Muppet Guys Talking Reunite to Remember Jim Henson!

The Muppet Guys (and Gal) will reunite to talk about Jim Henson this Saturday for an online fundraiser.

Thirty years after the untimely loss of Muppets creator Jim Henson, four legendary Muppets performers will reunite online in a livestream event to help raise funds for frontline workers who have battled the Covid-19 virus.

Bill Barretta, Fran Brill, Dave Goelz and Frank Oz will take part in the live discussion, which also invites fans to submit questions in advance that may be answered during the event. The reunion of the Muppet performers, who also appeared in Oz’s acclaimed documentary Muppet Guys Talking: Secrets Behind the Show the Whole World Watched, is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. Victoria Labalme, who conceived and co-produced Muppet Guys Talking, will facilitate the livestream.

“We wanted to lift people’s spirits and raise money for Covid-19 frontline workers,” Labalme said.

The performers who will participate in Saturday’s reunion discussion are:

· Bill Barretta (Pepe the King Prawn, Johnny Fiama, Bobo the Bear and Big Mean Carl)

· Fran Brill (Prairie Dawn, Zoe, Little Bird and Betty Lou)

· Dave Goelz (The Great Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Zoot and Boober Fraggle)

· Frank Oz (Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster and Grover)

The event is free and open to anyone around the world who remains inspired by Henson and his unique brand of creativity, entrepreneurship and leadership. While there is no charge to participate, virtual attendees will be encouraged to make a donation to a selected Covid-19-related cause. 


The live event will take place Saturday, May 16, 2020 @4pm EST. 
Participants must pre-register at www.MuppetGuysTalking/Jim. 

Adorkable Rachel Talks Muppet Guys Talking!

Our friend Rachel is back to talk about the newly released documentary Muppet Guys 

Talking!

Muppet Guys Talking Now Available!

A year after premiering at SXSW Frank Oz's documentary Muppet Guys Talking is finally available for all to see. 

 

As of this morning the film is ready to be downloaded an enjoyed.

 

Currently there are two ways to download the film at two widely different price points.

The first option is a very reasonable $9.97 and will get you access to the film only. 

For the hard core fan with plenty of expendable income, they're also offering a V.I.P "Below Stage Pass." This includes the film plus the following extras:

• LIVE HANGOUTS WITH THE GUYSYou get to be part of a online audience and watch/listen to the Guys during two LIVE unprecedented, unscripted video Hangouts. They’ll share never-before-heard anecdotes and answer select viewer questions.
  
• RECORDINGS OF LIVE HANGOUTSParticipate in the Hangouts whether you can make it live or not. Submit your questions in advance, watch whenever you want, and relive the fun over and over again.
  
• MEMBERSHIP IN THE PRIVATE MGT FACEBOOK COMMUNITYInteract with the Muppet Guys Talking fans. Discuss the film, the Hangouts, the Guys or anything else!
  
• BONUS! EXTRA FOOTAGEDeleted Scenes, Outtakes, AND other great moments we couldn’t fit into the movie.

This option will set you back $97, that is until next Wednesday 3/21, when the price will increase to $197!
Both options of Muppet Guys Talking are available now at MuppetGuysTalking.com

Talking About Muppet Guys Talking!

I just finished watching Muppet Guys Talking, and it simply striking in so many ways.

The first thing you notice right away is just how raw it feels. From the opening titles to Frank Oz's intro you can tell you're in for something different. 

This isn't a glamours documentary with depth of field shots, or a behind the scenes special on how the things are made. 

The man who took the Muppets to Manhattan, had a signing plant destroy skid row, let dirty rotten scoundrels out to play, and tied Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin into a bowfinger, strips it all away to simply let you enjoy the company around him.

In some of the promotional materials Oz called it "Shooting Dirty" and the end result is both jarring and conversely relaxing.

Frank is joined in warn leather couches in an almost empty brick room with his
longtime collaborators and friends Jerry Nelson, Fran Brill, Dave Goelz, and Bill Barretta. Immediately you get the sense that your just a fly on the wall listening as these old friends swap stories about working together and with Jim Henson. 

They talk at length about their dearly departed leader and the lengths he would go to bring magic to the screen. They also briefly delve into working with their other friends that have passed on like Richard "Richie" Hunt, Jerry Juhl, and Don Sahlin. Here is where I would have liked to have seen a little more archival footage, especially of Richard and Jim. Their lost stories and interactions are a painful reminder of that they left us all too soon. It should also be said that Jerry Nelson passed away not long after filming. 

You may recall that Jerry died in 2012, while the copyright on the screener I received said 2016. It goes to show just how long it's taken to get this little film out to the world.

The film is very much aimed at Muppet fans who already have a working knowledge of the people and characters each of these "guys" brought to the screen over years.

It'll be interesting to see the reaction by some of the more conservative Henson fans when they learn that not only were the Muppets not made for kids - not even Sesame Street to an extent, but to hear the "shit" litteraly fly a few times in a "Muppet" movie.  

The elephant in room is everyone/ thing they don't mention. While I don't expect them to name drop every single performer, writer, and director, they do not mention Louise Gold one of the few female performers, any of the recasts or how they were handled - not even the characters Bill Baretta took over, any of the second generation performers, any of the human cast of Sesame Street, nor Marty Robinson, Kevin Clash, and this is a big one, Steve Whitmire. The loss of these people being recognized for their contribution to The Muppets gives the otherwise familiar vibe of the film a somewhat hollow sting.

Having seen pretty much every Muppet/ Henson special and movie, and having the privilege of seeing most of these performers tell these and similar stories at live events, it was still refreshing to learn new things about each of them while also getting a sense how excruciatingly complex, and at times dangerous, scenes were to pull off. 

