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How Muppets Work · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: from House stuff Works dot Com about rainbow and what
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  Speaker 1: a Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Hey,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Hey Josh Clark. It's a beautiful day here
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: at How Stuff Works, Hunt it is. I have a
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  Speaker 1: question for you, Jy. Have you ever been half sleep?
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  Speaker 1: And have you heard voices? Chuck? Josh, I've heard them
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  Speaker 1: calling my name? Is that the sweet sound that calls
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  Speaker 1: a young sailor? Oh? I can't remember the next line.
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  Speaker 1: It might be one and the same. I think it
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  Speaker 1: is one and the same. Yes, clearly we were speaking
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  Speaker 1: of none other than top hit Academy Award nominated song
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  Speaker 1: Rainbow Connection is performed by a certain philosophizing frog in
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  Speaker 1: a swamp at the beginning of the Muppet movie. Huh,
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  Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about how the Muppets work today.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I know Josh is like rocking in his chair right now.
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  Speaker 1: He's so excited. I love the Muppets. Who doesn't love them? Uppet? Everybody?
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  Speaker 1: You show me someone that doesn't love the Muppets, and
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  Speaker 1: you know they've got a butt kicking coming to them
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  Speaker 1: via me. Yeah, Chuck's the Muppet enforcer, Muppet love enforcer. Um,
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  Speaker 1: I think we should probably give a disclaimer, Chuck. If
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  Speaker 1: anybody is really attached to illusion and doesn't really want
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  Speaker 1: to know, like the nitty gritty details of how muppets
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  Speaker 1: are made and moved about, they should probably not listen
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  Speaker 1: to this one, right, People that don't even want to
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  Speaker 1: acknowledge that they are puppets. Yeah, the lovers, the dreamers
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  Speaker 1: and me. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah. So um, Chuck, let's
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  Speaker 1: start at the beginning. Let's start back in. Gotta start
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  Speaker 1: with Jim Henson. Yeah, well, yeah, there are no ups
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  Speaker 1: without Jim Henson and even says it right there in
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  Speaker 1: the article how Muppets Work, which you can find on
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  Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. Right right, Uh, Washington, d
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  Speaker 1: C has a local TV station and uh, and I
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  Speaker 1: think the winner of nineteen fifty five, Um, a young
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  Speaker 1: college freshman, Jim Henson. Dude, until probably had no idea
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  Speaker 1: that this went back that far. No, this guy was
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  Speaker 1: starting something huge at this time, right, I mean it's puppets,
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  Speaker 1: Like puppets were relegated to what children's birthday parties, stuff
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  Speaker 1: like that. This guy's bringing them on the TV. Exactly huge.
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  Speaker 1: And what what what was kind of surprising is that
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  Speaker 1: this show Sam and Friends, Right, that was his first show,
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  Speaker 1: the one on the local Washington d c UH television station,
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  Speaker 1: was for adults. Absolutely, it was I believe there was
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  Speaker 1: some satire involved, correct, a ted political satire parody. They
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  Speaker 1: parodied other television shows and it ran for six years
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  Speaker 1: and got him on Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and actually this is where um, a little lizard like
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  Speaker 1: creature who came to be known as Kermit debut. Should
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  Speaker 1: I do it? Yeah? Hi? Who Kermit d Frog? Here?
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  Speaker 1: That is wonderful, Chuck revealed before the the UM, I
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  Speaker 1: guess the real, the real that's run by a hamster
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  Speaker 1: started rolling. Um that he started with Kermit. That was
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  Speaker 1: your first voice, first voice? What else do you get?
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  Speaker 1: My voices are mediocre at best, But I still like
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  Speaker 1: doing him. I gotta tell you, Nail Kurmit, but I've
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  Speaker 1: been doing Kermit since I was like six km. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: well you've got him. I'm trying to get a ya
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  Speaker 1: out of Chuck, but have a limited range. Well, Kermit
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  Speaker 1: lizard like Kermit, as we'll call him Um. It was
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  Speaker 1: joined by some other wonderfully named puppets that weren't quite
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  Speaker 1: called muppets yet these are still puppets in Henson's mind.
