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We kind of lost a lot of that and puppeteers were sticking to the script and we thought everything needed to get a lot funnier, so we thought we would go to a good improv comedy instructor.

Brian Henson

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Brian Henson
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 3
Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Puppeteer
Screenwriter
Television Director
Television Producer
New York City
New York
Brian David Henson
Lost
Funnier
Thought
Instructors
Everything
Improv
Kind
Sticking
Good
Script
Would
Scripts
Puppeteers
Needed
Puppeteer
Comedy
Instructor

More quotes by Brian Henson

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Really, initially what I very quickly realized that I was loving about the show was, because it reminded me of when I was a kid and I would visit the sets where my dad was shooting with the other puppeteers.
Brian Henson
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I think in a creative effort, in any creative effort, you need to, people need to be able to be taking risks and if it turns out to be a mistake, if it turns out not to have been the right choice, that should be applauded, you know, by everybody, and it will come up with another plan.
Brian Henson
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Patrick thought we should try to put an audience in front of one of the workshops, basically in front of the class and see how the performers rose to having an audience there, because he said, You know, it's a really interesting test, because sometimes it gets even funnier.
Brian Henson
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I try to emulate his approach of really get the most out of people by allowing them to experiment and certainly allowing people to make mistakes.
Brian Henson
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And one of the funnest things was watching what they did before the director called action and after the director called cut. And they'd keep their hands in the puppets, they'd stay in character, and then they'd start goofing around with each other and be off of script, and it would get quite blue.
Brian Henson
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I was already sort of mixing my science physics enthusiasm with entertainment and directing and puppetry.
Brian Henson
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This is certainly the raunchiest, if you use that word, raunchy. The roots of Jim Henson, though, was adult comedy.
Brian Henson
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People would say to him, When you finish a movie, did it come out as good as you thought it was going to? Or, Did it come out the way you intended it to come out?
Brian Henson
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So that's the challenge, you have a big technical aspect of what you're doing whilst you're creatively trying to improvise.
Brian Henson
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And then while she's lip-syncing, I've Grown Accustomed To Your Face, to this little head next to her, the head eats the cloth fabric and swallows it and it's sort of this weird, demonic character there, who then tries to eat the singer. But it's a lot of fun. So there's a couple of pieces like that.
Brian Henson
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The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention.
Brian Henson
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And it was a whole lot of fun, and in many ways, what we've done with the show is just taken that part of my early memories of visiting my dad, shooting with the Muppets, and taking that and making a show that's really an expansion of that and presenting a show that's all that.
Brian Henson
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And that was always my father's favorite part about shooting as well. Often my dad would shoot very, very late, he was quite a workaholic, they would do 20, 20-hour shoots and stuff like that.
Brian Henson
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And then after the success at Melbourne Comedy Festival, then we regrouped back in LA and we went back into workshopping and decided to develop a proper show and that's when we started working on Stuffed and Unstrung, which is a much bigger and sharper version of Puppet Up.
Brian Henson
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I thought, well, if we're inviting an audience, let's do it right. So I put in a proper studio audience at our studios in Los Angeles and it was just a little showcase and it was just for fun.
Brian Henson
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And my dad's answer would be usually something to the affect of, A, it came out better than he imagined, but also, he said, No, it would be impossible for me to imagine the way it will come out. He said, Yes, I story-boarded it, I had a plan, but then I work with an army of great artists and I want all of them to create inside that creation.
Brian Henson
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You get used to it, you look forward to the adrenaline of the stage fright before you go out.
Brian Henson
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First of all, you're improvising through a puppet, so you're not always yourself: you're a cow or you're a pig or you're an old woman, you know, whatever puppet you pick, or you're a demon, you know, whatever you pick up, that's what you get to be in the scene.
Brian Henson
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In the show, we have recreated two sketches that my dad had, or pieces that my dad had developed. One that he had developed with my mother, one that Frank Oz had developed with my dad. And these are old pieces from the '50's and '60's, and we're going to develop more, too.
Brian Henson
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At that point, I thought probably special effects, something like that, and indeed, the early days when I was working with my dad, after I left school, I only went to less than one year of college, and then I was transferring, and then I delayed my transfer, and I did a movie, and then another movie, and then I never finished college.
Brian Henson