Frank Oz vs Disney
September 26, 2021 7:33 AM   Subscribe

Frank Oz: “Disney Doesn’t Want Me” To Do The Muppets Anymore As a former Henson employee I can attest that during Jim’s funeral more than one fellow employee said to me, “It was the Disney deal that killed Jim.” George Lucas was at the reception and he saw what I saw: 4 Disney suits hovering over Jim’s children, telling them in overly familiar tones, “You’re family now. Let’s close our deal.” This was minutes after the funeral. It was stomach turning.
posted by joetrip (35 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm not sure the "Oz vs. Disney" framing is necessary or useful. The Guardian link the article sources from is probably a better read, and made me feel good about Frank Oz instead of making me feel bad about Disney. YMMV.
posted by Ickster at 7:54 AM on September 26, 2021 [11 favorites]


It's funny - I've been Muppet adjacent for years. And I love me some muppets. I do think outside of the Jason Segel movie, which I believe Oz hates, that Disney has been completely at a loss for what to do with the corps.

Having said that, Frank Oz, by reputation and some witnessing of close friends, is a real piece of work to be on a project with. Take that for what you will.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:26 AM on September 26, 2021 [6 favorites]


This definitely feels like clickbaity framing now it's more acceptable to throw shade on the Big Bad Mouse. It sucks that Oz isn't being consulted for Muppets stuff any more, but the Henson/Disney stuff has such a long legacy of difficulty it's not that surprising. Oz has been unhappy about the direction things have been going in for years.

I have a lot of admiration and love for the Jim Henson Company (note: the Henson Company, along with everything else produced by Henson save Sesame Street, the Muppets & Bear In The Big Blue House, is still under the control of Jim's kids). The Dark Crystal series they did with Netflix was gorgeous and full of the old magic. The Muppets are just one facet of Henson's legacy and I wouldn't be unhappy if they were allowed to fade out (we still have the memories after all), but I imagine Disney will be trying to get their money's worth somehow for a while yet.
posted by fight or flight at 9:38 AM on September 26, 2021 [4 favorites]


Mod note: A couple deleted. Just as a quick note, the Guardian (or at least the UK division of the Guardian) is frequently awful on transgender issues, and there has been a Metatalk about it for people who would like to catch up on that situation, but in terms of the site, we do not have a prohibition on linking to them on non-trans / gender topics. (also, in this case the poster has chosen a non-Guardian link for the main part of the post and that seems like a fine way to approach things for people who make an understandable personal decision not to link to them at all.)
posted by taz (staff) at 10:05 AM on September 26, 2021 [12 favorites]


It ain't easy takin' green.
posted by chavenet at 10:17 AM on September 26, 2021 [13 favorites]


This definitely feels like clickbaity framing now it's more acceptable to throw shade on the Big Bad Mouse.

I've been throwing shade on the Big Bad Mouse for at least forty years now. Nothing contemporary about it. They're a sinister corp who've always been invested in corrupting the souls of children, even back when Uncle Walt was still running things.

Which doesn't mean they haven't made some good movies over the years.
posted by philip-random at 11:01 AM on September 26, 2021 [23 favorites]


I've been throwing shade on the Big Bad Mouse for at least forty years now. Nothing contemporary about it. They're a sinister corp who've always been invested in corrupting the souls of children, even back when Uncle Walt was still running things.

There's a reason why the descriptive idiom "Mickey Mouse" as a negative epithet for decades and decades now, often used to describe something half-baked, cartoonish, kitchy, unprofessional or simply excessively juvenile. Often in workplaces of all sorts from offices to construction sites and labor industries. As in "What is this 'Mickey Mouse' bullshit?"

In addition to their more obvious cultural crimes against humanity Disney is also nearly single-handedly responsible for extending, expanding on and abusing the original legislation of copyright laws in the US and abroad.

There would be so many more works in the public domain at this point if it wasn't for Disney. They're not just co-opting or outright buying monopolies on art and culture, they also have prevented access to even more intellectual properties that would have been in the public domain by now if it wasn't for their efforts. Their own properties is just the tip of the cultural iceberg.