 

I won't spoil it here, but suffice it to say Frank tells the story of the contraption used to create one of the climatic scenes in The Great Muppet Caper. Having watched the film countless times, I thought I for sure knew how they filmed it. If you think you have an idea, I can pretty much guarantee you will be shocked to learn how it was actually done. 

With all the attention Jim paid to filming behind the scenes footage for The Muppet Show (seen in footage from Of Muppet and Men),The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth (shockingly neither of which is mentioned at all), I'm surprised there isn't much behind and under the scenes photos or film from the early Muppet movies themselves - surely if they existed we would have seen something by now.

That brings me to the clever way the filmmakers illustrate these stories - by literally
illustrating them over the frame. This technique lets you see how both complex, and at times simple, some of these techniques and tricks really were.

The low techness of the the whole thing makes it feel like you're just one seat away, hanging out with people who play larger then life characters. It's intimate, sweet, and highly
recommended for fans, but I'm not sure those with just a casual appreciation of the Muppets will be willing to sit and hangout.

Muppet Guys Talking will be available this Friday, March 16th at MuppetGuysTalking.com

Find Out Why Muppet Guys Are Talking!

With less than a month before Muppet Guys Talking is released, 

find out how the whole idea for the film came to be...

Muppet Guys Talking Gets Official Release Date!

Frank Oz and the folks behind Muppet Guys Talking: Secrets Behind the Show the Whole World Watched have officially announced that their behind the scenes documentary will be available March 16!

The full length feature film starring Oz, Jerry Nelson, Dave Goelz, Fran Brill, and Bill Barretta, will be available purchase and download at MuppetGuysTalking.com.

Yes, that means for the time being it will only be available online and not from traditional outlets such as Amazon, Best Buy or Netflix. 

Muppet Guys Talking Poster Revealed!

Frank Oz's new documentary "Muppet Guys Talking"  premiered this weekend at the SXSW (South by Southwest) festival.

Thanks to screen rant, not only do we have a first look at the poster, but a muppet guy talking about the making of the poster as well!

Dave Goelz wanted the poster to represent each of the cast members in a way that spoke to the performers hidden beneath the Muppets they puppeteered.

Goelz explained the reasoning behind the poster’s design as follows:

“It was just how do we convey the idea that you’re going to hear from the people under the characters. So, there were two levels of it that intrigued me. I did a lot of sketches of ideas. Hands are an obvious gateway. But if there’s nothing on the hands, there’s no puppet covering it, all of a sudden it’s unmasked. And then if the hand is coming out of a box of some kind, and we’re going to peek into the box, we’re going to find out the story of what makes the hands move.”

But not just any hands would do. Every living cast member pitched in, snapping a series of shots of their own hands in different Muppet performance positions, then sending them to Goelz. From there, a string of Pixar people cam into assist. Friend of the Muppeteers Pete Docter (Up) suggested Ratatouille composer Michael Giacchino, who suggested The Good Dinosaur director Peter Sohn for help composing this poster (see below). “Peter Sohn over at Pixar drew the safe for us,” Goelz said. Then Sohn took the hand shots of the cast, and began to fiddle in photoshop to pull them together into a pleasing picture. “Then he ran up against the wall of his photoshop skills, in terms of getting the color balance of the light sources working and everything,” Goelz explained.

Jerry Nelson’s photo proved a special challenge. By the time the cast snapshots were being taken, Nelson was gone. Thankfully, Bill Baretta (Pepe The Prawn, Bobo) found a photo he’d taken years before that had Nelson and Goelz crouching under a golf cart, the former’s bare hand raised in a Muppet pose for the camera operator’s reference. The original photo had been lost, but the scanned digital copy seen in Muppet Guys Talking allowed Nelson’s history-making hand to be added to the mix. Still, the low-res quality of the scan coupled with it being black and white meant Sohn was at a loss.

Goelz considered perhaps having the hands sketched like the safe, perhaps white on a black background. But Oz (Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear) pushed for the pictures, and a vibrant yellow backdrop. “And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how you’re going to tie that together,'” Goelz recalled. “How are you going to tie photographs and an ink drawing and a yellow background? But it’s worth trying, so we went down that road.” But to get down that road, they needed one last favor. Goelz shared:

“I got this friend of mine who is a medical illustrator (Cindy Woolley)…medical illustrators illustrate medical textbooks and publications. They might look at a cadaver and draw what’s going on. They might look at a skeleton and do a graphic version of how a joint replacement works, that kind of thing. So she’s really good at drawing people. She’s really good at figuring out how to save a bad photoshop job. So she took the photoshop and just took a whole weekend figuring out how to work it, to get the colors to work. I think when Peter was working on it I switched a couple of arms so they’d be talking to each other. And between Peter Sohn and this lady, Cindy Woolley, they pulled it together. It took a lot of work.”

And all of it was volunteered, Oz noted. “What’s cool is all of these people also helped us for free,” Oz marveled. “They just wanted to be part of it. Dave had such a great idea. And then he talked to Pete, and Pete suggested Michael, who suggested Peter Sohn, and Dave had his friend (Wolley). And that all of this came about like it did is wonderful.” 

“It ended up feeling pretty good,” Goelz concurred. “It felt like it worked pretty well.” He shared the credit with his fellow Muppeteers as well, saying, “All this comes down to the value of a collaboration and how much we love working together.” But for Oz, it’s Goelz who deserves the credit. He said simply, “It’s Dave’s poster and we love it.”

Below is the scene from Muppets Tonight that was crucial in getting the image of Jerry's hand for the poster. (Jump to to 6:05 mark)