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  Speaker 1: You had Sam Yorick Harry the Hipster, one of my favorites,
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  Speaker 1: Professor Magcliff. I'm surprised it wasn't a hippie rob. No
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  Speaker 1: hippie rob yet give it another decade. Mush Melon and
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  Speaker 1: Chicken Liver was part of the regular cast, and basically
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  Speaker 1: it was Henson and a classmate of his um named
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  Speaker 1: Jane Nabel, who later became Jane Henson. They met up
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  Speaker 1: and she kind of assisted him early on. They fell
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  Speaker 1: in love. They did fell in love, and she was
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  Speaker 1: actually replaced when they got married and had kids by
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  Speaker 1: one frank Oz. Frank a nineteen year old Frank Oz,
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  Speaker 1: and he was originally um hired just to be the
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  Speaker 1: right hand literally of Rolf the Dog. Right they call
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  Speaker 1: that technique right handing. We'll get into that, which we'll
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  Speaker 1: get into and Rolf actually fun fact, Rolf the dog
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  Speaker 1: with the big floppy ears, who's performed with the likes
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  Speaker 1: of Liberacci among others, was actually created specifically to sell
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  Speaker 1: Purina dog food. Yeah. After he did Salmon Friends, he
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  Speaker 1: produced TV commercials for a while with the early muppets,
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  Speaker 1: a bunch of them. So this is a clearly we've
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  Speaker 1: we've transitioned into the era where there were muppets. We
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  Speaker 1: went from Salmon Friends and now muppets are starting to
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  Speaker 1: come about. Ralph Kermits now Frog. He's made that sexual
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  Speaker 1: transition from lizard to frog, that right of passage that
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  Speaker 1: every lizard has to go through. Um, and uh, there's
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  Speaker 1: still no TV show. We're in the sixties and everyone's
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  Speaker 1: getting to be aware of the muppets, Chuck, Like you said, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: they were on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Jimmy Dean Show,
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  Speaker 1: which you should have been in the green room for
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  Speaker 1: that one sausage everywhere. Um. He did create some pilots,
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  Speaker 1: but they never took no one ever, bottom up No.
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  Speaker 1: And he got really close with ABC, but they walked
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  Speaker 1: on a deal. Um. What really kind of catapulted him
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  Speaker 1: into a possible TV deal was the formation of kids
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  Speaker 1: show called Sesame Street, the children's television network started by
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  Speaker 1: Joan and Coney Right and Jim Henson always kind of
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  Speaker 1: thought of his puppets and then muppets as um uh
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  Speaker 1: for adults, like this is adults stuff like you can
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  Speaker 1: even today there's um puppet Up Uncensored. It's a live
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  Speaker 1: improv muppet puppet show for adults. It's carried on by
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  Speaker 1: his son Brian. And that's very much in the tradition
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  Speaker 1: of Jim Henson's original idea, which is these are puppets,
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  Speaker 1: but they're for adults. Like there's just that kind of
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  Speaker 1: ironic twist that these puppets are cursing, you know. But
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  Speaker 1: apparently somewhere along the way he came to figure out
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  Speaker 1: that um children could be a very sophisticated audiences a
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  Speaker 1: quote in the article, So he went along with Sesame Street, right, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and that's really where it blew up. Everyone who grew
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  Speaker 1: up in the United States and probably elsewhere watch Sesame
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  Speaker 1: Street as a kid and may still and that's where
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  Speaker 1: we were introduced to uh, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird
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  Speaker 1: and Burton Ernie Cookie Monster. Doesn't get any more classic
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  Speaker 1: than that. Grower's my favorite Sesame. Yeah. I did little
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  Speaker 1: video one time with a Grover Finger puppet. Did you
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  Speaker 1: This is back in like the old VHS days where
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  Speaker 1: you could edit like I literally had to edit it
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  Speaker 1: all in camera as I shot it, and I used
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  Speaker 1: like a ween song and I Grover finger Puppet. He's
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  Speaker 1: pretty fun. So this had nothing to do with Karate Chuck. No, no, no,
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  Speaker 1: these are just my early filmmaking days. It's fun. So okay,
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  Speaker 1: So Sesame Street takes off and still going today. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: this has got to be one of the longest running
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  Speaker 1: television shows of all time. Yeah, I think sixty Minutes
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  Speaker 1: has a beat. Maybe General Hospital. You know General Hospital
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  Speaker 1: has been on since the mid fifties. Who cares. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but dude, that's a really long time for a single
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  Speaker 1: television show to run. That's a lot of crap, it
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  Speaker 1: is They just shovel it on nothings. Yeah, back to
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  Speaker 1: the goodness of the Muppets though. So he's almost there,
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  Speaker 1: He's so close. He's been shooting pilots. None of them
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  Speaker 1: were getting taken up. ABC's Walked Um and a little
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  Speaker 1: show called s Live starts up in nineteen Yeah. I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: did not know this until I read this article. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't either. I'm a big fan. I'm trying to sound
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  Speaker 1: like I did know this, alright. Um, the the first
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  Speaker 1: season and included sketches Um called The Land of Gorge,
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  Speaker 1: which were larger muppets, and the SNL writers said, we're
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  Speaker 1: not writing for puppets. Yeah, in fact they're I think
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  Speaker 1: they're head writer is famously quoted saying I don't write
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  Speaker 1: for felt, which I thought was kind of was that
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  Speaker 1: Al Franken? Now what now Franken? I can't remember his name,
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  Speaker 1: but Senator Al Franken, Senator Al Francin is so crazy.
