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The Muppets Mayhem: Backstage Pass - "Can You Picture That" · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:06
  Hello, and welcome to the Muppets.
• 0:08
  Mayhem backstage, pass the unofficial Companion podcast to
• 0:12
  The Muppets Mayhem presented by tough, pigs.com.
• 0:15
  This is the podcast where we tore through every episode of
• 0:18
  The Muppets Mayhem to uncover behind-the-scenes stories,
• 0:21
  Easter eggs and more with The Talented cast and crew, who
• 0:24
  helped put the series together. I'm your host dedicated may head
• 0:28
  Johannes today, we're kicking. Kicking things off with track
• 0:31
  one. Can you picture that in which
• 0:32
  the Electric Mayhem is contractually obligated to
• 0:35
  produce an album. So they throw a couple of
• 0:37
  legendary Rangers for this debut episode.
• 0:40
  We're excited to welcome Three Special guests of the podcast,
• 0:42
  all of whom were vital in bringing them up.
• 0:44
  It's Mayhem to the screen. Our first guest is a writer and
• 0:47
  producer, best known for his hit.
• 0:48
  Sitcom The Goldbergs and he's one of the co-creators and
• 0:51
  executive producers of the Muppets Mayhem.
• 0:53
  Please welcome, Adam Goldberg to the podcast.
• 0:55
  Hi, Adam. Hey, I'm now known for Muppets
• 0:58
  Mayhem. Not the Goldbergs.
• 1:00
  That's true. Yeah.
• 1:01
  What's your name though? Do you want me to uh, to redo
• 1:04
  your intro there? Just to go now?
• 1:06
  Okay. I'm very, very excited to be
• 1:10
  here and excited about this show.
• 1:13
  Wonderful, our next guest is a writer film editor and former
• 1:17
  Jim Henson company. Intern who has definitely risen
• 1:19
  up in the world because he is yet another co-creator and
• 1:22
  executive producer of The Muppets Mayhem.
• 1:24
  Please welcome, Jeff. York's to the podcast.
• 1:26
  He Jeff. I was terrified to hear how I
• 1:28
  was gonna be introduced. After Adams long intro of all
• 1:32
  his accolades and credits and we have Jeff York's.
• 1:37
  Well, isn't it nice that I mentioned your internship?
• 1:40
  It's amazing. It is, come on, but I had
• 1:44
  nothing to do with Muppets at, although, I know that.
• 1:46
  No, that's nothing. No, he's a newbie to this world.
• 1:49
  Our final guest is yes. Another co-creator and executive
• 1:53
  producer of Muppets Mayhem, but he's also the man responsible
• 1:56
  for bringing those golden teeth and Golden Tones to life as dr.
• 1:59
  T Please welcome Bill Beretta to the podcast.
• 2:02
  Hey Bill. Oh hey.
• 2:04
  What's happening, what's happening?
• 2:06
  I honestly thought you were gonna introduce Frank langella.
• 2:08
  I was confused but I worked with Frank langella.
• 2:12
  Really lovely man? Yes, yes, he was a Muppets Most
• 2:15
  Wanted. Yes sir, we put him in a hole.
• 2:18
  He was so tall that I said Miss Piggy and Kermit going to look.
• 2:21
  So, tiny, in front of you that I asked him.
• 2:24
  If he wouldn't mind being in a 10-foot deep hole with his robe,
• 2:29
  going to the floor. For long as it's not six feet
• 2:32
  and he did it. He did.
• 2:33
  It was amazing. We've already derailed this
• 2:35
  thing, by the way. Where are your nearly as kind
• 2:38
  when you asked me to stand in a hole?
• 2:40
  Well, yeah. I was like, Jeff just said that
• 2:43
  was the 651. But yeah, fair fair.
• 2:46
  I had it coming so Gentlemen. Let's start with where did the
• 2:51
  idea for an Electric Mayhem series?
• 2:53
  Come from Bill you start God. Okay.
• 2:59
  Who different places? We'll start with Bill.
• 3:02
  All right. Well, so after we did Outside
• 3:07
  Lands and the reception that we got, it was just so much fun to
• 3:12
  do and we hadn't done anything like that with the band, you
• 3:16
  know, to that degree and it was it was amazing and I just
• 3:20
  started thinking about how much fun it would be to take them on
• 3:22
  tour. Right.
• 3:23
  Let's why don't we just take the band on tour kind of thing?
• 3:25
  And, and then, as I started, think about it more.
• 3:28
  I thought, well, maybe it's like a series about them going on
• 3:30
  tour. And so, I had pitched to the
• 3:32
  Muppet Studios back then and then The Changing of the Guard
• 3:37
  happened and they would some new folks now running it.
• 3:40
  And I pitched the idea to them and everybody was kind of they
• 3:43
  loved the idea and so I little did I know while we were talking
• 3:49
  about, you know, should we go pitch it to Disney plus then I
• 3:52
  can just pass it right off. Go ahead.
• 3:54
  You guys go from there. Are simultaneously.
• 3:57
  The Stars aligned because Jeff and I had been working on a
• 4:01
  Muppets Mayhem series for quite a long time.
• 4:04
  Just for fun. On spec, I wasn't I was at the
• 4:08
  time, that's so nice. Oh, I couldn't even pitch it and
• 4:12
  when I when I finally got a deal with Disney, it was like that
• 4:17
  was the really the reason one of the reasons probably, if not the
• 4:21
  main reason I went to Disney and Jeff Hitched.
• 4:27
  Jeff sold me on the idea because before his life, as a creator of
• 4:32
  television series, he was a trailer editor and he loved this
• 4:36
  idea so much. He cut a trailer for the Mayhem.
• 4:40
  I made a living cutting trailers to help people sell their shows.
• 4:43
  And I was like, well, I have an idea and this was for a movie
• 4:46
  and I pitched it to Adam. I'm like, here's the trailer for
• 4:47
  the movie, using clips of the Mayhem and all this stuff, and
• 4:51
  he's like, it's great. It's, I think it's a television
• 4:53
  show. And also, I have this deal, so I
• 4:55
  can't do. Anything with it.
• 4:56
  So that was sort of the end. So we waited patiently and then
• 5:00
  when we finally approached Disney there, like, oh, Bill
• 5:03
  Beretta has this exact same idea.
• 5:05
  Muppets muppets did right. Yappity-yap it Studios.
• 5:09
  Why did you guys talk? Yeah, talk, and we basically,
• 5:12
  that was a terrifying Zoom, because Jeff and I love bill and
• 5:16
  his work, and we're now pitching Bill.
• 5:18
  Like here's what we think. Dr. Teeth.
• 5:20
  He hears his backstory. So we're, we're pitching.
• 5:23
  Dr. Teeth. What happened when dr.
• 5:26
  It was a child so and then bill was so on board right away and
• 5:30
  we just started riffing. And we were like, okay this is
• 5:32
  working so it's just so easy and just like, we just clicked and
• 5:36
  we all got very excited more excited than we already had
• 5:38
  been. I think also, they have the, I
• 5:41
  think the smarter approach to the series which was that it was
• 5:44
  about the band creating their first album.
• 5:47
  Yeah, I always was my idea, verse my idea of the tour,
• 5:50
  right? So that could be another season,
• 5:52
  but this was so much smarter, you know, to do the The the
• 5:56
  album and I'd always socially just wanted an album and when
• 6:00
  it's sort of clicked that that's what this could be, we had, what
• 6:03
  was called the engine to the show, you know, it's not just
• 6:06
  day in, then the misadventure right in term.
• 6:09
  Is that a writer's term? I don't know.
• 6:11
  I'm only a Reader engine to this to the show.
• 6:13
  Yeah. Okay.
• 6:14
  Death wanted his Mayhem album, which never existed and now,
• 6:19
  this album is number one on Billboard, how about that?
• 6:23
  And remember, we kept fight, I kept fighting for my good has to
• 6:25
  come out. It has to be a vinyl.
• 6:27
  I mean at the end it's like a number 23 on vinyl.
• 6:30
  Yeah, maybe it's well, first of all, I love the idea of creating
• 6:36
  an entire television series just so that you could have a piece
• 6:38
  of merchandise. I very much relate to that.
• 6:41
  My next one's about a t-shirt. Is there any chance we'll ever
• 6:46
  get to see that? Trailer that you cut because I'm
• 6:48
  very curious to see what your pitch law.
• 6:50
  What's really interesting about it is that that trailer actually
• 6:54
  became the first Sizzle, or the first teaser.
• 6:57
  The first teaser that was released.
• 6:59
  So there's a third of my trailer was what became the teaser where
• 7:04
  it's just like, you know, for the past 45 years, one been, you
• 7:07
  know, the misdirect the rug pull and then I wound up just re
• 7:10
  cutting it with the footage from our show.
• 7:13
  Great. But where's yeah, whereas before
• 7:14
  I was using all these random movies, like rock star at Almost
• 7:17
  Famous and things like that, now, I could swipe it, you know,
• 7:20
  swap it out with the Muppets Mayhem, just a tight shot of the
• 7:24
  mixing board move. You know, Floyd home base that
• 7:27
  kind of stuff. Yeah.
• 7:29
  Yeah, absolutely. Well it obviously worked because
• 7:30
  when we saw the actual teaser, I mean, the internet blew up the
• 7:34
  Muppet fan Community went nuts. Yeah, you and you delivered on
• 7:39
  the promise which is also always satisfying.
• 7:42
  Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about
• 7:45
  the research that you guys had to do?
• 7:47
  Probably more for you Adam and Jeff to learn more about the
• 7:52
  Mayhem so that you could write in their voices.
• 7:56
  I don't think I did much. I, you know, I grew up with the
• 7:59
  Muppets, I love the Muppets. I love the electric, man.
• 8:02
  That was something I felt like, you know, for me it, which it's
• 8:06
  the Muppet Show. It's the Muppet movie, great
• 8:08
  Muppet, Caper. I mean, it's all of it.
• 8:11
  And I sort of knew that. And I do, I mean, I watched the
• 8:15
  recent series, but I think for Jeff, I would like that.
• 8:18
  He would have done less research because his brain is Giants
• 8:23
  Muppet encyclopedia Which is helpful sometimes and sometimes
• 8:28
  Jeff would be like, oh, but wait, in the Muppet Show.
• 8:32
  They said this. So Jeff definitely.
• 8:35
  They would. The cannon.
• 8:36
  It's I think awesome for Jeff. He's doing a tough pigs podcast,
• 8:41
  where this is one of his favorite websites.
• 8:43
  So, oh get out of here, you know, they'll tell you I mean it
• 8:47
  was great sitting in the room, you have Bill who is a muppet,
• 8:51
  you know, I mean he's a real person but he performs Muppets
• 8:54
  and as we were just like screw Wrong with dialogue.
• 8:57
  We would just improvise with the voices of these characters, and
• 9:02
  yeah, that's that was the most helpful was that we would joke
• 9:07
  that like because Bill is dr. Teeth, we would propose a line
• 9:11
  and then bill with just pitch it as dr.
• 9:13
  Teeth and of course all of that goes to the script because it's
• 9:16
  so funny. We're like dr.
• 9:18
  Teeth is right in front of you saying it, but Bill also has a
• 9:21
  handle on all the other voices, too.
