THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS
Brian Henson subverts Kermit’s legacy with profanity and puppets...
It’s time to play the music, it’s time to stress that these are not the Muppets. Hide your eyes!
CULTURE CLASH
Cover your eyes, Kermit, because The Henson Company’s going R-rated with crime comedy The Happytime Murders. Directed by Brian Henson, this hard-boiled caper takes us to the furry underbelly of a city where puppets and humans coexist... sort of. “This is a darker, grittier world than ours,” Henson tells Red Alert. “It feels like contemporary LA but there’s a minority population of puppets who live among us and there’s a lot of societal strife. There’s friction between the Puppet Americans or what we call ‘Felties’ and the ‘Fleshies’. We used that as a springboard to create the world.”
PUPPET PARTNERS
When the cast of once-beloved puppet show The Happytime Gang start getting whacked, hot fuzz Phil Phillips (long-time Muppeteer Bill Barretta) is forced to re-team with his Fleshie ex-partner Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) to crack the case. “It’s a contemporary crime thriller but conceptually a lot of the elements have roots in film noir,” says Henson. “Phil’s a private detective puppet whose life is kind of a trainwreck. He’s angry and has to work with his ex-police partner who he hates and she hates him. I’ve known Bill since we were 17 so it’s a lot of fun working with him.”
IT’S TAKEN ITS TIME
The Happytime Murders arrives in August but it’s taken its sweet time getting here. Ever since Henson helmed sweary stage show Puppet Up! in 2006, a big-screen continuation has been on the cards. “Puppet Up! got funnier and funnier as long as we were being really adult and that’s when I decided to make a movie in this tone of comedy,” he says. “This was probably 13 or 14 years ago. We did a lot of work on the structure of the story and Melissa McCarthy worked on the dialogue but the essence of the movie stayed the same.”
FAMILY BUSINESS
Puppet profanity may shock some viewers but it shouldn’t – Jim Henson’s original company ethos was to surprise audiences and defy expectations. “I think he would have enjoyed it,” says Henson on what his dad might make of The Happytime Murders. “It’s naughty and my dad liked to do naughty stuff too. The equivalent was when he did the first year of Saturday Night Live, that was by far the most racy TV show on air and there was a lot of controversy when it first came out. The characters were quite adult. I’ve done a similar thing to what he did.”
R IS FOR R-RATED
Sesame Street this is not – unlike its educational cousin The Happytime Murders is brought to you by the letters “F” and “U”. “The scene everybody finds shocking is where I comedically depict a man ejaculating using a puppet and silly string,” says Henson on finding the line. “It’s ridiculous and really funny but if I hadn’t done it with silly string it probably would’ve been gross and wouldn’t have been in the movie so the comedy goes pretty far but always in an absurd way. It always gets a reaction. I haven’t had anybody say, ‘It looks boring!’” SBl
The Happytime Murders is in cinemas from 17 August.