JIM HENSON

Interview on 9/21/82 by Judy Harris

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Just before THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982) was due to open, Fred Clarke, publisher of CINEFANTASTIQUE, called to ask if I would like to write an article about the career of Jim Henson. Would I! I had been a fan of the Muppets since I first saw them making guest appearances on Ed Sullivan and other variety and talk shows. When Rowlf made his debut as a regular on the JIMMY DEAN SHOW (1963), I ran out and bought myself a stuffed Rowlf (which I still have, somewhat the worse for wear). I had seen all the Muppet fairy tale TV specials and was an avid fan of THE MUPPET SHOW. The period of THE DARK CRYSTAL was a very creative one for the Henson organization; almost simultaneously FRAGGLE ROCK was about to debut on HBO. This became another show I never missed.

The Henson Organization supported and continues to support the art of puppetry. Some of the ways it does this is by mounting exhibitions of the work of puppeteers and also sponsoring actual performances. At the time of the following interview, I had recently seen at Lincoln Center one of these exhibitions which contained items from virtually the entire history of the Muppets; simultaneous with the release of THE DARK CRYSTAL, there was an even more impressive exhibit, also at Lincoln Center, of many of the puppet/characters from THE DARK CRYSTAL in wonderfully detailed dioramas. Subsequently, over the years, I have been to other exhibits mounted by or with the participation of the Henson Organization, including one devoted to the artwork of Jim Henson.

In doing additional research for the article on Henson's career, which was published in the April/May '83 (13:4) issue of CINEFANTASTIQUE, I came more and more to admire Henson as a human being. Previously, if anyone had asked me to name someone I considered a hero, I would have been hard pressed to nominate anyone contemporary; but certainly Jim Henson fit that description for me. It is a tribute to his vision that the Henson organization survived his sudden death on May 16th, 1990 and has continued to be creative and entertaining.

If you have ever attended a fan convention at which someone you admire was a guest, you know the frustration of having to raise your hand to get called on and, even then, being able to ask only a single question. You can perhaps then imagine how enormously satisfying it is to be able to spend about 90 minutes with someone you admire, not only being able to ask any question you like, but also being able to follow up the answers with questions you might not initially have prepared. I had prepared myself prior to the interview with a rather long, typed list of questions, and this list to an extent imposed a certain order to my questions but I certainly got derailed a couple of times when I got an unexpected response.

This project - the phone interview with Jim Henson, my subsequent face to face meetings with him a week or two later and the free access I had to the Muppet headquarters and workshop - is one of the high points of my life.

Following is a transcription of a telephone interview between me and Jim Henson on September 21, 1982. I am home in New York; Jim is in London taking a break from postproduction for THE DARK CRYSTAL. Reference is made in the following Q&A of a "Labor Day interview/tape" which was a preliminary interview between Fred Clarke and Jim covering ground I mostly already knew.

Since my initials and Jim Henson's initials are both JH, I will use "me" for me and "H" for Jim.

Me: I just want to say up front, I really appreciate your taking
the time out for this interview. I know you must be terrifically
busy with the last minute production aspects of DARK CRYSTAL and
you also must be sick to death of interviews and stuff like that,
and I'll try not to ask a lot of the kind of questions that
people normally ask. Nancy Evans of your own Henson Associates
has been very, very helpful. She let me see some tapes of TIME
PIECE and THE CUBE and THE MAKING OF THE MUPPET SHOW. She let
me look around the workshop.

H: Holy cow! Did you look at those? Did you look at THE CUBE?

Me: Yes. You know, the funny thing is I remember when it first
aired. I remember seeing it because I'm a big fan of Richard
Schall. I'm very into improv actors and I remember seeing it, but
I couldn't remember all the details. I enjoyed watching it again
so much and I thought it was so well edited.

H: It's funny because I just looked at it myself about two weeks ago
in Toronto. My 17 year old son was up there with me at the time
and I showed it to him and my 11 year old daughter. Neither of
them had seen it or remembered it. It's fascinating. I hadn't
looked at it in 5 or 6 years.

Me: And it hasn't dated at all.

H: It was fun; I enjoyed it and they - my son, in particular - said wow! it's really a great show.

Me: Were you responsible for casting Richard Schall, because he was just perfect in it.

H: Yeah, yeah. That was really a project that was a lot of fun and quite delightful, and that was back in the days when I was doing two careers, before I decided to concentrate on the Muppets.

Me: I was doing some research on the influences on you - the early
exposure that you had to other puppeteers - Burr Tillstrom and Bil
and Cora Baird - and one of the shows that you probably saw was
LIFE WITH SNARKY PARKER. Does that ring a bell, an early Bil and
Cora Baird TV show in 1950?

H: Only vaguely, I don't think I ever saw that show.

Me: Oh. The reason that I ask is that, apparently, the show was set
in the Old West and there was a character called Ronald Rodent.
I read somewhere else that the very first puppets you made were of
a French-looking rat named Pierre and a couple of cowboys. I just
wondered if SNARKY PARKER had rubbed off on you and that's where
you got your initial inspiration for your first puppets?

H: I don't think so, no, because what I really knew of Bil and Cora
Baird's work was their variety show stuff. Immediately before I
first did any puppets, they were doing a CBS morning show, in
opposition to the TODAY SHOW. They were just doing novelty records
and little tiny short bits and pieces.

Me: In other words, they were lip syncing the way you...

H: I think so, yeah, and so I guess that was kind of how I started
off into doing the record lip sync stuff.

Me: Speaking of that, when did the Muppets first talk - when did they
stop doing the lip syncing and start developing their own voices?

H: Well, it was in those first couple of years. One of the first
things I did was start into a commercial series for Wilkins
Coffee, and for that I did both character voices (Wilkins and
Wontkins). That was almost the first voice stuff I did. I had
been doing a couple of little tiny things on the show until then.

Me: I read that these commercials were syndicated. I don't really
understand that. How could you syndicate a commercial - did you
just change the voice track and substitute a different product name?

H: Well, usually we should reshoot the entire commercial. You see,
we started that commercial for a local coffee in Washington/
Baltimore called Wilkins Coffee, and so those commercials would
only go on the air in that area, but the commercials were an
immediate hit and they made a big impact. In terms of popularity
of commercials in the Washington area, we were the number one,
most popular commercial. They got a lot of talk, and so then the
advertising agency started syndicating them and they would sell
them to a coffee company in Boston, another coffee company in New York.