• 9:23
  So I think Bill, I mean, we would the writer, the writers
• 9:29
  room or is writer Zoom. Unfortunately would basically
• 9:33
  proposed dialogue and then it would have to be filtered
• 9:36
  through Bill who has just, you know, 30 plus years of
• 9:39
  experience, with these characters.
• 9:41
  So, yeah, I think, I mean, obviously, you know, these two
• 9:46
  guys are big fans of the Muppets, right?
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  And just like what they just said about knowing the history
• 9:51
  of them and but I think we even with the band that there's, you
• 9:55
  know, There's what people know based on what they've seen,
• 9:59
  right, but there's all kinds of things that when we're
• 10:01
  performing we're there's things were doing, you know, with each
• 10:04
  other that don't make it to the screen and we have our own ideas
• 10:08
  of backstories and things. And so it was fun to throw those
• 10:11
  out there and get the Muppet performers to make some
• 10:14
  suggestions about character and throw them into the pot.
• 10:17
  So we could discuss them in the writers.
• 10:19
  Umm, you know, and see what would Bubble Up and then or take
• 10:23
  an idea that that Jeff for atom or one?
• 10:26
  Of the other writers will come up with and I would kind of you
• 10:28
  know occasionally go to the guys and one of the guys and say what
• 10:31
  do you think about you know Janice having a twin sister you
• 10:34
  know and they would be like that's pretty cool.
• 10:37
  You know what does she like? And we we didn't know yet but we
• 10:40
  would then start to you know talk about it and find find ways
• 10:44
  of developing the characters more.
• 10:46
  So that was that was the fun part we as the performers I
• 10:49
  think had an idea of who these characters are obviously by
• 10:51
  learning from The Originators and things that we play around
• 10:54
  with for years. This gave us even more a more
• 10:58
  more of a chance to get deeper and find more.
• 11:01
  It's tough with them. You know, and I think that was
• 11:03
  one of our early meetings to where we did meet with, we met
• 11:05
  with Bill. This seemed like this was a
• 11:07
  thing. This was going to, you know,
• 11:08
  we're going to work on this and then we met with the performers
• 11:11
  because it just felt like such hubris to be like, now we've got
• 11:14
  this. Like, why would we not work with
• 11:17
  these people? You know, who have developed
• 11:19
  these characters. As bill was saying, you know,
• 11:21
  these are extensions of them at this point.
• 11:24
  We've had we've had situations in the Past where people assume
• 11:27
  that they do know these characters and don't really
• 11:31
  reach out or have that connection and what was great is
• 11:34
  that, you know, these guys were open to hearing out everybody
• 11:40
  foolish 90, everybody a part of the group which is what we
• 11:43
  always hope for, you know, that's great.
• 11:45
  Yeah. That's I mean, that's exactly
• 11:47
  what we want as well. You know, the, we've always said
• 11:49
  that the puppeteers of have known the characters best and
• 11:52
  you know it like you said, Jeff it is, it would be stupid.
• 11:56
  For someone to come in and not take advantage of that greatest
• 11:59
  resource and it's good to have one of us in the room you know
• 12:02
  all the time. Yeah being part of the creation
• 12:07
  because that doesn't happen very often you know.
• 12:10
  Yeah that was one of the things was that I was really insistent
• 12:15
  with Disney was That Built Me A co-creator as opposed to just a
• 12:18
  purse an executive producer or /, you know, I thought you know,
• 12:23
  looking back you know, since the Jason Segel movie.
• 12:27
  All the various projects never had there been one of them, the
• 12:31
  core group, as a Creator. And I think if you are familiar
• 12:37
  with the way that Jim Henson did it back in the day, it's like,
• 12:41
  it was one giant hippie. Kind of like lovefest
• 12:44
  collaboration, right? Like it, that was the most
• 12:48
  important part and you know, Bill would say, oh, like well as
• 12:50
  we were writing we you know, you think it's good now.
• 12:53
  Just script wise wait till we get on the floor, like that's
• 12:55
  when the magic Happens when we're just riffing.
• 12:57
  So, you know, I think Jeff and I wanted to make this a group
• 13:02
  effort as opposed to just like, I mean, like Jeff said, who are
• 13:05
  we to come in? And be like, we got this, we
• 13:07
  know the Muppets. So it was really important that
• 13:12
  bill who you know, is dr. Teeth had already been thinking
• 13:15
  of the show. Really be in the DNA and the
• 13:18
  creation of the show with Jeff. And I because Jeff and I are
• 13:22
  just guests, you know, we now feel like we're maybe not.
• 13:26
  We're now not guess because we have our name on a show but at
• 13:29
  the time we were just facilitators, trying to get it
• 13:32
  going because allow us and yeah so yeah that's I think it's
• 13:37
  really important that all future Muppet projects you know really
• 13:41
  have the Creator's in sync with the performers in the way that
• 13:48
  we did it because you know, obviously it worked.
• 13:50
  So I think we wanted to to be that moving forward.
• 13:55
  You know, we talked a bit about, you know, Bill, you being dr.
• 13:58
  Teeth, you having 30 years of experience doing this character
• 14:01
  but you're also up keeping this Legacy and creating carrying
• 14:07
  this torch, you know, of this character that was originally
• 14:10
  performed in created, by Jim Henson.
• 14:12
  So our who Jim Henson? Oh yeah.
• 14:15
  Oh yeah, yeah yeah. I remember I remember especially
• 14:23
  with things like creating new Characteristics or backstory for
• 14:26
  this character. Well, actually, I was recently
• 14:31
  talking to Dave goals about this idea of taking on somebody
• 14:35
  else's characters and we both don't really enjoy, even though
• 14:42
  we love it it's hard because, you know, for me, I'll speak for
• 14:47
  myself. It's at best.
• 14:52
  It's an impersonation, right? A fair impersonation.
• 14:58
  But for me, it's, you know, the person that creates it, that
• 15:01
  character is driven by that person.
• 15:04
  What's in them? What that comes from a place,
• 15:06
  this doctor teeth comes from a place in gym, right?
• 15:08
  That he drew from something, whatever that was that helped
• 15:12
  him create this character. And so at first, you know,
• 15:16
  you're doing like this, the best impersonation you can and you're
• 15:20
  trying to find for me. It's the essence of the
• 15:24
  character. Are you trying to find the
• 15:26
  energy of the I was saying the Dave Jim had so much energy in
• 15:32
  dr. Teeth.
• 15:34
  I don't think I could last through an entire scene that we
• 15:38
  like we've done in this show with that energy.
• 15:41
  Right? So I had to find a way of using
• 15:46
  that energy but in not constant, right?
• 15:50
  Otherwise that it's just kind of one note.
• 15:52
  So for me it was about finding those Peaks and valleys with dr.
• 15:55
  Teeth when is that energy there? And when he's a little more
• 15:59
  chill and trying to that's that for me was kind of how I think
• 16:02
  I'm making it mine in a way if you want to say that.
• 16:07
  But it's just hard. It's hard because everybody has
• 16:10
  their doctor teeth, right? They love what Jim did and so I
• 16:18
  don't know. I don't know if I answer the
• 16:19
  question. I guess it's just about over
• 16:22
  time. You try and find ways to put a
• 16:24
  little bit of yourself in there so that you're more comfortable
• 16:27
  doing Yet instead of just pretending you're doing somebody
• 16:30
  else's character. Sure.
• 16:32
  Yeah I will pipe in and say as we were preparing to the show I
• 16:37
  had a zoom with Brian Henson. I'm sorry.
• 16:40
  Who Brian Henson? Oh yes, yes right Jim son?
• 16:45
  Yeah, yes, he's done some Muppet stuff.
• 16:48
  No we were we were talking about you know the process and I just
• 16:52
  wanted to pick his brain and any kind of pointers and he Brian
• 16:56
  said of all of the Characters of people who've taken over
• 17:00
  characters. He said, at this point, when he
• 17:02
  thinks dr. Teeth, he thinks Bill, he
• 17:05
  doesn't think Jim and that bill has made it his own and, you
• 17:10
  know, it's not an impersonation at this point.
• 17:13
  It's like was bringing dr. T to life with his own Essence,
• 17:17
  which I thought was really cool to hear.
• 17:19
  So and then also he's like yeah and I think he's become so much
• 17:23
  more dimensionalized you know, with Bill and certainly with the
• 17:27
  show, We'll bill brings is his heart, and that's why you feel
• 17:31
  and you care. It's I mean that's what he's
• 17:33
  brought to it and it's in every, you know, line that he says and
• 17:37
  dr. Tooth was never given a chance
• 17:39
  to be that and bill has given him that chance.
• 17:43
  Well, aunt just like pure quantity.
• 17:46
  This series specifically is given dr.
• 17:48
  Teeth and the rest of the Bands so much more of a spotlight than
• 17:50
  they've ever had before. You know before like they come
• 17:54
  in, they do a joke, they get off stage, they come in, they do one
• 17:56
  song they get off the stage. Age, like, maybe you could say,
• 18:00
  you know, Outside Lands, something like that, where they
• 18:02
  can sing a bunch of songs, but that's, that's not character.
• 18:05
  That's just you're doing a performance.
• 18:07
  But this I think I think a lot of fans are gonna come out of
• 18:10
  watching Muppets Mayhem feeling like this is dr.
• 18:14
  Teeth. This is the way he sounds.
• 18:16
  This is what will will kind of continue moving forward with the
• 18:20
  characterization. I think it was the advantage.
• 18:21
  We had also in writing it is that people sort of new these
• 18:25
  characters. You certainly recognize them You
• 18:28
  didn't know that much about them.
• 18:29
  So it gave us freedom to really flush them out or phone them
• 18:32
  out. I don't know.
• 18:33
  It felt them out. So I just thought, you know, you
• 18:36
  could just go and kind of do what you want.
• 18:39
  Starting with the basic things that, you know, people knew I'm
• 18:42
  a glutton for punishment and and Jeff and Bill have really
• 18:45
  discovered this that I am. I really read all the online
• 18:49
  comments be? The Facebook pages.
• 18:53
  Twitter, especially not so much on Instagram and I'll even I'll
• 18:58
  even do Muppets Mayhem sucks, and do that as a search.
• 19:02
  So you spelled sucks. Who thinks it?
• 19:04
  Who out? There is not a show.
• 19:07
  So one thing I have never seen is like a fan saying, this is
• 19:14
  not the character that I knew. Like, you know, if there's a
• 19:18
  Gonzo, well, if there's guns or Kermit or fought, like anytime
• 19:21
  you do with those characters, like, that's not Kermit, that's
• 19:24
  hi. Kermit, right?
• 19:25
  Because that character is so flushed out.
• 19:27
  Out. No one is saying this is not the
• 19:30
  lips that I grew up now. Lips maybe have online.
• 19:34
  So, that's that was a huge relief for Jeff.
• 19:38
  And I in terms of like, we're standing on the shoulders of
• 19:41
  giants, but we're not like we're like the the smaller Giants.
• 19:46
  Right? Like so we can kind of make it a
• 19:49
  little less pressure. Yeah, a little less pressure for
• 19:52
  us it was a great way to dip our toe into this world for sure.
• 19:56
  What was the first thing that you filmed for the series?
• 20:01
  I think we cut it. The first thing we shot in
• 20:05
  episode 1, it is not a Nora Nora shows up to the shack, she just
• 20:09
  found out that they're performing at the shack, right?
• 20:12
  And she runs into the house to find.
