Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio.
Hello and welcome to Off the Record. I'm your host,
Jordan Runtug. Thanks so much for listening. Today, we're continuing
our Labyrinth Week celebration honoring David Bowie's unforgettable star turn
as Jaref, the baby abducting goblin King. My guest today
(00:21):
is a puppeteer who performs several characters in the film.
He's one of the two headed guards that Jennifer Connolly's
character out maneuvers with logic. He's also one of the
fiery figures in the Chili Down dance sequence, the one
who gets his head kicked around like a soccer ball.
And my favorite, he was Ambrotious, the trusty dog of Cerdidimus.
(00:41):
But these roles, as impressive as they are, are just
a minuscule part of his resume. This gentleman's name is
Steve Whittmeier, and if you know anything about Muppet history,
that's all I need to say. I know I toss
around the world legend a little too freely, but in
this case, there's no other word for it. His work
(01:02):
was a huge part of my childhood and probably yours
as well. For twenty six years he was the voice
and soul of Kermit the Frog, not to mention Ernie
of Burton, Ernie Fame, Rizzle the Rat, Bean, Bunny, Wembley, Fraggle,
Statler of Statler, and Waldorf Fame. The list goes on
and on. His story is so genuinely inspiring to me.
(01:24):
Steve grew up loving puppetry, especially Jim Henson's Muppets. After
hosting a kid's cable show in his native Atlanta with
his puppet Otis, he was invited to audition for his hero.
This led to years working alongside Henson on all manner
of projects, The Muppet Show, Fraggle, Rock the Dark, Crystal,
and of course Labyrinth. After Henson's death in Steve was
(01:48):
absolutely gutted his mentor was gone. And then he got
the news that Jim had hand picked him to carry
on his signature character Kermit. Up to that point to
have been the only person to ever perform as our
favorite amphibian. Now put this in your own terms. Say
you're a massive Rolling Stones fan and you find out
(02:09):
that Mick Jagger has chosen you to step into his
platforms in front the band. Imagine that incredibly potent mix
of excitement, ecstasy, and sheer terror. Steve obviously excelled at
the role he did it from for eights Babies like me.
He is Kermit, Sesame Street, Muppets, Christmas Carol, Muppet's Treasure Island.
(02:32):
It's all him and now he's creating new characters and
his web based series cave In, where he voices the
hilariously crabby Weldon, the I T. Guy. It was an
honor to speak with Steve about Muppets, the cosmic philosophy
of puppetry, whether or not it's actually easy being green,
and of course his unforgettable encounters with Bowie on the
(02:52):
set of Labyrinth Enjoy To start sort of at the beginning, well,
how did all this speakin for you? Were? You were
ten with Sesame Street began and you wrote a letter
that's correct. I I was ten years old and night.
I had been a Muppet fan for a very long
time prior to that. But the Muppets were really, prior
(03:15):
to Sesame Street, were kind of almost just an act
that went on variety shows, you know, they didn't have
their own show and stuff like that, and so it
was a matter of waiting until they were gonna be
on you know, the Tonight Show or something like that
to get to get the chance to see them. And
when Sesame Street happened, suddenly the Muppets were on TV
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every single day, and I was just at that right
age to get you know, really obsessed and become a
pride a fan of it. I started trying to build
my own puppets and all that sort of thing, and
you know, Rocky start with that. It's not an easy
thing to do. And so I ended up writing that
letter to Jim Henson and a few months later he
actually wrote back to me, which was amazing now that
(03:58):
I look back at it, you know, it seems of
unlikely and surprising. Uh, you know, at a time when
there was no social media, and it really was you know,
a letter with the stamp on it. To get a
letter back from Jim was pretty special. And he directed
me to some simple muppet patterns that he had published
and I think a Woman's Day magazine some years before,
(04:19):
super super simple, as a way for me to start
making puppets. So that was really what started me. And
once I started doing that and learning how to do that,
I started adding a little inch here or a little
shape there, and and started stiddling around with making different
shapes and making my own puppets as well. But my
initial thing was to try and copy every character that
(04:40):
Jim had done, from Kermit to Ernie to Birt to
everybody on Sesame Street. And I think I read that
your friends in high school we're calling you Kurmit, like
this almost seems faded in a way. Well that's true.
They did, mostly because I had my my pretty actually
pretty poor Kermit puppet that I've made by comparison to
the real one, of course, but whenever there were school
(05:01):
talent shows or corral recitals or things like that, I
took every opportunity I could should be on stage you
doing something, not me personally, I was hiding. Of course
I was in a puppet stage, but to have an
opportunity to do something with puppets from my classmates and
stuff like that. So I ended up using Kermit quite
a lot, the not very good version of Kermit I
was probably doing at the time, but it did gave
(05:23):
me the nickname. You're working on this this television show
in Atlanta, the Kids Show with Otis and the kids.
All through town. They're calling in there talking to you.
I mean The thing that always boggles my mind about
your work is how much improv is involved, especially for
something like that. I mean, not only are you giving
a performance with your body and doing the voice and
(05:44):
doing the vocal work, but then you have to be
that quick to like think of what the character would
say to these kids. I mean, how do you learn that?
I bet you're something that you don't learn. It's just
something that that's kind of born with. It's a funny thing.
I don't know exactly how you learn it, um because
it's something I always did. I mean, I'm a pretty
good improv person when it comes to doing characters that
I know quite well. Once I know a character. Once
(06:05):
I've done a character for a while, and it's very
natural to play in that character's voice. I'm less good
at straight improv, you know, I don't do that quite
as well, But if I know the character, I can
tear in a conversation indefinitely. And that really is what
I was doing back in the late seventies. What you know,
as I was graduating high school and doing that first show,
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you know, it was more than two hours a day
on the air live and taking these phone calls. So
we had to fill a lot of time with a
lot of you know, a lot of a lot of
a lot of talk. And I never gave it a
second thought. I just sort of did it. So to
say how you learned that, I think you just you
do it. Yeah, yeah, you just jump in and do it.
