“We felt like there was in all probability just one main documentary to be made,” says Lisa, the present CEO of the Jim Henson Firm, on a Zoom name together with her three siblings. “Our dream was {that a} filmmaker of actual stature would come alongside and be an ideal match for Jim Henson.”
They received their want firstly of 2022, when Howard, representing the documentary arm of Creativeness Leisure (his and Brian Grazer’s manufacturing firm), visited the Henson household’s studio in Los Angeles. The Oscar-winning director knew Henson solely barely, having met him backstage at a range present within the late Seventies. However after talking extensively with the siblings about their upbringing, and screening two hours of their dad’s early commercials, experimental movies and residential movies, Howard was satisfied that he had a transparent imaginative and prescient of Henson as an artist, husband and father.
“You would see a type of aesthetic thread all through, a wit and satirical undercurrent, and his large creativeness,” Howard says of Henson’s work. “Nearly instantly I needed to channel Jim’s sensibility and aesthetic by means of the stuff that we’d create.”
Out there to stream Might 31 on Disney Plus, “Jim Henson Thought Man” makes good on Howard’s editorial instincts and the Henson household’s persistence. The film, which lately premiered on the Cannes Movie Competition, comprehensively chronicles the Muppets creator’s life and work, investigating his relentless creativity and ambition with a mixture of archival materials, animated and musical thrives, and interviews with shut colleagues and all 4 youngsters. It additionally makes room for loads of puppetry, together with behind-the-scenes seems to be at Kermit the Frog, “Sesame Avenue” forged members, and the modern marionettes of the films “The Darkish Crystal” and “Labyrinth.”
To know his topic’s genius, Howard leans closely on Frank Oz, Henson’s longtime pal and collaborator, who gives perception into their numerous work and revolutionary method to tv. However the latest and most illuminating insights into Henson pivot on his romantic and artistic partnership along with his spouse, Jane, who helped discovered their firm, and their household life, which grew to become strained within the years main as much as the couple’s separation in 1986. “I noticed large worth within the Jim and Jane story, as a result of I had no thought how vital Jane had been in actually constructing the inspiration of Muppets Inc. and every little thing that got here from it,” Howard says.
The pair met in 1954 in a College of Maryland puppetry class, the start of an in depth working relationship that ultimately spawned “Sam and Mates,” a stay, late-night puppet sketch present that was broadcast on WRC-TV, their native Washington, D.C., station. Its musical components and magnificence of puppetry (the puppeteers would watch themselves on a stay simulcast utilizing a TV monitor so they might see how the puppet regarded in body above them) laid the inspiration for Kermit, their Muppets firm and Jim’s grander endeavors. “It was simply Mother and Dad creating this five-minute piece each single night time,” says Cheryl, president of the Jim Henson Foundation. “It was college-style humor. They have been entertaining themselves.”
Jim and Jane’s marriage a number of years later felt just like the pure evolution of their creative collaboration, much less the results of a deep romance than a keenness for being collectively, one thing that Jane, who died in 2013, describes within the documentary. “I personally assume it was extra romantic than a few of my mother’s statements make it appear,” says Lisa, who, alongside together with her siblings, kept away from taking producer credit or steering Howard’s editorial selections. As he illustrates within the documentary, the puppets operated nearly like alter egos, permitting the couple to “be each playful and insightful and type of be a little bit unfastened and loopy,” Howard says, “which neither of them have been in individual.”
When Jane gave start to Lisa, pausing her skilled artistic work to start a household, Jim saved up his breakneck tempo, constructing a small group of puppeteers, which included Oz, to make Muppets-based commercials inside a Manhattan workshop. Over the subsequent decade, Jim’s manufacturing elevated, with the puppeteer growing a repertoire of characters and making experimental movies and tv specials — “early works which might be tremendous revealing of my dad as an artist,” Brian says. “You’re seeing the uncooked creativity earlier than it began turning into extra refined and extra complicated.”
Because of his quite a few ventures, “Thought Man” notes that Henson’s workload — particularly as he latched onto “Sesame Avenue” and started producing “The Muppets” tv sequence in England all through the Seventies and early Eighties — naturally made it more durable to attach with Jane and his 5 children at dwelling. “That type of factor occurs on a regular basis in relationships, and I believe they dealt with it significantly properly,” Howard says. “Nevertheless it’s attention-grabbing that the very factor that pulled them collectively was in the end the issue within the romantic facet of the connection fading.”
All through our dialog, the Henson youngsters (all of whom have numerous roles of their father’s firm and basis) mirrored warmly on their dad and mom’ early relationship, their shared humorousness, and what Cheryl calls their “sturdy household life” and “fantastically artistic childhood” in Armonk, N.Y. That included collaborating in do-it-yourself artwork tasks, reminiscent of claymation and woodworking, crafts they might ultimately refine as they received older and started aiding their father in skilled settings. “I undoubtedly didn’t really feel that my father was as absent from the household as is portrayed within the movie,” Cheryl says. “However that’s partially as a result of we have been at all times invited to be with him on location, within the workshops, in addition to journey with him.”
The latter half of “Thought Man” traces Henson’s relentless pursuit of latest applied sciences, such because the more-advanced marionettes and particular and visible results he configured in his characteristic movies “The Darkish Crystal” and “Labyrinth.” Impressed by his topic’s experimentation, Howard channeled a few of Henson’s oeuvre into the documentary’s aesthetic, implementing stop-motion strategies and conducting interviews on a stage surrounded by tv screens meant to resemble Henson’s 1969 documentary “The Dice.” “I cherished recognizing the worth of throwing your self right into a medium, and simply studying it on the job,” Howard says. “What Jim and Jane did jogs my memory a lot of what TikTok and Instagram content material creators did.”
Henson’s stressed power and workaholic persona (“He was sketching or writing on a regular basis,” Brian says) appeared to stem, at the least partially, from his brother’s premature demise in a 1956 automotive accident. Because the documentary theorizes, that occasion imbued his work with a way of urgency that his youngsters additionally felt when Henson died abruptly at 53 — and once more when their brother, John, died in 2014. “I by no means gave one second’s thought to my very own mortality till my father died,” Lisa says. “There’s little question {that a} sudden, sudden demise goes to shift your mind a little bit bit.”
When the household inherited the corporate, Jane established the Jim Henson Legacy, devoted to preserving and perpetuating his contributions to the puppetry world, and employed Karen Falk as a full-time archivist. “Thought Man,” which Lisa hopes will encourage viewers to “let their creativity fly,” features, in some methods, because the fruits of all of their preservation work. Additionally they really feel it captured their dad’s spirit — and made the lengthy wait value it. “We have been scared we wouldn’t be capable to do that,” Brian says. “This seems like the proper option to rejoice Jim Henson.”
“It’s so nice to have this documentary,” Heather provides, whereas additionally acknowledging its inherent limitations. “Coming to an understanding of our relationship with our dad is at all times an ongoing course of.”
