The Genius of Kirk Thatcher sponsored by Acorns

You are now tuning in to discover your potential. So listen, participate, be inspired, know that you can discover your potential. Potentiometers? What do you call your view? I like people and I turn on, as a girlfriend once said, you become television's Kirk Thatcher. Which I am all the time, it's just when I'm not talking. If I was like this on my own, I live alone, it would be kind of crazy. So I like people, I like talking about anything. It's nice to sort of, I met you guys last week, I don't know, time-wise to the listeners, but yes, it's nice to see you again. And thank you for having me on. Yeah, and I've been thinking about you ever since, but I'll let Dan answer the question, so I don't get embarrassed by that. Yeah. I hear that's so little from attractive ladies. More for attracted men who are large bearded men, they tell me that. I'm gonna go off the normal questions. Yeah. Normal questions don't work with me. Yeah, exactly. You're not leaving normalcy, normalcy. Well, one question I had, and I know if people watch, I know you worked with Jim Henson for five, over five years. About five years, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd love to know more about that relationship and about what, you know, because he was so extraordinary. We met through a mutual friend who I just finished Star Trek 4 and she had been married to Jim Frawley, who directed the first Muppet movie. And so she said, I was showing her some projects I was pitching around. She said, you should meet Jim Henson. He really would, I think you two would get along. And I did, and we got along like a house on fire. He had just, I think, labyrinth and come out the year before. And what was interesting, I mean, this is such a testament to his lack of ego in some ways. He asked me what I thought of it, because it hadn't done well. There had already kind of been a box office flop. And he asked me what I thought of it. And I gave him an honest answer, because I wanted to work with a guy, I didn't want to blow smoke. And I said, I thought the world was amazing, the world building. I said it was a little tough to get involved with, I didn't think David Bowie was a threat. I thought he was weird, but, and the threat was so good, the goblins and everything were so fun and funny that it seemed weird, but not scary. Anyway, it gave him whatever my 27 year old or 25 year old opinions were. And he listened to his credit and was like, oh, that's a good point. And we talked about that. And we had a discussion like we were already collaborating and he listened to this punk kid with my, again, opinion on a movie or on his movie that was he thought, I was told by people who worked with him that that was going to be his Star Wars. Like this is it. I've got my creatures going. I've got this amazing technology. I've got David Frick and Bowie. And George Lucas was a producer on it. Monty Python guys wrote the script. So he kind of, in his mind had really got the A team together and it was frustrating for him to say the least that it did not kind of gel in the way that he had hoped. So anyway, I showed him some drawings and some sculpts I'd done. And we just hit it off and I started working for him long distance. So that would have been all of the summer of 86 to about fall of 87. And then in that fall, he, I have a funny story, my mom. So Jim called me, let's say a month later after I met him. And my mom answered the phone and my friends are similar to me. We make silly voices and so she answered the phone and she hears like, you know, hi, ho is a, is a crook there. And my mom's like, oh, yeah, a mask is calling. And he goes, yeah, it's Jim Henson. My mom, I'm thinking it's a friend playing a prank. And I was like, oh, well, hello Jim Henson. I'll get him for you. I come back in from, I think I was working out in the garage and I come in and I'm like, hello, hey Jim. And her face goes like, I have a great conversation with a hang up. And she goes, and she's shot. She was just the loveliest woman. And she was like, oh my gosh, I hope I wasn't impertinent. You know, I acted kind of coy like, oh, well, hello Jim Henson. I'm sure he didn't offend him, mom. I mean, she was very, very, you know, Victorian in her attitude about things, just very proper. But it was kind of funny that she was just flabbergasted that she had maybe mocked Jim Henson in some way. I did that to Pee Wee Herman one time. That's a tie. And then it was Paul Rubins and he was friends with my boss at Flying by Foy. And he's like, hi, it's Paul Rubins. I'm like, who? You know, Pee Wee Herman. And he was like, dude, I know exactly who you are. Anyway. I couldn't believe you. More about Jim Henson. Hey Anna, can we pause just for a second? Can you lower your camera a little bit? Yeah. Sorry, you're just a little. Yeah, you're here. Could you make your camera down here? Thank you. Yeah, it'd be better if your voice was like this. Oh, I can do that. I can stand up straight. That literally happened to me. I was so embarrassed. He was really pissed because he was like, in between Pee Wee Herman fame. And it was like, yeah. I didn't know that story. Yeah. Anyway. I had a similar as a comedy writer who has a very distinct voice. He talks like this. And I'm not sure. He had been the writing partner of a guy I'd known and I finally met him at a party. And he was like, hey, my name's not, I'm not gonna say his name, but people who know who it is because it's pretty close impression. And I was like, hey, my name's Kurt. Nice to meet you. I thought he was being funny. That's his speaking. Oh gosh. I love the guy. And he's, he's in a movie actually, plays a comedy writer in a movie. And that's, that's not an act. That he's got this really distinct voice. Kind of like Walter Maffow on uppers or something. I love it. Walter Maffow when he's on some uppers. Anyway. So back to Jim Hansen. See, the ADHD is. Awesome. It's a wonderful thing. It's a flower or a feature. So then in fall of 87, he said, hey, I'm doing the show, the Jim Hansen hour. And I would love you to come out and, you know, work in the shop and work on the show. And I said, yeah, absolutely. So the company was kind enough to move, you know, pay for me to move out. I didn't have that much. I was living in my parents' house at the time. So moved out there, got an apartment and started working at E 69th Street, I guess. 