And it really was always throughout my career it's been
(06:47):
my favorite thing to do, no matter which character, whether
it would be Rizzl the rad or Kermit the Frog
or whoever, It's always been my favorite thing to do
is just to have the opportunity to carry on a
conversation in character. Is it's great fun I mean, and
this is probably a funny question. Where do you go
during that? Do you are you very present in or
where are do you? Almost kind of like I I
(07:09):
talked to a lot of musicians and they say that
when they're on stage playing solos, they don't know where
they go. They just kind of go away and they're
not there and just sort of the music takes over.
Is that what it's like for you when you're playing
a character? You know, it's the funny that you should
put it that way, because I can imagine I'm I'm
sort of not a great accomplished musician, but I've done
a little bit of music as well, and that can happen,
(07:30):
you know, And and there is a similarity. I think
it might be true with many many artistic pursuits. Frankly,
you know, you know, it's odd. It's hard to describe.
You know. We watch what we're doing on a monitor
as we work, so we're seeing our work as the
audience will see it. And I got to a point
where I was looking at criminal on the screen and
(07:52):
not thinking about it anymore. It was almost as though
I retracted from anything that I was conscious of doing
and began to just witness it, just to watch it
as though I were an audience member. And there were
plenty of times, I mean a lot of times still
are when I would drift off into that character and
(08:13):
not even think about what that character was going to
say next, and and honestly quite often be surprised by it,
very removed from being the character and really more watching
the character just come out and evolve and kind of
channel through you, you know. And I'm sure it's the
same way with musicians, you know, and as incredible men.
It really does, it's alive, It takes on a life
(08:36):
of its own. It really does. And to me, that
is the key to whenever the Muppets have done something
successful and their connection to the audience was always about
that sort of believability. You know, they were just as
much there and alive as the people as a human
actor or you know, talk show host or whatever that
(08:59):
they were speaking with just absolutely key and unfortunately I
think that's a little bit missing these days, that they're
not quite as strong as they might have worn't been.
But but that's a lot of it. The character is
such a deeply ingrained character and we all know that
character when we see it, and it's very important that
that stay that way for that connection to exist. There
(09:19):
are things that the character will and will not do,
choices they will and will not make. And yeah, it's
it's funny that that is. To actually know that character
as a real person is definitely fascinating to me. I
guess my question to you, in sort of a broad sense,
is is there one thing that separates good puppet performers
(09:39):
from from the great? Is there is there one thing
that you can that you can articulate or is it
a series of many, many, many small things that are
honed over time. You know, it's hard to put my
finger on one the future of the thing. I think,
it's a lot of stuff. It's really interesting when I
and I don't mean to be critical of anybody's art.
I mean I think people progress at different stages. You
learn everybody starts to square one, and you learn through
(10:00):
this process. You know whether you're a musician, whether you're
a puppeteer with you're an accurate, whether you're an artist,
a painter, or whatever. It's interesting when I look at
a lot of the puppetryes that's out there these days,
it tends to appear to be a lot like what
we were doing back in about nineteen eighty. You know,
it hasn't progressed a great deal in terms of what
(10:21):
it is that people are doing in many many cases,
and that's just a matter of time and learning and
what style of person wants to do. In my opinion,
what always helped me to be the best I could
be with puppeteering and performing these characters is to put
them first. It really was a matter of looking at
(10:41):
those characters as though they were living, breathing entities in
the world. The minute they become a character, franchise you've
kind of lost the point, you know, and from the
point of view of the people who are producing the
material for these characters, they need to be their point
of view and their sensibility, and the group dynamic of
the group of characters needs to be the focus through
(11:05):
which you look at everything you do. I guess, going
back a little further, how did you go from being,
you know, a teenager with with your own homemade kermit
to actually working with Jim Henson? How did you you
first cross pass? I understand you you met Carol Spinney,
who is legendary performer Big Bird, oscar the Grouch. How
(11:28):
did you you first enter the Muppets orbit? That's exactly
how it began. I um time from Atlanta originally it's
still lived here, and I never heard of these things.
But there was this puppetry festival, this gathering of puppeteers
taking place in Atlanta, and I heard about it and
decided to go because I thought it'd be fun to
meet Carol, you know, someone who worked with the Muppets.
(11:49):
And I was about I guess I was seventeen or eighteen,
and it hadn't really clicked for me that I would
be considered for a job. I mean, I didn't go
for that purpose. I just wanted to meet someone who
worked with the Muppet just you know. And so I
met him, and I happened to be the only person
at this festival who at that point in time was
(12:09):
actually doing Muppet like puppets, Muppet style puppet The puppets
I had created in my own look like the same style.
So I spent the weekend this was a weekend long
thing with Carol and his wife Debbie. We faced contact info,
but I I didn't necessarily spect to ever hear from
him again. And about four months later he called and
said Jim was looking for new puppeteers for Sesame Street time.
(12:33):
He was he was shooting the Muppet Show, but he
was looking for new Sesame Street performers and thought I
should audition. So what that led to was was eventually
ending up in New York with Jim, who called me
and invited me to come up and spend the two
days with him. And Jim's idea of an audition was
to spend about I don't know, maybe an hour with
puppets on our hands, and the rest of the week
(12:55):
was spent sitting around talking and getting to know each other.
He really wanted to know there, and you know, I
was very young. I can only imagine what that must
have been like and whether I was someone that he
felt would fit in with his group of people. Uh
so that that interpersonal kind of you know, connection between
the group was super important to him. Yeah. What was
(13:16):
he like as as a person, Well, he was I
think one of the best ways to put it might
be to say he was an integral thinker. He was
someone who seemed to have a pretty good grasp on
seeing a situation from multiple points of view and multiple angles.
