Late Night Muppets - The Land of Gorch: Saturday Night Live's Ill Fated Muppet Show
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ต.ค. 2024
- As Jim Henson searches for an opportunity to make puppet performances popular to an older audience, he gets the chance to bring the Muppets to a new segment on Saturday Night. Between Sesame Street and the Muppet Show sits Jim's ill-fated, short lived segment, known as "The Land of Gorch".
(Sometimes spelled Gortch.)
Kings of the Magic Kingdom Episode 1:
• WHO INHERITED DISNEY? ...
#snl #saturdaynightlive #muppets #jimhenson #muppetshow
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A Mini-Documentary by Tyler Thompson
hellotyler.com
Instagram: @watch.tyler
TikTok: @watchtylerfilms
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Primary Sources:
Jim Henson: The Biography
by Brian Jay Jones
Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers
and Guests by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
“The Muppetry of Nightmares: Figures of Fear, Danger and Terror in The Cosby Show, Chappelle’s Show and Saturday Night Live ” by Michael J Bernsten
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Music Credits:
"California Woman" by Joachim Kuhn
"You're So Rude (2004 Remaster)" by Faces
"Home at Last (2006 Remaster)" by Sam & Dave
"Games People Play" by The Spinners
"Pineapple and the Monkey (2010 Remaster)" by Faces
“Kool Kats” by Kevin MacLeod
Kool Kats by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommon...
All music used with permission and sourced from TH-cam's Creator Music Library.
Sources for videos and photos are listed at the bottom of the video. My best attempt was made to correctly attribute credit to each piece of media. If you find anything belonging to yourself that was uncredited or misattributed, please send me a message, and I will put any corrections in the description. Thank you.
I was in the audience of SNL's dress rehearsal on October 25, 1975, just the third show (guest host: Rob Reiner). Waiting in line in front of me were these two men who kept saying "We wanna see stars!!!" In all that time Chevy, Gilda, and John could've passed by us, and we would never have known. Then I saw Jim Hensen sign in at the desk, and told the two men in front of me, "That's Jim Henson, the man behind the Muppets". The two men immediately started shouting "Oh Mr. Henson! Mr. Henson!". Jim looked around to see where it was coming from, spotted them, smiled and waved at them, before he boarded the elevator. I'm sure it made those two guys' day!
It took me almost forty years, but the algorithm finally led me to the fabled Land of Gorch.
Yeah, I've searched before and there are no clips, (or dang few), anywhere, apparently. When you google SNL Muppets, there's plenty of puppetry examples from the show, but no 'Gorch'. Of course, it's been a while since I searched, maybe the stuff is more visible now.
Very interesting story - I didn’t realize that Jim Henson had a recurring muppet segment on a season of SNL.
_"I don't write for felt..."_ Michael O Donohue writer for Saturday Night
@@harvey3rdman464 Yeah, but Michael O Donohue wasn't nearly as funny as HE thought he was. I watched the show back then and there were a lot of crickets in that audience in between the great bits.
Bernie Brillstein was a legendary agent and producer, and strangely enough was both Lorne Michaels and Jim Henson's agent.
Very good video essay, man! Solid work, im definitely subscribing.
Thank you!
The Muppet Show was an important part of my childhood. I remember watching it every week. I was too young for SNL, but you bet I always caught The Muppet Show.
this was a great watch as i just saw the movie saturday night a few days ago! thank you for your time and energy on this.
Thanks for watching!
My parents let me stay up late on Saturday nights so I very clearly remember The Land Of Gorch and I still occasionally watch it here on YT. The similarities to the Muppets I knew from Sesame Street was actually enough for me to be entertained by it even if I was a bit too young then to get all the jokes, and I missed the segments when they ended. It's unfortunate though that Henson wasn't allowed to write for his own creation though. A setup like that was doomed from the start
Gosh I loved those puppets back in the day, such good stuff.
Nice! Thank you! I’d been wondering about this for most of my life.
I recognize that the land of Gorch is similar to the Dark crystal and the gorgs from Fraggle rock.
For Dark crystal, unpleasant beings scheming against each other who rule over a wasteland. The designs of some of the inhabitants also look similar to some of the skeksis.
For Fraggle rock, that gorgs and gorch is similar to each other and are bombastic royals. As well as consulting an animated inanimate object for advice.
I guess that creators do recycle ideas and in Henson's case, recycle ideas into something that works.
Gorch reminds me of The Bog of Eternal Stench in The Labyrinth 😆
I used to enjoy this on SNL. Jim was right, Muppetry is still like animation was in the earliest days. Struggling to break out into adult viewing...
The Muppet Show was one of the best.
