Selects: How Jim Henson Worked

Good morning everyone. I hope you are watching Saturday Morning Cartoons or maybe the Muppets, because this one is all about Jim Henson. I'm often asked what our favorite episodes are when we do the Q and A at live shows, and many, many times I go back to the ones on the Muppets and Jim Henson because he was just one of the best. This is from January sixth, twenty fifteen, how Jim Henson worked American Hero. That's not part of

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant. How do you and Jerry for the last time this year? Yes, just informed us and she's all smiles. She is not very nice, Jerry.

How'd you like that presentation earlier?

The sensitivity training?

Huh?

It was great.

Yes, people, Because we worked for a corporation, we have things like sensitivity trainings.

Uh huh.

And in those trainings you get shown video examples of various forms of harassment and they are the best, most fun things to watch.

Ever, they're pretty overt.

Yeah, I could watch those all day. Long.

I was wondering how much that production company made from that. Yeah, you know they did, but like five little vignettes. They I'm sure they paid the actors like literal peanuts.

They were bad actors.

They were like, kid, there's the peanut bucket over there, you can pay yourself.

Yeah, the old The one that really got me was the Actually they were all really funny, but the one with the old guy in the uh in the factory loading boxes like a shipping warehouse, right, and they were giving the old man a hard time about everything because he was old. Yeah, because he's old, and you know, they were given a hard time. So he and he was out of work for a while and they had to cover for him. The old man, and he had the back brace on. Did you notice that? And he

The back brace prevents him from it.

Anyway. I just had to bring that up because I just think that stuff is so funny. And what's funny is people really do some of that stuff that you're like, what, there's some creeps out there. That was a really weird setup for Jim Henson, because he's the least harassing guy he was probably ever.

Yeah, he certainly comes across that way.

He's a genuinely good dude. It's not one of these stories you hear about, like maybe some of your favorite children's books writers or cartoonists or something, maybe we're kind of bad people.

No, apparently not at all. Yeah, he was not. Only so there's a lot of in this article. John No, John, I thought John Strickland wrote it. It turns out that's not the case. I'm surprised because he's friends with or down with at least one of Jim Henson's kids I believe lives here in Atlanta.

Oh wow.

And but in this article, it's one of those things where everybody who compliments Jim Henson, who worked with him, they they go to the trouble of complimenting him in a way that's not just like, oh, he was such a great guy. They all back up just a little bit because they're cognizant that that doesn't get it across sure, and they want you to understand that they're talking about more than just the great guy. Like, oh, he's dead and I'm not gonna speak ill of the dead. And

Yeah, because as a filmmaker, he's a puppeteer obviously, but he was a filmmaker first and foremost, which a lot of people kind of forget about. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's a tough, tough job, super stressful, and you and I have seen it can make good guys and good ladies be real jerks and yell under stressful situations. You know, it's it's it's a tough thing. There's a lot of money on the line each day, and uh.

It's like everybody, relax, it's just millions of dollars.

But frank Oz, I think that's the point he was making, Like even when he would get frustrated and stress like that, it was he was still a good guy behind it all.

Yeah, and I read I read an I guess it was a book review of a biography about him that that showed that it was all somebody said it was all just play to him. Yeah, like work was play. Even though he worked really hard, he was able to commit himself like that to his work because to him, he was having the time of his life all the time. And apparently like there was just there was no line between work and play, which now that we've seen that sensitivity training could have gotten him in a lot of

Yeah, I mean, if you haven't, I just need to go ahead and say, if you haven't listened to the episode on the Muppets, this is a what I consider just a more in depth part two on the man himself. But that's one of our favorite all time episodes and from feedback, one of the great all time fan episodes.

Yeah, it was a great episode.

Yeah, it was just a lot of fun. And so I hope this augments that one. I hope we do it justice.

So that's actually one of the reasons why we can do this episode, because we already did a Muppets episode and.

They tweeted about us. Do you remember the Henson Company did? Yeah, they did, which was they approve huge. It got their actual approval. That's right, man, that was something the Muppets episodes its own thing. It's about Muppets.

