Original subtitles

You know, I'm an idea man.

I spend a lot of time thinking.

Thoughts are funny things.

They can lead to ideas.

There's one now.

Now, when you get an idea,

you have to look at it from every direction.

Help.

Then along comes a new, fresh idea.

And this gives you other ideas,

which gives birth to other ideas.

And finally the whole thing crystallizes into one gloriously marvelous,

great, big, beautiful idea.

Looks fantastic.

Stand up. There's, uh... There's a little rectangle on the floor.

Stand up.

I think he looks so good this way that I'm...

It's just it's so graphic an image.

Great.

- Yeah. - I don't do this for a living.

- You got a great face. - Oh.

Oh, yeah.

How would you define yourself now, as a puppeteer or a filmmaker or...

- Any of those. - Yeah, right.

- And all of the above? - Yeah. Sure.

Do you get a lot of fear wondering whether your perceptions are correct?

Uh, when you're running a whole, you know, several-hundred-person unit,

uh, you have to keep everybody else enthusiastic.

- Uh-huh. - You can't really express

grave doubts and stuff, whether or not your...

this whole thing is a good idea or not.

Yeah.

Is this a nine-to-five job?

No, it's sort of... an all-the-time job.

Yeah.

It's every... "every moment of one's life" kind of a job, I suppose.

I met Jim when I was 17.

And it took about ten years to get to the point

where we could sense each other's rhythms.

I was the mainstay performer with Jim for 35 years.

Jim created out of innocence.

He was a very rare, rare creature.

He was so internal and quiet

that his inner life must have been sparkling.

He had so many ideas and so many things he wanted to do.

And so the idea of time, I think, was very much on Jim's mind always.

I was what they called a "creative assistant,"

an assistant that would travel with Jim and shadow him 24-7.

You should be much more active. You need to be running around.

His ideas came from excitement in him.

He said to me that from a very early age,

he had the feeling that he was here for a purpose and a reason.

And that was largely what drove him.

I feel like he came onto this planet, and he knew he had a mission and a calling.

He's like, "Gotta get it done. Gotta get it done."

His schedule was so packed. New York to London to Toronto to LA.

His drive was superhuman.

Uh, we have to keep going, and you get to go home.

It was a restlessness.

He was always doing, always creating. And he was urgent about it.

Wrap it up and get to the ending.

I've always operated doing a few things at the same time.

And I find it very exciting.

It's just an incredibly busy life with a shocking amount of things

that got done in every year.

Why he kept going so much, I don't know.

There's no real one answer. That's the trouble, you know?

Muppets, they're superstars.

250 million people enjoy them every week.

And just because they're so popular,

we may neglect to notice that Muppetry is also an art.

Sitting beside me here is the Muppet master himself.

There's only one word for Jim.

He's a genius.

Think of Rasputin as an Eagle Scout.

And in the chair next to him, and, indeed, seldom far from him,

is Jim's close associate and friend, a man who truly fits his name.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Frank Oz and Mr. Jim Henson.

Let's get this on the record. How did you start?

So when I started, it was, like, just out of high school,

and I just heard about a television station

that was looking for a puppeteer.

And so I made puppets and auditioned

because I really wanted to work in television.

I don't recall ever seeing a puppet show when I was a kid.

You never saw a puppet?

No. And I never played with puppets. I never had any to play with.

He grew up in rural Mississippi. Leland, Mississippi,

on a Department of Agriculture research station.

His mother was a Christian Scientist,

and his father agreed to be Christian Science because he loved her.

His older brother was his best friend.

They would spend a lot of time outside,

a lot of time exploring.

If you imagine the peacefulness...

he really had that kind of childhood where your mind is allowed to fill in.

When I was fairly young, we just got a television set.

Television was in its early days,

and I thought it was such an exciting thing.

This television picture that was happening in one place,

and you could see what was going on somewhere else.

From the first time he saw a television, I think that's where he wanted to go.

You think of a guy growing up in Mississippi.

A television set could bring the world into your home.

Like, that's just like, boom, mind-blowing.

His name is Jim Henson,

the most famous name in the whole history of puppetry.

And you're telling us that you went into puppetry

just as a way to get into television?

Yes, because I wanted to work in this field. I-I loved it.

Throughout, I'd get all the credit and so forth.

But back in the early days, it was my wife, Jane.

Actually, she wasn't my wife when we started working.

She and I were the whole thing for the first, oh, five, seven years.

My mom had a wicked sense of humor. She was really, really funny.

She was very, very artsy, but she was also extremely earthy.

She was a painter and a ceramicist, and her art was very important to her.

I met Jim in a puppetry class.

It was my senior year, and he was a freshman.

When he was young, everything was absolutely intriguing to him,

and he just couldn't wait to get on to the next thing.

The puppetry class really was the first thing he did with the university.

It was a senior class,

and Jim was coming in as a freshman.

He started writing all the scripts, designing the puppets,

and he pretty much took over the class.

And he had that boy-genius quality about him.

His skin wasn't perfect.

He wanted to take care of his acne,

and his mother didn't want to have him go to a doctor.

So as soon as he could grow a beard, he just wanted to have one.

He thought of himself as a pimply-faced, skinny teenager,

and then carried that with him for a long time.

When they first met, she was much worldlier on multiple levels.

She came from New York. She had had other boyfriends.

She was more socially adept than him.

They both had a sophisticated appreciation of nonsense and absurdity.

That's probably what pulled them together.

He already had some puppets on TV 'cause he started in high school.

And it was in that spring semester that Jim asked me to help him at WRC.

Jim was an artist.

He wanted production design, but he was fascinated by television.

Action.

I heard of a TV station that was looking for a puppeteer.

So I painted the scenery and I built the puppets,

and wrote the materials and auditioned and got a job.

And that's kind of how it all started.

I did this thing that was called Sam and Friends.

It was late at night. It was on at 11:30,

which was a strange kind of time for a puppet show.

But, uh...

But, at the time,

we never thought of ourselves as being particularly for children.

Going now to two of the best people in the world, I think.

They're Jim and Jane Henson. And they have two friends.

They call 'em Muppets

because they're neither puppets or marionettes, but kind of a combination.

They invented them.

Here we go to Washington and Jim and Jane Henson.

♪ Yes! We have no bananas ♪

♪ We have no bananas today ♪

It almost always started with some kind of a musical piece,

and do his visual interpretations.

Jim would pick a record, and he would build puppets to go with it.

And I would help perform.

♪ ...old-fashioned tomato ♪

Sometimes it was a sort of sophomoric, uh, record pantomimes.

Other times, it was completely zany sketch comedies.

The truth is out!

And it attracted this huge following

in Washington D.C., of all places,

where everybody watched the news.

Everything was live. Nothing was taped.

Whatever you did, went out over the air as you did it.

And our style of puppetry, we didn't even try to be sophisticated.

Television was very new, and really, Jim went to play.

There's so many things that Jim did at that time to explore puppetry.

♪ Old black magic has me in its spell ♪

♪ Old black magic that you weave so well ♪

What Jim did is he took the first proscenium away,

and made the TV set the stage.

♪ Like a leaf caught in a tide ♪

♪ I should stay away But what can I do? ♪

Not only that, but he worked with the close-up.

Most shows at that time didn't have close-ups of puppets.

♪ The old black magic called love ♪

Oh, that's marvelous.

Jim and Jane, I'm... I'm glad that you run the lady's part.

Oh.

- This is Kermit. - It's Kermit.

And this is Sam. Some of our characters change sex very easily...

with the addition of a wig.

Kermit... Uh, yeah, I see. Okay.

To start with, my dad just had sort of a... a troupe of puppets that...

that he had designed.

And they were very different from each other.

And Kermit was just one of them.

♪ So deep in my heart ♪

Dad was still trying to, like, find what he felt was the right look

for... for puppets for him.

In the very early experimentation, Kermit was right there.

Kermit wasn't a frog then.

Keep your shirt on, King.

Said the little green guy.

Initially, it was just one of the troupe.

My mother puppeteered it sometimes.

Kermit wore a wig at times.

♪ I've grown accustomed to your face ♪

♪ You almost make the day begin ♪

Where were you first born, Kermit?

The first... The first me actually came from, uh... I was a, uh...

I was a coat that belonged to, uh, Henson's mother there.

- Actually was. Yeah. - That's how you began?

It was my mother's coat and a Ping-Pong ball, you know,

which I cut in half to make the eyes.

