Brian Henson has been part of the family business all his life.
The son of Muppets creator Jim Henson, Brian remains a puppeteer, and has created a new show called Puppet Up, which is now showing at the Venetian.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
On growing up in the Henson household:
In some ways we were a very normal family and in other ways we were like a circus family. It was a very creative household.
We were rapscallions -- dirty and running around barefoot all the time.
My father was super hard working and he worked in [New York City]. He was there a lot. He would often stay there a couple of nights a week. During the beginning of "Sesame Street," he and Frank Oz and Don Sahlin did all the animated movies, as well as all the puppet stuff. Basically, those three guys did what 50 people do now.
He would always invite us to go to the studio. Mostly, I spent a lot of time around the Muppets, and my father's work, by going and being with him in the studio and the workshop in New York City.
On building his first puppet:
I was probably 15 years old and they needed a penguin for a "Lullaby on Broadway" number. They had a penguin, a walrus and they were building all these puppets really fast for one musical number.
So, the head of the shop said, "Brian, why don't you build the penguin?" So I built the puppet penguin. And Frank Oz picked up and he loved it. So, he did it in the "Lullaby on Broadway." And my dad loved it so much that they made a whole bunch more penguins. And then it became a thing - the Muppet Penguin!
On thinking about working outside of the world of puppets:
My father never pressured any of us to be in the business and most of us are in one way or another.
He just wanted us to do what ever made us feel passionate. During a time in my teens, I was very into physics and astrophysics. So, I thought I would go in that direction.
When I decided that it was really what I wanted to do -- stay in our industry -- I was probably 19. It was special effects. I wanted to be a special effects technician.
Then that was very quickly special effects puppets, and then it was more puppets. It made sense because it was stuff I knew a lot about from my childhood.
On what about being a puppeteer that is so stratifying:
I think it's trying to maintain that sort of edge that we're doing something a little bit different -- that we don't take ourselves too seriously. We're kind of making fun of puppets even when we're doing puppets.
I think that's what the Muppets has always done. That's still what we try to do.
When you get a puppet on your hand, you can let loose on some weird, crazy personality that is not what you normally would.
On the new show "Puppet Up Uncensored":
It started about 10 years ago. I was trying to find a new tone of comedy for the puppets -- a newer comedic tone that was with puppets that wasn't trying to emulate what the Muppets had really established in the 70s.
I was trying it with writers and that wasn't really working. So, I wanted to try it with performers and my wife, Mia Sara, suggested I get in touch with Patrick Bristow (whose field is teaching improvisation and he is an improv actor). Initially I got together with Patrick and said can you teach my performers to be really sharp improv comedians.
He said he didn't think that would work because improv actors look each other in the eye and they're trying to read each other's minds. But he said, let's give it a shot. And we started doing workshops and they were really successful.
In this show, it is really "Puppet Up Uncensored" because it is an adult show. More than half of it is improvised off of audience suggestions. And particularly here in Vegas, we've learned that the audiences are pretty blue, which is fun! They're pretty naughty!
The show gets to be very naughty, but once you're going with characters, you never know where you're going. So, you can be completely uncensored in this show. Your brain goes places you didn't know it was going to go.
On carrying on the business after his father's death:
I think that people just assumed it was done, because my father was such a visible frontman and he was the genius sailing the ship. But I don't think people realized there was all that much more company behind him.
When he died and it was very sudden. It was totally unexpected.
It was an interesting couple of weeks there, because he died and it was kind of wonderful because the whole world was in mourning with me, and actually that made it easier I think
Then within a couple of days, there were meetings to figure out what should we do with the company. My sister Lisa and I were the only ones really in the business full-time.
It was a small group of really important family and colleagues trying to figure [it] out and, basically, they chose me. I was only 26. So it was a tough time. I needed an enormous amount of support, which I got.
On what's next:
I am working on a movie that is basically a spin-off of this show. I am going to do an R-rated crime thriller. It is kind of a film noir thriller called "Happytime Murders." I've been trying to get the right cast that is half people, half puppets.
But it's a movie that's set in Hollywood in a world where there is a minority population of puppets and there always has been. There is terrible prejudice against puppets. Puppets get the worst jobs. They're totally mistreated by everybody.
It is the funniest script I've ever developed. I'm totally making a hard R-rated puppet movie.
Brian Henson, puppeteer