• 20:15
  I think there's a crowd outside and they're upset because people
• 20:18
  are, you know, there's animals, bang on the drums and so the
• 20:22
  shot was Nor entering the house once Going on here, animals on
• 20:26
  the drums, just pounding and rage from the cameras swiveled
• 20:29
  turned around. Pulled back.
• 20:30
  There's a doctor teeth, is building a house of cards.
• 20:33
  Floyd is, you know, just reading a magazine Janice's, they're
• 20:36
  doing like a tarot reading or something like that.
• 20:39
  And that was the day where we were Adam and I were in the
• 20:42
  writers room and someone hurried in, and they're just like, okay,
• 20:45
  we are two hours in. You are four days behind this
• 20:49
  shot and I think we even saw it on a monitor and Adams, like
• 20:53
  yeah, we're not going to use that shot.
• 20:56
  Yeah, we ended up cutting the entire scene.
• 20:58
  Yeah, it just goes straight from.
• 21:00
  What do you mean there Shaq? Let's hope the police don't come
• 21:01
  or whatever the line is and it cuts to the police.
• 21:04
  That's the pool, you know, That was the first thing we shot and
• 21:08
  cut fantastic. Well, I'm glad you got back on
• 21:10
  schedule. Yeah, right.
• 21:13
  On the last day on the last day, we almost were back on schedule.
• 21:17
  Well, speaking of getting back on schedule, let's talk about
• 21:19
  this episode. This pilot episode here, we
• 21:23
  start the episode. If the at the El Rey theater in
• 21:27
  Los Angeles, it was not in the script, right?
• 21:30
  This shit. Oh, really was, it was it
• 21:34
  supposed to be at a different theater?
• 21:35
  Yeah, it was. Basically in episode something
• 21:38
  or other, when they're on the side of the road and they're
• 21:40
  performing, It's Only Rock and Roll.
• 21:43
  But I like it that was are open and we cut it and it's cool.
• 21:47
  And the powers-that-be Disney plus saw it in there just like
• 21:52
  we just want bigger, do this, right?
• 21:54
  But we just want to get into this.
• 21:56
  We want to blast the audience with electorate, I great
• 21:59
  suggestion. Yeah, yeah, it was a good
• 22:01
  suggestion. It was a great way to start the
• 22:03
  show to remind us. You know, we're not creating a
• 22:08
  new continuity for the Electric Mayhem, where they're this
• 22:10
  little band who are going to grow like they're already
• 22:12
  famous. They already have a following
• 22:14
  that's really important. With the story.
• 22:15
  You guys were telling ya. It was a comebacks vainly
• 22:18
  important and we like it's funny because when we're you're
• 22:20
  writing you're like okay we want them in a theater.
• 22:23
  We want to wow the crowd going crazy.
• 22:25
  We want like huge lights and thin and crane shots and then
• 22:29
  you are told okay well you that you can't effects on a movie and
• 22:34
  afford that. So then we end It up with.
• 22:36
  Okay, they're now on the side of a road, their van broke down,
• 22:42
  and they're just kind of jamming out and a cop comes up and he's
• 22:46
  like you guys got to move it but the cop loves the Mayhem so much
• 22:49
  that they play another song. So that's what we ended up doing
• 22:52
  its kind of Disney plus was like what happened to the thing with
• 22:56
  the giant crowd? We're like you tell us if you
• 23:00
  give us, the money will do it. So they were like we'll give you
• 23:04
  the money. It's really important.
• 23:06
  So that's kind of how that happened.
• 23:07
  So our side of the road with Cedric scene that ended up
• 23:12
  becoming a cold opening and another episode where the van
• 23:14
  broke down, it's a really fun way to start an episode but not
• 23:18
  the pilot, right? And then on top of it, when they
• 23:22
  were like when we decided, you know, I want to rock and roll
• 23:26
  all night and party every day what we're like the Rock and
• 23:29
  rolling at night, what is the band to a day?
• 23:31
  So we got to go to the beach also for a little fun reshoot
• 23:35
  and we so much great stuff. That's not in lot of great stuff
• 23:40
  like. Oh my God, Dave did the Zoop
• 23:42
  thing where Zoot was walking down a line of two people.
• 23:46
  It's like beachgoers that are just like looks like MTV Spring
• 23:49
  break or like Soul Train. Yeah, like Soul Train Line and
• 23:52
  his hands were just kind of waving back and really he was
• 23:58
  just totally out of it. It was he thin lips were buried
• 24:01
  up to their head necks in the sand.
• 24:03
  Yeah it was all kinds of fun stuff.
• 24:05
  We shot. I'll tell you.
• 24:07
  And it also got us to Nora in a very cool way that was just on
• 24:10
  point for character, you know, her, the lyrics, her being a
• 24:13
  poser. Yeah.
• 24:15
  Trying to be, you know. Yeah, it was the she make that
• 24:17
  but I will tell you just from a personal note, going to the
• 24:19
  reshoot showing up to the o.r., a driving down Wilshire and
• 24:24
  coming up and seeing the El Rey all lit up at night and the
• 24:27
  Electric Mayhem, their name on the billboard.
• 24:30
  Like I got the chills I'm like I cannot believe this was a pinch
• 24:33
  yourself moment for me. I was just like, I can't believe
• 24:36
  I am some way contributed to the Electric Mayhem name, being on
• 24:39
  the El, Rey theater, you know? I wondered if that was a real
• 24:42
  Marky or if that was definitely a real lucky, that's cool.
• 24:46
  I can't imagine being a muppet fan and just like driving on the
• 24:49
  road, no big deal. And then you see that and well,
• 24:52
  number one you freaked out and number two, you freak out again
• 24:55
  because you think wait, are they doing a show?
• 24:56
  And I didn't know about it, right?
• 24:58
  Not hire, that would be slightly upsetting.
• 25:03
  I do have to mention because you were talking about this beach.
• 25:06
  Seen there's one shot of Floyd an animal in there crowd
• 25:09
  surfing. And I pause it just to make sure
• 25:12
  you can see. Yeah, you could see Eric and
• 25:15
  and, and Matt they had their beat shirts on.
• 25:19
  Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 25:19
  They're keeping their heads down so simple actually actually
• 25:22
  they're they're really not it's just the angle but they were one
• 25:26
  of the crowd you know. That's what we made them.
• 25:28
  Kind of like when we did Muppets Most Wanted what are they were
• 25:32
  carrying Kermit through the crowd of the prisoners will
• 25:35
  carry Gulag. Yeah yeah.
• 25:37
  Steve was there but he didn't really hide, you know.
• 25:40
  Yeah, yeah. And how did you land on rock and
• 25:44
  roll all night for this song? I think, just because of that
• 25:47
  bit that I wanted to put in a show for the last 15 years,
• 25:51
  which is like my, my son. I played it for him in the car
• 25:56
  and he thought the lyrics were rock and roll all night and part
• 26:01
  of every day because no one could conceivably.
• 26:05
  Rock all night and then it would be part of every day like so
• 26:09
  that whole bit with Nora, like that was something that I wanted
• 26:13
  to get in the show and we did, we scripted it we have like four
• 26:16
  pages of this back and forth and were like, this is great and
• 26:19
  they're like, yeah, let's yeah. Four days of shooting, right?
• 26:22
  Yeah. They would never fit in an
• 26:24
  episode. Yeah.
• 26:25
  So it was like, it was great. I mean, we had, we had this like
• 26:29
  comedic bit that just kind of took on a life of its own and
• 26:33
  it's also such a great Song for the band.
• 26:37
  Yeah, totally control. Just the anticipation of those
• 26:40
  drums at the top. I mean, it is really perfect.
• 26:44
  Yeah. And then the fact that it has a
• 26:46
  Comic View point, you know, like it has that turn there that just
• 26:49
  gets a tour of character. If only, we could have also
• 26:52
  gotten them in Kiss makeup, that would have been, that would have
• 26:55
  been the kicker. But, yes, as you said Nora is we
• 26:59
  see, Nora. We meet her played by Lilly
• 27:02
  Singh. She's wonderful on this show.
• 27:05
  And she's getting these lyrics Incorrect and she is corrected
• 27:08
  by her Barista at the drive-through coffee.
• 27:10
  Place played by Colton Dunn who you may know from Superstore.
• 27:15
  And we assume he was cool. He seems like a cool guy to work
• 27:19
  with. Yeah.
• 27:20
  Well I'm just like, you know, that was one of our reshoot days
• 27:25
  and we were shooting several things at once.
• 27:27
  So actually, I unfortunately couldn't be there.
• 27:31
  I was doing shooting something else so I missed that that
• 27:35
  scene. I didn't really get to watch
• 27:37
  that. I was everything else pretty
• 27:38
  much but that one I unfortunately wasn't able to be
• 27:41
  there. Yeah, once we once we changed,
• 27:44
  the are opening Away from the road, then it starts to dominate
• 27:48
  other things, everything. So so now we're like, you know,
• 27:52
  now we it gave us the opportunity to give Nora of fun
• 27:55
  intro. I think initially she was giving
• 27:57
  like a PowerPoint presentation to her sister about her plans
• 28:01
  for the band which the essence of that is so on the show.
• 28:04
  But, you know, this this way she could what we showed the to.
• 28:09
  We did shoot it and we also that got cut.
• 28:11
  Yeah. Oh, you're sure you're peeking
• 28:14
  behind the curtain, like it. I'll pilot.
• 28:15
  It for sure. You know there's so many eyes
• 28:19
  and it's under a microscope. So you do have that opportunity
• 28:22
  to perfect it once it's finished.
• 28:23
  So we hit a couple crucial things, all good roses too.
• 28:28
  I mean in the end all really great.
• 28:30
  We'll get you another one in a second.
• 28:32
  That absolutely improved our show.
• 28:34
  I say. All right.
• 28:36
  All right. We're going to hear about that
• 28:37
  in a second. I guess we can.
• 28:40
  I just say one thing. Sorry.
• 28:42
  You can see just in the El Rey theater, just a moment.
• 28:44
  I think that Maybe fans out there would really appreciate so
• 28:48
  wearing that we're in the El Rey theater and you can see it's a
• 28:50
  full body situation for these characters, right?
• 28:54
  So every there's there's 14 puppeteers total trying to make
• 28:59
  this seen happen in all in green, right?
• 29:02
  So the amazing work that the VFX people did.
• 29:06
  It soapbox getting rid of everybody and but there was a
• 29:09
  moment there I'm just going to I'm sorry you can cut this if
• 29:11
  you want. I got to tell you but there was
• 29:13
  a moment where we had to Because we had a problem with the crane
• 29:17
  so we're waiting and I was sitting there and I remember and
• 29:21
  there's an audience, right? There's a big crowd there,
• 29:24
  waiting as well. And I'm like, what can we do?
• 29:26
  What can we do? You know, I thought of Leslie
• 29:29
  Carrera did an audition the first time she ever when she
• 29:33
  came to join the Muppets, she did this amazing audition, it's
• 29:36
  a two-minute version of the entire movie, The Wizard of Oz.
• 29:41
  It's the most incredible thing you've ever seen.
• 29:43
  She does every character And just goes through the whole
• 29:48
  movie the best, Judy Garland I've ever heard the witches that
• 29:51
  she does everything Toto and then at the end that rat went
• 29:56
  wraps up her her piece is everybody singing the song Over
• 30:01
  the Rainbow and everybody started to sing and she got the
• 30:06
  whole room going. It was just her and her green
• 30:08
  doing this. Wow and the room just lit.