He was sort of sitting vigil

with his grandfather, who was very, very ill.

The story is he used Kermit to entertain his grandfather as he was dying.

My mom thought there was a little bit of a spiritual connection to the puppet.

It was a way of bringing lightness and bringing humor.

My dad always felt like humor was an antidote, that it was a saving grace.

Kermit was one of the more generic of the puppets,

but it fit his hand really well.

He could puppeteer really well through it.

He was learning that a really simple puppet, like Kermit,

could be very expressive just by using the fabric and letting it distort,

but controlling the distortion so that they become expressions.

- Give me a dozen eggs. - How about a loaf of Claussen's bread?

Nah, just give me the eggs.

Give him the eggs!

He'll learn to buy Claussen's.

The fact that the puppet is so simple, and it really almost exposes the hand,

makes it very close to him.

And, over time, he really imbued that character with more of himself.

Kermit is... is more outgoing than I am, certainly.

I am more laid back. I... I don't do outrageous.

I... I do his outrageous things. That's true.

I guess it's close to an alter ego of some sort.

How's that for happily ever after?

Yeesh.

Oh, Harry, we're blocking some people's view.

Oh, excuse me. I sure don't want to keep anybody from seeing

this gorgeous Esskay bacon package.

It's a very tasty package.

Jim was doing Sam and Friends daily shows.

Even though it was fun, he was very confined.

He was particularly sensitive to being boxed in.

He wanted to be an artist.

He was interested in filmmaking.

He was interested in television, not strictly puppetry.

He was figuring out what he wanted to do next in his life.

I was going through those sort of early times in one's life.

I was breaking up with a girl.

We were kind of dating other people and everything.

We had life going on during Sam and Friends.

Well, he clearly had a moment of self-doubt.

Here's a track. I could stay on this track,

but is this the track I want?

So I decided to go away and paint.

Then I went to Europe.

I wandered around.

Then I met a lot of other puppeteers.

He could see that puppetry was taken more seriously in Europe.

I mean, they got funded. They had companies. They had theaters.

He started to believe that puppetry was an art form,

and could express things that humans couldn't express.

In the course of that little trip,

I found that people were doing interesting things,

and it was something that, uh, you could get into and develop

and... and turn into something else.

That's what you did, all right.

I came back from that trip all fired up.

He really had it in his mind. "This is what we're gonna do."

We're gonna do this with the puppets, and then we're gonna get married.

Falling in love is a kind of a funny way of putting it

because, I don't know, we were just with each other,

and we were very fond of being with each other.

He and my mom founded a company called Muppets, Inc.

But as soon as it was incorporated, that's when we settled on the 60-40,

which it kind of always was from then on.

It was around October or so that we decided to get married.

But I don't know at that time we knew what the future would be.

My mom sometimes said that they got married too young.

She was aware that he was maybe too young to settle down for the rest of his life,

having gotten married at 23.

Now, that was probably not too young for her though.

Right about that time, we got that local Emmy.

I do remember Jim getting it from Richard Nixon,

and you have to stand there having your picture taken.

You have to say something, right?

But I do remember Jim came up and he said, "Nixon said to me,

'I knew a man in the navy with a beard.'"

At that time, he was holding it all together with my mother.

Just the two of them figuring it all out.

Then we had a baby in May of '60.

And then in August '61, we went to Puppeteers of America Festival.

Jim was anxious to know other puppeteers,

and also to look for somebody to work with him.

He really was in search of putting together a team.

Jim started asking around for someone.

And everybody was saying,

"You really should see a very young man named Frank Oznowicz."

I was 17. I hadn't finished high school when Jim saw me.

I had worked for four or five years doing puppet shows all around the Bay area.

I think Jim could sense that feeling and timing

I learned through all those years of doing all those shows.

And I could hold an audience. I think that was the key thing.

Frank Oz was, initially,

a very mischievous son of a very serious puppeteer.

My dad and mom escaped from Antwerp, Belgium

at the beginning of the war.

My father was a window dresser and a sign painter.

And, to the degree that I know, he carved puppets out of wood.

Then when he met my mom, she made the characters' clothes.

They really took the art of puppetry so seriously

that Frank could never take the art of puppetry seriously.

Frank and I met Jim

at exactly the same time.

In fact, Frank and I were doing a show together.

Jerry was asked by Jim to join him.

I probably never would have had the job except that Frank was too young...

...to... to leave home.

Jerry Juhl came in '61.

I was pregnant with Cheryl, and Jim felt

that I was no longer dependable.

Shortly thereafter, Don Sahlin joined the team

and became the genius builder of the Muppets.

He was this quiet, very funny, obsessed man.

I completed high school, and that's when he asked me to come on.

That was the core group for quite a while.

I arrived at 53rd and Second Avenue, and there were two rooms.

One room was a little cubicle for a secretary,

and then there was a workshop for Don Sahlin.

And he had the gerbils running around.

Don took a basketball one day and cut it in half.

And that became the basis of Rowlf's head.

And, of course, Rowlf became the big star.

- Howdy. - Was that him?

- Yep. - Howdy.

- Is that all he says? - He's a star.

- Any more and we have to pay him. - Howdy.

Immediately, Jim and Frank started performing together.

And almost the first thing that Frank did was to play the extra hand of Rowlf.

He then had a weekly spot on Jimmy Dean's show.

- You're on the other side. - I'm on the other side.

- Now, Rowlf... - I got water in my ear.

- Okay. Now I'm running again. - All right. Now you're running.

- Now you're going faster and faster. - Faster.

- Lickety-split. - I'm lickety-split.

What's the matter?

I think I just split my lickety.

My part was basically an apprentice.

I didn't do anything, you know, except the right hand.

All right, Jimbone.

Frank always had such a emotionally loaded relationship with puppets.

Jim could relate to that a lot, too, 'cause he didn't intend to be a puppeteer.

And here was Frank, who didn't intend to be a puppeteer,

but Jim very quickly picked up on that.

Frank also wanted to do things really, really good.

And that was really their bond.

You do it great, and I'll do it great.

We'll do it great together.

Woof, woof, woof.

This is what it looks like when we're doing a television show backstage.

We stand up here. The four of us, we're working this one.

We're watching a television set here while we're doing the show.

We'll play back a little bit of the show so that you can see

what it looked like from backstage while we were doing that last skit.

"Okay. Now, once upon a time, there was a lovely girl named Cinderella."

Cinderella, come here, you wretched girl.

Oh, no. It's Gretel, and she's back from the moon.

I shall kiss you on the nose.

That's a magical transformation.

Three bowls of porridge.

Using the television monitor, you can perform and see your performance

exactly as the audience does.

And so, as we're performing, we're also editing.

We're framing the shots.

It's a magical transformation.

At the end of the day, what that monitor is, is life.

Purina Dog Chow will really make a hit with your dog.

Are you sure it'll make a hit?

Positive.

During that time, we were making a lot of commercials.

But the amazing thing with Jim was, even though he had to do something

that he didn't really want to do,

he always made it fun for himself and for us.

I'm gonna convince everybody to buy nothing but Claussen's bread.

What's the club for?

To get their attention.

We had 6.5 seconds of audio in which to sell a product and tell a joke.

What do you mean Taystee bread is baked while you sleep?

I'm awake.

Like I said, Taystee is baked while you sleep.

In the old days, a lot of our stuff was very violent.

It was before we even started talking about violence on television.

Uh, or maybe they were talking about it, but I didn't hear it.

Uh...

That's a lot of...

Well, I'm gonna go.

What do you have against Jim Henson?

Nothing.

What do you have against me?

Nothing.

What do you have against Wilson's Meats?

Well, actually, I'm a vegetarian.

Doing commercials was a practical matter for Jim.

It allowed him to build a-a small team of people

that would be able to move on and do bigger things.

Jim created a big dollar bill like this that hung on the wall,

and it was all made with coins and money, and that was the altar to money.

It was an awareness that, damn it,

we have to... we've got to pay attention to that.

♪ I want that green ammunition That's the stuff of which I'm wishing ♪

♪ Fill my closets with deposits I'm a demon at addition ♪

♪ Give me shekels, give me pesos Let me see their smiling face-ohs ♪

♪ Give me money, money Money, money, money ♪

You could see how conflicted he was about advertising,

and just selling for the sake of selling.

I want you to get out there and sell, sell, sell.

Merely spray it...

Quick-cooked in dragon fire.

What else do you do besides just puppets?

Well, I've been into filmmaking for a while.