Me: But you would completely redo them for each coffee company...

H: Yeah, right, and so for a while there - I bought my contract from
that agency and then I was producing them - the same things around
the country. And so we had up to about a dozen or so clients going
at the same time. At the point, I was making a lot of money.

Me: You're not in the commercial business anymore, are you?

H: Not really. The last thing we did the beginning of last year was
we signed with Polaroid, and we did a few for them, which have now
ended, but that was my first dip back into commercials in years.
When SESAME STREET came on - well, it was a combination - we were
too busy to do commercials and it was a pleasure to get out of that world. If you've ever worked in commercials, it's a world of compromise and a world of...

Me: You're right. I used to think it would be fun to be behind the
scenes and produce something like that, and I did work in an ad
agency for a year, and I hated every minute of it. You're right
about compromise. I was constantly told to talk down to people
and pick the lowest common denominator, and it really made me grit
my teeth. I was very unhappy.

H: Yeah, it's interesting when you're working at the lower levels
through agencies and that sort of thing, it's really quite
difficult. At the time of Polaroid - and I did a couple of other
commercials just before I stopped doing that stuff - at that point
I was at the level where they respect you and your opinion and all
that sort of thing, but even then it's still a matter of every
meeting is a meeting with a dozen people, who all have opinions
and the whole process is really not easy on a creative person. So,
anyhow.

Me: You drew cartoons for your school paper and magazines. Were these
little characters, like the early sketches you would do to create
a Muppet, or were these actual cartoons with balloons and captions?

H: Well, let's see. I did some of each. That very first Pierre, the
French rat, that came out of a cartoon thing I had done for my
high school magazine.

Me: Are any of these still available or are these all collector's items?

H: Oh, he's prob-- I'm sure we have him somewhere. We have an exhibit
that's traveling around.

Me: Yes, I saw it when it was at Lincoln Center; it's wonderful.

H: If you saw it at Lincoln Center, you saw it at the very beginning.

Me: That's right; it was the first stop.

H: Yeah, and then thereafter we decided to mount it for traveling.
We got invitations from a couple of museums and so it's been
traveling for two years. It's in Detroit right now.

Me: Is there going to be a permanent home for this when it finally
stops touring, because it would be a shame not to allow people to
have access to it - it's so wonderful.

H: I don't - yeah, I would doubt it. We'll see. It's interesting,
because that exhibit does a particular part of our career, but
DARK CRYSTAL coming along does an entirely different thing, and
we're starting a new show that's going on next year.

Me: FRAGGLE ROCK, yeah.

H: And that's another entirely different area, so I have a feeling
that an exhibit type of thing will make sense for the next few
years in different places; and we're thinking about sending that
overseas to Europe; yeah, and that would be nice.

Me: Simultaneously with SAM AND FRIENDS (around 1955), which was on
late at night, you were doing an afternoon show in DC. What was
that called?

H: Well, we did - actually we did a number of things. There was a
little afternoon show that was called AFTERNOON. Back in those
days in television, most local stations had a midday show for
housewives that had a series of things. It was like a variety
show for midday. So we did a few little entertainment pieces on
that show.

Me: So that was another 5 minutes that you had to come up with?

H: Yeah, well basically, the work I did in those days is not stuff
that I'm creatively very proud of.

Me: I remember hearing on the tape you made with Fred Clarke that you
refused to let the kinescopes out.

H: Oh, yeah, that stuff was really experimenting and it was just
stuff that I did as a lark. I was going to college and so I was
doing this and it was a way of working my way through school.

Me: How long did this afternoon show run?

H: I'm not sure; on and off for a couple of years but during that
time - you're saying an afternoon show - there were times that I
had 3 shows a day - one in the afternoon, one in the early evening
during the 6 o'clock news strip, and then one during the 11 o'clock
news strip, so it kept me busy.

Me: And yet, you left in the middle of all this and you went to Europe
for a year. Did you leave your poor wife to do all of these shows
at once all by herself?

H: Well, it was before we got married and before we were at all
romantically connected actually, because I was engaged to another
girl and she was engaged to another guy. I decided that what I
really wanted to do was go off and paint. I was an artist, you see,
so I was going to take the shows off the air - just quit for a
while. The station prevailed upon me; they said, "Look, we'll pay
you money and you can put somebody else doing the show", and so I
realized I can get money and at the same time be off painting, so
I brought in a friend of mine - an art student form the University
of Maryland - and he worked with Jane. His name is Bob Payne, and
he's working back with me now - joined me again about 5 or 6 years ago.

Me: I noticed as I looked at these older pieces of yours: TIME PIECE
and THE CUBE, that the same names appear over the years. People
are really loyal to you and they must really enjoy working with you,
and the projects and working conditions 'cause the same names keep
appearing all through the years.

H: Yeah, well there are a lot of us that have been together for a
long time. There's a small core that has been around a long time.
Frank and I have been together for nearly 20 years now.

Me: Luckily Nancy Evans was sitting with me when we were watching TIME
PIECE, and she pointed him out to me as he dashed through it, or I
would never have recognized him.

H: Oh, he was - I think he was about 17 or 18 at the time. He was
just a kid; that was right after he joined us.

Me: He even had a longer name!

H: That was Oznowitz, yeah.

Me: Yeah, his original name was in the credits.

H: Right, right. Jerry Juhl was in that also, did you know that?

Me: Right, and Don Sahlen did the special effects.

H: Yeah, and there's a flash shot of Don in there too.

Me: I read that you were getting only $5 a show for SAM AND FRIENDS.
Is that anything like reality?

H: Yeah, well when I first started working, it was $5 a show; it was
probably a little higher by the time I got to my own show, but I
remember that they put me under contract at $100 a week, which to
me was really an astronomical price.

Me: But didn't you have to create all the sets and the puppets and
your props out of that money?

H: Yea, sure.

Me: If only Lord Grade knew that!

H: Yeah, well, I was a kid and it was fun. And also there wasn't
much money in television in those days anyhow.

Me: And it was only a local show.

H: Sure.

Me: Was the term "Muppets" coined specifically for SAM AND FRIENDS?

H: Yeah, I think we did the term Muppets before we got the show SAM
AND FRIENDS - a few months after I started working. It was really
just a term we made up. For a long time I would tell people it
was a combination of marionettes and puppets but, basically, it
was really just a word that we coined. We have done very few
things connected with marionettes.

