Memoirs of a Muppets Writer: (You mean somebody actually writes that stuff?) (17 page)

One night, shortly after I arrived in London, and I was about to prepare my usual
Cadbury avec Heineken
repast, my phone rang. It was Jerry Nelson.

“You hungry?”

“I’m starving!”

“How about a steak?”

“You’re kidding!”

“Be out front in about 20 minutes.”

Twenty minutes later, the oldest, rustiest, dirtiest, dented Ford Cortina I had ever seen rattled up to the front entrance of my apartment building. It was Richard’s. (At home in New Jersey, Richard’s personal car was a black, eight passenger Checker taxicab.) Richard was at the wheel and Jerry was seated next to him. I jumped into the back seat and Richard roared off into the evening traffic.

Richard had the most extraordinary sense of direction I’d ever seen in a human being. In one year of driving in London, Richard had committed the street atlas of the entire city to memory. In fact, I saw him win “how-to-get-there” arguments with London cabbies who are the best in the world. It takes about 18 months to get a taxi license in London. As I said before, the streets are an indecipherable maze. And the taxi exam has questions like,
What’s the fastest way from the Royal College of Needlework to the Hotel Connaught?

Richard flew through the city so fast that I never got a sense of where we were. We drove for about 15 minutes and pulled up in front of a small hotel called the Portobello.

Richard and Jerry had stayed at the Portobello during the first year of
The Muppet Show
production. The Portobello was London’s answer to the Chelsea Hotel in New York. At the same time the Muppets were staying there, so were the Sex Pistols and J. Paul Getty III, who is said to have skipped out on his bill.

In those days in London, the pubs closed at 11:00 p.m.. However, if you were a hotel guest, you could go to the hotel lounge and pretty much drink all night long. The night manager of the Portobello lounge was an American whom Richard and Jerry had befriended the year before. He let us eat and drink in the lounge after hours while we pretended to be hotel guests. He also had cold beer and made a pretty good chicken fried steak. So, many a night when we worked late, we ended up at the Portobello.

I was always a bit uneasy. Despite assurances from Richard and Jerry, I was always afraid the place would be raided and we’d be all over tomorrow’s headlines: MUPPETS CAUGHT IN AFTER HOURS RAID!

“What’s the charge?”

“Your Honor, these three criminal aliens were arrested while eating steak and drinking beer at 12:45 a.m..”

“Thirty years hard labor!”

One night we almost did get busted. The hotel’s owner came by, something he rarely did at night. “Quick!”, Jerry hissed. “Act like a guest.”

In a loud voice with my best New York accent, I turned to Richard and said, “Have you seen the johns in this place!?”

The owner did an immediate about face and disappeared. Americans are notorious throughout Europe as being bathroom fanatics. The last thing this guy wanted to do was listen to some loud mouthed American complain about his “can.”

Weather reports aside, one of the great things about living in London is the BBC. They do some great programming. But, it’s veddy
British
programming.

In 1977, there were only three television channels in London: BBC-1; BBC-2; and a third channel, which was shared by two commercial networks. One network had it during the week. The other had it on the weekends.

So, many nights I’d come home with Chinese take-out, flip on the TV and discover the only thing starting was a program entitled, The
Ponies of the Shetland Islands. Wow.
But, fifteen minutes later, I’m thinking, “Wow! That’s fascinating!” No doubt about it. The BBC makes great documentaries.

But, their sense of quality extends throughout their programming. John Cleese told us that he had completed 80% of the shooting for his
Fawlty Towers
pilot, and decided he didn’t like it. So, he went to the BBC and told them, “This is rubbish. I want to start all over.” And, they let him. That’s unheard of in American television.

Here’s the most esoteric BBC story I know. During a discussion about toilets, a question was posed: If, in the Northern Hemisphere, the water drains clockwise when a toilet is flushed; and it drains counter clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere; what happens when a toilet is flushed on the Equator?

A crew was dispatched to find a toilet located exactly on the Equator. They found one, flushed and reported back that when a toilet is flushed on the Equator, the water actually goes straight down. I don’t know about you, but I’ll sleep better tonight.

