Forty-years ago this summer, a man and a frog made their dreams come true.The release of The Muppet Movie in the summer of 1979, starring Kermit the Frog, was the culmination of puppeteer/writer/filmmaker Jim Henson’s ambition to translate the small screen success of his feel-good felt from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show over to the big screen where they could make “millions of people happy.”
However, despite Emmy-award wins and global recognition for The Muppet Show, obtaining funding for a theatrical film with The Muppets interacting in the real world wasn’t an easy sell. As Henson, Frank Oz and their Muppet team shot The Muppet Show in London, they had to spend time shooting proof of concept camera tests that eventually attracted the foreign investment of Lord Lew Grade’s British Independent Television Corporation (ITC).
When the money came, Henson, his long-time writers, Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns, and his core unit of Muppeteers, like Oz, Jerry Nelson, and Richard Hunt, were ready to go. Having spent years amassing talented young technicians, artists, and puppeteers from London, New York and California as collaborators, Henson was able to gather many of them together in the summer of 1978 for the production of The Muppet Movie in Los Angeles.
Ahead of its time, technically, and with its comedic sensibility (it was meta before meta existed), The Muppet Movie was a grand experiment that proved The Muppets were box office stars––it made $76 million off an $8 million budget. Songwriters and composers Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher were nominated for two Academy Awards and won a Grammy for their work on the film.
Now for its 40th anniversary, The Muppet Movie is back on the big screen with two Fathom Event screenings across the U.S. on July 25th and July 30th (get tickets here), along with many retrospective screenings at museums and film festivals celebrating the film’s impact on cinema and puppetry.
For this IGN oral history, we’ve conducted brand new interviews with many of Jim Henson’s team who worked on the film to reminisce about how the scrappy little film, made by dreamers, about dreamers, came to be.
Setting the Stage
Busy producing and performing The Muppet Show in London, Jim Henson and Frank Oz were also concurrently laying the groundwork for a potential movie that would break Kermit and his gang out of their secure variety show theater and out into the real world.
Cheryl Henson, President of the Jim Henson Foundation: “My father was very excited about doing a full-length feature film. It was really major for him because his work up until then was television. He’d done a couple of small short films, but this was really the first opportunity to participate in a major feature film. Initially, both my father and Frank Oz were a little bit concerned about whether or not these puppets, that are made of fleece and foam, would translate on a giant screen. And so, they made some really very funny improved test films. That was a major leap for them to try putting the puppets in the real world because, up until then, the puppets always existed inside of a television studio. That was one of the big challenges and they weren’t sure how that was going to work, and I think it worked really well.”
Back in the states, a lot of puppeteers and support staff for The Muppets worked in New York at the Muppet Workshop. John Lovelady, a freelancer who started on The Great Santa Clause in 1970, transitioned to a staffer in the workshop. Calista Hendrickson was also based in New York as a costume designer who worked on Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. She actually convinced Henson and Oz to dress the Muppets beyond their one-outfit looks.
Calista Hendrickson, Muppet Costume Designer: “When I had my so-called interview with Jim, after I had done Emmet Otter, I remember meeting him at a studio where they were editing. He just said, ‘Okay, what do you want to do with The Muppets?’ I said, ‘I want to dress the puppets. I want to be the costume designer.’ Mostly, the puppeteers, and the people that built the puppets, were doing the costumes as well. Frank Oz, who puppeteered Miss Piggy, had some hesitancy about changing her costume, which at the time was just a gray, silk dress that she had as a member of the chorus on The Muppet Show. I said, ‘Well, she’s an actress. She needs a robe. She needs a peignoir.’ That led of course then to the boa. So, it all fell into place for me.”
When the greenlight for The Muppet Movie came through, Henson and select team members made trips to California to develop the script, music and infrastructure in Hollywood to shoot the film. Also, James Frawley was hired as the director.
