(Editor’s note: Columns often contain opinions; those opinions belong to the author.)
Many of us oddballs are still in love with The Muppets. We have that heart-pumping nostalgia for them that goes straight to the late seventies and early 80s. We love them just about as much as Gonzo loves Camilla or Miss Piggy loves Kermit.
Therefore, it is fitting that The Miller Theater will be playing “The Muppet Movie” Valentine’s weekend. The free flick will start at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16 with doors opening at 1 p.m..
As an author, I still love puns, and this probably extends to this film. Fozzie Bear and Kermit reach a literal fork in the road during the “Moving Right Along” number during their road trip to pursue their dreams. The giant metallic fork is right there just as the map dictated to them. Some moderns might say that Dad joke is just so prong. (Wocka! Wocka!)
Along the journey, there is a scene where Kermit keeps repeating that something is a myth. He yells, “Myth! Myth!” A lady with a lisp then comes up and says, “Yeth?”
Speaking of Valentine’s Day again, who can forget the scene with Kermit and Miss Piggy on a date? They pick this ultra-cheap champagne, and Miss Piggy coaches Kermit in etiquette and tells him that the waiter is supposed to taste it for them. Steve Martin, playing the waiter, does his usual deadpan, sarcastic expression during this exchange. Then, he spits it out and murmurs, “…excellent choice!” The scene itself is an excellent vintage.
Also, having worked for two years in university as a K.F.C. cook, I get a lot of laughs out of the frog leg restaurant entrepreneur who is an obvious send-up of Col. Sanders (remember how ubiquitous he was in the mid-to-late 70s?). Like when I was a kid, I still cringe a bit when Kermit sees the frog leg billboard. This is coupled with another tragedy where the frog star’s bike is run over by a steamroller being used on a new frog leg franchise parking lot, and it appears for a moment that Kermit is destroyed as well.
But in true Muppet fashion, there is still more comedy and another chance for a Georgia-specific pun. Shown sitting atop a piece of construction equipment after the accident, Kermit looks at his smashed bike and says, “…if frogs couldn’t hop, I’ d be gone with the Schwinn.”
By the way, before I saw the film, I had vague memories of watching “The Muppet Show” with my Grandma Hattie and “Ninny” / Great Aunt Evelyn. They, my Golden Girl-like neighbors who shared a home, helped take care of me when I was young and did not have satellite television for many years. Because of this, we would watch regular television and educational television together during the evenings on the weekends.
Ninny especially loved the Muppets and as a divorcee, she identified with Miss Piggy. She, too, loved makeup and garish colors – particularly red – and histrionics. And, one year, she and her creative senior friends put on a skit as part of their own entertainment at Edisto Beach. Part of that entertainment involved a toy version of the Miss Piggy Muppet – a puppet, in this case, intended for children.
I am sure she had Miss Piggy sing some Andrews Sisters standard (she often sang everything from World War II classics to Elvis songs around my sister and me). I wish I knew what happened to that puppet and could not find it when I helped clean out three estates which were essentially in the same home.
I loved Miss Piggy as well, but I particularly enjoyed Statler and Waldorf. As I write critiques at times, I am reminded of some of their caustic, funny remarks. And I think that they are needed in the modern age – where some celebrities do need to be taken down a peg or two. I remember in one episode with Milton Berle they had heckled him for a while. Berle then said, “I’d like to see you come down here and be funny..” Statler replied, “You first.”
But my favorites from the show and “The Muppet Movie” were probably Kermit and Fozzy Bear – Kermit because of his heart and Fozzy because of his corny jokes and sensitivity. I can still hear Fozzy dryly stating, “A bear in his natural habitat… a Studebaker.”
And what still stays with me from Kermit, because of the creatives and oddballs I have broken bread with through the years, is “The Rainbow Connection.” Seeing that helicopter camera move and focus down to that swamp where Kermit lived and then seeing the shot of the swamp and a closeup to Kermit singing on a log still puts a tear in my eye. I later learned what a monumental task this scene was with Jim Henson being underwater in a tank with breathing equipment as he did the puppeteer work for his alter ego.
Growing up in rural South Carolina and having ventured throughout the country as an author and having lived elsewhere in my almost fifty years, including in South Carolina cities and two years in Massachusetts, reminds me of Kermit’s and others’ journeys as well. And of course, I am reminded of one the main lines of his signature song about finding that rainbow connection – someday.
And maybe you’ll find it and regain your love for the Muppets at the Miller.
South Carolina author Ron Baxley, Jr. is a social media manager for Paula’s Family Restaurant in Bamberg, S.C., a correspondent for “Augusta Good News” and a graphic novelist and screenwriter who is currently writing a series set in a small Southern town which he has codenamed “Project Neon.”