Me: When I talk with people at Henson Associates now, they practically
blanch if you use the term Muppets in connect with DARK CRYSTAL.
What is the difference between what you consider Muppets and what
DARK CRYSTAL is, and have you coined a term for what the creatures
in DARK CRYSTAL are?

H: No, we haven't, and a number of people say "you really should have
a term for that" but at the moment we're saying creatures.

Me: Well, what is it that they're not Muppets?

H: Well, to me the Muppets are sort of fuzzy, bright colored, cute,
lovable caricatures that we know from THE MUPPET SHOW. FRAGGLE
ROCK also drops under the term Muppets. But I think DARK CRYSTAL -
you've seen some of the promotion tape on DARK CRYSTAL, for
instance?

Me: Well, I saw a trailer that had been theatrically released a couple
of months ago, which is a real brief piece and I attend conventions
here and so I've seen slides, but...

H: Yeah, we have an 8-minute tape. If you want to see it, I'm sure
that Nancy could make that available to you.

Me: OK, thanks.

H: But, it's just a little promotion tape that we made a couple of
months ago, which has brief interviews with Gary (Kurtz) and Frank
and myself and Brian (Froud), and a few little scenes of the film,
but it gives you a more complete picture of it than the trailer
certainly, but originally...

Me: Is it - I remember in the interview you did with Fred Clarke over
Labor Day, he sort of labored the point that DARK CRYSTAL wasn't heavily into humor. Is that why you don't want it to be called a Muppet movie - because it's more dramatic and adventure-oriented than...

H: Well, no, it's no so much the humor, but I have a feeling that the
characters are just not Muppets at all. We hesitate to call them
puppets even. I think of puppetry as being something more -- see,
I love puppetry and what puppetry is, which is related to - if you
- it sounds as if you've read everything I ever said.

Me: Well, I may have! I've really delved into this.

H: Yeah, so you know that my feeling about puppetry relates to
stylization, simplicity, boiling down to - it's a wonderful form
and I really love it - but with DARK CRYSTAL, instead of puppetry
we're trying to go toward a sense of realism - toward a reality of
creatures that are actually alive and we're mixing up puppetry and
all kinds of other techniques. It's into the same bag as E.T. and
Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will
actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing but
you're trying to do the thing itself.

Me: Yeah, I understand that. We won't belabor that any further. The
first Kermit was made out of your mother's coat. Would you say
that it was just an accident that the coat was green and that maybe
if the coat had been purple that Kermit would not have evolved into
a frog?

H: That's quite likely actually. Yeah, the first Kermit was not even
a clean green- it's sort of more a turquoise - sort of a milky
turquoise.

Me: Yeah, I saw him at the exhibit; he looked a little faded.

H: Yeah, well, no, he's not faded; that was the color he was.

Me: That was his real color?

H: Sure, but you see back in those days you may have read somewhere,
but I didn't call him a frog.

Me: Right, he was just Kermit the thing.

H: Yeah, all the characters in those days were abstract because that
was part of the principle that I was working under, that you wanted
abstract things.

Me: He didn't turn into a frog until you did THE FROG PRINCE for a TV
special.

H: Yeah, that's right.

Me: That was the first time he got flippers and his little pointed
collar?

H: Right.

Me: He just seems so froggy to me.

H: Yeah, well it's interesting how that evolved. See, I still like
very much the abstract characters and some of those abstract
characters I still feel are slightly more pure. If you take a
character and you call him a frog, or like Rowlf, our dog, call
him a dog, you immediately give the audience a handle. You're
assisting the audience to understand; you're giving them a bridge
or an access. And if you don't give them that, if you keep it
more abstract, it's almost more pure. It's a cooler thing. It's
a difference of sort of warmth and cool.

Me: That's interesting because one of my questions farther down on my
list here is, I know that Kermit is your favorite character, but I
was going to ask whether you preferred abstract or representational
puppets, and I think you've just answered that.

H: Well, it's just that the two do different things. There are nice
things about each and, in terms of going commercial and going
broad audience, you want to reach the audience as much as possible,
and you need those bridges. You need the characters that are more
accessible, and that's why a Kermit or a Rowlf is more accessible
as a style basically.

Me: It's interesting also that you should mention that because just
earlier today I was interviewing Lorne Michaels for this career
article about you, and he felt that this was the problem that the
writers had on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE - that you had created these
brand new characters and there were no rules about this land of
Gorch - there were no parameters set up for what these characters
could do and what would be expected of them, and the writers just
couldn't seem to cope with that.

H: Yeah, that's interesting. I'd be really interested to see what
Lorne said, because I really respect Lorne. We talked a number of
months before the show ever went on the air. He described the
show and I really loved it. I saw what he was going for and I
really liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but somehow what we
were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never
jelled. I felt it jelled later on when they did THE CONEHEADS,
because with THE CONEHEADS, they found it was a slightly abstract
thing but they were able to write it in a way and pull it into
their style of humor. When they were writing for us, I had the
feeling they were writing normal sitcom stuff, which is really
boring and bland.

Me: Well, maybe they thought it was funny to do sitcom stuff for
characters that were so outlandish and weird.

H: Yeah, but that wasn't enough though.

Me: Anyway, he says primarily the same thing you did, that he felt
that the writing just never came up to the standards of Muppetry
and that part of the reason was the show itself was so new at that
time and everybody was just feeling their way.

H: Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah, it just never jelled with the
particular writers we were working with, but at no time did I ever
lose my respect for the show. I always liked what they were doing.

Me: Yeah, well, he speaks very highly of you, too.

H: Yeah, yeah, well I think we parted on very good terms and we
really stopped doing the show because we had to go to England to
do THE MUPPET SHOW.

Me: I also found out when I was interviewing him today that you have
the same manager, Bernie Brillstein.

H: Oh yeah, right.

Me: He actually called while I was there; it was sort of funny.

H: Oh yeah? I've been with Bernie for about 18 or 19 years now,
maybe 20.

Me: I read the inspiration for the Muppets was Bunraku. Is there any
truth to that?

H: No, I don't think so.

Me: Is this the kind of Japanese puppetry where the puppeteers are
actually on stage but they're dressed all in black and you're
supposed to ignore them, pretend they're invisible - is that what
Bunraku is?

