16 ms·
The Muppets’ many spiritual insights
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sharms 4y agoThe Muppet's Christmas Carol is a such a unique moment of time where you have legendary actor Michael Caine playing a role accurate to the original Charles Dickens story, combined with Gonzo as narrator and Rizzo the rat. I feel like since then we have somewhat lost the capability to make these sorts of movies.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThe Muppet Christmas Carol is a great film. One thing I find very striking about it is that it felt free to swing between being a Muppets movie and being a faithful rendition of the story according to whatever was better for the movie. There are two Marleys in the Muppet Christmas Carol, because the best Muppet personality match to Jacob Marley is a set of two Muppet characters. That's great. But then on the other end, when Dickens has produced a great piece of writing that doesn't translate well to film... Rizzo the Rat can whip out his copy of the book and just read that passage to the audience. Even better! Someone had a vision for this movie and did an amazing job. > I feel like since then we have somewhat lost the capability to make these sorts of movies. Copyright is a big problem here. If you want to find the best possible version of a story, you need to let different people experiment with different ways of telling it.
- a_e_k 4y ago> There are two Marleys in the Muppet Christmas Carol, because the best Muppet personality match to Jacob Marley is a set of two Muppet characters. It also let them have the parental bonus of a character named Robert Marley. > Rizzo the Rat can whip out his copy of the book and just read that passage to the audience. The neat thing about that is that the book was basically meant as a read-aloud. Dicken's had a condensed version which he'd get up on stage and read to audiences in a dramatic way. (He'd failed as a professional actor, but definitely found another path to success!) So I love that Gonzo reciting narration passages directly from the book is even more true to authorial intent in some ways.
- earthboundkid 4y agoTbf, Paul Williams was coked out of his mind when he wrote the music for that, to the point that he later introduced himself to Caine as though they hadn’t done the movie already. So hard to recreate the conditions of creation.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago> I’m going to play this movie like I’m working with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I will never wink, I will never do anything Muppety. I am going to play Scrooge as if it is an utterly dramatic role and there are no puppets around me. He pretty much nailed it.
- AndrewOMartin 4y agoNailed it he did, but isn't this how all people treated the muppets? My memories of the original shows were of celebrities working with the muppets just like their peers. It's one of the greatest examples of buy-in to a shared pretend, alongside the likes of Father Christmas/Santa and arguably outshining kayfabe.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y agoI was actually thinking the very same thing since I posted that! I don't remember the original series that well, but I do have a vague recollection of everyone 'buying into it' incredibly well, like you say. I guess it's a testament to the Muppeteers, too! I need to rewatch the recent - excellent - movies and do a comparison.
- Tsiklon 4y agoTim Curry could be argued to have acted precisely as a Muppet in Muppet Treasure Island - That said in certain circumstances that may be an accurate description of his acting style to begin with.
- gonehome 4y agoI was upset when Disney cut the “when love is gone” song from it in the dvd release because it was “too sad for children” or some other dumb reason. This lead it to being mostly missing from it on streaming services. The cut part was then also lost, but very recently they found it again and added it back in. Still, at least on apple streaming it’s missing and we have to switch to YouTube to see it at the right point (my family watches it every year).
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoI have an older DVD copy that retains it, but only in the full screen edition. The widescreen edition on the same disc cut it.
- gonehome 4y agoThe scene doesn’t really make sense without it.
- mandevil 4y ago"When Love is Gone" was not in the version of the movie shown in theaters, it was ONLY on home releases (one or two of them only had it available as special features, the original VHS release had it in the right place in the movie). It was never lost at all, they always knew where the footage was. Brian Henson says that Jeffrey Katzenberg (Chairman of Walt Disney Studios) strongly suggested but did not order him to cut the song- saying that it was too much adult emotion that children did not understand, and caused children to start to fidget and get bored. This came up in my family because I had only seen the movie in theaters and my wife had seen the VHS copy many times, so when we watched it on our blu-ray back in December I blithely selected "widescreen theatrical release" and got what I remembered and she was wondering where that song went, if we'd selected 'Full-screen VHS release' we would have gotten this song that I didn't remember at all.
- gonehome 4y agoThis is the article I had read: https://www.vulture.com/2022/12/muppet-christmas-carol-song-when-love-is-gone-song-returning.html https://www.vulture.com/2022/12/muppet-christmas-carol-song-... In it they say Disney cut it - I had read elsewhere it wasn’t an order but they definitely seemed to have pushed it despite what he wanted. That article says they then lost it after. >” While the scene was cut from the theatrical release, Henson very much wanted it to be included. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in November, Henson explained that Jeffrey Katzenberg (yes, the Quibi one, who was then in charge of Disney) was the one who had the scene cut. “He’s like, ‘It’s just a little too adult-emotional for little kids to stay connected,’” Henson recalled Katzenberg saying, adding that the film “certainly plays well without the song, but I obviously preferred having the song in. I think it’s good for kids to be pulled into deeply emotional moments, even if they feel slightly awkward about it when they’re in a movie theater.” According to Henson, Disney lost the original footage soon after, but efforts have been made to recover it. “For years and years, I’d call them every six months and see how they were doing. And they actually even put together a team and a little budget to try to find it, and they still couldn’t,” he told EW. “It’s very frustrating.”” Also at the end of the movie the last song is a throw back “when love is found” which loses some meaning with the other song cut.