And he was quite a collaborator. He had a great
organizational sense in terms of bringing the right people in
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for the right projects. And he would meet someone in
the course of life or you know whatever, and he
would maybe not work with that person for four or
five years, and but he would remember them and he
would have this thought in minds that, oh, you know,
this person I met would be perfect for this project.
So he's really really a student making those kinds of
calls on people, you know, stuff like that, and just
(14:01):
a terrific person to work with. I always say that
I don't feel like I worked for Jim. I feel
like I worked with him, which was really really special.
That's funny because I speaking to many of of David
Bowie's colleagues and friends, they all said something similar about him,
is that he he was so good at at sort
of this almost social alchemy in a way, like he
(14:22):
would he knew how to put a team together and
even if it could be years down the road, he
would remember people and think, oh, yeah, that person would
be perfect for for doing X, Y Z and And
that's why that whatever he's involved was so good. Was
that he brought in people, didn't tell them what to do,
let them be themselves and bring the most authentic gifts
to the project. And that was that was really special. Yeah, Jim.
(14:44):
Jim was a bit like that. He would come in
with the vision and an idea, quite happy for everyone
to have their particular input in that project. You know,
he was the final arbiter of what we actually did
and didn't do, but more often than not, he gave
us an enormous amount of freedom just to add our
you know, our our thing to whatever it was we
were doing. At what point did David get involved with
(15:07):
with Jim for the for the Labyrinth projects? I know,
it sounds like that had a long gestation period. Yeah,
you know, I can't give you a definite answer on that.
I'm not quite sure. I do know that when he
began talking about Labyrinth and sort of sharing it with us,
he'd been working on it for a little while at
that point. And when I say as, I mean, the
pup tears. You know, I remember a particular conversation. We
(15:29):
were in Toronto working on some other work, and he said, um,
something that I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said there were
a couple of people he was looking at for the
role of Jared. One of them was David Bowie and
the other was Sting. I remember very distically having a
conversation with him where I said, well, you know, I
think Sting is amazing, but I sure hope you go
(15:50):
with David Bowie if he's willing to do it. And
Jim said, no, no, I I hope so too, And uh,
you know, it's a matter of whether he's he's going
to be interested or not. You know, that was pre
asking I or free getting an answer, but I was.
I mean, I was just a massive fan of David
Boie from the time I was in high school. You know,
Ziggy Stardust was that that whole album was just a
trademark time. I mean, it was just it was the
(16:13):
music that I did but in my high school rock bands,
you know. So it was a very big deal, very
big deal to me to have the chance to meet
him and work with it. Oh man, I can only
imagine when did you first meet? You know, I have
a few embarrassing moments in my life. This is one
of them. Before we started shooting, we were rehearsing some things.
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We were there for maybe a week before the shooting began,
and Jim decided to have a gathering at his house
in Hempstead. We all go in Bowie. David Boye is
gonna be there. Jennifer Connelly was there, the cast, you know,
the main producers and people, and you know, all of
us puppeteers. And I remember we were sort of standing
(16:55):
in the full circle of people and I was one
of a handful of people who was introduced to David.
He was very gracious and kind of quiet, you know,
and and and you know, very nice to meet you
kind of thing. After a moment, I said, You're gonna
have to I was very young as well, You're gonna
have to forgive me just a little bit if throughout
the first couple of weeks we're shooting together, if you
(17:16):
catch me staring at you, I don't mean anything by it.
I'm just such a massive fan. And he smiled, but
he also took a step back, and I remembered it,
and then shortly after he accused himself, and I remember thinking,
oh my god, I've blown it. I have I have
(17:38):
made a complete fool of myself in front of one
of my heroes with this fanboy thing. And now how
can I go in and work with him? You know?
So that was actually the first meeting, and then we
go in and begin the work. You know, we're working
on labor, working every day and see fine, we were
working okay, but one day for some reason, so we
(18:01):
go we go to the dailies every day that you know,
we see the work we did. The day before. We're
leaving the daily theater I'm working. I'm walking back to
my dressing room with a hand a handful of puppeteers
and we're all gonna gathering our stuff to go home,
and somebody ran up behind me and put you know,
like you might run up behind somebody put both hands
on their shoulders and kind of jump off the ground
(18:22):
and really pressed on their shoulders for a second, you know,
just the sneak up on them. It was David Boys
and I had absolutely I I don't know why in
that moment he chose me, but he came to me,
put hands on my shoulders, look, you know, with all
the other puppeteers, and said, hey, I'm going he still
(18:42):
has makeup on from the days as the character. He said,
I gotta go out and get all his makeup off
once you come up, and we'll sit around and talk
for a while. And I was flabbergasted. I don't know
why he chose me in that moment, but he did.
So that's exactly what we did. So I didn't drive
in the UK at that point because I had never driven.
I was a little bit afraid to be on the
(19:02):
other side of the road, so I didn't have a car.
My one way to get home was that every day
they sent a mini cab for me, like a little
car that this guy would drive me home. And we're
working in Elstree, which was quite a distance from where
I was staying. So you know, I had like one
shot to get home, so if I didn't leave right then.
I remember the very first thought in my mind was, oh,
(19:25):
my god, how am I going to get home? I'm
sleeping here. Yeah, and but and then I thought, well,
it would be worth it to sleep here. So so anyway,
he you know, so I go. I follow him up
to the to the makeup lady is working on taking
the makeup off. We sat around for probably two hours
or so and just talked about everything under the sun
(19:46):
that we could think that I could think, I have
to talk to David Boe about things like at the time,
Prince was incredibly popular, height of Purple Rain popularity. We
talked about Prince, and then somehow we got around to
the topic of the fact that I had gone out
and bought my own little recording you know, home recording
studio and my you know, Yamaha d X seven synthesizer,
(20:09):
which was a big deal at the time, you know.
