Memoirs of a Muppets Writer: (You mean somebody actually writes that stuff?) (8 page)

OPEN TO THE INTERIOR OF HOOPER’S STORE. DAVID IS BEHIND THE COUNTER CLEANING UP. ENTER OSCAR THE GROUCH.

OSCAR

Hiya, Mr. Storekeeper. How about a chocolate sundae with vinegar and a few lemons?

DAVID

Look, Oscar, I can’t mess with you right now. I have a date with Maria in a couple of minutes and I’m closing early.

OSCAR

Isn’t that cute, a date with Maria.

DAVID

That’s right. I got paid today, and I’m going to surprise Maria and take her to the new movie down the street. Now, Maria’s going to be here in about five minutes, and I want you to be gone before she does, see?

OSCAR

Aw, what’s the hurry? I happen to know that the last three times you had a date with Maria, she was late. Right? Right? Right?

DAVID

Yeah, okay. But…

OSCAR

Well, what makes you think she’ll be on time today?

DAVID

Don’t hassle me.

OSCAR

Me? Hassle you? I wasn’t late for our last three dates, was I?

DAVID

No, Oscar.

OSCAR

You know, it’s really not very nice to be late for a date, is it?

DAVID

No. It’s not, Oscar.

OSCAR

I mean, here you are, right? All duded up with your pay in your pocket, planning to surprise Maria and take her to a movie. And, you know what Maria’s probably doing? She’s probably sitting around right now, trying to decide how late she’s going to be. She’s probably sitting around saying, “How late am I going to be for my date with David? Maybe I’ll just be an hour late. Or, maybe I’ll really zatz him and be two hours late.”

DAVID

Oscar, you’re being ridiculous. Now, scram.

OSCAR

Ridiculous? She does it to you all the time. She’s got a lot of nerve. Especially, after you got Mr. Hooper to let you off early, and then you planned to surprise her and take her to the movies. I’ll bet she doesn’t even care.

DAVID

Yeah?

OSCAR

Yeah! You know, I’ll bet that Maria is at that new movie right now, just so she can ruin your surprise.

DAVID

No!

OSCAR

Yeah!

DAVID

Yeah.

OSCAR

If I were you, man, I’d really be mad.

DAVID

Yeah.

OSCAR

She really doesn’t care, does she?

DAVID

Not a bit!

OSCAR

I’ll bet she’s probably seen that new movie two times already, and she probably won’t get here ‘til next week!

DAVID

I don’t even know why I asked her out in the first place! Boy, that makes me mad! In fact, I’ll bet she’s already seen that movie fifteen times, and she’s never gonna get here! I could wait here forever, just getting madder, and madder and MADDER!!!

ENTER MARIA

MARIA

Hi, fellas. Well, David, it’s four o’clock. Ready to go?

DAVID

What?! After what you just did to me!!?? Going down to that new movie fifteen times!!! And, ruining my surprise!!! And keeping me waiting here forever!!! I wouldn’t take you to the movies if you were the last woman on earth!!!

DAVID STORMS OUT

MARIA

Oscar, what on earth do you suppose is the matter with him!?

OSCAR

(PRIMLY) I’m sure I certainly don’t know. However, it appeared to be extremely uncouth, ungentlemanly, and certainly unforgivable behavior … Want to go to the movies?

FADE OUT

Since we believe in happy endings on
Sesame Street
, the last scene in the show went like this:

DAVID IS LOCKING UP HOOPER’S STORE AND MARIA IS WITH HIM. SHE HAS HER PURSE AND THEY ARE DRESSED FOR A DATE. AS THE CLOSING CREDITS ROLL, THEY WALK DOWN THE STREET WAVING TO EVERYONE. AS THEY REACH OSCAR’S CAN, MARIA STOPS, REACHES INTO HER PURSE AND TAKES OUT A SMALL SPRAY BOTTLE. SHE LIFTS THE LID ON THE CAN AND SPRAYS INSIDE.

OSCAR
(INSIDE CAN)

AARRRRRRRGAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

MARIA
(TO DAVID)

Perfume.

FADE OUT

Chapter 10

How do they do that? The genius of Jim Henson

B
efore we go much further into my Muppet memories, it’s probably a good idea to give you a little insight into Muppet mechanics.