Jim was an experimental filmmaker. That's what he really, really was.

Jim wasn't a musician himself, but he thought like a musician.

He was just always rather intrigued with the idea of music

and time being measured out in beats.

Heartbeats.

Everything he did was experimental.

And that's the way my dad approached everything.

He was such an ambitious guy,

he'd do a little shoot for his home movies.

He was doing stop-motion,

experimental television...

experimental film.

- Moms. - Dads.

Kids.

♪ Flapsole Sneakers hit the spot ♪

Vita-Juice. Let's have a shot.

Tippy Toys for a happy tot.

Boo-boo Band-Aids help you clot.

I have a short film that I made I called Time Piece.

It's just a study of contemporary man sort of thing.

You know, kind of a fun look at it.

So if you want to know my dad, watch Time Piece and then go from there.

It's a film that's made of a lot of little short segments chopped together,

and it's a way of editing that I was enjoying doing at the time.

It's sort of, like, kind of train of thought editing.

Help.

The idea was mixing seemingly unrelated images in quick sequence

in order to communicate one feeling, one thought.

We did that on weekends.

We'd make commercials,

and then we'd have enough money to shoot on the weekend.

And that's how we shot Time Piece for a year with an old Rackover 35.

Help.

For my dad, time was ticking all the time.

Because he wanted to do more than is humanly possible,

there was never gonna be enough time.

Help.

That idea that time could run out,

I'm sure came with the death of his brother.

It was huge. It was huge. Losing his brother was huge to him.

They were inseparable. Like, they were brothers and best friends.

And my father was, uh, two or three years younger than him.

He died in a car accident at the army base.

He was very young.

It was a huge shock to the family.

Absolutely shattered my dad's world.

The whole family had a really difficult time.

He saw his mom get really depressed.

He saw his mom, like, start to give up.

And he wasn't gonna do that.

He was gonna keep going.

In the 1960s, Jim was excited to create work

that reflected everything that was going on in the country.

I think part of it is shocking, and I think part of it is very interesting.

He did this show called Youth 68.

I think it's finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of artistic expression.

It was very much about the generational divide.

It was about the music. It was about the politics. It was about the protests.

It was about what is happening in the world.

- Well, I think it's garbage. - I love it.

- I don't understand it. - I think it's wonderful.

Yeah, sure. It's always more exciting. Then what?

How can you do a program like this

where you could take all these people's statements

and you could re... rearrange it, you could reedit the film

so that, uh, one person comes out saying something

they really never intended to say?

This is no way to make a television program.

Jim was not into drugs or anything,

but he... he loved the expression that was going on.

You know, I've learned to walk around inside my own head.

That may sound silly to you,

but it's been very, very helpful to me.

Jim wanted to do more than just the Muppets.

He wanted to experiment.

One of the things he did during that time was called The Cube,

which was about a man who was trapped in an alternate reality.

What is this place? What's it for?

We ask that question ourselves once in a while.

But what Jim was most excited about was creating a discotheque called Cyclia,

which would have, like, 24 projectors all over the ceiling

with different angles of white.

And then he would project all this 16 millimeter film

while the music was going on.

He didn't really care that it was gonna be a nightclub.

It was all about what is technically possible.

He was always excited about the next idea.

He wasn't sure that puppetry would be his thing.

And, in some ways, he was starting to drift away from the family.

But then he got this invitation.

Children were watching a tremendous amount of television.

Forty, 50 hours a week.

Some of it bad television.

Joan Cooney had the notion that

if you're going to watch that much television,

why don't we find out what it is they like to watch on television?

Then go out and find out what preschool children ought to know,

and put those two things together.

So Joan found seasoned television professionals and said,

"Do your thing and we're gonna teach you how to be educators."

Joan had seen Jim's work and knew how valuable he would be to the program.

I knew Jim very well, and I had worked with him.

So I could call him up and say, "Come on over and talk to us."

But Jim wasn't sure he wanted to do that.

And we weren't into children's shows. We never did children's stuff.

But there's also a part of him that sensed the value of the show.

Because he always sensed that television could do more.

Jim latched on to the idea that we could create a television show

that would really do some good for a very specific audience

that needed good done for it.

I think that television is such a huge influence on children.

I think it's the next most important influence to the family,

or the church or the school.

As an industry, we don't generally face up to that responsibility,

and I think we need to be a great deal more responsible

to what we put on the medium.

He had four kids, all kind of Sesame Street age at home,

and another on the way.

My younger brother John

had learning difficulties and was not speaking yet.

So the whole idea of "How do kids learn?" was really personal to him.

But he didn't think that educating children was anything he was good at.

- Can you sing the alphabet, Joey? - Yes.

♪ A, B, C, D, E, F, G ♪

♪ H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P ♪

- ♪ Q, R, S ♪ - ♪ Q, R, Cookie Monster ♪

Cookie Monster isn't a letter of the alphabet. It goes...

- ♪ Q, R, S, T, U, V ♪ - ♪ R, S, T, U, Cookie Monster ♪

You're... You're just teasing me.

♪ W, X, Y and Z ♪

- ♪ Now I know my A, B, Cs ♪ - ♪ Now I sung my A, Cs ♪

- ♪ Won't you... ♪ - ♪ Next time Cookie Monster ♪

Next time Cookie Monster can do it with you.

I'm leaving. Whoo!

I love you.

- I love you too. - Thanks.

Sesame Street is one of those interesting things

where the time was right for that particular idea.

Here's one half of my chicken salad sandwich.

Where's the other half? It's gone.

Egad, the hunt's afoot. Show me the clues.

I think Sesame Street was almost the most unlikely thing,

probably, in terms of his life plan.

The fact that he did Sesame Street instead of a series of nightclubs,

yay. Like I... I think everybody was like, "Phew!"

♪ One, two, three, four, five, six, seven Eight, nine, ten, 11, 12 ♪

One of the ways they lured him into doing the show was to say,

"You can do a lot of experimental films."

♪ Seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12 ♪

He did one set of number films

that has the syncopated animation of Time Piece.

Two.

And then ten other films, which was the most exciting to him of all,

where he could do whatever he wanted.

♪ I'm the King of Eight, And I'm here to state ♪

♪ That everything here Has to total eight ♪

♪ The guards, for instance, by the gate, ♪

♪ Must always number exactly eight ♪

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

They weren't coming at it from how to teach preschoolers.

Like, they were all about doing the coolest, funniest, fun show.

One wedding cake.

In the summer of '69, we did some test shows.

And the original concept was the street would be real,

and everything else would be fantasy.

The result was the street was deadly dull.

So we realized we had to populate the street with some interesting puppets.

I had in mind that we would do this large, silly character

who would represent the child.

Oh, good morning.

It's possibly the world's most magnificent puppet.

He's also a very highly technical puppet, which a lot of people don't realize.

And it was Jim's design, top to bottom.

Caroll Spinney was one of the few that had not worked with us before.

I met him at a puppet festival and I described this very large, yellow bird.

I'm sure he'd had no idea what he was in for.

Caroll.

There we are.

Ah...

Jim offered it to Frank Oz but he'd already done the La Choy Dragon.

He says, "You're not getting me into one of those things again."

And so Jim said, "Whatever you want to develop, it's all yours."

And then he asked Caroll to do Oscar also.

Ta-da! Hey, that was rotten.

I think that having both Oscar and Big Bird on the street

sort of brought the street to life.

Here we go. Rolling sound.

Yay!

The puppets, from the very beginning,

were an integral part of our whole concept of the show.

There would be no Sesame Street without the Muppets.

What's the big one, Big Bird?

Oh, what's the big one?

Oh, that's a picture of me when I was little.

Wasn't I cute?

Characters have come about from many different ways.

Some of the characters were puppets that we had before Sesame Street,

and they took on a personality.

Uh, Cookie Monster certainly was that.

I will count them.

- No, me eat them. - Count.

- Eat. Eat, eat, eat. - No, count. Count, count.

- Wait. - What?

- Why don't we cooperate? - Ah!

The Count was invented for Jerry Nelson.

Grover was closest to my heart.

Oh, they're coming!

- Which way? Which way? Which way? - That way. That way.

Guy Smiley was invented on the show and he was brilliant.

Jim was absolutely brilliant with him. God, he was so funny.

Wonderful. I'm Guy Smiley.

They call me Guy Smiley because I changed my name from Bernie Liederkranz.

Yes, thank you. Yes.