And and he said, oh, do you have any of
your music here? And I did, and he said, oh,
go get it. I gotta hear it. So I got
to play my music for what it's worth for David Bowie,
who was extremely encouraging and extremely enthusiastic about it, which
was a really big deal for me. Any problimed me on,
(20:31):
you know, I mean like like, it seems very like
sincere compliments. I don't think he would have done that
just to be nice. You know, he wouldn't have said
anything bad, but he also wouldn't have gone out of
his way to say, well, that's that's really quite good.
You know, we wanted to know the lyrics. He really
was in tune to it, so that was a very
big deal for me. And then I as as I
(20:51):
recall the the woman who was doing the makeup actually
gave me a ride home so I didn't get stuck there.
This sounds like a top three, maybe even top two
life moment ever. I mean, good lord, that's incredible. It
was a pretty big deal. And you know, obviously I
will never forget that how nice congratious he was to me,
(21:13):
and of course that we worked on set and had
a great time, you know, these silly characters that we
were doing together along playing alongside him when he was singing.
Just a wonderful guy. And I was very surprised. And
then you know, I ran into him a couple of
times after that, just because of the connection. I was
able to get tickets to a to a concert or
two and I got to pop backstage and say hello,
(21:35):
you know, things like that. But that was really my
moment was that evening when he decided he was going
to spend some time with me, you know, for whatever reason.
I mean, you probably remembered what you said to him
the first time he met and that was like, that
was the moment you had the time. I guess, you know,
maybe so maybe so. We had spoken briefly on the set,
just in the course of working, but it was really
(21:56):
about the work. So yeah, who knows that that is amazing?
Oh man, I mean that that that shoot. It seems
like a really incredibly hard, arduous shoot, but also it
looks like a really fun shoot. Did Did David have
a good sense of humor? Yeah? I think he did,
And I think he had to to deal with this
because yeah, it was it was a complicated shoot. I mean,
(22:16):
he's he's a professional. He's used to working in a
set and you know, he knows what it's like to
work on a film. But sometimes are are things that
we would do with these mass scenes of puppets. It
takes a long time to set him up. It takes
a long time to get them working. You've got so
many characters working out at the same time, and Jim's
trying to coordinate those characters to do things because it
was all practical effects at that point, you know, so
(22:38):
everything had to work in camera. So yeah, yeah, very
patient guy and but just always a gets us of
humor and you know, he always seemed to be enjoying himself,
which was terrific. What was the uh, the trickiest scene
for you to shoot? Was it that? The chili down scene.
That's a pretty good estimate on the hardest thing we did. Yeah,
because it was the early day of computer controlled cameras,
(23:03):
you know, trying to to match these shots over and
over again with cameras that that tried to do the
same motion. And you look at it now and you
can kind of see this little halo around all the characters.
You know, it's pretty crude by today's special effects standards.
But I I did the the guy who was the
one whose head comes off and gets kicked across the
room and stuff like that, So I was I was
(23:25):
doing the head of that character, which means, you know,
you've got I don't know how many maybe fifteen twenty
puff of tears, all dressed in black clothing with these
hoods on, so we can hardly see running through a
black set that was kind of slippery and so real time,
you know, they had my that head had to fly
across the room as though it had been kicked or hits,
(23:46):
you know, or whatever that was about. So I'm running
through space trying to make his head twy across. You know.
The choreography for that just is absolutely stunning and I
can't get over because in addition to the physical demands
of the character, you also have to deliver a performance too,
which is the thing that I can't run my mind
around doing all of those things all at once. That's
unbelievable to me. It's aught to think about sometimes, yeah,
(24:08):
especially when it says choreographs and blocked as that. That
was done by a guy named Charles Oggins, who I
think he's still around, but he was a very talented
dancer and choreographer and we all worked with Charles to
figure this out. But it was a great coordination effort.
You know, um, three or four people per character trying
to do that thing. Now, did you have any choice
(24:29):
over which characters that that you were playing. I mean,
if because obviously there were just so many, or was
it really just like, hey, you can you grab one
of these one of these goblins right now? We need
to get forty five people in the castle. Right now,
we need everybody we can get, or did you get
the sort of pick and choose, like being one of
the guards or well Jim, Jim chose which one of
those guards I was. I was one of the four heads,
(24:52):
and he chose Uh as when you said guards, I'm
talking about the guys who were the the top and
the bottom of the doors. You know, there were four
guys who when and she chooses which door to go through,
almost like with playing cards, almost, Yeah, and Jim chose
who would do which one of those just I don't
know whether he had specific reasons for choosing. He just
made a choice. The four of us who did that.
(25:13):
I think when it came to the goblins, I probably
had some free reign on that although they sort of
had their goblins they're gonna put in the front, and uh,
you know I did one of those guys, and I
remember choosing the one I loved was this little guy
with a flat head with a long, skinny nose, and
I loved that carried that puppet was such a great puppet.
So I may have rushed in and grabbed that guy
because I loved him so much, you know. I mean,
(25:37):
is there, aside from your your moment, your private moment
with David, you have any favorite moments from from on
the set, anything stick out? Oh? Wow, you know, it's
a little hard for me to remember a lot of that. Um,
what I really recall is the camaraderie of this massive
project coming together, and Jim was obviously very busy and distracted,
(25:58):
but he always kept a good humor and had a
moment to smile. One of my favorite things is that
no movie would allow you to do this these days.
Jim always loved it when I would bring like my
um early days it was a Super eight camera, but
then it was home video and shoot stuff. Uh. He
loved the fact that I was documenting things and we
(26:19):
didn't always have behind the scenes people. So, I mean,
I've got some videos people have never seen. I don't
know whether I have anything of David particularly, but of
just the process of shooting that film. I got a
lot of stuff, and I don't even know what the
legality is of showing it somewhere, you know what I mean,
It's amazing. I mean a lot of stuff of Jim
specifically talking to my camera about the process. You know,
(26:43):
he loved the fact that I was you know, I
knew him and we worked together for years, and that
I was the guy shooting that. You know, you have
here a little documentary. That's amazing. Oh, you gotta do
something with that. That's so cool. I'd love to see that.
