Jim Henson was a genius. Patrick and Katie loved Sesame Street as little kids. We all loved The Muppet Show. Ron Howard directed this documentary. Howard mixes interviews, show clips, bloopers, artist sketches, and behind-the-scenes videos to produce a chronological story of Henson’s early life in Mississippi to educational TV to his failure with Labyrinth.
Jim Henson died at 53 from toxic shock syndrome caused by Streptococcus pyogenes. Henson was in negotiations to sell his company to Disney when he died.
If you want a deep understanding of a complex, innovative, ground-breaking talent, Jim Henson Idea Man reveals the essence of creativity behind this American icon. Are you a fan of Jim Henson and The Muppets? GRADE: A
My kids didn’t watch the Muppets and neither did I! I’m not sure why! They could have if they wanted to, but I guess Barney was more appealing! As for Disney, PFUI!
Bob, Disney has bought up plenty of franchises: MARVEL, STAR WARS, and The Muppets.
And screwing them up!
Bob, Art and Profit seldom go together. Commercialism infects TV, Radio, movies, music, and just about everything else.
And made a mess of them!
I actually think the best work Henson did were his early shorts on “The Ed Sullivan Show” which was really brilliant at times (although I was more partial to Topo Higio). The “Sesame Street” work was fine for the first few years before it became increasingly bland as the show increasingly became corporate product. “The Muppet Show” had its moments but all too often seemed to coast on the audience’s good will more than inspiration.
Henson never wanted to be considered the creator of children’s television and “The Labyrinth” and “Dark Crystal” were hugely ambitious projects that he’d long dreamed of doing and were really much more in touch with the current fantasy genre than anything else at the time but neither quite jelled creatively. Their failure must have been a huge disappointment to Henson. I remember the negotiations with Disney being very controversial at the time. Sadly they were a harbinger of things to come. Disney’s attempts to do anything with the Muppets have been pretty dismal.
Byron, creativity and innovation struggle in a regimented corporate environment like Disney. THE LABYRINTH and DARK CRYSTAL were ahead of their times.
The SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE puppet sketches were also indicative of the kind of thing Henson wanted to do…as was, eventually, the FARSCAPE television series. For me, the Muppet productions were often more interesting than compelling, but certainly with moments of genius about them.
I gather from discussions of the documentary that Ms. Henson was kind of steamrollered into being the Pragmatic Family Runner, not atypically of US families at midcentury.
And here’s one of his non-puppet projects, the 1965 “Time Piece”, as reviewed from the PBS broadcast in the late ’70s: https://newspaper.library.tamu.edu/lccn/sn86088544/1979-03-22/ed-1/seq-20.pdf I imagine the doc touches on his contributions to ABC and NET/PBS experimental drama anthologies in the ’60s and ’70s.
Todd, thanks for the link! Henson was an innovator but too often was too far ahead of his audiences and sponsors.
And sometimes ahead of himself–in the sense that he had a childlike sense of humor that could grind a bit with his more sophisticated attempts.
The most “stories” non-puppet example of what I was referring to was actually on NBC, on their 1969 EXPERIMENT IN TELEVISION anthology: “The Cube”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csA_ENt0Tlk
I typed “storied” and was “corrected” but didn’t note that in time…