You know, I suppose one of the marks of a true favorite movie is that it sneaks up on you. Like the rest of my generation, the Muppets have been in my life since before I can remember. Before now, I don't think there was ever a moment when I stopped and thought, “You know what my favorite movie is? The Muppet Movie.” But when it came time to write this article, I knew this had to be it. Sure I could have written about my genre favorites: Aliens, The Road Warrior, Repo Man, The Thing, Road Games, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or I could have written about my classic and art house favorites: A Matter of Life and Death, There Will Be Blood, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Casablanca. But I can't think of a single movie that better embodies everything great about the movies and moreover that sends you out of the theater with motivation and inspiration for change in your life than The Muppet Movie.
In 1979, Jim Henson and co. managed to squeeze out one last classic Hollywood style movie. The Muppet Movie is a great road movie, a great musical, a great adaptation of the popular Muppet Show. It features more cameos than It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It’s goofy and irreverent one minute and genuinely heartfelt the next. I try not to be a sucker for sap, but I believe that Jim Henson’s optimism that bleeds through the screen is sincere. I don't want to read too much into this, but The Muppet Movie being made when it was and by the people who made it seems to be almost a response to the “gritty realism” of the New American Cinema of Coppola, Scorsese, and Friedkin. Classic Hollywood wasn't just a way too milk money out of the Great Depression's impoverished and destitute. It was a way of life. It was an attitude, money be damned. Like Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers (see Justin Couch's favorite movie write-up), and Errol Flynn's Robin Hood (see Harry Knowles' favorite movie write up), Kermit, Fozzie, and the gang are poor as dirt, but they never stop believing that with hard work, elbow grease, good company, great songs, and a little luck, something better will come along.
The aesthetic universe of the Muppets is joy to visit. Kermit and the gang dream about the big, fancy Hollywood lifestyle. Though their practical reality is decidedly shabbier, good company goes a long way. There are no finer moments in The Muppet Movie than when Kermit and Fozzie are exploring the wide open spaces of the ol’ U.S. of A. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is the most beautiful road movie cinematography I’ve seen. All Kermit and Fozzie have is their broken down Studebaker, a shitty banjo, and the beauty and dreams of their own souls writ large on the landscape. You can measure how good of a time you’re having on a real road trip by how closely it hews to The Muppet Movie.
The Muppets are downhome, homemade, and handcrafted. Their shagginess and dinginess, the movie’s hippy-dippy vibe and lived-in sets, and the casual, relaxed, even irreverent script, all point to a different era of family-friendly movies. I love the Pixar standard of quality as much as the next guy, but compared to the golden age of Muppet Studios, Pixar rules with an iron fist. The Muppets are downright grimy, maybe the last of the “happy hobos.” I constantly feel like I’m trying to get back in touch with that attitude in myself, and it’s a lesson I have to learn over and over again. The joyful feeling I get when watching The Muppet Movie is like the Vitamin C boost of good living.
The songs and score by the incomparable Paul Williams are, like all of his work, cheesy and dated. Nevertheless, his music fits the Muppets like a glove. There is no better song about idle aspiration than “Rainbow Connection.” There is no better traveling song than “Movin’ Right Along.” There is no better song about the melancholy of unfulfilled ambition than “I’m Going to Go Back There Someday.”
Okay, now for the crazy stuff. I am well aware that by writing the following paragraph, I run the risk of sounding like a complete lunatic.
There is an extreme humanist belief system that has emerged in the last few decades called chaos magic. Popular practitioners include comic book writers Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and novelist Terry Prachett. I don’t claim to be an expert on the beliefs and practices of chaos magic, but it’s always struck me as appealing. If you take away all the ritual and tradition, chaos magic basically assumes that you have the ability to effect physical time, space, and event through belief and will. It would sound pretty gonzo (pun intended) if it didn’t ring so true. If you will something hard enough, and dedicate all your psychic power toward making it true, it has a very high probability of coming true. In a less fantastical sense, it’s the contemporary western ideal of upward mobility. In the past decades, we’ve grown jaundiced to the old all-American lullaby that you can grow up to be president one day. But my god, it’s true. Jim Henson is proof of that, and The Muppet Movie is the most perfect cinematic realization of this almost Nietzschean will to power. When Kermit’s movie set falls down around him, he and his friends band together to sing, “Life is a movie/ Write your own ending.”
What I find so appealing about both chaos magic and Jim Henson is the belief that by harnessing your subjectivity, you can control what we usually call objective reality. The Muppet Movie is all about finding the agency to change your life. Admittedly, this is all a little bit touchy-feely, but The Muppet Movie lives what it preaches. It’s damn fun to watch, it will brighten up any cloudy day, and it’s about characters who dare to still dream the unhip dream of upward mobility through sheer will and persistence, made by people like Jim Henson who were really living that dream. What the unimaginative learn from Dr. Phil and Tony Robbins, I learn from Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear. Perception is half the battle. The hardships of life can’t touch you if you keep your perception positive and nimble.
Make no mistake, as carefree as they are, the Muppets are ambitious as hell. For goodness sakes, the whole point of the movie is that they’re trying to break into Hollywood and become “rich and famous.” Kermit is given a tempting opportunity to sell out to Doc Hopper. Though Kermit naturally balks at the idea of being a mascot for frog legs, it’s very important to me that the final confrontation with Doc Hopper is about more than that. It’s about how all the ambition in the world doesn’t amount to anything if you don’t have people to share it with. As life takes its turns, I don’t want to lose that. Nothing makes me happier than being able to host all of these wonderful guests for The Movie Advocate’s Favorite Movie Series. I know some of you personally, many of you I don’t know at all. We share a common passion for great movies and great discussion, and as Kermit says, “I guess that makes us kind of like a family.” I have made awesome new friends through The Movie Advocate, and rekindled old friendships as well. I’ve had access to really cool people and events. I feel like I’m just warming up, and as I continue to will my dreams onward and upward, The Muppet Movie reminds me not only that it’s possible, but why it all matters.
Sure, after all the trials the Muppets go through, it seems a little bit arbitrary when Orson Welles drafts up a “Standard Rich and Famous” contract for the gang. It feels like a cop-out to play the climax of the movie as a cheap gag. I don't know, maybe it is. However, it also says to me that when you work hard, surround yourself with great people, and really believe in yourself, not to be surprised if luck arbitrarily tips your way. It’s almost like…chaos magic.
-Ben
Join us all week and into the next for more Favorite Movies!
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