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The Fantastic Miss Piggy Podcast - Episode 9: Craig Shemin Interview · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:00
  In September 1977, Woman magazine in the UK published an
• 0:04
  article about The Muppet Show, which was just about to air its
• 0:07
  second season. They talked to Frank Oz about
• 0:09
  Miss Piggy, and this is when he was just keying into the
• 0:12
  complexity of this character. And he said the thing most
• 0:16
  people don't realize about Miss Piggy is how much that Lady
• 0:18
  suffered. My God, has she suffered.
• 0:21
  And it's made her very promiscuous.
• 0:22
  You know, she's had affairs with most of the male Muppets,
• 0:25
  except, of course, Kermit, the one she really wants.
• 0:28
  She continues to suffer and to live in hopes.
• 0:30
  It's all very, very sad. So there you go.
• 0:34
  That is Muppet Cannon, direct from Frank Oz.
• 0:36
  As of the second season of The Muppet Show, Miss Picky has had
• 0:39
  affairs with most of the male Muppets, except for Kermit.
• 0:43
  On the other hand, Frank Oz says a lot of things.
• 0:46
  I can't give you anything but love, baby.
• 0:53
  That's the only thing I've plenty of.
• 1:01
  Kissy, kissy and welcome to another episode of the fantastic
• 1:04
  Miss Piggy Podcast. I'm Danny Horn, and this podcast
• 1:07
  chronicles my journey to learn everything there is to know
• 1:09
  about that divine swine, the incomparable Miss Piggy.
• 1:12
  And today I am convinced that I'm going to get closer to my
• 1:15
  goal because I'm going to introduce my special guest, who
• 1:17
  I believe might know some stuff about Miss Piggy, and he is here
• 1:20
  to tell us all about it. Craig Shemin is a longtime Jim
• 1:23
  Henson Company staff writer and the president of The Jim Henson
• 1:26
  Legacy. He's written television shows
• 1:29
  and live shows and CD-ROM games. He wrote The Muppets Character
• 1:32
  Encyclopedia and the amazing book about the early years of
• 1:36
  The Muppets, Sam and Friends, the story of Jim Henson's first
• 1:39
  television show. So here is the fascinating and
• 1:41
  marvelous Craig Shemin. Kissy kissy Craig.
• 1:44
  Welcome to the show. It's.
• 1:46
  Great to be here. I'm so happy to see you.
• 1:49
  There's a bunch of stuff I didn't mention.
• 1:50
  You've done a lot of stuff, and I'm going to pretend to be
• 1:53
  interested in all of it, but I'm going to mostly pay attention to
• 1:55
  the Miss Piggy parts. That's quite all right.
• 1:58
  Now with the Jim Henson legacy, how long have you been doing?
• 2:01
  How long have you been the president?
• 2:03
  I guess I've been the president a little more than 10 years or
• 2:07
  so. I've been I think a, a board
• 2:10
  member since about 2002 or so, 2001.
• 2:16
  It's sort of the years blur after a.
• 2:18
  While a while ago. And it it's been really
• 2:21
  rewarding. Jane Henson really had an
• 2:24
  enormous foresight to establish this organization because she
• 2:28
  saw that the different companies involved with the characters
• 2:32
  would keep their particular interests alive.
• 2:36
  But she wanted to make sure that Jim was not forgotten as the guy
• 2:40
  who came up with The Muppets and and all of the hands and
• 2:44
  characters. So she she did that.
• 2:48
  And then so because of that we are able to present things all
• 2:51
  together in a way that Henson and Disney and Sesame really
• 2:56
  can't. So a few years back we did a big
• 2:59
  concert in New New Zealand where we were able to get characters
• 3:02
  from all the different character groups on one stage, and that's
• 3:06
  been a lot of fun. And you've been an important
• 3:09
  historian for The Muppets for a long time now, writing the Sam
• 3:12
  and Friends book for one, which is incredible, just going deep
• 3:16
  into all of the facts that you figured out about it and really
• 3:19
  understanding, like Henson's early days, but also the museum
• 3:22
  tours and screenings that you've done, kind of bringing awareness
• 3:24
  of Henson's work. It's been really exciting
• 3:28
  because there are so many people.
• 3:29
  As we get farther away from Jim Henson's, you know, actual
• 3:34
  career during his lifetime, you know, we have to work harder to
• 3:39
  make sure the people are aware, right, exactly what he did and
• 3:42
  what was special about it. And I think it's to me, it's not
• 3:47
  just about celebrating Jim Henson, but it's also about
• 3:50
  inspiring new artists. And that was one of the reasons
• 3:53
  I wanted to do the Salmon Friends book, because this is a
• 3:56
  story about Jim Henson when he was in high school and college.
• 4:01
  And this is something that young artists can relate to really
• 4:05
  well. And, you know, so the the what I
• 4:08
  talk about whenever I do these presentations is this is what
• 4:11
  Jim Henson did when he was, you know, 17/18/1920.
• 4:16
  Why aren't you doing this? You know, it was so much harder
• 4:19
  back then. You didn't have YouTube and you
• 4:21
  didn't have television production in the palm of your
• 4:24
  hand, right? Yeah.
• 4:25
  So if Jim did all this, imagine what you can do.
• 4:28
  And it really does inspire young artists, I think.
• 4:32
  How did you get your start with Henson?
• 4:34
  I started as an intern. I was in my junior year of
• 4:39
  College in Northwestern University and I was trying to
• 4:41
  figure out what to do with my summer vacation.
• 4:45
  And I happened to see a documentary on called Henson's
• 4:49
  Place. And I think a lot of Henson fans
• 4:51
  will be familiar with it. And it's certain you got to see
• 4:56
  a little bit of the Office and the behind the scenes.
• 4:58
  And I'm saying, well, maybe that would be a great place to do an
• 5:00
  internship. And I was a big Henson fan when
• 5:05
  I was, you know, 10 years old, was when a Muppet show.
• 5:09
  I was 10 when the Muppet Show came on.
• 5:11
  Perfect age. Yeah.
• 5:12
  And I was, you know, 13 when a Muppet movie came out.
• 5:17
  And I was one of those kids who would go to the library and look
• 5:20
  up magazines and microfilm about The Muppets to try and figure
• 5:23
  out how they worked. And so I was a big fan and it
• 5:27
  was a slight bit of dormancy when I was in college.
• 5:31
  But then I'm thinking, well, Gee, this is something I've been
• 5:33
  really interested in. Imagine getting a chance to work
• 5:39
  at a place that does this. So I called up the Henson
• 5:43
  Associates office as it was called back.
• 5:46
  Then I got information from the directory assistance operator
• 5:51
  and called up the next day and they scheduled an appointment
• 5:55
  for me to come in during spring break and meet with the intern
• 5:58
  person. They didn't really have a big
• 6:02
  intern program, but they had me come in and I met with them and
• 6:06
  that I spent that summer interning for the public
• 6:09
  relations department and also doing a little bit of work with
• 6:12
  the Henson archives. There wasn't a full time
• 6:14
  archivist at that time. So what were you doing there?
• 6:17
  Basically I was just making sure that people weren't throwing
• 6:19
  things out, You know, just I would try and go around to the
• 6:24
  different departments and say oh do you, I need this and this for
• 6:27
  the archives. We, you know, make sure you send
• 6:30
  your scripts. So it was just trying to make
• 6:33
  sure there were, there were things Bob Payne who was who had
• 6:36
  started on Salmon Friends era, he had started the archives and
• 6:41
  he was no longer at the company by the time I got there in 1987.
• 6:46
  So it was just a matter of trying to keep things going and
• 6:49
  I was just a you know, summer intern.
• 6:51
  So I really didn't have any authority over anything.
• 6:54
  But that's that was the summer I met Jim Henson in the at the
• 6:58
  company softball game and Frank Oz on the same day.
• 7:02
  Yeah. And it was it.
• 7:04
  It was a wonderful summer. I I spent most of it just
• 7:07
  answering the phones and and taking messages and things like
• 7:09
  that. Don't want people to think that,
• 7:11
  you know? I was thrust into this
• 7:14
  magnificently glamorous. World, but still being and and
• 7:18
  then that gave you an end to come back How did?
• 7:19
  You. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 7:21
  I happened to be working for a a woman who kept on losing
• 7:26
  assistance, so it seemed like every time I was getting ready
• 7:30
  to come home for a break, she had just lost an assistant so I
• 7:35
  could come in and I I got some part time work during my.
• 7:41
  That's that's got to be a little you got to be a little
• 7:43
  suspicious at the. Well, yeah, yeah.
• 7:45
  But you know, I was so, so passionate to get in there.
• 7:48
  And I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll come work for you for a couple
• 7:51
  weeks. And then, as it happened, she
• 7:53
  hired me to to take that position when I graduated.
• 7:59
  And so you were in public relations department?
• 8:01
  I was, yeah. And that's when I started
• 8:03
  writing for the characters, because I would be assigned to
• 8:07
  write the character interviews for the magazines and
• 8:10
  newspapers, for the characters, but also sometimes for Jim, you
• 8:14
  know, it was a a smaller market newspaper or something.
• 8:17
  They had an interview they wanted to do, Jim.
• 8:19
  They'd send their questions. I'd write the responses.
• 8:22
  We'd send them up to Jim to get an approval or to answer a
• 8:25
  question that I really didn't have an answer for.
• 8:28
  You know, something like what's your most satisfying experience
• 8:32
  as a parent? I was like, I can't really speak
• 8:34
  for Jim in that I could tell you when he made Kermit.
• 8:37
  But you know, so we would send and get Jim to revise things.
• 8:41
  And same thing for the character interviews.
• 8:43
  We would send them to whichever performer was involved and just
• 8:48
  have them sign off on it. I've always been curious about
• 8:50
  those character interviews because I I love them and love
• 8:53
  them. As a kid I think like you were
• 8:55
  saying like going and and looking up in the microfilm like
• 8:58
  Miss you know, for me, Miss Piggy in, you know Redbook and
• 9:02
  and and Woman's Day. I've kind of always wondered
• 9:05
  about who writes them and and it's funny that you kind of as
• 9:09
  just a new employee we're doing. Well, I had been.
• 9:12
  I didn't really get a chance to start doing that until a few
• 9:15
  months, you know, might have been as much of a year then.
• 9:19
  But I was not a typical new employee because I knew a lot
• 9:22
  about Henson going in, being a fan.
• 9:25
  And and I was sort of proving to people it's like, yeah.
• 9:28
  And Jane Henson would ask me questions about dates and things
• 9:32
  because she knew that I came in to it as a fan.
• 9:35
  Most people working at the Henson Company did not come to
• 9:39
  it through there. You know, the people working in
• 9:41
  in licensing and publishing were not there because they were
• 9:46
  enormous fans of of Henson going into it.
• 9:49
  They are, you know, they were going into it because they work
• 9:52
  in licensing and they work in publishing.
• 9:53
  And this was the job that they had an opportunity to get.
• 9:56
  And so I was going into it from a completely different
• 10:01
  perspective. So they gave me a little bit
• 10:03
  more leeway to develop material for the characters than anyone
• 10:08
  else. And I did that in association
• 10:10
  with Jim Lewis, who was sort of the main staff writer to do that
• 10:15
  sort of thing. He had come over from from
• 10:17
  Muppet magazine. He had been the editor, Muppet
• 10:20
  magazine. So Jim Lewis, Bill Prady was
• 10:23
  doing a lot more work in production.
