Paul Henson (father of Jim Henson)

[BobThePizzaBoy]

I thought he refereed not wanting to state his thoughts about the script or when he does see the movie, because I think that interview was before the premiere of the movie.

He did an interview more recently saying that he has seen the film, is happy it's having the success it has but he apparently had some problems with it for him personally, but it seems he's keeping his mouth shut because he doesn't want to reopen that can of worms.

 

[Hubert]

From what I heard he just had a few minor issues with it, but then when the media got ahold of that, they said "Aah! One of the big Muppet people hate this! Help!" and then bam! it got out of proportion.

 

[mupcollector1]

That's Hollywood media for yah, oy! lol
Though I feel kind of bad that Frank doesn't want to say his true opinion about the current Muppets because not only did a lot of the Muppet Show characters come from him and he performed them and have them life but wasn't he also co-creative consultant of The Muppet Show? My personal opinion is that Frank Oz and Brain Henson seem to have the strongest feelings of what The Muppets were about from interviews that I've read. Frank knows the characters super well in fact when he describes Miss Piggy he says that her character is all about pain that she's covering up all the time which I totally find fascinating. And Brain pretty much knowing how his father did things like how the Muppeteers would goof around on the set and have the characters say and do things that they wouldn't do on camera which became the Stuffed and Unstrung shows. And of course I don't want to leave out the current surviving original Muppeteers Steve Whitmire and Dave Goles, plus the others know how strong and how important it is to have characters stay in character and be with one performer at a time and stuff like that. Sorry, I'm rambling on about this but yeah Frank's opinions of the characters and how the Muppet humor was written, amazing theories. Like one of this quotes that I loved was "The Muppets were never goody goody, never mamby mamby, they were irrevereny anarchic and disfunctional and not matter how crazy and out of control things get, they still actually do care about each other." And I totally agree with that quote 100%.

Personally I loved The new Muppet movie. It's a heck of a lot better than Muppets From Space (Which I've heard Frank also didn't like) and of course that movie had a bit of error, director changes from the scripts and surprisingly toilet humor. Sure fart shoes was a joke in the new movie and didn't look right in the trailer but it fit appropirately in the movie with Fozzie's anything for a laugh and despirate for a laugh personality. lol Though personally as a fan, I think things could be better like it was durring the mid 1990s with Christmas Carol, Treasure Island and of course Muppets Tonight (GOD I LOVED THAT SHOW lol)

Anyway, sorry for getting off subject there. But yeah like I mentioned earlier, there's rarely been any kind of documentry knowledge of Jim's parents except for Jim's father was a herb scientist who had to travel so that's why the family moved from Missisipi, Washington to Marlyn or I'm not sure if Jim had a dorm room at The Universaty of Maryl because Sam & Friends was shown in Washington DC still right?

By the way, Sam & Friends was only shown in Washington D.C. and same with Wilkins Coffee commercials right? They weren't nation wide just yet. Right?

Anyway Jim's mother was a devoted Christian Scientist. Though Jim didn't seem to be really devoted into it in his later years. I think he was more into spirituality and meditation in general. I remember CNN mentioned a possible link to CS and his final hours but I've also read it wasn't related.
Though Jim was mentioned quite a lot in The Christian Science Mirror. And I've even went into a Christian Science church just to understand the religion a little bit. It's basicly non-demoninational Christianity that experiments with spiritual healing of Mary Baker Eddy.

Sorry, I'm rambling on again. I tend to get so knowledge able with Jim Henson history that I just talk and do towards different directions. That's just me as a huge Muppet / Jim Henson fan. lol

Anyway, back to Jim's family. There was his grandmother "Dear" who was a painter and was she the inspiration for Jim to get into Art?

I know before The Muppets, Jim was into painting, design and even running his own poster company during high school. And of course his college major was Business and wanted to figure out how to bring art and business knowledge together.
Then of course the inspiration with the Television medium and the history that followed. But from what I heard, Jim was thinking of ending The Muppets durring Sam & Friends because he didn't think that it would be possible to market tv puppets for adults so he took a trip to Europe and watched these risky adult puppet shows and just cracked up which made him take The Muppets more seriously and brought them to the success they became today. Anyone ever hear this story?

 

[CalciferBoheme]

From what I heard he just had a few minor issues with it, but then when the media got ahold of that, they said "Aah! One of the big Muppet people hate this! Help!" and then bam! it got out of proportion.

That's most likely it. You have to think that he would have problems that the general public would never even notice just because of how close he is to everything. I'm sure it was nothing too major though. man, I love that movie. I need to pick up the blu ray next time I have money.

 

[mupcollector1]

You guys talking about Frank Oz' response to The Muppets?
From what I've heard he didn't like the script because he felt it was disrespectful about the characters and didn't want to get too into it. But did he have a reaction when he seen it?

Frank was suppose to write the next Muppet movie too but I guess Muppets 2 is taking over that. I think Muppets 2 is coming out next summer from what I heard. But I'd love to see Frank's script get turned into a movie. Even The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever the abandon script from Jim, Frank and Jerry (Juhl) from the 80s.

But speaking of Jim's family, it's really sad that Paul died before The Muppets became successful. I'm not sure if Paul got a chance to see Sam & Friends before the tragity of the car accident. If Paul was still alive, I wonder what he would say about being Jim's brother. Because there's no document of his comments at all, unless you want to count the blacklisted controversial "The Muppet Man" script which I don't even know if anyone could even mention it on the forum. I know it's not on Muppet Wiki, and it's still unknown if any real resources like interviews were used to inspire it or if it was just drama for the sake of entertainment. , All I know was it was written by a Muppet Fan, sold to The Jim Henson Company, Lisa and people from the company didn't like it (mentioned in a newspaper article) and that was that. But if there was any real interviews that inspired it, I'd like to read those interviews for proof as an historian which I like to consider myself.