This is about Jim Henson, and it's appropriate that we're doing this because he was more than just the Muppets. Even though everybody pegs him with the Muppets and like that is a huge thing. He was more than that. And like you said, he was a filmmaker but originally started out as a puppetsier, but kind of a reluctant one.

Yeah. He was born in nineteen thirty six September twenty fourth, James Mauri Henson m A U R Y in Mississippi, and his grandmother, maternal grandmother was a painter and a quilter and a needle worker, and apparently it was a big inspiration to him to seek out the creative in life, right, which is pretty great.

Yeah, and one of the one of the things he got into. Well, he was originally a kind of a fan of ventriloquism a little bit, but he said later on in life that he was never he was never like obsessed with puppets or anything like that like you would have expected him to be. And as he went to college, I think in Maryland, he he got into He started out as a studio artist, that's what he was studying.

Yeah, he loved television above all else, right, from the time he was a little kid. He was just transfixed by the tube.

He almost kind of made himself destined to be on television by being obsessed with it. Yeah, but he kind of stumbled into puppetry in college, and he started out as a studio art major and ended up graduating with a homech degree because homech was the only degree that offered puppet making courses.

Yeah, he majored or he took a puppetry course at first, and then a bunch of textiles and crafts courses, which is a great way to you know, start building and making your own puppets. Right.

So, but he graduated with a home ch degree, but by the time he graduated, he was already extremely successful. The Rolls Royce that I mentioned he bought in time to drive to his college graduation. Yeah, because he'd already created successful shows in his town.

Yeah. I think he was in high school. He was on the local TV station doing little guest spots, and then in nineteen fifty five, the show Salmon Friends debuted, and that you know, he also did work on the side making money with them. I think he did some of the like really cool concert posters of the day, really colorful silk screen posters, and Salmon Friends did really well, but he still wasn't quite sure, Like I still don't

Action, experimental, so totally experimental. Did you see the time Piece?

Oh?

Yeah, that one was pretty cool.

It was great in its way.

And did you see the Cube? I watched parts of the Cube that was Did you see the end? No, Oh, you've got to see the end. I skipped the middle because I was like, Okay, I get where you're going with this.

Yeah, well we should just set it up real quick. The Cube was a show on NBC. It was a one hour.

Show in nineteen sixty nine.

The name of the show NBC did was called uh Experiment in Television and it was a different thing each week. And he had one week's installment called The Cube, which was a guy just stuck in a white room but other people could come in and out of the room, but he could not, right.

Yes, okay, and he starts to go kind of crazy, and it has the look and feel of a color TV ad, like all lots of over acting in like Carol Burnett esque characters and stuff like that. But yeah, the sentiment behind it and like that, everything behind it is really neat and it really gives you a good, an eye opening example of like what Jim Henson was capable of, but also like what he was into, because you know, when you think of him, you think of muppets in Sesame Street in particular.

Sure, and these are weird abstract art films, not unlike you know, you watch like a Jim Morrison art film from film school and it's kind of the same style. You know, that was what was going on back then. Yeah, and he actually got nominated for an Academy Award for time Piece.

I think Jim Hooinson, Jim Henson had Jim Morrison beat by a mile as far as experimental films went.

Yeah, I agree with you there. So, like I said, he wasn't quite convinced that puppetry was his future because he was a filmmaker and he was like, puppets are still kind of kids. But post college he did the Old Tour of Europe, and in Europe, puppeteering is a whole different business. It was a lot more serious and a lot more I guess it was.

Treated as art.

Yeah, exactly, and he said, you know what, I Am going to give this a shot. Came back to the US, married Jane, and even though he and Jane separated, they never divorced.

Oh really I thought they did.

No, they never fulfilled the divorce. They just stayed separated. And then he started making TV commercials and formed his own company in nineteen sixty three with I don't know if he formed it with Frank Oz, but he hired Frank Oz and Jerry Jewel, who ended up being obviously legendary puppeteers.

And lifelong collaborators of his.

Yeah.

