During this holiday season I also recommend watching 'A Muppet Family Christmas' from 1987! Perfect little holiday treat and can be found free on youtube :)
I watched muppets most wanted before I watched muppets 2011 which considering how it starts is kind of wild but it really is very disconnected from 2011. I feel like it’s very good at being a stand alone sequel. Im not sure if watching them out of order greatly impacted my opinion of it but since so many people seem to dislike Most Wanted, it does make me wonder if separating them is truly the ideal watching experience 😅
Thank you! And it’s been sporadic during the holiday season, but going into the new year we plan to have something more concrete schedule wise! Stay tuned. New episode coming tuesday
I recently started rewatching the movies and I watched them in almost the same order you guys put them in, pretty cool :3 I just have treasure island and wizard of oz left
squeet squeet! i have unfortunately not seen many/any muppets movies other than the 2011 muppets (like when it came out) so i will 100% be watching them in this exact order and i will be taking notes
Please give Fraggle Rock Back to the Rock a chance. Here's a quote that explains the reason for Mokey's redesign: Interviewer: As long as we're talking about some changes that have been made I'm going to ask the burning question that I haven't heard answered yet, why did Mokey change? John Tartaglia: It is a good question and here's the honest truth, it's a combination of things. If you look at the original series, Gobo went through a huge redesign in the middle of the first season, he had a very distinct look in the beginning, kind of a pointy nose and he had these feathers that could kind of rise up on his eyeballs and he wore that kind of dark purple jacket, then that all went away after episode 13 I think and all of a sudden this brand new Gobo appeared that no one ever addressed. So puppets get remade, Ma Gorg got remade, the original Sprocket from the pilot to the series got remade, so things do change and that's very normal in the world of puppets. Miss Piggy looks very different than she did in the first episode of the Muppet Show, almost every main character has gone through changes, and part of that is style. With Mokey, she's always been a really interesting character, I mean everyone loves her, but it's funny, people had a hard time identifying her. People said "is she the mom, is she an old woman?" I remember some fan apparently at some Fraggle talk back back in the day was like "who's the albert Einstein character?" Because of her original hair. So she's always been a difficult character from a marketing perspective, she's been a difficult character from an identification place, and I think at the time, she was very much like that heavy cardigan and the hippie dippy thing of the 60s. So it just felt like she needed a refresh and she needed something new, and also we wanted to make her really funny. The original Mokey was intentionally not as zany and fun as the other characters, she was a little bit more, sometimes to a fault character wise, serious and we just wanted to give her a little bit more excitement, a little bit more life. And we had the opportunity with the amazing Donna Kimball who's taken over the character, who is such a funny improviser and such a funny performer, to let her bring something new to the character too. So the more we talked about it, we decided let's really get Mokey more into being in touch new age. All those things we love about Mokey are still there, she's still poetic, she's still artistic, she's still into crystals and meditation and all the things that we love about the original Mokey, but it was just time to give her kind of a youthful rethink and to make her a little more fun and then a little girl of today could look at Mokey and find something relatable in her, so yeah, that was really the reason. And what was wonderful was how much the team that had worked on the original, some of whom are still part of this reboot, were like "Yes!" Like everyone felt strongly that this was the way to go. So that was nice to have that blessing. It's hard, sometimes when you grow up loving something and you have to rethink it for today's times, it can feel like "Ugh", but I think it was the right thing to do. Once we knew that Mokey wouldn't be as old and we knew that she wouldn't be as kind of hippy-dippy, we gave her rotted hands so she could be a little more expressive in that way, and we just kind of gave her a new vibe. What i always say is she felt the creative spirit of the rock and decided it was time for a change and that's kind of what it really was.
You two should understand that when a Muppet gets recast, they're not looking for a perfect voice match. Read these quotes. Interviewer: You clearly come close to the voice, but I'm wondering if you ever made any effort to differentiate yourself a little bit. Steve Whitmire: No, but I can't help it. I'm not a mimic, really. Interviewer: I mean, it's pretty close. Steve: It's in the same ballpark, and it's been 26 years, so I think people have grown accustomed to it. I had a lot of criticism in the beginning and I understand it. I'd walk into a room, and people would say "You sound exactly like Jim" and then people would say "You don't sound anything like Jim". One of the most embarrassing things I did, in the early days we did this phone-in radio thing, to these kinda shock-jocks. So they weren't very nice people to begin with. And they were talking to Kermit, and they spent the whole interview saying "You don't sound anything like Kermit" to Kermit. It was so hard. What could I do? I had to say it was Kermit. So I get it. But we don't have any choice. I hear a lot of people writing or talking online about Jim's Kermit, or Frank's Fozzie or Frank's Piggy vs. Eric's Piggy. And from our point of view, I understand that, but it's a non-existent difference. There's no Frank's Piggy, there's Piggy. And that's the way we have to approach it. Because it doesn't get shared. This is who she is now. They do have to evolve. That's really important. Eric Jacobson: Yeah, evolve is the right word. Obviously, these characters are gonna be different on our hands than our predecessors. But we're accepting of that. It was hard for me at first, because I wanted to be able to fool people. And maybe you can do that for a little while, but eventually especially with the Internet these days, people are gonna know. And so I had to come to terms with that, and realize that I'm not Frank. And nobody can be somebody else. But perhaps Piggy can still be Piggy, and be a little bit different than she was before but totally in-character. Totally a character that you can believe in, and continue to believe in and be entertained by. Kirk Thatcher: The Muppet ethos, the internal ethos that you