Might as well post it in the Vorum! (mainly for Carl) In 2005 a year after buying The Muppets franchise from the Jim Henson Company, Disney decided to give the brand a shot in the arm. There were only a couple of forgettable tv movies since 1999s Muppets from Space (Frank Ozs last Muppet gig). I had only been mentoring for a short time under Noreen Young (she holds the Order of Canada for puppetry - yeah, thats a thing here) who had done work on Fraggle Rock, Sesame Park (Cdn Sesame St.), and is the creator of Under the Umbrella Tree (she created all puppets for that show and played Gloria Gopher). Because of this connection and because I was already an ACTRA member I lucked into the real Muppeteer audition. They held line-up-around-the-block auditions the day after, but on this cool November day in Toronto it was just me and three other guys in a room with Martin Baker, Jane Henson, and Kevin Clash (Sesame Workshop shared the audition time for similar purpose) amongst other puppet handlers. The form we filled was fairly generic, but it listed Muppet characters to do voices for. I checked them all off, butt noted that Frank Oz characters were most natural sounding for me. One by one the four of us went in and out, I was the last one to go for voices. They handed me a script for something obviously meant for Disney cruises, and explained that Disney is starting live Muppet performances at all of the resorts and cruise ships. They were looking for 60 puppeteers in total for Orlando, Anaheim, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and however many boats they have. This was very interesting info, and I had pretty much stayed focused on the people I was talking to the whole time. After I was finished I turned to walk out of the room and finally noticed what had been behind me the whole time. Monitors on the ground by a table holding the actual muppets of Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Statler, Waldorf, Bunson, Beaker, Animal and Pepe. On the table beside them were Ernie, Bert and Grover. Two guys were eliminated. I felt pretty bad for them, and they had each worked on Labrynth too, they were pros compared to me for sure! Anyways, I was finally brought back in and handed Fozzie Bear. He still had marks on his face where they made him look like a lion for Muppet Wizard of Oz! I had one of those moments that I already described in the republicom. Anyways, Disney decided to scrap the whole thing and the Muppets were pretty much mothballed after that other than random appearances on commercials and talk shows. They still havent finished releasing the last 2 seasons of The Muppet Show on DVD. Heres a random puppeteering show starring Joels favourite puppet Creepy Baby. It was for a small-town outdoor Christmas Lights ceremony thing. Wed been around for a few of the towns summer puppet festivals, so they knew about our weed brownie induced line-treading of being tasteful and appropriate... enjoy! youtube/watch?v=YCdw8nvrSzQ
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 20:38:47 +0000
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