Yeah, But he started out making a basically a puppet based commercial ad agency in New York, Yes, in nineteen sixty three.

Yeah, and they weren't making funny commercials back then. So he was really pretty revolutionary right time.

And they, I mean, they did pretty well for themselves. And one of the smartest moves he made early on was all of his contracts said that he retained the rights to any of the creations he made for these companies. Yeah, so he was creating what some of the things that would later become famous muppets, Like the Cookie Monster was originally made for a chip maker. It was this puppet that couldn't get enough of these chips.

Yeah. He was the wheel stealer and he stole cheese wheels.

Yeah, Okay, that's what it was. Yeah, and he ended up being the Cookie Monster. And the reason he ended up being the Cookie Monsters because Jim Henson retained the rights to that creation.

That was he was a very savvy business guy too.

Yeah, and he was he was using somebody else's dime, these advertisers, yeah, like budgets to kind of hash out and form and make his muppets. Yeah.

Rocked the Dog started out on Purina commercials and was later a sidekick on the Jimmy Dean Show in nineteen sixty three.

Which I remember that from the Muppets episode Rolf was the first big Muppet. Then he's such like a bit character now, yeah that you know, it's just mind boggling to think he was the one that started it all, even before Kermit, before Big Bird. It was Rolf.

Kermit kind of stole the show.

I think, Yeah, we'll talk a little more about Kermit and where he came from right after this.

All right, So it's nineteen sixty nine and a very very big thing happens to Jim Henson. He was invited to be on the pilot of a show created by the Children's Television Workshop called Sesame Street. Not created, some people think he did, but he did make his mark by creating most of the iconic characters. And if you were a fan of the old Sesame Streets back then, all not all, but many of those little short films, the little claymation ones or the live actions. He directed

I think I knew that, did you. Yeah? He was he was our Russ Vict, you know, he was their Russ Vic.

That's right.

Russ Vic is ours, That's right, So, Chuck, the whole thing that changed everything for him was Sesame Street. Yeah, he's not a He wasn't a creator of Sesame Street. They hired him on and they actually kind of won him over because remember, one of the things that Jim Henson always struggled with his whole career was he wanted to explore places that puppets had never really gone to, in themes that they hadn't gone to, at least not

Yeah, it wasn't like he was anti puppet by any means he was or anti kids because one of the big reasons he signed on with Children's Television Workshop was their goal to educate kids meant a lot to him. But like you said, I think to merge those worlds successfully was a big part of his goal and struggle for a little while.

Russ Vick, by the way, made the little interstitial things for the stuff you should know, televisions, Yeah, the animations, which is why I reference him.

Yeah.

So the Children's Television Workshop, which is now called the Sesame Workshop. Yeah, from what I understand, they won them over big time. He makes all of these characters from like Big Bird, and I think Kermit came before Sesame Street and he started out I think we talked about this in The Muppet episode two. He started out looking really weird, Yeah, like a lizard on this Yeah, not cool at all, like really kind of freaky.

Yeah, which is something.

That I now that I know a little more about Jim Henson, I think maybe he might have even been

Around in tiny fixed age.

Yeah. Yeah, So Jim Henson stepped back and said, Okay, the television is that little tiny area that the puppet can stay, can move around in, but it also opens up the whole world for a puppet because you're using camera angles and there's editing and it's not in person.

Just frame out the people.

So and again we talked about this in the Muppet episode. He created something called platforming up, Yeah, to where the puppeteers no longer had to like crouch down and to maneuver the puppets.

Yeah, because he was a tall guy.

Yeah, tall and lanky man. He was skinny.

Oh, those running shots and time piece exactly because he was in it. They were hysterical.

Yeah, and he weighs about seventy pounds somehow, big lanky legs. But so Yeah, the performers could stand up, which was a huge weight off.

Yeah.

But at the same time, because you're working with cameras and stuff like that, and they have the whole universe to move around in and Jim Henson wanted him to move around as much as possible. It also put him in some weird positions.

