Jim Henson
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Hensonwas an American puppeteer, artist, cartoonist, inventor, screenwriter, songwriter, musician, actor, film director, and producer who achieved international fame as the creator of the Muppets. Born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised in Leland, Mississippi, and Hyattsville, Maryland, Henson began developing puppets while attending high school. While he was a freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park, he created Sam and Friends, a five-minute sketch-comedy puppet show that appeared on television. After graduating from the University of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntertainer
Date of Birth24 September 1936
CountryUnited States of America
But with The 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.
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.
I don't resent working long hours. I shouldn't- I'm the one who set up my life this way. I love to work. It's the thing that I get the most satisfaction out of-nd probably what I do best. Not that I don't enjoy days off. I love vacations and loafing around. But I think much of the world has the wrong idea of working. It's one of the good things in life. The feeling of accomplishment is more real and satisfying than finishing a good meal- or looking at one's accumulated wealth.
All of a sudden you realise that you are the person who has control of your life.
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
I believe that we form our own lives, that we create our own reality, and that everything works out for the best.
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.
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.
Let us use this log cabin as a means of looking back.
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.
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.
We really have a lot of ambitions for this film,
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.
the most profound effect on children of any entertainer of his time.