In the late 1970s, Orson Welles developed a pilot for a bizarrely surreal, self-aware 90-minute (!) weekly variety show starring himself, for which he interviewed Burt Reynolds, did magic tricks with Angie Dickinson, played russian roulette, and reunited with his pals from The Muppet Movie: Fozzie, Kermit, and Sam the Eagle. The pilot never aired– probably because it was ridiculously weird, in the best possible way. Check out a clip from The Muppets’ appearance on The Orson Welles Show below, which, due to a combination of overbearing darkness and conspicuously absent audience laugher, falls somewhere on the creepiness scale in between Inside the Actors Studio and the Sunday services of a sinister cult.
Subscribe to RSS
I think Orson said it best, “Wh…why?”
Also, his lecturing the Muppets at the end (and the creepy, stoic crowd) is pretty amazing in a messed up way.
BIZARRE! great find!