Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/26/this-trailer-for-jim-henson-idea-man-made-me-cry.html
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I’m sure they’ll cover his advertising work as well. Idea Man, indeed.
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His was the first, and one of the only, celebrity deaths to hit me hard. I was gutted when it happened.
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I like the Muppets, but my wife LOVES the Muppets. We were about to tour the Pitti Palace in Florence while in the midst of a 5-week backpacking trip through Europe early in our marriage when we saw the headline about Jim Henson’s untimely death. She was devastated. It cast a pall over the rest of our trip. I’m not sure she’s recovered enough to want to watch this documentary. Seriously.
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I have no idea how much the stress of the situation contributed to his strep infection but I really wish there was some way to send a bottle of amoxicillin through a time machine to his home a few days before he finally decided to visit a hospital.
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… isn’t capitalism great
Frank Oz on life as Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy and Yoda: ‘I’d love to do the Muppets again but Disney doesn’t want me’ | The Muppets | The Guardian
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Growing up through the 80s and early 90s, the Muppets were everywhere. It’s easy to forget sometimes just how huge a cultural phenomenon they were and how different life would have been without them. The Muppets are still around, but in the way The Simpsons are still around- a soulless, shambling, corporate-hollowed zombie shell that nobody really talks or cares about any more. They persist, but have ceased to be relevant.
I wonder what Jim Henson would be like these days. I remember someone in the Mister Rogers documentary saying something along the lines that if Fred Rogers were alive to see what things have become in the past couple decades, it would have crushed his spirit. Maybe it would have been the same for Henson… or maybe more people like Henson and Rogers would have averted it to some degree. Either way, 1990 was way, way too early to lose him.
I’ll always think of him as he was portrayed in A Muppet Family Christmas. All the Muppets, from the Muppet Show to Sesame Street to Fraggle Rock, interacting and playing off each other and showing so much life and personality and emotion… and the man responsible for their existence has a brief, humble cameo back in the kitchen doing the dishes.
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Don’t say that like it’s something to be embarrassed about. I was very much a full grown adult when he died and I definitely cried. One of the best songs Tom Smith ever wrote was A Boy and His Frog. I cannot listen to it even though it’s an amazing song (and the details of Tom Writing it are also amazing.)
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Too soon. Not sure if i can watch this.
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Jim Henson was the first celebrity death which hit me personally. I spent my childhood raised on his stuff. I was a high school senior when he passed. It was losing a familiar face I’d known literally my whole life.
Funny thing is I eventually went to the same college Henson did, U of Maryland. One of my professors had him as a student. He put on his final exam, “Don’t take my opinion too seriously. I once told Jim Henson he should do something more productive than play with puppets”
Btw here’s a great fan site for all things Muppety
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Karen Carpenter was the first one for me. But Jim Henson was definitely a gut punch.
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I disagree. Fred Rogers’ spirit wouldn’t be crushed, he’d be speaking up and helping us all deal with it.
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Maybe. As saintly as he was, he was still human and everyone has their limits. If I remember right, the quote came from someone close to him and I figured they knew him better than me, but that doesn’t automatically make them right and I could even be remembering it incorrectly. The documentary was Won’t You Be My Neighbor? if you want to check for yourself, and it’s well worth watching.
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The proto-Kermit stuff is definitely a bit dark. I vaguely recall a black and white short of a Kermit-like frog sitting and playing a banjo before viciously attacking a worm, only to find it was a monsters tail and being attacked in return. I’ve never been able to find the clip again and have no idea where I saw it…or if I imagined it. It definitely stuck with me in the same way this little guy threatening the Rowlf/Grimace hybrid with a guillotine likely will.
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We’ve got 1 kid about to transfer to UMD, and the other going to his old high school.
I remember that, but I thought it was from The Muppet Show. Maybe they remade it for that - same with “Mah Na Mah Na.”
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I’ve not got the foggiest idea what it was for, aside from being a slightly off-brand Kermit who was a bit of a jerk and got et up as a result. It was surreal and I’m at least slightly glad it either wasn’t a fever dream, or it was a fever dream we both had! I’ll try searching muppet sketches now to see if I can find it though, so thanks!
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Not a great location for that trauma to play out. The Pitti Palace is designed to make humans feel small, insignificant and helpless. All the best to Mrs Muppetlover.
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I AM crying! He was SO SPECIAL!
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Welcome to BoingBoing.
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