The Best Jim Henson Documentary Is Already out on YouTube
Jim Henson steps in front of the camera, wearing a Steve Jobs–style black turtleneck, a detail that seems to foreshadow the early death we now know awaited him. At the time of the interview, the creator of the multinational, multimedia Muppets franchise must have been in his late 40s, yet his appearance was that of a man already flirting with old age. His long, lanky limbs—seemingly shaped for puppeteering—had grown thin, his trademark beard had faded to a dull gray, and the ever so slightly morose look in his eyes spoke volumes of the conflict that had defined the better part of his adult life: the push and pull between limited time and limitless ambition.
“Are you a puppeteer or an artist?” the interviewer asks. “Any of the above,” Henson mutters in a nasally voice most people recognize as Kermit the Frog’s. Only those close to him would have been able to tell that, behind his friendly chuckling, Henson was having a full-blown Muppet meltdown.
The truth, as revealed in Ron Howard’s new documentary Jim Henson: Idea Man, which opens on this scene, is that the world’s single most famous puppeteer never wanted to work with puppets. At least, not always. Growing up in Mississippi, he aspired to work in television, and the main reason he created Kermit and the gang was that he felt they could help him secure a spot at his local station. (They did.) For the young Henson, puppeteering wasn’t a childhood passion. It was an impulsive experiment, one that—to his delight as well as his dismay—proved so successful he would never really be able to try anything different. For more than 30 years, his hands had been tied up in his creations, and time was running out.
If Idea Man, which premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this month and is available Friday on Disney+, has been praised for anything, it is simply for giving the documentary treatment to a giant of American entertainment history, a visionary who—standing shoulder to shoulder with Walt Disney—should have received this treatment a long time ago. But the thing is, Henson has gotten it—not from a Hollywood insider like Howard, but from a YouTube channel called Defunctland. Created by a man who goes by the pseudonym Kevin Perjurer, the channel, which currently boasts 1.8 million subscribers, primarily uploads video essays on theme parks and the artists and business minds behind them, and those have earned it plenty of praise, including from this online magazine and, last month, the Peabodys. But Defunctland’s own ambition has extended beyond amusement rides. Its six-episode series on Henson’s life clocks in at around 180 minutes—more than an hour longer than Idea Man—and in that time, it covers biographical details that Howard doesn’t include, making for a warts-and-all portrait that’s not only more comprehensive and more humanizing but more touching.
Idea Man and the Defunctland series follow the same narrative beats. Both start with Sam and Friends, a puppetry segment for Washington’s WRC-TV that Henson produced alongside his future wife, Jane Nebel, when the two were still in college, before moving on to his reluctant involvement with Sesame Street and his yearslong struggle of putting on The Muppet Show, and end with his sudden death from bacterial pneumonia in 1990, at the age of 53. Defunctland incorporates additional projects that do justice to Henson’s immeasurable impact on pop culture, from Fraggle Rock, an HBO show that celebrates the differences between different Muppet species, to his partnership with George Lucas on the design of Yoda, among other Star Wars characters. Perjurer also dives deeper into Henson’s private life, specifically his relationship with Nebel, a talented puppeteer in her own right who, after helping launch Henson’s career, abandoned her own to fulfill the role of a traditional homemaker, raising their five children while Dad continued playing with his dolls. Where Idea Man—which some critics argue is too corporate of a film to offer a truly complete examination of Henson’s legacy (the Walt Disney Company purchased the Muppets in 2004)—claims that Nebel chose this life, Defunctland suggests that it was to some extent forced upon her.
Both documentaries explore how the unyielding critical and commercial success of the Muppets stifled Henson’s creative freedom. Although he ultimately came to realize that puppetry could be a serious art form and not just slapstick entertainment, he had a hard time convincing others. It is for this reason that he was so hesitant to assist in the development of Sesame Street, a show that, in spite of and because of its record-breaking ratings and educational value, served only to confirm the notion that, in Perjurer’s words, “puppets were for kids in the morning, not adults at night.”
Henson encountered similar hostility when, in an effort to overhaul his cuddly reputation, he and his team had a brief stint performing skits for Saturday Night Live. To the Muppeteers’ disappointment, they weren’t allowed to pen their own material, and the staff writers that were assigned to work with them often responded with sighs and grunts. “I won’t write for felt,” comedian Michael O’Donoghue protested. “Mucking Fuppets,” John Belushi added. The insults would haunt the sensitive Henson to the end of his days.
For a rare glimpse at what Henson could do without a puppet on his arm, look no further than 1965’s Time Piece, an Academy Award–nominated experimental short film about mortality, possibly influenced by the death of his older brother Paul Jr. in a car crash at the age of 23. Though filled with the same sense of playful absurdity that characterizes Henson’s most cherished Muppet skits, Time Piece also demonstrates his skills as an editor and cinematographer—qualities he couldn’t readily express in his puppetry performances. In Idea Man, Howard inserts brief clips of Time Piece whenever Henson’s dreams and integrity are stomped on by the entertainment industry, with Jim the actor airing all the frustration that Jim the person bottled up.
Much of Idea Man’s footage is stitched together at the same, snappy pace as Time Piece, allowing Howard to narrowly evade the tired talking-heads format most documentaries dutifully follow. Despite working with a fraction of Howard’s budget, Perjurer also manages to pay homage to Henson with aspects of his own editing style: Even the Squarespace ads parody the puppeteer’s wonderfully subversive early commercials for Wilkins Coffee, with one Muppet tormenting the other in myriad sadistic ways for refusing to purchase the relevant product. Although the Defunctland series lacks the production quality of the channel’s more recent output—including a nearly two-hour economic analysis of Disney’s disastrous FastPass system and a “symphonic” documentary about the history of EPCOT—Perjurer’s extensive experience documenting theme parks and other forms of children’s entertainment helped him grasp something about Henson that Howard seems to have overlooked: his dependency on his co-workers.
Henson might have been the driving force behind The Muppets, but his career wasn’t a one-man show. With Nebel acting as talent scout, Henson quickly amassed a team of both established and up-and-coming puppeteers—including Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, and Jerry Nelson—to bring alive their ever-expanding cast of monsters. Far from being mere employees or assistants, these individuals played an active role in shaping the personalities of the characters they played. The dynamic between Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, for example, was an exaggerated foil of the relationship between the grumpy, introverted Oz and the energetic, free-spirited Henson, who—it’s worth noting—went on to encourage his partner to not only direct such Muppet films as The Muppets Take Manhattan but to co-direct Henson’s pet project The Dark Crystal. An artist all his own, Oz would go on to direct classics without Henson, like Little Shop of Horrors.
Although Howard’s documentary does not have the time to go into the development of Sesame Street or The Muppet Show, Defunctland follows these projects from inception to opening night—and, in doing so, greatly alters the viewer’s impression of Henson and his creative process. Where the former suggests, if merely out of necessity, that the only obstacles in the way of getting The Muppet Show on the air were a bunch of skeptical producers, the latter reveals that Henson’s magnum opus went through significant workshopping before it became the series we know and love today. Multiple pilots, including an edgy, innuendo-filled, adult-oriented iteration titled “Sex and Violence,” fell flat with audiences. In the beginning, Kermit wasn’t even involved in the story, his position as the show’s front man falling to several other, less charismatic characters. Just as the Muppets were an ensemble, so too were the Muppeteers, and any documentary that focuses exclusively on the achievements of Henson fails to abide by what Henson stood for as both an artist and a human being: the power of kindness, collaboration, and—to use a word Henson sang about often—connection.