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  Speaker 1: Um so that was very short lived. Finally, Henson strikes
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  Speaker 1: a deal with UM I t C and they start
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  Speaker 1: shooting The Muppet Show in London and syndicating it out
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  Speaker 1: at CBS. And this is Yeah, the pilot, though I
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  Speaker 1: thought was interesting. I should mention was the name of
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  Speaker 1: the pilot was called Sex and Violence. They actually UM
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  Speaker 1: I was watching it earlier and um, one of the
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  Speaker 1: muppets comes out, not when I could identify by sight.
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  Speaker 1: Uh comes out and there's this huge thing carved out
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  Speaker 1: of stone. It's a sex and violence and uh, the
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  Speaker 1: announcer says, and now the end of sex and violence
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  Speaker 1: on TV. And the Muppet presses a dynamite plunger and
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  Speaker 1: blows up the sex and violence and then the Muppet
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  Speaker 1: Show theme starts, well, there you have it. Yeah, that
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  Speaker 1: makes sense. Then I thought it was just one of
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  Speaker 1: those ironic names or something. I don't think like Jim
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  Speaker 1: Hinson was trying to be ironically funny. I think he
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  Speaker 1: was still but sure, yeah, got you the end of
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  Speaker 1: sex and Violence. So yeah, the Muppet Show was born
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  Speaker 1: and the rest is history. The end, the end. Thanks
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  Speaker 1: for coming, Chuck, What was your favorite Muppet d How
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: did you get your voice to do that? It's anytime
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  Speaker 1: you say those three words together that happens. Let me
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  Speaker 1: try You should try to hum or the judges. We
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: see old guys in the balcony. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what
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  Speaker 1: was it? Statler and Waldorf? Statler and Waldorf. Those guys
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  Speaker 1: were excellent, and Jim Hinson actually voiced Waldorf. I guess
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  Speaker 1: we should talk about who the creator actually voiced specifically. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he did obviously did Kermit the Frog, He did Rolf
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  Speaker 1: the Dog. He and Waldorf. Uh. He did Doctor Teeth
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  Speaker 1: of Electric Mayhem, the Electric Mayhem, which was the the
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  Speaker 1: hippie band. Yeah. I think Dr Teeth was probably modeled
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  Speaker 1: after Dr John that's a guest, but probably I think so. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he had he had that kind of new Orleans accent,
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  Speaker 1: didn't he? Yeah? And then link Hogthrob of Pigs and
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  Speaker 1: Space of what excellent, And he did the Ernie half
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  Speaker 1: of Burton Ernie. Yeah. Who I have to say, Ernie's
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  Speaker 1: one of my favorite characters. I know he's set to
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  Speaker 1: me Street, but he's one of my favorite buppets. Um.
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  Speaker 1: I kind of go for the really sweet, kind hearted
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  Speaker 1: ones really Ernie, Fozzy, Yeah, Bunsen, which one was Bunsen
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  Speaker 1: the Little Professor, a little affable professor with Beaker the most. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Have you seen Beaker doing oh to Joy? It's pretty cool.