wouldn't know unless you work there, is very much the spirit of the character, not a voice impression. Cause there are people who do Kermit spot-on, but they're not puppeteers, and they're like "We can dub it over", but that's not the company and that's not the way Jim set it up. Spirit embodies it, and that's how it is with every character. In fact one of the bits of friction when Disney bought the Muppets was that they said "We'll audition nine people to do Kermit and ten to do Piggy." And the guys, the puppeteers and some of the people who worked with the company said "That's not how it works, you won't get the Muppets, you'll get a guy in a Mickey Mouse costume dancing, you lose their soul." It's like saying "We're gonna do an Austin Powers movie, but we're gonna audition five Austin Powers." No, Mike Myers created that, you can't do it without him, unless he says "I don't wanna do it anymore." So it's the same thing, you wouldn't hire Monty Python, you say "We're gonna reboot Monty Python, so we're casting John Cleese." Craig Shemin: Here's a question for you, Stephanie: "Can you talk about how you prepared to take on the role of Prairie Dawn, what questions did you ask Fran Brill?" Stephanie D'Abruzzo: I think I asked Fran "are you sure? Are you really sure? Are you positive?" When I was in college being a nerdy Muppet fan, my answering machine was (in Prairie's voice) "Oh, you have reached Stephanie's answering machine, I hope that the message you leave will be clean." So you could say I've been preparing for it. But the first time Fran ever heard my Prairie Dawn, it was my second season on the show, we were doing a sketch the fan nerds will know called Fairy Tales Today Striking Food where the food went on strike and I played the infamous Bean Number 3, and Fran had laryngitis, she was on another part of the set, we were on a separate part cause she was the roving reporter cutting to the vegetables. And in the middle of it she was like (makes hacking noises), so someone David, Joey or Peter just started saying "Oh welcome, oh welcome" and then everybody started doing it and then I did it, and I think Peter looked at me and went "Hey."And I don't remember the look that Fran gave me cause I didn't know her well at the time, I think that was the only time I did Prairie in front of her. But eventually if Fran was doing Zoe for a crowd scene I would usually hold up Prairie, so I feel like I had Fran's blessing. Bill Barretta: It happens that way I think. For some reason I think when people have taken on characters, maybe not with me and Jim cause I didn't work with him but, it feels like people that have been around each other or the other performers, I don't know how that happens but it's a very organic way that people feel comfortable and they're able to find that somehow. Craig: David Rudman was very close to Richard Hunt, and he ended up taking over Scooter. Stephanie: Matt was very close to Jerry and Caroll. It is nice cause before Jerry passed, he made a conscious choice to talk to Matt about his characters. Fran made the choice to retire and she was in on the auditions, so she had her say and it was with her blessing. And it's nice when you have that, but it's also nice when you know the person, and that's not always possible, but even with you not having worked with Jim, you knew enough about the world and enough about him and I think there was this automatic respect, I think that's the key, respect for the performer who originated the character and that feeling of it's not about doing an imitation, but making it your own while still respecting the integrity of the performance and what the original performer brought to it. Bill: I think at least in my situation, it's because there was a kinda trust that was gained among the performers, you're around them enough and they realize where your heart lies and where your sense of integrity is and are you trusted in a sense to kinda do that? And when it comes to doing somebody else's character, it's obviously not yours in any way, shape or form, and you're doing some kinda impersonation of it at first until you start to find the essence of who it is, not so much how it sounds, I feel like I've figured out how to make it feel like the character. Jim's energy is different in Rowlf than it is with the Chef. Stephanie: It's the cadence, it's the little things and for me knowing Fran, and the things that Fran brought of herself to the character I think helps too. But it's the trust with the other performers that really becomes key, cause it's a 2-3-8-way street where you can't really start working well with inheriting a character unless you've worked with all the other people doing all the other characters who know that your intentions are good and you're not just gonna futz with it. Bill: There's already been a pre-established relationship between the characters and the people, so you're building a relationship beneath the puppets that's gonna feed that and if that's working down there, then that makes it easier for the others to feel comfortable about doing that. Stephanie: I feel like that's something that gets missed by people who hear about someone taking over a character and think it just needs to sound as much like the character as possible. If you're an outsider looking at the Muppets, you're like "Oh, Kermit doesn't sound like I remember or Ernie doesn't sound like I remember." It's so much more than that because, it's not just a voice and I think those of us who've been doing it a long time realize that. Bill: And fair enough that there are so many people that have certain expectations about these characters. So what I recognize as Kermit's voice is Jim, but as I became part of the Muppets, Steve became the voice that I heard as Kermit almost overpowering what I remember as Jim. And there's a generation that knows Steve's Kermit, and that's what they know. To hear now Matt do something closer to Jim in a way, people are going "Well, that doesn't sound like it" because they're used to how beautiful Steve used to do it. So it's always changing and growing and I think that's a good thing because we don't last forever obviously. Stephanie: But there's always that question of, and this happens a lot more at Sesame, "Oh wait, do I do Prairie 20 years ago or now? Do I do '70s Prairie where she was different or do I do now?" It's like saying "do I do 1989 Homer Simpson or now Homer Simpson?" Bill: And that's why I think it's really more about the character and who it is rather than what they sound like, because the character has changed since the '70s and has grown as she grew with Fran, and now she's growing with you. I think that's the key to it, is having a grasp on the character and then just letting the voice that makes people feel comfortable enough to know that that's who it is, but it's gonna be a little different.