I hope I can at some point. Yeah, I want
to figure out a way to get it out of
the world little bit. What was Jim's working relationship like
with David, because they they're saying early they kind of
(27:04):
seemed very similar in a lot of ways. I imagine
them them really hitting it off. Yeah, I mean, it
certainly seemed on the set that it was wonderful, you know.
And I don't know how much they kept in touch
after the film was over. It wouldn't surprise me if
they did, but I don't really know that. But certainly
on set it was great. I mean, I think they
tended to agree on most of what was going on. Well,
for instance, is that I don't think Jim in any
(27:27):
way imagined there being music in this film. I don't.
I don't think he was going for that. But when
David wanted to do music for the film, it suddenly
became a bit of a musical, you know. Suddenly a
character would break into song, you know, and that changed
the certainly the feel of what I said, what the
direction I think Jim was going in. I don't, I don't.
(27:48):
I don't think he was looking for it to be
a musical. I forgot David Bowie and he wants to
wants to do his thing, Well, yeah, what are you gonna? Right?
And David wanted to do music for it, and I
mean the music is great, you know, but in terms
of their relationship, I mean, as best I could certainly see,
it was professional and friendly and they certainly seemed to
be enjoying the silliness of working together. But David playing
(28:11):
this kind of strong lead character who seemed to have
these other intentions in some ways. You know, what was
David and Jennifer Connelly's uh friendship? Like, like what was
there were they sort of like were they friends on set? Well?
(28:34):
You know, they certainly had to work closely together and
place some kind of intimate stuff together, and obviously she
was fourteen at the time, but he was playing a
sort of a fantasy in her mind in a certain way,
you know, real coming of age kind of thing for her.
I don't know whether we really know. At the end
of the film, we sort of indicate that these were
all real things that happened to this this character, but
(28:55):
in a way it was very metaphorical in its in
this whole thing about this coming of age story her.
I feel like they worked together incredibly well. I can't
give you any insight on their direct relationship in terms of,
you know, how how that was to work together, but
it seemed like as was typical with most of the
things Jim did, and this was a massive undertaking this
(29:16):
particular project. I never felt that there was any kind
of tension from anyone, you know, Jim. Jim tended to
have a set where people were enjoying the work, you know,
as we as we got through it. I mean it
it looks like a blast. I mean, do you do
you remember seeing it all completed for the first time?
Was it at the premiere? The first time we saw
the film was in Toronto. We might have been shooting
(29:39):
Fraggle Rock so talk about two extremes of different projects. Um,
you know, we were. We were sort of in the
middle of the four years, the four or five years
we did on Fraggle when Labyrinth came along, and I
seem to recall Jim having a Toronto screening West where
we did Fraggle, and and all of us going to
a theater seeing it there. I mean I was blown
(30:00):
away by For me, I loved it immediately because I
loved everything about it from David you know, I was
also a big rocky horror fan. Oh my god. Yeah.
I felt like there were some parallels between Tim Curry's
character in that and what David was doing. Even it
was very, very different, but this powerful sort of figure
(30:20):
was sort of almost like the sexual tension thing going on.
There seems to be some similarities, and I loved everything
about it. I can't tell you. I I can think
of at least a dozen women in my life that
say that their first crush was David Bowie in that movie. Well,
you know, I guess so. And it's really interesting I do.
I do comic cons these days quite often, and the
number of people, the cost players who come through dressed
(30:42):
as the two characters, you know, the Sarah character and
David's character, and oftentimes there's two women doing that. A
lot of women dressed as him in that film. You know,
it's a very kind of androgynous character, but a lot
of his stuff was that way. You know, Yeah, they're
actually I have several friends who have just addressed up
as a chair for Halloween too. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
(31:05):
I mean, there's so many things that you've been involved
with that that just means so much for so many people.
I mean, you know, of course obviously, Kermit, I mean,
how did you receive the news that you were I
don't even know what the word is. The phrase would
be just to to now inhabit that character. Yes, yeah,
it was pretty shortly after Jim's death. You know, we
(31:26):
were all going through an incredible period of just down
depression the morning, you know, terrible, terrible thing. But it
wasn't too long after that because Jim's family was still
in the process of theoretically trying to make the deal
work where he was selling his company to the Walt
Disney Company, which fell apart at that point, didn't happen,
(31:49):
but everybody was making a go of it. I mean,
the plan was to go ahead with that, so Kermit
needed to continue to exist. And from what I gather,
although he and I never talked about it, Jim had
knowing that he was going into Disney. He was sort
of like John Lasseter became. He was gonna be this
new creative force within Disney. Um many many projects and
(32:10):
ideas were being run by him for his thoughts. He
was gonna be the real, a real creative force within Disney.
And I think he felt that he might suddenly be
in a position where he simply didn't have the time
to perform Kermit anymore. Uh. And he'd been the Kermit
for thirty five years at that point, so rather than
(32:32):
Kermit go away, And it wasn't like he wanted to
hold open auditions, as was Jim's way of doing it.
He wanted to pass it on to someone that he
felt could handle it. I guess, and there he felt
that about me, because he had mentioned it to a
couple of people to his wife, Jane and I think
Frank Coz and a few other people, but a small
group that in the event that he was not able
(32:54):
to continue to do it, he was thinking about acting
me if I would give it a shot. Jim was
the only person everyday Kermit. We we all did our
characters and nobody else did our characters. So to suddenly
be told that was a big deal, you know, obviously,
and very scary to me and insimidating. But I immediately
said I would give it a try. And it was.
(33:15):
I mean, the way it was put to me was,
would you like to try it? And I immediately said yes.
