Brian Henson Quotes

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.

A puppet that starts to improvise badly is almost funnier than the puppet that's improvising well. So the show gets better when the improvising is really good, but also the show can also sometimes get better when the improvising sort of goes a little wrong and that's sort of a blessing to improvising with puppets.

But curriculum-wise, I was drawn to the sciences and specifically to physics, and I really enjoyed it and I think for a little while there, I was really thinking my schooling would be in physics, that that was something I loved.

"Sesame Street" was really the first kid's show that my dad did. He did a couple of TV specials that were targeted for kids before "Sesame Street," but really, it was, it's kind of going back to our roots, when we start to get adult. This show gets very adult sometimes, and that's because of the audience.

We're also irreverent, we have an irreverent attitude towards puppets, as well. So a lot of what we do is we're kind of making fun of the puppets for being puppets, even while we're doing it. And again, that all feeds into the absurdity of this show.

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.

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.

And if the audience is in a kind of naughty, raunchy mood, then they're going to make naughty, raunchy suggestions and then we take them and we do the scene anyway, and that's part of the fun.

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.

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.

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."

we sent a troupe to Edinborough, and then in Edinborough, there was a producer from the Melbourne Comedy Festival, so we went to Melbourne. So it's one of these shows that kind of organically developed and it started developing momentum way before I even thought there was a show here.

"Stuffed and Unstrung" started as a workshop, actually, classes within our company. We found that our puppeteers were not ad libbing as well as traditionally, Jim Henson Company puppeteers have. We're sort of famous for going off script a little bit and ad libbing.

And so as a director, as a leader, and myself as a director and a leader, I kind of try to make sure that we hold onto the vision and kind of corral it, but by the time you finish whatever the project is, a TV show, a series, a movie, a stage show, it should be a product of what all those people can do, and therefore, it can never be what you imagined it would be in the beginning.