The first time this writer saw The Dark Crystal in the cinema, I was probably too young to be there with my older brothers, given that the Skeksis are the stuff of utter nightmares. But it’s that dark side that draws so many fans like me to this film, it’s deep and strange and striking. It inspires us to believe that being different can still be beautiful. I was instantly enchanted, occasionally terrified, and a love affair with fantasy and puppetry was born. This makes it all the more exciting to hear that Sony Pictures is releasing The Dark Crystal on 4K Ultra HD when it returns to Blu-ray and DVD in celebration of the film’s 35th Anniversary.
Fans and collectors will be delighted to know the new Blu-ray version has most of the features included in the previous release but with some added goodies that will make even the angriest of Fizzgig’s happy. Both the DVD and Blu-ray will feature Original Skeksis Language scenes featuring screenwriter David Odell as well as The World of The Dark Crystal documentary. But only the Blu-ray includes the new featurette The Myth, Magic and Henson Legacy, which includes stories from Lisa Henson (daughter of Jim Henson and current CEO and President of The Jim Henson Company) and Toby Froud (son of creative director Brian Froud and star of the next Henson/Froud collaboration, 1986’s Labyrinth).
Additionally, the Blu-ray is beautifully presented in a collectable, 30-page booklet featuring rare photos and stories from the set. Those who want to take an even deeper dive into this iconic film should check out the new companion book The Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History, by Caseen Gaines. This deluxe book features in-depth looks behind the scenes, script pages, candid photos from the set and sketches from Henson. It also includes an introduction by Brian Froud and his wife Wendy, a prolific fantasy artist in her own right who met Brian on-set when she was tasked with bringing his Gelflings to life.
If that’s not enough for fellow Dark Crystal diehards, the film is getting a special, four-screening release at The Prince Charles Cinema in London starting on March 17th. There is nothing like seeing this film on the big screen but this new 4K release is going to come ridiculously close. It was an incredible honour to speak with Froud about this latest release and what it means for his legions of fans.
STARBURST: You and Jim Henson began working together on The Dark Crystal as early as 1978, but it would be a few years before your film finally hit the screen. What was it like in those initial developmental stages?
Brian Froud: It took five years, I had a meeting with Jim in the early days when he was working on The Muppet Show in England and I went to see him. He said, “I’ve got this idea for a movie,” and he hadn’t got much of an idea, but he wanted to push puppetry into a new area. He thought that my designs would be a good basis for some of the characters, and so he invited me over to New York. We had about nine people in the Muppet workshop. We started to push ideas around and I was drawing and people started to make things.
Jim had seen my art, but he hadn’t realised that I also sculpted and did strange puppets. I mean, I did puppets that were made out of snail shells and chicken bones and that sort of thing. And so it meant that while I was there in the early days I actually made things, I made little maquettes of the characters which very clearly showed my work in three dimensions. I could help people start to develop the creatures. But I had to learn quickly how to articulate what I wanted. I was used to dealing with myself and a drawing board and solving my own problems. But to work with other people with other skills, I had to learn really quickly how to not do it myself. I’d be like Mickey Rooney – doing the whole show in the barn!
I had to learn how to tell people what to do, and figure out what the obstructions were. And that was my big challenge. You know, I was just saying recently that I didn’t know if I could do it. I mean, Jim sort of thought I could do it. But obviously, I did do it, because in five years of my life he didn’t fire me! We ended up together at a Royal Premiere.
We’ve never understood why the film wasn’t the initial success we feel it should have been. Was it frustrating seeing something you all had put so much work into not being initially received as the beloved classic it became?
Yes, it was disappointing. One of our problems I think is that we had no idea. We were in a golden time because we just made the film that we wanted to see. We didn’t consider anybody else [laughing] we didn’t actually figure out who was going to come see this. Now you couldn’t do that, now it has to be really carefully worked out about marketing and who precisely it was for. So we were happy with it all, but then people just looked at it and went, “What is this?” It was stranger, darker than anybody thought.
