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.

There was a little afternoon show that was called Afternoon. Back in those days in television, most local stations had a midday show for housewives that had a series of things. It was like a variety show for midday.

I decided that what I really wanted to do was go off and paint.

Yeah, I think we did the term Muppets before we got the show Sam and Friends – a few months after I started working.

I was very interested in theatre, mostly in stage design. I did a little bit of acting.

Well, Detroit Institute is kind of a key – probably the largest permanent collection of puppets in the US.

We thought it would be fun to try to design a show that would work well internationally and so that’ s what we’re intending to do with Fraggle Rock, and we are indeed now selling it around the world.

I think my own strengths are in television production.

My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here.

You’re assisting the audience to understand; you’re giving them a bridge or an access. And if you don’t give them that, if you keep it more abstract, it’s almost more pure. It’s a cooler thing.

I do remember doing shows strictly in black and white, too, so you’re right.

Actually the copies of characters is something I don’t particularly like to talk about in articles but just for your information, most characters there’s only one.

It has always been difficult to get Big Bird to be very pretty. Big Bird in England is much more gorgeous.

If anything, there’s a difference in working with color in England and the color in the US.

Yeah, I did some small parts in high school and the first year of college and then fairly soon thereafter I settled into the backstage scenery, and then at the University of Maryland I was doing posters for their productions.

At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design.

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.

At the time of Polaroid – and I did a couple of other commercials just before I stopped doing that stuff – at that point I was at the level where they respect you and your opinion and all that sort of thing.

When The Muppet Show ended, we all sat around and said, what kind of television show would we like to do. We felt the need these days are for some quality children’s programming.

And also there wasn’t much money in television in those days anyhow.

Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.

NBC was trying to convert all of their local programming to color right away to encourage the sale of the sets, so I barely remember working in black and white, although I do know that I did do it, but there was not a major difference, though.

When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there.

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.

I’ve never felt any sense of competition with anybody, and we’re all friends; we’re all good friends.

When I was a kid, I never saw a puppet show. I never played with puppets or had any interest in them.

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.

Somebody like a Piggy or a Kermit, there needs to be several versions and so there will be several of them.

Yeah, we pretty much had a form and a shape by that time – a style – and I think one of the advantages of not having any relationship to any other puppeteer was that it gave me a reason to put those together myself for the needs of television.

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.

The most sophisticated people I know – inside they are all children.

No, there’s not much competition between puppeteers in general because everybody’s working their own style.