Welcome And Why Toby Matters

Greg Staffa 0:00

You're listening to the Staffa Corner Podcast, a Staffatarian look at entertainment and life with your host, Greg Staffa. My guest this episode is Toby Philpot, a performer whose remarkable career has taken him from circus street performing to working with Jim Henson and bringing one of Star Wars' most unforgettable creatures, Job of the Hutt, to life. Toby, thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Yeah, no worries. It's interesting. I mean, you know, talking about yourself is always fun.

Greg Staffa 0:51

I have to admit, I've interviewed about 300 celebrities from Pierce Brosnan to Ethan Hawk, and talking to you is probably one of my top four interviews that I've done out of those 300 celebrities. Um as a child of you know, born in 1975, you were instrumental. I mean, a lot of people were, but you were one of those people that were so instrumental in my childhood growing up in the 80s. It was a generation of imagination. And to look at your history during that kind of 80s period, you were instrumental in shaping so many young lives of creativity. So I am absolutely sincerely thrilled to have you on.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Thank

From Dropout To Cross Country

SPEAKER_01 1:44

you.

Greg Staffa 1:44

So you started off beforehand. You were a street performer, a circus performer. What was it about that that you enjoyed, and how did you get started in that? I know your dad was a puppeteer, but you went a slightly different route.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Yeah, well, uh it it really comes from the 60s. I mean, you've got to think I was 21 in 1967, so I'm I'm right dead center of that kind of uh breakout of young people being creative and adventurous and so on. Um I didn't know what I wanted to do, but when I dropped out of school and and so I wasn't gonna be going to university, uh, most people wanted to be musicians, but I I never showed any real talent for that. And um for quite a long time I was just a dropped-out kid, sofa surfing and uh hitchhiking around and so on. And it it my big adventure started when I went to uh I got a French girlfriend and we went and lived in Paris in a in a kind of scotted uh artist's studio. And um we earned enough money um selling jewelry to tourists and things to fly to America. Now, nowadays flying is quite common, but I can assure you that in 1970, flying to another country was still fairly unusual. And flying over the Atlantic was particularly odd, you know, um, especially when you don't have any money. Uh, you know, um, there was a very good chance we would be turned back at New York for not having any any uh proofs that we could support ourselves. But as it turned out, we bought a cheap um plane ticket. We strolled through New York uh airport. Nobody, they gave us six months on our passport. There was no challenge. And uh we were in. We were in New, you know, we were into the United States. We had friends to look up uh and stay with just to get started. But the ambition was to hitchhike right across America. You know, you can feel a bit of Jack Kerouac and all that. This was, I mean, I wouldn't hitchhike these days, okay? But back then, hitchhiking was uh uh a thing you could do. I mean, young people would pick you up. Most young people were sort of on the same side because of the Vietnam War, because of uh draft dodging and uh the drug subculture and just the whole youth movement meant that it was feasible to hitchhike right from, well, Boston eventually. We from New York we got a lift to Boston, but from Boston we hitched all the way across to Los Angeles in uh in, I don't know, a week or ten days or something like that. And it was no trouble. I mean, it was it was a feasible thing to do, was was to hitchhike across the States. Now, the reason I'm bringing that up is because uh most young people in the in Europe at least were going off to India and Pakistan and all Afghanistan, saying, you know, you can you can make a little bit of money, last a long time there. Um, but we didn't we didn't want to be rich kids uh hanging out in a poor country. I mean, I didn't have any money really. Uh uh so I decided me and me and uh my girlfriend decided we would go the other way, we would go west, and we would go to California, which was the richest state in the richest country in the world back at back then. And yeah, we we made it. We got to Los Angeles. That was a bit tricky without a car, so we hitched up to uh San Francisco, and then I was

