On Sunday, March 7 Disney's Hollywood Studios held a special event for a limited number of annual passholders. This event dealt with the Muppets. Since there is a muppet attraction at the park this made perfect sense.
The special guest speaker for the event was Dave Goelz. While not a household name his characters are beloved by millions. He is better known as the voice of Gonzo, Dr. Bunson Honeydew and many more. Goelz is a puppet designer and performer who has been nominated for multiple emmy awards winning in 1978 for Outstanding Comedy, Variety, or Music series. He has worked with The Jim Henson Company since the early 1970's. You may read more about him here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0324397/ or here http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Dave_Goelz
What was interesting about this talk was the brief history of Jim Henson and the muppets that was given. Henson started out with brief appearances on shows such as The Tonight Show, The Today Show and others starting the mid 1950's. He helped produce brief ads with his characters for use during the mandatory station identification breaks. We also got to see how many of the gags used on The Muppet Show in the 1970's were really older skits that had been used many times. Near the end as the q&a session started Goelz brought out his buddy Gonzo to help answer questions. The questions ranged from adults asking about what it was like to work with Jim Henson--Goelz had nothing but positives and seemed to truely still miss him to children asking Gonzo what he is--I guess Gonzo is just well Gonzo. When asked about future projects Goelz was somewhat evasive but did say there are many things in the works including a possible Halloween special.
The special guest speaker for the event was Dave Goelz. While not a household name his characters are beloved by millions. He is better known as the voice of Gonzo, Dr. Bunson Honeydew and many more. Goelz is a puppet designer and performer who has been nominated for multiple emmy awards winning in 1978 for Outstanding Comedy, Variety, or Music series. He has worked with The Jim Henson Company since the early 1970's. You may read more about him here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0324397/ or here http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Dave_Goelz
What was interesting about this talk was the brief history of Jim Henson and the muppets that was given. Henson started out with brief appearances on shows such as The Tonight Show, The Today Show and others starting the mid 1950's. He helped produce brief ads with his characters for use during the mandatory station identification breaks. We also got to see how many of the gags used on The Muppet Show in the 1970's were really older skits that had been used many times. Near the end as the q&a session started Goelz brought out his buddy Gonzo to help answer questions. The questions ranged from adults asking about what it was like to work with Jim Henson--Goelz had nothing but positives and seemed to truely still miss him to children asking Gonzo what he is--I guess Gonzo is just well Gonzo. When asked about future projects Goelz was somewhat evasive but did say there are many things in the works including a possible Halloween special.
As a special bonus at the end we were all allowed to have our picture taken with Mr. Goelz and Gonzo. Mr. Goelz was polite to everyone, talked to each group and was sure to thank us for coming. He seemed to be appreciative that we loved his work. I'm hoping Disney offers more events like this in the future.
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