Down At Fraggle Rock


In this special, Jim Henson shows us what goes on behind the magical world of Fraggle Rock. Other silly creatures who get a chance to talk in front of the camera are Kathy Mullen, Faz Fazakas, Jerry Juhl – and Richard Hunt.

At the beginning, we see the taping of the song "The Rock Goes On", sung by a bunch of Fraggles and the Minstrels. At first we see Richard practice with both hands in the air, performing without puppets. Later we see him with both of his puppets, and watching a playback with Jim Henson.

Like the performers for the five main Fraggles, Richard Hunt has his own spot on the documentary. While Jim Henson speaks, we see Richard practicing a song in the sound studio ('doobidoo bah, doobidoo bah…'), working on Red, Wembley, Mokey and Boober Fraggle while their performers hold them up, and reading through the script while talking to Jim, who’s holding Cantus. Somewhere during Richard's monologue, we see him performing Junior Gorg's face offstage while Junior dances in front of the camera.

Jim Henson: "Another key performer on Fraggle Rock is Richard Hunt. Richard plays a number of characters, principally Junior Gorg. Richard has practically grown up around the Muppets: he started working with us right out of high school. We're excited about some of the new challenges Richard has taken on, like directing an episode of Fraggle Rock."

Richard: "Directing Fraggle Rock was the first directorial job I'd had. It's a lot different than just working the characters, because when you work your own character, that's the only thing you have to worry about. When you direct, you have to worry about your own character and everyone else's characters as well. It wasn't as much fun though as working Junior Gorg, who is one of the easier characters that I had ever developed because he came a lot from me. He actually also came from two friends of mine in New York – a man I worked with at the Muppets named Matthew and a little boy named Robin. The voice of Junior Gorg came from Robin, cause when he was a little boy, he stawted tawkin' like this to me. And so I went, like, "say, that's a weiwd voice!" This is the way Junior tawks too."

Special thanks to Jogchem Jalink for getting this all down!


Back | On-screen Appearances | Information on Richard | Remembering
Links | Thanks | Home | Forward