• 10:25
  So it really fell to Jim Lewis to do a lot of the licensing and
• 10:30
  and publication stuff. And then as I started doing
• 10:33
  more, there was a time when Bill left to go to LA, and then Jim
• 10:40
  took over most of the New York stuff, and then Bill left the
• 10:43
  company and Jim went to LA and then I took over Jim's position.
• 10:48
  That's when I left the PR department after about three
• 10:51
  years. But during the time I was in PR
• 10:53
  department, I was working on the interviews, the newspaper
• 10:58
  magazine interviews, also doing some stories for the publishing
• 11:01
  department. For like the children's books.
• 11:04
  Yeah, well it was for the there was a series of children's story
• 11:09
  cards that were being done for field publications at that time.
• 11:12
  It was like a subscription thing, kind of like recipe cards
• 11:15
  and you get 8 Muppet stories in the mail every month and 1/2 or
• 11:19
  so. So they were it was like a 500
• 11:21
  word story on a glossy cardstock with a new illustration.
• 11:26
  So I I did a bunch of those and then they they got compiled into
• 11:29
  a book later on. How did you get into writing
• 11:32
  each character? You know, the best research is
• 11:35
  to watch the stuff and try and and get into the head and and
• 11:40
  figure out what each character wants and what their role is in
• 11:44
  relation to all the other characters.
• 11:46
  And some are either easier than others.
• 11:49
  You know, it's it's easier to write Piggy and Gonzo material
• 11:52
  than it is to write Kermit. Why is that?
• 11:55
  Well, you know, there's nothing. Kermit is the guy in the middle.
• 11:59
  He's the every man. He's not a guy who goes out to
• 12:02
  do amazing stunts. He's not big on fashion because
• 12:04
  he usually doesn't wear clothing.
• 12:07
  He's just there to get everybody else together to put on a show.
• 12:11
  And that's why when you write Kermit material, you're usually
• 12:15
  writing and mentioning the other characters and what they're
• 12:19
  doing at the moment. And also the swamp.
• 12:21
  There's a lot of like. Right.
• 12:23
  Yeah, Frog references. And I think sometimes with the
• 12:25
  Kermit stuff, you end up sort of falling into this trap of doing
• 12:31
  puns and jokes, which I don't really like to do, but you need
• 12:35
  to sort of have fun material. Something for him to do, Yeah.
• 12:39
  Yeah, and if you can't get it, you know, with Piggy and with
• 12:43
  Gonzo and Fozzie, you can get into it from their characters,
• 12:47
  you from their what they're experiencing at the moment.
• 12:51
  And Kermit? Sort of.
• 12:52
  Unless he's riled up and you can get him riled up, yeah, unless
• 12:56
  he's riled up. He's just, you know, he's pretty
• 12:59
  wrong. Yeah.
• 13:01
  How was it running for Piggy? Why?
• 13:02
  What made her kind of easier was it?
• 13:04
  She has real opinions, I guess. She has real kind of storylines.
• 13:07
  He has, she has real opinions, she has real moods.
• 13:11
  So you can always come into a piggy interview just thinking
• 13:15
  about what state she's in at that very moment.
• 13:19
  You know, you could do an interview purely based on her
• 13:24
  attitude. You know, you could just say,
• 13:25
  well, you know Piggy, you know, her hair stylist didn't show up
• 13:29
  today. How is she feeling?
• 13:31
  And she could you can get that out and and you know, if you
• 13:36
  look at something like and this was done before, before I was
• 13:40
  there. I don't know if you saw when
• 13:42
  Piggy and Kermit did the Emmy Awards and Piggy and Kermit were
• 13:49
  there to read the rules and she thinks she's there for another
• 13:52
  reason, right? You know, and that's the
• 13:54
  attitude, is that she spent hours in hair and makeup.
• 13:58
  She doesn't want to read the rules.
• 14:01
  And is very impatient. Yeah.
• 14:04
  And that drives the whole thing just coming up with those that
• 14:10
  attitude and and it was I will tell you that early on one of
• 14:14
  the earliest piggy things I I wrote, I I learned about this.
• 14:18
  This was an interview for Chicago Tribune's Sunday
• 14:22
  Magazine. And they had a celebrity
• 14:25
  questionnaire that they would do it in every issue and they would
• 14:29
  send about 65 questions out to the celebrities and the
• 14:32
  celebrity would fill it out. And then they would take like
• 14:35
  1415 questions and put it in the little thing with the picture.
• 14:38
  And it was a big thing on the inside cover of the of the
• 14:41
  Sunday magazine. So they sent 65 questions and I
• 14:46
  answered them, sent it to Frank. And Frank just crossed out a few
• 14:51
  of them. He's like, you know, Biggie
• 14:55
  doesn't have to answer all of these.
• 14:57
  And he also, you know, it's also like Biggie.
• 14:59
  Sometimes answering a question is not answering the question.
• 15:04
  Sometimes you don't have to answer the question.
• 15:06
  And the fact that you're not going to answer it is your
• 15:09
  answer and then you can then they can kind of like why isn't
• 15:11
  she answering? Why doesn't she want to discuss
• 15:13
  it? You know it prompts things in
• 15:16
  the imagination. There was one question was one
• 15:19
  of my favorite things that in in that particular thing and and
• 15:22
  one of my favorite all time things that Frank came up with.
• 15:25
  And the question was, when nobody's looking eye blank and
• 15:31
  the question is written very sincerely, it's like, OK, here's
• 15:34
  something we want to find out what Miss Piggy does in private
• 15:39
  when nobody's looking. So he wrote.
• 15:41
  When nobody's looking, I and Frank wrote, wave my arms up and
• 15:45
  down and yelled, look at me, look at me.
• 15:50
  So it perfectly captures. Piggy takes the the question in
• 15:55
  an entirely different direction. So it that made me learn that
• 16:00
  when they ask, when they're asking these questions, you
• 16:04
  don't have to give them an answer that they're expecting.
• 16:07
  You don't have to answer a question.
• 16:09
  You can take it in any direction you want.
• 16:11
  Piggy's responsibility to be Piggy.
• 16:15
  It's not her responsibility to sit and take.
• 16:18
  Attention to these questions, yeah.
• 16:20
  So that's where we're sort of where I try and take things is
• 16:25
  you think about what Piggy's attitude is and the her level of
• 16:30
  patience or impatience with this interviewer and what does she
• 16:34
  want to say. The other thing that that Frank
• 16:37
  used to get a little sensitive about is that he didn't want it
• 16:42
  to seem like Piggy was going after and flirting with the
• 16:47
  interviewers or people she he wanted to make the appearance
• 16:52
  that they were flirting with her.
• 16:55
  That's super interesting. Yeah, because I think he figured
• 16:59
  it would be funnier. Yeah, he has since been fallen
• 17:04
  out of favor, but we did a a bunch of things with Matt Lauer.
• 17:09
  So it wasn't her flirting with Matt Lauer.
• 17:11
  It's her saying. You know, Matthew, when we were
• 17:14
  together, you insisted that, you know, you Take Me Out after.
• 17:18
  It was a way of her right, putting him now.
• 17:21
  Now knowing what we now know about Mount Lauer, maybe not
• 17:25
  that was not the best way to proceed, but it really, you
• 17:29
  know, I think. Or or it was kind of more
• 17:31
  historically accurate? Than you knew at the time, yeah.
• 17:34
  Piggy, good morning. Happy New Year.
• 17:36
  Nice to see you and thanks for getting up so early.
• 17:38
  Yeah. Whatever.
• 17:39
  Are you not in a good mood this morning?
• 17:41
  But if. I'm Matthew.
• 17:42
  I mean, you and I had a wonderful night last night.
• 17:44
  Did you not? Let's.
• 17:45
  It's nice to thank you for the garcellage when you picked me
• 17:47
  up. You're more than welcome, but.
• 17:48
  The truth is, we both know the truth that I only agreed to do
• 17:52
  the show this morning because there was no other way to dump
• 17:56
  you. What do you mean, dump me?
• 17:57
  I had six other parties to go to.
• 17:59
  Did you not have a good time with me last night?
• 18:01
  Matthew. Matthew, Yes.
• 18:03
  Can we just say that when person picks up a pig at a date for a
• 18:07
  date that the New Year's kiss does not begin at 6:30 PM?
• 18:11
  OK. But I was split at this outfit.
• 18:14
  I was inspired. I am exhausted.
• 18:17
  And I think that, you know, every once in a while we will
• 18:22
  flip that if there's a joke that makes it worth it.
• 18:26
  You know we did another thing on the Today show, we did it Today
• 18:30
  segment with Chris Maloney and he it was a little remote in the
• 18:36
  dressing room with Piggy and and Chris Maloney.
• 18:42
  Why exactly are you and I on this show?
• 18:43
  To talk about relationships. Oh.
• 18:45
  Please as if it's not obvious. What's obvious?
• 18:49
  Oh, come now. The way you feel about law.
• 18:51
  The way you lost for me. The way you looking more as if
• 18:55
  dusting me for Prince with your eyes Oh.
• 19:00
  Piggy, I have no idea what you're.
• 19:02
  Talking about. We cut away and we cut back and
• 19:06
  Piggy has wrapped him up in crime scene tape to try and keep
• 19:11
  him there. So it's like, OK, in that
• 19:14
  particular instance, this was much later, this was an Eric
• 19:18
  Jacobson era, but and it's like OK in this instance because
• 19:23
  we're going for this visual. Right.
• 19:26
  It's OK for Piggy to be, you know, a little bit more, you
• 19:29
  know, aggressive. So yeah, I The thing is that's
• 19:33
  the way that I approach it based on the way that Frank approaches
• 19:36
  it. Don't know if the current people
• 19:39
  involved take that particular attack.
• 19:43
  It's quite possible they do. You know, Frank had a lot of
• 19:47
  sort of internal rules about Piggy.
• 19:49
  Some of them were flexible, some of them weren't.
• 19:52
  So what were some of the rules? One of the things he would ask
• 19:55
  if there was a request for Miss Piggy to do a television
• 19:58
  appearance or to do something is would Barbra Streisand do it?
• 20:04
  Meaning to to keep her kind of classy.
• 20:07
  Yeah, it it was, you know, we would get, for example, we got a
• 20:10
  a request, you know to do Hollywood Squares.
• 20:15
  I think this was in the John Davidson era and that would be,
• 20:19
  you know, Frank would you know, would say, you know, do you want
• 20:21
  Peggy to do Hollywood Squares? Can you do Hollywood Squares?
• 20:25
  Would Barbra Streisand do Hollywood Squares?
• 20:27
  Yeah. Really.
• 20:29
  No. No.
• 20:30
  So that was so you said no to that?
• 20:32
  Later at that point, later on, I think she did do Hollywood
• 20:35
  Squares. Yeah, she did a bunch of times.
• 20:37
  Yeah. And I think that that's just
• 20:39
  sort of a different I I think I don't know how much of it was
• 20:44
  because of the character and how much of it was because Frank
• 20:49
  didn't want to sit in a in a under a box for five shows and
• 20:53
  keeping his arm up for five half hour shows.
• 20:57
  But you know the rules were, you know, it was always about just
• 21:02
  trying to keep things funny. You know if you would write
• 21:06
  something for Frank, and this goes for anything, you know he
• 21:10
  would always try and make it half as long, make it twice as
• 21:12
  funny. You know it.
• 21:15
  It was about trying to find the funny moments and the character
• 21:19
  points. But also there were rules that
• 21:22
  that ended up getting broken. You know, we for years and
• 21:26
  years, Miss Piggy would wear lavender gloves with a ring and
• 21:34
  pearls, and that was sort of the rule.