Virtually everyone on earth has seen the performing genius of Jim Henson. Until his death in 1990 from streptococcus pneumonia, Jim, and only Jim, performed Kermit the Frog, Ernie, Dr. Teeth, Waldorf (The round faced old man in the box), Rowlf the Dog, the Swedish Chef, Link Hogthrob, Captain of the Swinetrek and the Muppet Newsman.

But most people never saw Jim’s artistic and mechanical abilities, which allowed him to combine puppetry, an ancient art and television, a relatively young art form into a new form of performance art. And, that’s the way he wanted it. Jim Henson was a master illusionist. And the last thing an illusionist wants is someone looking behind the curtain.

To begin with, Jim was a devoted fan of Walt Disney. His imagination ran parallel to Disney’s, creating fantastic creatures and worlds never seen before. Muppet tradition has it that Muppets only have three fingers and a thumb because it was a Henson tribute to Disney, since Mickey Mouse only has three fingers on a hand. Until the advent of computers, animation was a slow and tedious operation. Each individual cell, or film frame had to be hand drawn and individually photographed. Disney had enormous staffs of artists working on his projects. But Jim had neither the patience nor manpower for that.

In high school, Jim worked at a local TV station making puppets for a children’s show. Later, while studying commercial art at the University of Maryland, he took a course in puppet making. It was then that Jim melded his experience in television and puppet making to devise what was really a new, simpler form of animation.

Of course, there have been puppets on television almost since its inception. Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and Bil Baird’s Marionettes, all preceded the Muppets. (Baird said he dropped the second “L” from his first name because nobody ever pronounced it.) But all of these were just conventional puppets put on television. Jim Henson incorporated television right into the design of the Muppets.

To begin with, Jim did away with the play board, the stage that puppeteers hide behind during the performance. Instead, Jim used the bottom of the television screen for that purpose, “hiding” the puppeteers below it.

He then had the cameras elevated so the bottom of the frame was seven feet over the studio floor. The scenery was raised to the same height. That meant that instead of crouching on the floor, hiding behind props or scenery, the puppeteers could work standing upright. This gave the puppets complete mobility and was also much easier on the puppeteers. It also allowed scenes to be reset faster for a second or third take - in television, time is always money. So, when you see a Muppet scene on
Sesame Street,
or a piece on The Muppet Show, it’s all done seven feet in the air.

Jim then went on to devise a set of principles for designing puppets specifically for television. To begin with, Muppets are essentially hand puppets. The puppeteer’s hand is inside the head. The puppeteer speaks in the character’s voice and moves his thumb in sync with the dialogue to animate the puppet.

If you hold your arm straight up in the air and make a “duck head” of your hand, you’ll see a puppet’s mouth is 16” to 18” above the top of your head. Since the top of the puppeteer’s head is the cut-off for the bottom of the TV screen, those 16” to 18” are all the space that’s available for the character’s body.

Human beings are roughly eight heads high. But, because television is a “close-up” medium, that eight to one ratio would mean the puppet’s head would be much too small for a television close-up, not to mention a human hand. So, Muppets are roughly designed on a three to one ratio, one third head and two thirds body.

Since the only support a
Muppet
has is the arm of the puppeteer, weight is always a consideration in puppet design. Imagine working eight or 10 hours a day with your right-hand straight up in the air. So, foam rubber and feathers are the basic
Muppet
building materials. Great care is also taken to make sure that seams and joints don’t “read” on camera.

Color also requires a certain amount of attention. Colors change under television lights and some shades just aren’t television friendly. They can go dark or muddy. So for example, every Kermit puppet (yes, there are several for practical reasons) is that exact shade of Kermit green.

Big Bird’s color is also very crucial. Some yellows can go brown on television. So, Big Bird’s feathers are hand dyed that particular shade of yellow that looks so vibrant on color television.

Between takes on
The Muppet Show,
it was not unusual to see a hand appear on camera holding several swatches of material, all different shades of the same color. It was a puppet builder testing to see which shade read the best on camera.

Jim wanted his puppets to be able to gesture and handle props, which most hand puppets of the Punch and Judy variety could not do. So, Jim designed “handed” puppets. Fozzie Bear, Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, the Swedish Chef and Rowlf, the piano playing dog, are “handed” puppets. They have sleeves and gloves which become the puppet’s arms and hands.