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  Speaker 1: It's on YouTube. Type in meep and oh to Joy
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  Speaker 1: and it will come up. Yeah, He's like me, me, me, Me,
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  Speaker 1: me me. It's pretty cool. And of course the chef,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the chef who was Swedish chef, who actually has the
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  Speaker 1: distinction of being the only muppet with live human hands
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  Speaker 1: unsupposed or uncovered by gloves or anything like that. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I was watching a clip of the Swedish chef and
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  Speaker 1: you can very easily see why they did that. He
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  Speaker 1: has to put like dashes of things in and pinch
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  Speaker 1: and stuff in, and so he actually has I believe
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  Speaker 1: frank Oz's hands and then then Henson doing his head. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and we'll we'll talk about the muppeteering and Manto because
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  Speaker 1: it gets pretty intense. So I get ahead of myself
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  Speaker 1: sometimes I know it's just exciting. Uh. And then frank
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  Speaker 1: Oz of course, which was the other half. And I
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  Speaker 1: think the quote in the article, which I thought was cool,
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  Speaker 1: as Jim Henson said that Frank Oz was probably the
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  Speaker 1: person most responsible for the Muppets being funny. Right, Frank
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  Speaker 1: Oz is a very funny guy. He is. He also
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  Speaker 1: did h He also puppeted and voiced Yoda and All
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  Speaker 1: Star Wars. Oh you knew that, did you? Yeah? I
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  Speaker 1: think everyone did it. Frank Oz did Yoda. Uh. And um,
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  Speaker 1: he did Rolf the Dog. I'm sorry he right handed
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  Speaker 1: Route the Dog. Jim did the voice. Let's remember this
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  Speaker 1: is what he was hired for it an, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: He did Bert the Burt half. He did Grover, your
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: favorite cookie monster animal who doesn't love animal? A lot
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  Speaker 1: of screaming with that one, Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear
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  Speaker 1: of course, to to the iconic characters. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: frank went on to direct movies. I mean he worked
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  Speaker 1: with Hinson for like thirty years and then directed movies.
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  Speaker 1: He directed Uh What About Bob? And Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
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  Speaker 1: and with other classics. You're gonna tell you Dirty Rotten
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  Speaker 1: Scoundrels is funny. The greatest thing he's ever made, and
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: he's acted to. He was in The Blues Brothers briefly.
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  Speaker 1: Oh was he the the corrections officer at Hands and
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Back is prophylactic? Yes, he is. Later on he reprises
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  Speaker 1: that role sort of in Trading Places. He plays the
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  Speaker 1: officer checking out danack Royd in prison in that film
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  Speaker 1: as well. So he's a specialist. He plays officers giving
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  Speaker 1: prisoners there type cast. Yeah. Yeah, so Chuck you one
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: to get into um a little behind the scenes stuff, Yeah,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: why not? We might as well. Um, well, let's start
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  Speaker 1: with how a Muppet is made. Yeah, Josh, the Muppets
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  Speaker 1: were created only by Jim Hinson. He did all the
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  Speaker 1: original sketches and he built some of the original muppets
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  Speaker 1: when he was still kind of a small shop. Yeah,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: but he figured out pretty quick that he had too
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: many in his head and he needed too many to
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: just do it himself. So yeah, he started out, um,
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  Speaker 1: using some materials like paper machee that didn't work out
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: because it was too hard, and then he tried um
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: different kinds of foam. I think he's foam rubber, but
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: found that that deteriorated. Yeah, so he's reticulated polyphone, which
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: is I imagined very much like foam rubber, but a
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: little more durable, right, And I think it's more flexible
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: because that that gave him the opportunity if you stick
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: your hand in Kerman's head to operate the puppet, to
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: move your knuckles around and like he would raise an
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: eyebrow and it would give him a little more feature
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: to his face. I chuck. You know, I love lore.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I want it's poss this one out. Kermit Lizard Kermit
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  Speaker 1: pre Great Transition. Kermit was actually made from his The
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: skin of Kermit was made from fuzzy green coat Jim
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  Speaker 1: Henson's mother owned, and his eyes were two halves of
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: a toy which I'm not familiar with. I wouldn't either,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: wacky wacky stacks yea stacks half. Yeah. They always kind
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: of looked like ping pong balls with the little pupils
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: drawn on them. Yeah, well, let's go ahead and talk
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: about that. The pupils. Yeah, that's they They say that
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: they did the eyes last when they're building muppets because
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: it's the most important part, and the pupils are actually
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: very important. And this I didn't know either. Um, the
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: bigger the pupil, the younger the muppet. Pretty cool, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and it really kind of makes sense. It gets the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: point across that they're kind of wide eyed and innocent,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: unfamiliar with the horrors and evil of the world. Right.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And it says they also tilt the pupils end slightly
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to give them more focus. Well, they move them closer together,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: because if they just put them, you know, on these
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  Speaker 1: huge eyes where they should be in the middle, muppets