Cheryl Henson: “It was my impression that it wasn’t necessarily [my dad’s] choice [not to direct]. The studio felt that because there were so many new challenges to this film, that they wanted an accomplished director that had a track record. But my father had a lot of input on every single scene. He was right in there with Jim Frawley all the time. And Frawley brought a really great sense of humor, a really great sense of wackiness from his background with The Monkees. He had a no-holds-barred, let’s-just-do-it flavor that really helped to make the film work.”
John Lovelady, Muppet Workshop Coordinator: “I worked with [coordinator] Amy Van Gilder in the New York workshop. Jim was pressured [by people in California] to bring people out with him to answer questions. Calista Hendrickson and I went out with Jim and Jane [Henson]. We had the meetings and it was lovely, and everybody was getting ready to go back a few days later. And the [California producers] said, ‘Wait, wait, wait! We need somebody here to stay with us and answer questions. We’ve got lots and lots of questions.’ So, I stayed and that was [a] really exciting time for me.”
During one of those early trips, Henson collected together Oz, Jim Frawley, writer Jerry Juhl, Creative Director for Jim Henson Productions, Michael Frith, and co-producer Dave Lazer to flesh out the arc of the film and the music. Paul Williams, who wrote the music and lyrics for Emmet Otter, and was secured to write the songs for The Muppet Movie. He hosted the meeting at his home in Los Angeles.
Paul Williams
Paul Williams, Composer: “Emmet was such a good experience for all of us and Jim asked me to do The Muppet Movie. It was a beautiful surprise. I think that one of the reasons why he asked me to do Emmet was to see how we’d work together. It was a really easy fit. I’ve never had anybody more completely trusting. I brought Kenny Ascher into the project because I really wanted his musical skills. His melodies are so gorgeous.
“We’re all sitting at my house talking about what’s this going to be about? It’s the basic road picture of how [Kermit] picks up the rest of his Muppet family on the way.”
Michael Frith, Creative Director for Jim Henson Productions: “I was involved with a lot of the early story meetings. For me, a really pivotal story meeting we had was at Paul Williams’ house. It was very early in the process. Paul and Kenny couldn’t have been greater. They were just right on with it, and I found both of them so open and receptive.
“We kept coming back to technical things and story beats. ‘Well, then they’re going to do this, then they’re going to do that. And yes, you can tell a great yarn and you’ll have a lot of good jokes and the puppets will be wonderful and funny, and the music will be great, but why are we doing this?’ I remember at some point blurting out, ‘I think the movie is really about something else.’ I’m not sure I said [exactly] this at the time, but it certainly was something that I believed in the course of making the movie, that ‘It’s about us. It’s about the Muppets. It’s about this group of, in a way, misfits. These artists and writers and scenic people who seem to come from different worlds, coming together to create something that would not otherwise have been able to be created. The gathering of this clan becomes something greater than any of its parts.’ That, in a way, has become the theme for so many of the things The Muppets have done. I don’t think that had ever been actually crystallized before, or thought about before. I remember Paul and Kenny sitting up with a reaction to that idea.”
Paul Williams: “After, I walked [Jim] to his car and I said, ‘You know, Jim, this is a big deal. I know this is the first feature for the Muppets and we won’t surprise you with this. We’ll let you hear the songs that we’re working on to make sure we’re headed in the right direction.’ And he said, ‘Oh, Paul. That won’t be necessary. I’ll hear them in the studio.’ I was like, ‘Whoa!’ Who has that much faith in not only the people he’s working with but his own ability to choose the right people?”
Williams and Ascher immediately got to work on the songs, which Williams says they wrote in order, starting with “The Rainbow Connection.”
Paul Williams: “There is so much of The Muppets in the song. As with everything involved in The Muppets, the keyword is we didn’t work at it, we played at it. We sat down to write the first song, the “I Am” song from Kermit. I had asked Jim, ‘How does the movie start?’ He said, ‘Well, we’ve got Kermit in the swamp.’ I said, ‘Okay, what’s he doing?’ He thought a minute and he went, ‘He’s playing the banjo.’” [Laughs]
Lights, Camera… Action!
