You know? That's why it's funny.
It's not funny because Ooo we did a puppet
scene, a sex puppet scene that includes
an ejaculation. That's not why it's funny.
It's funny because of the stupid choice of
using silly string.
It feels really fresh to me right now,
at a time when everyone's making–
not even sequels anymore.
It just feels like there are rarely very
original films and
We did a lot of rewriting on it
because that all started 10 years ago. And then
and we had a couple of opportunities
but never with enough money to–
"Hey, handsome. You looking for
some rotten cotton?
I'm a woman.
That's okay. Yeah, that's even better.
We got a good time for you."
We started doing these workshops,
these improv workshops, with the puppeteers
to try and find a new flavor of comedy
And it worked really well, and we were
really enjoying it. And that became a live show
that we do now called 'Puppet Up,' which
has quite a underground following and we have
a lot of fun doing it. It's very, very funny,
but it's blue. So, then I started looking for
for something that was scripted that could
work in this more adult tone.
and on this particular movie, we actually
added a big layer of challenge to it which is
we wanted to try to infuse some of this
improvising comedy energy that Melissa McCarthy is
particularly excels in. And also what we had
been doing in our show 'Puppet Up' and that was
absolutely the first time we've ever done that.
Whenever we've done a movie, it is tightly, tightly
scripted and, you know, even my father would
maybe go off a little bit or Frank Oz would go
a little bit outside, but really, always the
Muppet movies were very tightly scripted,
very tightly planned in advance. And when
you try to open up for improvising comedy
you can't have that same level of preparation.
So, the movie sort of has some of those looser,
fun, modern, improvised energy comedy too.
And then, some of the real, tough sequences,
like the sex sequences and the porno shop
sequence. Those are real, tough, technical
sequences that had to be really figured out in advance.
"I'm in the f*cking FBI.
Oh yeah, what's the stand for? F*cking Big Idiot?"
I love what it can hap--and that it happens in real time, and it's
spontaneous. The tough thing about working
with CGI is you work real hard to make it
convincing, and then once it's convincing,
then you have to try to make it look like it was
spontaneous, and if you can do it for real
as a performance art form rather than a
Keyframe animation art form. It just
appeals to me, and it appeals to me the way
puppets move and all.
You know? Bend it a little bit. Do something
unexpected. Who would have walked away from
'The Muppet Show' like he did, you know?
He made 5 seasons of it, and right when he
could have started becoming crazy wealthy
he went 'No, I'm done with that.' You know?