But it was an incredible honor and just really scary
at the same time. You know, I cannot even begin
to imagine. I mean, what was it look for you
when you were handed I don't want to call him
a puppet because that seems really disrespectful, but when when
(33:36):
you were handing Kermit for the first time he was yours?
What was that would you remember, like like having him
in your hand for the first time and knowing that
this was now a part of you. I had stood
in for Jim like once or twice, but but I mean,
that's all that means is I put the puppet on
while he did another puppet, and then he immediately took
it back, and you know, he would dub the lines later.
(33:57):
So dog I had never had the puppet on the war.
But really the first time I had any contact with
the actual physical puppet after Jim's death, and knowing that
it was now up to me to try to make
it work, was very private. I mean, they actually sent
me a Kermit puppet um within weeks after Jim died,
(34:18):
and we talked about this for me to begin to
fiddle around with it. So it came to my home,
you know, in a box, you know. And you know,
I remember very very specifically that when I took the
puppet out of the box, it smelled like Jim. I mean,
I don't even know what that means exactly. Jim didn't smell,
(34:39):
but you know what I mean, you have a spent
you know. It was the last puppet that he had used.
You know, we had worked together just a few weeks before.
I remember it so well. And I put the puppet on,
and I'm standing in my bedroom in front of a
dresser mirror, you know, And I knew how to make
a puppet work, you know, I've done that a lot
by it. So I remember holding it up to the
(34:59):
mirror and having Kermit look at the mirror and sort
of then as though he was looking at we were
looking at each other in the mirror, you know, and
then uh, you know, my hands turned Kermit's face towards me,
and I really it was it was uncanny. I got
this sense of it was almost like kermittt was saying
to me, Okay, well go on say something. You know,
(35:21):
you've got it, you got it, do the voice. And
it completely freaked me out. I I took the puppet off.
I put the puppet in another room and I didn't
go near it for about three weeks. It was a
very weird, weird, kind of strange moment. And eventually I
remember Brian Hanson. I think it was Brian who got
(35:43):
in touch with me and said, you know, how's it going.
We sort of need to It would be good for
us if we could see something that you're doing, you know.
And I so I put together a tape of me singing.
I think it was not it's not that easy being green.
They sent me a track and I recorded my us
on top of it and shot it. I mean, I
(36:03):
don't think I ever sounded exactly like Jim. But I
realized quite early on that the most important part of
this process was going to be to make sure Kermit
state who Kermit was, that the character needed to be consistent,
and I mean, I just knew that. And the fortunate
part for me was that I at that point I
worked with Jim for a little over twelve years and
(36:27):
beside him almost all the time when he was doing Kermit,
doing other characters or assisting in with Kermit or something
like that, and so I really had a sense of
where Kermit came from from within Jim. You know, that
was super important. The things that were affectations of Gems
that were really Jim that became a Kermit, and how
(36:48):
that seemed to happen, you know. So those were things
I was able to recall my own experience of that.
And I could have watched YouTube videos all day long
of the work that him and done, and it would
not have given me what I really needed, which was
that interior, you know, origination point from Jim. So that's
really the only way it would have been possible. I
(37:11):
was gonna say, knowing Jim, it seems to have been
much more helpful than being any kind of impressionist or
anything to your right, well, exactly exactly, And it's very
easy to copy somebody sometimes, you know, you can just
copy what they do and do your impression of them.
But I knew from doing my own characters, you know,
because I've done a number of my own characters by then,
that to do that would mean that Kermit would become
(37:33):
very stale, very quickly, and he would just be a copy,
you know, be a parrot. And I didn't want him
to be a clone of Jim. He needed to be
based on that, but he needed to evolve, He need
to continue to grow, otherwise he wouldn't be viable as
a character going forward. I must imagine be like a
jazz player getting a lead sheet to a to a
jazz standard. You got the chords there, You've got the
(37:54):
basic structure, but then you veer off of that and
you make it your own, and you do your own thing.
You put your own in flect fins on it. It's
a funny thing. I hadn't thought about it until you
said it. Just then. The natural way that we would
all make that statement is to say, you know, you
start with the basis and something and then you make
it your own, and and that's true, but it really
what it boiled down to was to start in the
basis of Jim's Kermit keep his influence a part of
(38:19):
it rather than make it my own. It's almost as
though I was just trying to allow Kermit to continue
to grow. And that really came in handy in the
first couple of projects we did shortly after Jim's death.
One of them was the Muppet Christmas Carol and the
other was Muppet Treasure Island. Both were cases where sort
of playing Jim playing Kermit, but then Kermit was playing
(38:42):
an additional role. It wasn't really Kermit, you know, he
was other characters within those stories. So that was kind
of a challenge too. It's like three times removed, you know, Oh,
I can only I mean, we just watched Muppets Christmas
Carol this year. I mean I was I was actually
thinking about watching, like, oh my god, you're right, this
is Kermit as Bob chriss Bob cratchit as Kermit or
(39:02):
wait a wait, now I know I'm confused exactly. That
was my first really major thing as Kermit after Jim's death,
and it was the right tone and the right type
of project, and the Muppets were I think very well
cast in that Kermit was the right character to play
that character, you know, and you were Beans as well? Right,
(39:22):
being Bunny, I was being a was Rizzo as well.
Rizzo with Gonzo is one of my guys, and yeah,
many many things. Be Bean is my favorite in that
And I still I could I get choked up to
this day. I first saw this movie when it came
out and I was like five years old whenever the
camera pans over to to to being Bunny and when
he's sleeping outside of the hold, like, I can't, I
(39:45):
can't handle that. To this thirt and three years old,
I can't. This a little shivering thing. Yeah, I love that.
I mean, that's a nice little moment, but it kind
of gets the point across. You know, God, how does
that feel for you? I mean these movies, you know.