In the summer of 1978, a large unit of the Muppet production team relocated to California for principal photography on The Muppet Movie. Exteriors were shot mostly on location in the San Fernando Valley and interiors at CBS-MTM Studios in Studio City.
Cheryl Henson: “The Muppet Movie is the first time that my father was really producing in Los Angeles, so the big excitement was that he rented a house [there]. All the puppeteers were there so it was very much like the movie itself, that they’re going to Hollywood, and they’re making this movie.”
Brian Henson, Chairman of The Jim Henson Company: “The whole family was there in Los Angeles when we shot it. We had a cool, really weird, funky Mulholland Drive house. We had a pool that you could swim into the living room and it had a hydraulic diving board. My whole memory of that period was going to the set pretty much every day. I was too young to be working on anything, but I loved hanging out with the puppeteers. Richard Hunt was one of my best friends, so I would always hang out with him.”
Calista Hendrickson: “We had very little pre-production time, and there [was] a lot of stress about how we were going to do it all. I had no experience really working on a movie. So, we just bashed through these costumes, until everybody had their costume. It wasn’t until later that I learned that in the movies, you always make duplicates, just in case. I wouldn’t have had the fabrics to duplicate at that point, so we were totally blessed because we did not have any catastrophes. [Laughs]
“And I was also working with [human costume designer] Gwen Capetanos. We met regularly to see about colors and make sure that particular scenes were not going to be too jarring in terms of contrast or whatever.”
Dave Goelz, Performer of Gonzo the Great, Zoot, and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew: “It was only my second year or so performing. So, I don’t remember exactly when we found out we were going [to Los Angeles], but we were all excited about it. It was good to have a break from England, and be back on home turf.
Puppeteer Kathy Mullen primping Miss Piggy.
“We had a tremendous crew and just had a great time that summer. And what I really noticed was that TV had been like calisthenics, like you’re at the gym working out hard, and you’re getting your skills in place. And then, when you do a film, you can go for the highest quality on every shot. You have much more time to hone performances, the camera work, and the lighting. It was like exercise versus craftsmanship.”
Exterior: Swamp
The Muppet Movie opens as cinematically as you can get, with a wide aerial shot of a vast swamp that eventually pushes in to a lone log and Kermit the Frog singing and playing “The Rainbow Connection” for his own satisfaction.
John Lovelady: “The opening of the movie is so magical to me. What Paul did with the music, and that giant helicopter shot through the clouds. It’s like, ‘Oh, wow. This is really neat.’”
Paul Williams: “To me, Kermit has always been an every-frog. In the midst of chaos, he is the calm voice going, ‘Wait a minute, don’t panic. We can get out of this.’ We wanted to write a song that really shows that this is a frog with an inner life. He’s a frog that knows culture, that is sensible, that has a spiritual life. Where we set the bar was basically the most amazing moment in Pinocchio when Jiminy Cricket gets up in the window, takes off his hat, looks at the stars and sings “When You Wish Upon a Star.” It’s a stunning moment, and it takes you to a place just a little bit above where the storyline is. I was like, ‘That’s what we want to do.’ I think [Kenny and I] both agree, probably, it’s the most important song either of us have ever been lucky enough to write, “The Rainbow Connection.”
In order to create the sense of magical realism for the opening, Henson had to contort himself under the water to film Kermit’s song. One of the puppeteers assisting him was new to the company, performer Kathy Mullen.
Jim Henson and Kermit
Kathy Mullen, Puppeteer: “Jim asked me to audition, and I did, and he said, ‘Okay, come on out and work on the movie.’ The swamp where Kermit was singing was the old Gilligan’s Island lagoon. That was one of the early things I did, just helping Steve who [was] doing the hand on the banjo, and I was doing the other hand for him, sliding it up and down so it looked like Kermit was playing.”