Yeah, if you ever well, some people might think it's like kind of ruining the thing, but I think it's really neat. If you just look up on Google images Muppets, Muppet Show behind the scenes pictures, yeah, and it'll show the stage sets you know, like six feet off the ground, right, all the people standing beneath. I think it's awesome to look at. But some people don't, like you know, they

And we gave that warning in the Muppets episode too, did we. Yeah, Yeah, I think they're really cool pictures.

I agree, because you know, a lot of times they're looking at uh, they're looking at video monitors standing there contorted using both hands right. Like the way puppeteers work together, to me is just a miracle because they're acting as the puppets, but they're moving still moving among one another as humans right underneath, which can be really complicated. In fact, we know some really really talented puppeteers here in Atlanta.

Yeah, the Center for Puppetry Arts is yeah, I think the nation's largest puppet puppeteer organization.

Yep. And that is where we had our TV show debut party, premiere party. Yeah, Like it was a really cool experience. Like Auto in the Gang are right there on display. I think the Hinson and Kermit cut the ribbon for the grand opening back when it opened and ended up donating like five hundred puppets and muppets to the Center for Puppetry Arts. So if you ever visit Atlanta, people always email us and say what should we do? I highly recommend going and checking out the Center for Puppetry Arts.

Yeah, because they have a museum with, like you said, Emmitt otderxy stuff, like a full sized life size sketchy yeah behind glass, scary as you can imagine.

Yeah, But I was talking about Raymond Carr, our friend who I hate to keep bringing up the TV show, but it all kind of overlaps. He was a production designer for Stuff you Should Know on Science Channel, and he and his friends Brandon and the gang are amazing puppeteers and they're doing some really really leading edge, like cool stuff here in Atlanta. Yeah, like these giant puppets operated like, you know, fifteen foot tall puppets operated by like six and eight people. Have you ever seen the

That's awesome.

Yeah, but Henson is a huge inspiration to them obviously.

Oh yeah. I think anybody who works even remotely in puppets has gotta be inspired by Jim Hinton. One of the other things that he came up with was that was based on putting muppets or puppets on TV. Was using softer materials. Yeah, everything else was like up to that point, stiff Wood, Marionette's Ventriloquist dummies, that kind of stuff, right. He used like foam, and it allowed the puppets themselves to have more expressive faces, which was great for close

That's what I know.

But that was Jim Henson that came up with that, and it changed everything because it took something like, I mean, imagine Howdy Doty. He was like, yeah, it's cool, you know, it's Howdy doty or whatever. But yeah, whether close up or far away, he looked exactly the same. It was like a woodhead with like a moving lower jaw. And you know, he gave you nightmares with Kermit the Frog

Yeah, yeah, show me someone who doesn't like Muppets in any form. I get it. If you don't like it anymore, maybe, but your heart is cold and dead inside for a while. And this is something I don't think I knew. He

That was it. That was it. And you can really see Jim Henson's love of variety shows and just kind of well, just the stage in The Muppet Show, because if you think about it's set the whole thing set backstage at a variety show.

It's such a great idea. When you look back at it, it's like we take it for granted a little bit because we were kids, but now as an adult, it's like, what a perfect way to frame this world. It's basically like thirty rock or thirty Rock was the Muppet.

Show right with the Muppet Show started all that? Yeah, I don't know if Carol Burnett was before the Muppet Show.

Yeah it was before, was it?

Yeah? So she did a lot of backstage stuff, didn't she U. I wonder who started that.

I don't know. Hers was more sketch, Yeah, but some.

Of it was like backstage, was it? I believe? So I don't remember that. Thus I'm hallucinating right now.

They need to have a good old fashioned variety show again.

Yeah, they don't have those anymore.

Those were big back in the day, you know, like the host comes out and then there's sketches and singing.

And remember our cabaret, No, it wasn't cabaret. What was it the episode we did?

Oh uh burlesque?

Burlesque? Yeah, yeah, how that started out in vaudeville and burless cad that's where stand up comedy came from. That was an interesting episode.

Yeah. I miss those variety shows though, like the Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and yeah Cal Burnett all that, the band.

