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Watch Wakanda forever! 'Black Panther' deleted scenes, bonus content coming in home edition

“Black Panther” (Photo: Marvel Studios)

King T’Challa has come home to Wakanda — and now, he’s coming home with you. Disney announced today that Black Panther will be available digitally on May 8 and on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD on May 15. The home release will wrap up the film’s historic box-office run: As of this weekend, the Marvel film has earned $665 million, surpassing Titanic as the third-highest-grossing movie in U.S. history.

Both the digital and Blu-ray editions of Black Panther are packed with special features, including four deleted scenes: one featuring Okoye (Danai Gurira) and W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), who we all know deserved more screen time; one in which T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) remembers his father; one that takes place at the U.N.; and one called “Voices from the Past” (perhaps involving the ancestral plane? Or if we’re lucky, more Sterling K. Brown?). There’s also a roundtable discussion about the making of the film and featurettes about Wakanda’s culture, technology, and female warriors. Also: a gag reel. (Please let it involve Shuri rapping.) The digital edition also comes with two exclusive ads for  “Wakanda tourism” — as if they’d need to sell anybody on that vacation.

Cover art for the ‘Black Panther’ multi-screen edition (Photo: Disney)

Black Panther, which opened in February, is the biggest U.S. box-office hit in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. (Worldwide, it still lags $1 million behind 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and $2 million behind 2012’s The Avengers — but give it a few more weeks.) Two more Marvel films are slated to hit theaters this year: Avengers: Infinity War on April 27 and Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Black Panther’ breakout Shuri crowned the best Disney princess by social media

‘Avengers: Infinity War’: Thanos brings the pain, Spidey brings the laughs in final trailer

Marvel boss Kevin Feige confirms ‘Black Panther 2,’ considering spinoffs

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Who's Chewbacca hugging? And other 'Solo' trailer questions

The first full-length trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story (watch it above) gives us plenty of young Han Solo — but it’s Chewbacca who’s got tongues wagging. The trailer for the stand-alone Star Wars prequel, which takes place about a decade before A New Hope, shows how our favorite bounty hunter (played by Alden Ehrenreich) became part of the criminal underworld, with the help of female companion Qi’Ra (Emilia Clarke), charismatic hustler Lando (Donald Glover), ringleader Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), and a shiny new Millennium Falcon. And of course, there’s Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), who is younger, svelter, and exchanges a hug with a mysterious fellow Wookiee. Social media is dying to know:  Is this Chewie’s wife Malla, introduced in the notorious 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special and canonized in the Aftermath novels? Or does Chewbacca have other hairy companions in his (190-year) life?

  Is this Malla?! Please tell me it’s Malla. #SoloAStarWarsStory https://t.co/Tsb5DLlM47

— Jennifer Landa (@JenniferLanda) April 9, 2018

Chewbacca got blonde streaks and is out there breaking Lady Wookie hearts in his younger days like a 90s boy band frontman. pic.twitter.com/DxPrdqL7hc

— The Stefano De La Cuesta (@THE_Stefano_DLC) April 9, 2018

Wookie head butt is the only way that I will show love & affection in 2018 #SoloAStarWarsStory pic.twitter.com/GYMujgN4ir

— Hammie (@balancedpadawan) April 9, 2018

Star Wars podcaster James Baney also noted that Chewbacca appears to have been digitally added to a few scenes in the trailer, which suggests that the Wookiee’s role in Solo has been bumped up in re-edits.

Noticing that they have since ADDED Chewie to a few scenes is interesting. #SoloAStarWarsStory pic.twitter.com/88l5XSonSc

— James Baney (@Mirahtrunks) April 9, 2018

Besides speculation over Chewbacca’s love life, social media is abuzz with love for Donald Glover’s Lando — not to mention the colorful creatures and cocktail-serving robot who join him at the Sabacc table (where, according to Star Wars legend, Han wins the Falcon away from him).

HERE FOR DONALD GLOVER AS LANDO pic.twitter.com/pwWS4v7ZXq

— skywalker (@tolkienianjedi) April 9, 2018

Just watched the trailer for #SoloAStarWarsStory. All my life I’ve wanted a lightsaber. Now: A floating cocktail robot. pic.twitter.com/sgzicWtEwD

— Joseph Scrimshaw (@JosephScrimshaw) April 9, 2018

The creature designs here are already the best we’ve seen from the new movies. I want action figures of Eyeball Dude yesterday. #StarWars #Solo #SoloAStarWarsStory pic.twitter.com/XOqYH2HzMi

— Billy Buehler (@The2ndQuest) April 9, 2018

Some fans were excited to get a first look at Paul Bettany’s villain, crime lord Dryden Vos.

Paul Bettany. That is all. #Solo pic.twitter.com/4N3KkVKIKJ

— Mary Liz Adams (@MaryLiz_Adams) April 9, 2018

Others were psyched about the new female droid.

Droid Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the best droid already in the history of Star Wars, sorry Alan Tudyk and BB-8. #Solo

— Smilodon (@Smilodon2049) April 9, 2018

Some are speculating about the mysterious new female villain Enfys Nest, and her potential relationship to Emilia Clarke’s character.

Wait…what if Qi’ra IS Enfys Nest pic.twitter.com/rMuJDKTbiF

— Sith Observer (Qi’ra is Enfys Nest don’t @ me) (@sithobserver) April 6, 2018

I have a theory that the gunslinger duel with Enfys Nest (should it turn out that, yes, she is Qi’ra in disguise) will be one of the last scenes in the film, and Han shoots her and that breaks his heart (hinted at in the recent Last Shot excerpt) making him into a hardened “Solo”

— Ilya Glazkov (@IlGlaz) April 9, 2018

  And some are already planning their cosplay as Range Troopers, one of the film’s new Stormtrooper variants.

These Range Troopers look dope in the new Solo movie. @starwars #SoloAStarWarsStory pic.twitter.com/MoWXsbSKyV

— Ryan (@Ryanbluh) April 9, 2018

Finally, plenty of Han fans have also started connecting the dots between the character’s past and future, just as Lucasfilm intended.

find someone who looks at you the way han solo looks at the millennium falcon pic.twitter.com/aRfeXUNk54

— skywalker (@tolkienianjedi) April 9, 2018

“Assume everyone will betray you…” #SoloAStarWarsStory (The feels.) pic.twitter.com/rNqBKSZJr9

— Noor-Hal of Jakku (@noorhal) April 9, 2018

“I’VE GOT A REALLY GOOD FEELING ABOUT THIS.”

we’re gonna find out what changed our favorite space smuggler into a man who would rather say,

“I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.”

hold me. i’m emotional.#SoloAStarWarsStory #solo

— EMY (@MusicOfEmy) April 9, 2018

‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ opens in theaters on May 25.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Scoundrels, unite! Han, Lando, Chewie team up in first ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ trailer

Woody Harrelson reveals he turned down Han Solo movie; he’s glad he changed his mind

Han, Chewie, Lando, and Corellian hounds: Everything we learned about ‘Solo’ from these exclusive new ‘Star Wars’ toys

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How 'Blockers' redefines the prom-night comedy with talk of consent and John Cena's bare butt

Ike Barinholtz, John Cena, and Leslie Mann in ‘Blockers.’ (Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert/Universal Studios)

“I lost my virginity on this movie,” jokes first-time director Kay Cannon, talking to Yahoo Entertainment about her uproarious new comedy Blockers. Cannon isn’t exactly inexperienced when it comes to comedy: The three-time Emmy nominee got her start performing with the Upright Citizens Brigade, and has worked as a leading writer and producer on 30 Rock, New Girl, and the Pitch Perfect films. But Blockers, about three teenage girls who make a pact to lose their virginity on prom night and the three parents (played by Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz) who try to stop them, is her first time behind the camera. And as Universal has proudly pointed out, she’s only the sixth woman ever to direct a film like this.

“I mean, it’s very specific: rated-R, studio-released comedies. But the truth is, it’s all terrible statistics, because there’s just not a lot of female directors at all,” Cannon acknowledges. “But that’s what makes me hope that the movie does well, because it will hopefully open up more doors for us ladies to get that shot. I was hired based off of potential — and I think that that happens a lot for guys. It’s so rare that it happens for ladies.”

Blockers (which has a silhouette of a rooster before the title in the logo — get it?) benefited from having a female director in some significant, and perhaps unexpected, ways. When Cannon signed on, the screenplay by brothers Jim and Brian Kehoe was so focused on the parents (originally three dads) that the teenagers who make the sex pact came off as “three random girls.”

“The biggest change that was made was beefing up the daughters’ roles,” Cannon says. “That was important, to see what made them funny, what makes them individuals. And so Julie (Kathryn Newton) became romantic and Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) was sporty and confident, and Sam (Gideon Adlon) is the insecure one who’s debating her sexuality — all that was added into the script to really showcase them and get their point of view, and understanding the value of telling that story. That’s the biggest reason to do this movie, you know?”

As Cannon realized, most loss-of-virginity comedies are told from the perspective of teenage boys (with a few exceptions, like Easy A and The To-Do List) — so by putting teenage girls’ hopes and desires at the center of the story, Blockers immediately sets itself apart. Along with that decision, Cannon made sure that the film modeled enthusiastic consent; for example, that the girls clearly announce their intentions to their prom dates before imbibing any alcohol, and that the boys never pressure them into sex acts.

“There were a lot of great conversations between myself and the producers. There were many times it would be like, myself and 12 guys,” Cannon says with a laugh. “I remember us having the discussion about consent, because this is stuff that they don’t have to think about… I hope it will be a nice example for teens to watch.”

Another way that Cannon decided to defy normal sex-comedy tropes was to include more male than female nudity. “If it’s going to be a rated-R sex comedy, the typical ones would show a lot of boobs. Well, I didn’t want to do that,” says Cannon. For a scene the director describes as “naked Marco Polo” (we won’t spoil it), actress Gina Gershon opted for partial nudity, but her onscreen husband, Gary Cole (known to comedy aficionados as the boss from Office Space), was game for the full monty. “Gary was like, on board,” Cannon says, laughing. “So that just kind of happened organically, where he thought that was super funny. And the more naked they were, the funnier it was to us.”