Some of his absolute best performances took place on Sesame Street

because he didn't have to be watching the budget.

He didn't have to be producing.

He was just there to perform.

Quiet, please.

Performing the Ernie and Bert pieces with Frank

has always been one of the great joys of... of doing this show.

Action.

- Good night, Ern. - Good night, Bert.

- Bert? - What?

Oh no, I'm not saying this to you. I'm sorry, this is to me.

- Oh, I didn't hear that. - Hmm.

This is where I could use that close-up, Jimmy. If you wanted to.

- Oh, you want a close-up now. - Oh.

I remember in the very beginning, we... we first built these characters,

and then we were trying to decide who should do which.

And I remember trying Bert, and Frank tried Ernie for a while.

We were in front of the mirror and he was Bert and I was Ernie,

and that wasn't working.

I mean, Jim didn't even have to make the decision.

It was obvious that Ernie was more of Jim because Jim was very playful.

Wubba, wubba, Bert.

- You're it, Bert. - No, I'm not.

Yes, you are, Bert. Bert's it!

Bert is it.

And Bert was me because I was uptight and neurotic at that time.

Ernie, I am not going to play this game.

- Mmm. - Angry, right?

Yes, I am angry!

I knew it. Very good. That's one for Ernie.

In the beginning, Frank didn't like Bert.

In the beginning, Bert... he... he felt Bert was too dull.

And then I realized, okay, I'll make the negative a positive.

And then I created the character who just want to be left alone and read.

And that allowed for the comic impulses of Jim to interrupt me.

- Twenty-two. Oh, the red one. - Twenty-three. Twenty-four.

Bert. Bert, Bert. Cut, cut. Bert.

Jim is somebody if he's on the river, he will pull his paddles in,

and he'll allow the river to take the boat.

Me, I get in the boat and I go upstream.

So, we're so different in that area.

And one of the best things about comedy, from Abbott and Costello on,

is that the characters are opposites.

Pretend like you didn't hear any of that stuff.

- That was just fine. - All that stuff you just heard,

- you didn't hear that. - We were kidding around.

About half the time when Frank and I are working,

we decide not to use the script.

And so we're really working spontaneously,

and just sort of playing off of each other.

And it's a lot of fun.

The opposite of stop is go, Bert.

Go, Bert, go.

Go, Bert!

Bert, Bert, the opposite of stop...

At first...

When I came, I was 19, and I think I used Jim as a father figure.

I was unfair to him.

I was dependent and it took a while.

And the more independent I became,

the more we came closer.

- Grover, is that you? - Mm-hmm. That's right, Froggy. It's me.

You're a salesman?

Uh, you know, you got to do something to pay the cookie bill.

He was my boss. I worked for him.

He paid me, but, I mean, he never acted like a boss.

Why am I doing it and you're not?

- Because I'm just doing the words now. - Okay.

So it really was a partnership.

Eventually, it was like brothers.

That's... that's...

- Good. Good. That's good. That's good. - Yeah?

Yeah?

- A little higher. To the left. - That's awful.

During the '70s,

I suppose, the whole country felt it was slightly in a depression.

Emotional type of depression.

And when you were working for the preschool kids,

you can't be depressed about that.

I mean, you know, this is such a wonderful age,

and it's this wonderful innocence that you're dealing with.

- ♪ One, two, three ♪ - ♪ Sesame Street ♪

- ♪ A, B, C and... ♪ - ♪ Sesame Street ♪

The fact that Sesame Street was such a giant hit

was a big surprise to everybody.

- ♪ One, two, three ♪ - ♪ Sesame, Sesame Street ♪

It was beloved immediately on every level.

♪ Sesame Street ♪

♪ Sesame Street ♪

The success of Sesame Street meant he did have to expand at that point

bringing new people into the company.

There was an ad in the paper saying

that Jim Henson was looking to train puppeteers for a television show.

I was an actress. I had just come to New York.

I met with Jim and Frank.

The next thing was him asking me if I wanted to do Sesame Street.

Fran Brill was a friend of a friend, and she called and said,

"Jim Henson is looking for a costume designer."

I wasn't sure what to expect when I went in to meet Jim.

There were all these people working using foam rubber and all kinds of materials.

And I was fascinated, and that was the beginning of a whole new life.

He chose people really well.

People that had the same spirit.

This affectionate anarchy. That was the culture.

I was working in Silicon Valley.

One day, I'm sitting in my cubicle, phone rings and it's Jim Henson.

Sounds like Ernie.

"Hi, Dave. This is Jim Henson."

And I thought, "Oh, my God."

I was an editor and illustrator working with Dr. Seuss,

but I was fascinated with Sesame Street.

With the books, we could reach hundreds of thousands.

But with television, we could reach millions.

So, I said goodbye to Dr. Seuss and hello to the Muppets.

It's probably the best group of people I ever could have walked into.

It was Jim finding these people, putting them together,

and trusting them to do what he thought they could do.

It was amazing.

All right, guys. Here we go.

I don't think he really liked advertising,

and Sesame Street gave him a really good reason to drop out of it.

He didn't have to do it to make money anymore.

Ribbit. Ribbit.

It was a very, very creative period for him

the early year or two of Sesame Street.

But then, definitely the box closed hard around him.

After a year of Sesame Street, he felt,

"Oh, my God. I... I made a big mistake."

He was suddenly America's favorite preschool entertainer,

and that didn't sit comfortably with him.

He had all these ideas, and then when he became successful,

now was the opportunity.

If he had wanted to do two more kids shows,

it would have been no problem.

He would have sold them in a second.

But he didn't.

He had plans for Broadway shows.

He had plans for ballets. He had plans for amusement parks.

Lots of things in lots of directions.

He had a great ambition,

and he really wanted to contribute to the world in a huge way.

One more time.

I don't think Jim was ever afraid of anything creatively.

He kept on trying stuff.

He did Hey, Cinderella, The Frog Prince

and, uh, one that hardly anybody's seen called the Musicians of Bremen.

And those productions were where he would work out

a lot of cool, new ideas in his mind,

whether it was figuring out how to puppeteer the frogs in water,

or how to build puppets with a different look and feel.

He would work two days on a trot sometimes without sleeping.

He would do that regularly.

And that was normal for Jim. Normal.

I think it was Jerry Juhl who said that Jim had a whim of steel.

He was very thin, and he looked vulnerable,

but he was the toughest one of the bunch.

He was the strongest man I've ever known,

both with integrity, but also that skinny body.

He would just work and work and work and work.

♪ Well, you don't need rhyme or reason To sing a happy song ♪

♪ This is a song without a reason ♪

Hello.

He loved the work. He relished in the work and he thrived in the work.

But it did mean that he was doing the work all the time.

You know?

Like even on vacation, he's bringing his work.

It wasn't really a vacation.

So I think what happened was that Jane didn't foresee

how popular things would come.

And she didn't always want it to grow bigger.

She wanted her husband home more.

They were the cofounders of the company.

And then my mother started having babies very quick.

It was very hard for them to be cofounders of the Muppets

and have five kids at the same time.

My mom was an anarchist.

My mom was a creative thinker.

My mom was strong and... and dynamic,

and she was often rebelling against the concept of the perfect wife.

And my dad had some traditional expectations

of how things are supposed to be done.

It was when it came down to talk about the company.

I'm sure all of my siblings will say they remember the friction often

at the dinner table because my father wanted to know

how... how was my math quiz,

and how... how did the science project work out with my sister.

But my mother only wanted to... my father to talk about the company,

which was the last thing he wanted to talk about.

Jim certainly had respect for women.

He assumed that I was either interested in what the children were doing,

or I was interested in what he was doing, and that was what wives do.

I probably just kept it inside for so long until I made a declaration.

"Hey, look. I have a life too.

It's just not about you and your career.

It's about me too."

What is a declaration of independence?

It's a cry for recognition.

She felt left out.

She loved the creative collaboration, and I think it was hurtful to her

that the collaboration could keep going without her.

She wasn't thinking of ending the marriage because she didn't believe in divorce.

She continued to be a very good talent scout.

She discovered a lot of the puppeteers, particularly the young ones.

She would say that she was the first person who discovered Jim Henson.

No matter what happened in my parents' relationship,

my mom was always supportive of my dad as an artist.

I think my mother would've been super happy

if he did just stay on Sesame Street.

'Cause my mother always wanted to dedicate her life to kids.

My father never wanted to do that.

He had this idea for a Muppets variety show that predated Sesame Street.

