In memory of Jim Henson
Jim Henson would have been 75 years old today. Geek Chic Daily did a nice thing to honor his memory: They interviewed his daughter Lisa Henson, CEO of the Jim Henson Company, about her father. Excerpts:
GCD: We’ve recently seen Archaia Comics come out with A Tale of Sand, based on an unsold screenplay more similar to your dad’s earlier work like “Time Piece.” Do you think he would have come back around to that more experimental style later in life?
LH: Well, he was interested in all kinds of filmmaking. He wasn’t just working for kids: The Dark Crystal was considered creepy, scary for small children at the time. He did want to continue to do different sorts of projects. I think he would always have had a component of visual effects or characters, but he was doing some live-action projects that were sophisticated, and I think he wanted to be able to cut loose and do more of that kind of experimental, more personal filmmaking later on.
GCD: You see a running theme in stuff like “Time Piece,” about the importance of taking time out from the hectic pace of life. Now we’ve gotten even more frantic with Blackberries, instant messaging and social media. Do you think he would have found all of that difficult and annoying, or adapted and embraced it?
LH: He was a very technically proficient person who was always embracing the latest technology. Like a lot of men, he was a gadget guy: he would be the first person to buy the Handycam, or the personal tape-recording devices before they were called Walkmen. He was really proficient with — and really liked — everything gadgety. I don’t think that he would have rejected any type of new technology. However, personally he was a very focused individual and would be able to shut out the social and distraction noises. A lot of people have a hard time being creative because there are a lot of distractions, and he was really good at clearing his mind, putting a blank piece of paper in front of him and just starting a new project. With all of the new technology he still would have been very focused.
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GCD: What other modern innovations would have resonated with him, do you think?
LH: Gaming, in a certain way. He didn’t really play video games, but he liked the immersive quality. He was really interested in the idea of how you could enter into a piece of entertainment more than with a movie — something like the process that went into creating the movie Avatar, where you use 3-D for the reason of making it more immersive. That type of entertainment is where he wanted to go. He was very interested in 3-D, and at the time, in 1989, I thought he was going down a dead end with it, to be honest. It was fascinating to have that 3-D attraction at Disneyland. The Muppet-Vision 3-D interacts with the theater in a great way, but it was hard to predict that 3-D was where we’d be going in the movie industry.
GCD: Aside from 3-D, did he think of any other cinematic innovations that were maybe ahead of their time and hadn’t caught on yet?
LH: Not so much in terms of a specific invention, but he did imagine that we would be walking around in the show, making our own choices, walking through doors, meeting more characters…a fully real experience.
For more of the interview, go here.
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