I remember seeing those segments on the reruns of the early-season shows; very interesting but very weird. The style of the humour didn't quite jibe with the rest of the show however, so one can see why they didn't last long. (Also, some of the cast-members really didn't care for them; Belushi for example _hated_ them & was quite vocal in his disapproval of them.) Still, it was an interesting experiment, kind of laying the groundwork for Henson's later work on project such as "Dark Crystal."
This was incredibly well done, and here’s hoping this channel pops off! Looks like a couple of your videos were scooped up into the algorithm, and this video made it to my recommends, so hopefully this one does well for you too. Excellent work, man. I can’t wait to dig into more of your stuff, especially the Celebration series, which looks criminally under-viewed. Good luck, and keep up the good work! You got at least one more sub out of me!
Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy my Celebration documentary.
Oh, but I do remember The Land of Gorch from SNL. It was one of my favorite memories from the early SNL episodes.
I could have told them SNL could never write for Muppets. The Muppets have a classy vaudeville feel, and SNL was more postmodern and edgy
Feels weird saying the muppets are to classy for SNL but it’s true lol
You can squint and almost see the Skeksis. 7:20
It's so sad this and other adult-aimed puppet shows like Wondershowzen don't last very long 😢 at least we'll always have Avenue Q!
(PS Im honestly so shocked at how few likes this has?? You have such high quality for such a small channel! Its giving short-form Down the Rabbit Hole)
I thought of Avenue Q too as as soon as I read the intro. I hadn't thought of it before.
What great timing the snl origin story movie comes out today
Since my childhood I always wanted to be able to have free reign in Henson's Creature Shop, not sure why they haven't opened a Henson's Creature Shop Store anywhere, at least in one of the parks would be nice.
Have it just like the Build-A-Bear stores where you can go and customize your own Muppet to take home, I can't see it being too expensive to build one, it's mainly just foam pieces.
That would actually be so cool
I have to oddly agree with Jim Hensen, puppets were popular for a long long time in UK television.
We had kids shows using puppets right up until the 2010s, a few political satire shows used exaggerated puppets to mock politicians, and even two comedy musicians that represented the UK and Ireland in Eurovision.
Thanks for this wonderful video! I was around back then and watching SNL and later The Muppet Show, but for some reason I don't remember the Land of Gorch.
with the new SNL movie coming out soon I wonder if they include this part of it's history.
They are.
I did watch the movie yesterday, and while I knew about the discord with the writers and how he wanted to appeal to everyone, I don't think how overprotective of his puppets was accurate. Frank Oz said one of the things he liked about Jim is that he wasn't one of those people who delicately put his puppets in a case, he'd sometimes throw them in a corner. Plus, I recall his children would use some of those puppets pieces for costumes as children.
#DisneyDiva ❤
Rip Jim H❤
Loveee this
Back when saturday night live was a great show
I liked those Henson sketches.I also thought most of those Albert Brooks films were funny.
Could you see about doing something about the Muppets Take Manhattan for the 40th anniversary.
Scred was the best! I can’t find videos of it
Monomonop...
Shame that they've never given Gorch a reboot. Like more of SNL than not, it desperately wanted to be funny, but it usually wasn't. It could work with a different set of writers.
I love Jim Henson and rewatched the first season recently. Wow...what little momentum those early episodes could muster came to a screeching halt during these segments.
It just didn't fit. It's like if you dropped Death Row Follies, but written by Milton Berle, into the middle of an episode of The Muppet Show.
Maybe when Disney releases Song of The South on Blu-Ray
Why didn't you mention Fraggle Rock?
I HATED that MUPPETS SKETCH on early SNL. The sketches seemed like they were a half hour long (even though they weren't).
They didn't know what they had, or didn't want it. Even geniuses can get it wrong.
Imagine if they had thought of doing something like, "AVENUE Q."
That would have kept them on the show.
I was 13 when it came out and might have missed most of the first season, but saw the Muppets during the 2nd season reruns. They weren't funny and seemed out of place.
"Avenue Q" though......
It was just completely out of place on SNL.
As a teenager, I thought the Gorch stuff was just awful, perfectly unfunny. It was nothing like the Muppets humor seen on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jimmy Dean Show, and Sesame Street. It was completely witless. Now I know why.
The Gorch characters and environment are so unappealing. Just because something is made for adults doesn't demand ugliness... As much as western adult animation might disagree
Idk man they looked kinda cool even if the sketches themselves sucked. They look like cartoonish versions of the puppets from the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
Please cancel SNL, it's the worst.
God this looks like the dumbest show ever.
70s SNL sucked. Just because it was on when you were young doesn't make it good. I get the "jokes" they're just dull, bland, and nonsensical.
Gorch reminds me of The Bog of Eternal Stench in The Labyrinth 😆
Gorch reminds me of The Bog of Eternal Stench in The Labyrinth 😆