Adam Kreutinger: We were talking to Dave Goelz about performers who carry on characters, and obviously fans can be critical of how these new performers interpret these characters. Fran Brill in an empathetic tone: I know, yeah. Adam: Obviously in the case of people taking on Jim Henson's characters, the original performer can't say "I approve of these choices." Cameron Garrity: "Leave them alone!" Adam: I think from some fan perspectives, they might think "Jim might not have done it that way" or so and so, and I guess one thing that seems wonderful about you, it sounds like you want these new performers to put a lot of themselves into these characters, not necessarily just try to do what you did before. Fran: Oh sure, because they're not me. And you can imitate somebody's voice and I know this goes on and on, but a lot of the fans say "I can do a perfect Kermit or a perfect Grover, I wish I could audition" but it is not a voiceover job. If it were it would be easy and everybody could do it, but it's so many talents at the same time, and if they don't have the voice absolutely perfect, especially in the beginning. Like when Eric Jacobson took over Grover and a lot of Frank's characters, Miss Piggy, and he is doing such a fantastic job that even I sometimes have to think "Who was that?" And I know the fans get troubled when a new person takes over a character, but all of these people are cast from within the family of the puppeteers. It's not like they have found a puppeteer from outside the group, so the ability to imitate a voice is already in the air, let's say. Cause we would all kid each other and do each other's voice sometimes, but I think you have to give a new Kermit or Prairie Dawn or whoever, you have to give that person a chance. I can tell you they worked extremely hard listening to Jim, for instance, Matt Vogel now doing Kermit, I think he's doing a great job, and he really worked at it. He went back to not what Stevie had did cause Stevie was very good too, but he went back to Jim, the original, and listened and listened. It's the intonation, the inflection, it's the humanity of that character, and the manipulation, there's just so much. Plus all these puppeteers are a unit and they're used to each other and joke around with each other. So to bring in somebody from outside the Muppet family to replace a character as important as Kermit, that almost has to be done within these performers who've been working together 10, 15, 20, 25 years, it makes perfect sense to me. Matt had to do a lot of auditioning too, they didn't just throw a major character like that around. So I hope the fans can be more understanding about what all is involved, it's not just the voice, it's finding the soul of that character, speech pattern, keeping that character alive, while improvising which is really tricky, and the quick wit that you need. Adam: I love what you said about having the audience give the new performer a chance, because the original characters are in some way a piece of that performer, and that's what I think people fall in love with so much, how humanizing these characters can be, so when someone else takes over that, what people think they want is an impression, when really that's not what's best for this character to have a long living life as a character. So I think it's important for these new performers to try to be as honest to the character as they can be, but also in order to make this a real fleshed out character, it has to have a piece of that new performer in it. Fran: Yeah, I mean how can it not? I have my DNA and Stephanie has her DNA and Jen Barnhart has her DNA. Fans have to be patient.
Matt Vogel: We should talk about probably the most famous character that you play, and that is of course... Ryan Dillon: Don Music! Matt: I was gonna say the Sensitive Nose Dwarf. Ryan: OMG, Muppet Wiki! Matt: That's right. Of course it's Elmo. That was 2013. What went through your mind when there was a call that said "Hey, we want you to come in and audition for Elmo"? Ryan: I didn't think I was gonna do it. That's what I remember feeling. I think maybe the call came from you, but I remember thinking "IDK, I just can't do that". Elmo was never a character that I felt comfortable, I had done the puppet a little bit, if Kevin was directing, he'd throw the puppet to me, in the same way you'd been doing stuff like that as well. So I knew how to move the puppet enough, but Kevin's manipulation style is so specific and crisp and the character was so unique to him. It was never something I considered. So I fought with myself internally about even going in and then I went in and it's kinda a blur. I just remember it being you, me and Joey in a room with Elmo and Murray riffing. It was just a weird time personally, it was hard to know what was gonna happen. And I must have done a callback. And it just kinda happened from there. It's funny what life gives you and what you choose to do with it, because I never could've anticipated that character or that job. Matt: No, how could you? None of us do, even when you're a kid and you see Jim and Frank and Dave and Jerry and Richard, you're thinking that they do that, that's their job. How do I fit into that? I can't do that. I would never assume that I could've taken over Big Bird or Kermit. Ryan: Like I always thought the way it works is they develop new characters and those performers play those characters and it comes from them. You just think "I will add my characters to this group." And what has happened because of the nature of the medium, you need to have a small staple of characters, and what ends up happening is now the job has become that we take on legacy characters. Matt: There are differences in creating a role from nothing and taking over for someone. And how do you make that still that character, how do you make Elmo still Elmo, but not make it be just an imitation? Because it can't be just an imitation, it has to be alive. Taking over a role and making that thing yours while not stepping who the character is is a little tricky. Ryan: It's hard. I'd be curious to hear what you have to say about this, cause you had to do it a lot with lots of different characters. For me, I started to give myself a bit of a break. For the first year or two, it was very much an impression and it was like "Okay, well he goes up on the end of the thing." It was very clinical. Matt: But that was your way in. Ryan: It had to be. And just for continuity sake, it had to fit in with the rest of those shows. And for me it was like "Get it out of the way, do your 10000 hours of the mimicking to get that part outta the way." And it does happen, you get outside opinions from people, everyone's got opinions about these characters and rightfully so. Matt: And we're all trying to help, cause I remember early on we were like "I don't know if Elmo does this." And you were very gracious and like "OK, thanks." Ryan: It was important, because everyone was trying to hit the same exact target. What was frustrating was I didn't feel that I was there yet, and I knew what needed to happen, but I didn't have the tools. I love her so much, so I don't think she's gonna mind me telling this story, Carol-Lynn Parente early on came up to me and she goes "Just remember that he's 3-and-a-half." Because my Elmo's like a 47-year-old. Matt: But Kevin would do that too, he would go on the Tonight Show, and he would kinda age him up a little bit to make it funnier for adult audiences. Ryan: I have a hard time doing kid characters, cause they always end up being smarter than they're supposed to be. I guess that's part of that thing, just accepting it and yes, it's different now. But as you said, it kinda has to be different, or not different, but it's very hard to keep a character going and do a number of things: Make the audience believe that character's real, please the people who love these characters, and make it your own. I think there's value in making it your own. All of us have kinda taken the root of a character and said "How does that apply to my life?" In the sense that tons of people have played Ebeneezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. It's everybody's interpretation of a character. Matt: It's just so much harder because, it is that actual puppet, it's that actual physical creation that people grew up with and learned the alphabet or learned kindness with and you're trying to now take that and be that, but also you have something to contribute, if you didn't let who you were or are creep a little bit into that character, it's just gonna be stale and it's not gonna be fun to watch or perform. Ryan: And you just have to hope that the audience is