Usually, the puppeteer puts his right hand into the puppet’s head and his left hand into the sleeve and glove. Since the puppeteers are right-handed, “handed” Muppets are all left-handed. The right, or “dead” arm is usually pinned into a permanent position and played away from the camera.

It really gets tricky when the puppet needs to use two hands. When that happens, a second puppeteer is recruited. He or she stands behind the lead puppeteer and slips his or her hand into the puppet’s right hand. So, when you see Ernie butter toast, or deal cards, know that each hand is played by a separate puppeteer. The exceptions are the Swedish Chef and Rowlf, the piano playing dog. Both of their hands were “played” by Frank Oz.

The puppets without hands, Kermit: Gonzo; Piggy; and Bert, for example, are called “rod” puppets because their arms are controlled by thin rods, painted to match the scene’s background. For these guys to handle props requires the use of television technology.

Let’s say, Kermit has to answer a phone back stage at the Muppet Theater. This requires a series of steps. Firstly, when the phone rings, Kermit goes over to the phone and puts his hand on the receiver. Then we stop video taping. Kermit’s hand is attached to the receiver and the rod is then removed from his arm and attached to the bottom of the receiver. Then, we resume taping from another angle, say a close up on the phone. The shot widens out as Kermit brings the phone to his ear and the scene continues. When the two shots are spliced together, Kermit will seamlessly answer the phone. The sequence is reversed when Kermit hangs up the phone.

The final piece of the Muppet’s success is the television puppeteering technique Jim Henson created for them. Since television, as I said, is a close-up medium, Jim determined that eye contact between puppet and audience was essential. It’s the basic reason Muppets appear to be so alive.

Jim accomplished this by having TV monitors around the set so the puppeteers could watch their performances as they were recorded. When a puppet looks the puppeteer in the eye on the monitor, he or she knows that their puppet is looking the viewing audience directly in the eye.

Additionally, Jim discovered that puppets with fixed expressions could appear to change those expressions by changing the angle at which a puppet’s head is presented to the camera. For example, Ernie has a permanent happy grin. To make him look baleful or sad, Jim would tilt Ernie’s head forward, hiding the mouth and presenting only the eyes to camera. To make Ernie seem to grin, Jim would turn his head slightly sideways.

The most difficult physical aspect of Muppet puppeteering is hand control. Make the “duck head” again with your hand. Then make it go, “quack, quack, quack,” very slowly. Notice that your four fingers go up and your thumb goes down. That’s the natural movement of the human hand.

However, If you do this with your hand in a puppet, the head will bounce up and down, losing eye contact as well as the illusion that the puppet is alive. When people talk, the jaw moves but the head and the eyes remains steady.

Puppeteers in training work on “talking” with their right hand, moving only the thumb. This is usually done with a puppet, in front of a mirror, reciting the alphabet. The object is to move the puppet’s jaw while keeping the head stationary. Try it. Make your “duck head” recite the alphabet moving only your thumb. Not as easy as you thought, is it?

Understanding this Muppet technology is essential to writing for them. It keeps you from writing pieces that are impossible to produce, which is a waste of your time. It also keeps you from writing overly complicated material, which is a waste of everyone else’s time.

On the other hand, if you understand the technology, you can make it work for you. I once created an act for the Great Gonzo where he recited the seven-times multiplication table while standing up in a hammock and balancing a grand piano on one finger.

The trick was simplicity itself. We swung a hammock between two posts. Gonzo’s feet were attached to the hammock. A Muppet sized grand piano was attached to Gonzo’s finger. The piano was then hung, at the appropriate height, with clear plastic, invisible wire. Since the whole thing was rigged in front of a curtain, the puppeteer could slip his hand through a slit in the curtain and into Gonzo’s head.

Alas! Gonzo forgot what seven times nine was and got booed off the stage.

Chapter 11

Caroll Spinney

O
f course, the super star, top banana, and good will ambassador of
Sesame Street
is Big Bird, another great Jim Henson creation. In the world of puppetry, Big Bird is a major milestone. His articulated mouth makes him a legitimate puppet. But he’s the first puppet to be completely mobile. He needs no play board or camera angles to hide his puppeteer. He’s completely self contained.