Maintaining the Muppets' mystique

SINGAPORE -If you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Muppets ruled children's television and had a string of hit movies, there is a good chance that Jim Henson's singing, dancing and value-imparting puppets are embedded in your consciousness.

Hence, the pure joy with which hundreds of reporters interviewed them on the press tour for their latest film. This reporter found herself waving at Kermit to make sure he could see her as she asked her question, before catching herself and wondering if the puppeteer beneath him - Steve Whitmire, who took over after Henson died in 1990 - could even see her.

It helps that everyone involved in the show goes to great lengths not to shatter the illusion.

After director James Bobin and composer Bret McKenzie leave the podium, a giant screen is put up so that reporters do not see the puppeteers setting up. And as the "muppet wranglers" transport the puppets and their costumes to and from the stage, the muppets are carefully covered in special cloths so that no one can see them.

Bobin directed the previous film, 2011's The Muppets - a commercial and critical success that also won the Best Original Song Oscar for McKenzie, the New Zealand comedian best known for the TV musical comedy Flight Of The Conchords).

So beloved are the Muppets that the pair say they had a long queue of celebrities clamouring for a role on the new movie, which boasts an impressive list of cameos (Lady Gaga, Sean Puffy Combs, Usher, Celine Dion, Zach Galifianakis, Salma Hayek, among many others).

Producer Todd Lieberman says the film-makers "gather 'intel' about people we like,and people who like us", with McKenzie joking that this intelligence-gathering often means "just Googling 'celebrity' and 'Muppets'".

"There are so many people who love the Muppets that it's an interesting matrix to figure out where people go in the movie," Lieberman says.

"A lot of people approached me in the streets and asked if they could be in the movie, and more often than not, I got them."

But as much as grown-ups love them, the future of the Muppets franchise is far from certain among younger audiences today, who are confronted with far more entertainment choices than their parents. And despite the success of the previous film, the new one underperformed when it opened in the United States last month, although it is expected to do better overseas.

For Bobin and the film-makers, one of their goals was to make this latest film as appealing to children as it is to adults.

"One of the challenges of this film is that it has to be for everybody. Because I remember watching The Muppet Show in the 1970s when I was six or seven, and my dad and grandparents watched it with me, and we were all laughing throughout but probably at different things," says the British director.

Both he and Lieberman said they used their young children as a test audience while prepping the film, showing the kids daily footage to see what worked and what did not.

"Hence, in the last movie, there were a lot of chickens, because my daughter loves chickens," says Bobin. "And this time, she loves the Benson babies - the weird babies, she was obsessed with them. So I kept saying, keep the babies, they're amazing."

Catering for both young and old this way is one of the core elements of the Muppets' success, he believes.

"It's that thing where we're trying to do both things at the same time throughout. So, for me, it's about multi-layering the story and the jokes and the visuals.

"And creating something that bears repeat viewing - that's another huge thing. Because I love making a movie that you watch again and again and again. Kids wear out the movies they love, there's no limit to how many times they can watch it.

"And I love the idea that if you build something with enough depth and texture, you can watch it again and again and see new things every time."

This article was published on April 23 in The Straits Times.

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