Memoirs of a Muppets Writer: (You mean somebody actually writes that stuff?) (20 page)

It worked beautifully. Another example of Muppet limitations turned into creative positives.

The other lesson came from Frank’s personal approach to performing.

One afternoon, Don Hinkley and I were staring at the ceiling desperately searching for comedy. And, in walks Frank Oz. Frank is carrying two sheets of paper. They are typewritten, single-spaced, top to bottom, with very narrow margins.

On them, Frank has worked out Piggy’s back story, e.g., what was Piggy’s life before she joined
The Muppet Show.
Like any good actor, Frank was building substance into his character.

It’s been more than three decades but I can still remember the main points in Piggy’s back story. She grew up in show business. Her parents had a vaudeville act of some kind. So, show business is in her blood. Her parents divorced when Piggy was very young and she had an unhappy childhood. Now all she wanted was her career and her frog.

Ironically, a favorite Frank Oz story does not include puppetry. Although, it started with a puppet character. I saw Frank’s name on the assignment sheet for a particular episode of
Sesame Street
that I was writing. Among Frank’s lesser known characters was a wall eyed Muppet Keystone Kop. His name was Officer Krupky, a tip of the hat to West
Side Story.

(Actually, there were many hat tips to the Broadway musical and movie. Jon Stone was a big Sondheim fan. If you look at the original
Sesame Street
set and the opening of the movie musical, it’s pretty obvious
Sesame Street
is a West Side cul-de-sac, in the pre-Lincoln Center days of the late 1950s. We also had a young Puerto Rican girl named, “Maria,” in our cast of characters.)

One of
Sesame Street’s
Instruction Goals was an area called,
Reasoning and Problem Solving:
Given a set of progressively revealed clues, the child can use those clues to arrive at the correct answer. It occurred to me that it might be fun to have Officer Krupky bumbling around
Sesame Street
looking for Maria to demonstrate it.

He starts in Hooper’s Store. He has a picture of Maria and asks to speak to Mr. Hooper on
official
business.

“I’m looking for a Puerto Rican girl with black curly hair and dark eyes.”, says Krupky.

He shows Hooper the picture. “Do you recognize this individual?”

Hooper identifies the picture as Maria. “Is there some kind of trouble?”, he asks.

“Sorry, official business. Can’t discuss it.”

Outside the store, Krupky encounters Gordon and asks him the same questions with the same attitude,
in the line of duty.

Gordon tells Krupky that Maria lives at 123
Sesame Street
.

Maria exits 123. Krupky I.D.’s her from the photo.

“Are you Maria?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Are you Puerto Rican?”

“That’s right.”

Krupky holds up a card with the word, “BESO” on it. (BESO, is another
Sesame Street
Instruction Goals: Spanish Language and Culture.)

“The guys down at the station house want to know what, beso means.”, he asks. Maria takes off his hat and kisses him on his bald head. “Beso”: A nice big kiss.”

“Aw, why do I get all the mushy assignments?”, Krupky laments.

MUSIC BUTTON: Whaa-Whaa-Whaa.

When I got to the studio, the piece was already in rehearsal. I was stunned to see that Officer Krupky was being played by real, live Frank Oz, dressed in a New York City Police uniform. I learned very early in television that lowly writers don’t interrupt production. And since Frank had the wardrobe, I knew that Jon Stone had okayed it and I wasn’t going to win that argument.

Even odder, I had written the dialogue for a none too bright Muppet cop. But Frank, who has a police officer brother, was playing it with that unemotional monotone that state troopers use just before they ask you to get out of the car,
sir!

If you read the piece down from the top to just before Krupky produces the “BESO” card, the effect of a white cop (did I mention Frank is very white), with that attitude in an obviously minority neighborhood was chilling.

The dialogue that sounded so harmless from the puppet took on a sinister ring with Frank’s monotone as he asked the minority residents about a Puerto Rican girl with long hair named, “Maria.”

But Sonya and Frank played the end beautifully for laughs. And the piece was a solid success.