• 21:37
  And the pearls were there to hide the seam where the neck
• 21:40
  meets the body and the gloves were there.
• 21:44
  So you don't know if she has hands or hooves and that was the
• 21:49
  reason that, you know. Also, when Miss Piggy didn't
• 21:51
  wear open toed shoes, Miss Piggy would, if she wore a hat, one
• 21:57
  ear usually was poking out. You know, it was important about
• 22:00
  keeping her a pig. So one day I was going with
• 22:06
  Frank to the Henson workshop. We were getting ready to do a
• 22:09
  couple of days of appearances. I think it may have been for the
• 22:12
  cookbook. Not like 96.
• 22:15
  Yeah, yeah, we went over to the shop.
• 22:18
  We're looking at the outfits that have been selected, and
• 22:24
  Barbara Davis, dear woman, late Barbara Davis, who was one of
• 22:28
  Miss Biggie's designers for many years, said, you know, if she
• 22:32
  didn't have to wear these lavender gloves, we'd have a lot
• 22:36
  more flexibility in the colors we could put her in.
• 22:40
  And Frank said, well, she doesn't have to wear lavender
• 22:42
  gloves. And everybody's jaws dropped.
• 22:46
  And Frank's like, yeah, she can wear any color gloves, you know,
• 22:50
  as long as she's wearing gloves. Yeah.
• 22:52
  So everybody, you know, was like, Oh my God, I whisper.
• 22:56
  And we were, you know, a a week later, I was in the shop and
• 22:59
  Barbara by then had made like 40 or 50 pairs of different gloves.
• 23:04
  And, you know, let's let you know animal prints and different
• 23:08
  pastel colors, bright colors, fluorescent, you know, you name
• 23:11
  it. And from that point on, Piggy
• 23:14
  wore gloves of of any color. So everyone was just very
• 23:17
  excited with a lot more to have a lot more flexibility.
• 23:20
  Yeah, because they were very they take the fashion of Piggy
• 23:24
  very seriously and they want to make sure that she matches.
• 23:27
  And so they were always trying to match the gloves.
• 23:31
  But on that same day, we, you know, looking at different pig
• 23:38
  hairstyles, someone who was doing the hair said, oh, it
• 23:43
  looks so beautiful, it's a shame we have to put those ears on.
• 23:47
  And Frank's like, well, don't put the ears on and everybody
• 23:50
  what? So if you look at one, one or
• 23:53
  two TV appearances from that era.
• 23:56
  I remember there was a lot of talk.
• 23:59
  Yeah, because, Frank, it was Good Morning America or IT.
• 24:03
  Was I think it may have been today.
• 24:04
  It was one of those. It was an East Coast TV
• 24:09
  appearance and I think we may have done like a a video junket
• 24:15
  with that too. But it it was like one day, It
• 24:17
  was one day of of this because people couldn't take it.
• 24:20
  The whole world ended, you know, whereas Miss Piggy's ears.
• 24:24
  Whereas at Frank's logic was women always do uncomfortable
• 24:29
  and painful things for the sake of their appearance.
• 24:32
  They will squeeze their feet into shoes that don't fit.
• 24:36
  They will you know get themselves into a a a foundation
• 24:39
  garment that's uncomfortable. So he's his thinking was that
• 24:44
  her ears are just sort of pasted down under her hairstyle and she
• 24:48
  that's what she's doing. But some people thought that we
• 24:52
  forgot the ears, but it was it was a specific choice and it,
• 24:57
  you know, I think there were people in in within Henson that
• 25:01
  thought that the ears were forgotten because the here's the
• 25:04
  secret of Miss Piggy is that the ears are not part of the puppet.
• 25:08
  The ears are these foam ears. They have little pointy forks
• 25:13
  sticking out of them and once the hairstyle is done, you just
• 25:17
  sort of stick in the ears and the the forks go into the foam.
• 25:21
  It's a lot easier to, you know, do the hairstyling when you
• 25:25
  don't have to do it around the ears sticking out.
• 25:29
  So that was a a rule break that did not last, but the the gloves
• 25:34
  did. Something that's funny about
• 25:37
  that story is, is how much Frank was in charge of that decision,
• 25:42
  in charge of kind of what Miss Piggy does and how she looks and
• 25:45
  and could kind of make a new rule just kind of by saying it
• 25:49
  out loud. Yeah.
• 25:50
  And I think a lot of it is that that was his character.
• 25:54
  You know he you know while it was property of the Henson
• 25:57
  Company and it would he had more to do with the long term
• 26:03
  development of that character than anyone else.
• 26:06
  And by that time Jerry Jewell was not working full time for
• 26:11
  the company. We still had access to him.
• 26:13
  We'd run the stuff by him, but it was not like he was there to
• 26:17
  guide the vision of a character. And Frank did that.
• 26:22
  And he would write memos, you know, about, you know what, what
• 26:25
  he saw the character doing. And when we I wrote the Miss
• 26:30
  Piggy Cookbook with Allison Inches from the publishing
• 26:32
  department at Henson, and Frank came in and spent, you know, a
• 26:37
  day with us talking about what Miss Piggy's cookbook should be.
• 26:40
  And he was very emphatic about the fact that Miss Piggy should
• 26:44
  never actually discuss cooking herself because she doesn't
• 26:49
  cook. She doesn't know how.
• 26:51
  Yeah, that was that was in Miss Piggy's Guide to Life.
• 26:54
  There was a kind of a whole section on the most important
• 26:57
  thing in the kitchen is is the telephone exactly call for
• 27:00
  delivery? So that was, you know, and we
• 27:03
  actually said it on the Today show, You know, it's Miss Piggy.
• 27:07
  Why did you want to write a cookbook?
• 27:08
  And it's like why I figured it'd be great publicity get all my
• 27:11
  celebrity friend friends to send me recipes and I'd get on a book
• 27:14
  and that was, you know, that's the approach Miss Piggy would
• 27:17
  take. So that's what he wanted to make
• 27:19
  sure that Miss Piggy's material in the cookbook reflected that.
• 27:23
  And it was more about, you know, it was OK for her to talk about
• 27:28
  seating arrangements at at dinner and.
• 27:32
  Or her relationship with. With that celebrity.
• 27:35
  Exactly, exactly. But yeah, Frank had a lot to
• 27:38
  say. You know sometimes he he didn't
• 27:42
  have a lot to say where we just sort of wanted him to say more.
• 27:46
  But it you know he, you know he had a very close relationship
• 27:51
  with the character. And we we found, I certainly
• 27:56
  found that trying to think about her in the way that he saw her
• 28:02
  was really the way to to be successful in in writing for
• 28:07
  her. But in his mind at that time,
• 28:11
  Miss Piggy was not a big star, but she thought she was a big
• 28:16
  star. Now in reality, I think the
• 28:21
  reality is that she was a bigger star than Frank wanted us to
• 28:25
  think she was, because it's funnier when she gets deflated.
• 28:31
  I think that nowadays Miss Piggy is treated as more of an actual
• 28:38
  superstar than someone who is a legend in her own mind and I
• 28:44
  think. Like she goes on on drag
• 28:46
  RuPaul's Drag Race and everyone just cheers and is so excited to
• 28:49
  see. Her, I mean, I I did a segment
• 28:51
  with her for Project Runway and, you know, the designers were
• 28:57
  thrilled to be designing for Miss Piggy, an amazing
• 29:00
  superstar. And it was, this was in the Eric
• 29:04
  Jacobson era. And it it was a lot of fun.
• 29:08
  But it was, you know, I think that in the earlier incarnation
• 29:13
  it would have been, you know, positioned as this is, you know,
• 29:17
  something that losers get to do is design a dress for Miss
• 29:20
  Piggy. But this was, you know, I think
• 29:23
  that it's in in today's celebrity age, it kind of makes
• 29:29
  sense for Piggy to actually be an actual celebrity.
• 29:33
  Why is that? Well.
• 29:35
  I think that part of it is that to do it the other way is a
• 29:39
  little more subtle and you don't necessarily have the time to
• 29:45
  make that joke work and I think you do.
• 29:48
  You know if you look at the sitcom, The Muppets sitcom, she
• 29:53
  was seriously a a late night host.
• 29:56
  She wasn't someone who created her own show and was airing it
• 30:00
  on YouTube and trying to convince people that it was a
• 30:03
  network thing. It was an actual network show.
• 30:06
  So to do it in the in the way that Miss Piggy was thought of
• 30:11
  in in that earlier era, it's a complicated thing to sell and
• 30:15
  you don't always have the time because people are not watching
• 30:19
  it for 1/2 hour. It's the one thing that I think
• 30:22
  there's sort of a transition that was made where she becomes
• 30:26
  explicitly like a diva. Like first she's she was a
• 30:29
  superstar in her own mind and the and the focus was on how how
• 30:33
  great she was and and kind of is she actually good at doing this
• 30:37
  and kind of moving into diva. It's more about how difficult
• 30:40
  she is. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:42
  And I think one of the interesting things is, and this
• 30:45
  is sort of a cultural shift, that has also happened.
• 30:48
  Part of the joke of the earlier Miss Piggy things is that she's
• 30:52
  not, you know, she's she thinks she's great.
• 30:55
  Part of that joke was that she wasn't really good at anything.
• 30:59
  You know, she was not a great singer.
• 31:01
  She's not a dancer. She, you know, acts OK.
• 31:04
  But that was the joke, is that she thinks she's a great star,
• 31:08
  but she's not good at anything nowadays.
• 31:10
  You don't have to be good at anything to be an enormous star.
• 31:14
  So I think it's not necessarily that piggy has changed.
• 31:19
  I think culture has changed around her, where you have all
• 31:22
  of the Real Housewives and all of these people on television
• 31:27
  who don't have to be good at anything.
• 31:29
  And I'm not intending to slam them.
• 31:30
  I'm not saying they're not good at anything.
• 31:32
  I'm just saying they don't have to be.
• 31:33
  No one is requiring that of them.
• 31:36
  Yeah, you know, the Real Housewives don't have to be
• 31:38
  great singers or dancers or actors.
• 31:40
  They just have to be Divas. They have to be, you know, for
• 31:44
  lack of a better word, difficult.
• 31:46
  That's what their their, their attention is all about.
• 31:50
  So in some ways, I don't think that Miss Piggy has changed.
• 31:53
  I think the culture around her has changed.
• 31:56
  So sort of just like just now when I'm thinking about it, it's
• 31:59
  sort of coming to me that that's why it's more real now, because
• 32:05
  the world has caught up to Miss Piggy.
• 32:08
  Let's talk some more about working with Frank.
• 32:10
  One thing I that has always been interesting for me is you know I
• 32:13
  I knew that the print interviews obviously that somebody somebody
• 32:17
  was writing them, but what about live appearances like when she
• 32:20
  goes in and goes on a talk show as you were talking about like
• 32:23
  she's talking to Matt Lauer. How much is is scripted before
• 32:27
  Frank comes in and how much is is sort of ad Lib done on the
• 32:30
  spot? Well, a lot of scripted.
• 32:32
  How much of that gets used is totally up to Frank.
• 32:35
  What will happen is when we know that there's an appearance going
• 32:39
  to happen, I will or I did or Jim or whoever else is doing it.
• 32:45
  Usually what happens, you'll get in touch with the producers over
• 32:48
  there. You figure out what is being
• 32:50
  introduced and then I will also know what is trying to be
• 32:55
  promoted, what are, what is, what are Henson or Disney,
• 32:58
  whoever, What are they trying to get out of this?
