#3 - The Great Muppet Caper

(Launching the Jim Henson Project with his first film, and ours...)

Puppets can be movie stars, or at least that was the lesson behind 1979’s The Muppet Movie, which turned Jim Henson’s band of misfit critters into bonafide box office draws. Henson pulled the plug on the “Muppet Show” after five popular seasons to try his luck in films, and with a $65 million take for The Muppet Movie, the conventional wisdom said he made a safe bet.

For the sequel, Henson looked to merge his unique characters and sense of humor with a familiar film genre, the crime heist. The result was The Great Muppet Caper, another financial success (though a bit more modest), and a sequel that some Muppet fans still argue is better than the original. It’s also the first and only Muppet movie that Henson himself directed.

The Story: Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo float through the opening credits in a hot air balloon, chatting about the meaning of certain job titles while waiting patiently for the movie to begin. They soon land in the middle of New York City and right into a huge musical number explaining the plot (“Hey, A Movie!”) which, basically, is that Fozzie and Kermit are “identical” twin reporters, Gonzo is their photographer, and they’re up against a nefarious villain (Charles Grodin), who sneaks into the act to whisk away the Lady Holliday’s (Diana Rigg) diamond necklace.

Fired for missing the story right under their felt noses, the trio trek to England to recover the diamonds, restore their name, and get the scoop. Unfortunately, they’re so broke they’re forced to fly as cargo, where the only way off the plane is to be tossed out mid-flight. After landing (luckily) in a pond, the gang seeks lodging at the seedy, yet free, Happiness Hotel, where they quickly meet up with the entire background Muppet crew.

On the hunt for the story, our heroes track down Lady Holliday, who has coincidentally left her office in the charge of her new receptionist, Miss Piggy. Piggy and Kermit fall in love at first sight, but in the confusion Kermit mistakes Piggy for Lady Holliday and Piggy fails to correct him. This mistaken identity subplot propels us for a few amusing scenes, including one in which Piggy breaks into John Cleese’s house to impress Kermit, but when Lady Holliday’s new

necklace is stolen (again by Grodin, now revealed to be her brother, Nicky), the pig is up and the masquerade ends.

Kermit is wounded by her lies, but Piggy makes it up to him during a swirling song and dance number in the park. Their blossoming romance burns Nicky, who has improbably fallen in love with Piggy and now decides to frame her for the thefts out of revenge. Piggy goes to jail, and Nicky’s true target becomes clear. Lady Holliday, now thinking her jewelry is safe, intends to display her infamous “Baseball Diamond” in an art gallery, where Nicky can easily pilfer it alongside his gang of supermodel thugs, Marla, Darla, and Carla. (Think kind of a proto-version of Kevin Smith’s cat burglar gang in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.)

But there is no surrender in the Muppets!! Kermit and the gang bravely gather together to stop Nicky (“Some of us may be killed.” “I’m out!”). Miss Piggy breaks out of jail and races to the scene of the crime, just in time to see the Muppets playing keep-away with Nicky and the Baseball Diamond. The authorities arrive, Piggy clears her name, the diamonds make it back to Lady Holliday, and our heroes return triumphantly to New York… dropped out of another plane’s cargo hold, of course.

The Scene: Jim Henson often joked that the simplest effects are the ones that get the most attention.

“It's amazing… you work and work on the most difficult things and people say, 'That's nice.' Then something easy will occur and it will be all anyone talks about! In the first movie it was Kermit riding a bike. It was very easy to do that. It was just a simple marionette with strings. In the same film there was that whole complicated sequence with Gonzo in the balloon, crashing into the sign and landing in the car. It took forever to film that -- and all the talk was about the bike!” – Jim Henson

For the sequel, Henson decided to go with the flow and create an entire musical number around bicycle-riding Muppets. Piggy rides a bike, Kermit does bike tricks, and the entire song crescendos with a slew of Muppets peddling their way through. Funny, but funnier when you know the background.