H: Sure, yeah. Bunraku is a marvelous and fascinating art form and
puppetry form but, basically, I knew nothing about it until I had
been working for a number of years myself.

Me: OK, so much for that spurious article. This same article said you
were also inspired by a French puppeteer who "perched puppets above
exposed human hands." Is that also untrue?

H: I'm not sure exactly what that means, but when I took that year
off from the show, I wandered over to Europe. I traveled around
and that was the first time I'd met any other puppeteers. When I
was a kid, I never saw a puppet show, I never played with puppets
or had any interest in them. I really did that whole thing in
order to get on television because my enthusiasm was television
and film. When I traveled around I saw the work of a number of
people. Andrew Terhone (?) is a very good French puppeteer, does
some marvelous things, and I'm sure I picked up some things from
him but that was, as I say, three or four years into my work at least.

Me: So by that time the Muppets had started to develop.

H: Yeah, we pretty much had a form and a shape by that time - a style
- and I think one of the advantages of not having any relationship
to any other puppeteer was that it gave me a reason to put those
together myself for the needs of television.

Me: Yes, yes. I think you said on the interview over Labor Day that
you were "active in theatre" at college and that you designed
posters - these were posters for college theatrical productions...?

H: Yeah, yeah, in high school and college. I was very interested in
theatre - mostly in stage design I did a little bit of acting.

Me: You did do some acting?

H: Yeah, I did some small parts in high school and the first year of
college and then fairly soon thereafter I settled into the
backstage scenery, and then at the University of Maryland I was
doing posters for their productions.

Me: Did you ever take any acting classes or courses?

H: I don't think so, no.

Me: You said you got into puppetry because you were interested in
getting into television and films, and yet you graduated in Home
Economics. Why did you pick Home Economics?

H: At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off
planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre
design, stage design or television design, but at that particular
college, the advertising, art, costume design, interior design,
layout - all of that stuff was part of Home Ec, for some strange
reason. I think it's changed since then. And puppetry was a
course that was given there that was also in Home Ec.

Me: That was where you met Jane.

H: Yeah, I met Jane. And that puppetry teacher said, you switch over
to home ec, you don't have to take all of the math and sciences
that you do in fine arts, so you can take more art courses. So I
switched over to home ec on that basis and also ended up in
classes - I think there were about 6 guys and 500 girls.

Me: That sounds like a good ratio.

H: Oh, it was marvelous.

Me: I can imagine. You were active in Puppeteers of America. Are you
still active in that, and what is it?

H: Well, the Puppeteers of America is an organization in the US that
has several thousand members, and I have been past president of it,
and I've been on the board off and on, and then we have an
international organization called UNIMA. The title of the
organization's in French - it's the United - the Union Nationale
Internationale Marionettist - (struggling to remember)

Me: OK, something like that.

H: One of those things. I was president of the US chapter of that for
a number of years and been more or less active in that. These are
two different organizations. Most people belong to both and, it's
interesting, I was partly responsible for bringing that
international conference to Washington, DC.

Me: The 1980 one - 1980, the one you did the PBS special?

H: Yeah, that was a marvelous festival that we had in Washington.

Me: Yeah, that was wonderful. You didn't have anything to do with
these couple of recent puppet exhibits that have come through New
York, did you? There was one at the Museum on the Upper East Side.
I forget which museum - the Cooper Hewitt? - but it was just great.
There were some Muppets in it and an early Foodini and Howdy Doody.

H: Yeah, right. Yeah, that exhibit was put together by the Puppeteers
of America and is in Detroit right now with ours. The two of them
are in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Me: Oh, they're having a regular festival there all by themselves.

H: Well, Detroit Institute is kind of a key - probably the largest
permanent collection of puppets in the US.

Me: You met Jerry Juhl and Frank Oz for the first time at the National
Puppetry Convention in Carmel, California in 1961. Had you
purposely set out to find somebody to take over for your wife, who
was pregnant at the time, or was this just an accident that you
went there and you met these incredibly talented people?

H: Yeah, I think it was - I think it was an accident. I don't
believe I was consciously looking for somebody. I think actually I
met Frank's father and got to know him as a good friend before I
ever met Frank. Frank's father is very active in the Puppeteers
of America - well, his parents, it's actually both of them -
they're marvelous, very outgoing and I talked to Frank, I think,
early on about joining us. Well, he was really still at home and
not ready to come East, but we talked about it as an idea, and I
think the following year I invited him to come join us in New York
and he did.

Me: Don Sahlen built his first Muppet in 1960. Rowlf was the first
non-abstract Muppet. I want to put these two ideas together - was
Rowlf, in fact, the first Muppet Don Sahlen built?

H: Yes, that's very good. Yes, that's true. I had met Don at that
Puppetry Festival.

Me: The same one, the one in Carmel?

H: No, the first festival I went to was in 1960 in Detroit and the
following year it was in California, I guess, but I met Burr there.

Me: Burr Tillstrom?

H: Burr Tillstrom.

Me: Right, and Don was working with Burr.

H: Yeah, and I just saw Burr two weeks ago in Detroit at the opening
of that exhibit (9/8/82) and he's such a dear, sweet man, extremely
talented, but it was such a nice thing to see him again. I hadn't
seen him in a couple of years but, yeah, so Don was working for
Burr part time and I had Don come down and work with us for a few
weeks. He built Rowlf at that point and this other dog called
Baskerville. The two of them were done for a series of dog food
commercials we did in Canada. And then a little bit later I moved
to New York, partly at Burr's suggestion, 'cause Burr was
encouraging me to come up there and we moved into an apartment
building - the same building that Burr was in, as a matter of fact. We were all very close during that time.

Me: It's nice that there was no competition between you.

H: No, there's not much competition between puppeteers in general
because everybody's working their own style. I've never felt any
sense of competition with anybody, and we're all friends; we're all
good friends.

Me: When Nancy showed me TIME PIECE, I vaguely remember seeing it
before. Would you happen to know if it was shown as part of the
PBS series called ACADEMY LEADERS, where they showed theatrical
shorts that had been nominated for Academy Awards?

H: Yeah, I think it was, right. And when we first made that film, it
opened in New York with A MAN AND A WOMAN at the - oh, I can't
remember the theatre - the little theatre next to the Plaza Hotel.

Me: Right, I know what you're talking about - the Paris or something
like that.

H: And it was one of those freaky things because it opened with a
film that ended up playing there for a year.