117 E 69th, I believe. Amazing old building. I'd been out a couple of times for meetings. They would just fly you out, put you up in a hotel. You'd be there for three days for meetings. So I kind of knew most of the players at that point. And just started working. Jim put me in the puppet shop. Cause I was sort of an, not sort of, I was a designer gag guy. I was very visual thinker and an artist. So I designed characters. I was mainly working on designing characters for this new show. He wanted to do a new set of Muppet characters, not just Kermit and Piggy and Fawzi. Which is what I loved about the man. I mean, he's always like, let's do something new. Not let's, you know, shore up the thing that's been, you know, the juggernaut for, for whatever at that point. 15, 10 years, I guess. I mean, he'd done Fragile Rock that had just finished. So Jerry Jewel, who became my writing mentor, was running that, the Muppet side of it. And then there was a half, so it was a half hour of Muppet stuff. And then a half hour of short movies, I guess, or films. And so it was great. It was in New York for about six months and in Toronto for about six months, designing. And it was such a great job. I would just come in and come up with gags or drawings and Jim would go, yeah, that's cool. And then, you know, here, puppet shop, build that. Or, you know, let's make that. And then I just go out. I was going out dancing every night. Cause I had very little, it wasn't like a, you know, nine to eight kind of typical TV job. It was more like, show up with 10 and do some drawings and meet with Jim. And if he's busy, then we just kind of do whatever you feel like doing. Wow, that's great. It was great. And he was so, he was so collaborative. Amazing thing. I said this a million times in interviews. You didn't work for him, you worked with him. And that's not just me. That was like the guy in the mail room. Like he was friends and knew everybody. I mean, the company at that time was about 110 people. I would say out of 110 people, 95 of them were women. And so it was a great place to work. And just, you know, he so appreciated creative, the creative spirit. I mean, it was the best company I ever worked for. ILM would be a close second. ILM specifically, because he was all creators and artists and technicians. And George kind of was good about like, you know, get a famous quote, give these guys enough pizza and beer and they can do anything. And Jim was very much like, I mean, after the show did not do well in the ratings. And so after a year, I, you know, living in New York, it was expensive. I said, hey, I'm gonna move home. He said, no, no, you know, I'm happy to keep you on. I said, well, you don't have any projects. He goes, yeah, but you know, I think you're a good part of the team. I said, well, you know, if I can work from home and come back out for, because I didn't want to stay in New York without, I don't know, I felt bad. I don't want to take his money just to keep me around. So I moved back to LA and that year was crazy. I worked on Robocop too and started at Imagineering. And at that time, the Henson company was gonna be bought by Disney. And so Jim was like, oh, that's great. You can consult at Imagineering. And, you know, it didn't cost the Henson company anything because the Imagineering was paying me. So I started consulting on some of the Muppet rides. And then I was also designing a new ride for Tomorrowland. It was a crash spaceship. It was gonna be the carousel of progress. It was gonna be an alien carnival that had crashed. So yeah, it was really fun. Bro, I was designing characters and creatures for that. I brought Tony McVeigh down from Lucasfilm because he's the main concept artist and sculptor. Hey, my DYP friends, I just want to take a minute and say we are so grateful that you're tuning in because you are part of the ripple effect, the joy that we feel in connecting you with inspiring guests that help you discover your potential. So many of our guests are giving us great advice about financial wellness and describing it as a part of our overall feelings. Now, maybe that sounds weird, but think about it like this. 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And while we were doing that, I started, Jim said, hey, I want to start brainstorming a new TV series about dinosaurs. I want to do a sitcom about dinosaurs and dinosaur thinking. And so I came out to New York once, had a meeting with them, hung out for a couple of days, came back to LA, started drawing, went out a second time to show them the first set of drawings and kind of sketch while we talked about where we were going to go with the second pass. And that was on a Friday and we had lunch and just had a little bit of a hang after the meeting. I mean, at that point, a meeting with Jim was sort of like a hang and we talked about work and then we just talked about the universe and everything. And yeah, I mean, again, just so, you don't know how good you have, you know, you don't know what you got till it's gone. I mean, I knew he was great. I hadn't even hit 30 yet. I was like, I was at 27, 28 at this point and really spoiled. I mean, I went from like, I'll end Lucasfilm to Leonard Nimoy, my buddy Chris Whaless on Grillman's and then, you know, Jim Hanson. So I just