Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard returned to Cannes Film Festival for the first time since 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, to premiere his new original documentary about Jim Henson, titled Jim Henson Idea Man, streaming on Disney+ from May 31st.
In this deft and touching portrayal, Howard expands our appreciation for Henson’s brilliance beyond “just” the Muppets – though creating that menagerie of memorable characters out of felt, foam, ping pong balls, and other materials would have been more than enough to secure his artistic legacy. The Jim Henson of Idea Man is constantly creating: along with the nightclub notion, there were ideas for Broadway shows, ballets, and amusement parks (parallels to Walt Disney spring to mind, making it appropriate that Disney would ultimately absorb Henson’s company following his death in 1990).
Puppeteering, we learn through the film, was really a means to an end – a way for Henson to enter the nascent medium of television. His parents invested in the purchase of one of the first TV sets available in 1950 – at Jim’s insistence. As a teenager he responded to an ad for a Washington, DC TV station in search of a puppeteer. Thus began a journey that led to the creation of Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Cookie Monster, Fozzie Bear, Bert and Ernie, the Swedish chef, Beaker (the high-strung lab assistant whose anxiety is expressed through chirps of “mee-mee-mee-mee-mee”), and so many others.
Jim Henson Idea Man is a soup-to-nuts biographical documentary, covering the entire range of the protagonist’s life and career — upbringing in Mississippi; marriage to Jane Nebel, his artistic partner and wife, collaboration with the Children’s Television Workshop on Sesame Street, which introduced millions to the Muppets; the syndicated The Muppet Show and subsequent movies, and Henson’s other big screen endeavors, like Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Some of the same ground has been covered in Muppet Guys Talking, the 2017 documentary directed by Frank Oz, Henson’s longtime collaborator (the Bert to Jim’s Ernie), as well as Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, a 2021 doc directed by Marilyn Agrelo. But Howard brings fresh energy to the subject through the skillful use of animations based on Henson’s impressive drawings and wonderful archival rarities that go beyond what has been seen in previous treatments of Henson’s life.
One of the gems is an interview with Henson and Oz conducted before a live audience with none other than Orson Welles. The portly Welles intones, in that extraordinary baritone, “The Muppets – they’re superstars. Just because they’re so popular, we may neglect to notice that Muppetry is also an art.”
To my mind, this is the most visually inventive documentary Howard has made. The simplicity of the gray, box-like set for interviews with Henson’s children, Oz, Fran Brill, Rita Moreno and other collaborators, evokes both the black & white tone and the 5:4 aspect ratio of early television, and perhaps rear projection of appropriate clips that illustrate what interviews are discussing.
Watch the trailer for Jim Henson Idea Manhere and stream the documentary on Disney+ from May 31st.
