On the whole Jason distancing himself thing....
First of all, bless him. Fifty times thank you, Jason! But here's something that changed for Jason once he actually made the movie, and it was something that we saw happen to Walter in the movie. At first, there is star-gazing--wanting desperately to be a part of something that you see (it doesn't have to be on television) and feeling that, somehow, you have something to contribute to them. Fandom of all kinds is rife with people who feel that way. But once Walter became one of the muppets in the movie, then some of his hero-worship of Kermit and the others naturally went away and they became...friends. Jason was a fan, and now he's a friend. It changes the basic nature of the relationship.
I had the very rare privilege once of making friends with one of my heroes. I had written a fan story and he responded to it. We began to exchange letters and, at different conventions, introduced our spouses, went to dinner, etc. Once, my husband and I took his lovely wife out--away from the convention--for a breather while he did his thing on stage. I will admit just a twinge of guilt/envy because I missed his session on stage at the convention, but I felt like it was more important to be a friend instead of a fan at that time. He and his wife were kind enough to indulge my "OMGosh! I'm so excited!"-ness when it occasionally surfaced, which it did more and more rarely. Once, in order to escape the press of fans, they spent part of the afternoon in my hotel room. I seem to remember sewing on my costume for the costume contest while we talked, outwardly nonchalant but just thrilled inside to be with them, a trusted and familiar friend.
Another friend of mine not only met one of her screen heroes (on a fan cruise), but she MARRIED him. A few years later, she donated all of the fan paraphernalia she had collected about him to a charity auction. It wasn't that she wasn't still a fan of his--she most certainly was!--but it was now a real relationship and she had moved from adoring him from afar to adoring him up-close-and-personal. He seemed to appreciate the latter more than the former!
Luckily for us, Jason got to meet some of his heroes and, in the process, made those same heroes accessible to others in a way they hadn't been before. When you've been "rubbing Elmos" with the muppets for the better part of a year, then the heat of fan worship ought to cool a little, and be replaced by the warm fuzziness of friendship.
Also, and this saddens me to think, but Hollywood is anxious to pigeon-hole actors so they can better package them--like giving a laundry soap a catchy slogan. Jason has and will have his own significant body of work, and giving away his muppet fan stuff may have been necessary to keep Hollywood from constantly aligning him with a project to which he has already given what he hoped to give. To keep from being known as "that muppet man," he may have had to take more drastic measure. If that is the case, I sincerely hope that he stuffed a secret treasure or two in the back of his closet to remember what brought him to the muppets, and what brought the muppets back to us. I will always be one of his fans because of that, wherever his career may take him.
On a quick personal note--I would appreciate other forum members not presuming to speak for me or state my opinions without being asked. I am, as you can see, perfectly capable of making my own opinions known in the way that I wish.
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