Interview With The Director of Muppets Most Wanted, James Bobin #MuppetsMostWantedEvent

Yes I di-id!  I got to interview the Director of Muppet Most Wanted; James Bobin!  By now most of you know about my AMAZING Disney adventure in Los Angeles.  While there; I was able to interview Miss Piggy, Kermit, Constantine, and now; James Bobin!  Oh yes, but this isn’t the end.  Be sure to keep checking back because there is SO much more to share with all of you.  Anywho, back to our super fun interview with James Bobin.  first off; what a nice guy.  He was so much fun and just a humble person to get to chat with.  I was so excited to hear more about the creative side of Muppets Most Wanted.  Because this movie was so different from the last Muppets movie; we all wanted to know how these changes came about and how difficult it was to make the changes.

QUESTION : So who is the most difficult Muppet to work with?

JAMES BOBIN: And you. Pleasure. [LAUGHS] I’ll let you guess who the most difficult Muppet is who I work with. None of them, they’re all a total joy to work with. I’m–– I’m a huge fan, I grew up watching the Muppets as a kid, so working with them for me is like working with my–– my heroes…

QUESTION  :    So what is the difference between shooting the first movie and then the second movie?

JAMES BOBIN :    Oh, for me obviously it was the slightly, uh, the first movie I’d never worked puppets before, so it was a very big experiential learning curve of how to frame shots, how to make this world feel realistic, that these puppets were alive, breathing people who are interacting with humans and the world’s just, the world we live in, the recognizable world we live in happened to have puppets in it. That idea I love, and that’s a very important part of it.

And that was quite, the–– the training of the first movie was just getting, I think just getting to that level for me was an achievement. I could make a movie that like worked on that level. And so for this one I just wanted to push that a bit further. Because the last movie is kinda set in the theater for a lot of the final act. And the last, you know, most of it was and so I thought this time, well, we should just get out and about a bit more and just do some slightly more adventurous, bigger stuff. And, obviously, the fact that the movie’s kind of a caper movie with some criminal stuff in it, feels like you–– you can do bigger action sequences.

And, obviously, you never want to put the words “puppet” and “action sequences” in the same sentence [LAUGHS] as a director, ’cause that is very hard. But I like the idea of trying difficult stuff. It’s ambition about the movie I really like about it, it feels like a very different film to me. And the way I love both movies equally, but this  film I feel like has slightly more ambition which I love about it and I think that’s when you’re doing a sequel there’s all sorts of things you have to deal with. One of them is you want to try and make a different movie. You don’t want to make the same movie twice, and that’s very important.

QUESTION: Do you approach celebrities to do cameos, or do they come to you and say, “I want to appear in the movie?”

JAMES BOBIN: Uh, the, generally we write them in for the right specific idea in mind, then we have a person, or a type of person in mind, quite often it’s the actual person who we write in. Like, you know, the Usher is gonna be played by Usher, that’s a good, that’s that joke, you know? Uh, and but sometimes there are roles which are just like “a guy who’s delivering something,” or “a waiter” or something where by it could really be anybody. And then we start finding out just subtly who are Muppet fans. And people who we know, and we hear about who like the Muppets.

And then, for example, of course Christoph Waltz I knew, we heard liked the Muppets, and I thought, “Well if here’s a Muppet show today, obviously what you do with him, his name is Waltz, you are going to do a Waltz with him somewhere, [LAUGHS] and somehow that came about that way. So it’s kind of, it’s mostly us writing people in, but sometimes we hear about people that want to be in the show too…

I love what he had to say about the cameo appearances. I think everyone has their own “favorite” aspect of the Muppets movies; for me it’s the cameos. Cameos add a depth to the movies that are truly unique to the Muppets. It takes me back to when I was young watching the Muppets. These always brought the adult crowd into a children’s movie.  Be sure to go check out Muppets Most Wanted.  My 7 and 9 year old LOVED IT!  I’m not so sure how the people in front of us felt about my kiddos laughing so loudly in the theater, but it was a lot of fun!  You will be singing the songs for weeks!

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MUPPETS MOST WANTED is open in theaters everywhere NOW!