Honorable mention goes to the dance sequence for “The First Time It Happens”, a song that eventually snared an Oscar nomination for the film. The scene is a direct lift from the classic Busby Berkley musicals, including Miss Piggy underwater and an opera-singing Charles Grodin. (“You can’t even sing! You were dubbed!”)

The Line: Kermit, upon first laying eyes on Animal: “What’s wrong with your drummer? He looks a little crazed.”

Zoot: “Oh, he's just upset about missing the Rembrandt exhibit at the National Gallery.”

Animal: “RENOIR! RENOIR! RENOIR!”

That’s Muppet humor. Light, funny, and intelligent. This movie is full of bits like that, but this is my favorite.

The Production: Finding the money for a second Muppet movie was a piece of cake after the original’s impressive haul, but sequels of the time were expected to be cheap, so the Henson team had to find a way to make due with less. Jim Henson stepped into the director’s chair, guaranteeing the film wouldn’t be just a cheap knock-off, and therefore, cuts would have to be made in other ways. As “The Muppet Show” had been filmed in England for its entire run, the decision came quickly to set the story in London, eliminating the cost of moving the entire Muppet production away from their home studios.

Henson and his muppeteers were determined to top the bar set in the previous film and complete the most complex Muppet shots – and by extension, puppet shots -- ever filmed.

From the film’s official 1981 production notes: “Miss Piggy's underwater musical number was the most difficult scene to shoot, mostly because of communication problems. Lights, cameramen, cameras, speakers, monitors and Miss Piggy were all underwater. There were also 18 professional swimmers who had to dive into the pool at the right moment. We tried to get a dolphin to direct this part, but only one goldfish answered the ad.” I think the goldfish bit is joke, but the difficulties in the scene weren’t. Frank Oz claimed that he spent an entire week underwater during the filming of that scene.

Ultimately, the hard work didn’t quite pay off. The Great Muppet Caper, perhaps signaling the end of the Muppet fad, raked in about half of The Muppet Movie’s box office take. Four more Muppet movies would follow, but none would again approach the original’s success.

…A Jim Henson Film: Take a moment to really study The Great Muppet Caper, and you’ll get a very good sampling of Jim Henson’s attention to world-building and suspension of disbelief. He used every page of the playbook to make his Muppets come alive, which is, of course, a key to his overall success with puppetry. It starts simply with camera techniques, from showing the Muppets’ “feet” as often as possible, to having them ride bikes, dance, or just walk down the street. In a few shots, Henson uses a live actor to play Miss Piggy, shooting her from behind to keep up the illusion.

His coup, though, is using the technique of breaking the “fourth wall”, or letting the Muppets break character in certain scenes, such as in the park where Kermit criticizes Miss Piggy’s overacting. With live actors, this technique dispels the illusion for the audience and reminds them that they’re watching a movie. When the Muppets do it, it actually enhances the illusion – not that the movie is real, but that the Muppets are actually actors. It makes them more real to see them flub their lines or bicker over script changes.

In addition, Henson’s love of music and celebrity cameos is on full display here, as is his particular style of inoffensive humor. Even the “danger” is cheerfully non-threatening.

Lasting Impact: I desperately want to write a page on the lasting impact of the Muppets, the empire Henson created, and the cultural nostalgia an entire generation of children and young adults has for his work… but I’m not here to talk about the Muppets. I’m here to talk about this film, and I can’t really find any lasting impact. It’s a sequel to The Muppet Movie, and any lingering influence should really be tracked to the original instead. It’s an enjoyable taste of what the Muppets used to be, but as a film, it’s just a drop in the overall Muppet bucket.

Reason For Ranking: Although the film has its rabid fans, in my opinion The Great Muppet Caper isn’t even the best Muppet movie, and it certainly can’t compete against the rich, fully realized worlds which Henson developed for his next films. A great start for Henson, though, and a fun film to relax with on a lazy afternoon.

