Fozzie's Comedy Tour

[kathy26]

Who Perform These Characters
Angus McGonagle
Johnny Bear

 

[minor muppetz]

Who Perform These Characters
Angus McGonagle - Matt Vogel
Johnny Bear - Steve Whitmire

 

[minor muppetz]

I must say that this was a little hard to write. I had trouble with thinking up good enough jokes that Fozzie would say, but had a bit of fun writing the last few chapters that had a bit more plot focus up in the wintery area. As I had trouble thinking up Fozzie-worthy jokes, I reused a lot of jokes that Fozzie has told before (which I think is something Fozzie would do). And the ending, where it turns out Fozzie is just telling a story (based on real events but approximately how it happened), justifies any poor jokes Fozzie is shown telling. But I wonder if it's unbelievable that Statler and Waldorf wouldn't go to all of Fozzie's performances on a world tour (well, they did go to all of the Muppets performances in Muppets Most Wanted).

I had originally intended on having Sweetums be Fozzie's driver, before deciding to go Muppet Movie-style and having him chase the car constantly. It would have been great to have Fozzie and Sweetums interacting. And it turns out it's hard to write a road story with only one person doing the traveling, with nobody to talk to.

I didn't plan on having Johnny Bear be a villain or even a character until I decided to randomly throw in that name as the number 1 bear comedian. Then I decided to make it a brick joke/running gag before revealing that he was behind the whole tour and wanted him dead.

I decided to intentionally make it ambiguous as to whether Fozzie's manager is still Irving Bizarre, Fozzie only refers to his manager as his manager (actually Irving was his agent, but I don't know if there's a difference between the titles "manager" and "agent").

Deciding to bring in Pepe was almost a last-minute addition. After we learn that Johnny Bear was plotting to destroy Fozzie, I thought it'd be good if a small character showed up to warn Fozzie. I figured if a small character like Pepe, Rizzo, or Robin overheard Johnny's plans when he was the guest star on The Muppet Show and got caught, he could easily put them into a small package and mail them away. I kinda wanted to include Robin, but figured that Rizzo and Pepe would be more likely to be able to break out of a package and get to Fozzie on time.

I'm not too big on works of fiction having official facts that are never mentioned on-screen, but I'll make an exception here: Johnny Bear says that he knew nothing about Fozzie's big ad The Perfect Comedy Club Land, but that was a lie, so that even if Fozzie survived the winter place he'd go to the best comedy club only to be disappointed. I couldn't think of a good way for that fact to be said on-screen (Fozzie - and the readers - was supposed to be surprised by it, and there was no reason to bring Johnny back).

When Sweetums came back to the Muppet theater, I thought about having him mention being at the winter place, but wanted it to be a surprise that that's where Fozzie was going. And that was among the last two places Fozzie was going.

With the ideas that I had, I had expected to put in a lot more dark and mean-spirited humor at Fozzie's expense. But while Fozzie is portrayed as a butt monkey, it's not as dark or mean-spirited as I had expected.