Muppets Most Wanted opened just last Friday, March 21. Have you seen it?  Have you seen it again-again?  Do you know what I’m talking about?

I still say we start a petition and get the Muppets Show back on TV.  They deserve a weekly slot.  Stand up for Muppet equality!  There is WAY too much garbage on the television right about now, Kermit and the gang can save us from the mundane.  Down with the Bad Girls Club, up with Muppets!  Muppet power!  Who’s with me?

OK, more Muppet Power later.  I recently had the opportunity to interview the Director of Muppets Most Wanted, James Bobin.  He also directed the Muppet Movie in 2011 as well as the comedy series Flight of the Conchords. He co-wrote Muppets Most Wanted  with Nicholas Stoller, who wrote the Muppet Movie with Jason Segal (who also played “Gary” in the movie).  Who’s on first?

James Bobin

Here is some of that interview with James Bobin-

Q: When writing The Muppets did you take any inspiration from your funny show Flight Of The Conchords? And then do you think that adult humor and children’s’ humor are closer than we think?

James Bobin:   [LAUGHS] Good questions. Uh, adult humor and, I’ll do them in the reverse order. Adult humor and child humor, yeah they are kind of different but they can be the same. I mean, we’re all big kids, really, I am, I know for sure. And so often I find things like, things falling over, I will find that funny forever. Like Tom and Jerry makes me laugh as much as my kids might laugh. And that’s always going to be that way. But sometimes it’s useful to have a thing that works on two levels, that they like it for some, a reason, and we like it for a different reason.

Often that’s because we’re putting clever words into the mouths of puppets and so they see a blue thing with a funny nose and white hair, which is funny, but we hear them say smart words. And I love it, that idea works for both adults and children.

(In reference to Flight of the Conchords) I think whenever you make anything you can’t help but put an imprint of yourself in it to a degree. So when you do like a show like Concords and move into Muppets you can’t help but bring a bit of that, your personality, with you.

Especially when you have half [LAUGHS] of the Conchords working on the movie with you. Brett writes the songs and so Brett and I worked together. And so be it set out on the streets of New York and Conchords or set on the streets of London and Muppets, there’s some of it’s Bert in many ways. And then, you know, in many ways the Conchords Muppets aren’t that different, they’re both quite innocent.

I don’t know but Conchords is the quite accessible innocent, sure they’re very kind of likeable innocent people. And the Muppets are also [LAUGHS] very innocent, likeable people. So it didn’t feel like a huge leap going from Conchords to Muppets, so. Yes?

Q: So who is the most difficult Muppet to work with?

James Bobin: [LAUGHS] I’ll let you guess who the most difficult Muppet is who I work with. None of them, they’re all a total joy to work with. I’m a huge fan. I grew up watching the Muppets as a kid, so working with them for me is like working with my heroes.

Q: So what is the difference between shooting the first movie and then the second movie?

James Bobin: The first movie I’d never worked puppets before, so it was a very big experiential learning curve of how to frame shots, how to make this world feel realistic, that these puppets were alive, breathing people who are interacting with humans and the world’s just, the world we live in, the recognizable world we live in happened to have puppets in it. That idea I love, and that’s a very important part of it.

And that was quite, the training of the first movie was just getting, I think just getting to that level for me was an achievement. I could make a movie that worked on that level. And so for this one I just wanted to push that a bit further. Because the last movie is kinda set in the theater for a lot of the final act. And the last, you know, most of it was and so I thought this time, well, we should just get out and about a bit more and just do some slightly more adventurous, bigger stuff. And, obviously, the fact that the movie’s kind of a caper movie with some criminal stuff in it, feels like you can do bigger action sequences.

Obviously, you never want to put the words “puppet” and “action sequences” in the same sentence [LAUGHS] as a director, because that is very hard. But I like the idea of trying difficult stuff. It’s ambition about the movie I really like about it, it feels like a very different film to me. And the way I love both movies equally, but this film I feel like has slightly more ambition which I love about it and I think that’s when you’re doing a sequel there’s all sorts of things you have to deal with. One of them is you want to try and make a different movie. You don’t want to make the same movie twice, and that’s very important. Yes?

Q: How much filming do you actually do?

 James Bobin:  A lot, I mean, it’s the principal photography, which is 95 percent of the film, was in London. We shot on the stages at Pinewood, which is just about a half an hour outside London, and then even places like Berlin and Madrid are also shot in or around London. Because going to Berlin with the entire Muppet cast and crew would’ve been a very expensive endeavor in doing it. And London is, as you know, a very ancient historical city, and therefore has lots of different architectural styles in it.

So you can kind of get a rough idea, “this looks a bit like Madrid,” ” this looks a bit like Berlin,” and certainly enough with some, you know, added set dressing and stuff, you could really feel like you’re there. And so most of the movie was shot in London, and in or around London. Which is kind of nice because the Muppet show back in the ’70s, uh, was made in London and not many people know that, you know. I mean, it feels like a thing that just, well it felt very much like a homecoming for Muppets.
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