Creative nonfiction is a genre that I didn't even knew existed before taking this class. It's nonfiction turned into a compelling story. This means that dialogue may be recreated without total accuracy...events may be combined...things that didn't actually happen but could have happened may even be included. ("Based on a true story" movies are, in my opinion, classic examples of creative nonfiction.) The following piece is light on the creativity and heavy on the nonfiction. Dedicated Muppet fans will know where I've taken liberties, but the majority of the Steve side of the story is reconstructed from a Steve Whitmire interview.
When Steve Whitmire got the box in the mail, he opened it right away. Inside, resting on a bed of Styrofoam peanuts, was Kermit the Frog.
The puppet was the same as the many others that had been made over the years: green felt skin, eleven-point collar, flippers, eyes with elongated pupils, and a flexible head that could be scrunched into almost any expression. The puppet’s mouth was slightly open in a half-smile, half-word. He looked like he was about to announce a guest star on The Muppet Show, sing a song about being green, or say, “Hi, Steve! How are you?”
Steve almost returned the greeting. His characters had played alongside Kermit for so long, it would have been natural for him to say, “Hiya, Kermit,” in the voice of Bean Bunny or Rizzo the Rat. But he stopped himself. As far as Steve was concerned, this wasn’t his old friend Kermit. The frog’s animus, his spirit, his essence—all of that was gone. Kermit had died with his performer, Jim Henson.
It doesn’t have to be that way Steve thought, staring at the Muppet. Jim’s spirit had left his body forever, but Kermit could be resurrected. All it would take was the right Muppeteer.
Steve picked up the famous frog and slipped his hand up into the body. He sat very still for a minute. Then he put the Muppet back in the box and walked away.
***
With great nervousness and excitement, I considered interviewing Steve Whitmire. “He’s sure to have an e-mail,” my creative writing teacher said, something I had never even considered. Steve Whitmire? Me, e-mailing Steve Whitmire? Well, it was something to think about, for sure.
What would I say?
Dear Steve Whitmire,
My name is Awkward Mormon Girl Obnoxious. You’re probably not aware of it, but we sort of know each other. See, I have this friend named Runner Bean. Runner Bean’s family was on Extreme Home Makeover a few years back, so he knows Ty Pennington. Ty Pennington was on a segment in a Sesame Street Christmas special, in which he interacted with the Count von Count. As you know, the Count’s current puppeteer is Matt Vogel. You perform with Matt Vogel frequently. So we know each other. Sort of. By association. Yup.
Not that.
***
Steve Whitmire had been a fan of puppeteering since he was just a kid living near Atlanta. At eleven years old, he wrote a letter to Jim Henson. Jim Henson wrote back.
When Steve graduated from high school, he had a yearbook full of scribbled notes jokingly calling him “Kermit” and a first-place prize for puppeteering in the school talent show. He jumped straight into performing a character called Otis the Beach Bum at a local theme park, then cohosted a television program with his best friend Gary. Simply called The Kids’ Show, it was nominated for a state Emmy Award. Clearly, Steve was going places.
He was in the middle of negotiating his own television show when Jim Henson called.
When Steve graduated from high school, he had a yearbook full of scribbled notes jokingly calling him “Kermit” and a first-place prize for puppeteering in the school talent show. He jumped straight into performing a character called Otis the Beach Bum at a local theme park, then cohosted a television program with his best friend Gary. Simply called The Kids’ Show, it was nominated for a state Emmy Award. Clearly, Steve was going places.
He was in the middle of negotiating his own television show when Jim Henson called.
***
“Eighteen and a half, Joni,” I said to my Muppet. “Jim Henson hired Steve Whitmire when Steve was eighteen and a half.” It took a long time for her to respond. This was due to my cringeworthy technique. When I say “cringeworthy,” I really mean “cringeworthy.” Usually when I pick Joni up, I never get around to performing her because I get wrapped up cringing in anticipation of my poor puppeteering instead. To be fair, I guess it would be easier for me if she were a more expressive Muppet. She isn’t, though; she’s a Whatnot, or a type of basic human puppet used in the background of The Muppet Show. Joni is great-looking: short dark hair, blue skin, orange nose, slanted purple eyes. I designed her myself on F.A.O. Schwartz’s Whatnot-making website, and I’m pretty proud of the way she turned out. However, Whatnots have fat plush heads that can’t easily be wrinkled into different expressions—pretty difficult to use effectively without additional mechanisms in the head. Alas, Joni lacks such mechanisms.
“Ahem,” Joni said. I stopped cringing and went back to performing her. “So?”