Sisters, Although Kenny and Dolly could just sit on a couch and stare at the camera for an hour and I'd watch that. Yeah, jer the best great entertainers. Yeah, I love those two.

All right, So where are we in our timeline?

Well, Chuck, the Muppet Shows just hit.

Oh that's right.

Things are going pretty well. They happened going pretty well already for Henson. Apparently in nineteen seventy, Rubbert Ducky hit number sixteen on the Billboard charts. And for those who don't know, Ernie is voiced by Jim Henson. So Jim Henson sang a song Rubbert Ducky that made it to number sixteen on the Billboard charts, and that was nineteen seventy, a.

Year after The Cube, before.

The Muppet Show even happened, before Sesame Street even right, Nomestreet was sixty nine out. Okay, yeah, same year as The Cube. Wow, that's great, Sey. That the new touchstone for his life. The Cube.

Yeah, PC and BC. So the Muppet Show it was a huge hit. It won, you know, a lot of awards, It garnered critical praise and won the hearts of children all over the world.

But it was also for adults too. Oh yeah. I think that's why he was able to pull it off in Great Britain, because they have better senses of humor.

Yeah. And speaking of adults, he got into some more serious themes with his next great show, Fragle Rock. Yeah, in nineteen eighty three.

I never saw a second of that show. Oh man, really it wasn't it on HBO?

Yeah. It was one of the first HBO original series.

We either had showtime or we didn't have.

It was awesome. Fragle Rock was great. And the idea there is you had the fragle Gang and then you had well, you had three different groups. You had the Home of Doc who was an inventor, and his dog's Sprocket. You had the Fraggles who shared caves underground of Fragle Rock with their neighbors, the Doozers and the Gorgs and these gigantic creatures that are in Gorg's garden, And the whole point of that show was to show how different

And he I mean he wrote a lot of songs too. I think he wrote Rubbert Ducky. I'm sure he wrote a lot of the stuff on Fragle Rock. It was just yet another thing he did was.

Right music renaissance Man.

The other show that he came out with in the eighties, in the mid eighties that I was big time intwo was Muppet Babies.

I never saw one second of that.

Man, I love that show.

Yeah, we're just enough of part in age where like certain things I saw you I was you were too young for, and then certain things I was too old for.

You know, it's weird, though, I'm just gonna say this. So you, me and I are the same age. Her sister is like five years younger than us. U and I used to love Muppet Babies. Yeah, you and me's sister used to watch Muppet Babies, so you may was like, why were you watching Muppet Babies if my younger sister was.

Watching babies and Yummy didn't watch Muppet Baby.

No, she watched like Donahue or something like that. I watched Muppet Babies, And I'm not ashamed anymore to say.

Well, when was that nineteen eighty four. I was thirteen, so yeah, I was just I was starting to be a teenager. Muppet Babies didn't appeal.

I think it was on for like four or five seasons, so maybe I was watching it at the beginning of the series. Anka was watching it. That's what I've been telling you.

Me and eighty four, you would have been what eight, Oh, yeah, that's perfect age for Muppet Babies.

So I think I think we just saw it on different ends of the series, is what it was? Is that what it is? But have you ever heard of Ron Funches, Uh yeah, the comedian. Yeah, yeah, he has a little bit about Muppet babies. It's pretty hilarious. Really, he's awesome. I love that guy. Yeah, we saw him live. He's just a beautiful human being.

Muppet Babies was cartoon though, right right, it was not live puppets correct at all.

No, it was cartoon.

Okay.

It was so cute.

Were they just the regular muppets as babies? Yes, Oh well I have to watch that sometime.

Yeah, and they like us their imagination, Like Gonzo had a thing for Indiana Jones, so he was frequently like exploring caves and like swinging on vines with the Indiana Jones fedoran and that kind of stuff.

Well, see, I would probably enjoy that, now you would, Yeah, definitely. All right, I'm gonna go get Muppet Babies, Chuck.

He did even more TV that we'll talk about in a second. Okay, okay, okay, and we're back and we're still in the eighties.

