s a great dynamic to play for these two guys.

TP: It’s too bad you can’t have them interacting with each other very often.

SW: Exactly. I tried that yesterday, it’s impossible. We were just being silly, because we needed as many puppets on screen as possible, so I had one on each hand. I can’t even make them look in the right place when I do that. I was having them talk to Madison, this little girl on set, and I got confused, I got it backwards. (Laughs)We're almost at the end! I know, it's quite sad. Come back tomorrow for the final part of our interview with Steve where you'll see him talk about Kermit choreography, his fellow Muppeteers, and how to make a frog drive a truck.

Click here to talk tractors on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: disney, interview, jim henson company, Muppet performers

Click here to read part one of our week-long chat with Steve Whitmire!


ToughPigs: There’s been thousands of Muppet characters. Do you have any favorite obscure characters that haven’t shown up in recent years?

Steve Whitmire: I love, and this just happens to be someone I did at the time, there was a character named something like Eugene. He was a little weasel character who was alongside the director on Muppets Tonight. A little fuzzy thing. I always liked doing those kinds of characters. Rizzo started out that way, as a character who didn’t speak. Just a little character who was always there and always, you know, upstaging. And recently, on XD, when we see inside of Animal’s room, he has a little white bunny rabbit with him, and I did the rabbit. I just love the characters who are just there. They don’t have any lines, they just contribute to the atmosphere. And they’re all rodents for some reason. (Laughs)

TP: Are there any previous characters that you would want to bring back?

SW: It seems really important that we get back to some of the Muppet Show characters that have been missing for a while. But those are kind of coming back. What I’d like to see, if we ever get back into doing another series, is the opportunity to bring in new characters. And I think it’s really time we get into some new characters too. Just to grow the group a little bit. We’ve got the core here, and it’s working pretty well at this stage, between Eric and Dave obviously, and Bill is so great. But I’d like some new characters, and that might mean finding some new performers. When I came along, it was a great time because Jim was actively looking for a handful of new people, and the Muppets were on their way up. And I get letters from a lot of people who say they’d really like to puppeteer with the Muppets, and some of them have some real experience, and it’s just a really tough time for people to break into it with us. I always encourage people to do it anyway, don’t get stuck on the idea to work with the Muppets, just do it if you enjoy it. But it’s hard, right now it’s more about the Muppets getting more known again as a group.

TP: Do you think a new series would help with that?

SW: It has always proven to be the best time for new characters to develop because the writers may have an idea, and they build a puppet, and it’s in for a week. And then if it works, it has a chance to grow. And it seems that our characters always have a chance to grow and evolve over time. The first season of Fraggle Rock is nothing to write home about. And by the second season, we were starting to figure out who they were, and thankfully it was at a time in the world of television where they could afford to give us some time to develop this without just saying “Well, that didn’t work!” and pull it off the air, which is what they do now. (Laughs)

TP: Hugh Fink, Andrew Samson, and Scott Ganz have just been hired by Disney to write for the Muppets. From what they’ve told me, they’ve been hired to give the Muppets a more “prime time” feel and language. How do you feel about their involvement and this new direction Disney wants to take the Muppets?

SW: It seems okay. Two things always sound scary: when someone says they want to give the Muppets a “new feel,” because you never know what that’s going to mean until it’s done, and you can look back at it and say, “Oh, so that’s what they meant.” The other thing that’s always difficult to hear is when people say they’re the biggest Muppet fans and they want to write for the Muppets. Often times, they’re seeing the characters from the outside, and they really don’t know what they feel like on the inside, so it doesn’t work. But once we started working with these guys, they’ve really risen to the occasion. It was a good choice, it turned out to be a great choice, and that hasn’t always been the case with outside writers when they come in.

TP: So, what’s your take on the Jason Segel script?

SW: I haven’t met them, I keep hearing about it. I don’t know what they’re writing, we’re outside of it at the moment. I’ve heard that it’s happening, but I haven’t had any discussions about it. If they’re writing it, then once they’re finished I’ll see it and then I can probably comment about it. And in a way, that’s not bad. Jim was always very collaborative with us on everything we did, but it wasn’t like we all sat down in a room and conceived of the “first idea.” Jim was always very selective about the first three or four people he brought in on a project. He would often have an idea, and then he’d step back and let those people develop it into something. So there was always a bit that would go on before the next round when he’d bring in the puppeteers, or a broader group of puppeteers. It’s easy to get into what I call “endless meeting syndrome” where you’d get twelve people around a table, and everyone’s got ideas, and none of them really get used because the last thing that was said usually gets done. So it’s nice to have a core that expands into a bigger group, I think. That’s the good thing, that’s the smart way to really do it. And in addition to that, the more they bring us in near the early stages, the more we can give them about character, especially if it’s writers who know the Muppets but don’t know them from the inside. We can easily supply some of that. And that’s happening, so that’s a good thing.

