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Oh, well, I can't tell you it would be telling you the end. It's a one-character lip-syncing because in the early days, that's what my dad was doing.
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
Days
Tell
Ends
Character
Wells
Lips
Well
Dad
Would
Telling
Early
More quotes by Brian Henson
We took a show to the Aspen Comedy Festival, called Puppet Up at that point, and in Aspen we just did three shows, and in Aspen, there was a producer from the Edinborough Fringe Festival, who said, Please come to Edinborough.
Brian Henson
he puppeteers really responded to it. Patrick Bistrow really responded to it, it's great fun to do improve comedy with puppets.
Brian Henson
But initially when I was working with my dad, it was in special effects puppets with radio control and motors and puppet effects.
Brian Henson
We wanted to premiere it in New York, because New York is sort of the home of the Jim Henson Company and it's sort of the tone and flavor, always, of the puppet work that we've done traditionally. And that's what brought us here and now we're here.
Brian Henson
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
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
It was actually what my dad did and with the Muppets, the years with the Muppets, it was really all targeted to adults. It was in a time when everything had to be safe for the whole family. But he was targeting adults.
Brian Henson
In many ways, I think it's easier in some ways, or it's more entertaining or more guaranteed to be entertaining than traditional improvising. Again, because you're not just you in your body.
Brian Henson
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
And it should be something that only that group of people could've made with everybody invested.
Brian Henson
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
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
The first big thing that I did with my dad was the bicycle sequence in The Great Muppet Caper, where Kermit and Piggy are riding bicycles in Battersea Park in London and that was a complex marionetting and cranes driving through the park, it was a complicated scene, and I did that with my dad.
Brian Henson
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
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
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
It's really great to do one piece, I've Grown Accustomed To Your Face, my dad developed in 1956, when he was 20 years old, and it's great to do that piece again now and see that it still really works as well as it ever did.
Brian Henson
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
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
It's actually good when the performers are nervous, because it kind of sharpens up your brain and a little bit of adrenaline is good. Initially it's really tough.
Brian Henson