I mean, I'm sure you get this old time and
in many different ways from people who are much more
articulate than me. But I mean, these these movies, these characters,
these moments that there are a huge part of my
(40:07):
life and millions and millions of others. I mean, how
does it feel to know that you've had that kind
of impact on people? I mean every year at Christmas,
we watched this movie with my family, you know, my
girlfriend and it's just it's really special for us. What's
that like for you? Yeah, it's a funny thing. You know.
Part of the reason why I love doing the comic
cons is because I get to meet so many of
the fans. You know, when we were doing this work
(40:28):
over the years, we worked in a studio, kind of
in this vacuum. You know, we didn't have a live
audience that you didn't see people and pre Internet, you know,
you've got the feedback that you've got, but it was
a little bit different than there was no social media
or anything like that. You don't know what people are thinking.
You know what the reviewers you're thinking, but that's about it.
So it's gratifying to know that there was a documentary
(40:48):
done some years ago about George Harrison and I believe
Martin Scorcese directed. It's a great documentary. Living in the
material world one of my favorites. Love it and forgive me,
but I always get for money pies on. I get
Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam mixed up because of their names,
not because of what they looked like. I think it's
Terry Gilliam who is in there being interviewed because all
(41:08):
of that time. You know that the money Piespines flying
circus time and George Harrison's involved with them, and all
that was going on at exactly the same time we
were doing The Muppet Show in England. He makes the
statement in there basically where he says, it was a
little arrogant on our part, but we were doing what
we wanted to do with almost no regard for the
(41:29):
fans whatsoever. It's like John Lennon said, you know, we
we it didn't matter whether anybody liked it. We were
gonna do it anyway. And that's actually it wasn't arrogant,
but that's exactly the way Jim was. Jim did what
he wanted to do, and it just so happened that
people responded to it. You know, he did a lot
of things people didn't respond to. I mean, labretth wasn't
(41:49):
immediate big success. It was you know, it's been it's
become more of a cult success than it was an
immediate success. And he would have loved that. But it
was true of all of this work. And I resonate
with out to the extent that while I'm having this
great opportunity to meet fans who love the work. It
was purely for selfish reasons, you know, And it wasn't
about money, and it wasn't about fame. It was about
(42:10):
doing this incredible thing and having the opportunity to do it.
You know, dream come true. You know how many people
have a dream when they're when they're a teenager and
then get to actually do it. I mean, that's that
is absolutely unbelievable. I mean, you know, some of it
is luck, but a whole lot of its talent, and
a lot of it is just plain luck. You know,
it really is. I mean I look back at it,
(42:32):
and you can it's very You can look back at
scenarios and see how things fell into play. So you
could say it's serendipity or it's meant to be, and
maybe it is, but it also is just interesting to
see the pattern of how everything fell into place for
me to end up in the right place at the
right time. When Jim I was the right age, he
was looking for young people. He wanted like a person
(42:55):
to come over and become a part of his core team,
and I became that person. Could have been somebody else, know,
but it happened to be me. Right is the right
time you know, when is the when you when you're
going out and you're meeting fans at comic cons. What's
(43:17):
the most common thing that people say? Oh, just say
say this in so and so's voice. Is there a
common thing that people come up to you and ask
you to do? People do ask me to do the voices,
and I actually rarely do it. I usually tell them,
you know, I really, I really don't do the voices
outside of when I was performing the characters, you know,
trying to let people down. But I would say the
(43:37):
most common thing they say is quite similar to what
you were stating, and it's always great to hear it,
and that is that it's just such a huge part
of their lives, you know that it's um they usually
have some memory of a parent or grandparent or a
time in their lives when the Muppets for whatever reason
might have meant something to them in particular. And I
(43:57):
resonate with that because I was actually the same way
prior to working with Jim. You know, it was. It
was a massive part of my life for a good
nine or ten years before any notion of ever doing
it as a career came about, you know, So I
know exactly what they feel. There's a connection. I used
(44:18):
to look at the Muppet as a kid. I didn't
realize this at the time, but I know it now.
I think the audience was looking at these characters as
you know, you sort of saw pass them to the
person who was performing them, because they because they were
a unique aspect of whoever that performer was. You know,
it was a particular performer. They didn't switch around characters,
(44:38):
and that person would potentially be that character for their
whole life as far as Jim was concerned. So the
connection is through the puppets to the performers, between the
audience and the performer, like any other performer. You know,
it's like it might be through music to a musician.
You know, it's a very similar kind of thing. And
Jim was not extremely precious about the characters he He
(45:01):
really seemed to look at that the Muppet as the puppet.
You know, the puppets were tools tools of his artistic expression,
like a paintbrush or or if he'd been a carpenter,
you know, Kermit might have been a hammer, you know,
or a guitar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you never know. Wow,
that's that's such an interesting way to put I never
thought of that. I was gonna ask you, and I
know you you canna think I'm a crazy person for
(45:22):
asking this, but like, what was your relationship like with
the figures themselves? And the fact that you had Kermit
shipped to you like boggles my mind because I think,
oh my god, it's just it's the kind of thing
that would be sent with like armed guards and in
like some kind of special truck, like you know, on
loan from the Smithsonian or something like did you have
a special place for it, did you? Or was it
like you just said, was it just a tool and
(45:43):
you just kind of put it over there when you
were done? And yeah, I kind of was that. It's
really interesting thing with puppeteers, and I'm sure there are
ways to relate this to other artists and the type
of work they do with whatever the tools of their tradear.
I had built so many characters, and when you start
with a concept for character and you build it from
the inside out to be whatever it's gonna be, that
(46:05):
you always have that objective view of it along with
the subjective you from the point of view as a character.
So I should look at Kermit differently. When Jim was
doing Kermit to a certain extent. I'll give you an example.
We never talked to our characters. We don't relate to
the characters like we sit there and talk to the puppets,
you know. They we put them on. We do what
we do and we have a great time doing We
stay in character and they say cut and we keep
(46:27):
going for ten minutes and stuff like that. But it
is all about just us doing a performance with the characters.