TP: I have a question here from ToughPigs forum member and Muppet Wiki moderator Scott Hanson. There’s something they’ve been stumped on at the Wiki, and hopefully you can remember.

SW: I’ll try. You guys usually know more than I know.

TP: In the Dizzy Gillespie episode of The Muppet Show, they don’t know who performed Astoria, Waldorf’s wife, and the rumors say that it was you.

SW: Wow. And I ought to know that. But frankly, I don’t remember.

TP: Yeah, I wouldn’t expect you to…

SW: That’s interesting, because it wasn’t that long ago when we were talking about what were the names of their wives, and I think it was only the one, I don’t think Statler had one. It could have been me. I can’t answer, I don’t know!

TP: I promise I don’t have any more questions like that.

SW: (Laughs) That’s okay, I wish I could remember that.

TP: I don’t know if you heard, The Christmas Toy is coming out on DVD next month.

SW: No! That’s great! Is that Henson or Disney?

TP: That’d be Henson. Well, I was going to ask you if you contributed anything to the special features, but you obviously haven’t if you haven’t heard about it.

SW: Nope, I haven’t been involved in special features. I loved working on that show. That was just one of those Toronto productions during Fraggle time. It was a great break from Fraggles, because it was such an intense shoot. We had great fun on Fraggle Rock, but it was intense. And we went off to do this other silly thing, and the hardest thing for me was that Jim wanted me to do this little mouse. And to come up with a voice for this little mouse that wasn’t Wembley or Rizzo (Laughs), it’s like what am I going to do now? It was Rizzo in falsetto, is what it ended up being. I probably couldn’t even do the voice now. My voice has changed, and I know they sometimes change over the years, but my voice has changed and it makes it hard sometimes to do some of those older voices.

TP: Do you ever go back and watch some of the old stuff like that?

SW: I do, and I don’t think I even have a VHS of [The Christmas Toy], I’d love for that to be on DVD.

TP: Yeah, we’re very much hoping it’s going to be unedited.

SW: Yeah, me too.

TP: It’s got Kermit the Frog bookending the film, which is why the Emmet Otter DVDs have been edited versions.

SW: Yeah, I heard about that.

TP: Have you heard much about the Emmet Otter musical that’s premiering in Connecticut this December?

SW: I heard about it, but I’m not involved with it. And I wasn’t involved with the original. What have I heard? Tyler Bunch is involved, it’s half puppets and half sort of costumes suggesting puppets.

TP: Are you planning on seeing it?

SW: I probably won’t end up seeing it. I probably wouldn’t come to Connecticut just to see it. [ed. – On a side note, Dave Goelz mentioned in an earlier conversation that he probably won’t see it either, as he wouldn’t want to leave his family in LA just to fly across the country for a play. It’s too bad he won’t be able to critique the performances of Wendell Porcupine and Pop-eyed Catfish.] I’d love to see it just to see what they’ll do with it.Come back tomorrow for part 3 of our chat with Steve Whitmire where you'll read all about his performing new characters, his buddy movie life with Dave Goelz, and Disney's future for the Muppets!

Click here to take credit for performing Astoria on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: disney, interview, jim henson company, Muppet performers

Sid the Science Kid is a new children's show about the son of Bill Nye the Science Guy. No, that's not true. The show is about an inquisitive little boy who is rarely found without his toy microphone, and who wants to know "everything about everything." It's produced by the Jim Henson Company using the Henson Digital Performance System (which is a magical spell that turns puppetry into computer animation), and it premiered on on PBS last month. I sat down to watch the first four episodes to see if I learned anything about anything.

So, what's the first episode about? When I was a kid, I was really into dinosaurs, so maybe it's about dinosaurs. Oh, or germs. Those are cool. Or maybe something about fire? Kids love setting stuff on fire! We open on Sid in his room, and he tells us that today's show is about... charts!

