I love Beaker… Poor guy.

The Orson Welles Show was an unsold television talk show pilot. It has never been broadcast or released. Filming began in September 1978 and the project was completed around February 1979. It ran 74 minutes and was intended for a 90 minute commercial time slot.

Shot partly before a live audience, Welles interviewed Burt Reynolds (taking several questions from the audience,) Jim Henson and Frank Oz performed Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear.

Part of what makes this totally fascinating is that the puppeteers are in full view of the audience and only masked by shadows.

Jim Henson

September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990

Puppeteers Unite has a collection of clips from his memorial service.

Steve Vitale documents Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire’s visit to the Atlanta History Center including great video. This is an extremely rare opportunity to see the two men work in full view of the audience. It’s engaging and fun.

When I was an intern at the Center for Puppetry Arts, they had one of the mystics on display in the museum. This static puppet still seemed to have a life. If you stood in the room with it, you’d swear that it was breathing, perhaps simply meditating. I wasn’t alone in my reaction to it.

With stage puppetry, part of the magic comes because audiences have to actively invest their willing suspension of disbelief. More so than with a human actor, an audience member has to participate in the act of believing a puppet is alive. Which is one of the reasons that when puppets die onstage, they die so thoroughly. The audience had put part of themselves into the character. When an actor dies, you know that they are just pretending. A puppet is dead and returned to its inanimate state.

I think there’s some of that when watching puppets on film too. Certainly, I find the puppet Yoda more compelling than the CGI Yoda. It’s a curious thing.

The film itself… I’d love to see Frank Oz do a director’s cut, where they return to the original dialogue. In the original version, the Skeksis spoke in a constructed language, with subtitles. Here’s what that sounds like. No subtitles, sorry.

Plus, at 1.01, if you watch the lower right corner of the screen, Jim Henson’s head flashes for a moment. First time I’ve seen that.

You can listen to the whole interview at the same link. “C” is for cookie. That’s good enough for me.