gonna be cool with it. It means a lot to people, these characters are so personal, they're like family members to some people. So I just had to trust myself enough to say "I'm gonna make these choices." Actually it was very helpful to get away. The second year that I'd been doing Elmo, I went to England to do a spinoff called the Furchester Hotel, which was really challenging. Looking back, I should've been enjoying it a little more, but it was a little scary. It was freeing that I didn't feel the pressure of people watching me who've worked on the show for X number of years, but I was like in the woods. I didn't have a barometer of any "Is this right, am I doing this right?" It was a double-edged sorta thing. But it allowed me to take some of those liberties a little bit. Matt: And you also had David Rudman there, who would come in every month or so. Ryan: David had the best job on that show. I was so jealous of him, cause he'd come in and Cookie Monster would enter the scene and eat a cookie and he'd be done for the day. He'd be in one scene, I'm in every shot of that show. He'd come in and do his little thing and the rest of the day he could work on stuff in his room, I'm like "How are you getting away with it? This is amazing." He was really kind and very patient, people were very patient with me, cause there were a lotta parts of it that were scary. Because I was like "This is your thing now, this is gonna be on your obituary." Which is super dark, but this will be the thing that people know you for, whether you're ready for it or not, so you have to go full force into it, and then really make it something that you feel happy doing and comfortable doing. And a lot of that was allowing myself to come out, and a lot of it was doing those appearances, Jimmy Fallon and all those shows where you could improvise. You guys were all so generous and kind and patient, and I can only imagine how weird that whole experience was. I remember you and Joey and everyone just being really kind and helpful. So it was just a weird way to be thrust into that situation, I didn't expect it and I didn't anticipate it, but it's been amazing. Matt: You were working with Louise Gold, and she certainly had some experience over the years, how cool. Ryan: Louise is incredible, it was so scary, I was moving to England for the summer, I'd never been there, I didn't know what I was doing. And the first day of rehearsal, she was at the front door, with her arms wide open waiting to hug me. She never met me, she didn't know me, but again, I don't think I could've gotten comfortable if people like you guys and Louise and David and if there wasn't an element of like "You're gonna be fine, you're getting there." But it's been an amazing experience. Something else too, I didn't really have time to super panic about it, there wasn't a lot of time between getting the job and starting the job. Matt: That's true, you were kinda being thrown into the pond. Ryan: But it's been an amazing experience, you do things you never would have thought. I met Barack Obama, and I've got that picture of all of us with Michelle Obama. There's experiences you get to have that you never could have imagined. Matt: And you performed all over the world with Elmo, you've been to Australia. Ryan: I've been to the Philippines. I've been to Manila. Matt: It takes you places you never think that you'd get to go. Ryan: It's incredible. It's been the most fun thing in the world. It's the dream job, cause you know, you're getting to be the person who does these characters for people and you get to be the person who keeps it going, you can only hope that people are happy with it, but you just go out and perform and have fun and it's amazing.
Shelby Kelley asked on the Barretta Brothers episode with Ryan Dillon: "Is there a certain weight that comes with performing a character that has so much history attached to it? Ryan with Elmo, Bill with Rowlf." Ryan: It's hard, it took me a really long time to accept that you're not that other performer, I'm never gonna be Kevin, so you have to hope that what you're doing still works, and you just don't know it until you try stuff. And I have to say your Rowlf is really wonderful. It's just so warm and he's one of my absolute favorite characters, at the Hollywood Bowl and O2, the number you did, I've Been Everywhere, that was so much fun. Bill Barretta: See, I don't think I do a very good voice impersonation, and I think that's part of the thing, if you can access some of the essence of the character and what the original person brought to it, the energy, the heart of it, the perspective, I think if you can do that, I mean your Elmo voice is phenomenal and you're technically amazing, but I think it's unusual, it's not an easy thing to try and capture the essence of a character, although people will always go "It doesn't sound like I remember." And then you have to start putting some of yourself into it over time. You've been doing it how long now, 8 years? Ryan: It's been a while, and it took a while for me to be okay with that too, there's that feeling of "You have to be by the book." But the longer you do that, the more it really does become an impression. And people can feel it, even if it's subconscious, they can feel a falseness. Gene Barretta: Is there a point with both of you, where you say "I just have to say screw it, I'm doing the best I can, and I imagine that the people who preceded me would want me to take that path and just say be my own performer and take it that way"? Bill: I suppose, I don't know what Jim would say, but I think at some point, you have to let the stuff go and think about it as a character that you perform, you have to just take on the character and not think that you're doing someone else's character, even though you know it, and you're always respectful of that, I think because these characters were created by someone else, just like a character that I've created, I have to find the comfort in that, so that I'm not thinking and worried and all that stuff that is a distraction from the work. Ryan: Yeah, I think people can feel you thinking when you're performing, they can feel this insecurity, or being uncomfortable. And the first couple years of Elmo, it very much was that, cause you get to a point where you're just like, and at some point you do say, I did anyway, "I can't be him exactly, as much as I try I can't do it". And then you start to find avenues that may or may not work and you dial it back or you bring certain elements up, and for me a lot of that happened with press stuff, because you're winging it, and you don't have anybody telling you exactly what he wants to say, you have to trust yourself. Bill: But also the fact that we're working next to people who experienced those people and know them or we got to know them. It's the workshop people, the puppeteers, the directors, the crew, all these people who witnessed it and experienced it and felt it, that's who you're getting things from too. Ryan: Especially with Sesame because it's the same people, those people have been there forever, Frankie Biondo and all these people, they've seen it all, so when you get them to go, "All right, that's close", then you feel like you're doing something.
Kirk Thatcher: "A lot of fans don't get, the die-hard fans get it, that when a performer is brought in to do a character because someone passed away, it's not because they're a perfect voice match, it's because they embody that spirit and they add rooms to that house. It's not like a cartoon where you need to sound just like Bugs Bunny, it's like you embody Kermit or Fozzie or whoever, and bring more to the party as opposed to just doing an impression."
During this holiday season I also recommend watching 'A Muppet Family Christmas' from 1987! Perfect little holiday treat and can be found free on youtube :)
I like the Emmett Otter Christmas Special from Jim Henson's studios!
@@drewgoin8849 I haven't even seen that yet, omg! Definitely need to find it somewhere.
My personal favorite Muppet holiday special ❤
I was listening to you guys while I was studying for finals lol, but I would like to say that this is officially my comfort podcast
That makes me so happy
I watched muppets most wanted before I watched muppets 2011 which considering how it starts is kind of wild but it really is very disconnected from 2011. I feel like it’s very good at being a stand alone sequel. Im not sure if watching them out of order greatly impacted my opinion of it but since so many people seem to dislike Most Wanted, it does make me wonder if separating them is truly the ideal watching experience 😅
you guys are so awesome
Thank you so much!!