Cheryl Henson: “I remember visiting [that set], and was very impressed and [was] almost a little fearful for when my father was performing Kermit… in the lagoon. He was in a black wetsuit and he had to get into this metal container, and they sank the metal container into the lagoon. He was performing Kermit up through a hole in the top of the metal container. Kermit was actually sitting on a log, so it’s that extra stretch that he had to be up in there, and he was in there like, all day. That was really a major thing. And a little bit scary, you know?”
Gone with the Schwinn
In the Emmet Otter special, Kermit was first portrayed riding a bike. It was a technical leap to show a full Muppet body performing that action, and every major release afterwards featuring Kermit upped his bike game, including the bike sequence in The Muppet Movie.
Dave Goelz: “This was when we started using radio-controlled Muppets. Jim was very visually driven, so as the producer, he was able to have a lot of influence on how it was shot.”
Brian Henson: “I was always an insider, so I often would watch my dad’s work as my dad’s work. I would watch the movie thinking about everything that they did to make it work. So, I think for me, because I always like to figure out cool stuff, I was most impressed with Kermit playing the banjo in the swamp and Kermit riding a bicycle. And then with the second Muppet movie, I did all the bicycle [scenes].”
El Sleezo Café
The dive bar that first brings Fozzie and Kermit together was also a melting pot of cameo appearances from Carol Kane to James Coburn.
Paul Williams: “[I got] a phone call from Jim where he goes, ‘I want you to play the piano player in The El Sleezo.’ And I go, ‘Yes! You’re kidding?’ [Laughs]
“[For Doc Hopper’s jingle], I think Kenny and I wrote something that was kind of inappropriate. I don’t remember exactly what it was but I think that [final version] may have just come out of Jim and Jerry Juhl.” [Laughs]
Cheryl Henson: “When Kermit the Frog is dancing in The El Sleezo Café, and they have to do that little soft shoe number, I’m actually doing Kermit’s hands. Throughout my teenage years, we would be drawn in to do background puppeteering and puppeteering right hands, or puppeteering arms. It was very comfortable to do, so my dad was just like, ‘Here, come do this with me.’”
Movin’ Right Along
Paul Williams: “I think that the playfulness of “Movin’ Right Along,” and all of the elements in the song, brought out the best in us. The absolute best in us because we’re in a receptive mode of the humor and the brilliance and the heart of The Muppets.”
Brian Henson: “When Fozzie and Kermit are driving the car, they had very little space between Frank and Jim. So, Frank asked me to do Fozzie’s right hand, steering the wheel, because I was really thin, and I could fit in there without crowding them. I’ve noticed that when you watch the movie, you can see a little bit of blonde hair sticking up in the middle of the frame. And that would be me.” [Laughs]
The Church of Electric Mayhem
Paul Williams: “The Electric Mayhem band… I know all of those characters. I was Zoot for a part of my life.” [Laughs]
Dave Goelz: “The interior of the church was shot at the MTM [Studio] in Studio City. I remember the set designer saying that it cost 70,000 dollars to build that interior, which of course today, would be like 300,000 or 400,000. [I remember] thinking, ‘Gosh, I could get a nice house for that.’ [Laughs]
“And then the exteriors were shot out on the Disney Ranch. That was a fun day, because that’s where they painted the Studebaker, and arrived at the church, and departed the church. Maybe six years ago, we shot a commercial at the Disney Ranch and I went over and found the building that had been the church, and now had been remodeled into a house. But, to stand on that ground again, all those years later, was really powerful.”
Michael Frith: “My main function on the movie was actually [making] a lot of the collateral materials. I did design, like there’s a moment where the Studebaker pulls up in front of a billboard and it blends in with the billboard. I designed the billboard. And I designed Gonzo’s truck and the Gonzo figure, the plumbing Gonzo on top, and things like that.”
Michael Frith in his Henson office. Photo by Nancy Moran.
The County Fair
When Kermit and Fozzie take a pit stop at the local fair, a lot of the children playing were kids of those working in production like Lovelady’s children and Brian Henson (seen playing Frisbee).
