There’s a new Muppet special premiering on NBC tonight called A Muppet Christmas: Letters to Santa. So, because I’m a Muppet-loving fool, I figured it appropriate to feature Jim Henson’s creations once again in the Clip of the Day. This isn’t some kind of marketing ploy, though, and anyway I couldn’t find any clips or ads specific to the new program. In order to make this post more film-related, I initially thought about sharing a scene, preferably a musical number, from The Muppet Christmas Carol, but I wrote enough about my love for that movie last year for another site.
So, I’ve used this as an opportunity to finally showcase a brilliantly edited music video for a song called “All Through the Night” by Brooklyn r&b group Escort (despite their retro disco sound, they’re a current band, interestingly featuring former members of the popular Boston ska band Skavoovie and the Epitones). It’s not a legitimate Henson production and it doesn’t have to do with the holidays — unless your holidays consist of making love to Muppets all through the night — but it’s one of the best videos I’ve ever seen on YouTube.
One of the things on my Christmas list this year, by the way, is to hear of a definite production start for Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller’s planned Muppet movie (and I’d also like Segel’s Muppets-related “Dracula’s Lament” song from Forgetting Sarah Marshallto receive an Oscar nomination). And if those guys can find a way to fit some Muppet disco into their film, I’ll be their biggest fan.
The last clip I posted, before taking a week off, was Muppet-related. And now, rather than digging through all the viral marketing and other cine-centric videos I’ve missed during my vacation, here is yet another clip that is Muppet-related. The video presents a year-old performance of “Count’s First Day of School” by The Dead Hensons, a Muppet cover band from the Bay Area. Unfortunately the group doesn’t appear to play too often (according to their website, after this May 2007 set, they only played twice again, in August 2007 and May 2008).
So why share this clip? Well, besides the obvious, that it’s important to note that a Muppet cover band is no less necessary or serious than any other cover band (IMHO, Paul Williams is one of the greatest songwriters alive), this is also a chance for me to recommend that Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller consider giving The Dead Hensons at least a cameo in their upcoming Muppet movie. If you’ve seen Segal and Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you might agree with me that this song is like a bridge between that film and the new Muppet movie, because Dead Hensons frontman Ryan Beebe is very Segal-esque (at least he appears so in this poor-quality clip) and this performance is kind of like the Dracula musical song from Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Here is a film from 1965 of a young Jim Henson and friends lampooning their process of making commercials for Wilson’s Meats. It only goes to show how far downhill the Muppets have come. And how much more mature they were in the beginning.
I present it to you now, because in anticipation of the next project from Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller (respectively thewriter and director of this week’s new release Forgetting Sarah Marshall), which happens to be a Muppets feature, I hope there is some pre-Muppet Moviestuff taken into consideration as possible inspiration.
This particular film is a sort of sequel to this other one, which features more actual Muppets on screen, but I kind of prefer the Monty Pythonesque feel of the one I’ve featured above. But definitely watch both.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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There’s a new Muppet special premiering on NBC tonight called 
