#james frawley

This GIF is from The Great Muppet Caper, 1981 directed by Jim Henson.

We defused a lot of the tension with humour, naturally. On the set, and on the road, we had a game we used to play called Killer. Jim Frawley invented it. The idea was each person was allowed three shots per day. You could shoot whoever you liked—you just mimed your hand as a gun, like kids do, y’know—tssshhh! And whoever was shot had to die. But you couldn’t just fall down, nice and simple—it had to be a spectacular death. You had to moan and kick and fall over furniture and people and take about three-quarters of an hour to do it—like they used to in all of the best Westerns. And if you didn’t die loud enough, or long enough, or imaginatively enough, or if say you just didn’t die at all, because you were being introduced to the Queen Mother at the time, then you lost a life. And if you lost three lives—you were out of the game. Forever. No second chances. That was as good as being really dead. So, of course, we’d look for the best moments to shoot each other—when it would cause the most commotion. Not everyone was included. It was a clique of about eight. Sometimes we’d have a different director—we used to have a guest director to do one or two shows. They’d be in the middle of a scene and somebody would get shot and the whole scene would be ruined because this was very serious business—you couldn’t lose a life. The game produced no end of possibilities for going right over the top. In the middle of a love scene once—I had the stars coming out of my eyes, the whole bit—I’m walking over to the girl with my arms outstretched and she says, “Oh, Davy!” We’re just about to kiss when … Tssshhh!—Peter shoots me. I have to go into an epileptic seizure routine for about five minutes—knocking lamps over, fall over a drum kit, out the door, roll around the parking lot, up the stairs, across the president’s desk—“Oh my God, are you all right, David?”—“Aaargh! Shot, sir!” Back out the door, down the stairs, onto the set, collapse in a heap at her feet. Wild applause. One time in Australia, in front of about five million fans at the airport, Micky got shot and he fell all the way down this gigantic escalator. People were stunned. They thought he’d been assassinated. It was very rarely someone wouldn’t die—not even a token head slump. One time was the Emmy Awards. I think it was Bert Schneider stepped up to receive the award for “Best New Comedy Show.” We shot him, but the moment was too special for him to spoil it. He won an Emmy and lost a life. Towards the end of the second year—to show you how badly things were going—even Frawley couldn’t be persuaded to die anymore. Everyone had been up all night, as usual. We were on the set—first diet pill of the day—started fooling around, messing up takes as always. But somehow it wasn’t the same. Nobody was laughing. Frawley was so mad. The only thing we could do was shoot him. Dolenz shot him—he didn’t die. Mike shot him—still standing. I shot him—nothing. What a bummer. All the feeling was gone. The beginning of the end.

Behind the scenes of The Muppet Movie (1979).

THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979) DIR. JAMES FRAWLEY

Madeline Kahn-Telly Savallas "La película de los Teleñecos" (The Muppet movie) 1979, de James Frawley.

Columbo: Sex and the Married Detective (1989) James Frawley.