Stukas Over Disneyland!
posted by loquacious at 11:34 AM on September 26, 2021 [28 favorites]


I tried watching the new Sesame Street with the grandchild and it's just awful. Repetitive, formulaic, and lacking soul.
posted by Peach at 12:30 PM on September 26, 2021 [5 favorites]


"Disney against the metaphysicals"
posted by clavdivs at 12:50 PM on September 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


Meanwhile I’m seeing links to a trailer for a Muppet thing based on the Disneyworld Haunted Mansion ride. Yep.
posted by egypturnash at 1:49 PM on September 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


To be sure, I believe changes that have occurred at Sesame Street should be a separate issue from Disney owning the Muppets, since Disney doesn't own Sesame Street.
posted by polecat at 1:53 PM on September 26, 2021 [12 favorites]


Disney applies a specific sort of gloss and appeal to a mass target to the stories they tell. They aren't uniformly awful, they're sometimes, but not always, soulless, they make attempts at meaningful diversity. I'm sorry they own Star Wars, and the Muppets; the Muppets had a delightful off-kilter weirdness that I always loved, and made me watch Muppet stuff with my kid. A large % of households with kids subscribe to the Disney channel, and my instinct tells me they're being trained to be conformist consumers. Bummer for Frank Oz; it has to be heartbreaking to lose your role in such a meaningful, artistic creation.
posted by theora55 at 2:09 PM on September 26, 2021 [11 favorites]


Metafilter: Muppet-adjacent for years
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:35 PM on September 26, 2021 [22 favorites]


In terms of anthropomorphic shows originating in that era, I always liked The Letter People and Zoobilee Zoo better than The Muppet Show, but I picked the losing horse in that race. Disney's hegemony over U.S. cultural products is still nonetheless terrifying.
posted by limeonaire at 3:02 PM on September 26, 2021 [2 favorites]


As a Muppet fan I'm just disappointed no one controlling the franchise understands it. The last Muppet movie I actually enjoyed was Muppet Treasure Island and that was 25 years ago. You have all these characters people love. You already know what works cause there are so many hours of film/tv footage of it working well. How is it so hard to do that again? After Jim died they still got a couple good movies out under Brian's rule. But since then? Nothing. I more dread a new Muppet project than be excited about it at this point. They took a good thing and ran it into the ground. Disney of all companies should know how to exploit a property and give the fans what they want. But they treat the Muppets like the B team. Jim would never have put out a lot of what they put out with his characters. It's sad to watch.
posted by downtohisturtles at 3:06 PM on September 26, 2021 [11 favorites]


The first time I saw the Sesame Street Muppets shilling for DoorDash, I knew my decision to live in the past was the right one.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:17 PM on September 26, 2021 [17 favorites]


The first time I saw the Sesame Street Muppets shilling for DoorDash, I knew my decision to live in the past was the right one.

Didn't the Muppets start off by shilling? I have a vague memory of hearing about something like that.
posted by clawsoon at 5:22 PM on September 26, 2021 [9 favorites]


One of Henson's early gigs was shilling coffee.

The thing I remember is how -- back in the 80s -- Henson and Oz wanted to be seen as "real" artists, not just schmucks doing kiddie work. Hence The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth -- Jim was trying to make work that would be accepted on an adult basis. There was an edge to some of Oz's interviews at that time that was really off-putting to me, the pre-teen fan of all things Muppet. He seemed to bristle at references to the Muppets when he was promoting his early films.

Perhaps, as the original Muppets audience has aged, we have given him the artistic validation he was looking for back then. Or maybe he's just softened. As drewbage said above, Frank has a reputation and, as easy as it is to hate on the House of Mouse, I don't think their behavior is the only reason Frank isn't doing Muppet work these days.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 5:32 PM on September 26, 2021 [7 favorites]


I get that this is a naive position, and that the world doesn't work the way I wish it did, but damn, seeing an artist separated from their work, and largely helpless to watch as others take the creations they made and do... well, whatever, with them, with no input from the artist just hits me the wrong way. I get that even getting to the point where we know who Frank Oz is takes money, takes deals and corporations along the way. I get that, but it's hard for me to stomach things like this, that Disney (and other companies like it) can and have purchased "intellectual properties" created by artists and writers who put in the long work of getting their idea known to the point it became worth buying, and then just separate the creator from their creation.