been very fortunate at working with amazing collaborators and who became friends. And then that, so I stayed in New York that weekend, flew home, I think Monday, Tuesday morning, I got the call, Tuesday or Wednesday morning, forget the actual time, I have to look it up. Felt like it was a Tuesday morning. I know I'd been home for less than 24 hours. It was like 6 a.m. My phone rang and I was Kevin Clash saying, are you sitting down? I'm like, I'm just waking up, man, what's going on? He said, Jim died last night. I'm like, what? He goes, yeah, Jim passed away last night. I'm like, what was he, I thought he was in a car accident. Like, because I literally had seen him four days earlier and he was fine. He had, I remember he did, he said he had a little bit of sniffles because he sniffled like that maybe three times during lunch. And he goes, oh yeah, you know, I've got the sniffles. I said, what are you doing this weekend? He went down to visit family, I think in Maryland, Baltimore. And so, you know, it didn't, he didn't, it wasn't like, oh, I feel like crap. He was like, no, I'm going to, you know, taking a plane trip and he went down, saw them. I guess he came back. Maybe that was Friday night and he came back. And then Sunday, he was non-responsive and was in the ER for whatever, 36 hours. So that was obviously devastating for a number of reasons for, you know, me and half the planet. I still, I still people that I worked with him and they'd tell me, oh my gosh, the day he passed away, I cried. And they'd never hurt a man, they never, yeah. He had such an impact. Yeah. And he never acted like it. I mean, I don't know if he knew it in that, you know, you always want to have your funeral before you die to find out how much, you know, what people thought of you. And Jim, I think obviously felt loved, but he was very driven to just keep creating and play a sense of play was so important to him and really vibed with me. I always say my core value is playfulness and joy. Like we're all here, you know, life can be hard. So why can't we laugh through it? And again, I'm not saying, you know, you got a cancer diagnosis, you know, like, oh, let's laugh about it. But, you know, humor is an incredible escape valve for just, and not just pain, but for life. If you can't laugh at stuff, it makes it a lot harder. I'm not saying you have to, but for me at least. So he was such a great example of how to live and work particularly, create an atmosphere in the work environment, which is playful, which I've always tried to at least, you know, attempt by just, you know, being fun and goofy and not thinking I'm better than anyone else on the crew. Because you're not. In some ways, the director is, my joke is, I just yell action and cut and give my opinion. Well, you're... I said, you're a producer, except you actually have to deliver something and you get paid worse. So I want to bring this full circle and say to you that I told people, even as an adult, that I thought the Muppet Show was the funniest thing on television. And now I'm realizing that you were a part of that. So I want to thank you because you carry Jim's spirit in you. And you said something recently that blew my mind. I come from a very playful background. I love joy. And I've walked a lot of people through a lot of really dark things, which I'm sure anybody can relate to right now. And I think there's still a place for that. Because when you said, if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong, I went, I know that. Why am I not thinking about that right now? I got people coming over. I had somebody come to my house today, puppeteer, great friend of mine, his brother died last night. And he came to me because I'm his person. And I'm his person because we shared that joyful time, like you're talking about with Jim, all the greats. We're going to break that down. But I just want to just pause in this moment to say, I feel like in the ripple effect and the scheme of things, you are Jim's spirit to me. And it's blowing my mind that I get it. You're the guy that created joy with that guy. And I probably laughed my butt off at a skit you made up in New York. Like this is the connectivity is blowing my mind. So let me just say that. Well, thank you. You know what? You're the ripple effect. Well, the great thing is. That makes me very happy to hear that. I try to do that. And one of my frustrations with them up, it's under Disney is they do not. In fact, I got chastised for making jokes on set on a Friday night. It's too bad. This is it for me. Like when a producer came up to me and said, you shouldn't be making jokes. I'm like, yeah, I should. It's because it's 12 30 in the morning. I know and people are working hard. And if we can't be laughing about it, everyone's going to be very angry and grouchy. Well, it just seems like you're not taking seriously. I'm like, man, you have to learn. Yeah, I said I've been on sets for 40 years. Trust me, it's better than the alternatives. But Jim wouldn't appreciate that one. Well, I don't know. I'm not going to speak for Jim Henson, but I certainly know that. And look, he got serious. And there's a seriousness that isn't angry. There's just a thoughtful. I would say thoughtful. I'll meet up with Joe. Keep frowning. You'll get credit for thinking, which is kind of sad. But if you're smiling, you're an idiot. If you're frowning, you're smart. And look, what is it? The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. There's a balance to that as you choose happiness. It's turning into like a therapy session, but you choose happiness. And look, a dear friend of mine, who's a comedy writer, his wife just passed away after a lingering illness. And he and I used to write comedy together. And he was telling me about it. So we talked about it. We're serious. And there were tears shed. And then I