Another great episode
Keep up the good work do you have any idea what your schedule going forward is gonna look like
Thank you! And it’s been sporadic during the holiday season, but going into the new year we plan to have something more concrete schedule wise! Stay tuned. New episode coming tuesday
The border artwork is phenomenal @fr00tbats !!!
EDIT: 18:27 My family had "Rainbow Connection" on vinyl when I was a little kid. Such a great song!!
SQUEET SQUEET🥺👉🏼👈🏻
🗣️SQUAT SQUAT!!!
Froot Bat !😅
Hell yeh!! Can't wait for this - thank you both for all the creativity you share! It's so cool to see
I recently started rewatching the movies and I watched them in almost the same order you guys put them in, pretty cool :3 I just have treasure island and wizard of oz left
Oooh I wanna know what u think abt those last two!
squeet squeet! i have unfortunately not seen many/any muppets movies other than the 2011 muppets (like when it came out) so i will 100% be watching them in this exact order and i will be taking notes
Aw love that!! Let us know wht u think 🤭
This channel makes me very happy.
This comment makes me very happy ♥️🥹
I would actually recommend people watch “Kermit’s Swamp Years” first.
Hahahah
Please give Fraggle Rock Back to the Rock a chance. Here's a quote that explains the reason for Mokey's redesign:
Interviewer: As long as we're talking about some changes that have been made I'm going to ask the burning question that I haven't heard answered yet, why did Mokey change?
John Tartaglia: It is a good question and here's the honest truth, it's a combination of things. If you look at the original series, Gobo went through a huge redesign in the middle of the first season, he had a very distinct look in the beginning, kind of a pointy nose and he had these feathers that could kind of rise up on his eyeballs and he wore that kind of dark purple jacket, then that all went away after episode 13 I think and all of a sudden this brand new Gobo appeared that no one ever addressed. So puppets get remade, Ma Gorg got remade, the original Sprocket from the pilot to the series got remade, so things do change and that's very normal in the world of puppets. Miss Piggy looks very different than she did in the first episode of the Muppet Show, almost every main character has gone through changes, and part of that is style. With Mokey, she's always been a really interesting character, I mean everyone loves her, but it's funny, people had a hard time identifying her. People said "is she the mom, is she an old woman?" I remember some fan apparently at some Fraggle talk back back in the day was like "who's the albert Einstein character?" Because of her original hair. So she's always been a difficult character from a marketing perspective, she's been a difficult character from an identification place, and I think at the time, she was very much like that heavy cardigan and the hippie dippy thing of the 60s. So it just felt like she needed a refresh and she needed something new, and also we wanted to make her really funny. The original Mokey was intentionally not as zany and fun as the other characters, she was a little bit more, sometimes to a fault character wise, serious and we just wanted to give her a little bit more excitement, a little bit more life. And we had the opportunity with the amazing Donna Kimball who's taken over the character, who is such a funny improviser and such a funny performer, to let her bring something new to the character too. So the more we talked about it, we decided let's really get Mokey more into being in touch new age. All those things we love about Mokey are still there, she's still poetic, she's still artistic, she's still into crystals and meditation and all the things that we love about the original Mokey, but it was just time to give her kind of a youthful rethink and to make her a little more fun and then a little girl of today could look at Mokey and find something relatable in her, so yeah, that was really the reason. And what was wonderful was how much the team that had worked on the original, some of whom are still part of this reboot, were like "Yes!" Like everyone felt strongly that this was the way to go. So that was nice to have that blessing. It's hard, sometimes when you grow up loving something and you have to rethink it for today's times, it can feel like "Ugh", but I think it was the right thing to do. Once we knew that Mokey wouldn't be as old and we knew that she wouldn't be as kind of hippy-dippy, we gave her rotted hands so she could be a little more expressive in that way, and we just kind of gave her a new vibe. What i always say is she felt the creative spirit of the rock and decided it was time for a change and that's kind of what it really was.
Yeah there back
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It’s You!
If Kermit was a real guy, I’d go fuckin nuts
~ Marco Rubio
You two should understand that when a Muppet gets recast, they're not looking for a perfect voice match. Read these quotes.
Interviewer: You clearly come close to the voice, but I'm wondering if you ever made any effort to differentiate yourself a little bit.
Steve Whitmire: No, but I can't help it. I'm not a mimic, really.
Interviewer: I mean, it's pretty close.
Steve: It's in the same ballpark, and it's been 26 years, so I think people have grown accustomed to it. I had a lot of criticism in the beginning and I understand it. I'd walk into a room, and people would say "You sound exactly like Jim" and then people would say "You don't sound anything like Jim". One of the most embarrassing things I did, in the early days we did this phone-in radio thing, to these kinda shock-jocks. So they weren't very nice people to begin with. And they were talking to Kermit, and they spent the whole interview saying "You don't sound anything like Kermit" to Kermit. It was so hard. What could I do? I had to say it was Kermit. So I get it. But we don't have any choice. I hear a lot of people writing or talking online about Jim's Kermit, or Frank's Fozzie or Frank's Piggy vs. Eric's Piggy. And from our point of view, I understand that, but it's a non-existent difference. There's no Frank's Piggy, there's Piggy. And that's the way we have to approach it. Because it doesn't get shared. This is who she is now. They do have to evolve. That's really important.
Eric Jacobson: Yeah, evolve is the right word. Obviously, these characters are gonna be different on our hands than our predecessors. But we're accepting of that. It was hard for me at first, because I wanted to be able to fool people. And maybe you can do that for a little while, but eventually especially with the Internet these days, people are gonna know. And so I had to come to terms with that, and realize that I'm not Frank. And nobody can be somebody else. But perhaps Piggy can still be Piggy, and be a little bit different than she was before but totally in-character. Totally a character that you can believe in, and continue to believe in and be entertained by.
