This assessment of Craig Shemin’s new ebook, The Sam and Buddies Script Guide: A Assortment of Sketches from Jim Henson’s First Tv Present, has a foreword by Dave Goelz.
… Okay, no it doesn’t. However you recognize what does? Craig Shemin’s new ebook, The Sam and Buddies Script Guide: A Assortment of Sketches from Jim Henson’s First Tv Present. Which is the right strategy to ease you into a beautiful ebook stuffed with chaos from 1955-1961. Dave’s foreword is transient, however it exudes his love for Jim and the world he created, the beginnings of that are on show on this ebook.
For those who’re a kind of Muppet followers dwelling underneath a rock (say howdy to the Fraggles for me), chances are you’ll not know that Craig Shemin, President of The Jim Henson Legacy and former Muppet author, wrote a ebook in 2022 exploring the early days of Jim Henson’s profession, Sam and Buddies: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Tv Present. With this new ebook, Craig returns to provide some extra context and current precise scripts from a present that’s, sadly, nearly solely misplaced to time.
For those who’re studying ToughPigs, you’ll forgive me for assuming you recognize what Sam and Buddies is, however for individuals who do not know (Hello, Mum!) permit me to shortly clarify. Because the ebook title suggests, it was Jim Henson’s first tv present, starring the very first Kermit (not but a frog) and a solid of characters, led by Sam. It aired twice a day stay in Washington earlier than the information, that includes puppets singing and doing comedy bits for five minutes at a time (Muppets doing comedy sketches? That may by no means work now!) Shemin does plenty of the leg be just right for you although, briefly introducing the characters and the ideas so to simply bounce in.
Whereas doing analysis for his earlier ebook, Shemin discovered containers of yellowing pages, stuffed with scripts written by Jim Henson (and later, briefly, Jerry Juhl) and has spent the final couple of years working to get them edited and annotated for us Muppet followers to get pleasure from. The ebook is stuffed with notes to provide the readers context, or to elucidate decisions made inside the scripts.
The ebook is damaged up into Chapters, the primary being ‘GETTING TO KNOW THE CHARACTERS’, giving readers extra time to familiarise themselves with the crew of misfits they’re about to come across. As we undergo, chapters embrace ‘THE WORLD OF POLITICS’, ‘PARODIES’ and ‘TECHNICAL STUFF’, every with quick introductions to offer extra perception. Whereas all these scripts are fairly humorous, I laughed out loud a number of occasions in the course of the chapter ‘MUPPETY STUFF’, as a result of it actually felt like old skool Muppet humour.
Scripts start with scanned pictures of Jim’s scratchings, on notepads and flyers and the rest that may very well be written on. Craig then provides slightly extra background about what could have been happening with the present, or with the world, on the time, which helps contextualise what you’re going to learn. The annotations are normally fairly insightful, though greater than as soon as I did suppose to myself ‘I’m undecided that required a footnote’, akin to when within the first script we cease for a second to study Hamlet’s Yorick. That stated, 99.9% of the opposite annotations had been nice at offering extra details about Jim’s work and the present as an entire.
The discharge of those scripts appears like a big a part of the historical past of The Muppets has been restored. Apart from 5 of them, not one of the different 57 scripts introduced right here have ever been seen earlier than. As a result of the tapes are lengthy gone, a lot of Sam and Buddies has felt like misplaced media, so Shemin’s laborious work actually appears like a present. Right here we’re given pages and pages of what nearly appears like model new Jim Henson content material, which, throughout The Muppets seventieth anniversary, is a real deal with for all of us.
I do know technically The Jim Henson Firm nonetheless owns these scripts, however my hope is now that they’re launched, we see a few of you guys constructing some puppets and giving them a go yourselves! I’d like to see followers choose up a digicam and some puppets and check out ‘Frisbee and the Joke Guide Nook’, or somebody like Richard Gomez tackle among the enjoyable musical sketches they did. I believe that form of factor is precisely within the spirit of Sam and Buddies, enjoyable experimental puppetry, everybody simply having a go and having a great time.
The Sam and Buddies Script Guide: A Assortment of Sketches from Jim Henson’s First Tv Present is properly value you trying out. Craig Shemin’s tireless work holding the legacy of Jim Henson’s reminiscence alive is in overdrive right here, and all of us owe him so much. You possibly can pay him again by ordering his ebook proper right here! I obtained given a digital assessment copy and I’m STILL going to purchase a bodily one! That’s how a lot I liked this!
By Jarrod Fairclough – [email protected]
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