• 33:00
  And then we'll create a rough script, Questions and answers
• 33:07
  also. And so you're giving the hosts
• 33:10
  sort of. Here are some feed feed lines
• 33:12
  for questions. Yeah, yeah, we'll and and in any
• 33:15
  other talk show appearance, what will happen and they'll they'll
• 33:18
  do a pre interview when when a human goes on a talk show.
• 33:21
  So this process is sort of in, in place of a pre interview, you
• 33:26
  know, if Tim Allen's going on a talk show, usually Tim Allen
• 33:29
  will talk to one of their segment producers about, you
• 33:32
  know, what he wanted. It's like, oh this happened to
• 33:34
  me the other day. It'd be fun to talk about and
• 33:35
  then they figure. Out.
• 33:36
  Kind of like, what are the actual interesting stories that
• 33:38
  go someplace? Yeah.
• 33:40
  And then those questions will be given to the host and you know,
• 33:44
  so Tim Allen knows exactly what's going to be asked or
• 33:47
  roughly. And so that's what I do.
• 33:50
  Instead of him talking to Miss Piggy or or to Frank, they'll
• 33:53
  talk to me. I'll figure out some stuff, then
• 33:56
  I'll run it by Frank. And if I have not come up with
• 34:00
  an attitude or a concept for the overall piece, Frank will then
• 34:04
  discuss that with me. And he might say, well, you
• 34:08
  know, maybe Miss Piggy needs to get someplace or, you know, she
• 34:13
  is just, you know, they never got back to her about something
• 34:16
  else or, you know, yeah. And then I'll work that into the
• 34:20
  script. And what Frank wants to do, he
• 34:24
  wants to get to a point where he's not using the script.
• 34:28
  He doesn't want to feel constrained.
• 34:31
  So what he would do then is go through.
• 34:35
  He'll circle sort of the punch lines that he wants to hit and
• 34:39
  then take a 3 by 5 index card and he'll write those lines, you
• 34:45
  know, on on like one card. He will basically condense my
• 34:49
  three or four page script into one card.
• 34:51
  He'll tape that onto his knee because he doesn't want to have
• 34:56
  to be dealing with multiple pages and scripts and stuff and
• 35:00
  then he'll do it, you know, and and he will hit those gags and
• 35:06
  but I'll. See, he's, he's there, live to
• 35:08
  to actually interact in the moment.
• 35:10
  Yeah. So he knows, you know, we've
• 35:12
  had, we had done shows where they wanted to handle it on more
• 35:16
  word for word and and Frank pushed back and it's like, you
• 35:19
  know, I think when you're doing a show like that day in and day
• 35:23
  out, a lot of times the producers want their host to
• 35:27
  feel as comfortable as possible. But want things to go very
• 35:31
  smoothly. Yeah, but a Miss Piggy interview
• 35:34
  kind of is best when the host is as uncomfortable as possible and
• 35:40
  Miss Piggy's taking it in completely different places and
• 35:43
  doesn't, and the host doesn't know where she's going.
• 35:46
  And that's. I don't know what Frank wanted
• 35:48
  to do and sometimes we would get pushed back from the shows that
• 35:51
  wanted to try and script it a little more clearly but more
• 35:54
  often than not they booked Miss Piggy because they wanted to get
• 35:57
  Miss Piggy and that's what you got and and I don't know how it
• 36:01
  is done these days. I've done a bunch of things with
• 36:04
  Eric, but ever you know, and a a few things with Disney, but
• 36:09
  Disney kind of wants to script things out a lot more ahead of
• 36:14
  time. So all of the different powers
• 36:17
  that be can make sure that nothing is going to, you know,
• 36:20
  bring down the mighty Disney. And so, so Eric, you think often
• 36:24
  goes in with more of a script than than frankly?
• 36:27
  I think he probably goes in with more of a script, but I'm not
• 36:30
  saying he always necessarily has, you know, sticks to it it
• 36:35
  the performers are still sort of the final editorial process in
• 36:39
  all of this. I remember just one of the most
• 36:42
  memorable 1996 was such a weird year, I think for Piggy and and
• 36:48
  for Frank, they were doing what, Muppets Tonight and Muppet
• 36:52
  Treasure Island and The Cookbook all in the same year.
• 36:55
  So he's, you know, we're doing a lot of Piggy interviews and it
• 37:00
  seemed like Piggy was just really losing her patience.
• 37:03
  Yeah. One of the things that I would
• 37:07
  love to do, you know, and the other thing that that I'll talk
• 37:12
  about this first is that you know we would do these virtual
• 37:17
  junkets, you know where you would go into television studio
• 37:21
  and now people do it at home over Zoom.
• 37:23
  But when you used to go into a little television studio and
• 37:26
  they would line up about a dozen or more different news outlets
• 37:31
  across the country that would then interview piggy over
• 37:36
  satellite. So we did it for like the
• 37:39
  Cookbook or something. So we would write roughly, you
• 37:43
  know, we we could reuse some of these things.
• 37:48
  Right, because it was going to be shown in different parts of
• 37:49
  the. Country, because going to be in
• 37:50
  different markets and if it was, sometimes you'd get like
• 37:53
  Entertainment Tonight would do it over the junket.
• 37:55
  So you do something special for them.
• 37:57
  But just imagine that we were there for like 3 or 4 hours and
• 38:01
  and Miss Piggy's doing the same, essentially the same interview
• 38:04
  and over and over again. So yeah, Frank's going to have
• 38:06
  fun with it. He's going to, you know make fun
• 38:08
  of the names of the people because and and he'll say them
• 38:12
  over and over again, he'll get a thing and going he's trying to
• 38:16
  keep it. So it's fun because while people
• 38:19
  are are not going to see, because they're in different
• 38:22
  markets, in Frank's mind he doesn't want it to be the same
• 38:27
  thing over and over again because he wants to be fresh.
• 38:29
  He wants to keep it fresh. It's one of the things that, you
• 38:33
  know, we would do. We did a Martha Stewart special,
• 38:37
  we did a couple of Martha Stewart specials, and I wrote
• 38:39
  great stuff about him making fun of Martha.
• 38:41
  Because you're in a situation where Miss Piggy can say what
• 38:45
  everybody else watching is saying.
• 38:48
  Do you like that one, little Insy Beansy?
• 38:51
  You need my glasses to see that. Well, look, this is what I do
• 38:53
  with this. You cut a star shaped out of the
• 38:55
  center of a larger cookie so you have a nice hole in it.
• 38:58
  Oh, obsessive. You can, you know, can really
• 39:02
  have fun with it. But Frank sometimes would use
• 39:05
  these great lines during the rehearsal and he would have, you
• 39:11
  know, he would get that, you know what, he wanted to come up
• 39:13
  with different things because he wanted he was trying to.
• 39:18
  This was a show not shot in front of an audience.
• 39:21
  You know they're in Martha Stewart's barn someplace.
• 39:25
  She's making a gingerbread house.
• 39:26
  Yeah, but he's exactly he he's trying to get the crew to laugh.
• 39:31
  That sort of. I think that's part of the game
• 39:33
  he plays. Is that the crew's not supposed
• 39:35
  to laugh. They're in the middle of of
• 39:38
  Martha's barn. He wants the crew to laugh.
• 39:41
  He wants people at home to hear the the this crew laughing.
• 39:44
  So if he does it during the rehearsal, he's he wants
• 39:48
  something else. So, you know, and he would say
• 39:52
  it. He would say me and you know, I
• 39:53
  didn't go up for that shoot. But he, you know, called me
• 39:55
  afterwards and he said, oh, you had some great stuff.
• 39:58
  It was great. It killed during the rehearsal.
• 39:59
  But I didn't use it for the show, you know, because I didn't
• 40:02
  want to repeat it. And it's like what difference is
• 40:04
  the number one? He.
• 40:05
  Did. Yeah, but that's in him, you
• 40:07
  know, he's kind of performing for the the crew.
• 40:10
  He doesn't want to give them the same material twice.
• 40:13
  Well, one memorable one for the the cookbook was Regis and
• 40:18
  Kathie Lee. Yes, which I love, where she
• 40:22
  basically just got into she She brawled.
• 40:25
  I will tell you the the the story behind that.
• 40:28
  Excellent. So we're getting ready to do
• 40:30
  this. And we had invited Kathy Lee to
• 40:36
  do a recipe for the cookbook, and she didn't, neither that her
• 40:41
  people didn't get back to us. And I told that to Michael
• 40:45
  Gelman, the producer, and he's like, oh, don't mention it, you
• 40:49
  shouldn't. Mention it, you know.
• 40:51
  Get her started. Don't mention it.
• 40:53
  And like, I'm fine. I'll tell Frank and I told Frank
• 40:57
  the back story and it's like, you know, then we invited Kathy
• 41:00
  Lee to do the cookbook and she said no, but the producer said
• 41:05
  we shouldn't mention that. And Frank's like, OK, so we're
• 41:08
  doing the thing and God bless Regis, He's just doing the
• 41:10
  cooking. He's like, because Piggy can't
• 41:12
  do anything. She's got her rod hands.
• 41:14
  And even if she did have working hands, she wouldn't want to
• 41:17
  touch any of his food. So Regis is going through the
• 41:20
  recipe, and in the middle of it, Kathy Lee pipes up.
• 41:24
  Or I think she might have. I don't know if it was during
• 41:26
  that segment or or, you know, in the intro during host chat, but
• 41:30
  she starts talking about how offended she was that they
• 41:32
  didn't ask her to be in the celebrity cookbook.
• 41:36
  And it's like, did Gelman have just as much trouble getting
• 41:40
  Miss Piggy's apron on this morning as he did Dolly's?
• 41:43
  Did he help you Miss Piggy? She's not.
• 41:46
  Insulting me? No, not at all.
• 41:49
  I happen to like you very, very much.
• 41:51
  No. No.
• 41:51
  Why? Why?
• 41:53
  There was nothing personal. I think we we went through your
• 41:56
  people. Oh, you went through her people?
• 41:59
  Yes. My people.
• 42:01
  You talk right to me. No.
• 42:04
  Well, that's all right. Miss picking.
• 42:05
  You're forgiven. You're forgiven.
• 42:07
  We don't care. That's OK.
• 42:08
  She'll get over. You.
• 42:09
  Know what? She gets Nova.
• 42:10
  Bigger than that. Who?
• 42:11
  Cares. So she was picking a fight then?
• 42:16
  Yeah, she was picking a fight and I go up to Gelman during
• 42:19
  commercial and like I'm assuming that we can talk about it now
• 42:24
  and he's like be my guest, you know.
• 42:27
  So I went to Frank and said you know you can go at it, you know
• 42:31
  So that the segment sort of. Went.
• 42:35
  Descends into this thing where you know, I, you know, we did
• 42:39
  invite you. No one told me.
• 42:40
  And I was like. Celebrity cooking week
• 42:42
  continues. Yes.
• 42:43
  And here she is, Miss Piggy, everybody or chef for today.
• 42:47
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 42:48
  Thank you, the wonderful collection of recipes.
• 42:51
  From almost dear, dear Friends, major stars.
• 42:56
  Don't rub it in. Most dearest friends?
• 42:59
  No. My closest friends.
• 43:02
  Very good friends. All right.
• 43:05
  And during that whole thing, Regis is still just trying to
• 43:08
  make the recipe. And then so Miss Piggy's yelling
• 43:12
  at him. It's like you're still doing
• 43:14
  this. Can I ask you a question?
• 43:16
  Sure. Shoot.