Another male star who had no qualms about showing his bod was John Cena, whose rear end makes its big-screen debut in Blockers. “He’s so muscular that it sort of looks like he’s wearing spandex — it doesn’t look like a real butt!” says Cannon of the pro wrestler-turned-actor. “Somebody asked me if that was a butt double for John. I was like, are you kidding? Where would we find that person?”

Jokes aside, Cannon hopes that studio films with a female point of view will not always be considered anomalies. In fact, as the writer of all three Pitch Perfect films, Cannon has seen first-hand that there is a worldwide audience for stories written by, directed by, and starring women. But she also thinks that the groundbreaking success of that franchise has yet to be truly acknowledged by the film industry.

“I think that in some weird way, the narrative around Pitch Perfect might be like, well, it’s this cutesy musical comedy that has girl power and sisterhood,” she says. “But they’re not realizing the great business that it did. I feel like there’s a little bit of patting on the head of the franchise, as opposed to like, hey, the budgets were really low, and the domestic and international sales are significantly higher than the budgets.”

With Blockers, Cannon once again proves that girls’ stories can be as inspiring, raunchy, and laugh-out-loud funny as any other. If Hollywood doesn’t pay attention, it’s literally their loss.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

You won’t believe who got engaged on the ‘Will & Grace’ season finale

Courtney Love appears as a guest judge on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’

Don’t mess with Blake Lively — actress issues warning after unauthorized photos of her daughter are posted

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Kathy Griffin breaks out her Kellyanne Conway impersonation — and breaks out of internet jail

Kathy Griffin hasn’t stopped lampooning the Trump administration — but this time, she’s getting a warm reception. Last night, the comedienne made her debut as Kellyanne Conway on Comedy Central’s Make America Great-A-Thon: A ‘President Show’ Special. Alongside The President Show star and creator Anthony Atamanuik, who plays Donald Trump, Griffin debuted Conway’s signature “act”: defending the worst people in history. As the Counselor to the President, Griffin passionately spoke up on behalf of Jeffrey Dahmer, Bernie Madoff, and Charles Manson. And Twitter was here for it.

Watch Griffith, as Kellyanne Conway, defend Bernie Madoff.

Gotta say, @kathygriffin did not disappoint as @KellyannePolls on tonight’s excellent @PresidentShow #MAGAthon with @TonyAtamanuik https://t.co/ZJZlbhFkaF

— Matt Wilstein (@mattwilstein) April 4, 2018

Kathy Griffin playing Kellyanne Conway has tilt the universe back on its axis. Welcome back Kathy https://t.co/jzLfq3OqRK

— MommaT (@tweetmommybop) April 4, 2018

Wouldn’t miss @TonyAtamanuik & @kathygriffin together again for the 1st time! I hope it gets monster-ratings & guarantees a 2nd Season of @PresidentShow which is both funny & therapeutic & I NEED IT IN MY LIFE. AND #PleaseRenewThisShowComedyCentral https://t.co/T019fTILg1

— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) April 3, 2018

@kathygriffin as @KellyannePolls was BRILLIANT last night on @PresidentShow “Make-America-Great-A-Thon”! @TonyAtamanuik and crew brought the laughs while portraying the chaos! Great show and kudos for putting Kathy in the spotlight where she has always belonged!

— Faith & Mom Cardillo (@DonnaCardillo11) April 4, 2018

@kathygriffin you are slaying me on The President Show. Fully dead.

— Chris Ashton (@cjashton) April 4, 2018

Never one to shy away from a controversial opinion, Griffin became the center of a scandal last may after posing for a photograph with a replica of President Trump’s bloody, severed head. In the fallout, she received death threats, was investigated by the Secret Service, and lost her annual New Year’s Eve hosting gig opposite Anderson Cooper (not to mention her longtime friendship with the CNN anchor). In the ensuing months, Griffin was remorseful, then unapologetic — and now, says she’s happy to “lean into the controversy.”

“I am kicking the hornet’s nest, as much as I can,” Griffin told the New York Times before the President Show special aired. “I think now enough time has passed where people are starting to see the ridiculousness of what happened to me, and they’re seeing other people that Trump has done it to.”

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Chrissy Teigen boycotts ‘Roseanne,’ and Trump supporters couldn’t care less

Jim Carrey provokes fresh outrage with new Donald Trump painting

Dana Carvey portrays John Bolton as an unhinged warmonger on ‘The Late Show’

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Tiffany Haddish kicks Kevin Hart's tailfeather in 'Night School' trailer

From Dwayne Johnson to Ice Cube, Kevin Hart has a knack for choosing the perfect comedy co-star — so is it any surprise that he’s teaming up with Tiffany Haddish? Night School, Haddish’s first feature since her breakout role in Girls Trip, stars Hart as a grill salesman who aspires to a career in finance. Trouble is, he’s a high school drop-out, and no one in his desired field will take him seriously without a diploma. So Hart enrolls in (you guessed it) night school, where his teacher, played by Haddish, isn’t about to let him off easy… even if he’s wearing a chicken suit. Directed by Girls Trip‘s Malcolm D. Lee, with a screenplay by Hart, the film co-stars Romany Malco (Think Like a Man), Rob Riggle (21 Jump Street), and SNL’s Taran Killam as the high school principal who keeps slipping into a “black voice.” Watch the trailer above.

Night School marks the first time that Haddish and Hart have co-starred in a film — but the two quick-witted actors (who previously appeared together on BET’s Real Husbands of Hollywood) actually go way back. In an Instagram post promoting the trailer, Hart told the story of how he helped a down-on-her-luck Haddish get back on her feet when they were both working as stand-up comedians. It’s a story that Haddish has also told many times — and a reminder that, in Hart’s words, it’s worth it to “stay on the course…and continue to follow your dreams.” Read the post below.

I’m launching the trailer today people….The grind/Hardwork never stops. The movies just get bigger/better/funnier….Listen to how crazy life works….8 to 9 years ago @tiffanyhaddish was homeless & living out of her car. I had no idea until I saw a shitload of clothes in her car outside of a comedy club in LA. I asked her what was going on and she down played the situation….I reached in my pocket and gave her all the money I had which was $300 at the time. She held onto that moment…That moment gave her a bed & shower for a couple of nights…This woman never let her life situation beat her. She stayed true to her dreams and bust her ass to get where she is today and now she’s my damn CO-STAR in my new movie “NIGHT SCHOOL”….GOD IS TRULY AMAZING. Stay on the course people and continue to follow your dreams….You are looking at 2 people on a movie poster that are living proof of it being worth it in the long run!!!! #Motivation #Inspiration #NightSchool #HittingTheatersInSeptember …..P.S I want my $300 dollars back now

A post shared by Kevin Hart (@kevinhart4real) on Apr 3, 2018 at 5:07am PDT

  Night School opens in theaters on Sept. 28.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Girls Trip’ breakout Tiffany Haddish shares grapefruit tricks and creative ex revenge ideas (an R-rated Q&A)

Now you can bet on who bit Beyoncé: The list of suspects

Kevin Hart explains fallout, reconciliation from cheating scandal: ‘It was a cold house’

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Why Meryl Streep won't play Princess Leia in 'Star Wars: Episode IX'

Meryl Streep arrives for a special screening of ‘Final Portrait’ in New York, U.S., March 22, 2018. (Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)

From Margaret Thatcher to Julia Child, Meryl Streep is an actress who can seemingly resurrect any cultural icon — but will Princess Leia be one of them? An online petition calling for the 21-time Oscar nominee to replace Carrie Fisher in Star Wars: Episode IX has gained a surprising amount of steam, with over 8,900 supporters as of press time. The petition’s author, who goes by the handle Chill M, argues that the role of Leia is too important to be dropped in the final installment of the new Skywalker trilogy, even though Fisher (who created the role in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope) died before shooting began.

“As the fans of Star Wars and Carrie Fisher, we really want Leia to shine in Episode IX and we certainly do not want her to be written out of the film abruptly without a reasonable plot,” writes the petition’s author. “Therefore, recasting Leia is a more ideal option for us and we believe that Meryl Streep is an ideal candidate to play Leia.” The author’s argument is based both on Streep’s many accolades as an actress and friendship with Fisher, and the fact that she played a character based on Fisher in Postcards from the Edge, Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel.

Unfortunately for the petition’s supporters, Streep is not planning any trips to the galaxy far, far away. A rep for Streep told ET Canada that rumors she is in consideration for the role of Princess Leia are “untrue.” That’s no shock, considering that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has stated outright that Leia will not appear in Episode IX. Though the princess-turned-general was originally going to be a “really significant” part of the story, according to producer Kennedy, Fisher’s death necessitated script changes. “We pretty much started over,” she told EW in April of last year.

Granted, Episode IX has been through numerous script changes since Fisher’s death, as well as a change of director from Colin Trevorrow to The Force Awakens’ J.J. Abrams. But such a weighty decision as Leia’s fate is unlikely to change from draft to draft. In addition to Kennedy’s assurance that Fisher will not appear in Episode IX, Disney CEO Bob Iger has stated that Fisher will not be resurrected digitally (as her younger self was for Rogue One). Recasting hasn’t officially been ruled out — but considering Fisher’s devoted fan base, the tragedy of her unexpected death, and the fact that she played Leia in five previous Star Wars movies, re-casting the role would cause a controversy that Lucasfilm certainly isn’t interested in igniting.

