Never Before Seen Footage

Last weekend, I went to see "Muppet Fairytales," a special collection put together by the Alamo downtown of different fairytale-themed skits, shorts, and TV specials that Jim Henson had made over the years.  A few of them were sketches I had seen before (for those unaware, I am a HUGE Muppets nerd), but most of them were so old and rare that I'd only read about them or seen pictures in books.  The whole thing was less than an hour and a half, and it was fascinating (for me, anyway) to see such a wide range of different selections from such a vast body of work within a relatively short amount of time.  Kermit was the only persistent character throughout all of the shows, but even he has gone through a number of changes over the years, so it was kinda like going through an old family photo album and seeing how everybody grew up.  I really liked it.

I should pause for a second to explain that Jim Henson is something of a personal hero of mine.  The likability of his creations notwithstanding, the man reached a level of success as an artist that boggles the mind.  His career started in 1954 when he was barely out of high school and evolved into multiple internationally recognized media franchises (The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, etc.) that persist even today, more than twenty years after his death.  I realize that it may seem childish to get so worked up about puppets, but I've come to the conclusion that if you go the rest of your life without watching a single episode of The Muppet Show and can't find joy and humor and goodness in something that doesn't rely on obscenity, toilet humor and drug references for cheap laughs, then I'm not the one with the problem here.  Alas, I digress.

The point is that I walked into the theater with some heavy expectations.  These were cherished gems of a lost era, as far as I was concerned, and I was super-jazzed about being able to experience something that may never see the light of day for a long time to come.  I imagined it being some kind of living childhood memory; like I would get the same feeling I had when my parents took me to see "Follow That Bird" when I was little.

To sum it up, it wasn't and I didn't.  Don't get me wrong, it was cool and I enjoyed it, but honestly... well, some of it was just kinda bad.  Like, it was still creative and interesting and way, way, wayyy more than I would be able to put together on my own, but it was pretty obvious why this stuff didn't really make it out of the archives and onto a special edition DVD.  Kermit was all funky-looking and you could see all the wires and stuff holding things together.  The story itself seemed to drag out, like it hadn't been very well written, and it just felt very stiff compared to all of the things he would do later, like The Muppet Movie and Labyrinth.  In fact, I felt like I needed to go home and watch The Muppet Movie just to wash the bad taste out of my brain.

But the more I thought about it in context of Jim Henson's over-all career, the more I cut the thing a break.  In terms of a time-line, Sesame Street had just barely been on the air for a couple of years and The Muppet Show didn't even exist yet.  The people he had working with him were only a handful of the talent he would come to attract later and, obviously, he wasn't working with a very large budget.  In fact, The Frog Prince (which was the main feature of the collection) was the first time Kermit had even appeared on camera as an honest-to-God frog.  Before that, he was just a lizard-looking sort of thing with no particularly distinct features about him.

Ultimately what I came to realize was that The Frog Prince, though pretty bad in and of itself, was actually a big step for him.  It marked a transition out of fifteen minute sketches into lengthier, more substantive projects with larger sets and more characters.  It was a sort of stepping-stone that would take him away from doing bit parts in commercials or guest appearances on talk shows and serve as a kind of proof that he was able to produce something on his own if given complete creative control.  In short, there would be no Muppet Show if there weren't a Frog Prince.  And I really like that thought.

As an artist, there's a tendency to want to create the one perfect thing that's going to go down in history as the most loved and famous thing ever to exist anywhere.  It's hard to ever feel like you're really "finished" with something because it feels like you're placing some permanent stamp the thing, saying "Please, take this for consideration as to determine my overall worth as a person."  Nobody wants to be judged that way, and in an intellectually honest setting, nobody ever really is, but there's a sense in which everybody feels judged that way.  It's that kind of feeling like, if I die in my sleep tonight, would I be okay with *this* (whatever it is) being the last thing I ever produced?  It seems silly to phrase it that way, but it's a very common feeling among creative-types.  I bet it's pretty common with everybody else, too.

I think the important thing is to realize that nothing exists in a vacuum.  If I create something, it's partially a result of everything else that I've done in the past and partially a sign of something greater yet to come.  There's a saying that keeps coming up in my CR step-study that I really like: "It's about progress, not perfection."  Basically, it means that today may not be my best day and, by the end of it, I'll probably screw something up, but if I can look at where I am now and see it as better than where I was in the past, then I can still consider this to be a good day.  I don't know how revolutionary that idea is for you, but it's working wonders for me.  Everything I was raised to believe screams out against it, but there's a lot of wisdom (and truth) in being able to appreciate where you are and see it as an improvement over yesterday.  Thanks for letting me share that with you guys.

G'night,

- Pairsh -