Kirk Thatcher: The Muppet ethos, the internal ethos that you wouldn't know unless you work there, is very much the spirit of the character, not a voice impression. Cause there are people who do Kermit spot-on, but they're not puppeteers, and they're like "We can dub it over", but that's not the company and that's not the way Jim set it up. Spirit embodies it, and that's how it is with every character. In fact one of the bits of friction when Disney bought the Muppets was that they said "We'll audition nine people to do Kermit and ten to do Piggy." And the guys, the puppeteers and some of the people who worked with the company said "That's not how it works, you won't get the Muppets, you'll get a guy in a Mickey Mouse costume dancing, you lose their soul." It's like saying "We're gonna do an Austin Powers movie, but we're gonna audition five Austin Powers." No, Mike Myers created that, you can't do it without him, unless he says "I don't wanna do it anymore." So it's the same thing, you wouldn't hire Monty Python, you say "We're gonna reboot Monty Python, so we're casting John Cleese."
Craig Shemin: Here's a question for you, Stephanie: "Can you talk about how you prepared to take on the role of Prairie Dawn, what questions did you ask Fran Brill?"
Stephanie D'Abruzzo: I think I asked Fran "are you sure? Are you really sure? Are you positive?" When I was in college being a nerdy Muppet fan, my answering machine was (in Prairie's voice) "Oh, you have reached Stephanie's answering machine, I hope that the message you leave will be clean." So you could say I've been preparing for it. But the first time Fran ever heard my Prairie Dawn, it was my second season on the show, we were doing a sketch the fan nerds will know called Fairy Tales Today Striking Food where the food went on strike and I played the infamous Bean Number 3, and Fran had laryngitis, she was on another part of the set, we were on a separate part cause she was the roving reporter cutting to the vegetables. And in the middle of it she was like (makes hacking noises), so someone David, Joey or Peter just started saying "Oh welcome, oh welcome" and then everybody started doing it and then I did it, and I think Peter looked at me and went "Hey."And I don't remember the look that Fran gave me cause I didn't know her well at the time, I think that was the only time I did Prairie in front of her. But eventually if Fran was doing Zoe for a crowd scene I would usually hold up Prairie, so I feel like I had Fran's blessing.
Bill Barretta: It happens that way I think. For some reason I think when people have taken on characters, maybe not with me and Jim cause I didn't work with him but, it feels like people that have been around each other or the other performers, I don't know how that happens but it's a very organic way that people feel comfortable and they're able to find that somehow.
Craig: David Rudman was very close to Richard Hunt, and he ended up taking over Scooter.
Stephanie: Matt was very close to Jerry and Caroll. It is nice cause before Jerry passed, he made a conscious choice to talk to Matt about his characters. Fran made the choice to retire and she was in on the auditions, so she had her say and it was with her blessing. And it's nice when you have that, but it's also nice when you know the person, and that's not always possible, but even with you not having worked with Jim, you knew enough about the world and enough about him and I think there was this automatic respect, I think that's the key, respect for the performer who originated the character and that feeling of it's not about doing an imitation, but making it your own while still respecting the integrity of the performance and what the original performer brought to it.
Bill: I think at least in my situation, it's because there was a kinda trust that was gained among the performers, you're around them enough and they realize where your heart lies and where your sense of integrity is and are you trusted in a sense to kinda do that? And when it comes to doing somebody else's character, it's obviously not yours in any way, shape or form, and you're doing some kinda impersonation of it at first until you start to find the essence of who it is, not so much how it sounds, I feel like I've figured out how to make it feel like the character. Jim's energy is different in Rowlf than it is with the Chef.
Stephanie: It's the cadence, it's the little things and for me knowing Fran, and the things that Fran brought of herself to the character I think helps too. But it's the trust with the other performers that really becomes key, cause it's a 2-3-8-way street where you can't really start working well with inheriting a character unless you've worked with all the other people doing all the other characters who know that your intentions are good and you're not just gonna futz with it.
Bill: There's already been a pre-established relationship between the characters and the people, so you're building a relationship beneath the puppets that's gonna feed that and if that's working down there, then that makes it easier for the others to feel comfortable about doing that.
Stephanie: I feel like that's something that gets missed by people who hear about someone taking over a character and think it just needs to sound as much like the character as possible. If you're an outsider looking at the Muppets, you're like "Oh, Kermit doesn't sound like I remember or Ernie doesn't sound like I remember." It's so much more than that because, it's not just a voice and I think those of us who've been doing it a long time realize that.
Bill: And fair enough that there are so many people that have certain expectations about these characters. So what I recognize as Kermit's voice is Jim, but as I became part of the Muppets, Steve became the voice that I heard as Kermit almost overpowering what I remember as Jim. And there's a generation that knows Steve's Kermit, and that's what they know. To hear now Matt do something closer to Jim in a way, people are going "Well, that doesn't sound like it" because they're used to how beautiful Steve used to do it. So it's always changing and growing and I think that's a good thing because we don't last forever obviously.
Stephanie: But there's always that question of, and this happens a lot more at Sesame, "Oh wait, do I do Prairie 20 years ago or now? Do I do '70s Prairie where she was different or do I do now?" It's like saying "do I do 1989 Homer Simpson or now Homer Simpson?"
Bill: And that's why I think it's really more about the character and who it is rather than what they sound like, because the character has changed since the '70s and has grown as she grew with Fran, and now she's growing with you. I think that's the key to it, is having a grasp on the character and then just letting the voice that makes people feel comfortable enough to know that that's who it is, but it's gonna be a little different.
Adam Kreutinger: We were talking to Dave Goelz about performers who carry on characters, and obviously fans can be critical of how these new performers interpret these characters.
Fran Brill in an empathetic tone: I know, yeah.
Adam: Obviously in the case of people taking on Jim Henson's characters, the original performer can't say "I approve of these choices."
Cameron Garrity: "Leave them alone!"
Adam: I think from some fan perspectives, they might think "Jim might not have done it that way" or so and so, and I guess one thing that seems wonderful about you, it sounds like you want these new performers to put a lot of themselves into these characters, not necessarily just try to do what you did before.