Huh. Okay, I guess it's useful for kids to learn about charts. Sid wants to know, "Why do we need charts?" Of course, it would take a kid to ask a question like that, because to a grown-up it's very obvious why we need charts. We need them because... well, it's... when you use the Pythagorean... um... Well, I know why we need charts, but I'm not going to say anything so I don't spoil this episode for anyone.

Now Sid's mom calls him downstairs for Breakfast Time, and we meet Sid's family. I read a review somewhere that mentioned Sid's parents being multi-ethnic. I don't think I would have even noticed otherwise, but it seems to be true. That's pretty cool, and it ensures that the character will be easily identifiable for kids with one yellow parent and one orange parent. Is it weird that I think Sid's mom is a little bit hot? Actually, forget I said that.

Speaking of Sid, there's something about him that reminds me of the comedian Patton Oswalt. Is it his voice? (Sid is voiced and digitally puppeteered by Drew Massey.) Is it his pleasantly round face? I'm not sure, but I like to think they'd get along. Oswalt could make jokes about food while Sid asked about the preservatives in his Fruity Pebbles.























Sid learns more about charts at breakfast, but he still remembers to eat. I'm guessing they'll make sure to show Sid eating a healthy breakfast in every episode, at least until they decide to do a show in which Sid asks the question, "What will happen to me if I eat this 4-month-old burrito I found in the back of the refrigerator for breakfast?" Then his Mom drives him to school, and he sings a song as he finds his friends on the playground. The animation here is pretty great -- they're all moving like real kids, and there are camera moves and everything. I don't understand exactly how digital puppetry works (maybe that's a question for Dan the Computer Animation Expert Man), but I'm guessing this sequence involved some full-body motion capture.

Sid's friends are Gerald (a goofball who, in real life, would be prescribed methylphenidate), Gabriella (who wears a skirt AND jeans, a bold fashion statement), and May, who's a bit spacey. The characterization doesn't go very deep, but they all represent types you would probably encounter in preschool. I know my preschool had a Gerald. Come to think of it, though, I'm not sure they're in preschool. It could conceivably be kindergarten. In the four episodes I watched, I don't think they ever said how old Sid is. Also, why are there only four children in Sid's class? Is it an extremely exclusive private school, or just a sparsely populated area? More importantly, who cares?

So then it's "Rug Time," which means time for class to start, with Sid's teacher Susie. It seems awfully informal that they just call their teacher "Susie" -- not even a "Ms." -- but whatever. And they talk about charts. What else? After watching four episodes, I noticed that Sid seems to dictate every day's curriculum. Wait a minute, what kind of school is this? Does Susie ever even bother coming up with a lesson plan, or does she just wait to see what Sid wants to talk about? Then she takes all the kids to the "Super Fab Lab" and has them scribble something to do with charts in their science notebooks.

After that, it's playtime, which means it's time for "Good Laughternoon." Now, kids under the age of 8 have never heard of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in. (Heck, most kids under the age of 42 have never heard of Laugh-in.) So they won't realize that Good Laughternoon is an homage/ripoff of one of that show's famous bits, as Sid and friends open multi-colored, multi-shaped doors on their playscape and tell... well, they're not real jokes, exactly. Henson keeps promoting Sid as a "comedy show" for kids, but this kind of stuff makes it seem more like a comedy show by kids. Here are some examples from the four episodes I watched:


Okay, so maybe that last one is a little bit funny. But you see what I mean. Sure, these sound like jokes made up by children, so it's accurate enough. But it indicates that this will not be one of those kids' shows that parents will look forward to watching with their kids. On the other hand, there also plenty of adult characters who talk more or less like adults, and the show's obnoxious, so parents won't run away screaming from it either. So I guess that's okay. But the fact that Sid often has to click the laugh track button on his toy microphone to let us know something is supposed to be a joke is telling.

Where was I? I guess I kinda blew all my critque in that last paragraph. Oh, right: Soon it's Time for Susie to Sing, and she takes Sid's microphone and whips out a catchy pop song about the day's subject; in this case, charts. In the episode about magnifying small things, she sings a song about magnifying glasses, and in the estimation show she sings about estimating. So

I take back what I said about Susie earlier -- Despite letting a little boy decide what the lesson for the day will be, she apparently goes to the trouble of memorizing an endlesss number songs that pertain to the subject he might choose on any given day. She has no idea what the class might be talking about from day to day, but she apparently has a song prepared for every occasion. Now that's dedication.