What they missed was that Jim Henson was a genius. And he never stayed still. He was always pioneering something, he was always looking for another thing. A new way of doing things, new ideas, so this was his dream that he was pushing puppetry. Pushing the boundaries of what you could do with a puppet and visually what you could do with it. And so I think we were ahead of our time.
There was, I don’t know, about ten years, maybe more than that, after the film, I remember I was at Sony Pictures looking at what they were just developing there: 3D animation. They were showing me stuff and I was asking questions to this man, “That’s really interesting, but can you do this?” And he said, “Well no, not quite yet,” and then I said, “Oh, that’s great, but can you do that?” And after a while, he got really frustrated with me and he said, “You know, you should watch a film, it’s called The Dark Crystal.” And I just laughed, he hadn’t realised who I was.
But it did show that we were doing things for real that CGI couldn’t do yet, and that’s how far ahead we were. And indeed I think what’s happened now, over all the years – although CGI in many ways can be brilliant – in many ways, it’s a bit, well… lumpy. It doesn’t always contain the emotions that a bit of a rubber and a stick and a bit of string that we were doing incorporates. They can’t do it, but we did it, and it still shows up in the film when you look at it now, it’s still an amazing feat.
It’s incredible, the realness behind the artistry of this film is very special. It’s one of the many reasons it resonates so deeply with audiences these 35 years later.
I think that The Dark Crystal somehow incorporates magic because it’s made of real things. We brought on board many people with different disciplines because indeed, puppets aren’t that brilliant, they don’t do very much! They do very little and the trick is to get them to do a few things beautifully, it creates the illusion they do so much. And in that, indeed is the artistry.
It is the performance – I really believe in being part of making costumes that were extraordinarily beautiful and intricate. Because that helped the puppeteers in them understand what their character was. They rose to the occasion because they had an extraordinary thing that they were manipulating and because it’s made out of mulitextuals – things are hard, things are soft, things that are sculpted, things that are just draped. It accrues a lot of life. That shows on a screen, and it still does. Whereas CGI can flatten everything out.
Also, I think as a puppet, we’re bound by the laws and the physics of reality. Whereas those dear people that do CGI just pull and stretch and do all these things that then you think, “I don’t believe this anymore.” Whereas everything that we did was for real. There are hardly any special effects in it at all, it just was Performance that these things would walk across the stage, would do things, and would articulate emotions. And that, in many ways, the film is just a record of that.
That’s why it still has a resonance now when you see it. And also, it’s historic in terms of nobody had made a puppet film like that before, and, in fact, nobody has made one since. It fits in a space that’s out of time, it’s timeless, and yet it seems to have a meaning, it keeps accruing meaning throughout the years.
And that was the other thing I found in meeting people, was the reaction they’ve had to the film. Indeed, to go back to your question earlier, we were disappointed that it was not a financial success, but we were absolutely proud – Jim was in particular – proud of our achievements of making this thing because it is an extraordinary film. And we’ve found over the years people’s reaction to it has been that. They say that “It changed everything for me when I saw it when I was young,” you know, “I wanted to either get into the film industry,” or “I wanted to draw, I wanted to paint,” or “I wanted to write.” But it’s always been a creative reaction, which has been great. Jim Henson would have loved to hear that, and I think that’s his legacy, is that he left that behind and it’s still as vibrant and alive now as it ever was.
You can count this writer as one of those people directly inspired to embrace my creativity because of your work! Speaking of legacies but changing gears: one thing I’ve always loved about your story is that you and your wife Wendy first met while working on the film, does that give it an entirely different kind of sentimental value for you?
Jim was very good at finding people, seeing something in their work that he thought was in tune with what he was doing. And definitely, when he saw Wendy’s dolls in the early days it was precisely that. Because Wendy has this extraordinary ability to encapsulate soul instantly in her work. And he knew that’s what he wanted to get into the film. So it was like he brought that to get us together because of the vision of the film, but he had no idea that the two of us personally would link up. And we’ve been married all these years and the extraordinary thing is that we both work from home and we both get on with each other that much. We spend every day with each other but we respect each other as artists. Also in the past years, we’ve been collaborating on books together, and that’s been wonderful to do.