Fran: Oh sure, because they're not me. And you can imitate somebody's voice and I know this goes on and on, but a lot of the fans say "I can do a perfect Kermit or a perfect Grover, I wish I could audition" but it is not a voiceover job. If it were it would be easy and everybody could do it, but it's so many talents at the same time, and if they don't have the voice absolutely perfect, especially in the beginning. Like when Eric Jacobson took over Grover and a lot of Frank's characters, Miss Piggy, and he is doing such a fantastic job that even I sometimes have to think "Who was that?" And I know the fans get troubled when a new person takes over a character, but all of these people are cast from within the family of the puppeteers. It's not like they have found a puppeteer from outside the group, so the ability to imitate a voice is already in the air, let's say. Cause we would all kid each other and do each other's voice sometimes, but I think you have to give a new Kermit or Prairie Dawn or whoever, you have to give that person a chance. I can tell you they worked extremely hard listening to Jim, for instance, Matt Vogel now doing Kermit, I think he's doing a great job, and he really worked at it. He went back to not what Stevie had did cause Stevie was very good too, but he went back to Jim, the original, and listened and listened. It's the intonation, the inflection, it's the humanity of that character, and the manipulation, there's just so much. Plus all these puppeteers are a unit and they're used to each other and joke around with each other. So to bring in somebody from outside the Muppet family to replace a character as important as Kermit, that almost has to be done within these performers who've been working together 10, 15, 20, 25 years, it makes perfect sense to me. Matt had to do a lot of auditioning too, they didn't just throw a major character like that around. So I hope the fans can be more understanding about what all is involved, it's not just the voice, it's finding the soul of that character, speech pattern, keeping that character alive, while improvising which is really tricky, and the quick wit that you need.
Adam: I love what you said about having the audience give the new performer a chance, because the original characters are in some way a piece of that performer, and that's what I think people fall in love with so much, how humanizing these characters can be, so when someone else takes over that, what people think they want is an impression, when really that's not what's best for this character to have a long living life as a character. So I think it's important for these new performers to try to be as honest to the character as they can be, but also in order to make this a real fleshed out character, it has to have a piece of that new performer in it.
Fran: Yeah, I mean how can it not? I have my DNA and Stephanie has her DNA and Jen Barnhart has her DNA. Fans have to be patient.
Matt Vogel: We should talk about probably the most famous character that you play, and that is of course...
Ryan Dillon: Don Music!
Matt: I was gonna say the Sensitive Nose Dwarf.
Ryan: OMG, Muppet Wiki!
Matt: That's right. Of course it's Elmo. That was 2013. What went through your mind when there was a call that said "Hey, we want you to come in and audition for Elmo"?
Ryan: I didn't think I was gonna do it. That's what I remember feeling. I think maybe the call came from you, but I remember thinking "IDK, I just can't do that". Elmo was never a character that I felt comfortable, I had done the puppet a little bit, if Kevin was directing, he'd throw the puppet to me, in the same way you'd been doing stuff like that as well. So I knew how to move the puppet enough, but Kevin's manipulation style is so specific and crisp and the character was so unique to him. It was never something I considered. So I fought with myself internally about even going in and then I went in and it's kinda a blur. I just remember it being you, me and Joey in a room with Elmo and Murray riffing. It was just a weird time personally, it was hard to know what was gonna happen. And I must have done a callback. And it just kinda happened from there. It's funny what life gives you and what you choose to do with it, because I never could've anticipated that character or that job.
Matt: No, how could you? None of us do, even when you're a kid and you see Jim and Frank and Dave and Jerry and Richard, you're thinking that they do that, that's their job. How do I fit into that? I can't do that. I would never assume that I could've taken over Big Bird or Kermit.
Ryan: Like I always thought the way it works is they develop new characters and those performers play those characters and it comes from them. You just think "I will add my characters to this group." And what has happened because of the nature of the medium, you need to have a small staple of characters, and what ends up happening is now the job has become that we take on legacy characters.
Matt: There are differences in creating a role from nothing and taking over for someone. And how do you make that still that character, how do you make Elmo still Elmo, but not make it be just an imitation? Because it can't be just an imitation, it has to be alive. Taking over a role and making that thing yours while not stepping who the character is is a little tricky.
Ryan: It's hard. I'd be curious to hear what you have to say about this, cause you had to do it a lot with lots of different characters. For me, I started to give myself a bit of a break. For the first year or two, it was very much an impression and it was like "Okay, well he goes up on the end of the thing." It was very clinical.
Matt: But that was your way in.
Ryan: It had to be. And just for continuity sake, it had to fit in with the rest of those shows. And for me it was like "Get it out of the way, do your 10000 hours of the mimicking to get that part outta the way." And it does happen, you get outside opinions from people, everyone's got opinions about these characters and rightfully so.
Matt: And we're all trying to help, cause I remember early on we were like "I don't know if Elmo does this." And you were very gracious and like "OK, thanks."
Ryan: It was important, because everyone was trying to hit the same exact target. What was frustrating was I didn't feel that I was there yet, and I knew what needed to happen, but I didn't have the tools. I love her so much, so I don't think she's gonna mind me telling this story, Carol-Lynn Parente early on came up to me and she goes "Just remember that he's 3-and-a-half." Because my Elmo's like a 47-year-old.
Matt: But Kevin would do that too, he would go on the Tonight Show, and he would kinda age him up a little bit to make it funnier for adult audiences.
Ryan: I have a hard time doing kid characters, cause they always end up being smarter than they're supposed to be. I guess that's part of that thing, just accepting it and yes, it's different now. But as you said, it kinda has to be different, or not different, but it's very hard to keep a character going and do a number of things: Make the audience believe that character's real, please the people who love these characters, and make it your own. I think there's value in making it your own. All of us have kinda taken the root of a character and said "How does that apply to my life?" In the sense that tons of people have played Ebeneezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. It's everybody's interpretation of a character.
Matt: It's just so much harder because, it is that actual puppet, it's that actual physical creation that people grew up with and learned the alphabet or learned kindness with and you're trying to now take that and be that, but also you have something to contribute, if you didn't let who you were or are creep a little bit into that character, it's just gonna be stale and it's not gonna be fun to watch or perform.