• 30:13
  It was so beautiful. And nobody really felt that, you
• 30:17
  know, the stress of do the crane, and how long is this
• 30:21
  taking? But it was just a great moment.
• 30:23
  I just want to mention that because it was really memorable
• 30:25
  for people who were, you know, fortunately able to be.
• 30:28
  There was, it was just great. It was again, great.
• 30:31
  It sounds really special. Yeah.
• 30:32
  Yeah. It was.
• 30:33
  It was. Well, speaking of Leslie, we are
• 30:37
  going to follow Nora to her job at West Ham records, which also
• 30:41
  I appreciate that wax on records is between a store called.
• 30:45
  Old pants and more and pants for Less.
• 30:49
  I got kicked out my, I love that.
• 30:51
  You appreciate that, because it was a nightmare, no, it wasn't a
• 30:56
  nightmare. It was, it was a lot of just
• 30:59
  back and forth. Every lie, you have your Disney
• 31:02
  legal department and every story exists.
• 31:06
  So we had boxes and four more boxes for Less that exact boast
• 31:11
  both of them, go to real stores. So it got to the point where we
• 31:19
  just Didn't give them any other options, right?
• 31:21
  Wheel. And I mean, really couldn't
• 31:22
  figure out the one. I really wanted was somehow
• 31:25
  related to a rock and a hard place.
• 31:27
  But what does a rock cell and what does a hard place?
• 31:30
  No. So but yeah, we gave them this.
• 31:34
  That was it, I'm like well what if it's a number for the like?
• 31:38
  Okay, we're just we warm down but thank you for noticing that
• 31:42
  a lot of other courts. I mean look this show is made to
• 31:46
  be paused a lot. So there's stuff to see When you
• 31:49
  pause, we at wax on records, we meet Penny For the First Time,
• 31:54
  new character performed by Leslie, Kerr are Rudolph.
• 31:57
  And I really, I have to give you guys kudos for creating number
• 32:01
  one, creating a new character because there's so few new
• 32:03
  Muppet characters number to creating a new female character
• 32:06
  again. So, few of those and number
• 32:08
  three, giving that female character, a female performer
• 32:13
  so. Well done on all three counts
• 32:15
  there and she's a great character.
• 32:17
  She's super fun and such a so Interesting to look at She's so
• 32:20
  different from any other Muppet I've seen great design.
• 32:24
  Paul and Draco. Designed her puppet Heap who,
• 32:29
  you know, basically takes care of the Muppets and make sure
• 32:32
  they're all in great shape and all the things they need.
• 32:35
  But yeah, it was a great design by Paul the puppet is so huge
• 32:41
  and I don't know that it fully comes across but like there's
• 32:45
  one shot in this pilot where Leslie is in the wheelchair.
• 32:49
  Chair with the puppet on top of her and the to the destitute was
• 32:52
  that episode 2 when she got the surgery and she's all wrapped
• 32:55
  up. Yeah, yes, I can.
• 32:57
  I still don't know where she is in there?
• 32:59
  Like if she's under she's in the she's wheezing that we oh we oh
• 33:03
  we ripped out the inside of the chair and got her to City of
• 33:06
  crunched up in there. Yeah idea for size when she's
• 33:09
  next to something but so much of the pilot is her to sitting
• 33:12
  alone at a desk and it's a big ask, you know?
• 33:14
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:16
  She's Bobo big. You know, she's that kind of
• 33:18
  big. Yeah, we at that's how we
• 33:21
  measure Muppets. She's Bobo big.
• 33:23
  Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I was told before
• 33:26
  the show premiered that she was designed to be a big surprise,
• 33:29
  and she is a surprise because she's not in any of the
• 33:32
  trailers. She was in none of the
• 33:35
  promotional stuff. Is that how you always kind of
• 33:38
  envisioned, her of like, okay, we can't tell anybody, like
• 33:40
  don't take any pictures because on on release date, that's when
• 33:44
  everyone's gonna see her for the first time, Well I think it was
• 33:47
  that and the baby baby animal. Yeah, but yeah I think more
• 33:51
  about we just wanted to reveal her.
• 33:53
  I think in a great way, you know, the spin in her chair that
• 33:56
  hopefully you don't expect that. If you don't know, it's coming,
• 33:59
  you know, I think it's a great reveal.
• 34:02
  Yeah. And I think we always wanted
• 34:03
  that. I built one of the last time
• 34:06
  besides Walter there's been a new original Muppet There's the
• 34:12
  turkey on Muppets now. Yeah, Beverly Bloom.
• 34:16
  We well yet Constantine, technically Constantine, go.
• 34:20
  Joe from legal is a great character that Peter does.
• 34:25
  I just hope that we really wanted to introduce a couple new
• 34:28
  Muppets mom, you know, teeth parents just because You know, I
• 34:36
  think they're just needs in order for Muppets to, like,
• 34:40
  continue forward. They're just, we just need new
• 34:42
  characters. Yeah.
• 34:45
  Well, you know, and I think I think you know, it's and also
• 34:48
  it's not an easy thing to do, right.
• 34:49
  I mean people come up with characters all the time but yeah
• 34:52
  the magic that happens is the performer, makes it work
• 34:57
  ultimately with the writing to support it, right?
• 35:00
  So sometimes it just doesn't happen, you know?
• 35:02
  All the hopes you have and it's a funny.
• 35:05
  Bit in the funny character but sometimes that chemistry just
• 35:08
  doesn't work. And fortunately like when we
• 35:12
  were doing Penny and writing for Penny and creating are in the
• 35:16
  room, I would kind of do a version that I would imagine a
• 35:19
  like me doing a penny, right? But I heard I heard Leslie in my
• 35:24
  head because I've heard or do something similar before.
• 35:27
  So my mind, it was like I think there's somebody that's going to
• 35:30
  be able to do this. We'll see if everybody else
• 35:32
  agrees, ultimately, but You know, she just really nailed it.
• 35:39
  She's there were there wasn't right?
• 35:41
  It just was it. She told me that the voice is
• 35:45
  modeled after I think her neighbor when she does.
• 35:48
  I think moved? She moved to this like weird
• 35:50
  sketchy building. And her neighbor was this just
• 35:53
  all character. So she's essentially channeling
• 35:56
  that and I realize, like a lot of these characters come from,
• 35:59
  like, like Pepe the prom that's someone that bill knows like
• 36:02
  there. You're almost imitating a Or, or
• 36:06
  your parent or, you know, a teacher that and, and then it
• 36:11
  just gets kind of like, put into a fun puppet and hopefully that
• 36:16
  matches up perfectly. So that's you got lucky.
• 36:19
  It worked Fortune. I do want to say, I think Davis,
• 36:23
  the cactus is also really a Mexico.
• 36:27
  So, there's, there's a new Muppet.
• 36:29
  That's right. Davis, will be back.
• 36:31
  We're doing a spin-off with Davis paid off.
• 36:33
  We're gonna do whole bonus episode just about teeth.
• 36:36
  Fungus. So Nora is making the case to
• 36:40
  Penny that she wants to work with more bands to help produce
• 36:42
  some albums. But Penny says wax towns, a
• 36:44
  ghost town time to close up shop and I also want to mention this
• 36:49
  week's time. Record set is terrific.
• 36:51
  There's so many little details are so much going on.
• 36:54
  I will, I want to say though, I was visited the set once and I
• 36:57
  thought there's got to be Easter eggs, all over the sink, and I
• 37:00
  spent so much time looking at like every album cover every
• 37:02
  record. I didn't see any Easter eggs.
• 37:05
  What's up with the guys? Now, they do in the shack, I
• 37:08
  know they have the cast album to Cabaret.
• 37:11
  Oh, Liza Minnelli was on The Muppet Show, so that's true.
• 37:15
  Yes, there's a connection. Yeah, lots of tickets.
• 37:17
  Stapled to the beams concert tickets.
• 37:20
  The Shack definitely is full of Easter eggs, on Easter eggs,
• 37:24
  you're right. We probably didn't.
• 37:28
  But you know, push it there. Yeah, it's okay.
• 37:31
  That's right, that's, that's not a real judgment that's but
• 37:34
  you're talking to Jeff, who's the king of Easter eggs.
• 37:36
  So I'm sure this that, you know, we'll get them that will get
• 37:39
  them seasoned to. Well, I have to step up our if
• 37:42
  we go back to that set for sure but you know we should mention.
• 37:44
  I mean, we did have amazing production and set design team,
• 37:49
  You know, Denise pezzini. And and David G.
• 37:53
  GG komal and and are set decorator.
• 37:56
  Done. Dear.
• 37:56
  Ears and then Jane Madden but the colors in the palette of
• 38:03
  that space and trying to make it hip and cool but still retro
• 38:07
  like it's been there for way too long but there's still these
• 38:11
  cool colors and textures in there.
• 38:14
  You know I just loved her office was always great to walk in
• 38:17
  there and shoot in there. Yeah.
• 38:21
  Nora is tasked with shredding all the papers and she finds the
• 38:26
  mayhem's standard famous rock star contract, which of course,
• 38:30
  is a reference to the standard rich and famous contract.
• 38:31
  From The Muppet Movie, I noticed that the contract is dated 1975
• 38:36
  which is the year of seniors, the Mayhem, staib you on The
• 38:40
  Muppet Show, Pilots Sex and violence.
• 38:42
  Nice little Easter egg. I see you.
• 38:45
  I was all Joe. Also want to say that the search
• 38:47
  engine is full of random Easter egg.
• 38:49
  I wrote this down to this, she Google's them.
• 38:52
  And underneath it says, who was the Electric Mayhem?
• 38:55
  Why is the Electric Mayhem, has the Electric Mayhem ever been in
• 38:59
  jail and not really a question per se, but the Electric Mayhem
• 39:02
  stole my cat. This was a, this was a fun
• 39:05
  afternoon. They're like, what does this
• 39:07
  search engine? Look like.
• 39:09
  And so I wrote up the whole page.
• 39:11
  Yeah. Yeah we do I want to hear that
• 39:13
  story of how. Oh, they how and why they stole
• 39:15
  a cat? I remember getting this email
• 39:19
  and I completely ignored it knowing Jeff would spend the day
• 39:22
  working on it. I love it, I love it but I think
• 39:36
  people got excited about that when they would see him you know
• 39:41
  creating these things, they started to try and go off on
• 39:44
  their own and think of things they could do like The the the
• 39:48
  cups, right? Jeff in the seventh yeah yeah in
• 39:54
  episode 7 the documentary that Bethany Barton our props
• 39:58
  property Master, she created the cups that were from the Beatles
• 40:02
  documentary. The t comes so that everybody
• 40:05
  started get into this thing. You love what I really I mean
• 40:08
  it's the best because I was all about the mr.
• 40:10
  Bassman sticker, right about, so good, that's my favorite Easter.
• 40:14
  I was just like and that's when it clicked like we have to.
• 40:16
  To do this. You know, it meant to be and
• 40:19
  it's contagious. And do you recall we were on and
• 40:22
  I mentioned it people like we got it.
• 40:23
  We don't we we're doing good. Only doing the pilot podcast so
• 40:28
  I will I will say there's two things that Jeff is responsible
• 40:32
  for the baseball diamonds, great which you know, get so much love
• 40:37
  on Twitter that I was not surprising.