“So he’d hired teenage Muppeteers before, but that was when the Muppets were just starting and he was pretty darn young himself. In 1977, the Muppets were doing well for themselves. He could have had his pick of puppeteers, hired someone his own age. But no, he hired this super-naïve teenage boy from Atlanta, Georgia. Why’d he do that, Joni?”
“Super-naïve teenagers do amazing stuff all the time. Remember how you became a famous author when you were a super-naïve teenager? Oh… oh wait, you never did that, did you? My bad.”
“Thanks a lot,” I grouched, glaring at her. With some effort, I arranged her face in a sort of smirk. “I was always planning on it, but…”
“But reality caught up to you,” Joni said, patting my head.
***
Steve pressed the buzzer three times before the door opened. Later he learned that the door was the kind of door where you pressed a bell and then someone else buzzed you in, but on the day of his audition at Henson Associates he didn’t know that. So there he was, repeatedly pressing the buzzer, when all of a sudden the door flew open. Hastily Steve stepped back. Out stepped Jim Henson.
“Hi!” Steve said brightly. He’d flown to New York the night before with $20 (of which he’d already spent $19), a lightweight coat, and a trunk full of puppets. He had absolutely nothing else to his name, but he’d never been more excited in his life.
Jim stared at him. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, I’m Steve Whitmire.”
Jim stared.
“The puppeteer from Atlanta?” Steve clarified, his heart sinking down to his toes. He was overcome with a sense of panic.
He knows who I am, right? He’s got to; he paid for my airfare and my hotel! But… what if he doesn’t? What if this is all some huge mistake?
Steve highly doubted he would be able to purchase a return ticket with his one dollar. He wasn’t even sure he could find his way back to the airport. He knew nothing about New York. Before last night, he’d never been farther away from home than Kentucky.
To his relief, Jim said, “Oh yeah, well, c’mon in.” He led Steve inside, then paused at the top of the stairs.
“You know, we really weren’t expecting you this early.”
Steve looked at his watch. It was eight a.m. That didn’t seem too early, especially considering that he’d gotten up at seven and had put off heading to the studio as long as he possibly could. Sure, he’d only held off for less than an hour, but, still. He’d tried to wait, and every minute he’d been able to delay running straight towards his audition with the Muppets was a small victory.
The panicky feeling returned. “Well, you know, I could leave and come back later,” he said, trying to sound polite but hoping Jim wasn’t going to make him wait any longer. He didn’t know if he had that kind of willpower. Besides, he had no money and no place to go.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
Steve left his trunk of puppets at Henson Associates, trudged to a Woolworth’s on the corner. He spent his last dollar on a cup of coffee and sat there for three hours, waiting.
***
“Why didn’t you?” “Why didn’t I what?”
Joni touched the keys of my laptop. “Can I write something?”
“No. Why didn’t I what?”
“Why didn’t you become a famous author when you were a teenager?”
“Because I never wrote anything good enough to publish.”
“Who told you that you never wrote anything good enough to publish?”
“I did.”
“Well, what did the publishing companies say?”
“They didn’t say anything. I hardly sent out any submissions.”
Joni looked at me reproachfully.
“Listen, Joni, it’s like you said earlier: Reality caught up to me. Eventually I realized I was too young to get published, okay? Adults have a hard enough time getting themselves published, and then once they are published, they hardly ever become famous. A teenager like me doesn’t stand a chance. The only thing I can do with my life right now is go to school and get my creative writing degree.”
“And then you’ll be a famous author?”
“No, then I’ll have to find something else to do with my life after I ultimately fail as a writer,” I snapped.
“Well, you could always be a Muppeteer,” Joni said in a sing-song voice. There was a long pause. “Are you cringing at your technique again?”
I put her away.
***
Steve’s audition wasn’t much of an audition. When he returned to the studio at eleven, he and Jim and Frank Oz played around with puppets for a while. Then Jim took Steve around and introduced him to the people at the studio. After a few days of this, Jim told Steve he was hired. He wasn’t going to work on Sesame Street, though, as Jim had originally led him to believe. No, Jim was hiring Steve to come work on The Muppet Show.
***
“You have to be mean to Kermit,” Jim chided Steve. Steve bit his lip and said nothing.
“Your character is guarding Liberace’s door. He doesn’t want to let Kermit in, Steve, and he has to be mean about it.”
“Jim,” the floor manager said softly. “It’s five minutes to eight.” Eight o’clock was when the technicians went home—always. The cast wasn’t allowed to keep them in studio a second longer than that.
Steve stared at the floor, frustrated. This was his first speaking role: easy, short, technically simple. Still, he had screwed up every take. It just wasn’t working.
