the happytime mUrders
It’s time to stop the music. It’s time to dim the lights. It’s time for things to get weird as Total Film visits the set of Brian Henson’s very adult puppet comedy, The happyTime murders…
Join TF on set of the filthiest puppet movie ever. Don’t expect any rainbow connections around here.
Forget the Muppets. Don’t even think about Sesame Street. And do pretend you’re not talking to the son of Kermit the Frog. Then, maybe, it won’t seem so wrong that he’s offering you a line of white powder on a mirror while he talks about a sex scene that involves “a cow with big udders and one very horny octopus”. TF might be surrounded by singing lobsters, talking crabs and half the cast of The Muppet Christmas Carol, but this is not one for the kids.
“I feel like we’ve always been a little bit naughty,” laughs Brian Henson, after huffing what turns out to be a line of icing sugar (something to do with the story, apparently…). “You know Kermit has some dirty thoughts. Piggy certainly does!” Clearly, pushing any innocent childhood memories of The Muppet Show to the back of your mind is a good idea for anyone who wants them unsullied by The Happytime Murders.
Growing out of Henson’s adult improv show, Puppet Up!, his new movie does everything with puppets that he couldn’t do with Muppets – think swearing, shagging, shooting up and starring in a grown-up, tough-nut film-noir cop comedy without a single spontaneous musical number in sight. Heartstrings are not tugged, moral lessons are not taught, and there are no happy endings – unless you count the one that sees a puppet spunking a load of Silly String over the walls and ceiling after a spot of fun against a glass door with his secretary…
TF is in a studio in Santa Clarita, California, listening to a harried producer tell us that The Happytime Murders has nothing whatsoever to do with the Muppets – just as the entire studio starts singing the theme song to The Muppet Show. Melissa McCarthy and Elizabeth Banks are standing on a stage that’s been raised five feet off the floor and an army of puppeteers are crowded into the space beneath them with all manner of animals, monsters and coffee-addled cops on their outstretched arms. Henson has just called cut and one of the puppets, still in character, looks at the camera and starts singing, prompting the entire cast and crew to join in. Watching the action between takes is almost funnier than what’s happening when the cameras are rolling, and it’s this sharper ad-libbed comedy that Henson has been trying to capture for years.
“I always loved what the puppeteers could do after the director calls cut and before the director calls action,”
he smiles, remembering his own childhood growing up with the Muppets that no one else knew. “All of our humour came out of a very dirty place. Even the Muppets were developed out of that instinct, and then censored. That was my favourite part of watching my dad [Jim] work – that naughtiness was just so deliciously funny. Everybody on the crew would be laughing so hard. So that was what I wanted to bottle in this movie.”