“Muppet fur flies over Jim Henson script”
A most interesting read in the LA Times blog Company Town about the screenplay “The Muppet Man,” written by first-timer Christopher Weekes. The script, which sits atop the recently released Black List (2009), is caught up in some controversy:
Weekes was discovered by managers Britton Rizzio and Kelly McCormack after they had seen an indie movie of his at a film festival in 2008. They soon found he had written, entirely on spec, a script about one of the most enigmatic and private of contemporary artists without having ever met or even read much about him (there exists no major published biography about Henson).
Instead, Weeks conjured the story mostly out of his imagination, basing it on a series of photos he’d studied and whatever strands of information he could find on things like Wikipedia. “Even though I was just 10 when he died, Jim Henson had been this Walt Disney-like figure in my life, and I wanted to create a version of him as seen through these kind of rose-colored glasses,” Weekes said Friday from Australia.
As whimsical as the script is said to be (it also folded into the narrative invented particulars of the romance between Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, including a depiction of a hungover Kermit heartbroken by Miss Piggy’s impending marriage to another beau), it also wanders into a legal and creative thicket. Weekes had written a story about individuals — Jim and Jane Henson — to whom he did not hold rights. Equally problematic, Weekes had included a number of Muppet characters to which Disney owns the rights.
That kind of thing is, to say the least, usually frowned upon.
“He basically did what all your representatives tell you not to do,” Sarah Hammer, who used to represent Weekes as an agent, says with a laugh.
Seemingly crazy move by Weekes to write a script like that per rights issues alone. But then to do a bio-pic that is only partially based on fact… well, one could expect that would be problematic with the surviving Henson family members:
And sure enough, when the project was sold to the Jim Henson Co. shortly after — “the only place it could go,” says Rizzio — it was welcomed but quickly found itself mired in creative differences. The production banner, according to people familiar with the meetings, wanted to turn the story into more of a Muppet romp — even a musical — and excise the Jim and Jane Henson relationship. And Weekes had written an intimate, if not dark, character study. As the novice Weekes found out, it’s not easy being green.
Lisa Henson, the daughter of Jim and Jane Henson who helps run the Jim Henson Co., maintains that the problems can be resolved by simply combining two different visions, though even she acknowledges that the story that came to her was not one that the company liked.
“It was a very gutsy move on [Chris’s] part to write this script, and we recognized the enthusiasm,” she says. “But it would be irresponsible to make a biopic that would be all made up.”
“But it would be irresponsible to make a biopic that would be all made up.” So simply slap the onto Weekes’ draft the other version of the story currently in development? Translation: Very little, if anything of Weekes’ screenplay will end up in a movie about Jim Henson, if the movie gets produced at all. But not to cry for Weekes:
Weekes is no longer actively working on his script — he, in fact, has not written a new draft since the original was sold to the Henson Co. Instead he is working on two new movies, including one for Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures called “Waterproof,” to which “Enchanted” director Kevin Lima is loosely attached to direct.
So even though “The Muppet Man” was a problematic script to begin with due to rights issues and its alternate view of reality re Jim Henson, and even though the script will most likely never end up on screen in any recognizable form, because Weekes had enormous passion for the story and wrote the hell out of it, he has managed to break into Hwood and begin his screenwriting career. All based on a certifiably crazy decision to write the script in the first place.
Has anybody read “The Muppet Man”? What’s your opinion of the script? And if any of you want to read it, you should be able to download it here.
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