• 43:17
  Are you married to Kermit the Frog?
• 43:19
  Yes. Really.
• 43:21
  Yes. We're very happy.
• 43:23
  How long? How long have you been married?
• 43:24
  Years. I thought you were just
• 43:27
  boyfriend and girlfriend. It was really none of your
• 43:29
  business, was it? All right, so you cut some some
• 43:34
  vegetables and you grill there. OK, now now what do I do here?
• 43:38
  I. Have no idea.
• 43:39
  OK. All right, I'm mixing now.
• 43:43
  OK, first, first, we're going to use 22 tablespoons of lemon.
• 43:49
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 43:50
  We're cooking Candace's recipe. 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.
• 43:54
  Here's one tablespoon of lemon zest.
• 43:59
  What? You know what?
• 44:02
  What? I couldn't care less about this
• 44:04
  recipe. So at the end of the day, when
• 44:11
  you're doing any sort of Muppet talk show appearance, you want
• 44:16
  it to be entertaining, you want it to be you know, it's not just
• 44:20
  I'm going to come and talk and show a clip and that's it you we
• 44:25
  always went into it trying to create a unit of entertainment.
• 44:30
  We wanted something to be funny. We wanted something to be
• 44:32
  visual. And certainly that segment ended
• 44:36
  up being that it was not what we planned.
• 44:39
  But thanks to Kathie Lee complaining about, you know, and
• 44:43
  she was genuinely a little chagrined at the end because
• 44:46
  someone didn't tell her that they she had been invited to do
• 44:50
  this. Her people turned it down.
• 44:52
  And you know, so yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun.
• 44:57
  But what you know, we also did during that thing, we did this
• 45:00
  very elaborate Today Show appearance with the whole cast
• 45:04
  of the Today Show sitting around the table.
• 45:06
  Because when we were planning out this book, we're like, oh,
• 45:09
  if we invite every single person on the Today Show to contribute
• 45:13
  a recipe, there's no way they wouldn't do a big segment to
• 45:16
  promote it. So that's what they did because
• 45:18
  we had Bryant Gumbel and Katie and Gene Shalon, everybody,
• 45:21
  Willard, Scott, everybody in a row talking about the things.
• 45:24
  And they devoted like 15 or 20 minutes to us and they built a
• 45:27
  whole set. So yeah, that was it was
• 45:30
  successful. So interesting that, that you
• 45:33
  feel like you have to plus the appearance.
• 45:36
  Well, it's not that we feel we have to, I think.
• 45:39
  Well, that that's. I I think.
• 45:41
  That's the a goal that that we. Feel that there's an expectation
• 45:45
  in the audience to be entertained by The Muppets,
• 45:49
  right? They don't just, they don't want
• 45:51
  to hear an interview. They want a little something
• 45:54
  more. If they want to interview just,
• 45:56
  you know, anybody, anybody will do.
• 45:58
  But if we're doing You Got The Muppets, let's do something more
• 46:03
  special. Something special?
• 46:04
  So we did, you know we've done things where we've taken over
• 46:07
  the Today show where we had, you know Muppet versions of the the
• 46:12
  main hosts come in and take over and we had, you know, one of my
• 46:17
  favorite bits, this is something that Bill Beretta sort of ad
• 46:20
  libbed and it was the bit was Bobo, Matt Lauer and I think it
• 46:26
  was Ann Curry and and whoever else was doing it at the time.
• 46:30
  They were they were trying to get back into the studio and
• 46:33
  Bobo was the guard. Everybody just take a.
• 46:36
  Breath to get there. I understand.
• 46:38
  I we have the. Regulations to do.
• 46:40
  Here I understand, Sir. Now, is this your current
• 46:44
  address Mr. Lawyer? Lauer.
• 46:47
  Lauer. OK.
• 46:49
  Is this your current address, Mr. Lawyer Lauer?
• 46:52
  It's Lauer. Lauer.
• 46:54
  Lauer, Is this your current address, Mr. Lawyer Lauer.
• 47:00
  Lauer. Not Lauer.
• 47:01
  I can't say it any louder than that.
• 47:03
  Oh. Man.
• 47:05
  And they, you know, Bill just dragged that out for like 2
• 47:07
  minutes. So, yeah, I mean, I think that
• 47:10
  we go into it, we probably have a higher expectation than the
• 47:14
  audience, but I think the audience deserves to be
• 47:16
  entertained and especially because most of these shows are
• 47:20
  just incredibly. Boring.
• 47:22
  Boring. Yeah, there was another sort of,
• 47:26
  in that same era, another kind of memorable set of interviews
• 47:30
  with Jay Leno. Those got those got very flirty.
• 47:33
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 47:34
  And one of the reasons is I think or those when we were, I
• 47:40
  think Jim would cover, Jim Lewis would cover a lot of those,
• 47:43
  those Burbank ones. But I think that Miss Piggy
• 47:47
  would be behind the desk with Jay as opposed to on the other
• 47:51
  side, and that the proximity gives it a little bit more
• 47:55
  interaction. Excuse me, is that your knee?
• 47:58
  No, that's not my name. But the one that I worked on in
• 48:06
  that era was the New Year's Eve. We did New Year's Eve and The
• 48:11
  Tonight Show had Miss Piggy being the Times Square reporter.
• 48:15
  Oh, yes. On top of the roof of the
• 48:17
  Marriott Marquis. I've seen that.
• 48:19
  And I wrote material for it. We were up there and Stephanie
• 48:24
  came along. My wife Stephanie came along
• 48:25
  because she was going to be there in case a right hand was
• 48:27
  needed. And Rene Rochelle, who was in
• 48:31
  production at the time. So it's just a bunch of us and
• 48:34
  they. Like actually on a roof.
• 48:37
  Yeah. Well, they gave us a hotel room
• 48:40
  and then the window of hotel room opened up onto this roof.
• 48:44
  And then, you know, what they didn't tell you is that
• 48:46
  everybody else also had to use this hotel room to get out to
• 48:48
  the roof. So, you know, we're trying to
• 48:50
  just sort of sit in between things and there are people just
• 48:53
  going back and forth. It's freezing outside and you're
• 48:56
  there right next to the people who are throwing away the
• 48:59
  throwing out the confetti. And I I wrote some material and
• 49:03
  the thing that was really funny is that in Times Square, on the
• 49:09
  big video screen, they would show these segments.
• 49:14
  They had The Tonight Show on the big video screen, but not the
• 49:17
  audio because couldn't hear it. They would, it had captioning
• 49:22
  and we did a segment where. Oh, by the way, Jay, yes, I have
• 49:29
  a wonderful fun fact for you. About 1,000,000 people are
• 49:33
  expected in Times Square tonight. 85% of them are coming
• 49:38
  from outside New York, 15% of them are New Yorkers and 100% of
• 49:45
  them are total whackos. And it took a while for the
• 49:51
  caption to go up there, and we're waiting and waiting and as
• 49:54
  soon as Absolutely crazy goes up, you hear the audience down
• 49:58
  below going, But that was live. We don't have live on that on
• 50:07
  that year and I think a few years Jay used to do that where
• 50:10
  they would do their show live and out.
• 50:13
  You know, it's three years, 3 hours ahead of time.
• 50:16
  So if they could do it at 9, you know, 830 or whatever and then
• 50:23
  it was midnight where we were and yeah, writing material.
• 50:29
  But the the best thing that, you know, even more creative than
• 50:34
  that was the fact that it was just so, so cold.
• 50:37
  Yes. And this piggy coming.
• 50:41
  Out in that moment, yeah. How are you doing there exactly
• 50:45
  where? Are you where?
• 50:46
  Am I? Yeah, I'm on top of a building
• 50:49
  in the middle of my chain. How do you think I I'm freezing
• 50:52
  my pajamas off. What?
• 50:55
  What part of the pig is the pajamca?
• 50:57
  Well, never mind. Let me ask you that way what you
• 50:59
  do. I know what?
• 51:02
  What does the crowd look like? It looks dangerous, Jane, right
• 51:05
  now. Right now, they're passing Dick
• 51:09
  Clark around over their heads. And and just that that Frank
• 51:14
  wanted so badly to get back inside to the room.
• 51:19
  So that was what was really coming through in in Piggy, you
• 51:23
  know? And so funny that she would
• 51:25
  react that that that's it was a very piggy reaction.
• 51:28
  Oh yeah, yeah. But it was a pretty high profile
• 51:32
  thing for Piggy and I think it was a great use of her and but
• 51:36
  it was really cold. I have always wondered about
• 51:40
  Frank's availability during various periods because
• 51:43
  sometimes he he would show up like even you know he'll be on
• 51:47
  the Today show, he'll be on on Jay Leno sometimes when there
• 51:51
  isn't anything to promote but also like but he's like how did
• 51:54
  how did it work as he became busier and busier with his non
• 51:58
  piggy work. Well, it would always be whether
• 52:01
  or not he was available, you know, and and I think that
• 52:03
  sometimes, you know, we would go, you know, he would go into
• 52:07
  these projects. He knew that we were doing the
• 52:09
  cookbook. He would need to be supporting
• 52:12
  it at some point, you know. And so he knew that there was
• 52:15
  going to be a certain number of appearances.
• 52:18
  Frank also it would you know more often than not he when he
• 52:23
  was directing films he directed in New York most of the time.
• 52:29
  You know, he always wanted to run his show shows out in New
• 52:32
  York and if he was directing a a movie in in LA, then you know,
• 52:38
  we sometimes have access to him to do the LA shows, you know?
• 52:44
  And so and he really enjoyed still kind of coming back to the
• 52:48
  puppets, coming back to these characters.
• 52:50
  I think so, yeah. You know when you don't have to
• 52:52
  do it every day? Yeah, you enjoy doing it once in
• 52:56
  a while. Right.
• 52:58
  So besides live appearances, what other kinds of things were
• 53:00
  you were you writing? While I was doing the video game
• 53:04
  stuff, the early CD-ROM games, I did the Muppet, Muppet, Treasure
• 53:08
  Island and The Muppets inside. I I love that game.
• 53:11
  Muppets inside. Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
• 53:14
  It wasn't fun for me because no one else knew what it was
• 53:18
  supposed to be, so I didn't get a lot of notes.
• 53:21
  Yeah, because they didn't understand the whole thing of
• 53:24
  the branching game and on these different options.
• 53:28
  And I was working for Michael Frith at the time and and I gave
• 53:31
  him the script to read and it's like, oh, what seems OK, but
• 53:37
  there's a there's an ending on page 7 and that goes on for
• 53:40
  another 130 pages. But I don't quite understand.
• 53:43
  I have to sort of explain it. So because people didn't
• 53:46
  understand, it was very new at the time, that was since 1995.
• 53:52
  We were doing that. You know, people let me get away
• 53:55
  with a lot of stuff. And it's so funny.
• 53:58
  It's it's really you know it's it's a shame it's always been a
• 54:01
  shame that that people were not able to like if they didn't
• 54:04
  have. I forget what the what the
• 54:06
  actual. Windows 90. 5 Windows 95 They
• 54:10
  couldn't see what was basically a a real Muppet Show product, A
• 54:13
  real Muppet production. Yeah, that was so much fun.
• 54:17
  And the way that was done, All of both The Muppets inside and
• 54:22
  the Muppet Treasure Island CD-ROM stuff was all shot around
• 54:26
  the same time when they were doing the Muppet Treasure Island
• 54:29
  movie. And they set up a little stage
• 54:33
  across the street from the sound stage or across the alley from
• 54:36
  the sound stage where they were doing most of the movie.