When the piece was in the can, Bob Myhrum, who directed the episode, told me my writing was, “Pinteresque,” the first and last time I was ever accused of whatever that is. I was so stunned I never asked who suggested substituting Frank for the Krupky puppet.

I’ve seen Frank do cameo parts and, not surprising, he’s a solid actor. Catch him in The Blues
Brothers.
But I’ll always remember that little piece of drama he brought to one episode of
Sesame Street
.

Chapter 37

Rendezvous in Paris

W
hile I was writing
The Muppet Show,
my wife, Gail, was a producer/director for an international children’s television show called,
Big Blue Marble.
So, while I was working in England, she was traveling the world, making documentaries with and about children in different cultures. The show took its name from a description and photograph of the Planet Earth taken by an Apollo 17 astronaut in outer space.

One night in the fall of 1977, I called Gail in New York as she was packing to go on the road again. As we spoke, she told me her travel itinerary. First, she was going to Spain to shoot an orphanage where the kids trained for and actually produced a circus. After that, she was going to Paris to film a kids’ roller skating club that played basketball on skates to raise money for charities. After that, she was going to Casablanca to do a piece with Berber kids, and then on to Egypt.

During the conversation, she asked if she could take my camera equipment with her since the production company wanted still photographs of each segment. I had a fairly expensive 35 millimeter camera with a good selection of lenses. But, I wasn’t thrilled about having it bounced around the world with my wife’s film crew. I told her that my camera equipment rented for $50.00 dollars a day, a pig-headed move I would regret later on. Of course, she refused.

Later in the conversation, her travel dates came up and I realized that
The Muppet Show
would have a week-long hiatus during the same week that Gail would be shooting in Paris. Because of the strain and pressure of producing television, it’s not unusual for shows to take a week off every six weeks or so. I decided right then that since I had the week off, we could rendezvous in Paris.
Quelle Romantique!

Originally, I decided to get to Paris by taking the Boat Train from London and then the ferry across the Channel, as they did in all those old 1940s movies. I had just bought a new trench coat at Burberry’s and was feeling pretty Bogartesque. The Boat Train to Paris,
Quelle Romantique!

But the English strike fever had crossed the Channel to France.

The French had their own unique strike tradition called,
faire Ie pont,
which means, “to make the bridge”. The idea is to start a strike on a Wednesday or Thursday. The strike is usually over by Thursday night. But, what the hell, since we’re out of work, let’s make
the bridge
over Friday to le weekend.

Since I was 34 years old, and hadn’t touched anything soft in six or eight weeks, I thought about how many unions were between me and Paris - and my wife: British Rail Union, British Steamship union, French rail unions, not to mention British and French emigration, immigration and custom inspectors’ unions. So, I threw romance to the winds and booked myself First Class to Paris on Air France.

The last time I had flown from London to Paris, I had flown Air France Tourist Class. And just as French women are wont to show you a little leg or a little cleavage, Air France left the dividing curtain open just enough for me to see the champagne, caviar and fresh strawberries served in First Class. So, I vowed the next time I flew to Paris, I was going First Class.

The flight was wonderful. The champagne was cold and dry. The caviar and strawberries were fresh. The stewardesses were beautiful. And, we landed in Aeroport Charles de Gaulle, then the newest, most advanced and most beautiful airport in the world.

De Gaulle was a masterpiece of modern air transportation. People were shunted quickly from one locale to another on moving sidewalks that snaked through transparent tubes. There were signs in about a dozen languages. It was the model of mid-20
^th
century airport efficiency. I was whisked efficiently from my plane to the baggage claim.

However, when I arrived at the baggage claim, I realized I was in the middle of a mid-20th Century airport strike. All that modern efficiency had been replaced with a hand written sign on a piece of old cardboard:
GREVE! STRIKE!
So, the unions had gotten me anyway. After a quick hour or so of investigation, I discovered my bag unceremoniously dumped on the sidewalk near the taxi stand.

