There was one awkward moment between Caine and a member of The Muppet Christmas Carol's creative team, though. Michael gave the characters a real nemesis in the film." If an actor tries to compete with the silliness and upstage the Muppets, it doesn't work. He played it as though he was onstage in a Royal Shakespeare production. "He just said he wasn't going to ever try to be funny in the film. Whitmire remembers that Caine knew exactly how to approach his role opposite the Muppets, too. That limited the field in a healthy way." ![]() "I knew I wanted a British actor, and he had to have a certain standing. "Michael was the first actor we approached," says Henson. We threw all that out."Īn ardent fan of Gonzo, Juhl decided the Muppet should play Charles Dickens in the film, and he made him the onscreen narrator. "That was good, because it stopped us talking about Miss Piggy as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Gonzo as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. "We knew that, if we were going to do it, we just had to do it respectfully, because the story and the book demanded that," says Henson. They briefly flirted with making the special a satire, only to quickly realise that the novel was "too good a story" to make fun of. So, Henson asked for assistance on the project from screenwriter Jerry Juhl, who had been the head writer on The Muppet Show, and had written The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper. Henson recalls, "Suddenly he told me, 'Well, I've already sold it to ABC as a special. But Haber insisted that the Muppets would be able to put their own spin on it. The Dickens novel had already been adapted so many times. Wouldn't that be fantastic?'"Īt first, Henson was dubious. ![]() So Bill Haber called me and said, 'A Christmas Carol with the Muppets. "We knew we needed to do something pretty substantial with the Muppets to propel them forward so that they could live on past my dad. "He has always been a big fan of literary classics," says Henson. Instead, in the middle of 1991, just a year after Jim's death, it was suggested to Brian by his agent Bill Haber, who worked for Creative Agents Agency. Which makes it all the more surprising, then, that the initial idea for The Muppets to do their own version of A Christmas Carol wasn't a calculated masterstroke from Henson or anyone at Jim Henson Productions. "That's when I was asked to write a score about Scrooge, who is experiencing a spiritual awakening and a changed outlook. I was comfortable and grateful in this world in a way I'd never experienced before," declares Williams. "All of a sudden I was waking up in the morning with no cravings. Hiring Williams to work on the songs for The Muppet Christmas Carol proved to be a masterstroke, as he used his own recent spiritual awakening as a parallel for Scrooge's journey. I had a reputation in Hollywood as an alcoholic and an addict." When you misplace an entire decade, you have earned your seat and you are officially an alcoholic. By the end of the 80s my career had basically gone. "That's my sober birthday," admits Williams. Which is all the more remarkable, since Williams struggled with alcohol and drug addiction through his life, up until 15 March, 1990. The writer of The Carpenters' We've Only Just Begun and Barbra Streisand's Evergreen, Williams had worked on The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie, earning an Oscar nomination for the latter's song Rainbow Connection. "He told me, 'I'll be on set with you the whole time.' He was. "But Frank was the biggest strong supporter of me doing it," says Henson. Henson believed that Frank Oz, the voice of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Animal, as well as the director of The Dark Crystal, Little Shop of Horrors and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, should have been overseeing The Muppet Christmas Carol instead of him. The X-rated cartoon that shocked the US That's one of the most interesting things about the film on the inside, it was really a bit of a test. We were not completely sure whether we would. "We were also just trying to move forward. ![]() We were all really still mourning," says Steve Whitmire, who, like Brian, was tasked with replacing Jim Henson in The Muppet Christmas Carol, this time by voicing and puppeteering Kermit the Frog. Not only was this his feature film debut as a director, but he was stepping into the shoes of his father Jim Henson, the puppeteer and filmmaker who had created the Muppets and turned them into pop culture icons, before tragically dying at the age of 53 in May 1990. "I didn't want to do it," Henson admits to BBC Culture. When Brian Henson was hired to direct The Muppet Christmas Carol, he was terrified.
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