Calista Hendrickson: “When Piggy sees Kermit for the first time, I still love that moment and the montage of her different outfits. That’s really when we went in the direction of Miss Piggy’s fantasies and that just became the whole theme for her character. She just dreams up all these roles for herself and then dresses them. For the montage, I want to give some credit to Jim Frawley because he came up with some very specific ideas for how it would go. They’re romping through the field, then there’s a film noir, the last one, my inspiration was the movie Tom Jones.”
Paul Williams: “Never Before, Never Again” was written in Sinatra-ese: ‘Never before have two souls joined so freely and so fast. For me, this is the first time and the last.’ I mean, it’s absolutely written in his style of singing, with the hanging-on consonants and all. I went and recorded it with Johnny Mathis. I’ve always thought that it’s a song that would have a real life as a love song and it hasn’t. It hasn’t been recorded at all. I’m sure, and I want to make this very clear, that Piggy’s unique performance has something to do with that. She sang it so beautifully, it’s like when Streisand sings something sometimes people just go, ‘Oh, I’m not going to attempt it because I will never be as good as she was.’ I’m sure that’s the case with Piggy.” [Laughs]
Edgar Bergen (and Charlie McCarthy!) in The Muppet Movie.
Not long after ventriloquist and Henson favorite Edgar Bergen shot his cameo as a judge, he passed away.
Calista Hendrickson: “I remember we shot that morning, and then they shut down so that the puppeteers could go to the funeral of Edgar Bergen, who had just done his cameo a few weeks before. That was a little spiritual moment, because shutting down on a movie set is incredibly costly. When they came back, they just decided they couldn’t [work] So, we waited until the next day.”
Hey, Isn’t That….?
Paul Williams: “You look at that cast, and what a remarkable gathering. From Milton Berle and Mel Brooks and Telly Savalas and Edgar Bergen and Orson Welles, for god’s sake! I have a couple friends who were in this movie, like James Coburn was a dear friend. Bob Hope. Charles Durning. There was a regular poker party that Charles Durning played in. Every now and then, I’d go by and give him my money and leave.” [Laughs]
Cheryl Henson: “To me, the person who really galvanized that sense of Muppet family was my father’s producer, David Lazer, who was executive producer on The Muppet Show starting the second season. He maintained really great relationships with the stars who appeared on The Muppet Show. He was just a consummate host, and he would go out of his way to remember their birthdays, to celebrate their children, to invite them to shows. He was always making people feel special. I feel like that [guest star] family is the family that David Lazer and my father kept going.
“The only star I really remember is Madeline Kahn. I met her on The Muppet Show, and she was just so funny and delightful. And of the puppeteers, I remember Richard Hunt in particular really enjoying Madeline Kahn’s humor.”
Dave Goelz: “The Richard Pryor scene I remember because prior to doing that [scene], I was always aware of his pain and the frustration and anger. And so, I went into it kind of afraid that he was going to blow up at me. He couldn’t have been nicer. He was fairly quiet. We shot it quite easily and quickly. I probably was rolling in and out on a dolly.”
Brian Henson: “I got to meet Orson Welles. He didn’t have a dressing room. He didn’t have a star wagon. He would have an office wagon that would be pushed all the way into the stage within 40 feet of where he was shooting. He had his little office. This was the first time in my life I’d spent any time in California, and so I was autograph hunting, sometimes a little shamelessly and then feeling embarrassed. But I wanted to get Orson Welles’ autograph, so I knocked on his office. Everybody was very intimidated by Orson Welles. I stuck my head in, and I said, ‘Mr. Welles, would you mind signing an autograph?’ And he went, ‘Oh, young Mr. Henson, come in.’ And then he sat me down opposite his desk and grilled me about my life. Really fun. I thought he was a very, very cool guy.”
Under the Desert Moon
John Lovelady: “I must say, a moment that really touched me was when things hadn’t been going well and the gang was down in the desert at night. Kermit wanders off and there’s a shooting star. [Seeing] it was like, ‘Okay, we’re part of something really, really special.’”