• 40:39
  I thought, well, you know, I don't know, anyone's gonna know
• 40:42
  the baseball diamond but and then of course, Jeff.
• 40:44
  Do you want to say the one there was one joke?
• 40:46
  Jeff kept, I kept deleting out of the script.
• 40:50
  Yeah. Because I thought it was so
• 40:52
  narrow and Jeff kept putting it back.
• 40:54
  And then finally, he came to me and he was like, it would mean a
• 40:56
  lot to me if this joke was in the script and I said, I
• 40:59
  thought, you know what, we'll just cut it in editing but when
• 41:02
  I was in the editing, so I wouldn't let it happen that it
• 41:05
  out of them just that decimal whole time and refused to let it
• 41:07
  happen. So you can see which one it is.
• 41:08
  Jeff passan, riverbottom nightmare band so good.
• 41:12
  I think you've used this to me. Yeah, I mean I met you You at
• 41:17
  Comic-Con New York Comic Con this past year.
• 41:19
  And I was telling you about, you know, get excited about Easter
• 41:21
  eggs and you were like, get ready.
• 41:23
  There's an m and arteries drag and you left it at that.
• 41:26
  You didn't tell me anything else.
• 41:27
  So proud of it, I only wanted to we, you know, we're going to
• 41:30
  have an episode, where they're beefing with another band and I
• 41:32
  just wanted it to be the river. Bottom nightmare band to be, but
• 41:35
  I'm like Jeff people no Emmet otter because he's in the title,
• 41:39
  that no one knows the river. Bottom Nightmare, Man.
• 41:42
  Adam, you're so wrong for so long.
• 41:47
  There's that. And then the one I'm most proud
• 41:48
  of is that we set them up that's in the same universe as the
• 41:51
  feebles. Oh yeah, I was another way to
• 41:54
  talk that I gotta break that whole thing open when we get to
• 41:57
  that episode. There's so much to unpack there.
• 42:00
  So Nora finds a video featuring Ryan Seacrest, of course, you
• 42:04
  know him was a great idea and I think that was Adam, I think,
• 42:07
  right? Didn't you say we need to do
• 42:09
  some sort of like Entertainment Tonight so that there's some
• 42:13
  real people talking about these guys.
• 42:16
  Sure. And Seacrest like it was covid.
• 42:20
  We had all these covid restrictions when we were
• 42:22
  shooting, of course. And Ryan literally is such a
• 42:27
  pro. He had no preparation.
• 42:29
  He just got a thing on a teleprompter and did it twice?
• 42:33
  And that was it. Like he is great.
• 42:34
  He is, he is amazing. That guy.
• 42:36
  So wow. And you know who else was great?
• 42:39
  As one of our testimonies Chris Stapleton, cracks me up, he
• 42:42
  plays it so straight. I thought he was just so good.
• 42:46
  It a beard. That's your punchline.
• 42:48
  I grew a beard and it works, you know, so good.
• 42:51
  The way he plays it. Yeah, we see Chris Stapleton.
• 42:55
  We see will Nas X. We see Tommy Lee with his Mayhem
• 43:00
  tattoo on his belly. Yeah, that was super fun and he
• 43:04
  has amazing job to use. This, was that a real tattoo?
• 43:09
  Oh yeah. Really has that.
• 43:10
  I didn't. Yeah, well we didn't use was
• 43:13
  they gave me my first video camera to shoot Yeah, I was
• 43:17
  going too far. Yeah, you know, he he famously
• 43:21
  hasn't met him tattooed features into some videotape.
• 43:24
  Yeah. So that's you know that's that's
• 43:26
  what that's add. More of, I would say a joke that
• 43:29
  probably adults, you know, get more than the your younger
• 43:33
  audience would but that's like the perfect that's like the
• 43:36
  perfect joke to me because, you know, it's real kids.
• 43:40
  Do not hang and adults. Go.
• 43:41
  Oh yeah. Okay sure.
• 43:43
  Yeah, not the best part about it.
• 43:44
  Also with our cameos when we could Specifically to them and
• 43:48
  just made all the difference in the world.
• 43:49
  I think, you know. Yeah I just wish we knew who we
• 43:51
  had. Yeah, in that video clip we also
• 43:54
  see clips from old Mayhem production which was actually a
• 43:58
  really nice Easter egg just to kind of note that all these
• 44:01
  things really did happen in this world as well as our real our
• 44:04
  world. The puppets.
• 44:06
  We see the Mayhem on The Muppet Show.
• 44:08
  We see them at the Macy's. Thanksgiving Day Parade.
• 44:10
  We see him doing a Christmas of the Rockefeller Center and we
• 44:13
  see a clip from the Outside Lands show, which is also I
• 44:16
  must've been so great that you already had that footage you
• 44:18
  didn't have to like film the Mayhem performing at a bunch of
• 44:21
  different places. It's like this there was no
• 44:22
  tapes. There were some, some, not
• 44:26
  licensing challenge. What was that?
• 44:27
  What just just, you know, getting clearance from some
• 44:30
  things. But everybody ended up, you
• 44:32
  know, letting it happen. So yeah, there was great to see
• 44:35
  all that stuff to them thinking. Wow, that audience, look at
• 44:38
  those audience Outside Lands, just always blows me away that,
• 44:41
  that many people were there. Yeah, that crane shot just like
• 44:44
  swooping over the sweeping, over the audience.
• 44:46
  Yeah, that's good. Except wise also I think just
• 44:50
  starting with the band being beloved is such a good vibe for
• 44:56
  the show. Yeah, there's this thing that's
• 44:58
  happened, I don't know why but when you're doing a muppet
• 45:01
  project you have to get the get the the you have to get the band
• 45:05
  back together. It's always a comeback.
• 45:07
  They're all it's a comeback. They're all scattered across the
• 45:10
  country and we have to reunite everybody and yeah we didn't
• 45:12
  want to that. That is one way you could have
• 45:14
  done the show, right? The band.
• 45:15
  What had of Former Glory Days back in the 70s and now they're
• 45:19
  all doing their own thing. But I think what we really
• 45:23
  enjoyed was just that they're Legends, everyone knows them.
• 45:26
  They've been everywhere like the Forrest Gump of the music world.
• 45:30
  They were there when it happened and and that this is really just
• 45:35
  about them because they're they're just doing their own
• 45:37
  thing making an album as opposed to having them reclaimed Glory,
• 45:42
  right? Yeah.
• 45:42
  They never the glory, they never cared about the glory.
• 45:45
  That's it. They don't.
• 45:46
  About, they don't care about the fame, they care about just
• 45:49
  making people happy and making music for me.
• 45:53
  And speaking of making music, this is where we get our first
• 45:55
  glimpse of the theme song. Which by the way is a Bob.
• 45:59
  I have had it stuck in my head for weeks.
• 46:03
  This is the only kind of fall out that Adam and I had was over
• 46:08
  this song he and I went at it for a little while, he loves
• 46:13
  this song, I there was another song that was submitted that And
• 46:16
  I thought I you know, should have been the title thing and we
• 46:23
  we went back and forth a little bit but he was absolutely right.
• 46:28
  The song, is it just sticks in your head?
• 46:32
  It's a fun tune and I couldn't it was interesting because I
• 46:35
  couldn't hear it with the band doing it.
• 46:38
  I could only that the, the demo, which was great.
• 46:43
  I just, I don't know. I felt like there was something
• 46:45
  else but when Then recorded it. It started to sound like it was
• 46:50
  working and I got I got used to it and then you could just feel
• 46:54
  people were just like this is the one, this this is this is
• 46:57
  works. You know.
• 46:58
  This works and it did you're so right.
• 47:00
  I was completely wrong. A couple things as written by
• 47:05
  our one of our writers, Hannah's only talented.
• 47:09
  Her dad is a songwriter and had had a few hits and very
• 47:14
  incredibly multi-day. Daniel Daniel Daniel Piniella.
• 47:19
  Yes. So they went off in one day and
• 47:21
  wrote this theme song, but what I love is, I'll give a shout-out
• 47:24
  to Bill's wife who when we were at Comic-Con she pulled me aside
• 47:28
  and she said, just so, you know, I told Bill, she said, Adam
• 47:33
  wouldn't steal your wrong. It's a good song.
• 47:35
  No, I believe Bill got some influence from his amazing wife.
• 47:40
  No, no, no, no, no. Honestly, she didn't say
• 47:43
  anything to me. She she she just let me go
• 47:46
  through. You know, and and you were a
• 47:48
  completely. So right, thank you.
• 47:50
  It's yeah, I'm thrilled. It's there.
• 47:53
  I we just wanted, we got so much blowback from Disney plus
• 48:00
  because they just want to get into the show, right.
• 48:02
  I mean you get it, it's like streaming and they just they
• 48:05
  have their metrics and I think these theme songs slow it down
• 48:09
  so they were like we don't want a long theme song.
• 48:12
  We want you to just get into the Muppets and have fun so we
• 48:14
  really went back and forth with them.
• 48:16
  And we were like it's a song, it's a show about a band.
• 48:19
  We have to have we just want to start with a bunch of big burst
• 48:22
  of joy and that's what I loved about the song.
• 48:25
  There's also a long tradition of Muppet theme songs and I just
• 48:29
  could not imagine there being a muppet show that didn't have a
• 48:31
  theme song. Well, especially one about the
• 48:34
  may, I mean, but it's all about Lisa.
• 48:37
  Absolutely. You have to start this off with
• 48:39
  it because we're not going to necessarily get to them doing
• 48:41
  music for a little bit. So you just want to have this
• 48:45
  blast of This blast of color of psychedelia, all that kind of
• 48:49
  stuff. No matter what you're coming
• 48:51
  into the episode about you, you're setting up the energy of
• 48:56
  the show and it feels good, you know, and it was completely
• 48:59
  completely right on and then the titles the suit themselves just
• 49:04
  even make it looks like a flower.
• 49:06
  You know, it's amazing, it's beautiful.
• 49:08
  That whole intro is beautiful full of references to the show
• 49:11
  that you don't know a references yet.
• 49:12
  It's only household one so that's exciting.
• 49:16
  But moving on with the episode. We now be moved for the first
• 49:21
  time played by Tahj, Mowry, he's terrific.
• 49:25
  He's so good on the show. He's a Super Fan who sometimes
• 49:29
  gets to hang out in the periphery of Muppets.
• 49:31
  Just like me. I felt very I felt a huge
• 49:35
  identification to to move throughout this whole show so I
• 49:38
  appreciate that it felt very real to me.
• 49:41
  And he's not it's never a joke to which I appreciate, I always
• 49:45
  imagined like Moog was Of this version of me, when we were
• 49:48
  writing it, just like this energy nervous, fan Fanning out,
• 49:51
  all that kind of stuff. And every note we got was, can
• 49:54
  you just make move a little cooler?
• 49:56
  A little less of a loser and we had an amazing amazing writing
• 50:02
  staff. It was an all-female writing
• 50:06
  staff and build Jeff. And I were, the only male males
• 50:09
  in the room, and should we mention, Casey, can we mention
• 50:12
  them? Yeah, sure.
• 50:13
  Crystal Shaw, dynamic, Lansky Julie Bean.
• 50:18
  Who else? Friedman?
• 50:19
  Hannah Hannah Friedman. Yeah he's in Gabrielle
• 50:24
  Gabrielle? Yeah.
