Jim Henson on Dick Cavett
Kermit and Jim.
–Many have commented on this before, but when Jim first takes Kermit out, it’s incredible to see the frog go from a lifeless piece of foam rubber to instantly gaining the spark of life the moment Jim puts him on his arm. You can practically feel a fissure in the air. First there’s this green bit of fabric and then snap! he’s a living and breathing frog. He’s Kermit!
–“Hard to tell where Kermit leaves off and you begin,” Dick says, to which Jim responds, “Yes, I’ve noticed that!”
–It’s fascinating to see just how willing Jim was to let people behind the curtain so to speak. After he explains his technique for a while, Dick indicates that perhaps they shouldn’t give away the magic, but Jim doesn’t seem to mind. And then Dick agrees, “No matter how much you know about how all this works, the minute you see them [the Muppets] again, they’re completely convincing,” then marveling at how, when Bert and Ernie were rehearsing earlier and the director asked them to pause for a moment, Bert, rather than Frank Oz, responded in character.
And again, yes, this. I love how Jim never minded letting people in on the secret, because the true magic of it is that the more you know about behind-the-scenes, the more of a marvel it is when you still fall for the illusion a moment later. I don’t know if there’s any other magic trick in the world that would be as satisfying after learning the “truth”.
–When Jim’s about to set up a clip from The Frog Prince in which Sweetums tries to eat Robin, Dick says that “there’s always somebody like that,” and Kermit nods, “Yeah, frogs legs and all that, I’ve seen you guys,” the second time I’ve noticed this recurring gag of Kermit’s come up throughout his long, storied career.
–Remember how Piggy’s voice emerged from Frank Oz’s female contestant character in “The Trading Game” on Sesame Street? Well, here it appears again, this time in the form of one of the Snowths in the version of “Mahna Mahna” they perform on this special! Although we’ve seen numerous renditions up to this point, this is the first time I’ve noticed a Snowth sounding so remarkably like our favorite porcine diva.
Cookie and Dick.
–One of Jim Henson’s signature puppetry techniques was, instead of simply flapping the puppets’ mouths open and closed, to have the Muppets’ mouths practically push forwards while speaking, as if they were energetically thrusting their words out of their faces, which adds to their very animated, excitable personalities and furthers the illusion that the sound was actually coming from their mouths. And here, Jim actually talks about that with Dick for a bit, which was particularly cool for me to see, since I’ve read about this but never heard Jim himself discuss it. Later on, he also explains their camera monitor technique: “We’re really performing for ourselves,” he says. “It’s kind of a neat thing. No actor can see his perfrormance the same way the audience does at the same time he’s performing.”
–Before they bring out Cookie, or as they refer to him numerous times in this episode, “The Cookie Monster”–which makes me laugh, since it gives his name a similarly pretentious sound to when people call the caped crusader “The Batman”–Dick mentions that he’s one of his all-time favorite guests. That, however, doesn’t seem to have helped him remember to actually provide him with cookies, for when Cookie unsurprisingly asks for one a moment after coming out, Dick “realizes” his mistake. At which point we get the ingenious moment where Cookie turns over to Jim and asks, “Does [the] bearded man have cookie for me?!” Finally, Cookie notices one of the overhead microphones, ask the boom guy to lower it a bit, and chomps down on that, afterwards telling Dick, “Delicious! Microphones on Carson show? Yuck!”
–When Big Bird comes out, he calls Dick Cavett, “Mr. Cabbage,” a cute reference to his propensity for creating malapropisms out of peoples’ names on Sesame Street, such as calling Mr. Hooper, “Mr. Looper”. He then goes on to tell him how nervous he gets around Thanksgiving. “I get a little paranoid,” he says, adding “That’s a ‘p’ word!,” a hilariously self-aware, almost-meta gag about how Sesame Street often presents its educational content which reminds me of the bit in A Muppet Family Christmas when Bert and Ernie are discussing the first letters of various words and Fraggle Rock‘s Doc asks, “What is this?” and Bert answers, “Where we come from, this is small talk!” And speaking of that great special, this sequence also unintentionally foreshadows its subplot in which the Swedish Chef tries to cook Big Bird for Christmas dinner! I also love how both use Big Bird in a darkly humorous scenario that would never have appeared on his own show.
Dick and Big Bird.
–Shortly afterwards, Dick is interviewing Big Bird’s puppeteer, Carroll Spinney–who still has Big Bird’s legs on (see the pic on the previous page), even though he’s no longer in costume–and says, “Many of you may think that these legs are part of a costume, but that’s actually how he got the job”. Without missing a beat, Spinney replies, “Always been a hindrance till this time!”
–When Jim is listing off Sesame Street characters that Frank plays, he accidentally mentions Herbert Birdsfoot, and Frank replies, “No, I don’t…Are you Jim Henson?” Dick amusedly asks, “You don’t know each other in real life?” Frank replies, “No, just by puppets!”
–After years of Jim getting away with a lot in his own TV commercials, the Muppets directly mock ads again here when Oscar comes out and Dick asks why he’s always so grouchy. “Mostly because we don’t have any commercials on our show,” he says. Dick asks if he’d like some. “Yeah,” he replies. “I love trash!”