He could say “Get out of my office, that’s not good!” and make it sound like “Come have dinner with me.” But it would be so gently and lovingly delivered that you didn’t even know you’d been told no. If he didn’t think something was going to work, he would say so. To have that kind of confidence in the choices he had made, and to trust somebody with so much creative freedom was just remarkable. I’ll hear them in the studio when you record.” Wow. And he said, “Oh no, Paul, that’s not necessary. We’ll let you hear the songs as we’re working on them and make sure we’re headed in the right direction. So Kenny and I aren’t going to surprise you with anything. And Kenny Ascher, who I was co-writing with at the time.Īfter the meeting, I was walking Jim to his car and I told him: Jim, I know how important this adventure is for you. It was me and Jim and Jerry Juhl, who was writing the script. At the first meeting about The Muppet Movie, we met at my house in the Hollywood Hills. One of the elements that is hugely important to the film is the remarkable attitude Jim Henson had to the people he worked with. What was it like working with Jim Henson? What kind of direction did he give you? As sweet and loving as Frank Oz is, that woman he carries around can be very biting! “What songs are you writing for moi? You call that a love song!” When you wake up in the morning and know you’re going to go work with Gonzo and Kermy and Miss Piggy, it just feels like home. If you were talking to Frank and Jim and they happened to be carrying Kermit and Miss Piggy with them, then there would be five of you in the conversation.
Of course, that has a lot to do with Jim and the remarkable Muppeteers, like Frank Oz and Dave Goelz. I didn’t even know they were called Muppets, those little felt guys on Sesame Street, but there was something in the talent and intellect and the wit. We’d get up, sometimes with a horrific hangover and often in some tiny little town in the middle of nowhere.
I had been on the road with my band, and we would watch Sesame Street every morning. Williams: When I went over to do The Muppet Show, I was already a fan. To inaugurate a new column called Roots on Screen, which will examine depictions of roots music in movies, on television shows, and through various media, we talked to Williams about his experiences with his Muppet co-stars, his work with Jim Henson, and what it means to live with a classic.īGS: What was your introduction to the Muppets? Featuring a spare arrangement that foregrounds the banjo and adds only dollops of sympathetic strings, “The Rainbow Connection” may be the first time many young listeners see that particular instrument or even consider the idea of roots music, although the Oscar-nominated song has been covered by a wide range of performers, including Harry Nilsson, Judy Collins, Weezer, and countless kindergarten classes. With the film returning to select theaters for its 40 th anniversary, Williams and the Muppets are still remembered for that song Kermit sings in the swamp at the beginning of The Muppet Movie.
RAINBOW CONNECTION LYRICS MOVIE
But he was also a gifted comedian, which led to numerous movie roles (including the Smokey & the Bandit films) and made him a natural fit in the Muppet ensemble. Often working with co-writer Kenneth Ascher, he combined rock and Tin Pan Alley influences into a melancholy sound that spoke eloquently about loneliness, lost love, and depression. Williams was already an enormously successful songwriter and performer by the time he stopped by The Muppet Show in 1976, having penned massive hits for the Carpenters (“We’ve Only Just Begun”), Three Dog Night (“Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song”), and Barbra Streisand (“Evergreen”). That became Williams’ specialty over the years, and he has contributed to numerous Muppets film and television projects, including 1977’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas and 2008’s A Muppet Christmas: Letters to Santa. In other words, it lends depth and humanity to a character who is mostly fabric and foam. “The Rainbow Connection” is, in the words of its co-writer Paul Williams, Kermit the Frog’s “I Am” song, meaning that it sets him up as a character and provides the motivation that sends him out on those highways and byways. Their journey starts small, in a swamp, where a lone frog sits on a log playing a banjo and singing a song that has become something of a pop standard. On their hit television show, they ran a vaudeville company that hosted a different celebrity each week, but their first feature film sent them on the road in America, to small-town beauty pageants, used car lots, empty deserts - all the way to Hollywood. When it hit theaters in 1979, The Muppet Movie took that troupe of felt characters out of the theater and into the real world.
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