That leaves Abrams with the considerable challenge of concluding Leia’s story arc while the character is off-screen. One could see where the temptation to recast would be great, but we’re sure that Lucasfilm has some creative, non-Streep solutions. And if they don’t, we do.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

How ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ can give Princess Leia the ending she deserves

How Carrie Fisher Helped Create the ‘Star Wars’ Legend

Mark Hamill and ‘Star Wars’ cast describe Carrie Fisher’s ‘phenomenal’ final performance in ‘The Last Jedi’

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'Beetlejuice' at 30: Dick Cavett reveals his 'genius' idea for 'Day-O!' dinner party scene

Dick Cavett is best known for the witty, penetrative interviews he conducted for three decades on The Dick Cavett Show — but to Beetlejuice fans, he’ll always be Delia Deetz’s agent. Though the television personality was in just a single scene of Tim Burton’s 1988 supernatural comedy, it turned out to be the most memorable one in the film: the dinner party at which Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and her guests are possessed by ghosts and perform a song-and-dance routine to Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).” In honor of Beetlejuice‘s 30th anniversary on March 30, Cavett spoke with Yahoo Entertainment about shooting the “Day-O” scene, his surprising special-effects contribution, and the one thing he wishes he’d done differently.

Cavett told Yahoo that he was surprised when Tim Burton offered him a role in Beetlejuice, seeing as he wasn’t an actor (though he did have experience as both a magician and stand-up comic). In fact, when Cavett has guest-starred on movie and television shows — including The Simpsons, Cheers, and Forrest Gump — he’s usually playing himself. But Burton was a fan and asked Cavett to play Bernard, the weary art agent to O’Hara’s terrible sculptor Delia.

Watch the ‘Day-O’ scene from Beetlejuice:

“It was delightful and every day was interesting,” Cavett said of his three-day shoot. He also revealed that he believes he “made a contribution to the film” in terms of a difficult special effect. At the end of “Day-O,” the grotesque shrimp on the guests’ plates become the fingers of hands, which reach out and grab their faces.  Burton, said Cavett, was having difficulty making the shot work, because the special effects team hidden under the table couldn’t see the actors, and kept missing their faces. Cavett recalled making the suggestion: “Why don’t you shoot it in reverse?”

Burton liked the idea (“I was hailed as a genius, though I’m sure several others would have thought of it,” Cavett said), so the director set up the shot with the arms grabbing the actors, then had them retreat back into the table. Cavett was never 100 percent sure that the reverse shot made it into the final film, so fans watching the scene will have to decide for themselves.

There’s only one thing Cavett regrets about his Beetlejuice scene. Since he’s a magician, he wished that he’d gotten a chance to do some sleight of hand with his table napkin to make it seem haunted. But he was quite happy with his hilarious exit line (the one that begins “Delia, you are a flake”), which he can still recite it from memory.

Watch Dick Cavett’s sick burn for Catherine O’Hara in Beetlejuice:

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Everything you didn’t know about ‘Beetlejuice,’ from the dark original ending to the cut characters

‘Beetlejuice’ turns 30: How Michael Keaton was transformed with makeup, moss, and a nose made of lips

The latest on the ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel

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'Beetlejuice' turns 30: How Michael Keaton was transformed with makeup, moss, and a nose made of lips

Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice (Photo: Warner Bros c/o Everett Collection)

In the filmBeetlejuice, Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin make the title character appear by saying his name three times — but makeup artist Ve Neill had to do it the hard way. Neill, whom you may recognize from her Oscar speeches (she’s won three times) or her appearances on the Syfy makeup competition show Face Off (she has been a judge for 12 seasons), was one of three artists who designed the makeup for Tim Burton’s 1988 black-comedy fantasy film. Though Neill had a hand in every character from Winona Ryder’s quintessential goth teen Lydia to the inhabitants of the undead waiting room, her proudest contribution was transforming Michael Keaton into Beetlejuice. To celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary on March 30, Neill spoke with Yahoo Entertainment about how she created the smarmy, ghoulish, and altogether perfect face of everyone’s favorite ghost-for-hire.

Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Michael Keaton, Catherine O’Hara, Winona Ryder, and Jeffrey Jones in Beetlejuice (Photo: Warner Bros c/o Everett Collection)

“Tim had some drawings up on the wall, literally sketches of the character, which he did on all the movies that I’ve worked with him on,” Neill said of Burton, who famously draws his own concept art. “This particular character kind of looked like a derelict. So I copied the sketch; it was just up on a little corkboard in this crummy little trailer that everybody was working out of. We were sort of the stepchildren of Geffen and Warner Bros. on that film, because they didn’t think we were going to amount to anything.”

Beetlejuice makeup artist Ve Neill appearing as a judge on the Syfy special effects makeup competition Face Off (Photo: Nicole Wilder/Syfy/courtesy Everett Collection)

Neill took the drawing back to the makeup trailer, where she did her best to copy Burton’s sketch onto Keaton’s face. When she was done, “He just looked like a nasty old derelict,” Neill said. “He was filthy dirty. We put this pale yellow wig on him, and he looked weird and creepy. Really disturbing-looking.” She took some Polaroids for Burton, who had the same reaction she did: The makeup was far too “creepy-looking” for the film’s comedic trickster.

“So I went back and did it slightly differently,” said Neill. “He said, ‘No, it still isn’t right.’ I said, ‘OK — we want all these people in the afterlife to be kind of pastel-colored, right? Let me take him back to the trailer and do what I want to do.’ And he said, ‘OK, go for it.’”

Watch the trailer for ‘Beetlejuice’

  In addition to Burton’s directive that the undead characters be made up with pale colors (“like Necco Wafers,” said Neill), Neill received a specific request from Keaton: “Michael said, ‘You know, I really would like to not totally look like myself, three-dimensionally. I’d like to have like a broken nose and some bad teeth.’” She and makeup artist Steve LePore had one day to deliver a makeup that would please both the director and the star. And neither of them had a prosthetic nose on hand.

“I said to Steve, ‘Do you have any broken noses?’” Neill recalled. “And he said, ‘No, but I’ve got these swollen lips!’”

The artists glued the lips to Keaton’s face (“one on one side of his nose and one on the other”) to create a makeshift broken nose. LePore got to work making a set of decaying teeth, while Neill put together a color palate that she hoped would make Keaton look “kind of like a cartoon character.” For his skin, she selected a very pale, “almost white” shade of yellow. To mimic the eye circles from Burton’s original sketch, she combined dark brown and purple paints, “not totally mixed together but in conjunction with each other.” Hair stylist Yolanda Toussieng dyed Keaton’s wig a pale lime green.  And there was one more thing.

“I sent a PA off to the hobby store and I said, ‘Get me some crushed green foam like they use on model kits, for moss and stuff like that,’” said Neill. ‘I said, ‘We’ll put some moss in his hair. We’ll just make it look like he crawled out from underneath a rock.’ So I got this crushed green foam, and I painted up the areas where I wanted it to come out. I wanted it to look like it was creeping out from underneath his hairline and his neck and stuff. I just stuck in on wherever the glue was.”

Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, in the undead waiting room (Photo: Warner Bros c/o Everett Collection)

With the makeup, prosthetics, false teeth, and wig in place, Keaton checked out his reflection as Beetlejuice for the first time. “Michael loved it,” said Neill. “He just completely started going off, crazy-like.” Excited, she took pictures of the new look to Burton, who approved them in a typically understated way. “He said, ‘OK, that works,’” Neill recalled with a laugh. “So that’s how we created Beetlejuice. It was really by the seat of our pants.”

For her Beetlejuice makeup, Neill received her first Academy Award nomination and win. She also became Burton’s makeup artist of choice, working on all of his U.S. productions and receiving her third Oscar for 1994’s Ed Wood. (Her second was for designing Robin Williams’s Mrs. Doubtfire makeup.)  Beetlejuice was a film that brought her career to the next level, and Keaton’s makeup remains one of her favorites — though ironically, his character ended up occupying a lot less of her time than the “straight makeups” for actors like Baldwin and Davis. “You have to remember,” she says, “Michael Keaton only worked like, two-and-a-half weeks on that movie. Because he was never with the living, except for that one scene at the end.”

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Everything you didn’t know about ‘Beetlejuice,’ from the dark original ending to the cut characters

‘Beetlejuice’: Dick Cavett reveals his ‘genius’ idea for ‘Day-O!’ dinner party scene

The latest on the ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel

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Frank Oz didn't let Rian Johnson play with the real Yoda on 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' set

In the behind-the-scenes documentary The Director and the Jedi (included in the digital and Blu-ray editions of Star Wars: The Last Jedi), there’s a section showcasing the return of Yoda, played by Frank Oz. The veteran Muppets performer agreed to puppeteer the character for the first time since 1983’s Return of the Jedi. (In the prequels, Oz provided Yoda’s voice, but the character himself was a digital creation.) The documentary shows Last Jedi director Rian Johnson trying his hand at Yoda during rehearsals. As Oz explained to Yahoo Entertainment, that particular Yoda puppet was a stand-in for lighting purposes — because Oz wouldn’t have allowed Johnson, or anyone else, to put a hand in the actual Yoda.

“It wasn’t the [real] puppet, thank God… I wouldn’t have been happy,” Oz said during a Facebook Live interview about his film Muppet Guys Talking. “It’s like if you’re a golfer, you don’t want other people to use your clubs. Inside that character is very special to me. So it was okay to use the lighting one, but not the real one.”

Oz was initially surprised that Johnson wanted to use the puppet version of Yoda, since the CGI character is much simpler from a production standpoint. In addition to Oz, Yoda in The Last Jedi required three assistant puppeteers to work the body, arms, and animatronic facial expressions. But for Oz, who began his career playing characters like Miss Piggy and Cookie Monster, the experience was like coming home.

“It was a joy. It was fantastic. I love the challenge and I love the character,” Oz told Yahoo. “You know, the challenge is great… it’s four of us doing one character, and we have to rehearse one line of dialogue. It might take us three days. The specificity is incredible.”