After school, Sid is picked up by his Grandma, who happens to be the show's best character. She asks Sid about what he learned in school, and she chuckles to herself a lot, as any self-respecting nutty old lady would. And when Sid explains his chore chart reward system, she pointedly explains that when she was Sid's age she was expected to do chores without any kind of reward. I like Grandma. I want a Grandma spinoff.

After dinner with his family, Sid returns to his room, where he comes up with today's Super Duper Ooper Schmooper Big Idea. (You may or may not recall that when this series was first announced as being in development, it was called What's the Big Idea?) Today's idea: A really big chart. Yep, that's a big idea all right.

And that's the show. If nothing else, it's impressive that they filled 30 minutes with nothing but charts. When Elmo talks about feet or bathtubs or clothes or whatever, he only does 15 minutes.

And yeah, I watched the other three episodes, and I was going to describe them in detail here, but I think you get the idea. Every episode seems to follow the same basic format, with some variation: Sid's intro, then Breakfast Time, then Looking for Friends (with a minute and 35 seconds of recycled animation every show!), Rug Time, Super Fab Lab, Playtime, Susie sings, Grandma, family time, and the Super Gooper Hooper Pooper Big Idea.

Oh, and each episode begins with Sid asking a question that presents the theme. Basically, he's the Carrie Bradshaw of budding scientists. "How do roly polys move?" "How many seashells are in my jar?" "How can I use my ruler to measure a whale?" "How do you know if you're good in bed?" Hmm... I think one of those might actually be from Sex and the City, but I have no idea which one.

So it's not a groundbreaking show, but it has a very specific goal -- to get kids interested in the idea of science as something you do, rather than something you read about -- and I think it'll hit that goal. And yes, I learned something: In the second episode, Sid's dad reveals that roly polys (aka "doodle bugs") are crustaceans, not insects. I don't think I knew that.

They even get into a few more complicated lessons, like the concept of "non-standard measurements," which is impressive. I have to wonder if the target audience will understand it all, but I'm sure they've done their research. And hey, getting kids excited about science can't be a bad thing.

Unless they blow themselves up. That would be bad.

Click here to comment on this article, to talk about Sid the Science Kid, and to measure some whales, all on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: jim henson company, other muppet/henson shows, review

Ah, the Jim Henson Company. In these past few, non-Muppet-owning years of their existence, they've given us a number of projects, but there really haven't been any that I've... what's the word I'm looking for?... ah, yes. "Liked."

Sure, I tried my best to muster up some enthusiasm for Puppet Up, but in the end I was unable to convince myself that it was entertaining. (Nor was TBS.com, despite its desperate video clip descriptions: "When a funny orangutan and some funny aliens do a funny thing, the funny stuff that happens is FUNNY! Really! PLEASE WATCH THIS!")

The Skrumps held some promise, but we haven't heard a peep from them in a year. And the 15 minutes I spent watching that Tinseltown pilot... well, I wish I had used that time to floss, or clip my nails, or glue my socks to the wall.

But now there's a new Henson Company production I actually, actually like... and the crazy thing is? There are no puppets. "No puppets?!" you might ask, as your eyes bug out and your jaw drops. It's true. The Sam Plenty Cavalcade of Action Show Plus Singing has no puppets, no cartoon characters -- just humans acting like fools. (This is not the first non-puppet Henson production... in 1999, JHC produced a UPN family sitcom called Family Rules that absolutely nobody in the universe has ever heard of, including you, me, or Brian Henson. But that's neither here nor there.)

What IS either here or there is Sam Plenty's Cavalcade of Action. The whole thing is actually pretty difficult to describe... I guess I'd call it a "serialized singing cowboy sci-fi low-budget adventure parody with songs." Huh. Well, I guess that wasn't difficult, just long-winded.

I first encountered it on the Henson.com podcast, where the host moderated a roundtable interview with the "cast" and "crew" of the exciting new movie Sam Plenty in Underdoom. It had a very Christopher-Guest-movie vibe to it... the "actors" like Dolores del Norte and Rex Argo discuss their careers and working on the project, and while that elicited more grins than guffaws, they've obviously put a lot of thought into it and they're really committed to the characters.

Hearing the audio-only podcast, I assumed it was a puppet thing -- I could even imagine what the puppets would look like, including director Sanso Pantopuntaquenia. But when I went to SamPlenty.com, I was surprised to find that, while there are a number of Henson puppeteers involved (Drew Massey, Alan Trautman, Victor Yerrid), there's not a puppet to be seen.

