New Never Before Seen Behind The Scenes Footage of The Muppet Movie (1979)

Here are never before seen behind the scenes footage of The Muppet Movie from 1978. This was sourced from the recent Jim Henson Idea Man documentary on Disney Plus. While it wasn’t the first time behind the scenes footage of the film has been found as outtakes of Kermit riding a bicycle was included on the 2013 Blu-Ray release. What makes it different from that however, is that it’s footage of the making of the iconic scene of Kermit singing Rainbow Connection, which for decades all we had were concept art and photos of the making of that scene, but thanks to this documentary, we can finally see that moment in motion of Jim Henson in a diving bell controlling Kermit underwater.

Also in a recent podcast with Steve Whitmire who was involved in the Muppets franchise for over four decades and played Kermit the Frog from 1990 to 2017, on an episode of the Jake’s Happy Nostalgia Show channel, he mentioned that he filmed behind the scenes footage during the making of that film with a Super 8 camera and claims that he owns tons of behind the scenes footage in his possession. He also mentions that he was contacted by the Ron Howard company, Imagine Documentaries, for a request of behind the scenes footage of The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie, which this footage that was given to Imagine, was from Steve Whitmire himself.

But what’s really important about this, is that it’s possible Steve has behind the scenes footage of deleted scenes that have been lost for decades, while some deleted scenes have been found on early home video releases and tv airings from back in the day, primarily the extended UK cut of the film, other deleted scenes have never been officially released to the public as either snippets sourced from other media or photos of them exist online. Which despite the movie is really iconic and changed the filming of puppetry forever, not much cut material from the film has been released besides test films from 1978 and the Doc Hopper’s commercial on DVD and Blu-Ray.

And while the current owner of the Muppets, Disney, does do a solid job of preserving material from their movies, well in terms of unused material at the very least, as their restorations of their films have been either hit or miss, the problem is that Disney didn’t own the Muppets until 2004, so it’s unknown if every single production material made for The Muppet Movie was sent to Disney or not. And if Disney doesn’t have the film negatives of the deleted scenes, then they could be owned by other companies like Universal, since one of the production companies of The Muppet Movie, ITC Entertainment, was formed into Polygram Television in 1997, and then would go defunct in 1999, and their assets would be bought out by Universal. Or maybe Henson Associates, now known as The Jim Henson Company, has material of deleted scenes from the film in their archives.

Or sadly, the film negatives of the deleted scenes either are lost or don’t exist anymore, which that probably could be the reason why other unused material has never been released on home video. And if that’s true and if Steve Whitmire has behind the scenes footage of the deleted scenes, then that’s probably the only surviving material of them aside from photos. Kind of like how the Wizard of Oz from 1939 where the negatives of the deleted scenes from the film were lost or destroyed, as one of the only available cut material are behind the scenes footage of the Jitterbug scene with no audio from the camera and just the song synced in with the footage. So hopefully cut material from The Muppet Movie still exists in some form, especially it’s a movie from the late 1970s, as most companies would keep reels of deleted scenes for tv airings, news reports, or documentaries at the very least. So besides maybe behind the scenes footage, we can only hope if the film negatives of the deleted scenes from The Muppet Movie does still exists in some form and it’s not in the same fate like The Wizard of Oz for example. But until we get an answer, only time will tell.

Also like stated earlier, the behind the scenes footage mentioned in that podcast and shown in the documentary is in possession by Steve Whitmire. So it’s best to be respectful about his possession rather than being rude to him about it. That’s entirely up to him if he wants to show more to the public or not.

But anyway enjoy this fascinating extremely rare piece of Muppets and Jim Henson history.

Link to podcast: https://youtu.be/NQ7mHOeJH98?si=eY_nJL6zWdgJW02P

Deleted Scenes Info: https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/The_Muppet_Movie_deleted_scenes

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