We don't feel like we have a separate relationship with
the characters per se. But I remember one time I
walked on the set and Frank was doing Piggy, and
for whatever reason, Miss Piggy looked at me and said, oh, hello, Stephen,
And it was so cool and and I mean by
(46:52):
by this point, yeah, by this point I had been
working with the Muppets at Puppets forever, you know, I mean,
I've better been doing in Puppets for twenty years and
with the Muppets for five, so but it was still
there was something cool about Ms Piggy speaking to me
because Frank would normally do that. It's just something that
came out of his mouth. You know, I have to
walk on the set, you know, but I totally get that. Yeah,
(47:17):
I know what it feels like. You know, it's just
not the normal way that I would look at it.
You know, it has been such a joy talking. Before
I let you go, I want to talk to you
about the new series that you're doing featuring this amazing character.
Well didn't the I t guy and Internet troll tell
me tell me more about about your new series. So
(47:39):
Weldon basically came about after I was no longer a
part of the Muppets, and I was thinking, well, you know,
I know that to do this work from doing series
over the years that if you walk away from doing
it for a while, it's like getting back on a bicycle.
You know, you can still ride, but it takes a
minute to get your balance. So I thought, I want
to look for something that that basically I can do
(48:01):
on little no budget, that just keeps my skill set growing,
you know what I mean, keeps me sharp with the puppetry,
the improv and all that stuff. So that's how this
came about. It seemed appropriate, you know, well it's really
a return back to you were talking about this kid's
show with those things that I did forty years ago.
It's very much the same kind of thing, only instead
(48:24):
of people calling in on the telephone, they now call
in on discord. You know, this is via the internet.
The basic point of the show was is for this
character to have exchanges with whoever is calling in. Therefore,
most of the material just comes out of the conversation
and somebody gets really slow and boring. I used to
go back and edit the shows after the live stream.
What we post is a slightly tightened version most of
(48:46):
the time. But that's the fun of it, you know.
And I've got this kind of It's funny because certain
people out there who watched this character have almost become
cast members. I mean, you know, they call every month
and they are almost a part of the show, so
we expect for them to check in. You know, is
a real undertaking to do this. As simple as it
is in concept, it actually I overcomplicated like crazy because
(49:10):
I hear about the production values on it. You don't
you don't do what I did for thirty forty years
and then just do something that's tackie. I'm trying to
do something that's got to be confestivety to. So we
do these production numbers that run in every show. It
can be to where from to to. We've done some
ten minute long narratives. I have one puppet that I built,
which is Weldon, So Weldon is um played all the
(49:33):
roles and all the production numbers we do if there
are multiple characters. I've always loved shooting against green screen
and what can be done in terms of of placing characters,
you know, into scenarios, into stats, into polices. So that's
a lot of what we're doing. I'm lucky to be
working with a young man named Liam Nelson who has
his own production company, h Do Heaven Productions, and so
(49:56):
the studio we worked in is a tiny little space,
but we're able to do some pretty ambitious things in here,
you know, and I'm loving it. I mean, it's a
fun little character to do. And you know, I'm also
developing some other things too, but it takes a walk
for those things to get off the ground. Some of
it is with former colleagues who I've worked with who
really want to work together, and uh, some other ideas
(50:17):
that will be probably bigger shows, but also bigger shows
cost more money, so you know, we have to pull
all that together. You know. Oh it is it is
hysterical I I watched a few episodes before speaking you,
and it is it's so great. I really love it.
I'm I'm so excited to so we're gonna do next
all So that's so exciting. Oh well, thank you, I'm
and I'm glad we talked about it, and um, you know,
(50:39):
I'm really mostly doing it as a learning experience. And
and by the way, one of the I mean, it's
not just the puppetry. I'm doing everything. I'm writing music.
I'm playing the music and recording it. Any any music
to hear on there I do, and and all of
the editing and most of the writing, although I have
Jim Lewis, a former colleague who works with the Muppets,
(51:00):
is helping me produce it. I've been around those things
my whole life. But I'm really learning the practicality of
doing it now, which is fun, you know, hard and fun.
I was gonna say that sounds like an absolutely mammoth
undertaking it is, but uh, we do. We do one
per month, We do the last variety of every month.
We do a live stream per month, and I would
(51:21):
not be able to pull anything more than that together
because I'm doing it virtually all myself. I just want
to thank you so much for your time night. Before
I let you go, I have one final question. You're
gonna hang up on me. What's Kerman's favorite David Bowie album?
Oh my god, how would I possibly up? There's gotta
(51:42):
be a great answer to that, right, wow. Trying to
figure out what it is at the climb inside Kermit's
head for a minute. I think, uh, it might album.
I don't know, but the song might be a laddinsane
I always, I always, I always say it like that,
a Laddin saying, because I know that was fun. But
Kermit loved fun, so that could easily be it. Well,
(52:06):
you know when we um when we were doing around
the Labrary, I guess after Labyrinth, David's son who was Zoe,
But I think he went with Joey in the end
worked at the Creature Shop for a while. I don't
know if you knew that. Oh that's right, yeah, he yeah,
I think he is, and but for for a number
(52:27):
of years there, I believe he. I don't think I
ever actually met him, but he was working in the
Creature shop, presumably working on building fabricating stuff. You know, Well,
that's a funny full circle there will. Yeah, yeah, I
thought so too, but yeah, I was. It was it
really hit me very hard when when I heard that
(52:47):
he had passed away. You know, it was it was just,
you know, he was just he was just such a
part of my life and he was always there, and
we always and we worked together and they're always even
though you know, after that point, I see him once
in a while, but and we weren't super close friends,
but it felt like there was a connection, and I really,
I really mourned over that. A little Bit Off the
(53:12):
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