Oz’s documentary ‘Muppet Guys Talking’ is available to stream at MuppetGuysTalking.com. Watch our full Facebook Live interview with Oz and producer Victoria Labalme below.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Will Yoda get his own ‘Star Wars’ movie? Frank Oz has a surprising answer

Even the author of the ‘Last Jedi’ novel doesn’t think he’ll stop the Rey debate

This is why Jim Henson was the greatest boss ever

Miss Piggy’s ‘a mess inside’: Frank Oz and puppeteer pals reveal Muppet secrets

[gwynnew]

No, you never saw a guest die on 'The Dick Cavett Show' (but it did happen)

Talk show host Dick Cavett, whose signature program The Dick Cavett Show aired on various channels from 1968 to 2007, is an entertainment legend. His guests included everyone from John Lennon to Groucho Marx, from Marlon Brando to Orson Welles, from Katherine Hepburn to Richard Pryor. Yet one of his most talked-about guests to this day is a lesser-known man named J.I. Rodale — because he died while taping the show. Though the 1971 episode never aired, Cavett, 81, told Yahoo Entertainment that he’s still approached by at least 20 people a year who are absolutely convinced that they’ve seen it. Watch Cavett tell the jaw-dropping story, with a bonus Katharine Hepburn impersonation, above.

As Cavettt notes, the great irony of Rodale’s death is that he was visiting the show as a health expert. (Which he was: Rodale founded a leading health and wellness publishing company and brought the idea of organic food to the masses.) After offering his host some asparagus boiled in urine (top that, Goop!) and boasting that he would “live to be a hundred,” 72-year-old Rodale made a strange sound. Cavett was at first confused, then horrified to realize that his guest wasn’t breathing. “I remember thinking, ‘Damn, I wish this wasn’t my show — I don’t know what to do,'” he told Yahoo. Despite the CPR efforts of a few interns, it was too late for Mr. Rodale.

Katharine Hepburn on ‘The Dick Cavett Show’ in 1973. When the actress first met the talk show host, she immediately asked him about ‘the man who died.’ (Photo: Everett Collection)

The episode (which also featured journalist Pete Hamill) didn’t finish taping and wasn’t aired. But the incident, which was subsequently written about by both Hamill and Cavett, has remained fixed in the popular imagination. Much like that nonexistent Sinbad genie movie that many people swear they’ve seen, Dick Cavett fans are adamant that they remember watching Rodale’s death on television.

“People come up to me still and say, ‘I’ll never forget the look on your face when that guy died,'” Cavett said. “I say, ‘Oh you were there?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, it never aired.’ And these people would pass a polygraph that they saw it.”

Dick Cavett hosting the original ‘Dick Cavett Show,’ which ran from 1968-1972. (Photo: Everett Collection)

Some would point to this as an example of “the Mandela effect,” a fringe theory that reality is constantly being altered, resulting in shared memories of things that “never happened.” But most would point to it as an example of the fallibility of memory — and the persuasive power of a story well-told.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

The Strange Case of the Sinbad Genie Movie That Doesn’t Exist — Even If People Insist They Saw It

Miss Piggy’s ‘a mess inside’: Frank Oz and puppeteer pals reveal Muppet secrets

Dana Carvey goes deep inside his controversial sketch show in ‘Too Funny to Fail’

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Watch Andrew Garfield go crazy for love in 'Under the Silver Lake' trailer

What do you do when you meet the woman of your dreams — and the next morning, she vanishes without a trace? That’s the starting point of Under the Silver Lake, an unconventional crime thriller in which a down-on-his-luck East L.A. resident (Andrew Garfield) falls down a rabbit hole of clues and codes searching for his mysterious one-night stand (Riley Keough). The frenzied quest takes him through the many hidden worlds and subcultures of his city. Is this all a paranoid delusion, or is he on the cusp of uncovering a real conspiracy?

Under the Silver Lake is director David Robert Mitchell’s first film since 2014’s sleeper hit It Follows, an unconventional coming-of-age story that played like a waking nightmare. Judging from the trailer, Under the Silver Lake shares some of the dreamlike elements of that horror film — but instead of horror, its major influences (according to the press release) are film noir classics like Kiss Me Deadly, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, and Mulholland Drive, all of which are also set in and around Los Angeles, Calif. Watch the trailer above.

Under the Silver Lake opens in theaters on June 22.

Watch the It Follows trailer:

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘It Follows’ Director David Robert Mitchell on His Surprise Horror Hit

Watch this Mr. Rogers documentary trailer and remember he taught you everything you know

How Steven Spielberg got his ‘Star Wars’ references in ‘Ready Player One’ after all

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Henry Cavill mourns his controversial mustache in hilarious Instagram tribute

Henry Cavill and KingStache at the ‘Justice League’ premiere on November 13, 2017. (Photo: Priscilla Grant/Everett Collection)

It’s the end of an era for Henry Cavill‘s facial hair. On Wednesday morning, the Superman actor posted an epic Instagram video (below) bidding adieu to his mustache — the very same mustache that cost Warner Bros. a reported $25 million to digitally remove from Justice League (because Cavill was doing his Superman reshoots at the same time he was playing a mustachioed villain in Mission: Impossible — Fallout). A bathrobe-clad Cavill delivers the deadpan tribute from his dressing room, where he appears newly clean-shaven.

#ShavedButNotForgotten

A post shared by Henry Cavill (@henrycavill) on Mar 21, 2018 at 2:10am PDT

“I know — it’s hard to recognize me without KingStache,” Cavill tells his followers (using the nickname he debuted for his mustache in February, when KingStache “announced” the new Mission: Impossible trailer on Instagram). “Sometimes I even have trouble recognizing myself.”

“It’s hard for me to admit: this is not CGI,” the actor continues. “He’s really gone. I’ll tell you this though: I will remember him. Always.”

That introduction is followed by a montage of mustache-centric selfies and screenshots, to the strains of Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.” Hilariously, the montage includes a still from Justice League, in which KingStache is replaced by a freakish CG upper lip.

Cavill’s perfect eulogy is missing just one thing: footage of the actual shaving process (which country star Dierks Bentley included in his own mustache memorial Insta, below). But between those two videos, the celebrity mustache memorial video is just one Instagram away from being a trend. Tom Selleck, the ball’s in your court.

it’s the end of the road… for now

A post shared by Dierks Bentley (@dierksbentley) on Feb 14, 2018 at 12:27pm PST

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Fans are finding Henry Cavill’s moustache removal in ‘Justice League’ hilarious

Henry Cavill vs. Tom Selleck: Who wore the mustache better?

Celeb couples who comment on each other’s Instagram posts

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Gwyneth Paltrow: Harvey Weinstein 'had an incredible gift for finding talent'

Gwyneth Paltrow is not ready to write off Harvey Weinstein completely. The actress, who rose to stardom with lead roles in the Weinstein-produced films Emma and Shakespeare in Love, is one of many actresses who has come forward with stories of being sexually harassed by the producer. On Sunday, Paltrow told the audience at the Sun Valley Film Festival that she was “still trying to process” her experience — and added that Weinstein’s accomplishments don’t deserve to be forgotten in the midst of the scandal.

“Harvey Weinstein had an incredible gift for finding talent, for supporting great screenplays, great actors,” said Paltrow, as quoted in Idaho’s Eye on Sun Valley. “We tend to throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s far more complicated than that.”

Gwyneth Paltrow at the Sun Valley Film Festival. (Photo: Getty Images/Courtesy Sun Valley Film) 

“I’m proud of the work that I did during that time,” she continued. “Art remains art, and I’m proud of the art that I put in the world then.”

Weinstein’s company, Miramax, produced some of the most acclaimed films of the 1990s and 2000s, including Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Amelie, and Chicago. However, more than 80 women have now alleged that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them during these decades, often with the result that their careers were derailed by the trauma or they were blacklisted for refusing his advances.

Paltrow shared her own story with the New York Times in October, saying that Weinstein asked her to go to his bedroom for a massage during a meeting when she was 22 years old. The actress (who declined) said she told her then-boyfriend, Brad Pitt, about the incident, after which Pitt confronted the producer and told him not to touch Paltrow again. Weinstein was furious and told Paltrow never to tell anyone else what had happened. “I thought he was going to fire me [from Emma],” Paltrow told the Times. “He screamed at me for a long time. It was brutal.”

Paltrow has also said that Weinstein boasted about having sex with her in order to persuade aspiring actresses to sleep with him. “He’s not the first person to lie about sleeping with someone,” she told the Times. “But he used the lie as an assault weapon.”

Weinstein has denied all accusations of sexual assault. He is currently under investigation by the district attorneys of Los Angeles County and Manhattan. On Tuesday, his current film studio, the Weinstein Company, filed for bankruptcy and terminated all nondisclosure agreements that may have prevented victims from coming forward.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

The many women who have accused producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct

Gwyneth Paltrow has no regrets about sharing Harvey Weinstein story

Matt Damon admits he knew Gwyneth Paltrow was harassed by Harvey Weinstein

[gwynnew]

Watch this Mr. Rogers documentary trailer and remember he taught you everything you know

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood for kids who grew up watching PBS. In honor of the late Fred Rogers’s 90th birthday, Focus Features has released a trailer for Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a documentary about the life and work of the beloved children’s television host. Long before he was a meme or his puppet creation Daniel Tiger had a television show of his own, Rogers helmed the long-running, low-budget program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Directed by Morgan Neville, who won an Oscar for the similarly feel-good documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, the film explores Mr. Rogers’s quietly revolutionary philosophy of educating children with compassion and honesty.

“I always felt I didn’t need to put on a funny hat or jump through a hoop to have a relationship with a child,” says the entertainer, whose show aired on public television for over three decades and nearly a thousand episodes. Since Mister Rogers‘ Neighborhood premiered in 1968, a year of political and culture upheaval, its host addressed such difficult topics as death (“What does assassination mean?” asks a child in a clip), divorce, and segregation. African-American actor Francois Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons for 25 years, explains in an interview that he and Fred shared a kiddie pool on the air — a direct response from Rogers to the segregation of American swimming pools. “My being on the program was a statement for Fred,” he says.

