"Fraggle Rock" Renowned Puppeteer Dave Goelz Hand Written Letter Dated 2012 For Sale
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"Fraggle Rock" Renowned Puppeteer Dave Goelz Hand Written Letter Dated 2012:
$199.99
Up for sale "Fraggle Rock" Dave Goelz Hand Written Letter Dated 2012.
ES-6338E
David
Charles Goelz (born July 16,
1946) is an American puppeteer and puppet builder, known
for his work with the Muppets. As part of
the Muppets' performing cast, Goelz performs The Great Gonzo, as well as Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Waldorf (after Jim Henson's death), Zoot and Beauregard, originating
on The Muppet Show.
Goelz's puppeteering roles also included in Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth. Outside of
puppeteering work, he was also the voice of Figment in the Journey into
Imagination with Figment attraction at Epcot. Born
in Los Angeles, California,
Goelz had an interest in puppetry as a child, including an affinity for the
children's television show Time for Beany, but after high school, he attended the Los
Angeles Art Center College of
Design and began work as an industrial designer. The mechanically-minded Goelz worked for
such companies as John Deere, American Airlines,
and Hewlett-Packard. However,
when Sesame Street premiered,
he was fascinated by the craftsmanship, as he recalled in an interview: I had
been a Muppet fan for many years, but now I started getting fascinated with the
design process that went into what I was seeing on the screen. Who were these
people who created the puppets, costumes and performances that were so
evocative? I got very curious. While working full-time for an electronics firm,
Goelz began dabbling with puppet building. He met Frank Oz at
a puppetry festival in 1972, and during a vacation in New York City, he attended daily Sesame Street tapings.
A few months later, Goelz showed his design portfolio to Jim Henson, and in 1973, he was offered a job with Henson Associates as
a part-time puppet builder. His first assignment was to build puppets and
design effects for a proposed Broadway show. However, the show was soon
abandoned in favor of an ABC pilot, The Muppets Valentine Show,
for which Goelz built characters and got his first chance at performing,
playing Brewster, whom he also designed. Upon Goelz's return to California, he
learned that he had been replaced by his electronics employer, so he set up
shop creating puppets and videos for industrial videos. Eight months later, in
the fall of 1974, Henson offered him a full-time position as a
builder/designer, and occasional performer in specials, while still allowing
him to keep his industrial clients. Returning to New York, Goelz began work
on The Muppet Show: Sex and
Violence, for which he built the new host character, Nigel.
Working from sketches by Jim Henson, Michael K. Frith, and Bonnie Erickson, he also built Animal, Floyd Pepper,
and Zoot, the
latter becoming his first major character. In 1976, Goelz joined the rest of
the Henson team and flew to London to begin work on The
Muppet Show. In addition to reprising his role of Zoot and playing
background roles, as in the earlier specials, Goelz was promoted to
"Principal Muppet Performer" with the starring role of The Great Gonzo. The puppet had debuted in The Great Santa Claus
Switch, as Cigar Box Frackle, and had made brief appearances in Muppet Meeting Films and Herb Alpert
& the Tijuana Brass, with different performers. The sad-eyed
creation was now given a permanent name and puppeteer. However, in addition to
playing Gonzo, Goelz was still employed in the Muppet Workshop. Goelz recalled
the hectic schedule of working full-time behind the scenes and in front of the
cameras in a 2004 Film Threat interview:
So my typical day involved running back and forth between making puppets and
performing. And I of course didn't know anything about performing. At all. I
guess I had an aptitude for it, but it was something I hadn't had any training
for. So I was learning on the job, and I found the whole thing very stressful.
At the end of the first season, I said, 'Jim, look, is there any chance I could
come back next year and just be a performer, and not work in the workshop?' And
he said 'yes'. So I sort of blended into the performing world that year. Gonzo,
that first season, like many of the new Muppet Show creations,
was a work in progress, and especially for Goelz, playing his first starring
character and major speaking role. When he was assigned the character, he
panicked: "I have no voice!" He thought of the voice the morning
before the first taping performance. As recalled later, Goelz thought that he
had the worst voice out of all the Muppet performers, and was scared the first
time he had to sing. The
early Gonzo, with a permanently sad expression, inspired a similarly depressed
portrayal from the novice puppeteer: "The downcast eyes made him easy to
play because that was exactly how I felt. I was an impostor in show business. I
was learning how to perform and to puppeteer on the job." In that
first season, Gonzo was a misfit and out of place, according to Goelz, which
was how he saw himself as a performer:
When I came to The Muppet Show, I found myself suddenly with
a different and enormous star every week, and I had absolutely no credentials.
I felt so out of place. So that came into the character, and for the first
season, he was very self-effacing and he felt like a misfit. Looking at the
character in retrospect at MuppetFest, he recalled that "over the years,
he sort of evolved along with me... I was an impostor in show business. In the
first season, Gonzo is always self-effacing and embarrassed. But he knows he
has something special." Adding to Goelz's insecurity was the jaded
veteran crew members of ATV Studios, who had worked with the likes of Julie Andrews and Bing Crosby, and were thus hard to impress.Finally, towards
the end of the first season, Gonzo had a scene where he had to shout, in
amazement, "No!" Jim Henson told him to go bigger, so Goelz obliged
with an overemphatic "NO!" This earned his first laugh from the
crewmembers.I got another laugh the second season. It was unstoppable now! And
I thought, I could make a character of this. Then when I got that first
laugh... I felt limited because he couldn't look excited. His droopy eyelids
always made him look pathetic. So after that first season, I asked Jim if I
could build a Gonzo with an eye mechanism. He said 'sure', so I went back
to New York and did
that. Now he could convey his excitement and enthusiasm for his silly acts, and
it was much more entertaining. Along with this I was becoming more comfortable
with performing. So it started to work better. I think he grew because I was
growing, and I was capable of doing more. As Goelz increased in confidence, and
Gonzo transitioned from a nervous depressed failure to a manic, confident
stuntman, other facets of the character fell into place. The second season
introduces his romantic fascination with poultry. As the performer reminisced in Of Muppets and Men: There
was a moment during the second season when
I had Gonzo ad-lib a line that was, I think, important for my understanding of
his character. He'd been auditioning chickens for the show -- dancing chickens
-- and they were all terrible. At the end of the scene I had him turn to the
camera and say, 'Nice legs, though.' Something jelled right there. It told me
something about him.
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