He had been selling it for years.

That was gonna be the ultimate show.

He tried to pitch it to every single network.

Anyone who would listen.

In the beginning, Jerry and me and Jim and Don Sahlin,

we'd have the puppets in these big boxes,

and we would go to ABC or CBS or whatever, to try and get them interested.

And, invariably, what would happen was

they'd say either, "Oh, no. They're puppets," or "Kids' stuff. No."

Or they'd say, "Well, it's interesting, but I'm not the guy to see.

You should see Bill." And, of course, Bill's on vacation,

and we gotta come do it all over again in two weeks.

My dad was very confident that The Muppet Show was going to be great.

But the effort he had to go to to convince the industry

was almost superhuman.

People were saying, "Well, the Muppets are for preschoolers."

So, then he overreacted by creating a show called Sex and Violence with the Muppets.

Ladies and gentlemen,

presenting the end of sex and violence on television.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's The Muppet Show.

Well, I might be able to get you a job on an educational show for kids.

Incidentally, this show has been prerecorded.

I mean, it was really strange, because I couldn't sell the Muppets

who have now done Sesame Street, and were a huge hit.

So he put together a new presentation.

Friends, the United States of America needs The Muppet Show.

And you should buy this show.

Now, we're not pulling any punches here.

I mean, there's nothing subtle about this pitch.

So buy the show and put it on the air, and we'll all be famous.

The Muppets will be famous, and CBS will be famous

because we'll have a hit show on our hands.

And we'll all get temperamental and hard to work with,

but you won't care because we'll all make a lot of money.

And Schlatter and Henson will be happy.

And you will be happy.

And Kermit's mother will be happy.

And God will look down on us

and smile on us and he will say, "Let them have a 40 share."

I... I couldn't sell it.

Help.

It was passed on by everybody.

It was enormously frustrating.

The idea for a Muppets variety show

was quickly replaced by other things to be busy with.

NBC's Saturday Night.

With Jim Henson's Muppets.

The most adult show that has ever been made...

is the way Saturday Night Live was being set up. And he was like, "I want in."

Scred?

Yes, oh, High Supreme Mucky-Muck, sir.

Scred, I'm hungry.

Ah, what would please your flatulence?

That was a great example of two completely different groups of people

with completely different styles of comedy clashing together.

We weren't allowed to write our own material.

It was their show, and we were taking up time.

Michael O'Donoghue could not say a good thing about the Muppets.

He despised them. "I hated writing for that felt."

We were all pretty sorry to hear you guys got canceled, Scred.

But, uh, you know, that's show business.

It was not a happy experience. It really wasn't.

It was halfway through that season that he got a call from London.

So one of the last two Saturday Night Live shows we did,

Jim pulled me over and say,

"Hey, listen. We just got 24 half-hour guaranteed shows."

Lew Grade had ATV Studios in London, which was empty.

He wasn't shooting anything there, so he needed something to shoot there.

It was two of the most ambitious men on the planet,

and they come from two completely different universes.

Lew used to be a Charleston dancer.

Then he became this very successful producer.

He was absolutely the greatest financial sponsor

that my dad could have had because he gave him so much freedom.

Lew would always say,

"Okay, if it felt right, let's do it. Here's the money."

As opposed to today, you go to a committee.

It was just visceral for Lew, and he trusted himself.

Lew was very bullish about this plan

of selling back into little, local TV channels across the country.

So we said, "Okay, well, that's a way to get it on the air anyhow."

And so we went over to England.

The whole crew went over there,

and they were working with British directors, with British writers.

It was a big collaboration,

and nobody really knew what was gonna come out of it.

We started frantically trying, grasping around,

trying to find characters and ideas and concepts

that would fit with this basic shape that Jim had put to the show.

We knew we wanted a comedian, and that he was gonna be a bear.

That's about all we knew about him.

And we knew that Gonzo the Great

was a guy who thought that eating a tire to music was great art.

Jim gradually hit upon this idea based on old English music hall.

I mean, there's a lot of influence, the way that theater looks.

All we were doing is taking a chance with 24 episodes.

I had no idea that it would be such an extraordinary, phenomenal success.

♪ It's time to play the music It's time to light the light ♪

♪ It's time to meet the Muppets On The Muppet's Show tonight ♪

♪ It's time to put on makeup It's time to dress up right ♪

♪ It's time to get things started ♪

♪ Why don't you get things started? ♪

♪ It's time to get things started ♪

♪ On the most sensational, inspirational Celebrational, Muppetational ♪

♪ This is what we call The Muppet Show ♪

Thank you, thank you!

Hello, everybody. And welcome to The Muppet Show.

Everything evolved in that first season.

- ♪ Mahna Mahna ♪ - ♪ Do doo be-do-do ♪

- ♪ Mahna Mahna ♪ - ♪ Do do-do do ♪

- ♪ Mahna Mahna ♪ - ♪ Do doo be-do-do ♪

♪ Do do do, do do do Do do do, do do do, do do do ♪

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen,

I will eat this rubber tire to the music of the "Flight of the Bumblebee."

Music, maestro.

- Frog of my heart... - Yes.

you will just wait until I say the word "here."

When you hear me say the word "here," you will rush up to me and say,

"Good grief, the comedian's a bear."

- Good grief, the comedian's a bear. - Check.

- When you say the word "here." - Right.

- Gotcha. - Okay.

He's doing it. He's eating a tire.

Boring.

Hiya, hiya, hiya! You're a wonderful-looking audience.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- Good grief, the comedian's a bear! - I...

Not yet!

- You just said "here." - That was the wrong "here."

- Which is the right "here"? - The other "here."

Sure.

- Stomachache, check. - Mmm.

Hey, hey, folks. This is a story you're gonna love to hear.

- Good grief, the comedian's a bear! - Will you stop it?

- But you said "here." - Not that "here."

- Well, which "here"? - Another "here."

- How am I gonna know? - You'll know when you hear!

- Good grief, the comedian's a bear! - Not...

The concept was these bizarre people trying to put on a show every week

Next on stage, Prince Rudolph and His Invisible Cheeseburger.

I'm sorry, guys. I've got a full show. I cannot use a jug band number tonight.

Way to go, samurai. To your dressing...

And this poor frog trying to make it happen every damn week.

Everybody's onstage for the opera except the spear carriers.

They want more money.

No way.

- Uh, see how much they want. - Right.

Kermit's function on this show is very much like my own,

in that he's trying to hold together this group of crazies.

And that's not unlike what I do.

The Muppet Glee Club, "Temptation."

One and two and...

And the very first show, we had a, sort of, an animal chorus.

Kermit was conducting...

♪ I was alone ♪

...and this one pig came forward to sing the solo in "Temptation."

♪ Born to be kissed ♪

♪ I can't resist ♪

♪ You are temptation ♪

♪ And I... ♪

And so she was sort of coming on to the conductor.

So that really started that... the whole relationship in that little moment.

♪ Only a slave ♪

♪ To you ♪

One show in rehearsal, it said for Piggy to slap Kermit.

And, for some reason, I don't know why, I karate chopped him instead.

Hi-yah!

And Jim went with it.

Barbarian.

It is a lightbulb that... Okay, I know her character now.

- I'll show you. - What...

- Hi-yah! - Piggy...

Hi-yah!

Hi-yah!

Hi-yah!

So Piggy was plucked from the chorus and became a star.

Hello, Morley.

- May I ask you a question? Please? - Yes.

- Is your wife here? - No, she's not.

Great.

- I thought he was a good interviewer. - Yeah, right.

- He's just overwhelmed by your beauty. - Could've fooled me.

All right. That's a wrap.

She has so many limitations.

All she can do is have bravado.

Okay, Piggy, you were good.

I was great.

She covers all her pain 'cause she knows she's not talented.

She knows she can't tell jokes.

She knows she can't dance.

I'm too delicate for show business.

And, of course, her magnificent obsession in life is the frog.

And he is just kind of namby-pamby about her.

That comedic conflict, I think that's what makes it memorable.

Kermie, would... ...would you help me take this mermaid outfit off?

- You want me to do the zipper back here? - Yes. Back there, the zipper.

- Okay. - It's just...

Ah! What a relief.

Thank you. Oh! Don't look. Don't look.

No peeking.

Is the pig ready?

The sofa goes across.

- All right. - Yeah.

Bye, Frank.

The necessity of, uh, doing a shot like this,

you have to, uh...

you have to, uh...

