Jim Henson Idea Man from Ron Howard is a comprehensive look at the man behind The Muppets. The film is the most nominated documentary this year at the Emmy’s with 8 nominations. It also is heading to ABC to appears on The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday, August 11, 2024. It currently can be seen on Disney+.
In Jim Henson Idea Man, Ron Howard takes a look Jim Henson’s life and how he created the Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, The Muppet Movie, The Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal and more. Through the course of the film, viewers learn about the man from the people who were around him. This includes the Henson family.
The Henson family granted access to Ron Howard and his team to their archives. This led to some pretty impressive reveals for both Ron Howard and the viewers. There were some really incredible things that were discovered, including Henson’s old sketchbooks from Paris. The response to this film has been enthusiastic because of the level of access. After being nominated for Emmy’s, Lisa Henson told Deadline, “We’ve been really heartened to see the reaction to Ron’s incredible film because it’s really his artistry as a filmmaker that he was able to, in a very creative and very insightful way, present Jim Henson as a person. And we know a lot of people have been interested in Jim Henson, but he’s a bit of an elusive character because he’s the ultimate behind-the-scenes person. And Ron really made a very beautiful personal film, and we feel that you could really get to know my father through seeing that film. We really think it’s just fantastic that the whole creative team is being honored.”
“There are a lot of things I hadn’t seen, these hilarious, crazy, irreverent commercials, which are what first got him noticed in the mainstream and allowed him to be this sort of experimental artist in the early years of his life. They were crazy,” Howard told Deadline just before the film’s premiere. “But I also got to see that the creativity for him never stopped. It existed in his home movies. It existed in sort of all of his drawings. It existed in his notebooks that weren’t sketches for design necessarily. They were just him keeping track of things. And even those were reflections of this creative energy. And it just dazzled me. And honestly, I wanted to celebrate it. I wanted to get to the bottom of what made him tick.”
Along with telling the story of Jim Henson, the film also tells the story of Jane Henson. She was Jim Henson’s wife and also was a contributor to the creation of the Muppets. She came up with innovations technically that helped bring the felt and fabric puppets to life and launch them into the spotlight. She also often would puppeteer Kermit the Frog in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
“This film is definitely the first time that that story has been told,” Lisa Henson told Deadline. “It’s been kind of a footnote to the Henson history that the company was started by Jim and Jane… It was started by Jim and Jane as a couple, and it sort of was a fact that hadn’t been explored the way that Ron explored it. I think he really honored both Jim Henson and Jane Henson. He tells both of their stories, tells the story of the marriage, which is not always perfect. And because it is so much about the marriage, it’s also a very personal film. It’s not just a film about work. And the work is fabulous, and the clips are amazing, but it’s not just a film about the work that Jim Henson did.”
Jim Henson Idea Man comes from Disney Branded Television is produced by Imagine Documentaries. It is directed by Ron Howard. It is produced by Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Sara Bernstein, Margaret Bodde, Justin Wilkes, Mark Monroe, and Christopher St. John. Paul Crowder, Meredith Kaulfers, and Michael Rosenberg are executive producers.
For those that want to watch Jim Henson Idea Man on ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney, it will air on ABC on August 11 at 8:30 PM EDT/PDT.