And all of this in a show that battled conventional wisdom at every turn. “If you take all of the elements that make good television and do the opposite, you have Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” says producer Margy Whitmer. Watch the trailer above.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? opens in theaters this summer.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

This is why Jim Henson was the greatest boss ever

See how Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the Notorious RBG in trailer for new doc

First look at Winnie the Pooh’s live-action origin story in Disney’s ‘Christopher Robin’ teaser

[gwynnew]

This is why Jim Henson was the greatest boss ever

Jim Henson with Kermit the Frog in 1980 (Photo: Everett Collection)

Frank Oz’s new documentary Muppet Guys Talking gathers five of the original Muppet performers for a funny, revealing conversation about their work with Jim Henson’s creations. In part, Oz made the film to honor the Muppets’ visionary founder, with whom he worked closely from 1963 until Henson’s death in 1990. It was Henson who brought this group together: Fran Brill (Prairie Dawn, Zoe) and the late Jerry Nelson (Count von Count, Mr. Snuffleupagus) began working with the Muppets on the first season of Sesame Street. Dave Goelz (Gonzo, Bunson Honeydew) was an original performer on The Muppet Show. Bill Barretta (Pepe the King Prawn, Bobo the Bear) joined up with the Muppets in 1991, but now plays several of the characters Henson originated, including Rowlf the Dog and the Swedish Chef. And of course, Oz was Henson’s right-hand man (sometimes literally), performing Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Bert, and Cookie Monster, among others, before moving on to his own directorial career.

In Muppet Guys Talking, conceived and produced by Oz’s wife Victoria Labalme, the puppeteers’ friendly banter and storytelling illuminates Henson’s unique work and life philosophy, what they describe as a “culture of generosity” and a spirit of “joyous competition.” In Part 1 of our conversation with the “Muppet guys,” Yahoo Entertainment went in-depth with the performers about creating their characters and risking life and limb for the Muppets. In Part 2, Oz, Goelz, Brill, and Barretta share their memories of working with best-ever boss Henson, speculate on how he created unforgettable characters like Kermit, and reveal the Jim Henson philosophies that have stayed with them all their lives.

Yahoo Entertainment: Those of you who saw Jim Henson’s creative process up close, what was that like?

Dave Goelz: Jim, he was just fluid and natural in everything he did. Everything seemed to come easily for him. His handwriting was so fluid! We’d be on the set and he’d have to write down a couple of notes real quick about something we were going to do, and my handwriting would get all crumpled and my hand would spasm and he would just be flowing. Everything he did was just with great ease and grace.

Frank Oz: After Dark Crystal we got a review, in People magazine I think, and I framed it for Jim. It said something like, “Jim Henson’s imagination is like lava just flowing down a hill.” And it’s true.

Goelz: It’s the weirdest paradox because he worked so hard. He put in more work, more hours, more strain than anybody else, but it was an effortless process for him. It looked effortless.

Rowlf the Dog, performed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, on ‘The Jimmy Dean Show’ in 1964.

Did you get a sense of his characters developing over time, like Kermit?

Oz: Kermit, absolutely. I remember we were doing The Jimmy Dean Show, that’s when I came in 1963, and the real star was Rowlf the Dog. Kermit was totally unknown. He wasn’t even a frog, he was just a thing. And I remember Jim was trying to introduce Kermit into the second year, and he took this thing out, and they reacted, “Ughh! God, no, no.” And he put him away. So at that point he was a complete non-entity. And then it took all this time and became who he was, and also became part of what was in Jim.

Goelz: For the people who are reading this: Frank accompanied that last speech with a gesture where he put his hands together like they were clapping, but with his fingers spread, and he slid it across the whole table to show the process he was talking about.

Oz: I really don’t know how Jim developed characters. Do you guys know? I have no idea.

Goelz: He didn’t talk about it.

Literal male chauvinist pig Link Hogthrob, performed by Jim Henson, in a collection of “Pigs in Space” sketches from ‘The Muppet Show.’  Miss Piggy is performed by Frank Oz, and Dr. Strangepork by the late Jerry Nelson.

Oz: I don’t think he even developed characters. They just were there. I think he just got a funny idea in his head. Like Dr. Teeth — he thought, “It would be funny to do this,” and he just was it. Like Link Hogthrob, who I loved. He probably thought it was really funny to have this stupid male pig being macho. But it was, “Oh it’s a funny idea, that’s what I’m going to do��� — and then that’s probably what he did.

Goelz: Yeah, he kept it simple. I remember I was there [working in the Muppet workshop] when the Link puppet was being built, and we all chipped in on ideas. He had chest hair but we decided it was a merkin, it was a rug. And we were picking out gold chains for him to wear because he was kind of a chauvinist. Everybody was on the same train, you know? Jim would come every day and hear these ideas and he’d decide to include them.

Oz: But his characters were more fully formed than ours — I mean mine, certainly — right away. It’s not that they traveled further necessarily, but they were more immediately defined.

Bill Barretta: Do you think he developed characters as he was maybe drawing or designing them? Like in his mind, he’s hearing their voices as he’s drawing?

Oz: I think so. Also Dr. Teeth is like Dr. John, that’s where it came from, and so he had a real great model for that.

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem perform “Tenderly” on ‘The Muppet Show.’ Dr. Teeth was originated by Jim Henson and is now performed by Bill Barretta. 

I want to ask all of you, what’s something that Jim gave you that you carry with you still?

Fran Brill: I have said this before, but he gave me the idea of just accepting whatever disaster’s going on in your life. Instead of fighting it, if you have no control over it, to just go “that’s the way it is” and let it happen. Like being stuck in a cab in traffic and knowing you’re going to miss your airplane. You could get terribly agitated, and he just sort of seemed to go, “Well, can’t do anything about it.” And that was like the opposite of what my parents would do. So I have tried to absorb that into my life and to just sort of roll with things a lot more.

Oz: Part of the reason Bert and Ernie worked is because Jim flowed with the river. I fought against the river. And to a degree I still do, and I enjoy it! But much less so because of —

Brill: For the readers, he just pointed to his wife Victoria.

Bert and Ernie, performed by Frank Oz and Jim Henson, on ‘Sesame Street.’

Oz: I also learned, like Franny, to accept more. If something goes wrong, don’t scream and yell, just accept it and move on with the next thing. It’s amazing. I’ve told this story before, but this is how fatalistic he was and how he accepted things: We were in an airplane together, as we were many, many times. He was in the window seat and I was next to him. He was working. And I looked out, and the engine was on fire. And I said, “Jim, the engine’s on fire!” He said, “Oh, yeah.” And he kept on working. But that was Jim. He would just say, “Whatever happens, it’ll be taken care of.”

Brill: He must have gotten that from his parents, don’t you think? Though he did do a lot of things like EST and meditation.

Oz: Towards the end of his life he was meditating a lot.

Brill: Yeah. I think he was always exploring things and he would take pieces of that kind of thinking, or a piece from somewhere else, and always trying to make himself better, perhaps? Or more aware?

Oz: Also the sense of work ethic. I mean all of us worked like hell.

Brill: “Jim Henson hours.”

Oz: And we worked and worked really hard for long hours, and prior to meeting Jim I probably would have complained. No complaints with Jim because he worked harder than us. And I think I learned a great work ethic from him. Many, many more things, too.

Director Frank Oz and producer, director, and screenwriter Jim Henson on the set of ‘The Dark Crystal,’ 1982 (Photo: Everett Collection)

Goelz: There are so many things. Empathy, I think empathy.

Brill: Enormous empathy.

Goelz: He was a great influence on all of us. And it’s not just us at the table, it’s everybody who worked for him: the workshop, the licensing people, the marketing people, the publishing people, the creature shop people. Everybody in the company was influenced by him. We had a reunion a few years ago where hundreds of people showed up, and it could be anybody that we worked with — so anybody on any of our crews, or in the company. And the refrain that you heard all evening from everybody, even people who had only worked there for a year, was, “That was the best job I ever had.” The culture was just so joyous. And in a way, for all of us who worked on Muppet Guys Talking, it’s a re-visitation of that.

Oz: And Jim legitimately — unless you did something bad to him like betrayed him or something — he loved people. He’d play with us, and he’d go into the workshop and he’d put his arm around people, sincerely, not like he was managing people. He was really fascinated. And I remember many times going into a situation where there were a lot of people and there was Jim Henson, and they wanted to talk to him. And he’d just talk to anybody. I’d have to pretend — “Hey Jim, we’ve got that meeting? You know, we gotta go?” He’d just keep on talking, to strangers, to anybody.

Goelz: But he wasn’t one of those people who just talks. It was always a real authentic exchange.

Oz: When I knew him for all those years, he never did small talk, ever. He always talked about projects, his family, excitement, what he planned to do — those were things he talked about. Never politics, never small talk, never. Never gossip, ever.

A scene from ‘The Dark Crystal’ (1982), directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz.

Goelz: You know what we forgot to mention? We forgot this in the movie, in all the interviews so far — is what Frank said at the London memorial for him. You did a little piece and you said he was an appreciator. And he really was. He appreciated his life, he appreciated everything around him, he loved nature, he felt like he was a part of it all. He loved people, he loved a variety of people, all different sorts. He loved work, he loved having pie —

Oz: He loved desserts.

Goelz: And he was so skinny! That was probably the only bad thing about him.

Brill: He was always the most authentically himself, you know? I don’t think he ever pretended to be anything other than who he genuinely was.

Oz: And never threw his weight around. Ever.

Goelz: It was interesting to go into a new shooting situation with Jim because the crew would look at this modest, quiet person who didn’t throw his weight around and think, “Gee, he must not know much about what’s going on.” And then slowly over a week or two, the lighting guy would realize that Jim had just asked for a halo light and that Jim knew exactly what the lighting guy was doing. He would do the same thing with all the other departments. He would just say, “Hmm, a dolly shot here would be really nice.”

A scene from ‘The Muppet Movie,’ 1979 (Photo: Everett Collection)

Oz: Jim knew more about television than anybody I ever knew.

