The Muppets

[Ben]

I’m guessing the new Muppets Mayhem series won’t be allowing Dr Teeth to be singing a song about rape (!) like he did for the band's debut in the second Muppet Show pilot, appropriately named Sex And Violence, from back before he even had "real" hands…!

[Daniel]

I'm guessing there will at least be some subtle weed references, man...

[EricJ]

And if Janice wants to live on a beach and walk around naked, she....oh, sorry.

[Ben]

Shining a light on the dark and dirty side of Muppet making…

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 235111978/

No smoke without fire, and several things here are certainly unfortunate if true.

[Randall]

It's a weird, unfocused article, though with some important stuff worth saying. It's mostly about unionization and safety standards, but starts by slamming Kevin Clash. Either is worth reporting, but the combining of them was awkward. I get the point they were trying to make, but I don't think that Clash's interaction with the wranglers really has much to do with safety standards and unionization.

Having said that, I have no doubt that more needs to be done to keep wranglers safe on the job and to get them properly insured.

[Ben]

It’s more about the general working conditions and the way they are treated, which both aspects (Clash, lack of unionization) play a part in.

[Daniel]

A new Jim Henson documentary is in the offing! Anything to touch on his legacy is welcome.

[Ben]

My thoughts before opening the link: oh, is that going to be one of those Ron Howard/Imagine-Kennedy/Marshall type docs?

Yes!

Second thought: I hope they also have Disney on board as it won’t be worth doing if they don’t have…oh, good, they have Disney on board!

Could this be the most definitive documentary on the Muppet Man yet? Yaaaaaay!

[ShyViolet]

Wonderful!!

I love biopics in general, and Ron Howard is just the man to do this.

[Randall]

This WILL be wonderful. I have no doubt.

[ShyViolet]

Life’s a happy song!


https://youtu.be/cKi2deFH_cw

[Ben]

I love biopics in general, and Ron Howard is just the man to do this.

Funny you say that, as I was thinking that this may yet then lead to an actual biopic, The Muppet Man, that’s been doing the rounds for years now. There seems to be a trajectory on these kinds of things where we get a documentary on a subject (Man On Wire, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, How Do You Mend A Broken Heart, etc, etc, etc) and then, if it’s a success, the narrative biopic follows (The Walk, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, the upcoming Bee Gees movie).

So this *could* be a precursor to seeing that screenplay finally realised as a biopic feature. Or it could, you know, just be something to fill two hours of Disney+ time…

[Daniel]

Keep in mind a biopic has already been confirmed.

[EricJ]

Funny you say that, as I was thinking that this may yet then lead to an actual biopic, The Muppet Man, that’s been doing the rounds for years now. There seems to be a trajectory on these kinds of things where we get a documentary on a subject (Man On Wire, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, How Do You Mend A Broken Heart, etc, etc, etc) and then, if it’s a success, the narrative biopic follows (The Walk, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, the upcoming Bee Gees movie).

Having looked at the narrative version of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" before the Oscars (rent the original doc immediately), it seems like narrative biopic remakes of hit documentaries--like The Walk's version of Man on Wire, or the Christian Bale version of "Little Dieter Needs to Fly"--are Hollywood's version of "How DARE those snooty arthouse theaters have an actual commercial audience success! Everyone knows it would be better as a REAL movie!"

And even if it's going the Ron Howard "Imagine" route, have a feeling that any Disney bio/doc of Henson is going to be as sentimentally (and corporately) whitewashed as any biography of Walt--
Technically, if you look at their respective last decades, Jim Henson near the end in the late 80's is an uncanny parallel of Walt Disney near the end in the Disneyland-era 60's: Insiders say that Henson--who originally only got into puppetry as a TV springboard-job to get into experimental filmmaking--started to feel that Kermit & co. were "holding him back", and clearly tried to write them off in the Manhattan movie, and move on to his new career of technological marvels with the Creature Shop...But, when "Labyrinth" proved it wasn't going to be the breadwinner for the company, he had to go back and market the original legacy characters, eventually going the George Lucas route of letting Disney take over the business end.

That's the kind of thing I'd hope to find from a PBS American Masters doc, but Ron Howard may be too nostalgia-struck to go there.
Even "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" floated around some of the edges of Fred Rogers' personal demons, while "Neighborhood" gave us "Saving Mr. Tiger", the nostalgically sentimental Magic-Icon story of just another poor, lost grownup who was "healed" by Saint Fred.

[Ben]

Keep in mind a biopic has already been confirmed.

Yah, but that’s still in development heck. This doc might mean it actually gets made!