I was uncomfortable and terrified, frankly."
“I wanted other people to direct it,” Henson says.
“Frank Oz put the most pressure on me.
Disney/The Muppets Studio
He said, ‘Brian, it’s possible for you to do this.
I’ll be with you.
I’ll be there the whole time that you’re shooting,’ which was fantastic.
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Then, of course, Jerry [Juhl] wrote a brilliant script.
“That scared Disney.
It worked really well inChristmas Carolbecause nobody really gives a nod to their previous relationships as Muppets yet.
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Jerry’s writing was very clever in that you always could feel their pre-existing relationships.
You just get into these storytelling ruts.
How did you decide who would be what?
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Like, that Kermit would be Bob Cratchit and Gonzo would be the narrator, Charles Dickens?
Was it a team effort?
We can’t make fun of it.
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Let’s not make fun of it.
It’s the contrast of Dickens and Henson that will make the movie.
And how did Gonzo become the lead here, instead of Kermit as traditional frontman?
Disney/The Muppets Studio
Jerry had the idea, because he was a big fan of Gonzo.
I was a big fan of Gonzo, so we were totally in sync there.
But I knew Kermit was going to be really hard work on set.
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We were going to have to do it very carefully.
I’m assuming that also added to your fear factor.
It was all just overwhelmingly terrifying, I’ll be honest.
Disney/The Muppets Studio
But [from other work], I realized the really good actors are way easier to work with.
They really know what they’re doing, and they don’t need as much directing.
Michael needed very little directing.
It was like, “This is about where the energy level should be in this moment.”
He’s such a talented actor.
He didn’t know it was my first film.
I only learned that from interviews that he’s done since.
But he was the first offer and he really wanted to do it, and he was great.
You said you knew Kermit had to be handled carefully.
All of the Muppet performers had worked with your dad.
How much did it being the first film after his deathweigh on all of you?
There was a feeling of “We have to get this right,” for sure.
Everybody was definitely trying to bring their best game.
But what we didn’t do was, “What would Jim do in this moment?”
Which is something that Jim would never do.
But certainly we all wanted to get it right.
We were all very close.
We were a close-knit group and had become closer since my dad had passed.
So there was just a lot of mutual respect and support on set.
I asked him to do it three times, and he had knee pads on under his trousers.
I did it, and I was like, “Oh, that’s really hard.”
And he said, “Yeah, and I’m a lot older than you.”
Giving Gonzo Dickensian prose is a bit of a departure for the character.
Did performer Dave Goelz have any trouble wrapping his mouth around that?
Yes, but Dave loved it.
It was definitely hard for him to wrap his mouth around it, and it would take multiple takes.
Dave Goelz would always say, “Oh, I had a lip crash.”
Yes, definitely, the ice skating was my idea.
It’s very hard to do, and it was a visual effect the whole time.
There was no ice there; it was just an empty hole.
Then we put the ice in under the puppets.
It was an empty hole with puppeteers scooting around on chairs, and then we put the ice in.
That was a complicated sequence.
I’ll be honest with you, I was a little resistant to the shooting star.
In the end, it went in as a greeting to my father.
[I didn’t want it there as] simply a callback to the first Muppet movie.
The movie doesn’t demand a shooting star at that point.
And I wanted real authenticity in the storytelling.
It’s kind of justified with, “There’s magic in the air.”
It really is just a salutation to my father.
You decided to do the spirits as new characters.
It is basically Dickens' descriptions.
The Ghost of Christmas Past is about innocence and innocence lost is the message the character is giving.
Shooting it under water was something that really intrigued me.
It wasn’t meant to be shot underwater.
It was meant to be shot in mineral oil, because I had actually done a bunch of research.
Mineral oil is very nearly exactly the same density as clear plastic rods.
The rod literally vanished.
I wanted to do her under oil because she’s flying around.
And I thought, “Let’s do something though that’s more magical than just flying.”
So, we had this mineral oil and it cost a fortune to get a tankful.
The oil turned perfectly white.
It went from clear to perfectly white.
And he’s like, “Brian, we can’t.
We’re going to just have to do this with water.”
One of the most clever bits of casting is Statler and Waldorf as the Marley brothers.
Where did that come from?
We thought, where they make sense, we’ll put them in.
With Jacob Marley, we knew that was going to be absolutely the scariest part of the movie.
We weren’t shy about scaring kids because a good story does often scare kids.
So we thought, Put Statler and Waldorf in there.
The other songwriter whose songs really worked for the Muppets was John Denver.
They’re both folk artists, really.
I was really quite intimidated by trying to do any musical numbers and who to guide as songwriter.
I didn’t even know where to start.
And I just thought, “Well, let’s find Paul Williams.”
And Paul had become sober recently and really wanted to prove that he was still a great songwriter.
He really responded to the script because it’s a story of redemption.
I was thrilled to hear that he was up for it.
But I remember Disney was like, “Are you sure?
Is he still working?”
And then he was fantastic.
“When Love Is Gone” is finally backin the Extras section on Disney+.
How important was that to you to be able to restore this version, since it got cut theatrically?
It was super important to me because that was the deal.
Jeffrey Katzenberg didn’t like ballads.
And for one very real reason, kids don’t like them.
Because Jeffrey was very respectful.
And they lost the negative.
Disney had lost the negative, and they were horrified.
They searched for years and years, and it took all this time.
You have to find it.”
They never did.But they found an IP, a first strike inter-positive of that reel.
Everybody was looking for negatives.
That’s it.”
Lastly, The Muppets are great improvisers.
Do you have a favorite moment that made the final cut?
It was generated by me and my storyboard artist, who wrote it in.
I thought it would be a scene that we might cut.
But then when we shot it, it was such a funny little scene that we kept it.
