The Muppets and Lady Gaga in new Christmas special November 28 on ABC

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I'm still reading it.

OK I'll wait on that then, I don't want to give things away. I'm just saying the cult of celebrity does a lot of damage to innocent people.

But hey, I'm excited about the special because anything Thanksgivingy/Christmasy gets me excited, lol. And because it's great to see the Muppets gets some exposure. If "A-listers" get the Muppets a larger audience, then great. But in the end, "A-lister" is just another word for "Soon to be D-lister" and after awhile it's hard to take any of it seriously.

 

[jvcarroll]

OK I'll wait on that then, I don't want to give things away. I'm just saying the cult of celebrity does a lot of damage to innocent people.

But hey, I'm excited about the special because anything Thanksgivingy/Christmasy gets me excited, lol. And because it's great to see the Muppets gets some exposure. If "A-listers" get the Muppets a larger audience, then great. But in the end, "A-lister" is just another word for "Soon to be D-lister" and after awhile it's hard to take any of it seriously.

Elton John has always been an A-lister, so your assessment isn't entirely accurate. My point it that the Muppets have had sucky stars up until this point and now they get the good ones. After that they can have their choice of anybody like they did 20+ years ago. Anyway, not going to belabor the point. You guys have gone far down the rabbit hole playing devil's advocate on this one.

My concern is that the special is 8 days away and there have been no advertisements on ABC. Maybe they're waiting for 7-days prior. Just seems odd to me.

 

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Elton John has always been an A-lister, so your assessment isn't entirely accurate. My point it that the Muppets have had sucky stars up until this point and now they get the good ones. After that they can have their choice of anybody like they did 20+ years ago. Anyway, not going to belabor the point. You guys have gone far down the rabbit hole playing devil's advocate on this one.

Sure, there are some people who manage to stay on top for longer periods. There are kids who are always popular in school. That doesn't change the fact that the entertainment industry is a shallow clique of who "belongs" and who doesn't (i.e. who is making money right now and who isn't). And the idea that the Muppets have to first butter up the "A-listers" and THEN they can be nice to the "Has-Beens" isn't something I'm comfortable with. That's how the industry works, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, lol. But I won't belabor the point either.

 

[jvcarroll]

Sure, there are some people who manage to stay on top for longer periods. There are kids who are always popular in school. That doesn't change the fact that the entertainment industry is a shallow clique of who "belongs" and who doesn't (i.e. who is making money right now and who isn't). And the idea that the Muppets have to first butter up the "A-listers" and THEN they can be nice to the "Has-Beens" isn't something I'm comfortable with. That's how the industry works, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, lol. But I won't belabor the point either.

Well, you just kind of did belabor the point. LOL! So I'll just say this.

If you want to reinvent the wheel of how things work, I encourage you to go for it! Nothing would make me happier if things were different. However, there's a way that things work in this world and entertainment is no different. People talk about Hollywood and "Hollywood values" and that's 100% hokum. What they are citing are merely worldly values of the bottom line - money. And money is neither good nor evil. It's just a means to accomplish something. The way it's earned and the moral value attached to it are completely up to the individual.

Jim Henson understood it more than anyone. He learned to create the media he wanted while playing under the rules of the game. And, yes, those rules suck! Completely! He then changed a lot of it from the inside through hard work instead of grumbling about it, casting judgments on others or simply snapping his fingers. I would love for the Muppets to be considered the insiders they were in the 80's and thumb their puppety noses at the establishment like they once did. Change comes from the doers.

I've had many, many, many creative setbacks in my life that are completely asinine. Instead of trying to justify why I'm right and the powers-that-be are wrong, I take a moment. I find an inanimate object to punch and move on to the next thing. That's how an artist stays alive - by knowing when to fight and when to relent and move forward. Experience tells me that, 9 times out of 1o, the latter is the correct response. As a bright blue fish once said, "Just keep swimming!"

Personally, I'd just rather enjoy the delicious donut of the Gaga situation than focus on the hole of whom else they could have landed. I guess that's par for the course on fan forums. Wow, that's a lot of metaphors!

 

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I've had many, many, many creative setbacks in my life that are completely asinine. Instead of trying to justify why I'm right and the powers-that-be are wrong, I take a moment. I find an inanimate object to punch and move on to the next thing. That's how an artist stays alive - by knowing when to fight and when to relent and move forward.

Absolutely. This is the part where I laugh at myself a bit and remind myself I have never been a starving artist and therefore have the luxury of pointing out injustice when I haven't had to fully deal with it myself. So yeah, I get where you're coming from.

 

[Drtooth]

My concern is that the special is 8 days away and there have been no advertisements on ABC. Maybe they're waiting for 7-days prior. Just seems odd to me.

Now that I think about it, that does bother me. I mean, they had non-stop publicity for the freaking Country Music Awards. This is a pretty major special, and the only publicity it's been given was a subpar clip shown on The View. No cross promotion, no small advertisements. If they don't start them tonight, during their high rated sitcoms, they might as well just hide the thing under a rock and put on reruns of that terrible Last Man Standing. I hate when networks second guess things and pretend things are on another network. Then they whine about how such and such is a failure.

 

[jvcarroll]

Absolutely. This is the part where I laugh at myself a bit and remind myself I have never been a starving artist and therefore have the luxury of pointing out injustice when I haven't had to fully deal with it myself. So yeah, I get where you're coming from.

Ha! Yup. 100+ hours of my hard work were just flushed down the drain on a project that everybody wanted and the powers-that-be cheered on until they pulled the plug in the 11th hour. And this is not the first time. I feel like Charlie Brown with the football. I'll just keep trying to kick it! The only difference is that I often do get that chance. In fact, my work has a success rate that's over 50%. That's kind of amazing among artists. I could easily do blackmarket Etsy items and make bank on them, but I choose to work for The Man because it instills a creative discipline. The other way would like playing a sport without any rules. Ultimately there's no challenge, no fun, no reward. Just cheap, fleeting thrills. So I kind of embrace the maddening rules.

The Muppets are following the rules, or at least as much as fuzzy anarchists can. I'm still upset that there's been nearly no promotion for this yet.

 

[jvcarroll]

Now that I think about it, that does bother me. I mean, they had non-stop publicity for the freaking Country Music Awards. This is a pretty major special, and the only publicity it's been given was a subpar clip shown on The View. No cross promotion, no small advertisements. If they don't start them tonight, during their high rated sitcoms, they might as well just hide the thing under a rock and put on reruns of that terrible Last Man Standing. I hate when networks second guess things and pretend things are on another network. Then they whine about how such and such is a failure.

I bet they'll blast the ads this Sunday night. It's just strange they haven't done much sooner.

 

[JonnyBMuppetMan]

Well, with the Muppets Most Wanted trailers having been released just today, hopefully that will compensate for the (so far) lack of promotion for this.

 

[Drtooth]

I bet they'll blast the ads this Sunday night. It's just strange they haven't done much sooner.

Because it's not Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, The American Music Awards, or Dancing with the Stars... all or which are reasonably prioritized... but then they kept shoving some Country Music Awards Christmas special in our faces during every show last night, and that comes on December 2nd! Later than the Muppet/Gaga special. That's probably because it ties into Nashville... but come on! I could see them kinda screwing over the Muppets (while I'm mostly positive about Disney's handling of the Muppets, their lack of confidence in their projects is disturbing), but Lady Gaga?

There should be promotion. If they can ho out the Country Music Awards Christmas special that airs later, they certainly can make at least a 10 second teaser commercial for the Muppets.