Goelz: He knew so much. And then gradually the crew went like, “Oh, whoa, this is not the usual expert who lets you know.”

Oz: And of course, he looked like a beatnik. When [TV producer and educator] Joan Cooney was trying to create Sesame Street, they had a large meeting with people, all the educators and everything, and they’d invited Jim. But Jim always had the beard, the leather jacket, the leather hat. And Joan Cooney had never met him. And she saw him. That was during the Weathermen. And she thought he was there to kill them. And they said, that’s Jim Henson!

Goelz: And [Sesame Street producer] Jon Stone had said, when they talked about the idea of having puppets on Sesame: If we can’t get Jim Henson, we won’t have puppets.

Barretta: Imagine what that show would have been like if Jim had said no.

Victoria Labalme: Dave, you said something I’ve never heard before that really moved me, which is the Chip character concept of “I’ll figure it out.” And I think there’s a theme of that for Jim. That he trusted people to figure it out, he believed in people’s capabilities, he would trust that if he lost his hands he would figure out a new career — there was just this faith in people and life, and a lack of pressure that Fran has talked so beautifully about. And also this sense that I think for a lot of people that are out there, many of the Muppets fans — they may feel that there’s a part of themselves that’s not enough. And I think in the expression of these characters and their vulnerabilities, they feel accepted.

‘The Great Muppet Caper’ producer David Lazer, Kermit the Frog, director Jim Henson, producer Frank Oz, bottom: Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, 1981. (Photo: Universal Pictures/ Everett Collection)

Oz: It’s interesting. As a director when I do a movie, I have a sense of what it is, but I don’t know how to do it. I know what it is, but I don’t know how to get there. And I ask people. But those are normal movies. With Jim, like Dark Crystal? He had this incredible idea, but he had to go forward into the abyss. This had never been done before. He just leapt into it without having the money, without knowing how to do stuff. It was quite something. Most people make the mistake of thinking they can’t go forward unless they know what they’re doing, and that’s a big mistake. And Jim of course was the opposite. He went forward and as he went on he learned.

Goelz: He trusted that he would figure it out and we would figure it out. It was an enormous trust.

A scene from Pixar’s ‘Monsters Inc.’ featuring Frank Oz as the voice of Randall’s assistant Fungus. 

Oz: We have great friends in Pixar, but I remember going to Pixar and doing a question-and-answer about 20 years ago. And it was quite something, because they said that the Muppets and the Muppet humor is what guided them. Which is extraordinary.

Goelz: It’s still that way, too. They still have a reverence. I’ve done a couple of talks there myself and both times people have come up to me and described that this was their germination that made them go into that field.

Oz: It’s amazing, all the people who are so touched by us. We’re just in a room doing our work and being very disciplined, very professional, working very hard with each other, and then somehow we affect all these people. I have no idea how. More people since I’ve joined Twitter have told me things that I never knew about. It’s extraordinary.

Labalme: As he said in the movie, Jim wanted to make the world a better place. And he certainly did.

Goelz: But we need a booster shot.

Barretta: I can tell you what Jim gave me: these people that I work with and these friends that I have.

Read Part 1 of this interview.

‘Muppet Guys Talking’ is available to stream exclusively at MuppetGuysTalking.com.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas’ turns 40: An oral history of Jim Henson’s holiday Muppet musical

Summer of ’86: How ‘Labyrinth’ Achieved Peak Practical Effects

Miss Piggy’s ‘a mess inside’: Frank Oz and puppeteer pals reveal Muppet secrets

[gwynnew]

Mark Hamill's drunk cameo, the hidden nude scene, and other secrets of 'The Last Jedi' deleted scenes

Warwick Davis’s character in the bathhouse scene (screen grab from Star Wars: The Last Jedi digital extras/Lucasfilm)

This week’s digital release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi gives viewers access to hours of deleted scenes — including several shots that Industrial Light and Magic’s Stephen Aplin found “heartbreaking” to leave on the cutting-room floor. Aplin, the global animation supervisor, had a hand in every animated effect in Rian Johnson’s film. But one of the things he worked the most closely on in his London office was the fathier chase. In the finished film, Finn (John Boyega) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) jump on one of the backs of the horse-like creatures and lead their herd through the resorts of Canto Bight. As they flee to the beach, the fathiers destroy the casino — but originally, they also crashed through the roof of a bathhouse, sending startled aliens (including a naked, one-eyed creature played by Star Wars stalwart Warwick Davis) flying. As Aplin told Yahoo Entertainment, that extended sequence, which can be seen on the digital and Blu-ray editions, was one of the most time-consuming for his team. On the plus side, a few of his favorite shots did make the final cut — including an animated character contributed by Mark Hamill during his off-hours from playing Luke Skywalker. In a conversation with Yahoo, Aplin talked about the process of animating the fathier chase, how it felt to see his work cut down for the finished film, and where to spot Hamill’s secret cameo.

When it came to the Canto Bight chase sequence, the first challenge for Aplin’s team was designing the mythical fathiers. “We studied so many different quadrupeds,” he told Yahoo. “We started out with big cats, we studied dogs, we studied horses. We knew this thing had to run at speeds of up to 50 miles an hour, but then it had to be kind of dexterous to navigate the alleyways of Dubrovnik [where the Canto Bight scenes were shot] and and to be smashing up tables. So there was no one creature we could look at… But what we found is that horses got us the closest.”

Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) and Finn (John Boyega) at the Canto Bight casino in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Photo: Lucasfilm)

Using horses as a starting point, the animation team created “run cycles” to capture the fathiers’ movements during the chase, a “library of motion” that could be applied to up to 30 creatures in one shot. Then they found a game-changing piece of reference footage: video of a moose running along a highway, shot by someone in a moving car.  “It had this extra weight that the horse footage that we had found just didn’t have,” Aplin marveled. “It had all this secondary motion. It was a lot more muscular. And it fit our creatures a little bit better.” The animators applied those moose qualities into some of the fathers. For the casino-destroying footage, they looked to videos of bulls.

When the creature design was in place, the animation department pre-visualized the entire sequence. After the location shoot in Croatia was over, they did a post-visualization process to incorporate the live-action shots of Tran and Boyega riding their fathier. Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould, who were responsible for creatures and other practical effects, designed a mechanized fathier for that purpose. “It was nicknamed the fathier-tron,” said Aplin. “And the actors could sit upon that and it would give a very natural motion, which we would then be able to take the footage of them being shot riding that, and plug those plates of the actors back onto our CG fathier.”

Though the finished chase sequence does appear in the film, it was downsized from the original version. “There was so much work that went into it, and once we got out of the city and were going up the clifftops and there’s the whole bathhouse piece of the sequence — it was heartbreaking when bits and pieces got cut!” said Aplin. “But at the same time you know it’s for the greater good, you know the film needs to move at a certain clip, and you hope that someone will see it on the DVD extras.”

Not only do the digital and Blu-ray extras include the chase scene, they also feature additional footage of the casino guests. The wild assortment of aliens, said Aplin, was largely achieved without CG. “Honestly, cards on the table: That was mostly Neal Scanlan and his practical puppet team,” he said. “We did one fully digital character in there, which was the little drunk, old, frog-looking guy who starts putting the money in BB-8.”

Dobbu Scay, right, played in motion capture by Mark Hamill (screen grab from The Last Jedi/Lucasfilm)

That character, named Dobbu Scay, was played by Hamill. “We had Mark Hamill had put his hand up and said, ‘I want to try a little bit of this motion capture,’” said Aplin. The initial shot of Dobbu drunkenly putting coins in BB-8 was based on Hamill’s motion capture performance, as was the later shot in which Dobbu is showered with coins. “Rian actually was guiding him and sitting on the floor with him and pretending to throw money in the air,” he recalled. “So they found that moment together and that’s what we honed in on.”

As for Davis’s cameo, that can be seen in both the extended chase scene and the feature-length documentary The Director and the Jedi, which shows the actor (who, as a child, played Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi and has appeared as various aliens in subsequent films) getting into his character’s full-body rubber suit. (“What we do for the entertainment of millions of people around the world!” he quips.)

Warwick Davis with his character in a scene from the documentary The Director and the Jedi, included in the digital edition of The Last Jedi (screen grab/Lucasfilm)

Aplin himself appears in one of the extras, a featurette about the process of animating Supreme Leader Snoke, featuring original footage of Andy Serkis’ motion-capture performance. Does Aplin feel conflicted about letting the audience behind the curtain? On the contrary.

“I think it’s great. Firstly, Andy is the soul of that performance,” he said. “He’s not just the voice; there are things he did which make that character. But I think it also helps to educate an audience to see how much work goes on, on top of what the initial performer did… And especially when we get into the close-up action of Snoke where we’ve added a lot of micro-expression detail, which you couldn’t pick up quite so much with Andy’s performance. Because Andy’s very fleshy. He’s got this great malleable face, and Snoke is this skull with skin pulled taut over it. So you get a different performance straightaway from the quality of the skin, but that also gives you the ability to go in, with these big eyes that Snoke had, that are a weird distance apart. And you can just start adding little bits and pieces here and there, but always coming back to the foundation of Andy’s performance.”

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is available digitally now and comes to Blu-ray on March 27.

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Miss Piggy's 'a mess inside': Frank Oz and puppeteer pals reveal Muppet secrets

Frank Oz poses with Muppets Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy in August 1977. (Photo: Mirrorpix/Courtesy Everett Collection)

A conversation with the “Muppet guys” is not like a conversation with other people. During a roundtable interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Fran Brill, and Bill Barretta spoke thoughtfully and fondly about their experiences creating and performing Jim Henson’s Muppets. At the same time, these friends speak a language all their own, a playful cacophony of gestures, jokes, character voices, one-upmanship, and riffs on their shared memories. It’s something that really needs to be experienced to be understood — but you don’t have to take my word for it.