Paul Williams: “Gonzo’s looking at the sky, and when we observed that story, something awakened in us as writers to add to that, to move the story along, to develop the characters.
“The fact is, so much of the inspiration came from the heart of Henson and the men and women that worked with him. Specifically, to Dave Goelz and Gonzo, who to me are family. I make no secret that Gonzo is my favorite Muppet. He’s a landlocked bird and I’m an old skydiver. I always loved to be in free fall because you feel like you’re flying. I have a real connection with him and I thought, ‘This is a landlocked bird. His girlfriend is a chicken, also a landlocked bird. For him to get lost in the heavens like that….’”
Dave Goelz: “I was just lucky to be able to do “I’m Going to Go Back There Someday.” It was a surprise song. It wasn’t part of the script. Paul wasn’t asked for it, but he offered it. He wrote it because it came to him out of his heart. I found out about it at dinner. Jim had all the puppeteers over for dinner one evening before we started shooting. And he said, ‘There’s this great song that Paul wrote for Gonzo, just for Gonzo.’ And, he played it for me, and it was just beautiful.
“Interestingly, when we went into the studio, it had been recorded. The instruments had been recorded in Paul’s key, and I couldn’t sing it. It was out of what we laughingly call my range. It felt like kind of a failure, but I couldn’t do it. So, they brought the band back in, and they re-recorded it in my key. And then, I went back and sang it. And many years later, when Jim died, I sang it at his memorial. And by that time, I could actually sing it properly. Since then, I’ve sung it to my little kids at bedtime, hundreds of times.”
Kermit and Doc Hopper (Charles Durning)
Kermit vs. Hopper
Michael Frith: “I think the most extraordinary thing about [working with The Muppets] in retrospect, and with other experiences now under your belt, was that I don’t ever remember anybody ever saying we can’t. I was asking for giant puppets that would appear to be 16 feet tall with all of the mechanisms and everything that made them work. Time and time again, just because it was my vision, if you will, of what this should be, and I would be sitting there with the puppet builders or mechanics guys, and I’d say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could do this?’ And nobody ever said, ‘We can’t do that.’ Ever.”
Calista Hendrickson: “There were no computers. We did it all in real-time, and made everything by hand. When you see a huge Animal head come out from that rooftop, it was really the big thing. It was not a model.”
Kathy Mullen: “[For the showdown], we were all in a pit for that. I did Kermit’s feet walking towards the bad guy. I had two individual, separate feet with the boots on it. I had to lie down on this thing that was run on a dolly so that they could get the camera behind the feet. They had to mount the camera below, and I was above it with the feet hanging over it. It was very funny. If you had seen that, you would say, ‘Oh, that’s hilarious.’ The feet looking like they’re stomping down the street from behind.”
Life’s Like a Movie…
The last sequence in the soundstage, where the set mishaps break a hole in the ceiling and a rainbow bathes the Muppets with hope as they sing together, was the biggest puppeteering day of the entire film.
Dave Goelz: “Our sets are built up off the ground, maybe 40 inches off the stage floor, and there was a big opening that was maybe 30 feet in diameter. They got 250 characters in that shot, so that meant we had probably 130 puppeteers in there.”
Cheryl Henson: “I was in that pit with a number of my siblings and puppeteers from all over California. Tim Burton was in there. It was an extraordinary day and there were so many people there who really had dreamed of being Muppeteers and who were getting to be Muppeteers in that one day. There were so many people really happy to be there.
“But I think when you talk about the significance of that moment, and one reason why I feel like we were feeling it in the moment, it’s about Paul Williams’ music. They were hearing that playback over and over again, and that’s a great moment. And you know it’s a great moment because you’re hearing the music. You can’t hear that music and not feel like this is important, you know?
“He was able to tap into my father’s philosophy, and the lyrics to that song are so connected to who my father was, and everything that he really believed. The movie itself had an autobiographical arc to it, even though it was a fantastical arc. It was still related to Dad’s arc. He grew up in Mississippi on the Delta and here he was in Hollywood making this movie.”