I know this isn't a logically sound, well thought out position, but it really isn't meant as one. It's just me trying to express how ugly this all is. I struggle with people defending Disney (or any of the other companies trying to become the end all be all of entertainment. The consolidation of publishing and producing is historically not great, and leads to staleness as the least of its byproducts. Add to that Disney, and Disney's inability to be anything but non-offensive, and we're watching the neutering of story after story, like we're going through fiction and putting bumpers on corners and covers over sockets like we're kid-proofing a house.

It all feels so wrong, yet also so terribly foregone. Add Oz to the list now, the one that has Alan Dean Foster, the families of Ditko and Lee, and all the others that will see their work absorbed by a corporation uninterested in the stories they acquire and the meaning that they hold, only in the chance to pump out a series or two that bumps engagement or whatever metric makes a stock price jump.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:14 PM on September 26, 2021 [17 favorites]


Didn't the Muppets start off by shilling? I have a vague memory of hearing about something like that.

The Muppets in general, yes, but Jim and Joan Ganz Cooney were very careful to keep the Sesame Street gang away from all that.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:29 PM on September 26, 2021 [10 favorites]


And while we're on the topic. the parting between Steve Whitmire and Disney was less than amicable, as well.

Steve had been hand-picked by Jim to take over Kermit when he was considering stepping back from performing to concentrate on production, so he had been the natural choice to play the frog after Jim's death. And he did it for nearly as long as Jim did. So that was another thread of continuity snapped.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:35 PM on September 26, 2021 [6 favorites]


BTW I highly recommend the Henson biography by Brian Jay Jones.

I always feel bad for Frank Oz and Paul McCartney, because it seems like they can never get through an interview without being asked about Jim Henson and John Lennon.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:42 PM on September 26, 2021 [4 favorites]


There's an episode of Defunctland which details an incredibly creative, insanely bonkers, and very Muppet-like plan one top Disney exec came up with in the early 1990s to have a yearlong event where the Muppets "took over" Disneyland. It would have been a complete re-theming of the park with a purposefully slapdash sign proclaiming it "DisneyMuppetland", a Kermit flower bed replacing Mickey's face under the train station, and all the parades would have featured Muppets instead of the typical Disney characters with a not-so-subtle subtext that they had invaded the park while Mickey and the gang weren't looking.

Imagine a Disney that's willing to temporarily transform their premier park for an entire year just to indulge in a little bit of Muppet humor (and also promote the recently acquired IP). That's the kind of Disney I wish had bought the Muppets.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:49 PM on September 26, 2021 [27 favorites]


While I was out mowing the lawn today I was musing about writing a fan script for an episode of The Muppet Show featuring Pee-wee Herman, and what bits it would include, what musical numbers and what the running plot would be. It was a fun mental exercise. I got the grass cut and had an hour long meditations on the genius of Jerry Juhl.

There were a lot of things that went right for the magic of The Muppets to happen. I'd be hard pressed to not quiz Oz about his partnership with Henson. Those two were at the top of their game, with brilliant comedy timing together for decades.
posted by Catblack at 6:57 PM on September 26, 2021 [5 favorites]


Very relevant (and well done) ‘Epic Rap Battle of History’ video.

‘Gaze upon my empire of joy’.
posted by soy bean at 7:22 PM on September 26, 2021 [12 favorites]


soy bean - I always thought that rap battle was one of the biggest middle fingers / hand biting things ever giving ERB's Disney ownership at the time and I love them for it.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:10 AM on September 27, 2021 [1 favorite]


And after watching the respective Defunctland biographies of both Jim Henson and Walt Disney, it seems like a huge missed opportunity. In many respects, Disney's biggest problem is.....Walt Disney. The man was a racist, sexist, fascist asshole and with each passing year it's increasingly difficult for the Walt Disney Corporation to keep mythologizing him the way they do. This was as true in the late 1980s/early 1990s as it is now.

