Jim Henson Idea Man premiered at Cannes earlier this year to great acclaim, then it had a successful launch on Disney+. It is a documentary directed by Ron Howard about the legendary puppeteer Jim Henson covering his prolific career. It was scored by composer extraordinaire David Fleming, whose credits include Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Last Of Us, and the upcoming Barry Levinson film, Alto Nights.
Jim Henson Idea Man is nominated for nine Primetime Emmys, including Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special. Fleming recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom about this rewarding experience.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length]
So how did you first get involved with this project?
It started with a call from Hans Zimmer, Hans, and I had post-scored a movie for Ron Howard a couple of years back. I remember answering the phone and I think he said something like, “Dave, do you like The Muppets?” Of course, the answer was yes. Hans and Ron have had such a long collaborative relationship, and I’m so happy that I got to be part of a movie with both of them before this. I think Ron liked the idea of me shepherding this one and what better subject than Jim Henson honestly, who better to tell his story than another prolific amazing storyteller.
There are some parallels between Jim and Ron…
It’s interesting the parallels between him and Jim, and I don’t want to speak for Jim Henson’s children, but I think they’ve said that one of the reasons they finally agreed to a documentary about Jim’s life is that Ron specifically reminded them of their dad. And I think there are some parallels with just how prolific he is, but also that he’s kind of driven from a very positive, curious mindset.
What was your first memory of Henson’s work?
It was Sesame Street that made me end up feeling like him. I think his spirit so clearly sort of pervades everything that he made. The wonderful thing about this documentary is that there are these other sides to him that I wasn’t aware of. I don’t think a lot of people were aware that he was an experimental filmmaker… This was unbeknownst to me and Sesame Street wasn’t necessarily even something he was interested in working on.
This is a documentary about his life that doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable details. Please, talk about your approach to scoring the scenes with Jane Henson. What did those scenes require musically?
It was a specific element that I think became important to Ron as well as editors Paul Crowder and Sierra Neal while making the film. Maybe they didn’t imagine that it would focus on Jane as much as it did, but it became very important. And musically, it was something that we talked about a lot as well as, how do we address this? How do we handle this delicately?
So one thing that we talked about was where is her voice in this. And what we decided was she’s a support color musically up until this moment where she sort of has this declaration of independence moment where she writes a letter to Jim and declares herself as her person and not just a support. So up until that point, there are little bits of acoustic guitar peppered in, but she doesn’t have a musical identity. At that moment, she finally does, and she has her voice, which is much different musically than anything else in the film. It’s much more grounded. It’s a warmer kind of color.
So obviously Henson’s work was very musical. This film has a lot of music peppered in. You did an amazing job of making it sound like it exists in the Henson Universe, but sounding new at the same time. How much of a challenge was that and how did you approach that?
It was kind of a fun challenge, really. There is this sort of deep musical culture of the Henson creations. He wasn’t a musician per se, but he was obviously very musical. It was obviously in him. His timing is impeccable, his taste level is impeccable. I don’t think it would be possible for that many iconic songs to pass through the universe if he wasn’t sort of shepherding that with his ear.
So more so than trying to ape any specific thing, it was kind of tapping into the spirit of Jim. And because there is a musical quality to the spirit that he put into things as well, it’s rhythmic, it’s eclectic, it’s colorful on a lot of film scores. It’s all about trying to restrict your palette and smooth off the edges of things. And in this case, Ron really encouraged as much color as possible, dump the crayons on the table, let’s use ’em all, and would always gravitate towards some of the stranger more off-kilter, more offbeat choices.
Do any particular arrangements come to mind?
I remember we did a percussion session where we were playing with glass bottles and trash cans and springs and things like that. It’s the kind of stuff that you would never put in front of a director. Every time something like that slipped through, Ron was like, “That’s great, let’s go with that.” I think that extended to the music, but it also extended to all the departments as well. It was like, how do we embrace the spirit of Jim? So they were using the stop motion animation, even in the sort of talking head interviews.
We did a percussion session early on with a drummer named Hal Rosenfeld who was kind of like, yes, we want to record big animal percussion and what drummer doesn’t want to be animal for a day, but also let’s go with things that are more eclectic and more fun and strange. And it was a little bit about embracing that experimental filmmaker quality of Jim.
Sierra Neal mentioned Raymond Scott as a potential influence. Did that enter the score at all?
A little bit. I would say Moondog was a huge influence. He’s a big hallmark for me in general, but it’s pretty rare to have a film score that can kind of accept those kinds of colors. So I thought there was a really good opportunity for this. It’s very rhythmic and it’s strange but charming. I think there’s a way that that style of music fits the Henson world.
Moondog is great. There’s a Jazz feel to the film but it’s not a Jazz score…
Something I liked about him is that there’s a lot of jazz influence in Jim’s world. So we’re using a lot of jazz percussion and woodwinds. Lots of saxophones are played by my friend Jake Boring, which is something that Moondog would use. He was sort of right on the outskirts. He was sort of in between jazz and minimalism. And I feel like it allows for this sense of joy to hear those types of instruments played in an irreverent way.
Tell me a little bit about your background. You’ve done several scores for movies and television. Did you play in bands? How did you get into the world of scoring?
I played in bands, but I was always kind of writing film scores for the band and we’d play punk shows, but it was always strangely cinematic for those environments. I kind of always had my eye on music meeting storytelling, even before I thought about film scores, I would gravitate towards artists like Bruce Springsteen, especially the Born to Run record was a big hallmark for me. It’s essentially a movie soundtrack.
What has the experience been like? I mean, now that you’re looking at it on the other side, it’s been released, it’s been very well received. It played at Cannes, which is an honor in and of itself. And now you’re nominated for an Emmy for it…
It’s gratifying to see so many people embrace this subject. I was sort of steeped in the joy of this subject was a beautiful experience. It was fun to make and it’s fun to sort of see people react to it. I think what I took away was I tried to try to glean as much from Jim’s method of creation as I could when making this. I think he so clearly created from this place of joy and curiosity, and it was inspiring to me to get immersed in this guy’s life and that kind of work ethic and purpose in general. I think the sort of double feature of Jim Henson and Ron Howard and the kind of just being immersed in the joy of creating is something that I want to try to continue to take with me into every other project.
Jim Henson’s death in 1990 really hit me. I love the way that’s covered in the movie. It really is beautiful, and it is like all cylinders firing, every aspect: sound, picture, everything. What was it like scoring that scene, striking that balance?
That was a tricky scene. It was one that I was kind of afraid of for the entirety and sort of pushed it to the end. That’s coming. The problem was after Jim’s death, they show his memorial and you have Big Bird singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” I had Ron and Paul and Sierra coming to me and saying, “Now how can we take this up a notch emotionally?” And the last thing you wanted have to do is follow musically Big Bird singing that amazing song.
It was a bit of a challenge, but something about the way Ron framed it with kind of ending it with his closest collaborators, talking about what he meant to them and how they wanted to continue on his legacy. It was so easy to get wrapped up in the emotion of that. It is probably the thing I’m most proud of in the score, even if it was the one I was pushing away as far as I could. It’s a beautiful end to the film. I think Ron really sort of wrapped it up nicely.
Jim Henson Idea Man is available to stream at Disney+