went, OK, now let's write some jokes. And we laughed because that's kind of the uncertainty of life. And not that I think that's always a panacea for someone who's significant other just passed us, let's write jokes. But he and I, our relationship was writing comedy and being fun together. And there is something to be said for, again, choosing your happiness. It's like, OK, this is terrible. I've mourned and you mourn for the rest of your life. But that doesn't mean you have to sit in a hole. And please, I've suffered from depression. So I've come to this after getting depression, you know? Going, I don't have to be depressed. Sometimes it's chemical. Sometimes it's situational. I had a year where 10 good friends died in 12 months. And I was like, oh, heavy. But you can just go, all right, I still want to create and celebrate joy and playfulness. Because you can. And again, there's people with nothing who find a stick and a ball and play with that. And whatever it is, you can be, I mean, some of the most miserable people I know are millionaires. And some of the happiest people I know are not stand-up comedians. Yeah. No, look, I appreciate if anything, listening to the through line of your life. And I know you've shared the tip of the iceberg. And I see is when we're young, we're buoyant. We're willing to bounce to opportunity to opportunity. It's very serendipitous. You can say, I was the luckiest time in my life. But you've made your luck by essentially just showing up and being super present in those times. And the fact that you still carry that joy and life is a walk through a lot of stuff. Yeah, it's a choice. Look, there's a lot to be there. There's a lot to be better about if you work in show business. I have a podcast with a buddy of mine. We have a podcast called Weirded Beardos. We are last episode. It's called Weirded Beardos, by the way. Weirded Beardos? I love that. Weirded Beardos. He's another bearded guy. Darren Doctorman is the name. And we just launched on YouTube and I think iTunes podcast. I'll advertise it on YouTube. Working in the business and how you got to get a thick skin. And you can get really depressed because you can work on a great project everyone loves. And then you don't work for a year. I mean, it happens with everybody. So Tomay got best supporting actress and then didn't do anything for like eight years. That's weird. Yeah, so it's weird. It's a weird industry, the arts. But yes, anyway, the short version is you can choose your attitude. That's the one thing you have control over. And I know it's hard and I don't obviously anyone who's depressed or something, there's no shame in it. But there is. And again, Jim Henson was a huge North Star for me in that respect. And by us most, it's not like you ever sat down and had a conversation like this. You just sort of watched him navigate life that way. So there you go, Jim Henson. Oh, no, that's great. Dan, do you have other questions you want to answer? Well, there's a lot of questions. I know. We probably don't have enough time. But is there anybody in the industry that you would have loved to work with or you haven't got a chance to work with yet? Do you think? I would have loved to work with Terry Gilliam. I think he was a genius. Well, as a genius, he hasn't passed away. I liked his, you know, Monty Python, The Holy Grail was a huge movie for me. I would say it's in my top, you know, Star Wars, King Kong, or Jason Aragorn, and Holy Grail. And just his visual, I didn't know originally that he was the visualist kind of behind Python. And the cartoonist I learned quickly. And having been an artist and very interested in drawing and animation as a kid, I was like, that guy's amazing. And then, you know, I love the others for their performance and their writing. Yeah. Yeah, did you see Dr. Parnassus? Do you know, I mean, from a million years ago. Yeah, everything he's ever done, yeah. See, that's almost autobiographical. That reminds me of my dad, that Christopher Plummer. And so to me, that was like a cathartic experience watching that show. And I agree with you about his visuals, just other world stuff. Yeah. I mean, I met Tim Burton, but I never worked with him or anything. I love his stuff. Again, the kind of visualists going back in time. I mean, Walt Disney, I think I would have loved to have worked for, at least as an Imagineer or something. I didn't have the animation chops. But, you know, I was really impressed by his vision and his tenacity. You know, but I was really fortunate that the guys, I mean, most of the people, I either wanted to meet, I got to meet Terry Gilliam, actually with Jim Henson. And the London airport, we were all getting off a flower, getting on flights back to LA. And he was there with his daughter. And we just sat and I'm sitting here. That's a moment. I'm sitting here talking about art and movies with Jim Henson and Terry Gilliam, like I'm talking to two buddies at Starbucks. And he was incredibly, you know, just affable. And I don't know, let me see. Going back, going back, people like, I mean, I've been really fortunate because I got to meet and hang out with Robin Williams. I've got to meet and hang out with Steve Martin. Again, not as long as I'd have liked to with either of them, to be Robin's and his past, but he had a mutual connection. Yeah, I had the chiropractor who actually worked on Robin Williams on our show. Because it was one of his patients. Crack a little bit. And I just want to throw out this one because it's just hilarious. So he gets up on his table and Dr. Friedman would love me for telling the story again. He gets up on the table and then all of a sudden when he like gets down to his neck, he goes, crack. Just said it. And yeah, well it's a pop or crack and it sounded just like him. He's like, oh my God, did I break you? He said, I'm just kidding. But it