Oz’s documentary Muppet Guys Talking (available March 16 exclusively at MuppetGuysTalking.com) gives Muppet fans the chance to pull up a chair and enjoy a casual, intimate conversation between the longtime colleagues. The film’s participants include director Oz (performer of Fozzie Bear, Bert, Cookie Monster, Missy Piggy, Animal, Grover), who was Henson’s closest collaborator during his lifetime; Goelz (The Great Gonzo, Bunsen Honeydew, Traveling Matt, Boober Fraggle, Beauregard), who started out as a puppet maker and became a principal performer; Brill (Prairie Dawn, Zoe, Little Bird), one of the few original female performers on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show; Barretta (Pepe the King Prawn, Bobo the Bear, Big Mean Carl), who began performing with the Muppets in the ‘90s and now plays several of Henson’s characters, including Rowlf and Dr. Teeth; and Jerry Nelson (Count von Count, Snuffleupagus, Emmett Otter, Robin), a longtime Muppeteer who died in 2012 after a long illness. Muppet Guys Talking was produced and conceived by Oz’s wife Victoria Labalme, who saw in the Muppet performers’ relationship something that deserved to be captured on film.

Watch a trailer for ‘Muppet Guys Talking.’

In the first part of our interview with the Muppet guys, the four performers reveal their secrets for getting into character, including what they’re doing underneath the floorboards while the Muppets are above their heads. Oz tells us the one word he needs to say to become Bert, and Baretta explains the facial expression that makes the difference between Dr. Teeth and Rowlf.

The performers also talk about how their characters have changed over time, particularly Miss Piggy, who Frank describes as “such a mess inside.” Brill speaks about her experience being the only woman working on the Muppets, occasionally taking on characters who were “kind of chauvinistic… but funny.” The friends discuss the hazardous situations they sometimes put themselves in for the sake of the Muppets, whether it was Oz lighting his arm on fire for a commercial or Goelz working his Fraggle Rock character from inside a landfill. Finally, Oz details the perfectionism that made him put his friends “through hell” on Muppets Take Manhattan — and opens up about how he used to sabotage Sesame Street takes.

Read on for the full conversation and stay tuned for Part 2, in which the Muppet guys share their memories of Jim Henson.

Yahoo Entertainment: Tell me, Frank and Victoria, what made you want to make this particular film with these particular people.

Frank Oz: I don’t know anybody else!

Dave Goelz: He has no other friends.

Fran Brill: Certainly no one who would agree to do it.

Oz: It was all because of Victoria. I wanted to do it in the beginning because I wanted to give these guys their due — people don’t know these guys.  But then Victoria made me realize there was a larger reason.

Victoria Labalme: I think it’s very rare in today’s society to see this kind of spirit of collaboration, of playfulness, of professionalism mixed with fun, of a sense of real respect and listening to each other and bringing the best out in each other. And I thought that should be shared with the world.

Goelz: Well yeah, we’re living in a cynical time here. The whole culture is more cynical than it was then. And I think part of wanting to do this is to talk about that innocence and the way that it brings out more in people, creates a safe environment and spurs creativity. And life is better.

The ‘Muppet Guys Talking’ poster features the hands of performers Bill Barretta, Fran Brill, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, and Frank Oz (Photo: Vibrant Mud)

The Muppet Guys Talking poster is just your hands, in position as if you’re working puppets. When I hold up my hand, it’s just a hand. But when you do it, the hand is alive. What are you thinking when you hold up that hand? 

Oz: As soon as I put my hand up, I’m observing.

Brill: Waiting.

Barretta: Listening.

You also talked a little in the movie about how when you have the puppet up top and you’re beneath the floorboards, you do a lot of overacting to create small reactions in the puppet. Are there habits you have with the characters that nobody sees, movements with your face or body while you’re under the shot?

Goelz: Sure, we make these ridiculous expressions. One of my favorite things to do is always to stand in front of Frank’s monitor and mirror his face.

Oz: I wouldn’t want people watching me, because then I’m self-conscious and I can’t perform.

Goelz: That’s exactly what used to happen. I would mirror your expression and you would lose it, and we’d have to do another take.

Dr. Teeth, performed by Jim Henson, sings “Can You Picture That?” with The Electric Mayhem in ‘The Muppet Movie’ (1979). Drummer Animal was performed by Frank Oz, bassist Floyd by Jerry Nelson, and saxophonist Zoot by Dave Goelz. 

Barretta: One thing I learned, actually — when I first started doing Dr. Teeth, Dave brought up that when he would watch Jim perform Dr. Teeth, he would do this [grimace smiles] kind of through his teeth.

Goelz: As much of a smile as he could get. He would just strain at it.

Barretta: And it also creates a sound quality that’s different from a character with a similar voice, like Rowlf.

Oz: Also it’s important physically. Animal is always [grinning and doing Animal] “wiiiide”, so I gotta be always wide. It depends on the size of the mouth.

Goelz: And that comes from the puppet.

Zoe, performed by Fran Brill, was introduced to ‘Sesame Street’ in 1993.

Brill: With Zoe, she was designed like a football, with a very wide mouth, so I tried to do a Carol Channing thing — [Carol Channing voice] “because Carol Channing talks like that” — and I tried, and I tried, and it just was very forced and didn’t feel like it was coming from me. But I think I usually take my cue from, what does that puppet look like and what is the mouth doing?

Barretta: Also, I think a lot of times we’re using our arms to make them walk and move in a certain way. I walk a lot in place. Like if I’m doing Bobo, you know, [does Bobo, walking in place] : when I’m walking I kind of do this thing under there, because he’s very stiff in his neck and then I turn this way a little bit — but my whole body is doing it down there, hoping it translates.

Goelz: Yeah, Bobo can’t turn his head.

Barretta: [Doing Bobo] “What’s goin’ on back there?”

Goelz: It’s a weakness in the puppet that becomes a strength in the character. That limitation is fun.

Brill: Well said.

Bobo the Bear, performed by Bill Barretta, and Beauregard, performed by Goelz, in a ‘Muppet Musings’ sketch from 2011.

Frank, you talk in the film about having a “lock” for the character, a certain sound that you make to get into Grover. Is that something that you have for all of your characters? 

Oz:  I haven’t worked with them for so many years, but I did with Grover, I did with Bert —

Goelz: What was Bert’s?

Brill: I was just going to ask.

Oz:  Yelling “Ernie” like Costello would be yelling for Abbott. [As Bert] “Ernieeee!” 

Bert, originally performed by Oz, and Ernie, originally performed by Jim Henson, on ‘Sesame Street.’

Is that something the rest of you do or did?

Barretta: I growl for Dr. Teeth a little bit.

Oz:  You do that normally anyway.

Goelz: I think it happens in the early stages of a character more than later, because later it’s reflexive. A couple years ago I did a character, a new one called Chip the IT Guy, and I had a little key phrase for him. It was [as Chip]  “I’ll figure it out.” And I always went back to that when I was trying to figure out who the heck he was, for the whole season I was trying to develop the character. And I was also trying to surprise myself all the time. There were a lot of times when he was startled by somebody and he had to react, and I made a point of not planning it and just doing something on the spur of the moment. As opposed to creating the character in my head, I just thought, what would happen if I just try to live it? And make a stupid reaction, a ridiculous reaction, and not know what it’s going to be? I had a lot of fun doing that.

Chip the IT Guy, performed by Goelz, introduces himself on the half-hour ABC comedy ‘The Muppets’ (2015-2016).

Brill: I think as soon as I get my hand in a puppet that I do all the time, and I see her on camera, everything is right there immediately: the voice, who she is, how she stands, everything. With a new character, I’m sort of learning as I do it. Like waiting for the puppet to tell me okay, she stands like this. It’s sort of discovering who she is at that moment. I think it just becomes instinct, like most jobs after a while.

Dave Goelz, Fran Brill, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and Bill Barretta in a still from ‘Muppet Guys Talking’ (Photo: Vibrant Mud)

The characters that all of you have played for a long time – do you find that those characters have changed with you?

Brill: Prairie Dawn was my first real principal character. I was handed this little puppet, and she was supposed to be very, very sweet. But that was very boring to me, to just be very passive and sweet all the time. So she got a little stronger over the years. But with Zoe, there was nothing. No drawing. They just wanted somebody who would be a buddy of Elmo. And that was much more difficult, because there was nothing to look at visually for me where I would come up with a character. But I went around and I watched other three-year-olds, because they wanted her to be three, and seeing how they acted, how they moved, how they talked, and came up with some catchphrases that at least gave me some basis, like [as Zoe] “Don’t joke me!” But they both changed, of course. The more I got to know who they were, the more they changed, if that makes any sense.

Prairie Dawn, performed by Brill, on ‘Sesame Street.’

Barretta: Pepe was written at first — he was supposed to be this guy who just wanted to be in show business but had a language barrier. But then over time, I don’t know how it happened, he just became this kind of ladies’ prawn, you know? He was very much into the women. And then women seemed to respond to him for whatever reason.

Brill: The accent. Has to be the Latin accent.

Pepe the King Prawn, performed by Barretta, in scenes from ‘Muppets in Space’ (1999)

Barretta: And I think he’s blunt, and he cuts through a lot of the crap. Now he’s much more confident and just loves his life, because he’s got women all over the world. He can go to any city and he has a place to stay. So yeah, he changed over time.

Goelz: We’ve done some of these characters for a long time, it’s like 40 years, so there’s also the element of trying to keep them interesting. And keeping them interesting to us means finding new wrinkles, new nuances to their character. With Bunsen Honeydew, he started out to be kind of a guy who misses the big picture because he’s so specific, and over the years I’ve added a lot of joy to him. He just loves the specificity so much, that I find ways to amuse myself with that while we’re shooting things.

Bunsen Honeydew, performed by Goelz, in a Muppet Labs sketch from ‘The Muppet Show’ (1976-1981).

If I were thinking about, from a viewer’s perspective, which Muppet changed the most over time, I would say Miss Piggy. 