In order to make it look good up there, it has to be uncomfortable down here.

Oh! Come sit, Roger.

Roger, I'm so glad you asked me up here.

Well, actually, I didn't ask you.

It was both a joy and a grind.

- Two, three, four... - "They call him the pillage idiot.

He was stupid with his pillaging." We'll get there.

We do a show a week.

Every number we do has to go through the same stages.

We have the guest star on a Sunday.

We do a read through, we do rehearsal, we go through music.

Oh, is that me?

And then the next day, we record the band.

And then the vocals are laid down.

And then we had three days to shoot.

- ♪ In the navy ♪ - ♪ Yes, you can sail the Seven Seas ♪

- ♪ In the navy ♪ - ♪ Yes, you can put your mind at ease ♪

- ♪ In the navy ♪ - ♪ Navy ♪

♪ In the navy ♪

Cut. Right? Okay.

And then one day off, and we start it all over again.

- ♪ Take it slow ♪ - [stammers]

♪ Easy goes ♪

There were no live people, except one guest star.

And we had everything raised.

We would have the floor in, like, three-foot sections.

We'd be underneath, and then we'd have our hands up.

- And Jim invented all this. - What is it?

that you'd like to come to my dressing room

and, uh, have a cup of tea?

Could I bring a friend?

- Well... - It's just... just my mother.

The concept of taking and designing the show around a guest star each week,

uh, worked out very nicely too.

Each guest would come in, and the whole show would change personalities.

You, sir, are a freako.

Why, thank you.

♪ Oh, oh, so is life Abatiwaha, so is life ♪

- ♪ Odl lay ee ♪ - ♪ Odl lay ee ♪

- ♪ Odl lay hee hee ♪ - ♪ Odl lay hee hee ♪

♪ Odl lay ee Odl lay ee odl lay ♪

♪ La, la, la, la, la, la ♪

♪ La, la, la, la, la ♪

He was literally turning away the biggest movie stars in the world,

'cause he just didn't have enough episodes to put 'em in.

Dave Lazer would be there at the airport

meet them, bring them to the hotel, have flowers.

And exec producers don't do that, but he knew how important it was.

Jim couldn't do that. It's just not something Jim did.

He was shy, first of all.

I don't know that it was shyness.

Jim was a reticent person when it came to communicating with people.

He never gave long and detailed answers.

I loved making him laugh.

If I could make his eyes crinkle, I was one happy Puerto Rican.

♪ Never know How much I love you ♪

♪ Never know How much I care ♪

♪ When you put your arms around me ♪

♪ I get a fever That's so hard to bear ♪

♪ You give me fever ♪

"Fever" was extremely complicated and I kept breaking up.

And then Jim at one point said, "Rita, we don't do overtime here.

This is London.

If you break up again, that's what we have to use."

I got to the end of the number...

and Animal says...

That my kind of woman.

You can see my nostrils flare at the end,

which is me trying desperately not to laugh.

There was nothing that Jim didn't entertain.

Jim never thought of color.

Jim never thought of nationality.

Jim just simply thought of characters.

♪ It's not easy bein' green ♪

♪ Having to spend each day The color of the leaves ♪

♪ When I think it might be nicer Bein' red or yellow or gold ♪

♪ Or something Much more colorful like that ♪

"It's not easy being green."

I mean, come on.

We know what that means.

Everybody knows what that means.

♪ It seems you blend in With so many other ordinary things ♪

♪ And people tend to pass you over ♪

♪ 'Cause you're not standing out Like flashy sparkles in the water ♪

♪ Or stars in the sky ♪

That frog was green.

He was a little f... green, funny looking frog.

And I know the children understood, that they just understood.

♪ Or tall like a tree ♪

That's one of the main thrusts of my father's work.

It's why he very rarely celebrates tribalism in any sense,

because he thinks if we all loved each other

for our differences and not our similarities,

we would... There would be no more war.

♪ I'm green And it'll do fine ♪

♪ It's beautiful And I think it's what I wanna be ♪

The Muppet Show is now seen in over 100 countries,

and I'm just delighted with the show's success

because until this program came along,

no one had ever done a show quite like this,

where the real stars are puppets.

For its day, it was the most watched television series in history.

My dad really got the final laugh

'cause the networks all passed twice on both of his pilots.

He and the puppeteers, they felt like rock stars.

They had tried so hard to get that show made,

and against such odds,

and then for it to hit in that way, it was really, really satisfying.

Puppets are very ancient entertainers.

They don't just go back to the crib.

They go back to the cave.

They were beginning to show their age a little

until you came along and dragged that whole squeaking box of dolls

into the 20th century, into the mainstream.

The Muppets, for my money,

are the most original thing that ever happened on the box.

Don't you agree?

We were so incredibly popular around the world.

And so I... It's just a natural decision to do a movie.

And zooming.

Jim Frawley, who was the director,

at first, he wanted to shoot in studio, create a world like The Wizard of Oz.

And I was really trying to talk him into shooting outdoors.

I said, "Come on over." He brought a Super 8 camera,

and we shot footage of... of the characters outdoors.

Jim Frawley didn't really get the Muppets,

and he wasn't sure if they really would work on the big screen and in real life.

- I apologize for that. - Hey, Kermit.

Look at the windshield wipers. Look at them go.

Isn't that terrific? I think I'm gonna be sick.

Uh, excuse me, guys. We're looking for Hollywood.

Uh, Hollywood, California.

No, it's... it's over near Los Angeles.

Do you... Have you ever been to Lo... Have you ever been to Lo... Excuse me.

Jim, of course, knew it'd work.

For the opening scene of the movie, we were shooting Kermit in a swamp.

Jim had to be squeezed into this steel canister under the water.

When they finally let him out,

it took him about 20 minutes to get unfolded.

But Jim wouldn't think twice.

It's the Muppets meeting the world.

♪ Why are there so many ♪

♪ Songs about rainbows ♪

♪ And what's on the other side? ♪

♪ What's so amazing That keeps us star gazing ♪

♪ And what do we think We might see? ♪

♪ Someday we'll find it ♪

♪ The rainbow connection ♪

♪ The lovers, the dreamers And me ♪

♪ All of us... ♪

The Muppet Movie opened us up into a whole new world

that allowed us a whole emotional range.

It afforded him chances to do more things, to fulfill more dreams,

to go off in a different direction.

He knew that he could pick up the phone and call anybody,

and the best people in the world in any given field

would be willing to listen to him because he was Jim Henson.

Just look at all this. Boy!

How did a frog make the big time?

- Do you know me? I created the Muppets. - Big deal!

Everybody knows them, but not me.

So when I travel, I carry the American Express card.

And from that point on,

my dad couldn't walk a block without getting recognized.

He bought a new building on 69th Street in New York City.

Much lovelier, fancier headquarters.

And all of a sudden he's wearing a much more fashionable kind of wardrobe.

California cowboy chic.

He got a Lotus with custom green paint in Kermit color...

and he started new parts of the business.

He had his own merchandising department and distribution,

and everything was getting a little bit bigger.

The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, the movie,

the bits and pieces of Muppetry, the whole Muppet empire.

What's it worth?

I have no idea. I really don't.

Scores of millions?

- Oh, no. No. - Millions?

Probably, but I wouldn't swear to that.

Yeah.

Becoming famous was definitely what he wanted.

But I could see and feel that there was an innocence getting lost,

and that it was gonna impact his relationship with us and everything.

And that was complex.

This kind of success has less peace in it.

It's, um, troublesome in many ways.

There's a lot of work, a lot of separation.

There's a lot of pressure

in a success that involves so many people and so much money.

He was also trying to commute back and forth between New York and London.

That was challenging because The Muppet Show

would tape months on end in London.

And then when he would get to New York, everybody needed his attention,

whether it was on the family side,

or even at the company needing more leadership and more of his presence.

So there was stress involved with getting bigger, for sure.

You're a very busy man. How do you find enough time

to spend with your family to keep those home fires burning, let's say?

You know, it... it is difficult, and certainly I... I, um...

But I like to travel with them.

I often, you know, have one or two of my kids with me at the time,

and, uh, we enjoy family vacations and that sort of thing.

Come on, everybody. Try it.

And meanwhile, Jim is still doing Sesame several weeks a year.

He felt completely committed to service Sesame Street

and not leave them behind.

My dad was working incredibly hard.

And, regularly, at the end of each week, they'd have, like, one day off.

And he would be sick.