Okay, it was still a rendez-vous in Paris. And now, it had a funny side story to go with it. Who knew it would be the first of many? I grabbed my bag and took a taxi to the hotel where Gail’s production team had reservations. There I met Franca Tasso. Franca had worked for years at the Cinecittá, the premier film studio in Rome. Franca was Roman. Her father was Italian. But her mother was French. She grew up bouncing from one language to another. And Franca had studied English in university. She was one of the very few real people who could, as they only do in James Bond movies, jump effortlessly between three languages.

Once at dinner in Paris, I was seated next to Franca, who was deep in discussion in English with my wife. The waiter asked what I wanted for dessert and I ordered strawberries in French. The waiter corrected my mispronunciation of the French word for, “strawberries.” I apologized to him in French and explained I had learned that word from an Italian. Immediately, Franca let me have it with both barrels in English for blaming my bad French on her.

Franca and Gail had previously worked together on a feature film in Europe. So, Franca was to be the translator on Gail’s Paris production.

At our hotel bar, Franca’s beautiful linguistic ability had gleaned the following information: When Gail flew to Madrid, Spain, the airline had thoughtfully sent her luggage to Denver, Colorado. So, Gail had been living in the same clothes for at least a week -
Quelle Romantique!

Also, that same airline was now on strike. So, instead of flying to Paris, Gail would come from Madrid to Paris by train, a trip that couldn’t take more than 12 or 14 hours. So, my wife arrived in Paris a half day late, still in her only outfit -
Quelle Romantique!

We retreat to our hotel room. But, even by French hotel standards, the room was so small that I couldn’t resist doing Chet O’Brien’s small hotel room jokes.

The up side of this is that since my wife’s luggage had been sent to Denver, and she had no clothes, she was forced to go shopping in Paris. Quelle
domage!
Since production wasn’t scheduled to start until the next day, Gail had a whole day to shop in Paris. I would say she was pretty successful. One pair of brown cord jeans she had bought in Paris fit her so well that a friend of mine remembered them fondly 30 years later.

Since serious production wasn’t scheduled until the next day, we changed hotels for one with
slightly
larger rooms. So, I got to sleep with my wife in a room and a bed that would finally accommodate my 6’2” frame. At 7:30 the next morning, there was a knock on the door and Franca and five or six strangers streamed into the room. I pull the covers up to my neck like some bashful virgin. “Who are these people?!” I demanded.

Of course I had been in television long enough to know that every morning, a production meeting is held to determine what has to be shot that day, and how to go about it. And, since Gail was the producer, the meeting would be held in her room. However, when the production meeting is held in your bedroom with your wife, it gets a little personal.

So, to avoid future confrontations and to sleep a little later, after the crew left, I went down to the desk and asked the clerk for another room.

Typically French, he asked, “Don’t you like the woman you’re sleeping with?” It did occur to me that, this being Paris, he might have had a replacement in mind.

I replied that I liked her fine. It was her friends that were the problem. He gave me the room, but I don’t think he believed me. He probably figured I had a second wife. This rendezvous was beginning to feel like an episode of
The Muppet Show.
Gail was reduced to running up and down the hotel halls, much to the amusement of the chamber maids.
Quelle scandal!

Most days while Gail and her crew were out shooting, I spent my time wandering aimlessly around the beautiful city of Paris. Then one night Gail asked me to go on the next day’s shoot. The weather report looked good so she was planning on shooting all the scenic outdoor footage for her show. Since it was going to be a complicated day and the crew would be very busy, she asked me to go along as the still photographer.

The segment was scheduled to open with the basketball team roller skating in front of the Sacre’ Coeur Cathedral at the top of Montmartre, then follow them down the ancient, narrow streets, past the markets and shops, along the Seine, ending up at the Trocadero.

There, they would meet up with another roller skating basketball team and play a game with the Eiffel Tower in the background. It was a photography buff’s dream, to be driven through the most famous and beautiful sections of Paris with nothing to do but take pictures.

However
, if you remember a certain pig-headed conversation I had on the phone with my wife back in London, you know that although I was in Paris, my camera equipment was safely stowed in New York. Instead, I was working with the production’s camera, a fixed lens, snapshot Kodak with a fixed focal length of 10 feet. It probably retailed for all of $19.95.