Oz: Yeah, probably so. But Piggy is a different situation. I’ve said this before: her beginnings were in the women’s liberation movement, just by accident. And I don’t consciously change things, but the characters don’t interact with the world — I interact with my world. And I don’t interact in such a way where I say, “Oh, I’ve got to put that in my character.” I think because of the zeitgeist, it just kind of happens without me knowing it. But Piggy’s a little different. Piggy is such a mess inside, that I think as the years go on, she gets more and more emotional baggage. And that’s mainly why she changes. She keeps being rejected by the frog. She keeps trying and cannot do the things that she wants to, like tell jokes or dance. So I think she has this emotional baggage that hurts her more and more and more, and as a result she covers more and more and more. That’s what I think. 

There’s something Dave says in the film, and, Frank, you used it in the trailer: “To create a character, I find a flaw in myself, amplify it, and try to make it lovable.”

Oz:  And by the way, Muppet Guys Talking is great because I never knew that! We found out about these things we didn’t know.

Goelz: I have an endless supply of characters.

Well it’s interesting because you think of these characters as lovable, but hearing you guys talk, some of them really come from this place of pain. 

Oz: If not pain, seriousness. If you’re coming from a funny place, you’re screwed. It’ll never be funny.

Barretta: For me they have to be rooted in reality first, grounded so that they’re real to me. And then things can come on top of that to make them silly or fun or crazy. And actually, Frank gave me a note — and I don’t remember when it was, but Frank had told me to be very specific about the character’s background, where they come from, where they live, what kind of jobs they’ve had. Just very, very specific things about their life to create that backstory that only you need to know. But it feeds opportunities or scenes or whatever you’re doing with them.

Oz: And there are characters like Animal who’s just two-dimensional.

Barretta: Carl is one who doesn’t change or grow. 

Big Mean Carl, performed by Barretta, on ‘Muppets Tonight’ (1996).

Fran, I want to ask you about being a woman —

Oz:  Me?

Brill: You cannot answer that question!

Oz: I apologize, I’m sorry.

It’s funny that Frank jumped in because as Miss Piggy, he was the main female character on the Muppets. 

Goelz: Had to have it all.

So this was pretty much the norm when I was growing up: I’d watch shows and most of the characters would be boys, who were defined by different traits — the smart one, the silly one, the leader — and then there’d be one girl who was defined by being the girl. The Muppets certainly have more nuance than that, but they also were a group of characters with very few women and very few female puppeteers. So Fran, what was it like for you coming into that dynamic?

Brill: It honestly never occurred to me that, oh, I’m the only female here. It really didn’t. They just needed a girl, so I just became another person who became a puppeteer who was doing the female [characters]. I didn’t feel a weight of responsibility of being all things to all women or anything like that. I remember, I guess it was on Muppet Show, where I had to be one of these —  I call them the “ta-da women,” who go “Ta-daaa!” And I thought, yeah, this is kind of chauvinistic, it may not be PC — but it was a funny character. And they dressed her kind of sexy or whatever, and all she ever did was go, “Ta-daaa!” But I had a lot of fun doing that kind of a character. You can do so much with puppets that you can’t really do as an adult or an actress. You can get away with murder just being as stupid as you possibly can be, because it amuses you, and then hopefully it amuses everybody else. I’ve never thought about it before, but I don’t think I could do a character who I didn’t like, or think was funny or interesting myself.

Oz:  No, I couldn’t either.

Jerry Nelson and Bill Barretta in a still from ‘Muppet Guys Talking’ (Photo: Vibrant Mud)

But Frank, did you feel a responsibility with Miss Piggy — I remember she was on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, representing women in the workforce?

Oz:  She was on tons of covers. She was huge. She was massive, yeah.

Miss Piggy, performed by Oz, and Kermit the Frog, performed by Henson, in ‘The Great Muppet Caper’ (1981).

Did you feel a responsibility of any kind to live up to a certain ideal with her?

Oz: If one lives up to anything external as a performer, you’re screwed. That’s not one’s job. That is not something that is my responsibility. My responsibility is to entertain and perform the script with my fellow performers and try to bring that alive. After that, it’s none of my business.

Brill: Exactly. If you thought about that, you’d get frozen. You can’t say, oh, I have a responsibility for all the females who are watching.

Oz: And that’s when things get really dull and didactic.

One of the highlights of the film is when you talk about all the insane situations that you found yourselves in, and that Jim put himself in, while performing the Muppets. I’m wondering if you have specific memories of a moment when you went, “Oh my god, I cannot believe I’m doing this right now.”

Oz: I do. I was 20, still too frightened to do voices. But there were two characters called Wilkins and Wontkins, and they were performers for these 8-second commercial spots, and they sold things – mainly coffee. So the idea was that Wilkins says something positive about Wilkins coffee: “Hey, don’t you love Wilkins coffee?” And Wontkins says something negative about the coffee, and then Wilkins does something violent to him, just destroys him. The first one I saw, he blows him away with a cannon. But we were doing a lot of them, and one was Wontkins saying, “Old Man Wilkins hired me to sell his crummy coffee.” And then, this is bizarre, but a match comes in and lights Wontkins in flames, and Wilkins says, “He just fired you, too!” So what happened was, there’s something called cold flame that magicians use, and you can put it on your finger and light it, and it will burn. But the actual finger won’t burn, the liquid around it burns. And so I had cold flame all over my arm to protect it, and behind the stage there, I had a big bucket full of water. And on the first take he lit the match, and the whole thing went “Whoosh!” and went right down my arm, and burned all my hair off! And of course, Jim said, “Okay, take two.”

Goelz: On Fraggle Rock, we had a head writer named Jerry Juhl. He was a longtime part of the Muppets, one of the first four people. And I had a character named Traveling Matt who went out into the field every week, exploring and misunderstanding what he saw. So Jerry would sit in his office and think of things for me to do. One week I was sent out to a chicken coop, and I was in a little closed room with a dozen chickens, which is not pleasant, on the ground, lying down under a moving blanket, working this character. And Jerry is back in his office, typing something else, and just smiling and thinking, “He’s probably in the chicken coop.” The next week I was in a little tiny pen, on the ground, next to a 700-pound sow. The zookeeper said, “If she starts to roll? Get out.” And then I found myself at the city dump covered in garbage — I’m covered in garbage, Matt is sitting on top of it. And then there was the roller coaster. It took 13 trips to do all the shots, and he sent me there because he knew I didn’t like roller coasters. And so again, he’s sitting in his office, working on something else, going [checks his watch, chuckles].

Did you have any experiences like that on the Muppet movies?

Barretta: Driving things is always a little uncomfortable, when you’re in the front [with the puppet] and there’s somebody driving from the back and they’re hiding back there. And you’re not sure how well they can really see, but you have to trust them.

The hazardous taxi scene from ‘The Great Muppet Caper,’ featuring Henson as Kermit, Oz as Fozzie, and Goelz as Gonzo and Beauregard. 

Goelz: In The Great Muppet Caper, there was a shot where Beauregard was driving a taxi, and Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo were in the backseat. And the car came down a city street, went around in a loop, and then went right in the front door of a hotel.

Oz: Smashed right through it.

Goelz: Broke a breakaway door. And there was a driver wearing a Beauregard suit, so he was driving and he could sort of see through the mouth, and Frank, Jim, and I were on the floor of this little Austin taxi cab —

Oz: In the backseat.

Goelz: Well there’s no seat, it was taken out.

Oz: I mean supposedly in the backseat.

Goelz: Yeah, and the characters were working above us. So we’re sitting right on the floorboards with a little cushion. And the door was three inches wider than the car on each side. So he had to line it up just right, or we were going to hit the side of the door and just all get crushed, because we didn’t have seatbelts or anything like that. And he’s going like 25 miles an hour, doing this loop, skitting around in a circle. And he goes right in the door and he makes it — it was perfect. But I’m just sitting back there thinking, it’s Jim and Frank and I — what happens if he clips the door?

Frank, when you directed Muppets Take Manhattan, did you end up putting anyone in mortal danger?

Goelz: He put us through hell.

Oz: Not danger, hell.

Goelz: Yeah it was hell, it was different. In hell there’s no death. There’s no chance of getting killed in Frank’s movie and not having to work with him anymore.

Oz: What happened was, I had co-directed Dark Crystal, which means I was learning on the job while helping Jim direct his movie. And then I shot Muppets Take Manhattan next. So that was my first movie by myself. And I thought I had to do everything myself, and I thought I had to know everything — every first-time director’s mistake. And I was just so hard on these guys. Dave hated my guts.

Goelz: Oh, for years! Years. Still a little residual.

Oz: Because I did all my characters also. I was directing and doing my characters. And I also knew what these guys can do and what they can’t do. And so I pushed them, and of course it wasn’t very nice and I was an a**hole. That’s what happened. I put them through hell.

Brill: But you only asked for a couple of takes, right?

Oz: There was a time I was pretty intense. Very intense.

Brill: “Take 42! 43!” 

The opening number from ‘The Muppets Take Manhattan’ (1984), directed by Oz.

What’s the most takes you ever remember doing?

Brill: Oh I don’t remember. But Frank does that — because you’re very self-critical of anything you do.

Oz: That’s true.

Brill: So with a Bert and Ernie skit, or something like that, you would say, “Oops, sorry, sorry guys, I didn’t get that.” I sometimes thought you did that just because you wanted to do it over and over again, because you still hadn’t achieved exactly what you wanted.

Oz: Oh yeah, I was terrible. The idea is, you have a playboard here [above the puppeteer’s head] and you can’t see. So the worst thing to do — you can’t have your head up. But if I’m doing a lousy take, I’m going like this. [Peeks head up from under the playboard.] It was terrible! But you could control a take that way. If I didn’t want them to accept my lousy take, I’d put my head in the shot. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

Goelz: I worked with him for 44 years or so — this is the first time he’s admitted that.

‘Muppet Guys Talking’ is available for streaming on March 16 exclusively at MuppetGuysTalking.com. 

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