Me: So a lot of people saw it.

H: Yeah, it did quite well. It got a couple of awards around the
world and all.

Me: The film guide that McGraw Hill puts out with it makes it seem
very scholarly. It makes the film sound almost not enjoyable
because they talk about it in such portentous terms.

H: Oh yeah? That's funny. Well the film is still being distributed
and mostly to film societies and film classes and things like that.

Me: Now that you mention it, I belong to a film society and we do show
shorts occasionally. I think I'll recommend it to them, 'cause
it's really worth seeing.

H: Oh good. OK.

Me: This is a question from my boyfriend, who is more into technical
things. He tells me that when cartoons went from black and white
to color, that there was considerable adjustment, because when
they were in black and white, there were all these gradations of
grey, and he wondered when you were making the conversion from
black and white TV to color TV whether the Muppets changed colors
at all to adjust to the newly available color?

H: Well, actually when I was first working, we were working in color -
now let's see, is that really true?

Me: 1953 you were working in color?

H: Fifty four, it was 54, I think.

Me: '54 was SAM AND FRIENDS, yes.

H: Well, I know we had color - I do remember doing shows strictly in
black and white, too, so you're right, and I think I built and
painted a couple of my early characters in black and white but,
you see, NBC had established the color television system, and so
they immediately converted their 5 owned and operated stations to
color. Washington was one of those, so we were almost one of the
very first people to do color television. NBC was trying to
convert all of their local programming to color right away to
encourage the sale of the sets, so I barely remember working in
black and white, although I do know that I did do it, but there
was not a major difference, though. If anything, there's a
difference in working with color in England and the color in the US.

Me: Why is that?

H: Because the two color systems are different. It's fascinating,
you know, and mostly it's the same except for the color yellow,
for instance, because yellow in England is one of the basic
electron guns and so you get beautiful, clear, gorgeous yellows.
In the US yellow is a combination of the green and red guns.

Me: So you're telling me that Big Bird isn't really yellow?

H: It has always been difficult to get Big Bird to be very pretty.
Big Bird in England is much more gorgeous.

Me? Really?

H: Yeah, it's a fascinating thing.

Me: It's strange. You mentioned that you liked the SATURDAY NIGHT
LIVE Muppets so much - why have they never been brought back? For
example, you're getting a chance now to do a series on HBO. Why
are you doing a children's series? Why aren't you doing another
adult series and maybe bring back the Mighty Favog and Scred and
those Muppets?

H: I don't know. I don't have any strong desire to bring them back
to life. I like the characters physically; I like them very much
but, as I say, I felt the thing never really jelled. When THE
MUPPET SHOW ended, we all sat around and said, what kind of
television show would we like to do. We felt the need these days
is for some quality children's programming. There's not much done
of a quality nature for kids. We were also looking - because of
the way we've been going with THE MUPPET SHOW and SESAME STREET -
to go more internationally. We thought it would be fun to try to
design a show that would work well internationally and so that' s
what we're intending to do with FRAGGLE ROCK, and we are indeed
now selling it around the world.

Me: I remember reading that. I also read you are the one who built
Gonzo and that he was built at a time when the staff was in a
hurry to make a whole lot of monsters, and he was built in 3 hours.
Is that true?

H: Yeah.

Me: Gee, I don't think of him as a monster at all. I think he's one
of the most lovable and complex and...

H: Oh yeah, well, yeah, monster is probably not the right term.
Matter of fact, we called these creatures Frackles on a special we
did with Art Carney called THE GREAT SANTA CLAUS SWITCH. He was a
very incidental character. He was called the Cigar Box Frackle,
'cause he pops out of a Cigar Box. He was just snipped out of a
block of foam with a pair of scissors in a very short time; just
really thrown together and then, because we liked him, we then
continued to remake him and make him better and better and add
mechanisms to the eyes and all that sort of thing.

Me: He's really one of my favorite characters. What exactly is he?

H: He's nothing, that's one of the good things about him.

Me: Yeah, he's not quite abstract but he's not anything that I've ever
seen.

H: Right, right. I think in THE MUPPET MOVIE we said he's sort of
like a turkey, but I never felt he was a bird particularly and so
much of what Gonzo is really comes out of Dave Goelz. You get a
talented performer, like a Dave or a Frank, and then any character
they do just starts to bloom and blossom because of all that they
put into it.

Me: And you can tell that those characters are loved by the puppeteers
too. I read that all 5 of your children have worked on THE MUPPET
SHOW - in what capacity?

H: Well, not particularly officially all 5 have. Generally, they
would come and visit and they would do certain things. Lisa and
Cheryl, the oldest two, both have worked in the shop on the show,
building puppets and doing costumes and that sort of thing. I
would throw the younger kids into a group scene operating a
background character and stuff like that, but nothing official.

Me: How did the practice start of making a Muppet caricature of the
guests on THE MUPPET SHOW?

H: We only did that a little bit.

Me: Oh, I thought you did that for all 120 shows.

H: No, no, we only did it for a few people. I'm trying to think who
we did it for. Paul Williams is the one who comes to mind.

Me: I know you did it for Marty Feldman.

H: Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, we did sort of a Marty Feldman
character and Paul Williams. Was there anybody else?

Me: All along I've been envying these lucky people who got their own
Muppet of themselves after they guested on the show.

H: I don't think so, and Paul is about the only one we ever gave the
puppet to.

Me: I read somewhere or picked up spuriously that Bunson Honeydew is
allegedly derived from Lord Grade. Is there anyone else whose name
I would recognize that you might have built a Muppet character
around?

H: Not really, and even Bunson Honeydew was not specifically Lord
Grade when we did him. It would have been easy to make him much
more like Lew Grade if we had tried to and, in retrospect, I wish
that we had. The character that owns the Muppet theatre only
appeared a couple of times and I always - in looking back -
always wished that I had made that to look just like Lew Grade
'cause he's very caricaturable.

Me: I know that one of the things that appeals to you very much is
creating new worlds and new characters and new creatures, but does
the idea appeal to you at all of making Muppet versions of famous
illustrations, like Tenniel's illustrations of ALICE IN WONDERLAND
or Denneslow's illustrations of THE WIZARD OF OZ?

H: Well, I don't know. I've never particularly thought in terms of
doing that. We did a bit on ALICE IN WONDERLAND style.

Me: Yeah, I remember that ALICE IN WONDERLAND show, with Brooke Shields.