Ryan: And you just have to hope that the audience is gonna be cool with it. It means a lot to people, these characters are so personal, they're like family members to some people. So I just had to trust myself enough to say "I'm gonna make these choices." Actually it was very helpful to get away. The second year that I'd been doing Elmo, I went to England to do a spinoff called the Furchester Hotel, which was really challenging. Looking back, I should've been enjoying it a little more, but it was a little scary. It was freeing that I didn't feel the pressure of people watching me who've worked on the show for X number of years, but I was like in the woods. I didn't have a barometer of any "Is this right, am I doing this right?" It was a double-edged sorta thing. But it allowed me to take some of those liberties a little bit.
Matt: And you also had David Rudman there, who would come in every month or so.
Ryan: David had the best job on that show. I was so jealous of him, cause he'd come in and Cookie Monster would enter the scene and eat a cookie and he'd be done for the day. He'd be in one scene, I'm in every shot of that show. He'd come in and do his little thing and the rest of the day he could work on stuff in his room, I'm like "How are you getting away with it? This is amazing." He was really kind and very patient, people were very patient with me, cause there were a lotta parts of it that were scary. Because I was like "This is your thing now, this is gonna be on your obituary." Which is super dark, but this will be the thing that people know you for, whether you're ready for it or not, so you have to go full force into it, and then really make it something that you feel happy doing and comfortable doing. And a lot of that was allowing myself to come out, and a lot of it was doing those appearances, Jimmy Fallon and all those shows where you could improvise. You guys were all so generous and kind and patient, and I can only imagine how weird that whole experience was. I remember you and Joey and everyone just being really kind and helpful. So it was just a weird way to be thrust into that situation, I didn't expect it and I didn't anticipate it, but it's been amazing.
Matt: You were working with Louise Gold, and she certainly had some experience over the years, how cool.
Ryan: Louise is incredible, it was so scary, I was moving to England for the summer, I'd never been there, I didn't know what I was doing. And the first day of rehearsal, she was at the front door, with her arms wide open waiting to hug me. She never met me, she didn't know me, but again, I don't think I could've gotten comfortable if people like you guys and Louise and David and if there wasn't an element of like "You're gonna be fine, you're getting there." But it's been an amazing experience. Something else too, I didn't really have time to super panic about it, there wasn't a lot of time between getting the job and starting the job.
Matt: That's true, you were kinda being thrown into the pond.
Ryan: But it's been an amazing experience, you do things you never would have thought. I met Barack Obama, and I've got that picture of all of us with Michelle Obama. There's experiences you get to have that you never could have imagined.
Matt: And you performed all over the world with Elmo, you've been to Australia.
Ryan: I've been to the Philippines. I've been to Manila.
Matt: It takes you places you never think that you'd get to go.
Ryan: It's incredible. It's been the most fun thing in the world. It's the dream job, cause you know, you're getting to be the person who does these characters for people and you get to be the person who keeps it going, you can only hope that people are happy with it, but you just go out and perform and have fun and it's amazing.
Shelby Kelley asked on the Barretta Brothers episode with Ryan Dillon: "Is there a certain weight that comes with performing a character that has so much history attached to it? Ryan with Elmo, Bill with Rowlf."
Ryan: It's hard, it took me a really long time to accept that you're not that other performer, I'm never gonna be Kevin, so you have to hope that what you're doing still works, and you just don't know it until you try stuff. And I have to say your Rowlf is really wonderful. It's just so warm and he's one of my absolute favorite characters, at the Hollywood Bowl and O2, the number you did, I've Been Everywhere, that was so much fun.
Bill Barretta: See, I don't think I do a very good voice impersonation, and I think that's part of the thing, if you can access some of the essence of the character and what the original person brought to it, the energy, the heart of it, the perspective, I think if you can do that, I mean your Elmo voice is phenomenal and you're technically amazing, but I think it's unusual, it's not an easy thing to try and capture the essence of a character, although people will always go "It doesn't sound like I remember." And then you have to start putting some of yourself into it over time. You've been doing it how long now, 8 years?
Ryan: It's been a while, and it took a while for me to be okay with that too, there's that feeling of "You have to be by the book." But the longer you do that, the more it really does become an impression. And people can feel it, even if it's subconscious, they can feel a falseness.
Gene Barretta: Is there a point with both of you, where you say "I just have to say screw it, I'm doing the best I can, and I imagine that the people who preceded me would want me to take that path and just say be my own performer and take it that way"?
Bill: I suppose, I don't know what Jim would say, but I think at some point, you have to let the stuff go and think about it as a character that you perform, you have to just take on the character and not think that you're doing someone else's character, even though you know it, and you're always respectful of that, I think because these characters were created by someone else, just like a character that I've created, I have to find the comfort in that, so that I'm not thinking and worried and all that stuff that is a distraction from the work.
Ryan: Yeah, I think people can feel you thinking when you're performing, they can feel this insecurity, or being uncomfortable. And the first couple years of Elmo, it very much was that, cause you get to a point where you're just like, and at some point you do say, I did anyway, "I can't be him exactly, as much as I try I can't do it". And then you start to find avenues that may or may not work and you dial it back or you bring certain elements up, and for me a lot of that happened with press stuff, because you're winging it, and you don't have anybody telling you exactly what he wants to say, you have to trust yourself.
Bill: But also the fact that we're working next to people who experienced those people and know them or we got to know them. It's the workshop people, the puppeteers, the directors, the crew, all these people who witnessed it and experienced it and felt it, that's who you're getting things from too.
Ryan: Especially with Sesame because it's the same people, those people have been there forever, Frankie Biondo and all these people, they've seen it all, so when you get them to go, "All right, that's close", then you feel like you're doing something.
Kirk Thatcher: "A lot of fans don't get, the die-hard fans get it, that when a performer is brought in to do a character because someone passed away, it's not because they're a perfect voice match, it's because they embody that spirit and they add rooms to that house. It's not like a cartoon where you need to sound just like Bugs Bunny, it's like you embody Kermit or Fozzie or whoever, and bring more to the party as opposed to just doing an impression."