was just a moment, you know. Where he's- I got to give Robin a tour of ILM. Oh wow. A guy he'd gone to college with and just started working there. Guy named Bob Cooper, who's still a friend. And he and Robin had done theater together at College of Marin. And so he goes, hey, a friend of mine would like get a tour and he just, Bob had just started. He said, do you think you'd give him a tour? I'm like, sure. It was Robin Williams. Wow. You know, I was like, okay, don't be a nerd. But he was amazing, but he did not stop riffing the entire 45 minutes. Yeah, I'm just a shick. That also reminds me of my friend. After 45 minutes, you felt like, oh, this is an affliction, not- Your ears are bleeding and you realize it's- It was always odd. Yeah, it was social anxiety. I mean, as an adult, I realized, oh, that's like social anxiety. Oh, for sure. And he was present, but I mean, also just that, the mind, his way his mind worked was just riffing on everything, you know. But very charming and incredibly, you know, generous with his praise or like, thank you so much. This was great, amazing. So that was neat. But anyway, yeah, I don't, I don't have a huge laundry list of people like, oh, I wish I were alive or I wish, you know, I'd met and work with them. That's probably the shortest list. Did you ever get a chance to talk to Mr. Rogers by any chance? No, never. I met Captain Kangaroo, but never Mr. Rock. I met Captain Kangaroo too. I love Captain Kangaroo. I wanted to build a house where pink mong balls fell. That was a shame. We rode into Muppets tonight. We had him on the start. We had Bill Shatner and George Takei on an episode. And it was, we parodied the Star Trek, or we were having the Star Trek cruise, which I don't even know, I think they might have done one then, but we said that George Takei was there on the Star Trek cruise. And I got to play a Klingon like, you know, cosplayer. And I thought, oh, the thing, you know, Mr. Sulu, Mr. Sulu, the, the Battlestar Galax, the Battlestar Galax, the ship has rammed our ship. And, you know, we're getting to life boats. And he's like, well, I suppose I'm captain, you know, captain of the ship. Captain Kangaroo showed up and goes, sorry, George. I'm the Red Sea officer. So it was great. I'm gonna say it was great. And Bob Keeshan was lovely. And, you know, it was fun. And it was just a dumb gag. But yeah. No, love your world, man. I want to ask you a little bit about creature creation. Cause when you talk to me about your experience at ILM, and I realized you really learned from some of the more iconic people. But when you talk about creature development and how to make them convincing as part of the story, that was my favorite question in that Zen interview was just talk a little bit about how the organic, you know, nature of creating something that's relatable as a monster or a creature. I think the thing there is relatable. You know, if you designed an alien that was so alien, you didn't know where its front or back was. It might be cool conceptually, but it doesn't really resonate with humans. And early on as a kid when I was designing creatures, I'm like, oh, they have to make sense to us. Which seems obvious, but there's a lot of people who kind of follow the intellectual path and create interesting looking things that again, you don't know which end is up. And it's like, okay, I believe that's an alien. But I don't really know. My reaction is, oh, that's weird. Where, you know, usually in stories, you either want to be lovable or scary or start out weird like ET and end up being lovable. So you got to start with human psychology, but the thing that Phil Tippett, who was kind of my mentor in creature design, as well as Tony McVeigh and Chris Whalis, like these guys who went on to win Oscars. What Phil did was obviously started as most good designers with biology here on earth. And if it's a water creature, well, use implement some of the things that denizens of the ocean have on earth. But one of the things I noticed when I started working there was like, he would put a reddish tinge around eyes and noses and mouths because we're used to seeing that on anything, except insects that don't have soft flesh, because of red blood. Now, if you were doing a creature that had a copper blood, you might do a greenish blue, but it's still and just subtle, but it makes you think it looks real because that's what a horse or a llama or, you know, I mean, you go into alligators and things like that, it's different, but there you go, those skin textures. Like you can't just put like pebbles everywhere. Like the skin around the armpits and the knees is gonna be different. The skin on the back is gonna be different than skin on the belly. If it walks along, if it slides along basically, you know, rubbing its stomach on the ground, then it's gonna be softer and smoother, not rough. But if it's something like a TRX where it's raised up, then it can have more texture because it's not gonna be stopped. It's not gonna get dirt piling up into its pores or its scales. So there was a biological logic or biologic, hey, I made up a word. Yeah. Which is stuff, even, you know, his Tantans and the dragon for dragon slayer, there were cues in the design that A, let you know if it's good or bad or neutral. Like the dragon and dragon slayer is scary, right? I mean, it rides it in breeze fire, it's got kind of slitty eyes and it's supposed to be intimidating. But then they made the movie Dragonheart where he had to have more of a personality and it starts out scary. Then, you know, it's Sean Connolly and he's talking like, you know, and he's got this slush. So you kind of use again, what's the humans or average humans reaction to what that creature is supposed to be in the story to guide the design? At least I think that's what good design is. No, I love it. I love your talking