https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/07/inspiring-jim-henson/
"Since the recent release of the documentary
Jim Henson: Idea Man, many have
been looking back at the Muppets creator with fresh eyes. In his 53 years of
life, Henson was constantly innovating in puppetry, pushing its boundaries as a
medium, and producing shows that still feel timeless today.
Having grown into a genuine larger-than-life figure, it’s easy to forget that,
in his early years, he had to find his own voice, just like any other artist.
In the same way that young puppeteers are inspired by Henson now, Henson looked
up to his own creative role models, borrowing and emulating them on his way to
Muppet fame.
Unlike his right-hand man Frank Oz, who grew up in a family of puppeteers,
young Jim Henson was not a puppet guy. “I don’t recall ever seeing a puppet
show when I was a kid,” Henson said in an unaired 1979 interview with Orson
Welles. “No, and I never played with puppets — I never had any to play with.”
Henson was always transparent about his original motivations for pursuing
puppetry: He wanted to work in television. In a 1985 interview, he jokingly
agreed that were the local TV station looking for a weatherman and not a
puppeteer, “It would be now, my 30th anniversary as a weatherman.”
That’s not to say that he wasn’t artistically inclined: Henson’s childhood
ambition was to make comics. His earliest published cartoon appeared in the
Christian Science Monitor when he was 13, according to
Imagination
Illustrated (an annotated collection of his notes and sketches). Henson also
penned cartoons, illustrations, and covers for his high school and college
newspapers. That early enthusiasm for comic strips later played out in the
personalities of his puppets."
Via Esther Schindler.
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
