The MuppetCast - Show #124 - Magenta is Beautiful!

[stephenjlizard]

You can't go wrong with an episode about Roosevelt Franklin. Thanks BigBirdFan for helping me out with the music for this one! I think it really came together nicely. I also pulled a few clips from YouTube and one from the Sesame Street Old School DVDs. Along with some personal commentary and a great passage from Michael Davis's book "Street Gang", I think you'll really enjoy the segment.

There's been a lot of Muppet news lately, and it's all covered in detail. Also, if anyone can answer the Muppet Trivia question I'll be surprised. I actually updated my Facebook status yesterday to say "Fact: You will not know the answer to this week's Muppet Trivia." So far I've been right!

Next week I'm bringing on my friends from the Amazing Comicast. Their newest co-host, Andrew Farmer, is one of my oldest friends from college and a former roommate. I haven't seen him in years so this is going to be a great show for me. Tune in next Sunday to hear a great new Profile of a Podcaster!

 

[The Count]

Hey Steve... Great episode.

It surprised me to hear that even the people at SW don't know who portrayed the Proto-Gordon. If they don't know... The world may never know.

As for your feature on that kid from the Street... People might not know who he is... Especially when his name's misspelled as "Roosevent" Franklin in the summary for this episode at the MuppetCast's front page. p

It's interesting to note that RF was added to SST's cast of characters because there were groups voicing the opinion that the show wasn't black enough, and then the character got axed because people started complaining he was too black. Goes to prove the old point... You can't please everybody all of the time.

BTW: Wanted to find and send you a segment from The Colbert Report, maybe if I go to the Indecision link I'll find it. The segment's about how Stephen Colbert tries to answer the question: who's the best Roosevelt, Teddy or FDR? The final result might surprise you, as it ties back in to your featured segment for Episode 124.

All in all, I liked this and hope this leads to a new series of character features on the podcast. Thanks and take care.

 

[dwmckim]

Is that the trivia question then - who played Gordon in the test shows? Typically if someone asks a trivia question, the implication is that they have the correct answer on file so were you actually able to track down the question that fans and Michael Earl himself has been asking?

 

[minor muppetz]

I liked the podcast, though it's a shame you didn't include the audio from either of the clips currently included at sesamestreet.org. That site has two Roosevelt Franklin skits ("To Be Born a Duck" is quite a catchy tune). It's about time you did another podcast dedicated to a speciffic character, after the Sam the Eagle episode from a few years ago.

I would have thought that the actor playing Gordon would have to get residuals for the test show, sicne it's recently been included on DVD and clips were on the A&E biography special. But somebody at Muppet Wiki claimed that back then residuals didn't apply to test pilots. Then again, maybe that's a good thing; Otherwise, we might not have gotten the first test show on DVD.

There seems to be another big mystery, this time regarding Roosevelt Franklin. It seems like Matt Robinson continued doing the character's voice after he left the show as Gordon, since Roosevelt appeared with a line in Hal Miller's first scene as Gordon, and Sesame Street Unpaved cites Roscoe Orman as the voice of Roosevelt's friend Hard Head Henry Harris. Oddly enough, Hard Head Henry Harris sounds more like how Roosevelt sounded in that alphabet sketch, and the character was around before Roscoe Orman joined the cast (Harris was in the "poision" sketch, which was in a season 4 episode, I think episode 514). He spoke in that sketch though it was very brief, but it sounded similar to Hard Head Henry's voice in the africa and "here and there" sketches where he had a lot of dialogue.

Also, while Street Gang and many other official books acknowledge the faxct that Robinson played Roosevelt, they rarely acknowledge the fact that most of his friends were voiced by members of the human cast (Sesame Street Unpaved acknowledges a few).

 

[minor muppetz]

Is that the trivia question then - who played Gordon in the test shows? Typically if someone asks a trivia question, the implication is that they have the correct answer on file so were you actually able to track down the question that fans and Michael Earl himself has been asking?

I think you mean Michael Davis, the writer of Street Gang, and not Michael Earl, the puppeteer who's full name is Michael Earl Davis and used to be credited as Mike Davis (I wonder if he's ever been credited by that full name, or if we just know it ebcasue that's his screen name at Muppet Central). Though it would be interesting to know whether the Muppet performers are wondering this as well.

 

[minor muppetz]

Considering that every fifth episode used to show ending credits, I wonder if the credits for the fifth test pilot have credits. Assuming that a copy exists in the CTW vaults somewhere. Maybe an archivist can check and search for the remaining test pilots and see if he's credited in any.

I wonder if there were any official press releases for the show before the test pilots were made.