• 54:39
  And whenever anybody was not working, they were brought over
• 54:43
  to shoot their stuff for these CD-ROM games.
• 54:46
  And I was. I stayed in New York.
• 54:48
  I didn't go over for it, but they had me on call.
• 54:52
  I had to to work for the. I had to sort of be on call on
• 54:57
  London Hours in New York. In case they didn't, you're
• 55:00
  working. London time.
• 55:01
  So yeah, and this was before a lot of and before there was, you
• 55:06
  know, anything like Zoom where you can actually dial in.
• 55:08
  So I was just faxing things back and forth, but it was a lot of
• 55:12
  fun. I I love those projects.
• 55:14
  So I would do those. I did products, licensed
• 55:18
  products, and you know the cards that would go with the Miss
• 55:21
  Piggy collectibles or the backs of the Mead notebooks.
• 55:26
  Like trading card the back of. Trading card.
• 55:28
  I did all the trading cards. Yeah, yeah, I did.
• 55:30
  The song parodies the posters. There's a poster on your wall.
• 55:33
  Yeah, I wrote for the The Gap parody and and The Beatles
• 55:37
  parody and a bunch of those. For the trading cards, there are
• 55:40
  some, There's like Super Beaker and and Be a Pictra which are so
• 55:45
  funny which have so many funny jokes in them and totally makes
• 55:48
  sense that you were writing that.
• 55:50
  We would what we would do for those they they basically we
• 55:54
  would reuse a lot of material that had been shot for Muppet
• 55:57
  magazine or Hallmark or any of these other clients.
• 56:01
  So it was basically they had a a a new shoot that they would do
• 56:06
  these beautiful sort of the portraits and I think some of
• 56:10
  the some of the music, more recent music parodies like
• 56:13
  Bunsen was doing. Garth Brooks.
• 56:16
  Garth Brooks, So some of those were were shot and then we go
• 56:20
  through and it's like, OK, we're going to incorporate the
• 56:22
  current, the Kermitage collection into the trading
• 56:24
  cards so we can write new material for that.
• 56:27
  So it was a matter of, you know, these photos cost an enormous
• 56:31
  amount of money to shoot. So how can you do a series of 80
• 56:35
  or however many trading cards when you can't afford to shoot
• 56:39
  more than a dozen or, you know, 20 photos?
• 56:44
  So that's what. Yeah, to kind of go to the the
• 56:46
  back catalog. Yeah, yeah.
• 56:48
  And that we have that. We did that a lot.
• 56:50
  You know when we would do posters for The Muppet Vision
• 56:54
  down in Florida, we did these posters for the pre show and Jim
• 56:59
  Lewis and I did a lot of these where we'd repurpose some of the
• 57:03
  the calendars, the old movie parody calendars.
• 57:07
  So we did it. Was like a top hat.
• 57:09
  Yeah, and we did a Tarzan thing. We would we wouldn't, you know,
• 57:13
  we had to reformat it because these were big vertical posters
• 57:16
  and so we couldn't use the actual poster designs.
• 57:19
  But the photography was reused and one of my favorite lines
• 57:23
  that I came up with was for the the Tarzan one with with Kermit
• 57:28
  and Miss Piggy. And I wrote she's Hollywood,
• 57:31
  he's Vine. Thank you.
• 57:34
  Thank you very much. And The thing is with those
• 57:37
  posters and the trading cards, that's where you can really do
• 57:40
  the jokes and the puns and things where I would not want to
• 57:45
  do that in dialogue in in a a script or in ATV appearance, you
• 57:51
  know, in that. And when you're doing ATV
• 57:55
  appearance or or a script of a show or something, you want the
• 57:59
  comedy to come out of character and that that really makes a
• 58:03
  difference. But when you're relying solely
• 58:07
  on a still image and a written word, yeah, let's do a parody
• 58:11
  song. Let's do you know you can have
• 58:14
  more fun with the words in that way.
• 58:17
  Going back to Miss Piggy, how how was he viewed in the
• 58:20
  company? Like did you know?
• 58:21
  Obviously in the late 70s and early 80s she was a a huge star
• 58:27
  and was viewed as like being super important.
• 58:29
  She actually like separate, even separate from The Muppets.
• 58:32
  And more important, did the the feelings about Miss Piggy change
• 58:36
  over time? I don't think so.
• 58:38
  I think she was always seen as sort of the big star of that
• 58:43
  group in terms of you know in licensing.
• 58:47
  You know they could do a beautiful collector's doll of
• 58:50
  Miss Piggy and they did that New Year's Eve Millennium one out of
• 58:55
  ceramic and and they could do the posters and they can do the
• 59:01
  calendars and they you don't see or at least at that point in
• 59:05
  time you didn't see it coming with the other characters that
• 59:07
  much. They knew that Miss Piggy still
• 59:10
  had this enormous following in a way that the other characters
• 59:15
  didn't. I think that Miss Piggy was also
• 59:20
  seen as sort of the adult character.
• 59:25
  While a lot of these other characters were sort of targeted
• 59:29
  in their merchandise to kids, Miss Piggy had an adult fan base
• 59:35
  and and they could do the more upscale things with her.
• 59:40
  So I I think that she was seen in a very positive way in the
• 59:44
  company and it was always about how do we get Frank to do what
• 59:48
  we need. You know how how can we can we
• 59:52
  do this Because the merchandise would more often than not need
• 59:57
  the support from Frank to do it. And it was not whether or not he
• 1:00:02
  wanted to. It was about trying to make
• 1:00:04
  things work with his schedule. We they did a great deal to do
• 1:00:08
  Miss Piggy's perfume and and since then they've had another
• 1:00:11
  Miss Piggy perfume but they had done Moi.
• 1:00:15
  With Bloomingdale's and I wrote a script for a video and we need
• 1:00:20
  Frank to come in for the video and we tried to make it.
• 1:00:24
  You know, we we shot a lot of elements without Frank because
• 1:00:29
  some of these things were just close-ups of Miss Biggie's hand
• 1:00:33
  holding a mirror or you know a flip of a hair or just a close
• 1:00:37
  up of an eye. So we could have another
• 1:00:40
  puppeteer just double while we did these little elements.
• 1:00:45
  And then Frank came, you know, swung by for an hour to do the
• 1:00:50
  main punchline. And then we did a little like in
• 1:00:52
  store video where he's talking to the thing.
• 1:00:55
  But you know, we had to also keep it in a way where it fit in
• 1:01:00
  with what Frank's thinking. So this was a video I think was
• 1:01:04
  being shown to the Bloomingdale's sales team.
• 1:01:07
  And in Frank's mind, it's like, well, why isn't Miss Piggy
• 1:01:11
  there? So we had a a green screen set
• 1:01:15
  up and we had a little bit of a railing from like a ship and you
• 1:01:21
  know, we had Piggy standing in front talking about how she's on
• 1:01:26
  the ship and all that stuff and couldn't be with you, blah, blah
• 1:01:29
  blah. And in the middle of the
• 1:01:30
  talking, we just had stagehands move the the green screen out of
• 1:01:33
  the way, revealing the back of the studio.
• 1:01:35
  So she, you know, it's it's the way of just sort of making it.
• 1:01:39
  OK, Piggy just didn't come, you know?
• 1:01:43
  It's not like she's on a ship. She's somewhere, you know.
• 1:01:45
  So that's, you know, we could do that.
• 1:01:47
  Yeah, she always has a storyline.
• 1:01:49
  Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's that
• 1:01:53
  makes her special. You know, Piggy is just an
• 1:01:57
  amazing character in so many ways.
• 1:02:00
  And one of the things that people don't really think about
• 1:02:03
  it is that before The Muppets and Frank, Frank told me about
• 1:02:08
  this and and you know, say it's his family, goes back into
• 1:02:11
  puppetry for years and years. And Frank told me once, You
• 1:02:16
  know, when you think about it, before Jim Henson and The
• 1:02:19
  Muppets, a puppet never changed clothes, you know, you're
• 1:02:23
  pumping Punch and Judy would be dressed that way forever.
• 1:02:27
  Howdy, Judy. They have their uniform on,
• 1:02:29
  Yeah. And when you think about it, the
• 1:02:33
  fact that, you know, Miss Piggy has such a vast wardrobe, right?
• 1:02:38
  That's what makes her real. You know it.
• 1:02:41
  I remember what I would call up the the costume people at the
• 1:02:45
  workshop when we were going to do one of these appearances.
• 1:02:48
  And I'd say Barbara, you know, we're doing the view or
• 1:02:51
  something like that. And I'd say, what does she have
• 1:02:54
  to wear? And Barbara would always say the
• 1:02:56
  same thing. She's got nothing to wear.
• 1:03:00
  I'm like Pepper. What?
• 1:03:02
  I've seen her closet. Miss Piggy's closet used to take
• 1:03:06
  up the, you know, third floor wall of the carriage house 3
• 1:03:10
  levels high. Oh my God.
• 1:03:11
  There was this enormous closet with everything from every piece
• 1:03:14
  of clothing she ever wore. But no matter you know, they
• 1:03:18
  because they would always want to make something.
• 1:03:21
  Do a new thing, right? Because that's what.
• 1:03:23
  That's what Miss Piggy would say.
• 1:03:25
  Yeah. And it it was a wonderful thing.
• 1:03:28
  Yeah, that's, you know, that's what.
• 1:03:29
  That's what kept her real all these years.
• 1:03:32
  Can you tell me about the transition to Eric?
• 1:03:35
  You know, I don't know how Eric was selected, but I do know that
• 1:03:41
  it had happened around 2002, I think we were getting or 2001.
• 1:03:47
  It was the end of 2001 because we were getting ready to do was
• 1:03:51
  this Muppet Fest, Muppet Fest, and Frank said that he couldn't
• 1:03:55
  do Muppet Fest. I think he had another
• 1:03:57
  commitment. So this this was for folks like
• 1:04:01
  this was the only Muppet fan convention that ever happened.
• 1:04:04
  It was a wonderful two days. I was there, all these
• 1:04:07
  puppeteers with their characters performing live in front of a
• 1:04:10
  group of very excited bands. Yeah.
• 1:04:12
  And and so Eric, I think at that point was just getting ready.
• 1:04:17
  He was practicing. I don't think he had really done
• 1:04:21
  anything of note, but we did not feel it was fair to him to put
• 1:04:29
  him in front of this group of specific Henson fans for his
• 1:04:34
  first appearance as Miss Piggy. To do it live.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah, so it's that. Well, let's put Miss Piggy into
• 1:04:40
  the Muppet Fest event and into the live show, but let's do it
• 1:04:43
  on video. So a few weeks ahead of time we
• 1:04:46
  went and I think we shot this in Emilio Delgado's dressing room
• 1:04:50
  at Sesame Street because that's where Eric was was working.
• 1:04:54
  So we all went over there and we set up a camera and we did these
• 1:04:57
  little bits. We think we did like 3 or 4
• 1:04:59
  bits. We did one bit for the live show
• 1:05:01
  with Introduce Interrupt Brooke Shields and we did a couple of
• 1:05:07
  introductory things for the for the Muppet Fest.
• 1:05:11
  I'm sorry I couldn't make it the event.
• 1:05:13
  I'm very busy. This is what I'm doing, yeah.