“Don’t worry,” Jim said to the floor manager. “We’ll be done by then.” His voice was calm, confident. Never mind the fact that he had been working on this brief scene with Steve since seven-thirty, and it still hadn’t come together. Never mind that he could have turned to any one of “the guys”—Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, Dave Goelz—to take over Steve’s part. It didn’t matter who played the guard in front of Liberace’s door. Jerry or Dave or Richard could easily do it in a take or two; Frank would only need one. Despite this, Jim hadn’t asked Steve to pass the puppet over to someone else, and Steve had a feeling he wasn’t going to. Jim wasn’t about to give him the easy way out.
“Let’s do it again, Steve,” Jim said. Steve extended the puppet above his head and waited for the camera to roll.
***
“Who did Steve play on The Muppet Show?” Joni asked me. I’d brought her out again after some wheedling on her part and many, many promises to be good and to not talk about my puppeteering technique. “No one, really. Rowlf’s hands. Miss Piggy’s dog, Foo-Foo. And Rizzo the Rat.”
“But Rizzo’s an important Muppet!”
“Not back then, he wasn’t. Rizzo was a background character on The Muppet Show—some rat puppet Steve found in storage and would walk in and out of scenes. Jim decided to make Rizzo an exalted extra by giving him lines, but the rat didn’t really take off until he was paired with Gonzo as a narrator in Muppet Christmas Carol.” I shrugged. “He spent his two and a half seasons on The Muppet Show doing all the puppetry work that nobody else wanted to do.”
“Poor kid.”
“Poor kid? No, he loved it.”
***
When The Muppet Show ended in 1981, it was because Jim wanted to move on to other things. Specifically, he wanted to create a kids’ show that could lead to world peace. It was called Fraggle Rock.
Of everything that Steve has done as a Muppeteer, I envy him Fraggle Rock the most. Fraggle Rock has sometimes been cited as “the best children’s television show of all time” and, really, I don’t think that can be argued with. Because of the lofty goals Jim had for it, you’d think the show would be boring and overly teachy, but this is not the case. The show is about a group of creatures named Fraggles who sing and dance and have fun all day while learning important life lessons and cracking fantastic jokes. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Each of the five main Fraggles is complex and nuanced, made likable by the puppeteer despite the character’s obvious faults. Steve’s Fraggle was named Wembley, a chronically indecisive but goodhearted little fellow.
“Wembley, give it to me straight. Am I invisible?” Gobo Fraggle asked his best friend.
Steve moved Wembley’s head and scrunched his nose into an expression of genuine scrutiny and consideration. “Uh… well, I don’t think so, but that’s only my opinion.”
The set members choked on their quiet laughter.
“What should I do?” Wembley asked Gobo.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Can you give me a hint?”
“That’s a wrap!” the director called.
“Good job,” Jerry chuckled as he and Steve lowered their puppets.
“Thanks. You too.” Steve carefully pulled Wembley off his hand. As he went to put his puppet away until their next scene, he noticed Jim standing there, watching. When Steve caught his eye, he nodded and gave an approving smile.
I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.
Of everything that Steve has done as a Muppeteer, I envy him Fraggle Rock the most. Fraggle Rock has sometimes been cited as “the best children’s television show of all time” and, really, I don’t think that can be argued with. Because of the lofty goals Jim had for it, you’d think the show would be boring and overly teachy, but this is not the case. The show is about a group of creatures named Fraggles who sing and dance and have fun all day while learning important life lessons and cracking fantastic jokes. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Each of the five main Fraggles is complex and nuanced, made likable by the puppeteer despite the character’s obvious faults. Steve’s Fraggle was named Wembley, a chronically indecisive but goodhearted little fellow.
“Wembley, give it to me straight. Am I invisible?” Gobo Fraggle asked his best friend.
Steve moved Wembley’s head and scrunched his nose into an expression of genuine scrutiny and consideration. “Uh… well, I don’t think so, but that’s only my opinion.”
The set members choked on their quiet laughter.
“What should I do?” Wembley asked Gobo.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Can you give me a hint?”
“That’s a wrap!” the director called.
“Good job,” Jerry chuckled as he and Steve lowered their puppets.
“Thanks. You too.” Steve carefully pulled Wembley off his hand. As he went to put his puppet away until their next scene, he noticed Jim standing there, watching. When Steve caught his eye, he nodded and gave an approving smile.
***
Guess what? Steve doesn’t have an e-mail address, at least not one you can find on Google. I discovered this after I tried every single search term I could think of. The closest thing I found was a website explaining that if you want Muppeteers to sign photos of their characters, you have to send the photos care of Sesame Workshop and pray they fall into the right hands. Unless I became a writer for a posh magazine overnight, there was no way I was going to be able to interview Steve Whitmire. I would just have to make do without an interview, and he would just have to remain unaware of my insignificant existence. I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.
