"It's into the same bag as E.T. and Yoda, wherein you're trying to create something that people will actually believe, but it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to do the thing itself"
About this Quote
Henson is describing a special kind of creative audacity: the refusal to let “artifice” stay safely on the art side of the glass. When he lumps his work into “the same bag as E.T. and Yoda,” he’s pointing to a late-20th-century breakthrough in mass entertainment, when puppetry, animatronics, and performance stopped signaling “cute prop” and started passing as character. Not representing life, but manufacturing a life the audience can emotionally contract with.
The key move is his distinction between a “symbol” and “the thing itself.” A symbol is legible at a distance; you recognize it, you decode it, you move on. “The thing itself” is riskier and more intimate: it asks viewers to suspend their adult defenses and respond as if a felt face has interiority, as if a rubber brow can think. Henson’s subtext is craft pride, but also an ethical commitment to sincerity. The goal isn’t to impress you with technique; it’s to make you forget technique exists.
Context matters: Henson is working in an era when blockbuster filmmaking is perfecting believable nonhuman companions, and he’s staking a claim for puppetry as peer to cinema’s most advanced illusions. He’s also articulating why these creatures endure culturally. E.T. and Yoda aren’t just designs; they’re presences. Their “believability” is less about realism than about behavioral truth: timing, breath, hesitation, gentleness. Henson is naming the magic trick and insisting it’s not a trick at all. It’s an act of creation that only works if it’s played straight.
The key move is his distinction between a “symbol” and “the thing itself.” A symbol is legible at a distance; you recognize it, you decode it, you move on. “The thing itself” is riskier and more intimate: it asks viewers to suspend their adult defenses and respond as if a felt face has interiority, as if a rubber brow can think. Henson’s subtext is craft pride, but also an ethical commitment to sincerity. The goal isn’t to impress you with technique; it’s to make you forget technique exists.
Context matters: Henson is working in an era when blockbuster filmmaking is perfecting believable nonhuman companions, and he’s staking a claim for puppetry as peer to cinema’s most advanced illusions. He’s also articulating why these creatures endure culturally. E.T. and Yoda aren’t just designs; they’re presences. Their “believability” is less about realism than about behavioral truth: timing, breath, hesitation, gentleness. Henson is naming the magic trick and insisting it’s not a trick at all. It’s an act of creation that only works if it’s played straight.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|
More Quotes by Jim
Add to List