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: would look like they had easy eyes. Right. And the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: man responsible for this was one of the first guys
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: that Jim Hinson hired. His name was Don uh Salen Salon.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I get the impression that this guy was like the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: man behind the man in a lot of ways. Jim
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Henson was this very creative, artistic person and he knew
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: what he was doing. But I think Don Solon was
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the one who's like, okay, i'll make it work. Well.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: He was definitely the master, like a sower. It sounds
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: like he came up with the Henson stitch, which he
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: very graciously um named after Henson. The Henson stitch, which
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: is a I guess, a method of sewing that hides
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the scene. Yeah, you don't wanna. You don't want to
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: see a scene right there. It's like I forgot that's
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a puppet exactly. And this, uh, this is so chuck
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: full of things I never knew. I'm so glad we're
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: doing this. Kermit the Frog actually has a stitch, Henson
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  Speaker 1: stitch going right up the center of his nose, and
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: you would never know it because the Henson stitch and
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the little fuzzy felt kind of helps to hide it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And the fuzzy felt actually um is called Andron fleets.
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  Speaker 1: That's the covering of Kermit and most of the other
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: You know that that kind of muppet skin, they actually
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: call it muppet fleece. That that fabric sort of like
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: a worn tennis ball. Yeah. You know you've arrived when
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: there's a type of textile named after your creation, a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: stitch named after you. Uh so most muppets. Um. Well,
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  Speaker 1: there's either two ways you can go about it. There's
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: either the hand and rod method of operating or a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: live hand. We talked about the live hand, and that
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: is when you literally stick your arm into the arm
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  Speaker 1: of the puppet, into a glove or in the swedishchef's case,
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  Speaker 1: a natural hand. Right, and there's actually two people operating.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And let's start with the hand and rod one or
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: rod in hand. Yes, so most muppeteers chuck or right handed. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and so they're their right hand would be inside the muppet,
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  Speaker 1: operating the head the face, that kind of thing. Their
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: left hand would be holding the two rods that were
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: attached to the muppets hand. Grover's an example of a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: hand and rod one. Um, so the left hand would
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: make the hands clap. That kind of thing is two
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  Speaker 1: very in dowels, which you can move them with your fingers, right,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: so one person can operate it. Uh. And actually, since
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: they the most muppeteers were right handed and they were
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: operating with their left hand. Um, most muppets are left
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: handed since they were operating the hands with them. Yeah.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Another cool fact, except there was one muppeteer who was
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: left handed and all of her muppets were right handed. Yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, man, I'm learning so much. Uh.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: And then um, occasionally you know clearly, if one person
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: is operating both hands, there's a limited amount of things
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: they can do. That's where the right handing comes in.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: If you need uh specific movements done with both hands,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: then a second puppeteer comes in operates only the right hand,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: which is what frank Oz was hard to do in
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the case of Ralph right Um. Ernie is another example
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to see right handed. Yeah, so there's a there's one
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: muppeteer who's there two guys standing next to each other. Um,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: there's one guy who has his right hand up as
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: high as it can go. He's operating the face, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: then his left hand is up the arm of the muppet,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and then the other guy has his right hand up
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the muppets right hand. There's two people operating these three parts,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: and they do a pretty good job. But you really,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: you think about it, and you just you look at
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Ernie or something, and you don't you wouldn't think that
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: there's two people operating him, and that sounds very cramped
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and close and it is. Yeah, I mean talk about
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: henson Um at the beginning of the Muppet movie when
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Kermit's on the log. Oh yeah, well sure, when the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: shots in the movies where you don't see a human Well,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: what I guess, let's backtrack a little. What they usually
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: do um was a technique that Henson invented called platforming up,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: So they would build the actual muppet stage about eight
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: you know, six to eight feet off the ground so
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: the puppeteers could stand fully upright so they don't have
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: to bend over. Sometimes when that wasn't possible, they built
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: trenches for the for the muppeteers to get down in.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And then for the movies, which is what you were
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: talking about, for the scenes where like Kermit was sitting
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: on the log and singing Rainbow Connection. At the opening
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of the film, Jim Hinson was in a little capsule
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: cramped down underwater, underwater sealed uh, with the thing all
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: around was sticking up out of the water, probably disguised
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: as a read that allowed him to breathe exactly. But