That's right. And you were talking about other TV, as we said, the man loved television and filmmaking, and so he got away from the Muppets and puppets every now and then collaborated with Raymond Scott, who was an electronica pioneer, actually on shorts called Ripples and Wheels that Go, and he did that for the Montreal Expo in sixty seven and I know we're jumping around in time, but we're just trying to paint the full picture here, not going

That a little bit?

It was a little weird. It was like two eyes and a mouth and there were like these invisible wires and background images. It was definitely a little more on that surreal tip, the hints and surreal tip, not kid oriented necessarily. But he got into the movies with the Muppet Movie, which was a big hit, so good it still holds up, man, it's still so great.

If you want to know more about that movie into some of the cool facts from it, go again listen to the Muppet episode Yeah, as a matter of fact, pause this, go listen to the Muppet episode and then come back to this one. Yeah, well it will probably enhance your experience. Agreed, Or listen to them both at the same time.

But he followed the Muppet in nineteen eighty two, he made The Dark Crystal, Yeah, which was puppets and it was based on some drawings by fantasy artist Brian Froud, And there were no humans. It was all puppets. And I don't think it holds up as well, but it still looks pretty good.

Well, yeah, I think it actually is probably better received now than it was originally.

Yeah.

I think critics appreciated it, but it didn't do so well at the box office. But now it's become like a kind of a cult classic for sure. And one of the reasons why it didn't do that well at the box office because audiences didn't quite know what to make of it. They heard Frank Oz who co directed it, Jim Henson and puppets, and I think they went expecting the Muppet movie this is nineteen eighty two, and they

Is really really evil yea.

And the stuff that happens to some of the puppets is including really cute puppets, is really horrifying. And I read this awesome quote by Frank Oz and basically he says, like Jim thought it was okay to scare kids. As a matter of fact, he thought it wasn't healthy for kids to never be scared, so like he purposefully was trying to scare kids, and he wanted to take the tradition back to like grim Tales, which were very very dark.

Yeah, that's a good point.

That's what he was going for with the Dark Crystal. Yeah.

I think it was ahead of its time for sure.

Yeah, if you look at some.

Of these, like some of the CGI movies today, I think that Dark Crystal was a precursor to a lot of those. Then he went on to make the movie The Labyrinth with Bowie, right, Yeah, David Bowie in a very young Jennifer Connelly. Now that was a legend.

Oh okay, good movie.

But this was written by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, and then rewritten a bunch by a bunch of other people. Including executive producer George Lucas. Labyrinth was okay, not bad again, not a huge hit for Hnson though as far as movies go. But he was still out there exploring these cool fantastical worlds and fantasy.

Worlds, and he still had a lot of crid even in the late eighties. If you think about it, his heyday was the late seventies early eighties with the Muppet Show the Muppet Movie, and then after that it was like, yeah, I'll try this with Jim Henson. I'll try this with Jim Henson. Yeah. And even still he had like a he was on a pretty great streak. And at the end of the eighties he had two TV shows on The Jim Henson Hour Yeah, and Storyteller This Storyteller.

Yeah, the Jim Henson Hour. He was always pushing the boundaries. The Storyteller looking Back Now, I'm sorry, Jim Henson Hour looking Back was really different from what you were getting at the time because it was it was all over the map. You had certain shows that were like, you know, four or five sketches in one and then three of the episodes were full on one hour little mini movies. Oh really, Yeah, from beginning to Louis. Yeah, that's a

The storyteller I hadn't seen before. I was, I guess aware of, but I don't know why I wasn't watching it because it would have been like right there for me, Yeah, because I would have been twelve in nineteen eighty eight. But I watched one today and it was really good. It's like human puppet interaction, yeah, which is and it's

Well, yeah, the illusion that these are living, breathing things. He would go I remember Kermit as guest on talk shows. He wouldn't go out as Jim Henson. He would go out as I mean, he did those appearances as well, but Kermit the Frog would be a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or host or host the guest host The Tonight Show and Larry King. Yeah, and it was all a part of this goal of making these real people, right, or real living things not people.