I also enjoyed listening to BBC radio. It is the purest English spoken on the planet. I used to take a short wave on vacation just to listen to BBC English. But the World Service News depressed me on vacation. So, I tuned in right after BBC World Service to the BBC World Farming Report. I would blissfully listen to bulletins and updates on the Rhodesian yam crop and wheat farming in Argentina. I didn’t care. I just wanted to hear real English English.

Someone told me that after 6:00 pm, anyone on BBC
Radio
had to be wearing a tuxedo. How appropriate and how British! They always sounded like they were dressed formally.

But then, in England, I heard that in the sixties they abolished that policy. So, now I still like listening to the BBC. But every once in a while, it occurs to me that I could be listening to some yabo in a Hawaiian sport shirt.

If you’re as outraged at this barbarity as I am, join me in BBBBBC!, or Bring Back Black Tie to the BBC! Let our voice be heard!

Chapter 30

Lou Rawls

L
ou Rawls was one of the greatest jazz singers of the 20
^th
Century. His deep baritone voice was as recognizable around the globe as Frank Sinatra’s. And so it came to pass that Lou Rawls was a guest on
The Muppet Show
.

In a writer’s meeting about the Lou Rawls episode, Jim asked for a bit where Lou was hanging out by the stage door with some of the guys from the Electric Mayhem band - Zoot, the sax player, Floyd, the bass guitarist, Janice, the lead guitarist and Animal, the drummer. The assignment fell to me.

I’m not sure how we discovered it, but it seemed that Lou Rawls had a great sense of rhythm but very little sense of comedic timing. So, it took me close to three days to come up with the following bit. I’ll outline it for you and then give you the logic behind it.

The sketch opens with Lou hanging by the stage door of the Muppet Theater. Enter Floyd, played by Jerry Nelson and Animal, played by Frank Oz. Animal is wearing a dog collar attached by a chain leash held by Floyd. Floyd explains to Lou that he’s out walking the drummer.

When Lou exclaims what a great drummer Animal is, and how he’d like to tell him he can really put some
soul in the bowl
, Floyd tugs on the chain and says,
Animal! Good drummer! Good drummer!

While Animal chewed on the leash, the conversation continued. Lou says he’s going on a road trip and needs a drummer, and how about Animal? Floyd worries that they don’t have a long enough chain. So Lou decides to talk directly to Animal. Floyd hands the leash over to Lou with the admonition,
Just don’t let him chase any cars.

As soon as Lou takes the leash from Floyd, we hear, off camera, a car going by.

Car! Car! Car!,
cries Animal as he rushes off camera, yanking Lou behind him. We hear another car going by and Animal charges through the scene, pulling a frantic Lou behind him, left to right. Since three is the magic number, we hear another car and Animal drags Lou through the scene once more, from right to left, screaming,
Car! Car! Car!

The piece “worked” beautifully, as we say in comedy. In fact, I put it on my sample reel. The rationale for it is very simple: Since Lou Rawls had little sense of comedic timing, I literally chained him to Frank Oz, who has an extraordinary sense of comedy. So, Frank’s timing controlled the scene.

Chapter 31

Muppet Makers

B
esides the cast and production staff, the third component of
The Muppet Show
’s success is the group of people who build and wardrobe the puppet characters. I’ve always felt the Muppet makers were equally as creative as the writers and puppeteers, and had to be equally in synch with Jim’s comedic vision as we were. As a writer, this means after you write something, every possibility of your script is explored to the limit for comedic value by these people.

If you think about it, every character you’ve ever seen in a Muppet production was made and clothed by hand. These are true artists who create in felt, foam rubber, plastic, feathers and God knows what else.

Many of the original characters were designed by Jim, himself.

But the construction, maintenance and duplication of the puppets were left to the Muppet builders in the various shops located in New York, Los Angeles, London and Toronto, depending on where individual Muppet projects were being produced. Additionally, many of the characters were designed and built by the shops with very little, if any, supervision by Jim Henson.

A case in point is the creation of Miss Piggy. During a shop meeting before the first season of
The Muppet Show
, Jim said, “Make me a gang of pigs.” He then got on a plane and flew somewhere.

So, the Muppet shop designed and created a half dozen or so pig Muppets. They surmised that Jim had plans to use them in musical numbers, as he did with penguins. And, that’s exactly what he did.