H: Yeah, the Brooke Shields show. I loved working with Brian (Froud)
on DARK CRYSTAL because I feel THE MUPPET SHOW grew over a period
of years and all those characters grew, but there were many
diverse styles, and so it was quite a mixed bag, which had its
good points and bad points. It was a variety show, and it lent
itself to that, but the idea of having one design mind create an
entire thing really appealed to me, and that's what we did with
DARK CRYSTAL, but the way things are going these days with special
effects and all of the different film techniques, one of the things
that's exciting is that you can do anything with these kinds of
creatures. You can take and bring to life any sort of
illustrations or you can create anything new and so it's very
exciting from that standpoint. I think that whole worlds are
opening up to us that are limited only by our imaginations.

Me: If the movie does really, really well, will there be a DARK
CRYSTAL II? Will these characters continue?

H: Well, the story line does not lend itself to a continuation. I
think this particular story has told itself and is complete. If
the film is successful and if we decide that we want to continue
on, I think we could set another story in the same world, but we
probably wouldn't necessarily use the same characters.

Me: THE MUPPET SHOW was occasionally taped before visiting children
but, other than that, did you ever tape in front of an audience?

H: No, not particularly. The way the show was taped, we would block
and tape, which means that each piece of material would take
anywhere from half an hour to several hours to tape, so it's a
long, slow process. You can't really work in front of an audience
that way. I mean, when we had Raquel Welsh in the studio, we had
a good 150 guys from neighboring studios, but it wasn't an official
audience.

Me: It seems to me that a laugh track was used on THE MUPPET SHOW.

H: Yes.

Me: Why did you do that? You didn't have networks breathing down your
neck. Why did you put a laugh track in?

H: No, well because of the form we had decided to choose to do the
show, that we were doing what amounts to a little vaudeville show
in front of an audience on a little stage with a backstage, so
having chosen that as a premise, we decided to sweeten the shows
and, as I look at some of the early shows, I'm really embarrassed
by them. The sweetening got better later on, but it's always a
difficult thing to do well, and to create the reality of the
audience laughing. I did one special dry - without any laugh
track - looked at it, and then tried it adding a laugh track to
it, and it's unfortunate, but it makes the show funnier.

Me: Really?

H: Yeah, it's really strange, 'cause I'm the sort of purist that
doesn't like that sort of thing.

Me: No, I don't either, but I have to say that it never impacted my
pleasure in the show.

H: Well, it does mine if it's badly done, and you really object to it. If the show is sweetened tastefully and just exactly right, you never notice it and it doesn't get in your way, so it really just depends on how well it's done.

Me: I know that the musical production numbers, the voices and the
music tracks were recorded before you actually did the performance
on tape, but the dialogue portion of the show - the sound was
recorded live then. Could performers have the script in front of
them, or because they had to move around so much, did they actually
have to memorize the script?

H: Oh, it varied a lot. Since the show was done in small bits and
pieces, we seldom taped anything more than a couple of minutes so
generally you could learn your lines but, at the same time, when
we were taping a lot of stuff rather quickly, we would tape up our
little pieces of script on the scenery someplace.

Me: I read somewhere that you also arranged the musical numbers on THE
MUPPET SHOW - I just can't believe that - you were doing so many
things simultaneously that you would have time to arrange the
musical numbers too.

H: No, no, I didn't do musical arrangements at all. We had several
really good people who did that, but I think, basically, the thing
I like to do was stage them or figure out what we could do with
the number. I think someone probably misinterpreted that into
arranging.

Me: That could be. The Muppet comic strip is no longer appearing in
New York. Does it still exist?

H: Yes, it does. It was the decision of the DAILY NEWS to stop the
strip, which was very sad to me because I liked it being there in
New York, but it's still in several hundred newspapers around the
country.

Me: Do you have any input to that at all?

H: Yeah, yeah. We worked for a long time. We spent a year and a
half or two years working with different cartoon teams trying to
find a good combination before we found Guy and Brad Gilcrist, and
I'm very happy with the way they're coming, and the strip is
growing quite nicely.

Me: Yeah, it's a shame that it's been dropped here.

H: Well, what happened was that it was immediately bought very
broadly and it sold to more newspapers than most strips ever
launch with. We immediately had - I don't know the figure right
now - but several hundreds of newspapers, but after that first
little bloom, a lot of people dropped it. Not a lot, but a few.
Actually, I don't think it's gone down that much, but to me the
guys are doing really a nice job and I think it's catching on.
It's a growth process and all these characters always take a bit
of time to settle in.

Me: I didn't see Jerry Juhl's name as a writer on THE FANTASTIC MISS
PIGGY SHOW; is that because he's busy with FRAGGLE ROCK?

H: Yes, he was still doing FRAGGLE ROCK while we had to write the
Miss Piggy show, so that's why we went outside to Buzz Kohan and
Henry Beard. Did you like the show?

Me: I really liked it and it looked to me like a pilot; was it?

H: No, no, not particularly. We have no intention of doing another
one.

Me: That's a shame. It's not until I got into doing the research on
this and started looking at the old MUPPET SHOW episodes and
reading about them in THE MAKING OF THE MUPPET SHOW that I
realized how much I miss it. I realize that 5 years of doing that
kind of intensive work is a long time, but I just like those
characters so much.

H: Yeah, well, it's a quandary because I love the characters too and
I want to keep them alive. I don't want to let them disappear.
We all love them. Every time we get together and work the
characters, we have such a good time, but at the same time, we
never intended to do more than about 5 years. We wanted to stop
while we still felt the show was fresh.

Me: But you're going to bring them back for periodic specials and
things, aren't you?

H: Yeah, oh sure, yeah, we have specials. We have plans for another
movie.

Me: Will this third movie be no human beings like DARK CRYSTAL, or are
you going to have guest stars again?

H: The script that we're working with right now has them in New York
City mostly and they're trying to make it on Broadway.

Me: Oh, great! As a matter of fact, that's farther down on my list of
questions here but, in articles and interviews with you in the 60s,
you seemed to be hinting that there was going to be a Broadway show
in the offing that you were working on. Was that a Muppet or
puppet project and is that still a possibility or has that been
taken over by your ice and arena shows?

