Perhaps the toughest takeaway from Ron Howard’s documentary “Jim Henson Idea Man” is the fact that his sudden death in 1990, at just age 53, robbed us all that “The Muppets” creator might have created in the computer age. Henson was already experimenting with technology before he died — and we can only imagine what he might have done with the tools we now have.
“It would have been fantastic,” Howard says. “And he would have been cutting-edge. He would be learning to use those tools and then adapting them both to his sensibility, but also to the sensibilities of his key collaborators — and to what audiences were responding to.”
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There’s also the question: Where might the Muppets be today? Now owned by Disney, the intellectual property has seen its presence in popular culture rise and fall several times in recent decades.
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“I would say that Jim was an outlier, and he might have kept the Muppets going for sort of practical reasons and because he liked them,” Howard says. “But he also would have just moved on to other things. It’s impossible to know what could have happened. But I wouldn’t count those Muppet characters out. They’re a lot of fun.”
On this edition of the award-winning Variety Awards Circuit podcast, we talk to “Jim Henson Idea Man” director Ron Howard about what he learned about the Muppets creator, and what it personally meant to him. Also, the filmmaker behind “How To with John Wilson” talks about ending his docuseries after three seasons. Listen below!
In his research, Howard was most surprised by Henson’s “ongoing, but lowgrade, angst he felt about fulfilling his creative dreams. He was very ambitious, extremely experimental and never satisfied. He enjoyed it. He wasn’t brooding. But I think that relentless creativity and that drive was not always a pleasant feeling for him.”
Howard’s documentary highlights how quickly Henson jumped from project to project, as if he knew his time on earth would be short. And to some degree, he did: Henson’s older brother died in a car crash.
“He felt pressed, all the time,” Howard says. “In our documentary, Frank Oz gives a great interview about his boss — who became an older brother to him. He’s willing to say, ‘I think the loss of his brother at an early age sort of alerted Jim to how fleeting it all could be.’ I think opportunities were there and he didn’t want to let anything drift away.”
That tight bond between Oz and Henson, the real-life Bert and Ernie, looms large over “Jim Henson Idea Man.” In one of the film’s most glorious moments, found in an unaired 1978 pilot for a talk show hosted by Orson Welles, the filmmaker interviews Henson and Oz. Seeing Welles giggle over Henson, Oz and the Muppets is quite a sight.
“The whole thing is just so off-kilter,” Howard says. “It’s sort of perfect for Jim Henson, and hilarious for us.”
And it’s an example of the serendipity surrounding documentary filmmaking that has attracted Howard to the form in recent years. Now that his Imagine Entertainment has a dedicated documentary division, it’s even easier for him to jump back and forth between scripted and nonfiction. Next, he’s working on a doc about photographer Richard Avedon.
And though Howard is an iconic actor-turned- director in his own right, he wouldn’t make a doc about himself.
“I certainly relate to a kind of joy in recognizing what it means to live a creative life, to express yourself, to share it with people and to give yourself over to that as a way of life,” he says. “The one thing I really related to, in terms of Jim Henson, was this feeling that these opportunities are precious. You want to give it your all, and you don’t want to waste time. But when it’s finished, you don’t necessarily want or need to bask in it. You’re a junkie for the action, and you want to find the next thing.”
Also on this episode of the podcast, “How To With John Wilson” host John Wilson discusses his HBO docuseries.
Variety’s“Awards Circuit” podcast, produced by Michael Schneider, is your one-stop listen for lively conversations about the best in film and television. Each week “Awards Circuit” features interviews with top film and TV talent and creatives; discussions and debates about awards races and industry headlines; and much more. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or anywhere you download podcasts. New episodes post weekly.
