here ya go friends around the world! All 5:17 minuets of the interview.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart: The Brian Jay Jones Interview
JS = Jon Stewart
BJ = Brian Jay Jones
JS: please Welcome to the show Brian Jay Jones!
(Crowd cheers as Jon gets up and welcomes Jones by way of a hand shake then both men sit down at Stewart's desk.)
JS : Thank you for being here, Jim Henson the Biography really was for me I think, almost the stunning part. It's been over 20 years...
BJ :(nodding his head) yea,
JS : Since Jim Henson's death?
BJ :Yea and still to a lot of people it still feels like yesterday. That math I think really stuns people.
JS It's incredible I remember you know, there are always people that when they pass away, generally that was a good man, but when he left....
BJ: It was a big hole!
JS: Man! He was in everybody's heart? I mean he was a really special guy.
BJ: Yea, I mean the reason everybody is still knows about the Muppets, and that Disney is rebooting them, and trying to get them back in our constinesness It's a huge legacy that he actually did in a very short time.
JS: And it's funny, because when we look back we have memories of it, and yet when you go through the book your like, “Oh right the original show was hosted by puppet named Nigel.”
BJ: Yea, right....He called it “Sex and Violence”
JS: He called it “Sex and Violence” and it was hosted by Nigel....That doesn't sound right at all?
BJ: Yea, that really didn't work at all.
JS: (Repeats what BJ just said)
BJ: Yea it actually took a lot of studying, and stick to itness for him, there is not a lot of people who would put out a pilot and have it fail put out another pilot, and have it not really catch hold, and keep saying I know this is going to work, and it really pays off and it does it again, and it finally catches on.
JS: And the strange thing is how it catches on. SNL which is this incredible counter culture, and explosive satirical new way of looking at things, I mean really created a whole different genre of television and then here is this guy with his puppets.
BJ: Yea, he is on there, and John Belushi called them the Mucking Fuppets, They hated sharing air time with them, and it was there was sort of a bad DNA between The Muppets and SNL mentality, and it turned out ok The Muppet Show came along the first season and they could wave goodbye nicely, but the team did send a postcard back from London, and say whatever happened to the Mucking Fuppets, here we are the biggest show in the world.
JS :And Jim Henson had the soul, this guy had artist soul and inventor soul and really a bit of a renaissance man.
BJ: Yea, and did it all it was sort of a creatively restless, Throughout the 60's he wanted to do an inflatable nightclub and drop it in an ally in New York City and bring women in white leotards and project movies on them and play music on them.
(The crowd starts to laugh)
JS: Everyone is like where is this place I will go there.
BJ: And the technology wasn't there for him yet. He was a little too far ahead of the curve a lot of the time. He is doing sort of hippy documentaries and he is doing sort of twilight zone short specials for NBC. And Finally the exclamation point at the end of the '60s, is we know “Sesame Street” comes along, but even he says in the 60s, you know I had two careers going, I was an experimental filmmaker and then I had the Muppets. The Muppets finally took hold
JS: But the fusion of the two is almost why it worked. Because when you watch the Muppets, there was-it didn't have the condescension or the sort of strange adolescents nature of maybe some of the other puppet things. It was infused with a very sophisticated and subversive sense.
BJ: Not to tired and not to Sweet. That sweet spot between Lonny Tunes and Disney, and you know, the Muppets are fun and they're family. And I think that's why people really ended up loving them because the relationships they have, The Muppet Show with Kermit is kind of the eye of the hurricane, that was the way it was with Jim. He was the eye of that hurricane the glue that held them all together. It was crazy, He was instigating sometimes but he brought them all back together and that is really what made them all work, Jim loved to work. It was always fun and that shows up.
JS:And he was the iron man. That is why I think his death was so stunning, a, that it was so abrupt and sudden and he had been so healthy. And I still remember, boy, if you want a good cry fest go on YouTube and find Henson funeral because this is, people are in shock. And there's the puppets. I mean it is one of the few times you can really bring a puppet to a funeral.
BJ:Right, and in his absence is notable in there you I mean you are really missing him when you see that it is heartbreaking.
JS: It is heartbreaking. And it is I always used to think I will go to the doctor, like three days earlier that is not really the case.
BJ: It was so sever, by the time the symptoms where showing some said it was so strong but the time the symptoms showed up it was probably to late anyway. It's just one of those thing, most guys would say ride it out. I'll be fine.
JS: I'm that way, if I get sick, no, I'm not going to go to the doctor. I will sleep there.
BJ: Exactly!
JS: Well, I'm really glad, you it strikes me the first time anybody has really cataloged his life and put it out there and it is a wonderful memoir.
BJ :Thank you.
JS: A wonderful memory of him, called Jim Henson the biography, on the bookshelves now. Brian Jay Jones. Thank you sir.
(The two men shake hands and it fades to black)
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