H: Well, no not really. It's interesting. Well, it was a different
show back in those days. I was actively building a show when we
got THE MUPPET SHOW, so I shelved that whole project and we went
over to London and got into THE MUPPET SHOW, but now I'm still
working on a concept for a Broadway show which is probably a
couple of years away. It's not the Muppets, but it's very exciting.

Me: Is it puppets or something like that?

H: Yeah, yeah, it's puppets and a mixture of all kinds of other
things, too.

Me: Sounds great!

H: Well, if we get it together, it'll be a lot of fun.

Me: With a project like FRAGGLE ROCK, which you create from scratch,
you didn't have to get anyone's permission or sponsorship or
anything. With something like that, who creates the names of the
Muppets - do you come up with them or the writers or who?

H: The whole project has been fun because it was very collaborative.
We invited a bunch of our people and some of our friends together
and we sat around a room for several days with a couple of
different sessions. During that period of time, we cooked up the
whole scheme and the names fell into place. The FRAGGLE names -
some of them are fun - came from different places. Boober is one
of my favorite names. There's a character in FRAGGLE ROCK named
Boober. My daughter was in Devon at a farm, and there was this
cow - this angry cow because they'd taken her calf away - an angry
cow named Boober, and she came back and told me this story of this
cow, and we were just laughing hysterically and I said we have to
find a character and name him Boober because it's such a great
name, and then FRAGGLE ROCK came along a number of months later
and so there's Boober on FRAGGLE ROCK now.

Me: In 1978 there were over 500 Muppets, so there must easily be many
more by now. Do you have any idea how many Muppets there are?

H: You know, I don't really. I couldn't begin to guess actually.

Me: When they're not being used, are they all in your various buildings
on 69th Street - is that where they're housed?

H: No, we have a lot of storage - we have theatrical storage in New
York because we built up - they're quite bulky, you know,
particularly the large characters, and so we couldn't begin to
store all the stuff in our place.

Me: So how do you keep track of them? Is there some one place where
they're all inventoried?

H: Yeah, yeah, we have boxes and they're all carefully labeled and
that sort of thing, and we do go back and pull them out for other
shows.

Me: I know you used some of the EMMET OTTER characters on THE MUPPET
SHOW from time to time. How many copies do you make of major
characters, like Kermit or Rowlf?

H: Well, it varies just by the need. Actually the copies of
characters is something I don't particularly like to talk about in
articles but, just for your information, most characters there's
only one. Somebody like a Piggy or a Kermit, there needs to be
several versions and so there will be several of them; I'm not
even sure how many because often we'll also have a photocopy - a
character that's made that we use just for posing for photographs.
It would be armatured, that sort of thing, but I don't think it's
good to talk about that particularly. I remember hearing that
there were several Lassies, and I never liked knowing that sort of
thing.

Me: She couldn't have been alive all these years; I mean, she'd be 200
and something.

H: No, but besides that Lassie was always male, which was another one
of those disillusioning pieces of information you don't want to
know.

Me: I guess not. Well, I guess you don't want to tell me how often
the Muppets wear out.

H: That's the same story. Actually, they don't wear out that much
really.

Me: The original Ernie and Bert are in the Smithsonian. Do you have a
place that you put other worn out Muppets, or do your staff just
take them home or what?

H: No, actually, they're basically all in storage. We have all of
that stuff together. We don't release Muppets out hardly ever.
There's one Kermit in the Detroit Institute of Arts and Ernie and
Bert in Washington and that's about all.

Me: OK, the next question may also be something that you don't want to
answer, but I have it down here, so how much does it cost to make a
Muppet from the amount of time that somebody spends from the
initial sketch and all the materials that it takes and the time to
costume it?

H: You can't really put a figure on it. The cost of the material is
usually negligible because you're not using that much of hardly
anything, so it's really all time and labor and that varies a great
deal. If you're doing a large, complicated character with radio
controls, it might take a number of people several months to make
it and if you're talking about a quick little hand puppet, it could
be made in 2 days, so there's enormous range there, and no real
easy generalities.

Me: But once you create a puppet, isn't it that much easier to make a
duplicate of it, once you've gone through all the...

H: Strangely, no, with major characters in particular. Any time we
have to duplicate Ernie and Bert, for instance, we all cringe
because they're very, very difficult to duplicate. Much harder to
do than the first ones.

Me: Why is that 'cause they don't even have that many features. They
just have, you know, that big eyebrow...

H: Yeah, there's an incredible subtlety to the placement of the eyes
and the planes of the shape that they're made of, and if any of
those things are off just slightly, the character doesn't look the
same. You can't put your finger on it. You study and measure it
with calipers and all that sort of thing, but the first time you
build a puppet, you just toss it together and it's fine, but then
you've got to build the next one exactly like that, and we all go
crazy. But besides that, you see, as you work with the puppet, it
wears out, and as it ages it changes and the nature of the fabric
changes, the hair. Then you come back to do it again and you've
got brand new fabric and so it doesn't look anything like it. It's
always been a big problem.

Me: It's interesting when I was allowed to walk through the workshop,
and there were all these Muppets that were on racks and they all
look so lifelike - as though they were going to start talking to
me any minute - except Kermit, who was just this limp thing. It
never ceases to amaze me the amount of emotion that Kermit can
convey for a character that is so basically simple - doesn't have
movable eyes and just...

H: Yeah, well, the nice thing about Kermit is there's nothing in that
head. I mean, the whole shape is merely just a cloth pattern and
so it takes the shape of your hand inside, and so the whole thing
is really created by your hand, which is why he's a delightful
character to operate, too. He's so flexible and very responsive.
One of the things we've always tried to do with any of our puppets
is to try and get them flexible enough so that you have a wide
range of emotions possible.

Me: It's just amazing to me that you could do that with a hunk of felt.
You know, a character that can't really curl his lip, for example,
you can still put that kind of, I don't know...

H: That's again one of the great things about puppetry. You do part
of it and the audience fills in the rest.

Me: I guess so, but I still think it's more your ability than in my
mind.

H: Well, it's a joint thing.

Me: I can't believe how fast you work; you said you devote only 3
months to a special, and that includes one month writing for the
first draft; and you only spend 3 months of the year on SESAME
STREET and you're involved in so many projects, you've got the TV
series and the specials and the ice show and the traveling art
exhibit, comic strip and theme park - how actively involved are
you in the day-to-day creative aspects of all of these things?