The videos available on the website are episodes of the movie serial that was discussed on the podcast, so you're actually seeing fictional movie characters played by fictional actors. Is that confusing enough for you? Unfortunately, you don't get to see Sanso Pontapuntaquenia, but you do get to see episodes of Underdoom (starting with... Part 3?), and they're pretty dang entertaining.

It's completely silly, but the actors play it straight -- there are never any snarky winks at the camera or conscious acknowledgments that this is anything other than a serious adventure film. It appears to me they had a pretty low budget for this project, but they use it to their advantage: highlights in the two episodes posted so far include an army of invisible men, and one sequence seems to have been filmed in the employee parking lot at Henson. Perhaps my favorite thing on the site so far is the "Sing-Along," whose lyrics suggest that the songwriting budget was as limited as the production budget.

I don't think I would pay to see this stuff, and it wouldn't translate well to a format longer than than the webisode, but what they're doing now works pretty well for the medium.

Anytime the Henson Company does something new with puppets in it, I always feel a sad little twinge of "Gee, remember when these were Muppets?" I'm not suggesting that Henson should abandon puppets, but you know what? Sam Plenty is better than any of that recent puppet stuff. So if that's a direction that works, maybe that's the direction they should keep exploring.

But maybe with fewer songs about horse poop.

Click here to discuss Sam Plenty on the Tough Pigs forum!

Labels: internet, jim henson company

There's been a lot going on in the news over the last few weeks, and unfortunately our news writers are all on strike. So here's a brief catch-up on the highlights:

The Muppet Show: Season 3 has been announced for a May 20, 2008 release. All 24 episodes are there, and they'll hopefully be edit-free. Fozzie's extreme closeup made the cover, and the special features include the new documentary, "The Making of the Muppets" and the old documentary, "Muppets on Puppets."

Fraggle Rock: Season 4, also known as Seasons 4 and 5 (HBO split the final production season into two broadcast seasons) will be out on DVD this fall. Not much more information than that has been added, but we're all that much closer to owning all documented footage of Fraggle spelunking.

And most recently, the Jim Henson Company has announced that they will be making the entire series of Fraggle Rock and Farscape available on iTunes. Episodes will cost $1.99 each, and the first seasons of each are already online.

So there you have it, lots of old Muppety stuff to watch and to watch out for.

Take a peek at the ToughPigs forum to discuss the above newsbits!

Labels: DVD, Fraggle Rock, jim henson company, the muppet show

What happens when you close your eyes and whisper the words Atlanta, Georgia? Do you see peach trees? Streets named after peach trees? The World of Coke’s infamous Beverly sample flavor? Streets named after numerous battles over peach trees? Matlock?

Labels: Center for Puppetry Arts, jim henson company

The Jim Henson Company, much like you and I, thinks that Christmas is keen. In fact, they've been thinking that for almost 50 years. In fact in fact, they have had such a crush on Christmas that they use the United States Postal Service to tell all their friends. And what better way than to include doodles of Muppets? If there is a better way, I haven't thought of it.

Below, you'll see 37 Christmas cards from Muppets Inc./The Jim Henson Company. Some of which are drawn by Jim himself, and some of which were used to promote specific productions. All of these images come courtesy of MikePop's blog. Enjoy!

Click here to discuss the true meaning of Christmas on the ToughPigs forum!

Labels: christmas, jim henson company

Wishbone, Skrumpy, and Raisins. If the Jim Henson Company has anything to say about it, these three will soon become household names as familiar as SpongeBob, Dora, and Hugh Laurie.

They're Skrumps, and they're part of a big new franchise Henson is launching. Based on characters created by artist John Chandler, the Skrumps are a colorful bunch of critters from Skrumpland (where else?), and they're brought to life with the Henson Digital Performance Studio, which allows puppeteers to perform computer generated characters in real-time.

Plans are under way to feature the Skrumps in their own TV series, books, comics... who knows, maybe even customized checks! We'll see if any of that stuff ever materializes, but for now, Yahoo! Kids has a rockin' new music video called "Dance Without Feet," by the Skrump band, Grumblebelly. It's a fun, silly song, which may not become a hit, but is certainly better than anything by Fergie. And if you love watching video blogs by abstract fictional characters, you're in luck, because they got those too.

Also, the latest podcast over at Henson.com has some behind-the-scenes info, although it doesn't explain why all the Skrumps are naked.

Labels: jim henson company, other muppet/henson shows