Muppet writer/director Kirk Thatcher discusses writing for puppets on the latest On The Page screen writing podcast.

Kirk Thatcher was a guest on this week’s On The Page screen writing podcast along with David Skelly (a Writer/Director and Pixar story artist who’s also worked with the Muppets) and together they discussed writing for puppets and animation. Kirk talked a lot about the unique technical aspects of writing for puppets and together with David emphasized several key points, including:

• It’s all about telling a good story and creating characters the audience cares about and can relate to.
• Physicality is very important; sometimes things that aren’t funny on the page are funny when they are performed and vice-versa.
• Also on the subject of physicality, it’s important to make sure that animation and puppetry works with the sound off.
• If you can do it with live action, you probably shouldn’t do it with puppets or animation (Kirk says this was a big part of Jim Henson’s philosophy).

At one point Kirk also quickly name checks Duck Walks In To A Bar, which I thought was kind of cool.

Via The Bubble Boy Blog.