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: they were showing off right out of the bat they
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: right out of the gate. They did a three sixty
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: shot of Kermit on the log to show that right,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: no wires is not a marrionette. Pretty cool, Yeah, it
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: was pretty cool. I love that. And then they did
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: scenes where they were like riding bicycles, and in some
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: cases I think they had to have multiple h They
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: called it muppet switching, where they had like a full
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: body Muppet that they would occasionally have to use the
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: marrionette wires, or they would have a little person in it,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: or they would have a little person, or they would
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: use a remote control which came a little bit later. Um. Also,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: this is my favorite. When they had a muppet driving
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: a car, the car was actually being driven, so the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Muppet would be in the front seat. Uh, the muppeteer
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: would be crouched down in the back seat operating the Muppet,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and then there would be a little person in the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: trunk driving the car with remote control looking at a
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: video screen. Yeah, they're actually extremely sophisticated. What they have
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: to do. This is incredibly complex. Imagine having to build
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: like you have to know exactly what's going to happen
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: in every scene. Then you have to build the set
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: to accommodate a human person and a muppet and their muppeteer,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: so there may be several different levels. It sounds very dangerous.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And then as a muppeteer as well, Chuck Um. They
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: have and they have had since the seventies monitors strapped
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to their chest so they can see what the what
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: their muppet is doing. Right, it is backwards, so they
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: have to know that if they're if they are looking
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: at the screen and they want their muppet to move left,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: they have to move right. I mean, I imagine that
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the wiring, the neural connections of these people's brains are
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: very unusual. If you could slap them in a wonder
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: machine and take a look at them next to like
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: one of ours, I'll bet you've noticed some real distinction.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: We should write a article on muppeteers brains would be good.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Uh and you're dead on man, because one of the muppeteers,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: there's been about a hundred of him, one of them
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: named Dave Gold, said it takes maybe five years to
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: do everything without thinking about it. In fact, I still
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: find it difficult. And Frank Oz said, what you're doing
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: is so complicated that you really don't have time to
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: think about what you're doing. First your body understands and
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: then your mind grasp what you're doing. Sometimes so very
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: complicated stuff. There's there's one other kind of muppet. We've
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: got hand and rod uh live hand or right hand muppets,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and then there's full body muppets like Big Bird. Sure,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: so this is actually you know Big Birds as tall
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: as he looks, um, what is he like? Eight feet tall?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: He's pretty tall. So there's a muppeteer and they're probably
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a fairly tall muppeteer on platform shoes five inch shoes. Uh,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: standing up with his right hand going up to Big
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Bird's mouth and it's a it's a reach to Yeah,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I can you imagine. I'll bet they feel like Neil
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Pert all the time? Right, you know what you should
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: look on the on the article actually, and there's some
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: really good illustrations, excellent illustrations. It shows like Big Bird
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: with the person inside of it, and it is a
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: stretch man that would get really really tiring, just physically exhausting,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I would imagine. So the right hands up, the left
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: hands controlling left hand, and then there's a wire connected
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: to the left elbow that's connecting Big birds right hand
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: or that's that's controlling Big birds right hand. Which is
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: why if you notice, if you watch Big Bird, when
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the right hand goes up, the left hand goes down.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: When the left hand goes down, the right hand goes
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: up because it's Uh, it's like a little Pulley system, right, Chuck.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: We were we were talking about, you know, um, muppeteers
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: performing in trenches on the set or platforming up or
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you know, how difficult it is to create these sets. Uh,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And once you know what they're doing, you can see
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: it pretty easily. Like I was watching a clip of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Steve Martin playing dueling banjos with some muppets class on
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: The Muppet Show, right classic, and they're doing it, like
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I guess in between performances because they're out in the
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: theater seats and Steve Martin doesn't move the whole time,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: so god knows how many like pits are on either
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: side of him and how far he would fall if
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: he stepped one way or the other. And then some
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: of the other muppets are in the seats rows of
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: seats behind him, so that clearly provides a trench for
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the muppeteers too. And once you once you kind of
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: know how they did it, you can you can see
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the techniques in use. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I bet
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: it was a cool set to visit, for sure. The