But, between takes of a musical number, a female pig in the chorus started hassling Kermit. To keep spirits up during a production, it’s not unusual for the puppeteers to stay in character and ad lib among themselves between takes. Sometimes the ab libs are funnier that the written material.

So this female pig, puppeteered by Frank Oz, started bugging Kermit about when she was going to get her own spot in the show. When Kermit said he had no idea what she was talking about, she replied, “That’s not what you said over dinner last night.”

As the discussion between Piggy and Kermit heated up, the show’s writers were watching this interplay on their monitors. And so, a star was born.

Through the combined imaginations of Frank Oz and the first season
Muppet Show
writers, Piggy’s character and importance grew. Calista Hendrickson, a very talented wardrobe designer, took over Piggy’s costumes. Calista designed all those wonderful gowns, hats and traveling suits for Piggy while still keeping the original character - basically a Muppet pig.

I once asked Calista what the secret of dressing Miss Piggy was.

“Piggy,” Calista explained, “is 15 pounds heavier than she’ll admit to herself.”

1977 was the beginning of the aerobic craze. So naturally, it occurred to me that Piggy should do an exercise video.

Piggy appeared in a “Pig Power” t-shirt. I had her jogging in place, bending over to touch her toes, doing jumping jacks and squats and complaining bitterly throughout. Of course, Piggy was shot from the waist up through all of it.

For the finish of the piece, I thought it would be funny to have Piggy lay on her back and “bicycle.” Since ostensibly, Piggy would be lying on the floor, all we would see are her legs. And so far, Piggy didn’t have any legs.

So, it would be up to the shop to create Piggy’s legs. I thought this would be a good opportunity for the Muppet builders to design and build a pair of chubby little legs for Piggy. The shot would be a close up of the legs being manipulated by a puppeteer below camera, while Piggy grunted and groaned.

However, I had left one visual element out of the script. When I “saw” Piggy exercising in my mind, I naturally pictured her in work out gear, black fishnet stockings and five inch stiletto heels. I purposely left the stockings and heels out of the script just to see how simpatico the Muppet shop was with the writing staff.

Sure enough, on the day of the shoot, there were Piggy’s ham hocks and chubby little calves encased in black fishnet and sporting five-inch stiletto heels.

While I’m on the subject, let me give you a few more examples of the wonderful support I always got from the Muppet shop. Their enthusiasm and creativity always pushed my enthusiasm and creativity.

I had an idea for the Muppet News Man. Just as the food always attacked the Swedish Chef, the news always attacked the Muppet News Man, played, by the way, by Jim Henson. The idea was a running gag with three separate news flashes that we could insert throughout the show.

It was a simple premise. Every news flash announced the opening of another season.

First news flash: “Today is the opening of the Fishing Season.” Thousands of gun shots go off. Thousands of Muppet fish fall from the sky onto the News Man.

Second news flash: “Today is the opening of the Hunting Season.” Thousands of gun shots go off. A moose falls from the sky and drops on the News Man.

Third news flash: “Today is the opening of the Opera Season.” Thousands of gun shots go off. A diva, complete with horned helmet and chrome breast plate, falls on the News Man.

I figured the fish and the diva were a pretty routine request. And, I was right. I did get a call about the moose. There was no problem building a moose. The shop was just curious about whether or not the moose had to be articulated. “Articulated,” in Muppet talk means, “Does the puppet have to have a working mouth so a puppeteer can make him talk?”

“No.”, I told the shop. “He just has to drop on the News Man.”

Well, we got the fish, the moose and the diva. Just in case, the shop articulated the moose. Three shows or so later, he turned up in somebody else’s bit as tap dancing Micky Moose. Even better, Jerry Nelson performed him with John Wayne’s voice.

You gotta problem with that, Pilgrim?

Chapter 32

Dave Goelz

I
didn’t meet Dave Goelz until I started on
The Muppet Show
in 1977. So, we’ve only been friends for 34 years. In those days, Dave appeared to be the most normal of all the puppeteers. But that might be because he was the quietest. “Quiet,” of course, being a relative word when discussing Muppeteers. But all appearance of normalcy immediately disappears when Dave inserts his hand into one of his signature characters: Dr. Bunsen Honeydew of Muppet Labs; Zoot, the saxophonist in the Electric Mayhem Band; and my favorite, The Great Gonzo.