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I think it's a lot richer than what we call fleshy improv, I think it's very funny, puppet improv and fleshy improv.
Yeah, I think we did the term Muppets before we got the show Sam and Friends - a few months after I started working.
If our 'message' is anything, it's a positive approach to life. That life is basically good. People are basically good.
Nobody creates a fad. It just happens. People love going along with the idea of a beautiful pig. It’s like a conspiracy.
My dad and mom were, they would take what were popular hits, and lip-sync to them with puppets and do a ridiculous story.
So that's the challenge, you have a big technical aspect of what you're doing whilst you're creatively trying to improvise.
Yes, its one of the basic truths of the universe,....Things don't disappear. They just change, and change and change again.
The most sophisticated people I've ever known had just one thing in common: they were all in touch with their inner children.
he puppeteers really responded to it. Patrick Bistrow really responded to it, it's great fun to do improve comedy with puppets.
I don't know exactly where ideas come from, it's just a matter of us figuring out how to receive the ideas waiting to be heard.
And with puppets, especially in our company, we sort of demand a very high standard of puppetry, so it's a real technical skill.
I think if you study--if you learn too much of what others have done, you may tend to take the same direction as everybody else.
But initially when I was working with my dad, it was in special effects puppets with radio control and motors and puppet effects.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.
If you take a character and you call him a frog, or like Rowlf, our dog, call him a dog, you immediately give the audience a handle.
As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe continues into adulthood.
Follow your enthusiasm. It's something I've always believed in. Find those parts of your life you enjoy the most. Do what you enjoy doing.
I try hard not to judge anyone, and I try to bless everyone who is a part of my life, particularly anyone with whom I am having any problems
I was 17, certainly by the time I was 19, I knew that show business was where I was going to end up, and I had my sights on being a director.
I try to emulate his approach of really get the most out of people by allowing them to experiment and certainly allowing people to make mistakes.
Oh, well, I can't tell you; it would be telling you the end. It's a one-character lip-syncing because in the early days, that's what my dad was doing.
I believe that life is basically a process of growth-that we go through many lives, choosing those situations and problems that we will learn through.
I believe every young women needs to know that though you may have to struggle and strive to achieve your dreams, you can have oodles of fun along the way.
I've never been nervous. I just wanted to play and have a good time. If it didn't work, then I would get nervous. But, for the most part, I just go for it.
But the fact that most of the show you can't be prepared for, you have no idea really what's coming is initially very nerve wracking, by now, it's kind of fun.
Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We've done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you.
So while you're trying to improvise, you're also trying to puppeteer, you're doing everything that you need to do to perform a puppet in our style, for a camera.
It's actually good when the performers are nervous, because it kind of sharpens up your brain and a little bit of adrenaline is good. Initially it's really tough.
At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design.
When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there.
Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on an evening star? Somebody thought of it and someone believed it, and look what its done so far.
Actually the copies of characters is something I don't particularly like to talk about in articles but just for your information, most characters there's only one.
And one of the things that I've always loves about children is their vivid, unrestrained, and far-reaching imaginations - the depth and breadth of their creativity.
People would say to him, "When you finish a movie, did it come out as good as you thought it was going to?" Or, "Did it come out the way you intended it to come out?"
The attitude you have as a parent is what your kids will learn from more than what you tell them. They don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.
Music is an essential part of everything we do. Like puppetry, music has an abstract quality which speaks to a worldwide audience in a wonderful way that nourishes the soul.
When The Muppet Show ended, we all sat around and said, what kind of television show would we like to do. We felt the need these days are for some quality children's programming.
Certainly I've lived my whole life through my imagination. But the world of imagination is there for all of us--a sense of play, of pretending, of wonder. It's there with us as we live.
We kind of lost a lot of that and puppeteers were sticking to the script and we thought everything needed to get a lot funnier, so we thought we would go to a good improv comedy instructor.
In many ways, I think it's easier in some ways, or it's more entertaining or more guaranteed to be entertaining than traditional improvising. Again, because you're not just you in your body.
A film is not done by one person. It's done by a lot of people. I love this whole collaborative aspect. When it works well, you end up with something better than any of us started out to do.
And that was always my father's favorite part about shooting as well. Often my dad would shoot very, very late, he was quite a workaholic, they would do 20, 20-hour shoots and stuff like that.
And if the audience is in a kind of naughty, raunchy mood, then they're going to make naughty, raunchy suggestions and then we take them and we do the scene anyway, and that's part of the fun.
I thought, well, if we're inviting an audience, let's do it right. So I put in a proper studio audience at our studios in Los Angeles and it was just a little showcase and it was just for fun.
We try to keep it a classy show, but it certainly is blue at times. And it all depends on the audience, sometimes we've have audiences that don't really want us to go too far in that direction.
You're assisting the audience to understand; you're giving them a bridge or an access. And if you don't give them that, if you keep it more abstract, it's almost more pure. It's a cooler thing.
The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention.
We thought it would be fun to try to design a show that would work well internationally and so that' s what we're intending to do with Fraggle Rock, and we are indeed now selling it around the world.
It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself.
I always very much enjoyed arts and it was so central in my family, my mother was also an art teacher, as well as founding the Henson Company with my dad, there was a lot of art going on in our household.