about how that fits the storyline. I think that's, I think facing monsters and then what that does psychologically in the story is kind of the crux, kind of the, you know, it's a big part of the arc, right? And you know, alien, I use the alien design is so great because it didn't have a face and it's terrifying. You know where it's looking. It had a mouth with a mouth in it or a mouth on the tongue. And that's just alien, but you also have a visceral reaction. If it's mouth looked like an ear and it was on the back of its neck, you'd be like, okay, okay. And it, you know, it's running towards you. You just be like, but not. I don't know. I don't know. And you know, we, I think something that's happened particularly with the advent of CG as for the sculpting is what I'm referring to. Although it is the animation, you can get creatures that have detail upon detail. They're, you know, wedding cakes of just like horns and eyes and wrinkles and stuff. And as a designer, you kind of get caught up in the details and that's the fun of it, but it loses a resonance with the audience going. Is that, I mean, you kind of go, wow, that's a lot. Same thing with the movement. If it can, if it's completely unfettered by physics, it can do all these amazing things, but then it kind of pushes the audience away. Like, and for years there was that, oh, it looks CG, which kind of meant it could mean, you know, that it didn't have a skin texture or, but it also meant it moved, it had a artificial look to its movement. So I think that's why there was this kind of backlash and practical effects or something that average Joes are talking about now where it didn't used to be. No, yeah. But I think that's part of why Labyrinth and Dark Crystal have this tremendous love for them still because they're actually there. And now I think what you see is a really good combination of both, although, I mean, CG has come so far, like what a digital's work on like the plan of the apes movies, that last one. Unbelievable. Yeah. I know it's CG, but it doesn't look CG. Yeah. And when it's really curated and done by, you know, top of the line pros, you can't tell anymore because they've learned the lessons. Like, the hair, like hair, in fact, they use a lot of motion capture and facial capture and kind of talk because you get all those weird micro movements and micro tremors that a human face has. But again, we're humans. So maybe an alligator wouldn't, but if you have a talking alligator, it helps to have it have those touchstones for a human emotion or humans to, like you said, react to. Well, that's what made dinosaurs so landmark because I remember watching that show, I think, how is this done? I sat there and thought, how is this done? And then it was a sitcom. So it was really organic and that's such a landmark show. Right. Yeah, that's a testament to the Creature Shop. And they kind of worked out the bugs of that real time performance system on the Ninja Turtles movies and started with Dark Crystal Labyrinth, but really they honed it because the Ninja Turtle movies, we're on a movie schedule and you had to shoot every day. On dinosaurs, we got it down to a factory kind of thing where each character had, we had multiple eyes and motors ready to swap out. I remember in the middle of the second season, we had a motor servo break and it was five minutes. Where in the back in the movie days, it would be like two hours. So we had the Sands Velcro, you could pull it back, replace the servo and just such amazing people, a John Criswell in particular with the mechanics department and all the guys in England who started really kind of knocked it out of the park to the point where we were shooting a five day single camera show, like you would, you know, Malcolm in the middle or anything else of that style of sitcom. And I remember when we started, they talked to Joe Dante because of experience with gremlins and explorers and about, you know, being the director of the pilot. And he said, and they were like, we want to get it down to like a seven day shoot. He goes, you're crazy, you can't, hey, you've never worked with these things. These things are enormous and you've got, there's no people and there's nothing to cut away to. Take two weeks. And I think our first episode did take nine days, but you know, we're working out the kinks. And yeah, by second season, we were shooting five day weeks. Wow. A couple times we go over time, but yeah, that was just a testament to the amazing tech, technicians. But the design, to talk about the design, it was how do you make a dinosaur look like a sitcom character without just, you know, putting a T-shirt on a T-Rex. And so that was fun for me. And the baby who was kind of the breakout character, I had just, in 1990, I'd started, I got a couple of pet macaws or a cockatoo and a macaw. And if you've ever seen a baby, particularly a baby Maluk and cockatoo, they are pink with giant eyes and they're just goofy looking. And I thought, well, I'm gonna, if, you know, birds are descended from dinosaurs, I'm gonna start with the baby, not being green and scaly, but pink and big purple eyes. And I kind of got crossed with the human big fat baby. And obviously it was successful. That's great. Yeah. And in the original sketches, they actually had hair. Well, the women had hair, Charlene and Fran had, you know, big fifties, bouffant hair. And Roe Charlene had like curly, you know, very 80s kind of material girl hair. And I remember Brian Henson going, you know, that seems unrealistic. Yeah. And I was like, well, yes. But, and I think they even made a wig for Fran. And he goes, maybe we should go with horns or, and I said, well, you know, the walking talking dinosaur wearing an apron probably is pushing boundaries of what's real. But I take your point. I said, we can do with feathers. He goes, no, let's