• 50:26
  So we had a small you know was exhumed so you don't want too
• 50:29
  many people, right? But as we were doing Moog we
• 50:33
  were Jeff with always get so sad because they're like move just
• 50:38
  it's like if we would not be romantically interested in mood
• 50:42
  and Jeff is like I'm reading about me.
• 50:44
  Oh no. But the great thing about
• 50:48
  Tasha's like he's so lovable yeah that I think in hindsight
• 50:53
  we could have given him anything we wanted the most you know fan
• 50:58
  of obsessive fan stuff and he want him to play date.
• 51:02
  He will. Yeah he would have made it
• 51:03
  lovable any. So anyway anyway we wrote it I
• 51:08
  think that's when he's a handsome guy you know?
• 51:10
  I mean he's a handsome guys love you can you're just drawn to
• 51:13
  him, he know we're best. I mean, he came in and
• 51:15
  auditioned. And we were just like, I think
• 51:18
  that's mooc but yeah, that's all God, the energy was
• 51:22
  unbelievable, right? He was just hey, you know in the
• 51:26
  likeability and he didn't play all stammering fool like me,
• 51:30
  right? And again and in the we wanted
• 51:35
  to show people that the band has DieHard fans that aren't like
• 51:40
  complete weirdos. That it's not, it's it appeals
• 51:46
  to The, you know, every person. So they like with any fan
• 51:50
  groups, right? There's a real kind of the
• 51:52
  insane DieHard people and then there's a, you know, there's all
• 51:56
  types of fans, right? But yeah.
• 51:58
  Like, you're talking about me Bill.
• 52:01
  Actually. No, I think you're more of a
• 52:04
  mood. I think you're more of a Moog,
• 52:07
  thank you. That, that is a huge compliment.
• 52:08
  Thank you. Well, Nora beats the bands and
• 52:12
  Moog at this point, and I like that.
• 52:15
  She calls, dr. Her teeth.
• 52:16
  Mr. Teeth and he says Mr. Teeth is my Father which we later
• 52:20
  learn is not true. As father, is also a doctor
• 52:22
  teeth. No, he isn't.
• 52:24
  He's not at his mother's, a doctor.
• 52:26
  He's a dental assistant. He's the assistant for they were
• 52:29
  both doctors. Well, I learned something today.
• 52:33
  That's fantastic. CU value.
• 52:35
  Never, yeah, yeah, you got me. We also are introduced to
• 52:38
  animals infatuation with Nora. This is the first time where he
• 52:42
  says her name. Get ready.
• 52:43
  You're going to hear it a lot. He says, nor A lot of ways to
• 52:50
  it's amazing. That's true.
• 52:51
  I mean, Eric does a terrific job with it?
• 52:53
  It does not actually get old, but he does say it a lot that's
• 52:55
  all. And we they take a meeting in
• 52:59
  the van, the mayhem's van and they note all of Zoots photos
• 53:04
  that are all over the ceiling. You guys want to talk a little
• 53:06
  bit about those Polaroids? Oh gosh.
• 53:09
  Yeah, I mean, I can't remember when exactly.
• 53:11
  We came up with the idea that they gave Zoo to Polaroid camera
• 53:15
  to help him. Remember, The things, but it
• 53:17
  became actually, I kind of do not specific, but we had a
• 53:22
  great, we were fortunate to have the opportunity of writing all
• 53:25
  of these episodes ahead except maybe to write.
• 53:29
  So we have this chart that we could plan out arcs for the show
• 53:35
  for themes for each character. Right?
• 53:38
  So we at some point found, maybe you guys remember more
• 53:42
  specifically but we talked about this idea that We're talking
• 53:47
  about what they could do. What is every, what kind of what
• 53:49
  does everybody have or what are they bringing to the table?
• 53:53
  And we came up with this idea that the band gave him a
• 53:56
  Polaroid to help him remember things, right?
• 53:59
  And so, then that became he's in the photography and he's taking
• 54:05
  pictures and and he puts them up on the ceiling of of the van, or
• 54:10
  the bus to remember. And all the people and all the
• 54:14
  fans and all the people are life.
• 54:16
  And then, When we realize, oh there's a great vehicle for this
• 54:18
  if you guys want to talk about it.
• 54:20
  But, you know, that's kind of bookends.
• 54:23
  Yeah, this whole thing, I think we realized, oh, we could do
• 54:26
  this, it's a treasure map right through his memory.
• 54:29
  We're going to do like a, you know, a usual suspects ending
• 54:33
  where this unit will flash through all these images and
• 54:35
  will take us to where that money went.
• 54:37
  And I think, at the same time, we came up with the idea that
• 54:41
  noor's make working on the wrong apple, and it's a photo album,
• 54:45
  and it's the photo album of Polaroid's and so on all of
• 54:47
  that, just sort of lined up in this perfect kind of way.
• 54:51
  Yeah. Well, that's interesting.
• 54:52
  Yeah, I would love it if you release those pictures as an
• 54:55
  album, know what gets? We'll talk about this later but
• 54:57
  like when we actually get to see close-ups of a lot of these
• 55:00
  pictures, like they're really gorgeous.
• 55:02
  Yeah, there we are. And that is again, I will say
• 55:06
  two things. Jeff was, I didn't Jeff and Bill
• 55:10
  worked on what are the Polaroids at the end of the credits and
• 55:15
  that was Jeff definitely. I'm picking and choosing, but
• 55:18
  the other thing that Jeff mailed I thought it was kind of like a
• 55:24
  last minute thing, but Jeff was always like we should do like
• 55:26
  the Muppet Show House. Zoot always ended every Muppet
• 55:30
  Show with, you know, with the sacks.
• 55:33
  And that was something when I was a kid and I sent this email
• 55:37
  out of one point, my dad would come in to be like and I'd be
• 55:40
  like, no, no. Because the credits were wrong
• 55:42
  but there's more there's more, and then I would wait for Zoot
• 55:44
  and then I would have to go to bed.
• 55:46
  So that Past that camera stuck out in my brain and Jeff was
• 55:50
  like, we have the Polaroid camera.
• 55:51
  Let's do the Zoot Polaroid's. It was Steinbach who actually
• 55:54
  came up with it. But yeah, I was like, I think we
• 55:57
  should do the sax. We have to do a Zoot thing at
• 55:59
  the end and then Steinbach was just like what if it's something
• 56:02
  that the Polaroid? I'm like it's absolutely that
• 56:05
  and that and then a lot of that was just Dave riffing and it
• 56:08
  like and if we wrote out I think about 10 and then I think we got
• 56:11
  like 15 or 20 back you know. And I also love on Twitter.
• 56:15
  People like this is my favorite one.
• 56:16
  One and posting it. Like it's just so cool because
• 56:18
  it was a little thing we did real fast that you know but I
• 56:22
  think I'll let all that little love in those.
• 56:24
  It goes a long way and now we're done with the episode so that
• 56:27
  was cool. Thank you for having us.
• 56:29
  I was just actually I was I was just recalling something when we
• 56:32
  were writing when we were writing the scene of them for
• 56:34
  the first time in the van with Nora and the idea of what
• 56:37
  happened to this money, we were trying to figure out, well, what
• 56:41
  did they do with the money? And so we laid it on Zoot, as he
• 56:46
  was the One who somehow received it and had so nobody knows what
• 56:50
  he did with it. Right?
• 56:51
  It just now it's now it's gone. It's a given you're not going to
• 56:54
  know what happened to that money and then I just assumed started.
• 56:58
  Yeah, I think that's started to feed this idea.
• 57:00
  Well wow. Could this payoff in the end?
• 57:03
  Because he put it somewhere and then they find It ultimately,
• 57:06
  you know, so that was a fun. Well and the amount of money I
• 57:09
  noticed was four hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
• 57:12
  Which what do you mean seem like a random number?
• 57:14
  It's sort of what I think I just Yeah, I just random spend a
• 57:21
  little more. They got ya.
• 57:22
  It was I think for 16 and we just around it up, it just makes
• 57:26
  sense. You know, that's fair.
• 57:28
  That's fair. So we also in the next couple
• 57:31
  scenes we meet Hannah played by sorry tawdry the Mayhem.
• 57:37
  Just kind of show up at their house because they say they're
• 57:39
  going to stay with a friend and nor is there a new friend?
• 57:42
  So they're going to crash here. I love that.
• 57:44
  This whole see, you know, animal brings the Bouquet of flowers
• 57:47
  that were obviously, just pulled out of the front garden.
• 57:50
  Floyd's ready to hang hammocks? Janice wants to do pants free
• 57:53
  hot yoga. I want to throw in one thing
• 57:55
  before we get to that scene. I'm sorry.
• 57:56
  I know we gotta get moving, but the scene that happens before
• 57:59
  that is in the record store. And that was a reshoot for a
• 58:04
  couple of reasons. I think we could just as Riders
• 58:07
  probably didn't set it up as well and so they wanted a little
• 58:11
  more setup and character investment with Nora.
• 58:15
  And so we the first time they shot with vaccine, I think it
• 58:18
  was in Hannah's house and it's good but it was shot like the
• 58:23
  first week and then when we reshot this and we wrote this
• 58:28
  and they shot this they were by that point they were sisters.
• 58:30
  Mm-hmm, yeah, laughs. What's up close?
• 58:36
  Hey, it's yeah, it's yeah, but it was like four or five weeks
• 58:41
  in and by that point, just Surah and Lily had become so close.
• 58:46
  Yeah, that there was just this magic, that was there.
• 58:49
  The sisterly love that was there.
• 58:52
  That wasn't in that first scene. And we were fine with the first
• 58:55
  scene except for the ride. You know, we had to just let you
• 58:58
  set this up a little better, but I was the magic gift of that
• 59:01
  reshoot truly. I think the most important thing
• 59:04
  though, about that scene is that I come out of the store and go
• 59:07
  in. In the in the establishing shot,
• 59:11
  which I didn't. I didn't realize was going to
• 59:14
  happen. These guys thought they're
• 59:15
  really funny and yeah, I'm having me going in in the first
• 59:21
  time. We're at the record store, and
• 59:22
  then I'm leaving return to the record store later, the longer
• 59:28
  you are you in that scene like us?
• 1:00:08
  He has to go to the hot tub and then soak in the hot tub because
• 1:00:11
  hot tub and dr. Peters completely nude, except
• 1:00:16
  for his hat and glasses, of course.
• 1:00:18
  And a mai tai. That's come from nowhere.
• 1:00:22
  I thought that whole thing was hysterical.
• 1:00:24
  I'm guessing you didn't actually submerge yourself into a tub of
• 1:00:27
  water for that scene. I don't know.
• 1:00:29
  We supposed to give that away. No magic.
• 1:00:33
  No, a lot of great special effects but definitely
• 1:00:36
  underneath That was created by the set team and set design.
• 1:00:43
  They made. That was some house that we
• 1:00:45
  found in Burbank, or in North Hall.
• 1:00:47
  I'm worried where we remember anyway, they built that jacuzzi
• 1:00:51
  and I was underneath, you know, sick of my arm through for a
• 1:00:57
  while and the people on the outside and green suits, doing
• 1:01:01
  his hands. However, the First on location
• 1:01:03
  day was it? I think so.
• 1:01:06
  And, and I went to that, And I was like, oh, we're doing like a
• 1:01:10
  real Muppet thing. This is like, for real, like,
• 1:01:12
  they're out in the real world and Bill is scrunched up, dude.
