The Bonkers Jim Henson Story That Frank Oz Told at His Funeral
Frank Oz and Jim Henson were opposites in many ways, Oz said at Henson’s memorial service in May of 1990. But their fertile creative partnership, from Sesame Street to The Dark Crystal to The Muppet Show, resulted in great, silly fun. “The best thing of all, the best thing,” Oz said, “is when you watched Jim laugh until he cried.”
How silly could they get? Oz related one story from 15 years before to explain what he meant. It was the first season of Saturday Night Live, the year in which the Muppets were bona fide cast members (much to the dismay of John Belushi and writer Michael O’Donoghue). Between a dress rehearsal and the live show, Henson approached Oz with a camera. “Frank,” he said, “I need to go into the dressing room with you. Could you take off all your clothes so I could take a picture of you naked?”
“Whoa,” Oz responded.
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After a brief discussion, Oz decided to play along. They went into a dressing room, locked the door and Oz stripped down to “buck naked.” Henson told him how to pose: Put your hand over your genitals (which Oz was happy to do), bend over, and look into the camera with a state of shock. Given the circumstances, Oz said, looking stunned was not difficult.
After the impromptu photo shoot, Oz dressed, and the men got to work on their SNL business. So what was the naked picture about? Oz found out at the holidays when Henson presented him with a gift, about the size of an extra-large shoe box. It was “a wall-hanging, sculpture kind of thing,” Oz said, containing “a head of Bert. And Bert’s arms are holding a ledge, and on the ledge are about a dozen little Berts.”
Bert was looking down at the little Berts, who in turn were gazing up at the big Bert. And the ledge in Bert’s arms was decorated with photographs of faces, Children’s Television Workshop people who were responsible for creating Bert and the other Muppets. “They were all looking up at the camera and their little faces, about that big, were all along the edge of this wooden ledge.”
It was a complex creation. “Jim had painted layers, like Earth’s striations, which I gather are layers of Bert’s mind, layers of his soul,” Oz described, reminding the gathered that he voiced Bert to Henson’s Ernie. “And within those layers, the striations, he painted textures, beautiful little textures.”
After a few moments, Oz noticed something peculiar about big Bert’s eyes. “The pupils were cut out,” Oz realized. “And you look inside Bert’s brain, and there I am naked, looking like this.”
So that’s why Henson wanted the nude photo. “I knew he had a good reason,” Oz told the laughing crowd about the piece Henson called Bert in Self-Contemplation.
The gift contained the intricacy that Henson loved so much in “Persian rugs and trees and life, the detail in the layers, the textures.” The elaborate creation meant so much to Oz, in part, because of “the generosity of time in order to do this when he was so busy.”
“It all speaks so much of Jim, that gift,” Oz said. “I think that’s when I knew he loved me, and I loved him.”
