We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

Muppet man Jim Henson was known to dabble in experimental cinema. Maybe that’s an understatement– after all, practically everything the man did was an experiment. He wasn’t one of those cautious, measured individuals who simply puts a fresh spin on a successful formula. No, luckily for us, Jim Henson was more interested in remolding the world in a way that made sense to him, paving his own path along the way.

What’s special about works like Ripples and Limbo, The Organized Mind, is that we’re treated to an intriguingly abstract vision of Jim Henson’s thought process. We’re given a glimpse of Henson’s deeply contemplative inner world. Can you imagine The Tonight Show having the audacity to air a piece like Limbo on national TV today? Even back in 1974 when Johnny Carson was still in charge, it seems unlikely that anyone but Henson could have brought a film this unusual (and rad) to the mass audience of late night TV.

Keep an eye out around the 3:29 mark for Henson’s sly homage to his pal Maurice!

via Andy Neuhues. Thanks for the link!

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.

Matt Furie is more than a little bit amazing. Really, he’s all the way amazing. So it’s makes us happy when there’s brand spanking new work posted on his website– like right now. Go check it out!