The Jim Henson Project

1. ???

2. ???

3. The Great Muppet Caper

Hollywood Project #2 -- Jim Henson

If you’re under a certain age, Jim Henson probably taught you something, whether that’s how to tie your shoes, count to 10 in Spanish, or that a pig and a frog could fall in love. Labeled early in his career as “just” a puppeteer -- a novelty act -- Henson became the driving force behind a programming empire, winning fans in every age group from preschool to retirement while touching countless lives and developing scores of fellow artists. Make no mistake; this so-called novelty act was one of the most influential entertainers of his time.

And so there was a sad moment recently when I realized I had never fully examined his work in film. I had just viewed the Henson Company’s Mirrormask, meant as a continuation of Henson’s fantasy film legacy, and was severely disappointed. The movie was a brave experiment, yet it failed to assemble into anything more than the sum of its parts. The ideas were there, the story seemed to click, and yet there was not even a fraction of the heart felt in Henson’s classics. Why? Was it the switch from practical puppets to computer-generated monsters? Was it the dark tone? Something deeper? Where did Henson go so right, where others have repeatedly gone so wrong?

Filmmaking was an early interest for Henson. In fact, he was nominated for an Academy Award (for the short film Time Piece) a decade before his first Emmy. But filmmaking slipped to the background as he began his work in television, starting with the cult hit “Sam and Friends” through a stint on “Saturday Night Live” and on into “Sesame Street”, “The Muppet Show”, “Fraggle Rock” and many more. Henson is known primarily for his work in an episodic medium and this fact, plus his relatively small number of films, is why his movie work has been overshadowed.

While I can’t compare his film output to the tremendous influence of “The Muppet Show” or his other TV projects, I plan to use his films as a window into what made Henson tick, his particular passions, and how his filmmaking should be seen in the greater context of his life’s work. I’m excited to make Jim Henson my next Hollywood Project.

Fingerprint

Name: James Maury Henson

Birth: September 24, 1936, in Greenville, Mississippi

Death: May 16, 1990 (pneumonia) in New York, New York.

Parents: Paul Henson (agronomist), Elizabeth Henson

Life: Jim Henson grew up one of six siblings in the small town of Leland, Mississippi, known for its connection to blues music and for its colorful Christmas float parade on nearby Deer Creek. The Henson family moved to the Washington, DC area while Jim was in the fifth grade so his father, Paul, could work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The promotion went well for the family and Henson later recalled the profound moment when his father brought home his first television set. Jim quickly became fascinated with puppetry acts, such as Edgar Bergen and the “Fran and Ollie” show. These influences stuck.

While still in high school, Henson began working with puppets for a local television station’s children programming. At this time, Henson saw puppetry as just a stepping stone to the larger TV industry, and he used it snare his own local program, “Sam and Friends.” While working on “Sam”, Henson met and hired Jane Nebel as a muppeteer. Eventually, the couple would marry and raise five children. Although they were separated at the time of his death, they never divorced and remained quite close.

Henson developed flu-like symptoms in early May, 1990, but reportedly kept them to himself as to not bother family or friends. His condition worsened, however, and by the time he sought medical attention, the disease had taken hold. Henson had contracted a vicious strain of bacterial pneumonia and, despite aggressive efforts to cleanse his body of the illness, his organs shut down rapidly, leading to his death on May 16, 1990. His funeral was a festive celebration of his life – nobody wore black, and the Muppets led an emotional sing-along of his favorite music. His ashes were scattered near his ranch in New Mexico, and a permanent tribute sits at the University of Maryland, his alma mater.

Career: Jim Henson had his big break with “Sam and Friends” in 1954, a puppet show on local Maryland television that met with some modest success and ran for five seasons. The show is where Henson developed his team, elements of his humor (several sketches would reappear in his later projects), and a few of his signature characters, including a lizard-like puppet named Kermit, the name of a childhood friend.