***
“You know, we need to get you a main character,” Jim said over dinner in 1990. “I have Wembley.”
“Sure, but Fraggle Rock ended several years ago.” That was true. Since then, Steve had done many movies and projects as a full-fledged, experienced Muppet performer, but he had no main Muppets. Rizzo was a fun side character and Bean Bunny was a great character originated in The Bunny Picnic. Neither of them, however, was part of the core Muppet cast. “I’m frustrated that you don’t have any main characters. I think we should work toward getting you another major character, maybe something that’s like a sidekick to Kermit.”
“Like Fozzie?”
“Yes, like Fozzie. Fozzie is there, but Frank’s not always available, and it would be nice to have another character that could fill that role sometimes. I can work on that as soon as I get back to New York.”
“Great!” Steve said. It would be good to have a main character.
Then Jim passed away, and his son sent Kermit to Steve in a box.
***
“What about that thing you wrote over the summer? Are you going to send that to a publisher?”
“Eventually. I have to edit it some more first.”
“So when will you be done editing?”
“Over Christmas break. Hopefully. Maybe.”
If Joni’d had an eye-rolling mechanism like Wembley Fraggle’s, it would have been in use then. “Hurry it up. You’re going to want to get that thing published as soon as possible so you can be a famous author.”
“And what’s the hurry, exactly?”
“Well, hey. You’ll still be a teenager until April. There’s still a chance for you to make your lifelong dream happen.”
Joni was silent as I thought about it. “Well,” I said slowly to her, “when you put it that way…” If there was anything I’d learned from Steve’s story, it was that it didn’t matter how young or inexperienced you were as long as you were willing to try.
“I guess I can hurry the revisions a little.”
“Yay!” Joni said. “Also, I would appreciate it if you worked on your puppeteering technique some more. You’re not doing me justice.”
I made a noise of disgust.
“You say that now, but who knows? Maybe if you get good, you’ll get hired by the Muppets, and you can be a famous author.”
“Yeah, and maybe I’ll become the next performer of Kermit the Frog.”
“Maybe you will,” Joni said, and she wasn’t being sarcastic.
It was a month before Steve could take the puppet out of the box again. Finally, the studio called and asked him if he would record something for them as Kermit. Nothing too stressful, just a little song or something—but even a little song became stressful when Steve considered what they were really asking of him.
“Oh, Jim,” he whispered, “I can’t do this.”
In his head, Jim said, “Of course you can, Steve. Of course you can.”
Steve took a deep breath, then settled the green frog on his hand. He opened the puppet’s mouth. He spoke.
“Hi-ho, everyone. Kermit the Frog here.”
“Eventually. I have to edit it some more first.”
“So when will you be done editing?”
“Over Christmas break. Hopefully. Maybe.”
If Joni’d had an eye-rolling mechanism like Wembley Fraggle’s, it would have been in use then. “Hurry it up. You’re going to want to get that thing published as soon as possible so you can be a famous author.”
“And what’s the hurry, exactly?”
“Well, hey. You’ll still be a teenager until April. There’s still a chance for you to make your lifelong dream happen.”
Joni was silent as I thought about it. “Well,” I said slowly to her, “when you put it that way…” If there was anything I’d learned from Steve’s story, it was that it didn’t matter how young or inexperienced you were as long as you were willing to try.
“I guess I can hurry the revisions a little.”
“Yay!” Joni said. “Also, I would appreciate it if you worked on your puppeteering technique some more. You’re not doing me justice.”
I made a noise of disgust.
“You say that now, but who knows? Maybe if you get good, you’ll get hired by the Muppets, and you can be a famous author.”
“Yeah, and maybe I’ll become the next performer of Kermit the Frog.”
“Maybe you will,” Joni said, and she wasn’t being sarcastic.
***
Kermit could be resurrected. All it would take was the right Muppeteer, and according to Jim’s wife, his son, and the guys, that Muppeteer was Steve Whitmire. It was a month before Steve could take the puppet out of the box again. Finally, the studio called and asked him if he would record something for them as Kermit. Nothing too stressful, just a little song or something—but even a little song became stressful when Steve considered what they were really asking of him.
“Oh, Jim,” he whispered, “I can’t do this.”
In his head, Jim said, “Of course you can, Steve. Of course you can.”
Steve took a deep breath, then settled the green frog on his hand. He opened the puppet’s mouth. He spoke.
“Hi-ho, everyone. Kermit the Frog here.”
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