![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerNot that long ago, I was in the local remaindered bookstore when I saw a copy of a book I'd been aware of elsewhere for years without ever quite reading. This time, I bought Michael Davis's Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. I could have been motivated by the thought there might not be another chance to find the book, but I suppose my previous diffidence did have something to do with half-overheard grumbles under familiar rocks about the show "being more for little kids now" than when the people grumbling were little kids, a particular twist on a too-familiar attitude that's long seemed especially monstrous to me (and not in a Cookie or Grover way).
Reading the book, though, just seemed to put me in what I was soon calling "a Muppet mood," unpacking something that had long been there. I began paging through the "Muppet Wiki" again and making a few searches for video clips, but perhaps something about what I mentioned just above soon got me thinking to keep some of my oldest memories packed away by taking in the Muppets as a whole. In the process of that, I got around at last to watching a video biography of Jim Henson I'd recorded off of PBS quite a while ago. The pledge breaks happened to mention a recent biography of him, and when dropping into the local large bookstore with the thought of searching for the book on the computer kiosks there I glanced at the biography section first to see paperback copies of Brian Jay Jones's Jim Henson: The Biography, and I went right ahead and bought one.
The general outline of Henson's life was familiar enough already from comments in the previous book and the TV show, but a considerable amount of extra details added a good deal of interest to the slow climb from the first Muppets of the mid-1950s to the "Muppet mania" of the late 1970s, and to the certain amount of struggle in the 1980s to make something else new that would also be a success. Maybe I'm seeing what I want to, of course, but in the face of the current fetish for "stuff right there on the set!" I took notice of how Henson had taken interest in computer animation early on and was working it into some projects in the 1980s. I also came to reflect a bit on how Kermit and Rowlf aside, a great many important characters in The Muppet Show were created for or in the leadup to that syndicated phenomenon; that seemed to help me better understand Henson wanting to make more new characters and refine them as he went, the only problem being a greater and greater insistence from others on "instant triumph."
Among the projects that never quite got made mentioned in the book, I was interested in the late plans for "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made," which would have involved Gonzo trying to make a movie only to spend most of his budget on the opening credits, after which things would devolve "into black-and-white Super 8 film, then a slide show, and finally just storyboards" before a sudden twist ending. I do wonder, though, how much "frame" the project would have needed, and if that would have made the movie a more conventional "show within a show" where I'd keep wanting to see more of the shoddy fictional project and less of the production travails.
In thinking about "wanting to see things that were never made," though, I did get to thinking a bit about "not seeking out what can be seen," and how it might be better to try and take in something yourself than just to take note of the summaries and/or opinions of others. When The Muppet Show started being released on DVD, I'm afraid hearing rights issues had meant some songs had been cut out linked into how fast some found faults with domestic anime releases, and I refrained from buying the show; it might not be linked to that that the last two seasons of the show still haven't been officially released.
Reading the book, though, just seemed to put me in what I was soon calling "a Muppet mood," unpacking something that had long been there. I began paging through the "Muppet Wiki" again and making a few searches for video clips, but perhaps something about what I mentioned just above soon got me thinking to keep some of my oldest memories packed away by taking in the Muppets as a whole. In the process of that, I got around at last to watching a video biography of Jim Henson I'd recorded off of PBS quite a while ago. The pledge breaks happened to mention a recent biography of him, and when dropping into the local large bookstore with the thought of searching for the book on the computer kiosks there I glanced at the biography section first to see paperback copies of Brian Jay Jones's Jim Henson: The Biography, and I went right ahead and bought one.
The general outline of Henson's life was familiar enough already from comments in the previous book and the TV show, but a considerable amount of extra details added a good deal of interest to the slow climb from the first Muppets of the mid-1950s to the "Muppet mania" of the late 1970s, and to the certain amount of struggle in the 1980s to make something else new that would also be a success. Maybe I'm seeing what I want to, of course, but in the face of the current fetish for "stuff right there on the set!" I took notice of how Henson had taken interest in computer animation early on and was working it into some projects in the 1980s. I also came to reflect a bit on how Kermit and Rowlf aside, a great many important characters in The Muppet Show were created for or in the leadup to that syndicated phenomenon; that seemed to help me better understand Henson wanting to make more new characters and refine them as he went, the only problem being a greater and greater insistence from others on "instant triumph."
Among the projects that never quite got made mentioned in the book, I was interested in the late plans for "The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made," which would have involved Gonzo trying to make a movie only to spend most of his budget on the opening credits, after which things would devolve "into black-and-white Super 8 film, then a slide show, and finally just storyboards" before a sudden twist ending. I do wonder, though, how much "frame" the project would have needed, and if that would have made the movie a more conventional "show within a show" where I'd keep wanting to see more of the shoddy fictional project and less of the production travails.
In thinking about "wanting to see things that were never made," though, I did get to thinking a bit about "not seeking out what can be seen," and how it might be better to try and take in something yourself than just to take note of the summaries and/or opinions of others. When The Muppet Show started being released on DVD, I'm afraid hearing rights issues had meant some songs had been cut out linked into how fast some found faults with domestic anime releases, and I refrained from buying the show; it might not be linked to that that the last two seasons of the show still haven't been officially released.