minor muppetz said:
(in addition to Frank Oz making cameos in some of Dan Akroyds films, but I don't know if that would have anything to do with what Dan Akroyd thought of the Muppets
The Oz cameos in Aykroyd films I think have more to do with Oz's friendship with the director of those films John Landis. Landis is one of the king's of putting inside jokes in his movies...several of these involve Oz.
Oz appears as the police officer who gives John Belushi back his personal items at the beginning of "The Blues Brothers." Then they turned the role around as he plays an officer who checks in Aykroyds personal items in "Trading Places." Oz of course reprised his Blues Brothers role in "Blues Brothers 2000" also. He's also a test monitor in "Spies Like Us." I think I've heard he has a cameo in "Into the Night," but I havent' seen it. And of course, the Muppets appear on TV in "An American Werewolf in London."
My favorite of the Oz references, though, is when you can hear "Paging Mr. Frank Oznowicz" during the scene where Eddie Murphy arrives at the airport in New York in "Coming to America."
It's also worth noting that Oz repaid the favor to Landis in his solo directing debut "The Muppets Take Manhattan." John Landis plays the broadway producer who is visited by "a frog with an afro." (Boffo Lenny! Socko Lenny!)
Oh, I almost forgot another reference to Oz in "The Blues Brothers." Right before Jake and Elwood crash their car through the toy store. A customer goes up to the counter holding, if I remember correctly, a Grover doll and asks "Do you have the Miss Piggy" while there is also an Animal doll visible on the counter. All Oz characters, of course.
Movie in-jokes are an interest of mine, what can I say.