He would just crash, and then he'd have to get back up and go.

We always said, "Oh, Jim is taking on too much this time."

If there was a week off in London,

he'd say, "Hey, we're doing the Queen's Silver Jubilee during that week."

He wasn't against doctors.

He just didn't want to go to doctors first.

I remember doing a shoot with him in Chicago out in the dead winter,

and he... he had walking pneumonia.

And he just barreled through.

He... He wasn't scared of dying.

I-I remember when Don Sahlin died, which was a huge shock,

and I was in the workshop and I was crying.

And Jim came behind me and said, "It's okay.

He's just on a different plane."

And Jim believed that.

He saw it as another adventure.

He believed there was something else there.

He was interested in Buddhism, TM, Transcendental Meditation,

different ways of seeing the world.

What is reality? What is human nature?

What is this world that surrounds us?

My father never spoke of God,

and he was not a Christian Scientist, in spite of his mother.

He was the kind of person who just believes in the greater power,

and a very intense interconnectedness between all beings.

Jim was always trying to broaden his mind, his sensibilities.

He was a seeker.

Uh...

I don't really make speeches, uh...

as... as everybody knows.

But, uh, listen, it's been really a great five years. And I'm not...

After five seasons, he was like, "I did it all.

I did The Muppet Show. I'm gonna start repeating myself."

And he canceled it.

We're proud of the work that we've done together.

All of you people and all of us.

And, uh, it's stuff that will, uh, stay with me a long time.

So, thank you very much.

Nobody does that with a show that successful.

But he had the next chapter already in his head.

Sometimes you feel you should continue moving forward.

From a creative standpoint,

it's a lot more interesting to change and do something different and new.

Dark Crystal was really the beginning

of this next chapter of creativity.

We intended to do something

that would jump styles completely from the Muppets.

And about the same time we started thinking about it,

I saw the work of Brian Froud.

And I immediately loved it.

It's a wonderful challenge to design the creatures and what they wear,

the castle and the landscape and the color palette of the skies.

Jim needed a shop.

So he bought a place in Hampstead, an old derelict post office.

And that became the creature shop.

Jim was a detail person.

He would say, "Go ahead and stitch that three times,

and do a handmade embroidery because that'll just enrich it."

He just started collecting artists into this building in London.

So that's when he named it the Jim Henson Creature Shop.

So it was literally a shop

where you can come and buy your creature for your movie.

Jim loved the technology involved in all of this.

This extraordinarily complex system of moving mouths and eyes and eyebrows

and wiggling ears, and anything else that you needed to have a puppet do.

It was an interesting challenge because these puppets were unwieldy,

and they were also capable of nuance and subtlety

that we didn't have in the regular Muppets.

There were mechanisms on the characters that made them mimic life more closely.

The images in the shirt have to be vertical

because that... that's the kind of shape we're going into.

Certainly not three, and probably not two.

It was getting closer to the shoot.

And in his own quiet way, Jim just said to me,

"Frank, do you want to direct this movie with me?"

I said... ..."I've never directed before. Why... Why ask me?"

And this is typical Jim. He said,

"Because it would be better."

He knew that I had some strengths that he didn't have.

And that's always Jim.

The reaction of him hitting that stone should be nice.

They were in the creative sandbox the whole way through.

Everything was something new.

First day we shot, Jim had 30 or 40 people

in this uncomfortable position in the dark...

on a 2-foot-high platform.

And I step off the platform, and now we're going over.

And somebody caught us, and put us back on the platform.

And I remember thinking

Jim's optimism has really gotten the best of him this time.

Ah!

And one, two, three, action!

One, two, three, action.

Uh, Mr. Oz, how do you think the picture is going?

Mr. Oz doesn't say much about that.

...and one, two, three!

The first time he showed the movie,

the executives all got up and walked out of the theater without talking to him.

They so disliked the movie.

Fools! Skeksis fools!

What do you want with me?

Well, a large portion of the movie was not in English, was in made-up languages.

When the characters were just babbling nonsense words,

the test audiences rejected it completely.

So they had to go back and create a script in English

that would fit with the lip sync of what they had shot.

That entire film was almost rewritten twice after we shot it.

Oh!

Something I don't recommend to anybody.

my home.

We ended up just loading the thing with dialogue.

And, in many ways, I slightly regret...

Oh, how crude.

Dark Crystal came out about the same time as ET.

And ET had one character in it, one fantasy character,

and the rest of the world was real.

You just had to believe that character.

Dark Crystal, we had to believe everything.

When Jim believed in something, he will go all the way.

It wasn't a huge hit, but it was successful.

A one-of-a-kind piece of work that was artistic for him,

and got back to his experimental roots.

754, take six.

My dad wasn't really living in the house at that time.

Oh, hello.

He was living wherever the productions were.

Tell me what you're doing

for my friends at home I'm gonna show this to.

- What are you doing? - This is underneath the first Muppet orgy.

We just tighten up.

My mom didn't want to live where the productions were.

She wanted to live in a stable house.

I think they might have been done on my 18th birthday.

I was in boarding school, so they saw me the least.

And for my birthday they said, "Why don't you come to Toronto?"

They had a conference or something.

So I went to spend one night with them, which was my birthday,

and they fought all night in a hotel room next to my room.

And I thought, "Oh, they're done."

And then they pretty much were done.

I knew they had tough times. I didn't know it could be this tough.

They had such different emotional realities.

He'd be like, "Hey, everything's great the way that it is,"

and she was taking it very hard.

So their whole worldview was dividing.

He got an apartment in New York City at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.

So there he was, late 40s heading into his 50s,

and what he wanted was to be single but dating.

He really liked the idea of dating and not having it become too serious.

Eventually, in the legal separation,

they did change the ownership of the company.

A lot of my mom's shares came to us kids.

While my father was going through that with my mom,

Lord Grade sold his company to Marble Arch.

And they both were really worried

'cause all of a sudden The Muppet Show, the Muppet movies

and The Dark Crystal were all gonna be owned by this company that he didn't know.

This was a pretty big turning point for him,

and he made a big, big gamble.

He basically borrowed every penny he could and mortgaged everything.

And he said, "I want you kids to know what I'm gonna do

because it's very risky and maybe you won't have as much money in the future."

Well, even though they weren't living together,

my mom said, "Yes, do it. You need to do it."

So he took all his money and he bought back Muppet Show,

the Muppet movies and The Dark Crystal.

That was a real reach to do that, and really, really brave.

My parents didn't talk about their romance, so to speak,

but they'd been through so much.

I'm sure they were both the love of each other's lives

who couldn't live with each other.

- a great deal. Always tighter. - Yeah.

Uh, would... would you say that you have a philosophy of life?

If our message is anything, it is that...

is that it's a... it's a positive approach to life...

- Uh-huh. - and that life is basically good.

And by taking a positive approach to it all,

it... it makes it, uh... makes life a lot easier.

Right. Now... Now what about the conceptualizing?

I mean, writing the stories.

I mean, for instance, Dark Crystal was a film that I absolutely loved.

- Oh, good. You're gonna love our new one. - Yes. Oh, good.

Our new one is, uh, I think it's... it's similar to Dark Crystal,

but I think it's, uh... Well, I'm... I'm very excited by it.

Is it more sophisticated or...

Yeah. It's a good deal more sophisticated.

Every time you do a film, everything advances a little bit.

The Labyrinth.

- ♪ You remind me of the babe ♪ - ♪ What babe? ♪

- ♪ Babe with the power ♪ - ♪ What power? ♪

♪ Power of voodoo ♪

- ♪ Who do? ♪ - ♪ You do ♪

- ♪ Do what? ♪ - ♪ Remind me of the babe ♪

When you think about it, it's bananas, right?

You're in this kids movie, and I have David Bowie as the kind of, like...

I mean, it's a mad idea,

and it's kind of great.

It doesn't look that far.

It's further than you think. Time is short.

It was a very ambitious film being a musical,

working with David Bowie, working with human actors.

For him, that was actually harder

because he hadn't been directing humans. He'd been directing puppets.

It comes down slowly into your hand and the moment...

I was 14, and there's this huge production.

You know, this world that he had created,

and I'm kind of at the middle of it.

Ta-da-da!

When you're casting a part like Sarah...

And playback.

which is the part in the film,

you hope someone walks in the door and is the right person.

And when Jenny walked in, she was the right person.

Despite having felt so nervous, Jim is such a calming presence.