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: sets were usually speaking of sets were um, there were
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: a couple of ways they could do it. They're either
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: muppets sized when there was only muppets involved, which would
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: be scaled down obviously, or when um obviously. You know.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: The Muppet Show was famous for having celebrity guests each
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: week when humans interacted, and as they do in Sesame
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Street too, they would have kind of a mix. Some
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: things would be human size and then they would do
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: it's a technique called forced perspective when they would make
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: like a door, you know, seven eighths the size of
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: a real door in the background to make it look
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: like it's really far away, or just to bring everything,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: you know, to where it all matches up. Fantastic, pretty cool. Yeah,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: that is cool. What's the quote from Carol Burnett? Because
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: that the article talked about, you know, humans interacting with
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: muppets and once it like to act with you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: poly Era. She said something like, when you're standing next
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: to Kermit and interacting with them, you totally believe him.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: And she she was on the Muppe Show a lot, wasn't, Yeah,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: she was. And the other cool thing was they said
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: that between takes that they said the puppets would often
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: just kind of chit chat with the actors, like making
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: small talk, just totally buy into it. Yeah, I love it, man,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: that would have been an awesome show to do. It
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: was a good time for it too, And Chuck, if
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: you notice there's um a lot of there's so much
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: going on on the Muppet Show. They really nailed the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: realism in part because there were so many muppets going around. Yeah,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and the big scenes, right, and then you have like
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: the stars clearly like ms Piggy, Kermit, Swedish Chef Buns
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and Beak Girl them, um, but then you also have
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: some muppets who you just like you you don't really
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: recognize the background extras basically right, And and there's actually
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: a name for these muppets. They create blank slate my
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: bits and then you know, depending on what they need,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: they have all sorts of costumes eyebrows, eyes, noses, all
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: that stuff that they can just switch out real quick.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Pretty cool. And what do they call them? Well, there's
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: a couple of names that originally they were called anything Muppets,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: but the one I like, they were called what Knots. Yeah,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I love that. I knew you would like whatnots over
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: anything Muppets. Well, who wouldn't The Whatnots would be a
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: good band name. Uh so, yeah, they were basically the
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: background extra of The Muppet Show and they would just
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: interchange these uh these guys and girls. I guess, I
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: guess they were gender specific. Sure. Yeah. Ms Piggy actually
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: had her own costume designer or her own real human
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: costume designer for the Muppets. One of the few, well
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: not few, but one of the one of the Muppets
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: that were close A lot of them were in the buff. Yeah. Kermit, well,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Kermit actually wore his trench coat sometimes. Well when he
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: was on Sesame Street, he was the roving reporter where
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: he had the trench coat and the hat and everything,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: which was pretty awesome. I loved the idea of a
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: frog reporter. But then on The Muppet Show, his character
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: was the kind of the lead producer of the show.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: That was kind of the idea of the show. That
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: leads me to the thirty Rock thing that what's gonna
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: tell you about the television show thirty Rock? That was
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: there's a thing on the internet, so one did on
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: a blog I think, where they linked the Muppet Show
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: to thirty Rock and how they were basically the same show.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And Liz Lemon was Kerment trying to pull this show
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: together amid the craziness, and Jane Karkowski was Miss Piggy,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and I can't remember the other characters, but they kind
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: of tied each one to the other. And the only
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: one who they couldn't get a representation of was the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin character, which I thought was pretty interesting. Maybe
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: he would be Carol Burnett, Yeah, maybe so, but I
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: think they said he could have been both Waldorf and
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Statler something like that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Um Chuck the uh. I guess that's kind of emblematic
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: of the Muppets, right. The Muppet Show produced a bunch
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: of spinoffs. First of all, you've got the three movies, right, Yeah,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: You've got The Muppet Movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan, and
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: The Great Muppet Caper, all three of them excellent, excellent film.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And apparently there's uh Seth Rogan and Jason Siegel, the
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: actors from Knocked Up, were trying to make another Muppet
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: movie and I don't know if yeah, I don't know
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: if that's ever gonna happen, but they were kind of
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: in talks with the Hint and people to write a
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: script and make another Muppet movie. There's a did you
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: ever watch Frago Rock? Did I watch Fraggle Rock? I didn't, actually, dude,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Fraggo Rock was on when I was eleven, twelve and
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: thirteen on HBO, so right when I first got h
