THE MUPPETS inhabit a world where pigs and frogs can talk but chickens can only cluck, one where they acknowledge that they’re on screen but never the fact that there’s a hand inside them, and one where they take being silly very seriously. But Aro Valley’s celebrated comedic son Bret McKenzie, music supervisor for the new Muppets movie, knows that children these days wouldn’t even recognise the felt characters he’s so familiar with.

McKenzie, best known for comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, was born in 1976 and grew up watching the original Muppets television shows. When James Bobin, director of the Flight of the Conchords HBO shows, asked him to work on the songs for The Muppets, McKenzie decided to accompany the characters into the year 2011.
McKenzie wrote three and a half of the seven songs for the new movie, produced all the original songs and recorded the Muppets singing in studio. Audiences in the States have met Life is a Happy Song and Man or Muppet with open arms, and McKenzie’s music has been tipped for Oscar nominations.
Now the New Zealand Children’s Film Foundation, Square Eyes, is bringing the Muppets to town for a preview screening before the official New Zealand release on December 29.
McKenzie, a supporter of Square Eyes, has attended the foundation’s film screenings at The Embassy in the past. While working on The Muppets over the past year, he got to know the names of every single fuzzy character – “even the weird blue monsters standing in the corners” – and when putting together the final number spent a week individually recording about 40 Muppets.
McKenzie says the project was a lot of fun: he got to teach Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper how to rap over Skype, and says there were unforgettable in-studio moments, “We had one guy recording about six penguins – hilarious – and sometimes the actors would just refuse to sing lines because they didn’t suit their character so I had to improvise in the studio, to rewrite the lyrics on the spot”.
But he was also aware of the responsibility of working on an enduring global legacy, and of introducing the characters to the next generation.
“People under 26 haven’t really heard of The Muppets. For them it’s quite a psychedelic movie: talking frogs, talking pigs,” he laughs, “Whereas I’m a fan of the original TV shows and very familiar with them.”
He’s been playing those original shows to his two-year-old daughter and says he enjoys Muppets creator Jim Henson’s timeless, ageless comedic style.
“The Muppets is one of those programmes that’s good for both kids and adults,” he explains, “Kids’ entertainment is often dumbed down and compromised for kids’ understanding, but really children find the same things funny that adults do.”
Square Eyes founder and long-term friend of McKenzie, Nic Marshall, established the organisation to introduce young New Zealanders to diverse international film. It’s been described as ‘arthouse for kids’, and there’s a strong focus on shared viewing between children and adults. Marshall says The Muppets ticks all the right boxes.
“It was the first show I remember watching with my parents and realising we had the same sense of humour,” she says, “Adults in the audience can introduce the characters that influenced them when they were young to the smaller people in their lives.”
The Muppets still have resonance with children in an age where 3D imagery and high production values tend to rule the screen, says Marshall.
“Henson’s characters have a lot of heart and truth.”
McKenzie says the Muppets project was clear about respecting the old, original world, extending rather than updating the Muppets in its new era.
“What really stands out these days is that animation is so perfect. What I like about the Muppets is their imperfections: they don’t look or sound perfect,” explains McKenzie, “That’s what people are like, it’s more real.”
The respect for the old style stretched to the music.
“I worked on recreating that old sound. One of the secrets was to put in as much banjo as possible,” he laughs, “To make something sound ‘Muppety’ it has to have banjo.”
McKenzie also observed ‘method Muppeteering’ firsthand.
“Some of the puppeteers stay in character between takes. You’re talking to Fozzie, saying, “Can you do that again?” and he replies in Fozzie’s voice,” he laughs, “It’s quite surreal. There’s a man in the recording booth pretending to be a penguin.”
He argued with Miss Piggy over how to sing her song, “That was just awesomely surreal. The puppet’s not there, just the voice is in the room. And the day I found myself recording Kermit the Frog singing The Rainbow Connection in a Hollywood studio was a really beautiful moment. It was a magical session; I felt a long way from home.”
More Muppets are coming to Wellington. To accompany her work at Square Eyes, Nic Marshall has been working with the Jim Henson Legacy in New York, celebrating the life and work of The Muppets founder. She hopes to bring The Jim Henson Retrospectacle to New Zealand. The plan is for a set of films to run at The Embassy, along with a musical component and an exhibition.

Square Eyes preview screening:
The Muppets, The Embassy, 2pm, December 18.
- Jennifer Niven