H: Well, it varies a lot. I think my own strengths are in television
production. It's what I see as what maintains the thrust of us
as a group and so that's really where I like to spend my time and
energy. We have a marvelous group of people that are involved in
our publishing programs and the art department working with
different licensees trying to keep these things faithful.
Basically, I review that kind of thing and try to stay in touch
with the people and their problems, but I'm not working with that
on a day to day basis.

Me: How are new operators, new puppeteers trained and what do you look
for when you recruit somebody - what skills do they have to possess?

H: Well, let's see, generally we'll have a series of auditions. We'll
contact all the different people who have contacted us since our
last auditions, and we look for a whole combination of things. We
look for a basic sense of performance, a sense of humor. We look
for the type of person that kind of sparks to what you think
everybody else would spark to. You have to find people who put
their whole performance into their hand and that's a very specific
talent that a lot of performers don't have. A lot of very funny
performers will never be good puppeteers.

Me: You're saying it's nothing that somebody could be taught.

H: Well, it can be taught if there's a basic kind of receptivity
there. It's hard to know. I so often don't know myself and so
usually what we do is after that first series of auditions, we go
through a workshop period where we'll take twice or three times as
many people as we want to end up with. We'll take people who have
no puppetry experience also. We'll work with all of them for a
week and at the end of that time - if we think they have an ability
there that looks like it'll work out - we basically know whether
or not the person will become a good puppeteer or not. The whole
process of learning our style and becoming good at it takes nearly
a year, I would say, at least.

Me: And that's just practicing lip syncing for that whole year?

H: It's not just lip syncing; it's all the other skills connected
with what we do and so generally what we try to do is whenever
we're in production, we try to have a couple of people working
with us on a - not exactly apprenticed - but the new people
learning, a backup team in order to be able to grow into good
puppeteers. A lot of it is just doing it because all of the stuff
you just have to do it a lot until it gets natural and totally
without thinking, so you don't have to think about how to lip sync
and you don't have to think about the monitor and the fact that
the picture's reversed.

Me: That's one of the things I could never get used to, the fact that
you have to move left when you want the puppet to go right. My
brain is just not set up that way.

H: Right, right, but after you go through working with the monitor
for a particular period of time, then it's totally automatic and
you never even think about it.

Me: In the films and even to a certain extent on the TV shows there's
increasing use of radio controlled devices and mechanical and
hydraulic things. Do you envision the Muppets ever become
completely, I don't know, robotocized, like these Walt Disney
animatronic figures?

H: Well, no, although one of the things that we're working with these
days in FRAGGLE ROCK is a way of performing a character completely
outside. We have some little tiny characters in the show called
Doozers. They're about 6 inches tall. We've been able to radio
control their movement, so that one is outside operating a large
thing, and it's all translated down to this little tiny thing. He
can talk while he goes riding across on a motor scooter but,
basically, the performance is still coming from the performer and
I think that always has to be a key thing to us: that all of the
mechanical things and all of the radio controlled stuff is always
at the service of the performer in order to try to get a more
complete performance. I think it's that sense of performance that
is always essential to everything we've ever done. The automated
shows very often look incredibly wooden to me because it's that
sense of performance that's not there.

Me: Yeah, you're more in awe of the fact that it's a machine doing
this; you don't lose sight of the fact. You think, "What a
wonderful machine"; you're not thinking, "What a wonderful performance."

H: Right, right, and the performance is where the humanity is, where
the relationship is and I think that has to stay at the heart of
it all.

Me: The Henson people are not doing the voices for DARK CRYSTAL. Are
they being done by well known actors?

H: No. Some of our performers did their own voices but only a couple
of them. Usually, because we felt that I was casting the
performance in terms of performers really, so tying the type of
character to the performer but not feeling that I wanted to lock
to somebody who has the right voice because in a film it's not
difficult to find a voice for the type of thing that you want to
do. That's almost easier than the performer.

Me: So does this mark the first time that somebody else is doing a
voice that they're not actually performing?

H: No, not really. We've done bits of that all along, back from the
days when we did MUSICIANS OF BREMEN we used a number of voice
people. EMMET OTTER we had a couple of voice people in that. I
think we've always done a certain amount of that.

Me: I guess I never picked up on it because your people do so many
different voices, it's hard to really tell who is doing who.

H: Good.

Me: I saw an ad in PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY for THE TALE OF THE DARK CRYSTAL,
which is a children's version of the story and I was surprised to
see that it wasn't using Brian Froud's illustrations or production
photographs. Why is that? Why did you get somebody else to do
the illustrations?

H: Yeah, Brian preferred not to do the book. I mean, we certainly
offered it to him, if he wanted to do it. I'm trying to think what
his reasons were at that point. I think probably he was tried,
having spent a number of years on the film, and he didn't
particularly want to go right in to doing the characters for the
children's book, but he also had no objection to someone else
doing it. Actually, we had another artist lined up and, for some
reason, that fell through and so Bruce McNally, who's our art
director in London, had to step in suddenly. Bruce is a brilliant
illustrator who did, I think, an incredible job on this book. It's
just a gorgeous book. It's really nice.

Me: I read somewhere that you have an interest in psychic phenomenon.
Is that true?

H: Oh, just an outsider's/layman's interest slash curiosity, I suppose. I love all that stuff.

Me: I do too. Is there any special aspect of it that appeals to you?

H: Well, let's see. A number of years ago I became quite interested
in Seth, if you know anything about Jane Roberts' books. Jane
Roberts wore a series of books from an entity called Seth. Those
are the Seth books, which I particularly love and enjoy all the
concepts in those. I haven't read them recently, I must say.

Me: Isn't there one called SETH SPEAKS?

H: Yeah, SETH SPEAKS is one of her early books.

Me: Well, I've just about exhausted all my questions here.

H: Oh, good.

Me: I just really appreciate your taking the time to do this. I know
you must be really exhausted after working all day and to have to
sit and talk...

H: It's night over here now, so it's time for me to go to sleep. OK,
Judy, I've enjoyed talking to you. It's fun to talk to somebody
who knows that much about us.

Me: Well, I'm a long time fan and it's just a pleasure to have an
opportunity to speak with you and tell you how much I love Kermit
and all the characters and I hope to see them soon. I wish you
really the very best luck with DARK CRYSTAL and FRAGGLE ROCK.

H: Gee, thank you so much. I look forward to meeting you some time.

Me: Wow, me too, thank you very much.

H: OK, Judy, good night.

Me: Good night!