Actually, speaking about your collaborations we’re also celebrating the release of The Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History, a gorgeous, immersive compendium by Caseen Gaines. You and Wendy wrote the introduction, what was it like looking back together at your time on set?
We did the introduction and a few interviews for it and I have to say the new book is wonderful. It’s great to see all the stuff together again. It’s also really well researched and I think there’s a lot of things historically that have been reinstated. Because sometimes when you read about what went on in the film you think, “It wasn’t quite like that,” or “Where was I? Did we mention my bit in that?” But this seems to address or redress a balance. And so I’ve had so much fun dipping into it and reading it and going, “Oh yeah, I remember that,” or, “I don’t quite remember that!”
A few years ago, I did a commentary for The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth and I sat there as they played the film and did it. But I frightened the sound engineer because I said, “Well I hope I can do this because I was never there.” And he said, “Oh my god, what do you mean, you’re doing this voiceover?” And I said what I mean is that I didn’t have time to be on the set. I was either on the next set visually checking that out or I was in the workshop getting the puppets ready so there’s no time to be slumming around on the film set. But unfortunately, so many people are going or dying now that I thought I’d better just do it. Apparently, I haven’t heard it, but there was a review I noticed that said, “Don’t buy the DVD if you think it’s going to be new technology and better, it’s still just as good as it was, but buy it for Brian Froud’s tart comments.” And I thought, well what did I say?
You’ve contributed to several illustrated works set in Thra. Have you enjoyed being part of creating such an expansive universe?
Yes! When we were developing the film we knew that we wanted to create a world that felt like it had this vast history. What we had to do visually, in sort of a shorthand is to show that the history [was] thousands and thousands of years old and we were part of this mythic story. And so we knew that we achieved a great depth to it and it did seem a pity that we couldn’t explore more of it. And that’s why when we’ve been doing the comic books it’s been great to be able to go to the periphery of the world and find out what happened then and find out there are new creatures and all, that’s been really exciting.
For years, I have been going to Comic-Con and saw that films gradually sort of took it over. Every year you’d go there would seem like another mile had been added to the building and then it would be all media. And the comics seemed to be pushed into a corner somewhere and I thought, there’s something really special about the comic books, they’re like a receptacle for great art. This is where young people learn their craft, learn how to express themselves through images. Now comic books have come back much stronger than they’ve ever been so to be able to be part of that, part of that world-creating ability, has really been wonderful for me.
Can you give us anything to tide us over about the upcoming Netflix prequel series, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance until its rumoured 2019 release?
No, I’m not really allowed to talk about it, all that I can say is that we’ve been trying to get a Dark Crystal 2 going for years and it’s gone through various incarnations. At some point, there’s been 3D animation and various things but I think what’s exciting is that through the vision of The Jim Henson Company and Netflix – it’s going to be puppets, and that’s the most exciting thing. So it’s a return to all that, to everything that was best and great about the original Dark Crystal film is going to be in ten glorious episodes and that’s all I can say.
The film is coming back to cinemas soon thanks to four special screenings at The Prince Charles Cinema in London, any plans to get out there and catch it on the big screen this month?
I hope so. I have to say the experience of seeing the film on the big screen is quite extraordinary. But you get to see a lot on the DVD, which is great about it. In viewing it again, you get to see all the details on the same screen you go, “Gosh I really didn’t notice that little creature in the corner, doing all that.” The fun is the game of trying to figure out what everything means because the secret of The Dark Crystal is that everything is linked to each other, everything has, as Jim Henson sort of said, “Everything. We’re all connected to everything.”
THE DARK CRYSTAL is on 4K Ultra on Blu-ray now. To further celebrate the 35th Anniversary, Park Circus is partnering with Prince Charles Cinema to host four screenings through the month of March. Tickets can be purchased online via Prince Charles Cinema.
