More Ads & Tinkerdee

Posted on Oct 6, 2015 in Ads, Docs/Interviews, Guest Appearances, Henson, Pilots, Short Films/Footage, Television

Before we reach the next major milestone in Jim Henson’s career there are again a bunch of smaller projects to cover. The first one is actually one of the most interesting we’ve seen yet, featuring the robot puppet with moving gears and smoke that we first caught a fuzzy, black-and-white glimpse of in the Food Fair footage from Hamburg, Germany, although in color and with full detail visible, it looks a bit less steampunk than I had first thought.

Anyway, what’s fascinating about this is that AT&T–which was then the Bell Company–actually hired Jim in 1963 to make the following short film as part of a presentation to air at a seminar for business owners on the new subject of Data Communications, the point of the film being to comment on the continual evolution of the relationship between man and machine, and as you can see below, Jim captured the subject with a wicked sense of humor:

Tales of the Tinkerdee Pilot

Posted on Oct 2, 2015 in Henson, Pilots, Television

Kermit the Minstrel

Ever since I decided to undertake this rather massive undertaking, one of the pieces of Henson history I was most excited to see was the Tales of the Tinkerdee pilot. I’d seen brief clips of it at the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens a few years ago and had wished to see all of it. Now I finally had a chance, and it did not disappoint. In many ways, it was practically designed for me. I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tales and folklore, as was Jim Henson, evidenced in his 1980s fantasy films, The Storyteller, Fraggle Rock, and the Tales from Muppetland specials–Hey, Cinderella; The Frog Prince; and The Muppet Musicians of Bremen.

The Muppets 1.01: “Pig Girls Don’t Cry”

Posted on Sep 23, 2015 in Henson, Pilots, Shows, Television, The Muppets

Kermit and Piggy

As you might have guessed by this point, I am an enormous Muppets fan. In fact, I can say without any hesitation that I would be a very different person without them, and as a devoted fan, I will will pounce on any new Muppets project with the same level of enthusiasm I did when I was tiny. At the same time, as any obsessive Muppet fan will tell you, any post-Jim-Henson production also brings with it a feeling of trepidation. Without him around to guide these unique characters, will this newest iteration be able to capture his spirit and heart, and his sense of “gentle anarchy,” as Frank Oz has referred to it?

And the post-Jim track record has been a bit spotty. In most cases, I feel like they have gotten the heart right. The Muppet Christmas