The Weirdness of Interviewing the Muppets

Despite our wet-blanketing of the whole Muppets Hosting The Oscars business, know that we love the Muppets as much as everybody else does and can't wait to see the movie either. (We're seeing it tomorrow night.) We are pro-Muppet! How could anyone be anti-Muppet! That said: It is worth remembering that these are puppets. It is to the eternal credit of the vast imagination of Jim Henson -- and those who have kept his legacy alive and even growing -- that people forget this sometimes, but as grown adults, as people who pay bills and commute to work and are aware of our own mortality, we shouldn't. They're pieces of felt and fur with someone's hand stuck up them.

We all know this, right? We're not telling you there's no Tooth Fairy or anything, yes? It is a bit astounding how much of the coverage of "The Muppets" has centered around Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy as real people, covered the way you'd cover Taylor Lautner and Lily Collins for "Abduction" or something. We appreciate keeping the illusion alive for children and everything, but again: We're all adults here. Can we stop?

We mention this after reading Collider's "interview" with "The Muppets" that ran yesterday. We like Collider and have no issue with those guys at all; they do good work. But this is what writer Christina Radish wrote to start her piece:

Yeah, well ... someone told Christina this isn't, you know, real, right? You can listen to the whole interview here. It's all fine and entertaining, we guess, but all told, as a journalist, this isn't all that different than pretending that Joaquin Phoenix wasn't doing some sort of strange post-modern act for "I'm Still Here," and no one was willing to do that. Listen, we get it: The Muppets are awesome. But there sure is something strange about sitting around a conference room table for your professional interviewing job and pretending that there aren't people sitting under the table moving mouths around and ad-libbing and trying to be entertaining to the lady with the microphone. There are people under the table. At the beginning of the interview, "Kermit" says he is "tired," which is how movie stars commonly feel after sitting in a room talking to junket people all day. But Kermit wasn't tired: Kermit is a piece of felt. Who is tired? What is this interview again? What's going on? And who are the people under the table?

We don't mean to be all Old-School Journalist here. But there's a fine line between "attempting to glean insight through interviewing while someone is promoting a product" and "being used as a prop to sell that product." We'd have to think this crosses that line.

That said, put us in a room with Kermit and Miss Piggy ... it might be tough to keep that old-school journalist hat on. It's Kermit, after all. People ask us often why we try to stay out of that room. This is a pretty good example of why.

Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and Walter THE MUPPETS Interview [Collider]