Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Until we had other new guys.
Hopefully it really is all about the characters.
Thats what people are turning in to watch.
Where did the idea for the movie come from?
Franks wife Victoria [Labalme].
How would you describe the chemistry between you five?
Were like a rep company.
Its so much fun.
We were so happy to be sitting downtogether.
I wouldve done it for no other reason than to be with everybody.
You have to compartmentalize the pain.
Literally, you want to just whine, but you have to say, Ill whine later.
Right now Im gonna be this character.
And it does require extreme tension and extreme relaxation at the same time.
You have to be incredibly tight and precise and also loose and spontaneous.
Puppeteering instead has an embarrassment of things the performer has to think about.
We work to monitors where everything is reversed.
Where you move right, the image goes left.
It takes a year to get your brain to accept that.
Then you have all the other logistics you have to be able to manage while youre acting.
Even then, it takes years.
Im naturally a mono-tasker.
I like to sit in a room and focus on one thing until its finished.
I think Im one of the last guys who should be doing this.
When we did the goodnights forThe Muppet Show, we would all go in front of a red drape.
And Jim as Kermit would thank the guest and say Well see you next time onThe Muppet Show!
If you were standing next to Jim when he was just saying those things, it was deafening.
If your head was eight inches away from Jims, he was so loud.
And you dont realize that.
You just think Kermit is kind of elevating his voice, but it was really loud.
Everything is very exaggerated … for our characters to be mildly startled, we look horrified.
It almost violates one of the basic principles of comedy, which is you dont oversell a joke.
Maybe theres different rules for puppets.
In the case ofThe Muppet Showcharacters, theyre either abstract or theyre animals.
Gonzos abstract, Fozzies a bear.
Maybe that allows more latitude than an actor would have.
Fozzies desperation might be more intense than a human actor.
We dont have a pre-existing idea of what a desperate bear looks like.
Yeah, thats right.
And Floyd Pepper can be uber cool, uber hip.
Is puppet comedy different on television vs. film vs. live?
In television, we shoot maybe 15 pages a day.
In film, we shoot maybe one and half at the most.
you’ve got the option to really hone things in film because you have the time.
Stage work is utterly unforgiving.
We just did the Hollywood Bowl, and you get one take and it was highly complex.
We had monitors, teleprompters, sound cues, video cues, the orchestra was playing behind us.
Somehow, it went perfectly.
Then theres live audiences.
I find that the easiest of all.
Gonzo sits on the lectern and I stand next to him, and nobodys paying attention to me.
Every time I go out there, its a chance to celebrate how magical this medium is.
You started your career building puppets.
When conceiving and building a character, is the plan for the puppet to be physically funny?
Or is the puppets body a vessel in which you pour funny?
I think its great when the puppet shows you who he or she is.Angry.
We have the greatest puppet makers in the world.
I guess if you just think about the design, why would a hipsters face be shaped like Scooters?
Floyds just hip because of the way he walks.
The idea for character comes first.
I think so, yeah.
Theres also a lot of give and take along the way.
So that got added.
Jim would come by every morning and saw these things and thought, Thats great, thats great.
It all became bigger than the original idea because of the collaboration.
Where do your own characters come from?
An exaggeration of my own flaws, which I then venture to make lovable.
Gonzo is reckless but free.
Zoot is disconnected from others but makes beautiful music.
Bunsen is exacting but misses the big picture.
Its kind of therapeutic.
Yeah, the environment sort of defines what kinds of things can happen there, so its a limitation.
And limitation spurs creativity.
Different things happen in a cave than a theater.
Without limitations, we wouldnt know what to do.
How would you say the chemistry between the Muppet Guys has evolved over time?
I think the original group were pretty distinct, unique characters.
Jim was light and playful.
He was much more easygoing.
He just wanted our work to feel good.
Frank was an aggressive comedy player, who was extremely focused and very serious.
Jerry Nelson really was kind of a hipster.
Richard Hunt was extremely outgoing andplayful.
They knew Jim and Frank because they were kind of in charge.
And then they remembered Richard because he was just so outgoing and so out there.
They would look over and say, Whos this crazy guy?
And the driver would say, Oh, thats Richard.
Well, Jim made so few mistakes in terms of hiring people.
And it almost always did.
It was one of the great lessons for all of us.
Jims philosophy was something he did not articulate, but he demonstrated every day.
He believed there was enough for everybody.
He believed if he treated people well, they would probably treat him well too.
And they almost always did.
It would be hard to find anyone who had a bad word to say about Jim.
You get the last word in the documentary.
Without giving it away, Ill just say were engaged in folly constantly.
Everybody tries so hard to be accepted.
We comb our hair in certain ways.
Comedy is about surprises.
Once we establish a reality, we start stretching it.
And then it got to where we would just throw penguins.
That was a go-to near the end.
No matter what was going on, you just find penguins flipping through the air.
Just make it surreal.
Muppet Guys Talkingwill be released exclusively onmuppetguystalking.comtomorrow.
