The Jim Henson Interview + Newsletter 2.0
Issue 38: Hit Man, Brats, How Music Got Free, Idea Man + Looking Ahead & The 1980's Jim Henson Interview.
Hi friends!
Hope your week is off to a great start. In the last few newsletter issues, I’ve mentioned working to improve this newsletter to make it easier to read, more enjoyable, and less time-consuming to read, while adding more actionable updates that better serve your curiosity. Today, I’m excited to share Hi Barr’s new and improved weekly newsletter.
While Hi Barr is an entertainment studio focused on creating awesome shows, we also love sharing updates and insights on noteworthy movies, TV shows, articles, and books. We especially enjoy resurfacing relevant archival stories and interviews from the past because, while history might not repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. We believe that by studying the past, even in pop culture, we can better understand the present.
Are you passionate about the history of movies, music, TV, sports, and business?
We’ve got you covered.
With today’s updates to the newsletter, we’re ditching my long-winded essays (hopefully, this is the longest Editor’s Note I’ll write) and bringing you more timely updates, insights, and interviews in a more fun and readable format. Expect an evolving process with some experimentation and trial and error. Most of the sections below are will appear weekly, but some may not. If we don’t have something great to share, we won’t. Simple as that. We aren’t trying to make fetch happen. We’re here to add value and joy to your week, not waste your time.
As part of the newsletter’s evolution, we’re now on Substack. Why? You! We’ve been craving better conversations with y’all and think Substack is the best place for the kind of discussion we desire—so check out our Notes & Chats, and let us know what you think.
Ok, that’s all from me! I better to get back to writing episodes 3 + 4 of our newest upcoming podcast (coming soon), and continue planning Season 2 of You Had To Be There, our groundbreaking ‘48-hour journey to pop culture’s past’ podcast. Thanks for reading and enjoy this week’s issue!
Have a great day!
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If you’re interested in learning more about Hi Barr or sponsoring Season 2 of You Had To Be There, shoot me an email / DM—I’d love to talk.
Looking Back
Glen’s Star Is Born: Glen Powell has It. He’s got the acting chops, a keen understanding of what it means to be a movie star, and undeniable charisma. What’s next for him? Twisters!
“I always find it lame when actors are like, I just want to act in the movie. I don’t want to promote the movie. If you want this career, part of your job—a big part—is doing everything you can to help sell your movies. Doing publicity matters. You’ve got to give people a reason to care.”
Money Talks: After its successful debut at the Venice Film Festival, Netflix’s $20 million acquisition of Hit Man seemed like a bargain. Now, it’s the kind of deal that should prompt Netflix executives to rethink their in-house studio budget strategies.
Creativity, Inc.: Perhaps one lesson from Hit Man’s success is that Netflix’s history of giving esteemed directors tens of millions of dollars to make their dream projects before production doesn’t make as much sense as buying movies from these directors after they’re made?
Source Material: Hit Man. Texas Monthly. October 2001.
Jim Henson Idea Man (Disney+): Ron Howard’s documentary on Jim Henson is great! For more on Jim Henson, including Kermit’s origin story, check out our curated interview with Jim Henson below.
Shout out to Ron Howard & Imagine Entertainment for not going the docuseries route (i.e. engagement-maximization) and instead making a 2-hour documentary feature. We appreciate it!
Looking Ahead!
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Brats (Hulu | Thursday, 6/13/24): St. Elmo’s Fire-heads unite, Billy Hicks and the News are back and better than ever! Seriously though, Andrew McCarthy’s documentary on the Brat Pack looks awesome!
Further Reading: New York Magazine’s then-controversial, era-defining 1985 profile that dubbed a group of young rising stars as “The Brat Pack.”
How Music Got Free (Paramount+ | Debuts Tuesday, 6/11/2024): If this documentary is half as good as the book, it’ll be great.
Source Material: How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention - Stephen Witt. One of the best reads on the origins of digital music, file sharing, and Napster, as well as Napster’s near-immediate cataclysmic effect on the music industry.