just, let's just go with horns. So, you know, we gave him crests like we knew dinosaurs had. So, but that was, I mean, that was an amazing job. My first TV writing job too. Oh, and we were, we were fortunate actually to have Bill Beretta on the show too. So. Oh yeah, Billy. He was, I mean, did he talk about that suit? It weighed like 80 pounds. He did. He mentioned it. Yeah, he brought it up. I think he lost something like 45 pounds in the first two. No. I mean, what, I mean, it was amazing. Because Bill, you know, came to us as a stoop performer, not a puppeteer. And then he started puppeteering. And then for my money, he's, he's the best creator of new characters. I mean, I got to work with him on Muppets Night. We created Pepe and Bobo and all that. I mean, you know, he was so much a part of that. I mean, a big part of it. The way that Muppets work is that puppeteers sort of create the characters, maybe off a script or an idea, but they really have to embody it because it's not like we have 100 puppeteers we can go cast. Here's Joe the squirrel. Like, we'll get 30 people to audition for it. Now there's about 12 to 15 really good puppeteers in LA and New York. I mean, if you add the Sesame Street guys who now are pretty much both, most of the main Sesame Street guys have taken over the Muppet, the classic Muppet show characters as the performers have retired or passed away. So, but what's amazing about Billy is he's just, he's so good at creating new characters. I mean, Pepe is one of my favorite characters to write for. Like, that's why he's the lead in Haunted Mansion, Muppets Haunted Mansion, because he's so fun. And that came about from me saying early on when I started writing with him up, it's starting, we started Dinosaurs, which wasn't the Muppets, but Muppet Treasure Island and that era. I said, we need our Daffy Duck. We need our completely selfish jerky Muppet. He doesn't care about the Muppets. He doesn't want to sing Kumbaya and tell them what he likes about it. He thinks they're kind of weird. And Rizzo had some of that, but I just want somebody who is completely a selfish jerk. Move deep down, you know, likes to hang out with them up. It's, but probably because he thinks they're rubes and he can pull one over on them. So, Bill created that. And so we kind of this meeting of the minds and so I started taking that direction and then Bill just filled it out. And yeah, he's great. He told the story about where he invented the, you know, that whole character. The voice from his aunt, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's great. Yeah, he said it was okay, okay. I wrote a whole show for Pepe. It was a, the idea was it was a, it was supposed to be a Latin American soap opera where he was the most successful, orthodontist in LA. And still there was mostly a string of beautiful actresses were there to get their teeth done and they all fall madly in love with him. But the drama was created by a Colombian Novocaine dealers. That's funny. And a bunch of rats with Spanish accents who were trying to pressure him into using their Novocaine. And the fun part was you would see, every show would start with Pepe and his agent at a booth at a diner. And his agent was telling him about how the show was going. You know, suddenly the ratings are coming in and they need more, you know, more guest stars or they need more drama. And so you would see that episode reflected and it just got sillier and sillier. And we were gonna do it for sort of before Disney Plus or even streaming. So it's gonna be a web show. So they were only about like 10 to 15 minutes each. I really wish we had a chance to do that because it was a lot of fun and very silly. The first episode, Sofia Vergara was going to be the guest and she was in the chair and being very dramatic. Like, oh Pepe, I love you so much. Why can't you marry me? And he's like, you know, I'm married to my career. And I love that. Something goes horribly wrong as it always does. And then by the second episode, she'd been replaced by Uncle Deadly in a wig. Yeah, that's great. They blow her budget on her. And so he was doing his Shakespearean best to be an attractive Latina. He was very domine silly. And I love that. I love it. I have a drawer full of an unpreduced Muppet stuff that was much edgier and crazier than any of the stuff we've done. Right now I'm working on this Nickelodeon series directing, which is fun. It's an Unreal Engine. I love the corporate culture at Nickelodeon is much more supportive than Disney has been, at least in my experience. And I mean, Disney, Disney, not Marvel. I love the Marvel guys and they've been very, they're much more collaborative and supportive in the small dealings I've had with them. So I don't wanna call out the entire Disney corporation and as an umbrella. But animations fun, this Unreal Engine's pretty amazing. I have a kid show, like a Pee Wee's Playhouse kind of thing called Captain Randy's Submarine that I was gung-ho on and then COVID hit and I went through a lot of financial issues and my mom died. And so it kind of, it got buried. I have a website for it and I put a lot of time and effort during COVID, the beginning of it thinking, okay, well, this is what I'm gonna do. It was sort of like I was saying my YouTube idea. And then the good news is I started getting work and have been really busy since 2022. So two years, which is great because it kind of saved me financially, put me back on an even keel, but Captain Randy kind of got way late and I have people who knew about it. I got some support videos from friends. So that's something I'd like to go back to. Again, it's my version of Pee Wee's Playhouse and I might do a Kickstarter to help build the sets and get some seed money for it. But the idea of it, and it came from a Jim Henson sort of vibe was it's a delivery mechanism for other