In contrast, Henson was affable, friendly, worldly and already pretty popular and recognizable. Bringing Henson onboard as a new creative lead could've given them the opportunity to move on from "Uncle Walt" and quietly relegate him to the dustbin of history. The short-lived Jim Henson Hour had already been an expression of Henson's desire to take on a Walt Disney-like role of hosting an anthology series which explored many different forms of innovative storytelling, and Michael Eisner was already trying (and failing) to put a such a face on the corporation. I think a deal between Disney and Henson could have been great for everyone involved.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:42 AM on September 27, 2021 [9 favorites]


BTW I highly recommend the Henson biography by Brian Jay Jones.

I second this recommendation, it's a very readable tome.

One thing from the book that puts Frank Oz's work with The Muppets in perspective is that he was just a teenager when he met Henson, barely 19 and he packed everything up and moved from California to New York City in the early 1960s and for 20 years (until he directed Little Shop Of Horrors) did nothing else but The Muppets (Ok, and a few detours into a small film series called Star Wars).

Another interesting perspective from the book was that, among other things, Jim Henson originally saw the Disney deal as a way to preserve the Muppet legacy.
"It's a wonderful future for these characters. It's as close to an eternal life as a little green frog can get."
From Disney's perspective, that was actually not as important, they were perhaps more interested in having access to Henson's creativity as he wanted to make park rides, attractions, movies, and had the proven ability to create original characters. Once he died, all they were looking at was the Intellectual Property.
posted by jeremias at 6:52 AM on September 27, 2021 [4 favorites]


In contrast, Henson was affable, friendly, worldly and already pretty popular and recognizable.

He did treat his wife like shit though.
posted by Melismata at 11:44 AM on September 27, 2021


As a Muppet fan, I was horrified when the deal with Disney was announced. Also as a Jim Henson fan, I was horrified when the deal with Disney was announced. Jim's mind/creative style was just so much better/smarter and sometimes darker, than anything Disney allowed its people to do. My biggest fear is still the day Disney decides to "re-imagine" Labyrinth...
posted by WalkerWestridge at 9:32 PM on September 27, 2021


Just because I never like to waste the opportunity, here is a link to the delightfully violent Wilkins Coffee ads by Jim Henson
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:49 PM on September 30, 2021 [1 favorite]


And while I’m dumping links, Frank Oz interviewing Mark Hamill for the 92nd Street Y series in 2018 is a very enjoyable watch.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:19 PM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


One more: Interesting 2013 interview with Oz where he talks more about his own background.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:01 AM on October 5, 2021


I've got to say, Muppets Haunted Mansion was the most Muppety the Muppets have felt to me in a long time. I think it was a wise choice to make veteran performer Dave Goelz's Gonzo the main character. The Muppets were once again wild, chaotic, and a bit dangerous, and the humor was allowed to be timelessly cornball instead of trying too hard to be hip and modern. The sentimental moment didn't really feel cheap or mawkish. If this is a sign of things to come and not a one-off, maybe there's more reason for optimism than I thought.

(Also: Why Frank Oz won't sign autographs as Yoda anymore)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:52 AM on October 9, 2021


My four-year-old has watched Muppet Haunted Mansion at least five times since it was released on Friday. He has listened to The Muppets (2011) soundtrack multiple times in just the last two days, culminating in us watching the movie tonight after dinner. We watched a ton of old episodes of The Muppet Show over the weekend. Old or new, there is a ton of love for the Muppets in my household.

I’m old enough to remember seeing The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper in the theater. I remember how, with the exception of Muppet Christmas Carol, the 1990’s were pretty much a low point for Kermit and friends. I think the YouTube shorts were great. The 2011 (The Muppets) and 2014 (Muppets Most Wanted) movies are, imho, up to the standard of the late 70s/early 80s productions that everyone loves. I remember reading Frank Oz slagging on the films when they were released but after seeing the movies, I thought he kind of came off as a crank. No, they’re not the same but it is obvious the people making them love the Muppets and tried to honor what they mean to millions of fans. The 2016 show was a misfire but, honestly is it really any worse than Muppets Tonight?

Getting the Muppets right is hard. You have to have the right mix of innocence combined with knowing savvy. Even Jim Henson misfired at times.

I think everything is going to be just fine.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:28 PM on October 11, 2021 [1 favorite]


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