• 1:05:15
  Exactly. You know, and what was wonderful
• 1:05:17
  about it is that I did not hear anyone talk about it, not being
• 1:05:22
  frank. I actually on the on the tough
• 1:05:24
  pigs forum I was swearing up and down that it must have been
• 1:05:29
  frank because it sounded so good and and why would they show you
• 1:05:34
  know a brand new person in front of the fans and I I really
• 1:05:37
  believe that. Yeah, I think Eric did an
• 1:05:39
  amazing job and he continues to do an amazing job the but you
• 1:05:45
  know when we did that particular thing for Muppet Fest, they were
• 1:05:48
  all very strictly scripted because you know, especially
• 1:05:53
  with the live show it we were interacting.
• 1:05:57
  So they couldn't really, you know, change it too much because
• 1:06:00
  we were going to be doing, we're going to be responding to it and
• 1:06:03
  we'd have to rewrite other parts of the show.
• 1:06:05
  So I think shortly after that, we were going to be doing the
• 1:06:09
  first Today Show appearance with Piggy and Eric.
• 1:06:13
  And when you're doing those appearances that are a little
• 1:06:16
  more spontaneous, you know, it's like, OK, well, Eric can do this
• 1:06:21
  voice, but how is he thinking on his feet with the character?
• 1:06:26
  Lib It's very it's very difficult.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah, and So what we did for that first one, I actually was
• 1:06:32
  under the desk with him and I had a little notepad so I could
• 1:06:37
  pass him notes during the thing, and I ended up not having to do
• 1:06:40
  it because, you know, it was clear fairly early on that he
• 1:06:43
  could handle this. And were there just in case he
• 1:06:46
  got stuck. Yeah, yeah, in case someone
• 1:06:49
  asked a question, because the thing that we are most concerned
• 1:06:52
  of, you know when you have characters, you have performers
• 1:06:56
  switch switching out, and I've gone through this with a few
• 1:06:59
  different people, is that you want to make sure that the
• 1:07:02
  characters still know what the character is supposed to know.
• 1:07:06
  You know, if if if Matt goes on, you know, is being interviewed
• 1:07:11
  by someone who had interviewed Kermit Dunn by Steve, he's got
• 1:07:15
  to know if in case that host says, hey, the last time you
• 1:07:17
  were here, we talked about what were we talking about.
• 1:07:20
  So that's what I'm most concerned about it.
• 1:07:22
  It ended up not being an issue and I worked with Eric on a
• 1:07:26
  bunch of things since then, from, you know, the Project
• 1:07:31
  Runway to more recently the D23. So you're still you're still
• 1:07:36
  doing this sometimes? Now and then, you know, and I
• 1:07:39
  don't do a lot, but the D 23 people hired me to produce The
• 1:07:43
  Muppet Christmas Carol 40th anniversary or 30th.
• 1:07:47
  It was 30th. Yeah.
• 1:07:48
  They did an anniversary event at the D23.
• 1:07:51
  They hired me to sort of produce that.
• 1:07:54
  And what was wonderful is that I wrote that segment we did with
• 1:07:58
  The Muppets and I wrote that with Jim Lewis and it was right
• 1:08:01
  before Jim retired from doing regular Muppet stuff.
• 1:08:04
  So it was sort of our last big thing to do together.
• 1:08:06
  So I'm happy, you know, It's like I am happy to do stuff when
• 1:08:10
  they call, but you know. It's kind of once in a while.
• 1:08:14
  Yeah, if you're listening, I'm, I'm still here guys.
• 1:08:17
  But yeah, every once in a while I'll do stuff.
• 1:08:19
  And what's really great is once you're you've done it, it's very
• 1:08:25
  easy to get back into the swing of it because we could you know
• 1:08:28
  when we're doing the D23. And since then Eric is sort of
• 1:08:32
  now he's the guardian of of the pig.
• 1:08:36
  And I written something where if you've if you saw it you can
• 1:08:41
  watch a little of it online. Nina W the the MC, she was
• 1:08:47
  wearing a green outfit with Kermit's face on it and the
• 1:08:53
  first version of the script I had Piggy saying you're wearing
• 1:08:57
  what I was going to wear. That's why I'm not speaking to
• 1:09:00
  you. And Eric called me and said
• 1:09:02
  listen, you know in in where he is.
• 1:09:07
  Higgy's not quite to that point. She's not back to like with
• 1:09:11
  Kermit. They're still sort of on their
• 1:09:13
  brake. So I don't think she would be
• 1:09:15
  upset that that because she wanted to wear it.
• 1:09:19
  She might be upset that Nina is wearing Kermit and not Piggy on
• 1:09:26
  her dress. So it's sort of like, let's
• 1:09:29
  let's change that, let's make it a little.
• 1:09:31
  Bit a subtle difference that that actually really does make,
• 1:09:34
  yeah. Yeah.
• 1:09:35
  So you could see that now Eric is really is that, you know,
• 1:09:40
  sort of custodian for the character to make sure that that
• 1:09:43
  she's being taken care of. You know, I worked with him on
• 1:09:47
  doing the Project Runway appearance or Miss Piggy's The
• 1:09:51
  Judge. And and Eric is such a nice
• 1:09:54
  person that he didn't want to say anything bad about the the
• 1:09:57
  hard work that the people were doing.
• 1:09:59
  And we're like, well, it's Miss Piggy, you know, it's like we
• 1:10:02
  had to come up with stuff that was funny but not too critical
• 1:10:07
  because Eric didn't really want to, you know, they worked so
• 1:10:09
  hard. So we were, we were trying to
• 1:10:12
  come up with stuff, stuff that was, you know, sort of straddled
• 1:10:17
  the the line. So where did you go?
• 1:10:21
  Was it like, I imagine, talking about herself in the in the
• 1:10:24
  clothes more? Little bit, yeah.
• 1:10:26
  And also it's like trying to you know something you know it's
• 1:10:30
  like well it looks like it's out of Starfleet Academy where it
• 1:10:33
  it's sort of not necessarily critical but just sort of
• 1:10:36
  comparing it to other things And but it was the the IT, it was
• 1:10:44
  just an interesting experience to to see how a show like that
• 1:10:47
  is put together. You know everything.
• 1:10:51
  You know, when I was doing you were either doing talk shows or
• 1:10:54
  scripted shows and this is sort of like that in between.
• 1:10:58
  And then the physical stuff we, you know, we had Miss Piggy
• 1:11:04
  having to watch as the people would come down the runway right
• 1:11:09
  wearing a thing and Miss Piggy's head would go from one side to
• 1:11:12
  the other as they followed. But of course underneath Miss
• 1:11:15
  Piggy's chin, you know, it could rub off the the flocking.
• 1:11:20
  So we, you know, Miss Piggy went back and forth, back and forth,
• 1:11:23
  back and forth, and we're like, Oh my God, the flocking's coming
• 1:11:26
  off. So we had to piggy heads.
• 1:11:29
  Oh, gosh. So that's just not a thing that
• 1:11:31
  she can do. I didn't know that.
• 1:11:32
  Well, it's it's a thing that anything that's repetitive like
• 1:11:36
  that is going to be a bad thing, you know?
• 1:11:40
  So if Piggy is doing a lot of yelling and yelling and yelling,
• 1:11:44
  it's going to maybe open up a little bit of, you know, just to
• 1:11:47
  get into the the physical aspect of things.
• 1:11:50
  I don't know if you did, you talk to Bonnie or?
• 1:11:52
  Yes, yeah, we interviewed. I don't know how how physical,
• 1:11:55
  how how detailed she got into the physical elements, but you
• 1:11:58
  know it. Everything is so specific and
• 1:12:02
  delicate and and can change and you know it's like if the
• 1:12:06
  temperature they pour the mold on that batch of Miss Piggy's
• 1:12:11
  it's going to affect the viscosity and the durability.
• 1:12:14
  I mean it's it's a very, very sensitive process.
• 1:12:19
  So you know, we always, they always travel with a couple of
• 1:12:23
  heads, just in case. Just Swatch swapped heads.
• 1:12:27
  But it's. Piggy.
• 1:12:29
  And it is very it requires a lot of attention and an upkeep.
• 1:12:33
  It's just it's just the way it is.
• 1:12:36
  What do you think about that change about them?
• 1:12:39
  Breaking up and I was I was surprised that that can look I I
• 1:12:44
  I know that that was done kind of as a setup for the sitcom but
• 1:12:47
  I always figured that after that they would kind of forget about
• 1:12:50
  that and and just go back to the usual yeah I think that they I I
• 1:12:54
  think. That that's where it's going to
• 1:12:56
  end up, I think. But they sort of, you know, the
• 1:13:01
  pole, the plug was pulled before they could really resolve it.
• 1:13:06
  And I think that that, you know, I I wasn't involved in that
• 1:13:09
  show, but the feeling I got from watching it is that they were
• 1:13:13
  heading back in that direction, right?
• 1:13:15
  Yeah. That last episode, Yeah.
• 1:13:17
  And I think if the show had continued.
• 1:13:20
  Piggy and Kermit would have gotten, if not together, they
• 1:13:23
  would have gotten closer. And I think that you need to
• 1:13:27
  have ups and downs in in a relationship.
• 1:13:31
  When you're showing this, you sort of, if it's just Miss Piggy
• 1:13:34
  and Kermit living happily ever after.
• 1:13:36
  There's not a lot of places to take that, right?
• 1:13:39
  And it's sort of. Followed up.
• 1:13:42
  On what was being planned at the time of Jim's death, there was
• 1:13:47
  something called Pig of the 90s. I don't know if you've discussed
• 1:13:50
  that. And the idea was that Piggy
• 1:13:53
  broke up with Kermit. She realized she was in a
• 1:13:55
  codependent relationship. She loudly broke up with him and
• 1:13:59
  they did the big thing on the Today Show.
• 1:14:01
  Yeah, that that clip has shown up on YouTube and it's.
• 1:14:04
  It's fantastic where she actually just screams this isn't
• 1:14:07
  working and stormed out. This is not the time to be
• 1:14:10
  talking about that stuff. I think it's.
• 1:14:12
  Time to talk and I think it's time to talk about us.
• 1:14:14
  It's not time to talk about us. We're we're talking to Deborah
• 1:14:17
  about to talk about oh I am trying to talk to my fraud about
• 1:14:22
  something that I've been trying to talk to for a long time which
• 1:14:24
  is I think it's not picking between the two.
• 1:14:26
  Don't, don't. I'm trying not to get into this
• 1:14:29
  stuff right now. Oh my gosh.
• 1:14:37
  You're piggy. Yeah, that was supposed to be
• 1:14:41
  the. Beginning of a whole campaign.
• 1:14:45
  Now, part of it it it was a campaign to sort of bring Piggy
• 1:14:48
  back into the public consciousness for merchandising
• 1:14:52
  and publishing purposes and all that stuff.
• 1:14:54
  But because Jim passed away, they weren't able to really.
• 1:15:00
  Resolve that. And by the time because he.
• 1:15:04
  Unfortunately he died, I think two weeks after that, yeah, it
• 1:15:07
  was very soon after and. You know, and by the time Kermit
• 1:15:14
  was back up and and performing about 6:00.
• 1:15:17
  Months to 8 months later. It was not really, there was not
• 1:15:22
  really a way to revisit that because, you know, it's like,
• 1:15:25
  what do you do? Do you have them break up again?
• 1:15:28
  Or do anybody remember they broke up?
• 1:15:29
  Or you know, it just didn't see a time when people are seeing
• 1:15:33
  Kermit? Yeah.
• 1:15:35
  And thinking so much about kind of losing gym.
• 1:15:38
  Exactly, exactly. So they really didn't take it in
• 1:15:41
  that. So I.
• 1:15:41
  Think that the sitcom was able to do that story in a way.