Euro 2024 (Fox Sports | Friday 6/14-7/14): Did you know American fans bought 27% of all Euro 2024 tickets, more than even those from the host nation, Germany?
Dragons Are Back (Max | Sunday, 6/16): Lest I forget, after 2 years away from Westeros, House of the Dragon returns this Sunday. You have 5 days to remember what happened in Season 1.
A great way to get caught up on HoD is with The Ringer’s Mallory Rubin & Joanna Robinson’s excellent House of R podcast.
Odds & Ends
Bananarama: The best story in sports entertainment isn’t WWE’s resurgence, it’s the Savannah Bananas, who sold out Fenway Park on Saturday night.
How CoComelon Captures Our Children’s Attention: A great example of an in-depth profile that only The New Yorker could produce.
She’s On Fire!: Good breakdown from WaPo’s Ben Strauss on the WNBA’s business model, media rights, & revenue streams.
Bryan Lourd Speaks!: I’m pretty sure CAA CEO & Co-Chairman, Bryan Lourd, wasn’t quoted directly in Jim Miller’s all-time entertainment book, Powerhouse, so seeing him give an interview was a bit surprising. Nonetheless, it’s a timely Lunch with FT given Scarlett Johansson’s (client) OpenAI drama and last year’s majority stake sale to François-Henri Pinault.
Joey Chestnut Banned from Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest! I guess the only thing that was going to stop Chestnut’s 4th of July dominance was doing the Impossible?
Utah! Get Me 2…Recommendations!
When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day (Book): Normally, I don’t like to recommend something until I’ve finished it, but here we are. I’m just 200 pages into this 500 page oral history of D-Day & it’s incredible. The bravery, courage, leadership, & logistics needed to make D-Day happen and succeed are worth studying. Get it here.
The Work of Art (Book): Former New York Magazine Editor Adam Moss’s book on the process of making something from nothing featuring interviews with artists, writers, filmmakers, etc is great. I especially enjoyed his interviews with Wesley Morris, Ira Glass, & Rita Sodi. Moss includes a wealth of incredible visuals, such as notebooks and drawings from nearly all the artists interviewed. Get it here.
Size Matters: The Work of Art is close to being a coffee table book. Too close. As someone who owns too many coffee table books—often buying them and almost immediately forgetting about what’s inside—I’m worried that the physical size of The Work of Art will cause it to be relegated to tables & bookshelves, which is a bummer and does its intended audience little good!
You Want the Truth? Publishers should consider releasing smaller, more reader-friendly, text-only versions (or ebooks) of coffee table books.
You Can’t Handle the Truth: They won’t.
Conversations from the Past.
The Jim Henson Interview
INTERVIEW BY FRED ROBBINS
HiLIFE MAGAZINE
FRED ROBBINS: I'm curious to know how you arrived at the concept of the muppets. The combination of marionettes and puppets. That's what the word means, doesn't it?
JIM HENSON: Yeah, I called it that originally, when I first started. And that was about 22, 23 years ago. I think our whole style grew over a long period of time and the fact that I started on local television in Washington and had many years doing local shows. And during that time, the kind of characters that we do now all kind of came about. It was an evolution process.
ROBBINS: Do you remember when you first got interested in doing puppets
HENSON: I got interested when I started on television. I never was interested when I was a kid. I don't think I ever remember going to see a puppet show. But about the time I was finishing high school, I wanted to work in television. Television was new then. I think they were just starting color television at that point. And I just loved it. I was very much in love with that whole form. And I wanted to work there. And I heard of a station that was looking for puppeteers so I made some puppets and I went down and auditioned. And got a job. And it was kind of that easy. Because then I was on the air regularly for the next eight years, in Washington. And during that time our style sort of came about.
ROBBINS: Can you attribute any of the characters you've developed or that evolved to those early influences?