- Avshalom 4y agoThe byline cites the author as "the Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization..." and I will note that Scrooge does not apologize to Cratchet, he shows up with a tangible act of contrition. Rabbi Ruttenburg just published recently https://danyaruttenberg.net/books/on-repentance-and-repair https://danyaruttenberg.net/books/on-repentance-and-repair on Judaism not really giving a shit about "I'm sorry" but about... repentance and repair: action of amendment by the transgressor rather than grace from the transgressed.
- Avshalom 4y agoN.B. She's a good a follow if you care about how we care about each other https://twitter.com/TheRaDR https://twitter.com/TheRaDR https://mastodon.social/@TheRaDR@mstdn.social https://mastodon.social/@TheRaDR@mstdn.social
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jasmer 4y agoThe OG Kermit was a beatnick frog poet! [1] Henson's Kermit had a kind of realism, he was kind but not cotton candy airhead. He showed contempt, anger, hints of cynicism and sarcasm sometimes even hints of what we would call 'violence' in todays parlance - but profoundly humanist. Every GenXer hates 'Barnie' the syruppy naive Dinosaur because he's an inauthentic fool, I think that says a lot about generations. The 'villains' in Gen X films used terrible language because they were 'bad guys' and all of them complicated. See 'Casino' for stellar peformances by Pesci/Deniro/Shrone Stone . You can't make that film today because of depictions of violence against women, ugly slurs. But it's clearly very good. But 'verbotten' for common creators who have to make their way through the industry. Barnie kids villains aren't allowed to be evil. I really think kids ought to have more rounded role models, and not infantile empty characters. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hDXscFh5co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hDXscFh5co
- dragonwriter 4y ago> You can't make that film today because of depictions of violence against women, ugly slurs. I assure you, both of those elements are found in recent film. > Barnie kids villains aren't allowed to be evil. I wasn't aware Barnie had villains; modern villains in kids shows are, in fact, often evil.
- jasmer 4y ago+ Is there a post 2010 popular film where a violent boyfriend husband hits his wife? Wherein that woman antagonised the man, making the audience 'feel' her 'culpability' in some ways, wherein both characters are presented as mostly bad, but also had elements of humanity? Wherein bad characters call each other (trigger warning / vulgar language) 'jew k*ke' and other terrible slurs? Maybe it was just an artifact of that era, or maybe I'm watching too much Netflix because even 'noir' is not 'noir'. + 'Barnie kids' villains, not Barnie's villains. Villains are barely disagreeable. Aside from maybe 'Hans Landa' here hasn't been a dark villain in a very long time. They are at best, sad charicatures of 'bad people'. 'Grand Moff Tarkin' from Star Wars is scarier than most bad guys, merely with his presence.
- MichaelMoser123 4y agodoes anyone know why Ernie and Bert didn't get much showtime in the Muppet Show? I think they only appeared once in order to say hello. Did the actor for Ernie ask for a raise? What's the scoop?
- jonathanlb 4y agoAren't Ernie and Bert Sesame Street? IIRC, that's a different Muppet cohort (Big Bird, Grover, Oscar, etc.)
- MichaelMoser123 4y agoKermit and Grover appeared in both the Muppet show and Sesame Street, there are intersections.
- mcv 4y agoGrover too? To me, they're almost entirely separate. Kermit is the only one I remember who regularly appeared in both. I think there's a very brief Big Bird cameo in the Muppet Movie, but I cannot recall any other significant character from one show appearing as more than a brief cameo in the other.
- mixmastamyk 4y agoThe Muppet Family Christmas has them all, even Fraggles Rock. We started watching every year thanks to a comment on HN. Somehow I’d missed it.
- incanus77 4y agoI still watch this every year. I first saw it on TV in 1987 and taped it, wearing that tape out. Nowadays, it's on YouTube.
- dhosek 4y agoI don’t remember Grover ever being on the Muppet Show. Big Bird had a guest appearance once, perhaps that’s what you’re thinking. Kermit was very much Jim Henson’s avatar and was the core character that the Muppet Show was built around, and existed before Sesame Street (IIRC, he was the very first puppet that Henson made, cut from his mother’s green coat). I believe that the Sesame Street Muppets other than Kermit are all owned by Children’s Television Workshop which is at least in part why they only made limited appearances in non-Sesame Street productions. There was a significant overlap in the puppeteering staff between Sesame Street and the Muppet Show (most notably Jim Henson and Frank Oz who were arguably the greatest comedy duo of the late twentieth century, but I think some other SS puppeteers also worked on the Muppet Show). Of course, all of this is going from memory and someone going to Wikipedia could probably find all the places where I’ve misremembered things or am just plain wrong.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoStatler and Waldorf were the best.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DavidPiper 4y agoMy favourite: S: "Do you think this show constitutes cruelty to animals?" W: "Not unless you're watching it." Comes to mind pretty much any time I see an advert for a reality TV show, a lame YouTube video, etc, etc. Not always fair, but always fun to remember.
- mixmastamyk 4y agoLiked those heckler guys a lot, only recently learned their names after forty years!
- Lio 4y agoWell, they weren’t that bad…