Telly the Truth

There’s been a lot of chatter over at Muppet Central about a Muppet “mockumentary”. I hinted at knowing something about it but not really being able to say anything. This post isn’t going to amount to much more than that, but here goes:

A Muppet mockumentary has been “in the works” for nearly 30 years. It was really actually born around the time the Muppet Movie was in production. There were bits in there that dipped into “behind the scenes” territory, like scripting in stuff that was made to seem off-script. Meta-movie stuff, you know? People on the crew were really into that, and it definitely worked. To lots of folks, it was the next logical step - something akin to what those VH1 “Behind the Music” stories ended up doing so well, but about the production of the Muppet Movie. Well, things dragged, the Muppet Movie took off and kept peoples’ attention for a little longer than expected, and next thing you know, This is Spinal Tap thoroughly destroys any sense of novelty such a project would have brought with it. One could easily argue that Muppets, as a concept, are novel enough to carry it, but when you think about it, Guest, McKean, and Shearer were themselves really Muppets. They were better at it than we were.

The idea wasn’t dead then, and still isn’t. It just keeps getting trumped and put on the back burner. “The Office” came out. Later on, “30 Rock”. And a bunch of cheap knock-offs. The truth of the matter is, nobody needs the money badly enough to burn Muppet enthusiasm out with a pathetic lump produced and released at the wrong time. Ill-conceived mistakes have been made before, and the powers that be seem to understand now that it is possible to cheapen the Muppet name.

But nobody denies it’s a killer idea. It just needs its time. They’ve dropped hints here and there to feel out public interest from time to time, and the folks over at Muppet Central appear to be keeping it alive (from what I can tell, anyway - I’m new there). Also I should note that as an actor I really don’t have much to do with this stuff. It’s all grapevine knowledge to me. Besides, if there were such a show, I probably wouldn’t be in it, except maybe as a cross-production attraction, kind of like when a “Cheers” character would show up on “Frasier” (see Figure 1, the item that is to my knowledge the boldest attempt at getting my image out there: a friggin’ Beanie Baby). So, at the end of the day, this thing could be happening under my nose. I’m not what you’d call an authority on the topic. But the fans should know that when they talk, people hear them.