No, not his new girlfriend Denise (although I hope for Kermit nothing but happiness), but Steve Whitmire, the puppeteer who became the man behind the frog (and Ernie, and several other beloved characters) after Jim Henson’s death. It’s also a sweet, mournful look into the mystery of puppeteering:

Until Being Elmo, the documentary about long-time Elmo performer Kevin Clash, nobody knew who Clash was. Elmo was just Elmo. Consider the secondary performer, the underling to the already-invisible: They don’t play a fictional character; they gesture a single limb. That dark empty sleeve is the foxhole of puppeteers—you dig in, protecting your neighbor and hope you come back alive. Survive and your own identity awaits. Jerry Nelson began as a right hand for the Muppets in 1965—eventually he would perform one of the most recognizable Sesame Street citizens, Count von Count. If anyone knows the value of digits, it’s a 4-year-old learning their numbers by extending one finger at a time until, finally, their hand is open, the better to grab on.

The Muppets premieres on September 22, and a Jim Henson documentary will air on September 15.

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• puppets

PBS is airing a documentary in September about Muppets creator Jim Henson called In Their Own Words: Jim Henson.

I had never really noticed before that Henson’s natural speaking voice obviously sounds a lot like Kermit. (via @khoi)

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• The Muppets
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Here’s a look at a new book based on the diary of Jim Henson called Imagination Illustrated. Here’s the foreword by his daughter Lisa and the first few pages:

Love this idea, BTW…embeddable book excerpts. More like this, please. Actually, if I were Amazon I would make Kindle previews embeddable with a big old “buy the full book at Amazon” button on the last page of the excerpt and tie it in with the Associates Program. Apparently they did offer this once upon a time but not anymore.

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• Imagination Illustrated
• Jim Henson

Jim Henson made this pitch video to sell The Muppet Show to CBS. It starts a bit slow but stick with it.

There’s also a scene with Kermit right at the end which unfortunately didn’t make it into the clip.

After Leo’s powerful speech, Kermit appears from off-screen against a CBS logo and shrugs, “What the hell was that all about?”

And just because, here’s the opening theme song of The Muppet Show. (via @gavinpurcell)

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• The Muppet Show
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