Perhaps more importantly, “Sam and Friends” is where Henson developed his overall approach to puppetry in new media. At this time, American puppetry was still clinging to its roots in vaudeville and pre-vaudeville styles: a performer with a doll on his lap, or dangling a marionette in front of a camera ala Howdy Doody. In almost all cases the puppets were made from painted wood. Henson decided that felt-covered foam rubber would allow for more expression in his creations, and that for ease of use (and for a more lifelike effect), the puppeteer should be right there on the same stage as the puppet -- the camera operator would just be told to shoot above them. Henson also shifted from marionette strings to arm rods, creating a hybrid marionette/puppet that he referred to as a “muppet.”

By this time, Henson had developed a passion to bring puppetry into the American mainstream, but his career was slow to get started. He crafted commercials and appeared on variety shows, but still suffered from the stigma of being a sideshow gimmick. Eventually, looking for a career break, Henson took a job creating puppet characters for a new children’s show on public television. The show, “Sesame Street”, proved to be exactly the kick start Henson needed. His characters were runaway successes, and Henson was suddenly in demand, but a fear of being typecast as a children’s performer led him to a failed stint on the first season of “Saturday Night Live.” After being told that the SNL writers wouldn’t “write for felt,” Henson brainstormed his own version of a puppet comedy and variety hour, an idea that eventually led to “The Muppet Show.”

Nothing went smoothly with “The Muppet Show.” Pushed to England because no American studio would fund it, airing only in syndication, and struggling to land even D-list guests, the show seemed doomed to failure. But then, just as Henson predicted, adult audiences discovered the show and the Muppets became an overnight phenomenon. The show eventually ran five successful seasons.

Beyond his work in film, which we’ll discuss on the countdown, Henson continued to create new television product for the rest of his life. In addition to a slew of Emmys and BAFTAs, Henson is one of the rare performers to be honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for himself and one for Kermit the Frog, his most popular character. Kermit, however, was not Henson’s favorite. That honor belonged to Rowlf the piano-playing dog, who has been permanently retired since Henson’s death, even though the Muppets have lived on, and likely will for a very long time.

Trademarks: The most obvious trademark of Henson’s work is the presence of his muppet creations, either standing alone or performing alongside human actors. Henson often looked for innovations in puppetry in film and television, seeking to make the puppet characters as lifelike as possible, even using unorthodox tricks such as breaking the “fourth wall” illusion to lend life to his characters. Henson excelled at world-building, and spent enormous amounts of energy on the tiniest details so that his worlds could stand on their own. Henson also favored a variety-show approach to entertainment, combining music and celebrity cameos with a breezy, inoffensive comedic style.

Number of Eligible Films: 3 (Arguably, but we’ll deal with that as it comes.)

Remarks: Directors are known for being a bit megalomaniacal, but all evidence suggests that Jim Henson was a pretty nice guy. I get the sense that Henson wasn’t even a “director” at all, at least not in his DNA. He was a creator – a writer/art designer given the keys to the set. For example, when The Muppet Movie finally hit the big screen -- the culmination of his life’s work -- he handed the reigns to someone else, something I doubt a control-minded director (like James Cameron) would ever allow. Maybe it was his small town background and large family that tempered Henson somewhat, hardwiring him for sharing and cooperation.

I get the sense in looking over his career, though, that Henson always strived for something more than what he had. It’s hard to tell what. Obviously, any man who created the Muppets, gave life to “Sesame Street”, and created so many meaningful hours of television had to be considered a success, but I have a feeling that Henson struggled with the direction of his career, and how he would eventually be remembered. It’s something I plan to explore with this project.

(Note: The Jim Henson Project is complete. Please enjoy the links below, which will take you through the entire Project, a film at a time.)

The Jim Henson Project:

1. Labyrinth

2. The Dark Crystal

3. The Great Muppet Caper