He would say, "Okay, so now you're going to sit here,

and you're going to turn over and then you're gonna talk

to this little worm that's coming out of the wall."

I'm like, "Great. Okay. Is this right?"

Say something, worm.

Uh-huh.

There was so much imagination and creativity.

And it was so spectacular to be around people

who are creating in that way.

It was like being in a dream world.

- One. Drop. - Help!

Help!

I love all the sporty, stunty stuff.

"Take me higher. Throw me down a chute.

Can I be on the wires a little longer?"

I loved it.

The way that the puppeteers would work together,

it was really incredible.

Ooh, yes. Hmm. Hmm. Yes. Which way? Hmm?

My dad never urged any of us kids into the industry.

He just sort of supported us.

My dad did notice, like, what we were good at,

encouraging Heather's work both as a show creator, a theater maker.

Cheryl was so talented with textiles and fabrics,

but she was also really good on story.

Lisa was always gonna be a television executive.

My younger brother John, he was doing, sort of, body performing,

and wound up doing Sweetums and doing the Coca-Cola polar bear.

Brian, he had training in everything technical.

On the directing side, he just knew that Brian was a gearhead in a way.

For Labyrinth,

my dad wanted to do a fully radio-controlled character, Hoggle.

And he was saying, "Brian, can you figure out how to do this?"

This was the beginning of animatronics at the Creature Shop.

We both stayed open too long.

- Action! Shut up! - Thank you.

- Oh! That makes it worse. - Oh, come on.

- That makes it... - Ain't it? Yeah.

What a nice surprise.

Hello, Hedgewart.

- Hogwart. - Hoggle.

So, I got to really work with him side by side and call him Jim, not Dad.

And I got to feel how rewarding it was to work alongside Jim Henson,

which was very different than being his son and in his family.

He was a kid at work. That was the biggest difference.

When he was home, he was always trying to set a good adult example.

And when he was at work, he was free.

So how do you think the film's going so far?

I think this will probably be the finest motion picture ever made.

Good thing I'm only showing this to my family.

What does that laugh mean?

No, no. I... I... I'm glad I'm not shooting for the evening news.

This is gonna be the best movie ever made.

Okay. All right. Well, I... I'll agree with that.

Uh, I'm happy to hear that actually.

You better agree with it.

Labyrinth was a colossal failure.

I do think Labyrinth was the one where he thought they just... they don't like it.

People don't like it, and he really didn't expect that.

It's hard to put one's heart and soul in something,

and then be rejected to a degree and not carry it around with you.

He was sad about the reception that the film was getting.

This was unlike Jim.

We had lunch one day.

We were about to leave and he said, "I love you."

And I said, "I love you too."

I mean, it was one of those moments where I think he was just...

He was feeling vulnerable enough that he would just say something like that.

That's one thing about Jim, when he did something,

he always had two other, three other things he wanted to do.

As sad as he was about the movie, he didn't dwell.

He kept on going and did other things that excited him.

One day, Jim called a meeting and said,

"I'd like to do a show that stops war."

And that became Fraggle Rock.

Storyteller's is the gem.

He was so proud of it.

It was a culmination of everything he had been striving for.

He always had so many projects brewing.

Good. Now I can make my entrance like I do in every show.

He was all about the next technological advance.

He was flirting with CGI

with a character on the Jim Henson Hour that was computer-generated.

Watch, watch this. Here we go.

I'm very excited by computer graphics,

and performing 'em, uh, as puppets.

It is mostly being done like animation.

And what we're trying to do with it is perform it live like a puppet,

so you can capture real performance, a dramatic performance.

He always wanted to go back and do exciting things.

And he was just worrying about overhead, and essentially not having time to create.

It was not long after that that he decided to sell the company to Disney.

He was a huge Disney World fan. Like, fanatic.

He wasn't just selling outright.

He wanted to get back to not worrying about business as much and having fun.

With us, from Walt Disney World this morning in Florida,

are Michael Eisner and Jim Henson. Good morning to both of you.

- Good morning, Charlie. - Good morning.

They had a handshake agreement, and it was really, you know, joyful.

I... As far as I can tell,

this is... this is a wonderful place for my characters to be.

It was really the beginning of the next chapter of creativity

that he was excited about.

Jim had so many new ideas and so many things he wanted to do.

I remember he called.

He said, "Hey, Frank. I want to talk to you about something."

And that's the last I ever talked to him.

A little of the magic is gone.

Jim Henson, the man who created the Muppets,

has died at the age of only 53

from what is described as a massive bacterial infection.

He had pneumonia, which went untreated for three days.

To call Jim Henson a puppeteer,

comes nowhere near describing his accomplishment,

or the love, affection and knowledge that his characters brought to the world.

For millions of people, it will seem like a death in the family.

I was in Los Angeles, and I was too late.

And Brian was too late too.

But my mom went to the hospital to be with him.

And what they discussed is private to them.

And it's nice that they had whatever closure they had right there.

This was just unthinkable to us

because this frail giant had just been so unconquerable all these years.

It was just one of the worst days of my life.

It was just this feeling that the light had gone out,

and that it was not gonna come back on.

He was ripped away from us way too young.

It was an unfair early death.

We all gathered in the New York office, people from all around the world.

Our focus was to put this funeral together in five days.

Someone came over 'cause the kids had the instructions.

There was a set of directions in the will.

It was like, "Oh, well, there are instructions for... for making this show."

So it was uncanny in a way.

And then we read the instructions at the table,

which was like a voice from, you know,

it was just like his... in his... It was so him.

"I suggest you first have a nice, friendly little service of some kind."

"It would be lovely if some of the people who sing would do a song or two,

some of which should be quite happy and joyful.

It would be nice if some of my close friends

would say a few nice happy words

about how much we enjoy doing this stuff together."

"This all may sound silly and over the top to you guys,

but, what the hell, I'm gone and who can argue with me?"

I don't want to pretend that I know what happens after this life,

or that Jim really knew what would happen after this life,

but he had great plans.

♪ It's not that easy bein' green ♪

♪ Having to spend the day The color of the leaves ♪

♪ When I think it could be nicer Bein' red or yellow or gold ♪

♪ Or something Much more colorful like that ♪

Hello there, my name is Jim Henson, and I'm a puppeteer.

♪ But green is the color of spring ♪

♪ And green can be cool And friendly-like ♪

♪ And green can be big like a mountain ♪

♪ Or tall as a tree ♪

♪ Or big as a sea ♪

I love doing what I do.

I can't imagine anybody else having as much fun in their work as I do.

There's an honesty and an integrity to what he was creating.

He was creating it because he needed to create it.

I think what Jim really wanted to do was to sing songs and tell stories,

teach children, promote peace, save the planet,

celebrate man and be silly.

He showed that creativity, artistry, metaphor,

can be used as a great power of good.

You can make people appreciate the good in all of us,

and laugh at the absurdity in all of us.

I think if the audience wants these characters to continue to live,

they... they will.

For me and many others,

it became very important for us to believe that we could carry on.

We felt like it was our life's work, and that if it could continue,

we would love to carry on.

There's so much loyalty to Jim because he was loyal to us.

We all do whatever we can because he gave us so much.

There are just endless things that have been changed

by the way he saw the world.

The tenderness that he clearly had for humanity,

and the space he gave to creativity and expression of imagination,

I see that in everything that he did.

Well, I don't think there'll ever be another Jim Henson.

If Jim was here...

my heart would say something a tad quietly,

but I wouldn't say it to him because he... he'd be embarrassed

and... and couldn't accept it.

Uh, so on the outside, I'd probably say,

"Jim, I'm busy. Could you please move?"

That's what I'd probably say.

But on the inside, um...

I just have to thank him.

♪ It starts when we're kids ♪

♪ A show-off at school ♪

♪ Makin' faces at friends ♪

♪ You're a clown and a fool ♪

♪ Doing pratfalls and birdcalls ♪

♪ And bad imitations ♪

♪ Ignoring your homework Is that dedication? ♪

♪ You work through the mirror ♪

♪ You're getting standing ovations ♪

♪ You're burning with hope ♪

♪ You're building up steam ♪

♪ What was once "juvenilish" ♪

♪ Is grown-up and stylish ♪

♪ You're close to your dream ♪

♪ Then somebody out there Loves you ♪

♪ Stands up and hollers For more ♪

♪ More! ♪

♪ You found a home At the Magic Store ♪

Yes, sir. It's a standard Muppet finale.

If you don't know how to end it, go out with a...