• 1:15:46
  The only sad thing is that they were not able to really resolve
• 1:15:50
  it satisfactorily. It's it's amazing actually.
• 1:15:54
  You know the way that. You're talking about it as a a
• 1:15:56
  continuing story, even though that sitcom ends.
• 1:16:00
  Like then in later live appearances and things that that
• 1:16:05
  you and Eric are are thinking about this.
• 1:16:07
  As you know, even if people only see a piece of this and a piece
• 1:16:12
  of that, that for you, it is still a continuing story.
• 1:16:16
  Well, it's not rest early for me.
• 1:16:18
  I'm not really involved in that. Other than what we talked about
• 1:16:21
  D23I think that it's important for a resolution to be earned
• 1:16:28
  that it's I think in in the mind of the people who are are doing
• 1:16:34
  the Piggy stuff now. They want to make sure that if
• 1:16:38
  they do return Piggy and Kermit to their original positions,
• 1:16:42
  which is still a little vague because Kermit never really
• 1:16:46
  talked about what his true feelings were.
• 1:16:50
  If they do return to that, they want to feel like the the Ark
• 1:16:53
  has been earned, that it's not just, you know, you know,
• 1:16:57
  everybody returns to where they started.
• 1:17:00
  It's not like, you know, when we were doing it, sort of when we
• 1:17:04
  were doing all of these CD-ROM games, Muppet, Treasure Island
• 1:17:07
  and stuff, whenever, you know, Billy Connolly was doing a
• 1:17:13
  thing, the camera, he would talk, he would do it, Then he
• 1:17:15
  would have to return his head to the exact same position that he
• 1:17:18
  started. Just because because that you
• 1:17:21
  got to end where you finish, because they're going to edit,
• 1:17:24
  right? Right.
• 1:17:25
  And they're going to edit another thing into it which
• 1:17:28
  starts at that same point. So it's not like that you don't
• 1:17:31
  just necessarily return these characters to where they started
• 1:17:35
  in order for them to remain real.
• 1:17:39
  You got to believe that the choices they're making and the
• 1:17:45
  positions that they're in in their lives make sense and that
• 1:17:49
  they're they're they are real. And unfortunately we haven't had
• 1:17:53
  like a project. That is big enough and long
• 1:17:56
  enough to to really do that, yeah.
• 1:17:58
  And I think that any number of projects.
• 1:18:01
  Could accomplish that. And I think that one of the
• 1:18:03
  things that we had tried to do, Jim Lewis and I had written a a
• 1:18:08
  pitch for A at the time, this was, I guess this would have
• 1:18:12
  been like the late 1990s or early 2000s.
• 1:18:17
  There was a series kind of like A and E biography, but Lifetime
• 1:18:21
  intimate portrait. And we were working on pitching
• 1:18:25
  a Miss Piggy. Lifetime intimate portrait.
• 1:18:28
  Oh, really? You could do something like
• 1:18:30
  that. A Miss Piggy portrait, a
• 1:18:33
  documentary like Little Mockumentary and Our Thing, with
• 1:18:37
  enough backstage material to bring that Kermit Piggy story to
• 1:18:43
  a real resolution where you could create a new status quo.
• 1:18:48
  But I remember we we were we had done a bunch of things and we
• 1:18:52
  ended up not doing it because we found out that lifetime intimate
• 1:18:56
  portraits and any biographies had incredibly low budgets.
• 1:19:01
  Like unbelievably low budgets, like a one hour Lifetime
• 1:19:05
  intimate portrait was like $160,000.
• 1:19:08
  Because they've just got the they're just doing interview,
• 1:19:11
  yeah. They do a couple of showing old
• 1:19:13
  clips and some pictures. Not even clips.
• 1:19:15
  Because they would usually, you know, couldn't afford actual
• 1:19:18
  clips that use either movie trailers or, you know, it's
• 1:19:23
  really ridiculous. Oh.
• 1:19:25
  We ended up not pursuing that, but I had.
• 1:19:27
  Talked to I saw Bernie Brillstein at at an event and I
• 1:19:32
  was telling him about this and and you know he's like oh I'll
• 1:19:34
  do an interview. So we're going to have Bernie be
• 1:19:38
  you know Bernie be agent. He's agent.
• 1:19:40
  But yeah, I think that you could do something like that.
• 1:19:43
  You could do any number of things, but it has to be, it has
• 1:19:47
  to have enough sort of gravity, right, for enough people to see
• 1:19:50
  it, which is hard nowadays because it's competing with so
• 1:19:54
  much for for people's attention. Yeah, it's.
• 1:19:56
  Hard for a lot of people to see. Any one thing nowadays, one of
• 1:20:02
  the other things that I, I I am really interested in, I'm I'm
• 1:20:06
  working on a book about is Jack Benny.
• 1:20:11
  And it's a very similar dynamic when you think about it, it's he
• 1:20:15
  is he created this persona which initially lived within his own
• 1:20:22
  radio and TV shows and then he took it out into the world and
• 1:20:26
  he could use that persona and and my my book is about his
• 1:20:30
  guest appearances on other people's shows.
• 1:20:34
  And it is a situation that's not unlike Miss Piggy's where you
• 1:20:40
  know, Benny took this same personality that he developed in
• 1:20:46
  his own show and could take it out on the road, could take it
• 1:20:49
  to other shows. He could take it to Flip Wilson
• 1:20:51
  or Smothers Brothers and he could take it to Bachelor Father
• 1:20:56
  or you know appear with Lucy. And it's very similar.
• 1:21:01
  Where you can you have this character that can endure on its
• 1:21:05
  own, taken out of the context of.
• 1:21:09
  It's a regular cast of character, so real to.
• 1:21:11
  People, right? And and.
• 1:21:14
  That's this very. Similar thing with Miss Piggy.
• 1:21:16
  You can take her anywhere and she can enough people know about
• 1:21:23
  her and what she's supposed to be like that she can interact
• 1:21:26
  with most anyone. Are you you working on any other
• 1:21:30
  Muppet? Books.
• 1:21:31
  Muppet projects. I am.
• 1:21:32
  I'm glad you asked me that question, Danny.
• 1:21:34
  Fantastic. I'm doing a follow up to the Sam
• 1:21:36
  and Friends book. Oh really?
• 1:21:38
  Yes, the Sam and Friends book. Which is?
• 1:21:40
  Available through Bear Manor Media or Amazon or
• 1:21:44
  barnesandnoble.com. I am doing a compilation of the
• 1:21:50
  Sam and Friends scripts that survive.
• 1:21:53
  So I'm taking about roughly 60 scripts that Jim and a few that
• 1:21:57
  weren't in the original book. The original book only.
• 1:22:01
  Had about 5 scripts in it. And it had summaries of all the
• 1:22:07
  surviving episodes. But this, this is going to have
• 1:22:11
  Jim's full scripts for about 60 episodes with my edits and
• 1:22:16
  annotations and and it'll give people a chance to see how Jim
• 1:22:21
  was really writing the show. And it'll be a combination.
• 1:22:26
  Will be all transcribed, so it'll be easily read.
• 1:22:29
  But then we'll show a lot of images of what's the original
• 1:22:33
  script pages look like, and and that means that the first book
• 1:22:37
  must have been a big. Success, if you're able to to go
• 1:22:39
  and do it is, relatively speaking, in the in the muppet.
• 1:22:43
  Fan community within Yeah. Within Bear Manor Media Yeah I
• 1:22:46
  I'm very. Happy with I'm very proud of the
• 1:22:49
  book. And the Henson Company and
• 1:22:51
  Disney has been very supportive because they allowed me to do it
• 1:22:54
  without charging any sort of license fee because it is a very
• 1:22:59
  niche book. I mean, it's a it's a book about
• 1:23:02
  a show that. Doesn't.
• 1:23:03
  Exist anymore, right. So it is a bit of A and somebody
• 1:23:08
  who people love but. Possibly in a in a now a vague
• 1:23:13
  memory way. Yeah, and people have have,
• 1:23:16
  really. Loved it.
• 1:23:18
  They've come up to me and said wonderful things about it, and
• 1:23:22
  it's gotten some great reviews and the Henson family was very
• 1:23:25
  happy with it. But you know, you don't, you
• 1:23:28
  don't get rich writing a book like that.
• 1:23:30
  But I didn't. I wrote it because I wanted to
• 1:23:33
  tell the story. I wanted to tell the story for
• 1:23:35
  Jim's sake, but also for Jane, because she went out of her way
• 1:23:39
  to not take credit for anything. But she deserved a lot of
• 1:23:44
  credit. So that was one of the.
• 1:23:45
  Reasons I wanted to write that book is to sort of establish for
• 1:23:50
  the record that Jane had a lot to do with those early days.
• 1:23:54
  It was very important into the to the future of The Muppets,
• 1:23:58
  her her role back then. So yeah so that's so the the
• 1:24:03
  follow up is the Sam and Friends scriptbook.
• 1:24:07
  I'd love to do another book, talking a little bit with Karen
• 1:24:11
  Faulk about a possible new book and would love to be able to get
• 1:24:19
  some of the audio material from Sam and friends out there.
• 1:24:22
  And that's a little more complicated, right, For you know
• 1:24:27
  legal and business reasons. But it's something I I still
• 1:24:31
  want to want to have happen. So there are there are
• 1:24:34
  discussions that will continue but for now the Sam and Friends
• 1:24:38
  script book is under way. I hope to be out before the end
• 1:24:41
  of the year but this was a lot of fun.
• 1:24:44
  I I love talking about Miss Biggie.
• 1:24:46
  It was, you know, I feel consider myself very fortunate
• 1:24:50
  to have had a little role in in working with her.
• 1:24:57
  Well, this has been amazing. I've gotten so many.
• 1:25:00
  Insights behind the scenes. And and you've answered some of
• 1:25:04
  the, you know, the the backstage story between some of the things
• 1:25:07
  that I've been wondering about for such a long time.
• 1:25:10
  Thank you so much. Well, it's my pleasure.
• 1:25:12
  It really is. So thanks again to Craig and
• 1:25:15
  kissy kissy and thank you for. Listening to this episode of the
• 1:25:18
  fantastic Miss Piggy podcast, brought to you by my friends at
• 1:25:21
  toughpigs.com. Coming up in the next episode,
• 1:25:23
  there's another interview, this time with Miss Piggy's original
• 1:25:26
  costume designer, the talented and magnetic Callista
• 1:25:29
  Hendrickson. I am so excited about that.
• 1:25:31
  You're going to love it. A big thank you to Joe Hennis
• 1:25:34
  and tough pigs for making my dreams come true.
• 1:25:36
  And special thanks to the editors of Muppet Wiki who work
• 1:25:39
  every day to help you become a better Muppet fan.
• 1:25:41
  If you have comments or questions or you know stuff
• 1:25:44
  about Miss Piggy that you'd like to share, you can write to me at
• 1:25:47
  fantasticmisspiggy@gmail.com. That's fantastic.
• 1:25:50
  Miss Piggy at Gmail, and please do.
• 1:25:52
  It's been really nice hearing from people.
• 1:25:54
  I'm also on X at Fantastic Miss P Or come and join us on the
• 1:25:57
  Tough Pigs Discord. Thank you everyone.
• 1:25:59
  I'll see you next time. Gee, I'd.
• 1:26:03
  Like to see you looking swell, baby?
• 1:26:09
  Diamond bracelets? Woolworth doesn't sell baby till
• 1:26:16
  that lucky day. You know that.
• 1:26:19
  Well, baby, I can't give you anything but love.