people's short creative projects, whether they're puppets or animation or even sketch comedy, because there's so many of us who have these ideas but it's not a TV series necessarily. It's not a movie, it's fun, or it's just we don't have the wherewithal, the money, the backing because it is outside of the box. It is more of a YouTube thing. So it was an idea of like, okay, here's this, again, like Pee Wee had Penny and- Yeah, love to that show. So it's the same idea except it's me with a shirt like this and a Captain's hat on a very goofy submarine where we have our mates come and visit and there's, you know, there's just, and it's that kind of dumb, you know, quote unquote adult humor like the Captain has a pair of boobies and like blue-footed boobies. Hey, let's play with the boobies and then let's take the boobies out and it's just silly stuff. But you know, someone read the script I wrote and they said it's like Benny Hill meets Pee Wee's play house. Like go ahead and push that edge. Yeah, it's made me up. I mean, again, no one, you know, look, if you're a very strict parent, you might be offended, but anyone who's got a sense of humor. And you know, look, no comedies for everybody. Well, quite frankly though, the children today, unfortunately with them watching YouTube, oh yeah, they become so desensitized. Right, and again, there's parent, and look, I get it. If I were a parent and I never have been so I can't really speak to it, but there's certain age you don't want your kids hearing about blow jobs or, you know, I think that's appropriate. But you know, fart and burp jokes, I mean, that's- Forever, I mean, well done. Also kids, you know, one to five, it's all about boobs and pooping and pee, because to me it's like, oh, we can't talk about it. Are you kidding? That's kids lives. They're, you know, the only response I would appreciate from a kid would be like, okay, enough of the boobies. Like, I don't care. Right, there's a time and a place. Yeah, I think that's appropriate. Yeah, I stopped pooping my pants. It's not funny anymore. It's for everybody. Dan's mom did fart joke. Are you kidding me? That's a very old favorite in our- That's a very old product. I would roll them up with it, like we don't do fart jokes. It's beneath us. It's cheap. I'm like, it's cheap. Laugh is still a laugh. I, you know, but again, the side guys that the Muppet set up, there is a culture to it. And I'm talking the original Muppet show, which to me was Monty Python with puppets. That's what Jim wanted to be and thought it was. And the movies sort of started turning into a group of friends who, you know, have adventures together, which isn't at all wrong. But I always liked them as Monty Python. There was like Treasure Island and Christmas Carol. They're playing characters in a franchise or in a genre. Like, I mean, I've written a science fiction comedy, a horror comedy. I started, Jim Lewis and I, one of the other Muppet writer, worked with a lot. We did 200 house movies before Audit Mansion came about. Oh, wow. We had written a sketch, which I still love the gag. It was, Kermit was James Pond. He was a, and Biggie was, her name is spelled Honeybaked Ham, but it's pronounced Honey Becketham. Yeah. So everyone keeps going, Miss Becketham. She's going, it's Becketham, it's Honey Becketham. Which to me is like, so we ended up wrote it right. Wrote it as a sketch and it never got made. So to me, that's, you know, I wanted to do a Muppet Western forever. Jerry, Jerry Jewel and I had talked about doing that as our next collaboration before he sadly passed. So again, that's my take. I don't know the Muppets. Not again, I, part of the frustration with any franchises, like I said, it's not my name on the door. So you get the ideas and whoever the gatekeepers are, they go, nah, it stinks. Or that's interesting, but let's change it. So I just, I just, I'm kind of, I said I've made a lot of other people rich. I'd like to, you know, at least enjoy some of the fruits of my labor as opposed to like, hey, we love your idea. We're going to let you work on it until we're tired of you. And then you're like, okay. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, hopefully YouTube or even streaming, if I can, you know, go sell something there. Thank you for letting me just riff. That's better. You're more interesting. I don't want to dominate the conversation. Anyway, Kirk, thank you so much for being here today. We truly appreciate it. We are hoping you'll have a chance to come back because there's just so many questions that we didn't get answered today. And I'm trying to button it up. But I love that we can follow you and follow your work. We'll put all the details. Yeah, work and people find you. Yeah. Well, my website, which is just where you mainly can buy autographs and ephemera or get consultation. I do consultations. It's a little tougher now with my full-time job, but it's www.kirkarthatcher.com. I don't know how I came up with that. And then the podcast I'm doing with my buddy is both a video on YouTube or video cast and podcast. It's called Weirded Beardos with Darren Doctorman. And we just launched. I got literally a text this morning from Darren saying, he's been doing the legwork on getting it approved. And so I think we're on iTunes and YouTube. I think we have three episodes up. We've done five. We do one every week. So yeah, and there's lots of this kind of nonsense on there. We do deep dives into both of our careers. And we just talk about the business. And we're going to start doing interviews, as you guys do. But with mainly starting, I think we have a year's worth of interviews with people we've worked with and the biz or friends. This is Cindy Gilman. And you're listening to Discover Your Potentials. So until next time, do something nice for yourself, but do something nice for someone else.