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EXCLUSIVE: Ron Howard’s Jim Henson Idea Man – the most nominated documentary at this year’s Emmys – will make its broadcast debut Sunday, August 11 on ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney.
The film about the creative juggernaut behind the Muppets, Fraggle Rock, feature films Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, among so much more, premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival. Last month, it scooped up a leading eight Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program, and Outstanding Writing for a Nonfiction Program. Jim Henson Idea Man is available to stream on Disney+.
Lisa Henson is among the children of Jim and Jane Henson who appear in the documentary (the Jim Henson Company did not produce the film; it’s from Disney Branded Television and Imagine Documentaries). After the Emmy nominations were announced, she told Deadline, “We’ve been really heartened to see the reaction to Ron’s incredible film because it’s really his artistry as a filmmaker that he was able to, in a very creative and very insightful way, present Jim Henson as a person. And we know a lot of people have been interested in Jim Henson, but he’s a bit of an elusive character because he’s the ultimate behind-the-scenes person. And Ron really made a very beautiful personal film, and we feel that you could really get to know my father through seeing that film. We really think it’s just fantastic that the whole creative team is being honored.”
The Henson family granted Howard access to rare materials in their archives, including sketchbooks of Henson’s drawings (he studied art in Paris). The film is full of revelations for the audience, as well as for Howard himself.
“There are a lot of things I hadn’t seen, these hilarious, crazy, irreverent commercials, which are what first got him noticed in the mainstream and allowed him to be this sort of experimental artist in the early years of his life. They were crazy,” Howard told Deadline just before the film’s premiere. “But I also got to see that the creativity for him never stopped. It existed in his home movies. It existed in sort of all of his drawings. It existed in his notebooks that weren’t sketches for design necessarily. They were just him keeping track of things. And even those were reflections of this creative energy. And it just dazzled me. And honestly, I wanted to celebrate it. I wanted to get to the bottom of what made him tick.”
The documentary also examines the vital contributions of Jane Henson, Jim’s wife, to the creation of the Muppet empire. She came up with many of the technical innovations that helped launch the felt and fabric creatures to fame, and as a puppeteer herself, often operated Kermit the Frog in the late 1950s and early ‘60s.
“This film is definitely the first time that that story has been told,” Lisa Henson told Deadline. “It’s been kind of a footnote to the Henson history that the company was started by Jim and Jane… It was started by Jim and Jane as a couple, and it sort of was a fact that hadn’t been explored the way that Ron explored it. I think he really honored both Jim Henson and Jane Henson. He tells both of their stories, tells the story of the marriage, which is not always perfect. And because it is so much about the marriage, it’s also a very personal film. It’s not just a film about work. And the work is fabulous, and the clips are amazing, but it’s not just a film about the work that Jim Henson did.”
Jim Henson Idea Man, from Disney Branded Television and produced by Imagine Documentaries, is directed by Ron Howard and written by Mark Monroe. Producers are Howard, Brian Grazer, Sara Bernstein, Margaret Bodde, Justin Wilkes, Mark Monroe, and Christopher St. John. Serving as executive producers are Paul Crowder, Meredith Kaulfers, and Michael Rosenberg.
Emmys in the documentary categories will be presented at the 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards on September 7 and 8 in Los Angeles. The Primetime Emmys will air on ABC on September 15.