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: you just answered the question. So yes, I lived and
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: breathed Fraggo Rock. Down, Chuck, you will be happy to know,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: or possibly dismay, that there is a Frago Rock movie
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: that's supposed to have already come out. It hasn't yet,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: but I imagine it's coming down the pike. It is.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I looked it up today and right now they had
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the date listed as eleven. Good god, so we'll see okay,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and uh, Frago Rock is not the only one. Did
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: you ever watch Muppet Babies? I did not. That was
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: after my time. That was right in my time, actually
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: embarrassingly maybe slightly after, but I still watched it. Um. Yeah,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: that was a really, really good cartoon. Barbara Billingsley played
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the nanny whose face you never saw. Yeah, they used
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: to have some great adventures. I didn't know. That took
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: me along on. And then my favorite was emmett Otter's
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: jug Band. Christmas have you seen that? Man? Are you joking?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: How old are you? It came out in nineteen seventy seven.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I was six years old. Et Otters Jug Band Christmas.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Have you seen a Jerry? Jerry hasn't seen it. Emitt
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Odors Jug Band Christmas is one of the best Christmas
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: specials ever in the history of Christmas specials. I'll check
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: it out. It was awesome. The the river Bottom Nightmare
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Band was there. There were two bands. There was em
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Hotter clearly with his jug band were these old nice
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Otters that played country jug music, and then there was
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the Evil Faction, which was the River Bottom Nightmare Band
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and they did this like hard rock, heavy metal stuff
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: and they had a snake muppet that was swimming around
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: in a tank and it was awesome. That's pretty good.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: I will check that out. I'll add that to a
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Christmas story and it's a wonderful life. You totally should. Well,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: that's pretty much muppets. They're still going on. As we mentioned,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Brian Henson's doing the puppet up Uncensored Crop Show. Yeah.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: I think you can catch him at a comic con
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: in San Diego, Australia. TBS had some stuff. I'm pretty sure.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: If you type in pup it up on the Internet,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: it will bring up some stuff for you. There was
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: a Broadway show. There is a Broadway show called Q.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: It's like, um, a revision of Sesame Street but adults
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: a little more drama. Yeah, they had to work it
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: out with the Hintson Company to get approval and umour
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: for best Musical. Good move there. And I want to
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: just recommend if anyone visits Los Angeles ever or lives
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. If you live there, you know about it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: But the Jim Hinton Company is located at the corner
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: of Libre and Sunset, and it was the original Charlie
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Chaplin Studios. So it's this really cool old kind of
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: English tutor uh studio. But it's it's small. It's not
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: like some big studio's right in the middle of Hollywood,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: so it's not very big. But um you drive ei
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: there now and it's got a big archway right when
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: you drive in, and on top there's like an eight
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: foot tall kermit dressed as the Charlie Chaplin little tramp
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: character with the top hat and cane. And here it's
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: really cool and the Hitler mustache and Hitler mustache. Now
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think he has the mustache. Actually, so Chuck.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I want to leave everybody with a really chilling thought.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Imagine Jim Henson back in n had decided to go
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: into accounting and this world was a world without muppets?
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Are you trying to make me cry? Isn't that a
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: weird thought? It really kind of barrels it into perspective.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: We should write a book called a World without Muppets,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: like some sort of reality. Be awful. It's nothing but war.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: So thank you. Jim Henson, who everyone knows. Sadly in
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: passed away of a kind of pneumonia, and they said
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: it wasn't actually pneumonia, but it was. It was a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: bacterial infection that shut his organs down. Basically, he complained
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: of flu like symptoms to his wife or his x
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Y food he was still close with. I think they
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: were separated at the time. And I went to the
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: hospital and twenty hours later died. It's very, very sad.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: But his children continued that tradition, and his son does
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: not actually do the voice of Kermit as many people thought.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: His son Brian, A lot of people thought that he
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: took over for Kermit. It was actually me for Kermit,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Yes you did. That's my side gig. So that's muppets.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I could go on for hours, I know you could.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I gotta stop you right here. We're gonna press stop
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: on the Stopwatch. Okay, okay, Chuck. Are we doing any
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: listener mail today? No, Josh, no listener mail. Because this
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: is a special episode. We want to play it out
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: with a little treat for the fans, A little snippet
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: from a song we all know and love. So uh,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: without further ado, take it away. Thanks for coming, everybody.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: com home page. M brought to you by the reinvented
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you