• 1:01:16
  Performance. And it was the coolest thing
• 1:01:18
  ever. There was a week because we
• 1:01:21
  thought, maybe we could make the water were around him.
• 1:01:25
  So the top of the jacuzzi is kind of like a tray.
• 1:01:30
  About four inches deep. Right.
• 1:01:33
  A lucite tray. That has a little cut out of
• 1:01:36
  where dr. Teeth spot.
• 1:01:38
  He goes and in that was water. We tried to have water flow and
• 1:01:42
  some Zone, but it just didn't work.
• 1:01:44
  Used the lines were too strong to see his body.
• 1:01:47
  So fortunately we have a great VFX people who came in and made
• 1:01:50
  it just look amazing. That's great, Nora goes back
• 1:01:55
  inside the house and already in just a few minutes.
• 1:01:58
  The house is overflowing with Partiers.
• 1:02:01
  We got Steve Aoki as a he's DJing The Party House Janine of
• 1:02:06
  the, the Puppeteer is looking at a photo Home with Zoot.
• 1:02:09
  She gives my favorite background performance in the entire
• 1:02:12
  series. Does she Jen?
• 1:02:14
  I mean, does she didn't miss you, do something specific that
• 1:02:17
  you love. No, she just I think maybe
• 1:02:19
  didn't draw attention to herself in Alberta background actor,
• 1:02:22
  kind of way. She was just great and she was
• 1:02:24
  just in and you just believed her.
• 1:02:25
  Is this sort of hippie? Yeah, I love that.
• 1:02:29
  And Janice is posing for an ice sculpture.
• 1:02:31
  I like that that also did, was that a physical realize?
• 1:02:35
  It'll sure. Yes, it was.
• 1:02:38
  It was actually ice. Oh yeah, yes.
• 1:02:41
  What you didn't really? It wasn't the, it was beautiful
• 1:02:46
  but it did not read well on camera, was a quick Story.
• 1:02:49
  The quick the quick story is it is our Stonehenge from spinal
• 1:02:53
  tap where they they asked us. We're going to have an ice maker
• 1:02:57
  make this thing. What pose should Janice be.
• 1:02:59
  So Adam and I poured through pictures of Janice, we're like
• 1:03:02
  we like this pose, right? And so thinking would be this
• 1:03:05
  dimensional, like one of those Muppet busts, you know,
• 1:03:08
  Dimensional picture of Janice and then the day of we see it
• 1:03:12
  and know they act that picture of Janice into this flat.
• 1:03:19
  Oh no. It's like, they were like, oh,
• 1:03:22
  they sent us a photograph of Janice.
• 1:03:24
  So they wanted to look like a photographically Stonehenge.
• 1:03:28
  You said six inches not feet, right?
• 1:03:31
  Yeah. Kinda give you a literally, what
• 1:03:34
  you gave them, but I will say Steve Aoki was great.
• 1:03:38
  Eight. We had a whole bit where I guess
• 1:03:41
  one of his things as he throws cakes to his audience and he
• 1:03:45
  whole thing with him throwing cake with animal and that all
• 1:03:48
  had to go. Just for time, the pilot was
• 1:03:50
  already long and then Billy Corgan, of course, really fun.
• 1:03:56
  He's a big wrestling guy, so that's what I was saying before.
• 1:03:59
  We just like you, we knew there's this strange things
• 1:04:02
  about these people, you know that like if you're a fan, you
• 1:04:04
  know, and we thought he would dig it so wrestling.
• 1:04:07
  Yeah, that was super cool. What's also interesting is,
• 1:04:09
  he's, you have a mega Rockstar, right?
• 1:04:13
  Like just the biggest and he comes now and he's just an actor
• 1:04:16
  so this is not what he does. So it's really interesting to
• 1:04:19
  see. I mean, he was like, tell me
• 1:04:21
  what you want me to do. Give me line readings, like he
• 1:04:25
  was, you know, it's like on stage as a musician full
• 1:04:28
  confidence. Now, as an actor with Muppets,
• 1:04:31
  he just wants to do well. So it's really fun to see like
• 1:04:35
  these huge Stars kind of come. They're out of their comfort
• 1:04:37
  zone. Just want to like have fun and
• 1:04:39
  do a good job. So he was super cool to work.
• 1:04:42
  With the three, you'll have to hear that about about rock stars
• 1:04:45
  that you love. Oh yeah.
• 1:04:46
  Oh yeah. I keep that with him the whole
• 1:04:48
  morning. I lamented.
• 1:04:49
  How, why can't I get any of the Smashing Pumpkins records on LP?
• 1:04:53
  He's like, I know, I know and I'm like, there's so much more I
• 1:04:55
  would ask you to sign my. I can't afford it.
• 1:04:58
  And then that afternoon a whole new like reissue of the both,
• 1:05:02
  you know, Siamese Dream and Melancholy went on sale and you
• 1:05:05
  made that happen. Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  Right. I was like or getting new.
• 1:05:08
  We have been courting came up to me and said, Gordon came up to
• 1:05:11
  me and said, can you ask that Jeff guy not to get so close?
• 1:05:16
  I was hanging over. So there's like a cape.
• 1:05:19
  I don't mind talking to him but he's really close.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah, it's the collodion. He's a close talker.
• 1:05:28
  So Nora can't have the Mayhem hanging out in her sister's
• 1:05:32
  house. So she arranges for them to stay
• 1:05:35
  at the shack. It was it's a house.
• 1:05:38
  So that the label owns and Laurel Canyon back in the day,
• 1:05:41
  it was a magical Mecca of music's.
• 1:05:43
  Most melodic Minds where Janice made meatloaf is first loaf of
• 1:05:47
  meat Wear Pink. Floyd built that wall.
• 1:05:50
  They hired the Carpenters, I love that string of jokes.
• 1:05:53
  I think that's hysterical. You arrive at the shack but it
• 1:05:59
  looks just like a like, a Suburban house.
• 1:06:02
  So they have to add some Rave to this cave, and some rad to this
• 1:06:05
  pad and they sing. Can you picture that?
• 1:06:08
  Which I'm grateful. So grateful that the mayhem's
• 1:06:11
  most famous song, made it into the show.
• 1:06:13
  And that also, you kind of got it in there, right?
• 1:06:15
  In the first episode. Got us excited about about the
• 1:06:18
  classics. And this whole sequence is so
• 1:06:21
  good. It's such a homage to the
• 1:06:24
  sequence from the Muppet movie, dr.
• 1:06:26
  Teeth porn the paint, and everyone painting the house, and
• 1:06:28
  the spinning screen and all that.
• 1:06:30
  I love it. I think you guys did a great job
• 1:06:32
  with that whole thing. It was also important to have,
• 1:06:34
  can you picture that? Because we reference it so many
• 1:06:36
  times throughout the show it It sort of becomes a yeah, appoint
• 1:06:40
  a story point. So even for people who didn't
• 1:06:43
  know it as well, we just want to remind them.
• 1:06:45
  And what's really crazy is like, I'm the Muppet movie.
• 1:06:49
  I'm assuming they shot that dr. Teeth segment in several days,
• 1:06:54
  we had like, six hours, she's so.
• 1:06:58
  So like yeah, I mean, what they pulled off in that tiny amount
• 1:07:02
  of time was was that was a crew working at their best.
• 1:07:08
  And we got everything you wanted and it looks great but you know
• 1:07:12
  we had we didn't the TV show. We only had a day to do it less
• 1:07:15
  than half a day so it was a kid. I remember like we didn't even
• 1:07:18
  have we didn't actually break out a music video type thing and
• 1:07:22
  I think I was working with our director Mets own, just trying
• 1:07:26
  to figure out was like, I don't know, it was one night, I was
• 1:07:28
  just writing out, you know, different shots that maybe we
• 1:07:31
  could try and then I would send it to these guys to get
• 1:07:33
  approved. Like this, could this little
• 1:07:35
  music video, but I always wanted to just start with dr.
• 1:07:37
  Teeth For in the paint because I figured once you do that then
• 1:07:41
  people are in you know they go. Okay here we go.
• 1:07:44
  The fans at least you know. Oh my God. 100%!
• 1:07:47
  I literally the first time I saw it second he pours that pain.
• 1:07:50
  I think I think I yelled like I went like a.
• 1:07:54
  Yeah, you know, I don't know a spike of joy.
• 1:08:08
  Well this is not the shack whose house did they psyckadeli 8?
• 1:08:11
  It's Danny Trejo. Your friend and mine.
• 1:08:14
  One of the best friends to the Muppets in recent years.
• 1:08:17
  Such a good guy and seems like yeah it seems like he like from
• 1:08:20
  now on we're just going to have Danny Trejo and everyone loved
• 1:08:22
  that. Everybody that is like a thing
• 1:08:24
  that everyone I'll get online is saying, it's like, if there's
• 1:08:27
  Muppets there's Danny Trejo which I think it's hilarious
• 1:08:32
  that somehow over the years he's just now he's the go-to.
• 1:08:37
  You know, is that you Bill? Is that you just oh my God every
• 1:08:40
  project. I see if he's available or if we
• 1:08:44
  can find a way to stick him in, you know we haven't always some
• 1:08:47
  spots in the show. Yeah.
• 1:08:49
  Do we? We cut the, we cut it.
• 1:08:51
  So we don't say it because it might want to.
• 1:08:53
  Yeah, I'm just saying there's a scene.
• 1:08:55
  Unfortunately, got cut with him but yeah, I just I love him to
• 1:08:58
  death and so I any chance we can put them, I just want it to be
• 1:09:03
  that kind of forever that gave them that listened as a little
• 1:09:06
  dog like you Yeah, like so crazy, so good, so Nora fires
• 1:09:14
  the band, that's that she's done.
• 1:09:16
  That's the end of the series. But first, the Mayhem have to
• 1:09:20
  throw another rager this time here at the shack.
• 1:09:23
  All the real Shack that even mention that Shack is across the
• 1:09:25
  street. It's the building.
• 1:09:26
  Looks like a shack. Yes.
• 1:09:28
  How could they not remember? They are playing the song,
• 1:09:31
  Jungle Boogie, which was a viral hit from them up before the
• 1:09:34
  Electric Mayhem back in 2015, and the YouTube video Danny
• 1:09:38
  Trejo does return here. He's a fan.
• 1:09:40
  Now he loves the fact that they painted his house.
• 1:09:43
  Steve Aoki is back, they taught him how to hit records.
• 1:09:46
  They they they they made Steve Aoki, Steve Aoki.
• 1:09:50
  That's right. And they play the song Have a
• 1:09:53
  Little Faith in Me. The Joe Cocker song which really
• 1:09:57
  is it was originally written and recorded by John Hiatt.
• 1:10:01
  I think I'm pronouncing his name, right?
• 1:10:03
  But the I think the Joe Cocker version is much more well-known
• 1:10:06
  and of course And Hannah have a personal connection to it
• 1:10:11
  through their dad and you guys got a whole Gospel Choir coming
• 1:10:15
  in and fireworks. And it's just a really lovely
• 1:10:18
  scene, you know, and it's a beautiful song to a great, a
• 1:10:22
  great vocal song for dr. Teeth to take on.
• 1:10:25
  Yeah, the W that I wish was in this series was have a Little
• 1:10:28
  Help from My Friends, which build performs so well.
