Making a full-length Muppet movie was a gamble. Could the loopy, slapdash spontaneity of the television program be sustained through a long film narration? Could Frawley frame his shots so that it would not be painfully obvious that most of the characters lacked workable feet? How would Muppets look outdoors? To settle that point, Frawley last spring took a super-8 camera to England, where the Muppets' TV show is taped, and did a test with Henson and the others in a meadow. As he was shooting, a cow wandered over to have a look at Fozzie. The results were amazingly good; the brown cow and the puppet covered with burntorange fake fur looked as natural together as Newman and Redford.
The shooting for the film was slow and difficult. The first scene called for the camera to swoop down on a Georgia swamp, where Kermit is discovered sitting on a log in the middle of a pond, playing a banjo. The decision had been made to try for the realism of actual photography, rather than to fake scenes with process shots. So a watertight tank was built, and into the tank went a small television camera and all 6 ft. 3 in. of Jim Henson. (Muppet performers often cannot see directly what their hands are doing or what the other Muppets are up to, but TV monitors give them a precise check on scenes as they progress.) The tank was lowered to the concrete bottom of the movie set's swamp, the log was fitted on top of it, and Kermit was perched on the log. Air was fed to Henson through a hose, and electric cables brought him Frawley's instructions and the TV picture. Divers stood by to rescue Henson in case the tank leaked. Through a rubber sleeve, at the top of the tank, Henson manipulated Kermit's head, and, using a stiff and nearly invisible black wire, made Kermit's right hand strum the banjo strings. Another Muppeteer onshore worked a radio control that allowed Kermit's left hand to do the chord changes. Now and then, between takes, someone would row over and pass a cup of iced tea down to Henson through the rubber sleeve.
The swamp scene was by no means the most complicated. The script calls for a Hollywood talent scout (played by a human actor, Dom DeLuise) who has strayed into the swamp to paddle by, discover Kermit and show him a copy of Variety that contains, by chance, an ad urging "all frogs who want to become rich and famous" to come to Hollywood. But down the road lurks Doc Hopper (played by Charles Durning), who wants this particular talented frog to shill for his fastfood chain, which specializes in French fried frogs' legs. Kermit encounters all of his Muppet Show pals and such assorted human characters as Elliott Gould, Carol Kane and Telly Savalas on his journey to Los Angeles. At one point the Muppets are riding in an old Studebaker, with Fuzzie at the wheel, several others in the front seat and another bunch in the rear. Jammed under the dashboard and behind the back seat with all of their cables and TV monitors lie half a dozen puppeteers. In addition to Henson and Oz there are Jerry Nelson, who does Floyd and Dr. Strangepork, and can project nine different voices; Richard Hunt, a young, curly-headed, outgoing fellow who does Scooter and Sweetums; Dave Goelz (Zoot, Gonzo), a former industrial designer who got started when he saw Ernie on Sesame Street and made his own Ernie doll; and squeezed in somewhere, a Muppet newcomer named Steve Whitmire. The Muppet people work under conditions that would not be acceptable to tunnel rats.
The 100 days of shooting ended when all of the scenery fell down, as planned, in a movie-within-the-movie that Kermit and his friends were trying to make. Their fake, Styrofoam rainbow lay in pieces, but through a jagged hole in the sound-stage roof, a real rainbow was seen to shimmer. Happy ending. Quick, sweep the stage and pack the Muppets in their boxes, because taping for the new season's TV series begins in London in five days.
Muppets live in suitcases, and Muppet people live out of suitcases. Jim Henson gave up the key of his rented Mulholland Drive hacienda, with its obligatory indoor-outdoor clover-leaf-shaped pool, and flew to Manhattan. There he rallied the support troops at HA! headquarters and conferred with his increasingly large staff of business people.
Henson is clearly a gifted businessman, and on the point of becoming a very wealthy one, but he is secretive as a nesting hen when asked to talk figures. The Muppet Show, considered separately, is listed on the books as making no profit, in part because Henson keeps putting money back into the program. Help is on the way, "The long-range profit for this show is down the road, when it's syndicated and sold to the stations," says Henson. "It's a couple of years away." Lord Grade adds with satisfaction that the take from this "strip syndication."--the sale of a show for the same time slot several days week--will be split equally between HA! and his ACC group and will mean "millions of dollars." Until then HA! is supported handsomely by fat merchandising contracts with such outfits as Fisher-Price Toys and Hallmark Cards, Inc. Muppet faces appear on coffee mugs, T shirts, yo-yos, playing cards, pillowcases and anything else that will take an imprint. Henson is good at big money deals and smart enough not to boast about them. "lts important to me that the audience doesn't think of us in terms of figures," he says. "I don't want people looking at the Muppets and thinking, 'How much are they worth?' It's just not us, it could be destructive to the show."