Paul Williams: “Jim and I produced the [soundtrack] album. Kenny did all of the beautiful arrangements. And when it came time to score the film, the plan was always Kenny for his music and I’m lyrics. But it came time for Kenny to score the film and he had just had a baby girl. We’re up in Toronto, and he said, ‘I love this. I want to do it, but I can’t. I have to go home and be with my little girl.’ All of a sudden, I’m sitting in front of the Moviola and going, ‘Okay, what are we going to do?’
“I remember writing scenes like the gunfight and working with [arranger] Ian Freebairn-Smith. I would tell him I want a trumpet or a clarinet to take this one line and he said, ‘Congratulations, you just killed the clarinet player because it doesn’t go that high. You’ll have to use a different instrument.’ I’m sitting there with no real training, singing string lines and doing percussion. It’s funny because I can watch the movie and remember basically every cue. We’re talking 40 years ago. At that point, I’d scored other films but that was the greatest challenge and I had the most amazing music to work with because I had Kenny’s music.”
Michael Frith: “I worked very closely with the promotional people and I did the basic concept sketches for the movie posters, and then got to work with these fabulous artists, like Drew Struzan, who is such a genius. Jim and I had seen Drew’s stuff and Jim loved it. Who wouldn’t? I said, ‘I think it’s really important that since this is the Muppets’ first movie, the feeling right from the gate is that it is a classic movie, and there is nobody who says classic movie like Drew Struzan.’ We used him on all of the Muppet movies except Muppets Take Manhattan. He was just a joy.”
40 Years Later
John Lovelady: “Somebody asked what is your favorite memory? It’s the movie. The memory was the movie, you know? We did a movie and everything that we wanted to do, we accomplished. And if anybody had any questions about what we were able to do, we answered the fact that we could do this. Not only can we do it, now there’s no problem about whether we can do it, or not. Because they had been questioning us for a long time.
“I hadn’t seen the movie in about 20 years. And when we saw it again, it was really an emotional experience. So many of us are gone. The tragedy of Jim dying, and then how the kids were able to come in and take over and start whole new other lives of their own. It was really great. I am so excited to have been a part of the early years. It was great working with Jim and being that close to him. As it turned out, we were both southern kids from the same little town.
The Rainbow Connection
Dave Goelz: “I think there is something really timeless about The Muppet Movie, because it is a character on a path, finding others who are like him, joining up to do something really nice for the world. I think the innocence and the joy of The Muppets are probably desired more in the world now than they have been in a long time. And I feel that’s true of a lot of our works, that it is timeless. It’s about eternal human motivations and emotions.”
Calista Hendrickson: “Jim was a very unusual and brilliant man who inspired so many people. When I first went to work at the Workshop, people came from all different backgrounds in art or design or industrial design. He had a way of finding people he wanted to work with, and we all felt very fortunate. Jim had a wonderful gift for seeking out opinions and advice from anybody. Talking to people about what they liked about it, or what we should change. I thought it was a wonderful thing that he could involve everybody on the set with ideas and critique, so we could keep making it better.”
Paul Williams: “I think that what I observed in watching The Muppets was that there was this duality. This joyful creativity that appeared to be just pure play, but at the same time the discipline to it. All of a sudden, I saw balance and change and inventive creativity. I think part of the reason The Muppets worked so well on the big screen, certainly in The Muppet Movie, is because the story and the heart of the characters, they are not children’s toys. They don’t feel like fairy tale characters. They are remarkably human. There’s a performance element there that could be done equally by humans. It’s something that’s wonderful for children, but it’s not designed for children. It’s designed for all of us.
“You know every now and then I wind up at a film festival where they’ll show it. Most recently at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. It was just wonderful to sit there and talk about the film and then look at it. It holds up beautifully. It’s a wonderful story.”
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Muppet Movie with Fathom Event’s screenings across the U.S. on July 25th and July 30th. Get tickets here to see the film on the big screen!
