Jim Henson on Dick Cavett
Ernie and Bert Go Hollywood
–There’s also a cute Ernie and Bert bit, in which Ernie comes out dressed in a beanie, scarf, and sunglasses, in an attempt to look more “Hollywood,” coaxing a reluctant Bert to come on stage. Bert, meanwhile, is dressed in an outfit that’s essentially somewhere between 1970s Elton John and pimp, complete with a feathered hat and cape, complaining to Ernie that they don’t dress this way on Sesame Street, and Ernie responding, “That’s educational TV. This is the big time!” He then convinces Bert that he needs to sound more important so Dick Cavett doesn’t think they’re “squares,” at which point Bert lets loose a stream of “showbiz talk” to show that he’s “hip to the jive”.
When Dick comes out, he says, “Hey, Dick, sweetheart, how are ya? We just flew in from Vegas to do the gig here and we wanted to come in and do a real boffo, socko show, y’know…” sounding remarkably like Kermit later will when he pretends to be a hip agent, complete with Afro, gold chain, and scarf in The Muppets Take Manhattan. Meanwhile, in a classic switcheroo, as Bert is in the midst of embarrassing himself, Ernie has removed all of his “Hollywood gear,” feigning complete innocence when Dick asks him what’s up with Bert.
–Grover also has a sweet bit with Dick, when Dick asks him if he’d like to read the monitor for him and Grover quietly confesses that he can’t read, so Dick reads it out for him and he repeats.
–Jim, Frank, and Don also once again recreate the transforming-the-Southern-Colonel-into-various-other-Anything-characters sketch, the main difference here being Dick’s reactions.
–Jim also brings 3 short Sesame Street films, the first of which was really neat for me to see, as I’d completely forgotten this series of a ball rolling through a Rube Goldberg device to demonstrate different numbers, this one being 3, the second of which is “King of 8,” which contains the neat bonus of Jim bringing out the actual King of 8 figure, and the third of which is a counting-to-11-with-various-colored-squares bit of animation I hadn’t seen before as far as I recall but which has a great deal in common with Jim’s early Shearing Animation type stuff.
Boss Man
–Jerry Nelson then brings out a Boss Man, one of a pair of enormous Muppets that Jim and Co. designed for Nancy Sinatra’s Vegas show: 12-feet-tall fuzzy creatures with huge limbs reminiscent of pipe cleaners, operated with giant rods, some of which are connected to the performer’s shoes and head. They would later appear on The Muppet Show and even make an appearance in 2002’s It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie. The nifty difference to the norm is that, whereas the performer is usually obscured with a black background, here Jerry is in full view. And after demonstrating the Boss Man, they bring out Kermit Love–both another Henson puppet builder and, along with one of Jim’s childhood friends, another Kermit who the frog was not named for!–who constructed it along with many of the other large Muppets, such as Big Bird and Snuffeupagus (who Jim mentions here as being a “new” character!), and he seems like he was a super awesome guy with a long white beard who I’m ashamed to admit I don’t think I’ve seen footage of before now.
–Later on, Dick Cavett briefly appears with a Muppet double of himself (see the first picture on the first page of this post), which foreshadows what happens at the end of the first few episodes of The Muppet Show, when during the curtain call, the celebrity guest would be presented with their very own Muppet of themselves, a tradition that didn’t last long but which I’m very fond of.
–Another sketch they recreate is Sam and Friends‘ “Visual Thinking,” however this time around Kermit is the hep, cool one trying to teach a more conservative Anything Muppet how to do it properly, a role that doesn’t seem to suit Kermit particularly well, but it’s cool to see the role flipped. Additionally, instead of “jazz,” Kermit simply calls it “abstract thinking”. And in another twist, instead of the “Harry the Hipster” character–now Kermit–being the one to scat so much that he can’t remember how to reverse it, thus leading to the screen being completely covered in white, it’s actually the other guy who accidentally does that, which does actually make more sense.
–I was also very excited to see 2 more clips of Youth ’68 shown here, as I only had the chance to watch such a small bit of it before. They’re both really cool examples of Jim’s experimentation with film editing and blending traditional film with video tape. In the first, film of various kinds of technology plays in the background, while a figure on whom footage of city lights is being projected dances around the screen, loud, clanking city noises discordantly playing against a lively country tune, creating an interesting dichotomy.
A clip from “Youth 68”.
The second is even more fascinating as it creates an actually dizzying effect as the mind tries to wrap itself around 3 concurrent moving images. In the background, we see footage of a couple being romantic together. In front of that, there is a dancing couple on whom other clips of the same couple are projected, so at any given moment, we’re trying to track the background and foreground footage, all of which is in constant motion due to the couple’s movements. And because both their motions and the bits of video they’re displaying as they move are more visually complex than the first film, your head feels extremely spun around by the end!
–At the very end, right before the credits, Jim brings out a Big Bird doll, explaining how the money it makes goes right back into creating more Sesame Street and Muppets!
And there we have it, one of Jim’s arguably most prominent TV appearances up to this point! And you can watch the entire thing (including some pretty amazing vintage commercials) online at the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. Now, I’m going to be taking a brief break for the rest of Christmas week, but please come back on December 29th for a look at the third and final “Tale from Muppetland,” The Muppet Musicians of Bremen!