HENSON: No, not specifically characters so much as a way of using television. Bill Baird was starting to use lip sync in the same way I did wherein the puppet moves its mouth every time it says something. And we kind of took that and expanded on that. And he was beginning to use, I think he used some rubber heads in those days. So he was beginning to play with new materials and so forth. And we started working in fabric and foam rubber and we use a lot of that now. Which is one of the things that gives the characters a lot of their life and motion within the face and so forth.
I can't think of anything I would rather be doing. I wish everyone in the world could do what they want to do as much as I can.
- Jim Henson
ROBBINS: How long did it take to develop the cast of characters on the current muppet show? They were all parts of other shows originally?
HENSON: Oh, not all of them. I would say maybe half of them were old characters. Then as I look at a picture there—Fozzie was created for the shows, Miss Piggy was around but had never been a real personality before. Scooter we built for the show. Gonzo we found. He was back in a back box. We had made him for some little dinky thing many years ago and he ended up a great personality, too.
ROBBINS: How about Kermit?
HENSON: Well, Kermit is the oldest one I'm still using. He's been around for 22 years now.
ROBBINS: Where did you use him before?
HENSON: Well, I used him...he was first created for the show I did in Washington, D.C. and then all through my whole career, he's been my main character. He's been on Sesame Street and before that we did several specials with him and so forth.
ROBBINS: What was the raisone d'etre of Kermit? Why Kermit?
HENSON: That's funny. Other people have asked me that. And I'm not sure I know. Because it goes back so long. As I say, it was 22 years ago. And when I first made him, he was made out of an old coat of my mother's, sort of a spring coat. And at that point his color was slightly more turquoise. But he had the same eyes, which were made out of a ping-pong ball. And they still are. He's always been the same basic kind of personality.
ROBBINS: You don't know why you settled on a frog? Did you like frogs?
HENSON: No, not particularly. I don't really know. It's one of those things. So often when a good idea comes along, you really don't know exactly where it came from or how it got there, but it's just suddenly there, and you look back and you say "Yeah, that was a good idea,” but you really don't know why.
ROBBINS: Did it work for you right away, when you started doing Kermit?
HENSON: Well, I had in the beginning, on my initial show in Washington, there were probably four or five main characters and Kermit was one of them. Not particularly the main one, but he was one of the lead characters.
ROBBINS: Is he much the same now as he was then?
HENSON: I suppose so. He's kind of grown and changed a little bit, as have I. But he's always been a part of my personality, really.
ROBBINS: Where do the ideas for the new characters come from? Are they based on real life characters, really?
HENSON: I don't believe we've ever done a character that's based on a person. We usually start with a character type, a personality type. And we'll design a character to be sort of an aggressive whatever it is, or maybe a sinister character or a sly, sneaky thing. But we usually work with a type of personality first and then we try to do a lot of sketches until we get a sketch that looks like maybe that could be that type of person.
ROBBINS: When do you feel it's necessary to introduce new characters?
HENSON: Oh, as I say, we're sort of building new characters all the time. And we try to keep... I try to keep our shop experimenting, coming up with new ways of building puppets, new ways of creating a personality. So that's a constant thing.
ROBBINS: I wonder if you can delineate the satisfaction that you must enjoy in providing such great pleasure to adults and children alike. To work with adorable things that don't give you a hard time, can't talk back—is that part of it? It's a world of magic.
HENSON: Yes it is. And it's a world of fantasy. I have a great time. I enjoy working and I enjoy doing what I do very much. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing. I wish everyone in the world could do what they want to do as much as I can.
ROBBINS: Is there or was there or will there be an attempt to have any political overtone, meaning from any of the characters on the muppets, as Sesame Street was so instructive, so educational? Will there be any subtleties along that line?
HENSON: Well, I think there are always things that are part of the show. The personalities of the people behind the show always get into the show. I don't think we'll ever turn the show into a message sort of thing. The show is intended to be pure fun and entertainment. But I think just the kind of feelings one has ends up on the screen.