• 1:10:33
  But, I guess you know the thought is, well, it's been, you
• 1:10:35
  know, they did it at on a, they did it on one The talk shows and
• 1:10:39
  they did it at the whole outside.
• 1:10:41
  Let so you know it's been seen before but maybe we'll get it
• 1:10:45
  in. If we get lucky enough to get a
• 1:10:47
  season 2, I just think it's such a great song for the band.
• 1:10:51
  We you love that was your picture I time you love that
• 1:10:54
  song and then you pitch, you have to me is I just think you
• 1:10:57
  know I just I love the song and I love the Joe Cocker version
• 1:11:01
  and like I know that bill, it's just that anyone with a Gruff
• 1:11:04
  gravelly voice, you know dr. Teeth is going to do its that's
• 1:11:07
  a doctor. Sound.
• 1:11:09
  So yeah, I think that was one of yeah, that was, that was one
• 1:11:15
  that I pitched but we went through a number of different
• 1:11:18
  kind of songs as we are scripting.
• 1:11:20
  And that's a real fun part of the show is like, what song Can
• 1:11:23
  the band do? Oh my God, I'm Jeff the library
• 1:11:26
  the library of music that is Jeff York's.
• 1:11:30
  Just, you know, endless ideas of songs that we could use that not
• 1:11:35
  only are great songs but have the sentiment of scenes and of
• 1:11:39
  the theme of an episode, you know really amazing.
• 1:11:43
  Yeah, well done. Yeah, if nothing else.
• 1:11:46
  I'd love to hear some of these songs that the Mayhem is already
• 1:11:48
  recorded or perform live to be release on another album.
• 1:11:55
  I hope we don't have to wait for another season of the show to
• 1:11:57
  get the next album, but I'm getting ahead of myself a little
• 1:12:00
  bit. So, Nora's changes are tuned.
• 1:12:03
  She, um, fires the Banshees letting them say the shack.
• 1:12:06
  She's accepting animal. And his weird animal crush on
• 1:12:10
  her Nora, gets the okay from Penny to get the band back to
• 1:12:15
  work. Because penny has received a
• 1:12:16
  gift of compression socks from dr.
• 1:12:18
  Teeth just the right amount of squeeze.
• 1:12:22
  So she calls. She calls the band, but they
• 1:12:23
  decided to take an our road trip.
• 1:12:25
  They're gonna be back in nine weeks, and we can't have that,
• 1:12:30
  because we have a whole show to do here guys, but they
• 1:12:34
  accidentally drive the van, almost over, cliff get just
• 1:12:38
  hanging off that Cliff edge with animal hanging from the bumper
• 1:12:42
  dr. G says, talk about a cliffhanger
• 1:12:44
  just to put a little button on that.
• 1:12:47
  And Floyd says Disney plus is gonna love this which I feel
• 1:12:49
  like has to be a. Some of you guys put in when you
• 1:12:53
  thought this was going to be dropped week-to-week, like we
• 1:12:55
  want you to come back next week. This was a mandate from the
• 1:12:58
  beginning, really. They were just like, we need
• 1:13:00
  Cliffhangers, we need reasons for people to tune in we to
• 1:13:02
  week, and we're like, okay? And so, we gave them a literal
• 1:13:06
  Cliffhanger at the And yeah I mean we didn't know how they
• 1:13:10
  were going to drop these. I think it still makes it very
• 1:13:15
  binge worthy. You certainly going to watch the
• 1:13:16
  next episode. I'm sure is next week or if it
• 1:13:19
  be right there, they put that line in all the trailers ever
• 1:13:22
  signal. One, I just think Disney plus
• 1:13:23
  loves at The Muppets are saying Disney plus told it's meta.
• 1:13:27
  I mean, it's classic Muppets to be a battle like that, you know.
• 1:13:29
  Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot
• 1:13:33
  of back and forth conversations we've had or I've had with
• 1:13:36
  people. It's like, what is better for a
• 1:13:37
  half? An hour comedy, do drop them all
• 1:13:41
  at once so everyone you know can take in this giant you know
• 1:13:46
  movie or do you do it week to week?
• 1:13:48
  I think they're finding that for the comedies.
• 1:13:52
  It's not as it's not as like people aren't returning as much
• 1:13:56
  because it's a comedy. There's not like the Giants
• 1:13:59
  takes that. People are just, you know,
• 1:14:02
  they're enjoying laughing and getting that Blast Of Joy all at
• 1:14:06
  once. So I know Honesty is also
• 1:14:09
  something about skewing to a younger audience.
• 1:14:11
  Do little kid, you know, because that's what they thought the
• 1:14:13
  audience was or. That's what they think the
• 1:14:15
  audience is to, you know, younger audiences.
• 1:14:18
  Do they tune in week after week in our or is it easier for them
• 1:14:22
  to just yeah continue sure. Yeah I don't know.
• 1:14:25
  I mean there's there's pluses and minuses to both and I don't
• 1:14:29
  know what's best. I'm just glad I have it, you
• 1:14:32
  know. Of course there are pros and
• 1:14:34
  cons to each side. Is there a pro obviously to
• 1:14:36
  having ten weeks? It's of people taught having
• 1:14:39
  this conversation, you know, about the show.
• 1:14:41
  Sure, absolutely sure. But also, you don't have to
• 1:14:44
  spend ten weeks promoting the show, which I think is probably
• 1:14:47
  easier up for your time frame. So, yeah.
• 1:14:50
  So this is where episode ends with, with the exception of our
• 1:14:53
  little tag here, with Zoot taking our photo for the first
• 1:14:56
  time. And that brings us to the end of
• 1:14:58
  this episode. Is there any?
• 1:14:59
  Do you guys have any other Reflections on this pilot
• 1:15:02
  Before? We Say Goodbye.
• 1:15:05
  I will say this Charlie Andrews at Disney, plus is the one that
• 1:15:09
  when he watched it he was like we want the reshoots, right?
• 1:15:14
  Yes, they knew. We wanted it big and we just,
• 1:15:17
  you know, it's a television show.
• 1:15:19
  So you know, that's, it's tough, right?
• 1:15:21
  You just don't have the money that, you know, that can you can
• 1:15:25
  do all of your ideas. There's a lot of concessions you
• 1:15:27
  have to made, but Disney plus, like really step forward for
• 1:15:31
  these reshoots on this and then, because I'm not going to be here
• 1:15:34
  for the Ali Muppet Studios in stepped up for a reshoot.
• 1:15:39
  We were missing a seat because we did these reshoots on the
• 1:15:42
  pilot, we really weren't able to get all the scenes for the
• 1:15:46
  finale. So we did these reshoots while
• 1:15:48
  we were shooting the show. Yeah, reshoots happened,
• 1:15:51
  advantage, and disadvantage, right?
• 1:15:53
  So for this, at least, I've heard finale suffered quite a
• 1:15:57
  bit, because we are missing some crucial information and Muppet
• 1:16:02
  studio stepped up. And was like, we're going to
• 1:16:04
  Help you pay for these reshoots so it made it up and made it
• 1:16:07
  happen. So it was, it was a giant labor
• 1:16:10
  of love and you know, from so many people and you know where
• 1:16:16
  Jeff bill and I really proud of it.
• 1:16:18
  We just love her Adam. Tell them about the your card at
• 1:16:23
  the end. Oh yeah, sure.
• 1:16:26
  It's so great. It brings me sometimes.
• 1:16:30
  The littlest things bring you so much joy.
• 1:16:33
  So at the end of all of my It shows I have a you I get an atom
• 1:16:36
  of Goldberg production card bill, it's called a vanity card
• 1:16:40
  and I you I always show a picture from my childhood that
• 1:16:43
  relates to the episode that I'm doing.
• 1:16:46
  So for, for this show I want I have so many pictures of me with
• 1:16:51
  Muppets when I'm a little kid and of course I go to Jeff.
• 1:16:54
  Do you have any pictures of you with anything Jim Henson and
• 1:16:57
  Jeff says be like 500 pictures around so yeah alright I got it.
• 1:17:00
  Yeah. Jeff and I will split the photo,
• 1:17:04
  right? I'm Going to I'm going to hook
• 1:17:06
  up my college buddy. We're each going to have our
• 1:17:08
  little vanity thing and then it bothered me that I'm like well
• 1:17:11
  there's no bill and one day we were in post and we were in this
• 1:17:17
  doing Post in his giant maze. Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers
• 1:17:21
  little space. You know, like Severance it's
• 1:17:26
  amazing and it was being redone. So it's just blank walls and
• 1:17:29
  blind turns. And my stores, I'm already I'm
• 1:17:33
  already late and I'm frazzled. And the guard looks at me and
• 1:17:36
  goes, okay, I'm going to have to tell you how to get to this room
• 1:17:39
  because you'll never find it. And I'm like, okay, and I'm not
• 1:17:41
  listening at all, and I'm just nodding.
• 1:17:43
  Well, if that's what it's right. Left left.
• 1:17:45
  Right right. Right.
• 1:17:46
  Left left. Yeah.
• 1:17:47
  But I think that's not and he's like, do you got it?
• 1:17:49
  And I'm like, yes, so that they are also texting with everybody
• 1:17:52
  right texting with everyone. I proceeded to roam around 45
• 1:17:56
  minutes which was the longest five minutes of my life.
• 1:17:59
  I cannot find this room. People are out looking for me
• 1:18:02
  and Bill goes. I'm going to make Birds Sounds
• 1:18:05
  so you could find and he go. Do I hear this very faint?
• 1:18:11
  So I text, I go wait, bill, I actually heard that do it again
• 1:18:14
  then. They're so I start to go down
• 1:18:17
  the hall and like, keep doing it and and I followed the voice of
• 1:18:21
  his bird. You also have to understand,
• 1:18:24
  this is a working office. Yeah.
• 1:18:28
  People get jobs done. What began as a joke bill.
• 1:18:33
  I actually worked and Followed his bird calls and then I found
• 1:18:36
  it and we just found itself funny that I'm like will you do
• 1:18:40
  the cause on as the voice of the car.
• 1:18:45
  So I love that the vanity card has a little bit of each of us
• 1:18:47
  on it. Yeah and yeah and I think that
• 1:18:50
  sums up our relationship perfectly which is I'm lost and
• 1:18:54
  everyone is trying to help me. That's that's perfect.
• 1:18:58
  And what a perfect way to end this episode.
• 1:19:01
  Adam, thank you so much for joining us, Jeff and Bill.
• 1:19:04
  We're going to have you Back sometime soon.
• 1:19:06
  So, looking forward to that everyone else.
• 1:19:09
  We will see you on the next episode of Muppets.
• 1:19:12
  Mayhem, backstage pass. Thanks, buddy.
• 1:19:15
  See ya. It's making a backstage pass is
• 1:19:19
  brought to you by tough pics.com produced written and hosted by
• 1:19:22
  Johannes low, do art by Dave, whole team Junior.
• 1:19:25
  The Muppets make a mark in local characters and elements are
• 1:19:27
  trademarks of the Muppet studio All Rights Reserved
• 1:19:29
  transcriptions provided by Keelan Miller.
• 1:19:31
  Then up is Mayhem and credits, written by Makino is used with
• 1:19:34
  permission. And special thanks to the Muppet
• 1:19:35
  studio Disney plus the entire month is Mayhem family.
• 1:19:38
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• 1:19:41
  Instagram and patreon. Thanks for listening and until
• 1:19:43
  next time rock on