Yeah. Apparently somebody who was working with Jim Henson was I guess a director of the Muppet Show would be giving Jim notes on Kermit, and Jim would just respond like, let Kermit respond, freaking And the director said, eventually you're just sitting there, You turn and you address Kermit like he just forced you in, like interacting with the puppet even during a note session.

Yeah, and probably without feeling silly or stupid or anything. You know, it probably seemed like a totally normal to do.

Eventually once he forced you to do it.

He also pioneered the Hintson Performance Control System and won an Academy Award for that, and that was a remote control system that helped puppeteers out. So he was always pushing technical, visual, stylistic, thematic boundaries as far as he could, and they didn't always work. You know, the movies weren't aside from them up at movie they weren't the biggest hits. The TV show a couple of you know, neither one

Yeah, and he did too. And he died in nineteen ninety of a staff infection. Organ failure brought on by a staff infection. Did you know that?

Yeah? I think pneumonia had something to do with it too, didn't it.

Not that I saw, Really, I saw organ failure caused by a group a strep infection. I'm sorry that staff.

Very sad. And if you're ever in the mood for a good cry, watch the Jim Henson memorial where Big Bird sings It's not easy being green, Yeah, tough stuff people, his children. His legacy lives on through nineteen ninety three, Jane, his wife, formed founded the Jim Henson Legacy to preserve his contributions, share him with the public. And like I said, he donated five hundred puppets to the Center of Puppetry Arts. And there is also the Jim Henson Memorial and Muppup

Ye, because apparently he believed in Disney's commitment to the characters, so he thought like that would be a good place for them muppets to live.

Yeah, and Disney went he bought it, but he did not get that deal finished. But it turns out one hundred and fifty million with chump change because in two thousand his children sold the entire company, including the Sesame Street characters, to a German media company for six hundred and eighty million and then I believe that company fell in hard times and they bought it back in two thousand and three for eighty four million. Isn't that crazy?

Wow? The Henson children are smart.

And in between all that, there are various exchanges of percentages of stakes with other companies and rights of certain characters. It's a little dull to go over all of that, but needless to say, they made up pretty well. And eventually Disney now does they do own all the Muppet studio?

They own the Muppets. That apparently the Henson Company sold the rights to the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Street, which is pretty cool. Yes, and the Jim Henson Creature Shop still builds the Sesame Street puppets and Muppets.

Yeah, it says they sold the rights to the Muppets and Bear in the Big Blue House characters, which I'm not familiar with that one, nor am I, but Disney wanted to. I guess that's sort of the player to be named later that's included in the baseball trade.

Man proud of the Henson kids.

Yeah, they're great, and I hope we get tweeted about this one from them. You seem pretty great, Brian and Cheryl and the gang. He seemed like they're doing right by the dad. And there's other siblings too, and I think they're all involved. Yep, super involved. And sadly Jane passed away I think in twenty thirteen at the age of seventy eight. I would have loved to have seen what kind of work he did later in his life.

Oh yeah, the fact that he died in nineteen ninety still had like a couple of TV shows going, I mean fifty three years old. Yeah, he had a lot of art left in. If you want to know more about Jim Henson, go listen to our Muppets episode. And while you're looking that up, you can also search Jim Henson on the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com and I'll bring up this great article. And since I said search part, it's time for a listener mail.

This is I'm gonna call this sophomore smart sophomore. Hey guys, my name is Matt and I'm a sophomore in high school. Sophomore, smart sophomore. I'm a newer fan of the show and I listen while I do everything, I just want to say the Dark Ages were only dark in Europe. The life expectancy in the Dark Ages is actually a little longer than before, but mostly because there were smaller wars.

Thanks Matt.

That is enlightening stuff, my friend.

Yeah, our numerals are Arabic.

Yeah, it's true. We should hit on some more Middle Eastern topics.

Let's do it man. Yeah. In the meantime, if you want to suggest some Middle Eastern topics for us, you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at House stufforks dot com and, as always, hang out at our beautiful home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.

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