A life with Kermit, Miss Pigggy and Fozzie Bear

BY JOHN WALSH

Can it be 25 years since a line of shaggy, bug-eyed, vividly coloured nursery soft toys went dancing across our screens singing "It's time to put on make-up, It's time to dress up right"? Viewers gazed at the agreeable, endlessly nodding host frog; the prima donna sow in the feather boa; the perma-grinning bear desperate to shine as an entertainer; the strange, hyperactive creature with the trombone voice and long proboscis - and fell in love with Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Gonzo on the spot.

The show went into five series, watched by 232 million people in 120 countries.

"When did I see my first Muppet?" asks Brian Henson, 38, son of the Muppet creator Jim Henson and chairman of the corporation that bears his name. "I don't even remember. But I do remember an evil paper bag.

"My earliest memory is of when I was three and had this recurring nightmare about an evil lunch-bag in my closet. So, obviously puppeteering had some sort of effect on me very early on."

Henson jun grew up manipulating pieces of vividly coloured felt into animated shapes while the Muppet phenomenon went global around his family's heads.
At 27, he headed the company after his father's early death in 1990.

And as The Muppet Show starts a year-long celebration of its 25th anniversary, Henson's major new directing project - a four-hour, multi-million dollar, humans-and-animation version of Jack and the Beanstalk - has gone out in America, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Matthew Modine.

One way or another, it's a reflective and mildly stress-inducing time for him.

"Being a performer didn't come naturally," he concedes. "I was more of a gadget kid. Of course we were all [he's the
middle kid of five siblings] puppeteering from the age of nought, but at 12, I made a potato which was all triggers and springs and was on a rod. I was more into the gadgetry, the hi-tech, more scientific stuff."

He would visit Jim Henson at his studio every weekend and hang out in the workshops.

"I had an enormous amount of respect for him. He took it all very seriously. It was important for him." But he still rebelled "really badly" at 15.

"I was in boarding school and suddenly it all became too much for me. I didn't want to use my last name. I was studying astrophysics and wanted to be a physicist. I'd get straight-As in art and film, but all I cared about was physics.

"This lasted until I was 18. While I was transferring from one university to another, I got a holiday job at my father's company, building special-FX puppets, and then it really excited me all over again. I decided there and then I wanted to be a movie director."

His father welcomed back the prodigal son, and set him up in other people's films, "to see how it worked in the real world".

Between 19 and 23, he did character special effects around the world, in Return to Oz, Santa Claus The Movie and Little Shop of Horrors.

Fully apprenticed, he moved back to the Henson family firm and stayed there as director.

"Of all his creations, my father most resembled Kermit," says Brian. "They're virtually inseparable. In fact, he started doing Kermit when he was only 21, long before the show.

"It was before he'd learned the arts of performance, and Kermit was kind of an awkward character in the first few years. As my father became more sophisticated, so did Kermit.

"They both became this personality, with a clear morality and philosophy of life but with a naughty sense of humour. My father loved nothing better than a really good, well-conceived practical joke."

Henson sounds like a man with a charmed life, growing up in Muppet heaven, heir to a family fortune, later carving out his own niche as a film director at the cutting edge of special-effects technology.

He talks with immense pride about the 560
special "visual effects" to be seen in Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story.

"We created a complete world for the giant world, and wanted to make everything look real, not like a story-book version. There's very sophisticated matte painting, with film and photography and 3-D animation."
How involved is he in the business these days? "I used to manage and negotiate everything the company did. Now I just want to direct and write. I woke up one morning and just felt really tired of sitting in a boardroom. In the end, you know, I'm a dancing bear.

"I am. I keep saying to people, 'We're a circus family, guys, remember that. Where's the next tent, and what acts do we have ready to go on?' That's our job."
And even as he says it, his voice rises in a froggy yelp and you'd swear it was Kermit himself on the line.

- INDEPENDENT