Juggling Sparks A Street Career

SPEAKER_02 5:24

there for months. Um the reason I'm bringing it up at all is because at that point I still didn't know really how I was going to make a living. I used to make bits of jewelry and so on. But in Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco, I saw this guy juggling. He's now famous. Ray Jason is was one of the first ever street performers. But um I realized that there was me, you know, making jewelry, finding wire, finding pliers, getting the seashells and beads and all sorts of stuff. And he was just turning up on the day with some balls and rings and things and making a living. And I thought, ah, uh, wait a minute. That looks like a good idea. So I started teaching myself to juggle. And I was living in a village called Bolinas, which was kind of uh uh uh like an artistic community, really. And uh uh Grace Lick from the uh lived there, and a lot of the local people started putting together little festivals and shows, and me and a few friends made a mime troop up. You know, we would jump through burning hoops, and my juggling would do a little bit. I wasn't very good, but uh, you know, uh we were sort of clowning. And I I suddenly realized that that that was something I could do, you know, something I had a talent for. But previously I didn't know what I could do if I can't play music, you know. What am I gonna do if I don't want to work in an office and I don't want to do nine to five? And there was a glimpse, at least, that showbiz was feasible. Now, actually trying to make a living as a street performer is stupid nowadays. It's a profession and people do it. But back then it was like just a dream. And uh we were we were in America for 18 months eventually. And I just I got good enough. I was doing a little bit of magic. Uh I learned to walk on my hands, and I you know, I I kind of had a vague idea of clowning and and something like that. But I didn't really know how to make it work until we got to Austin in Texas, um, in our travels. And on the main drag there, we were still selling jewelry and stuff like that, but I used to juggle while I was waiting for customers, and a guy came up to me and he said, Hey, you know, forget all the jewelry and stuff. I like that juggling stuff. Do you want to our film club is going to be showing a film of WC Fields juggling? And if you if you want to come to the film show, you could juggle before the film, uh, you know, for this live audience, and um and then watch the movie. So I did, and because the university there is huge, and the the whole town is kind of a you know a university town, a young people's place. And uh, next thing I know, a guy photographs me uh juggling as I walk along the street. I'm in the local paper. And when we hitched into Mexico, suddenly all of this came together and street performing became feasible. Because in Mexico, people live in the street. They, you know, they were used to the idea of a fire each or an acrobat or something passing the hat. And I wasn't. I didn't I didn't know this was a feasible thing to do. But I would be jumping outdoors, and this guy came up to me and he said, uh, hey, where's the hat? And I said, Well, no, I'm not doing a show, I'm just I'm just playing. This is my hobby, you know. Uh and he went, No, no, no, look, they're watching. And I looked up and around, you know, scattered 20 yards away and so on, were people kind of watching me, you know. They've got a boring peasant life, and there's a bloke juggling over there. That's interesting. So he started calling them in, and then he took his hat off and he took it round, and he came back with some coins in his hat. And I went, Oh, okay. I wasn't really doing a show. And he went, yeah, yeah, no, do a show, you know, make it a show. Do a a beginning in the middle and an end, you know, go roll up, roll up, and um uh, you know. And so we started doing little street shows. I mean, it really wasn't I want to be in showbiz. It was more like, how can I make a living without taking a job, without speaking the local language very well. And this worked. It made me enough money to pay for a hotel room and a meal. I mean, I wasn't gonna earn my plane fair home, but uh, you know, it I I I spent six months in Mexico just moving from place to place and earning enough to stay alive.

Returning Home And Mastering Skills

SPEAKER_02 10:12

By the time I eventually got back to the UK, which was another whole story, I'd been away for over two years. And I'd got an idea of what I wanted to do. Of course, I arrived back in London in November, and there is no street life in in the weather that we have. So I did kids' parties, and I, you know, I put a little act together for medieval banquets and that sort of thing. And then come the summer, people started hiring me for outdoor festivals. I mean, you know, in California I'd seen things like the Renaissance Fair, and I knew that uh, in theory uh you could be a court jester or something, or counter or something. So that's that's the the initial arc that got me from being a kind of dropped-out, don't know what I'm doing, to I'm gonna be a performer. And it it all happened in about uh three or four years, I guess. So then um I I just started uh studying, concentrating, and and it was circus skills that I found fascinating because I'd been doing juggling, because I'd learnt fire eating off a guy in Mexico, because I'd learned a bit of acrobatics. I started doing classes in tombling and mime and masks and just anything I could get my hands on. I mean, I had to go at tap dancing, but I wasn't really good, and I had to go at growing in a, you know, um, I I just wanted to learn all the skills. I wanted to be Fred Astaire, you know. Uh over ambitious by miles, but it meant I spent almost all day, every day, uh working on skills. Eventually I learnt stilts and unicycle. I found a guy who had a tight wire so I could practice on that. And there was a whole thing going on because, you know, this wasn't I'm not alone in this. In the 60s, the theater, which had been very straight and formal, started generating street shows and small theaters, shows in pubs and bars, um, and they were always a mixture, like almost like Boardville, you know, a mixture of comedy and music and skills. And I sort of fitted in there, so much so that I began teaching evening classes in the skills that I'd learned. And I spent about seven years in what I would call uh circus skills for just for shorthand. But um it meant that I was physically fit. I'd done work with mime and masks and some puppets and things.

Landing The Dark Crystal Audition

SPEAKER_02 12:54

And when I saw an advert in the trade paper for Jim Henson, they wanted big creatures in the dark crystal, but they didn't, the puppeteers didn't want to work uh those because they were very big and heavy and uncomfortable. So they put an advert out. I think it said something like, dancers, mimes, clowns, acrobats needed uh to do big creatures because they didn't really know exactly who they were looking for. People who were fit and uh brave, but also people who could do uh a performance through a costume. And I auditioned, and there was a lot of people, but I felt really at home. I thought, well, this is sort of the sort of thing I've been doing for years, almost like I'd been preparing for it, you know. Um, quite unconsciously, uh I'd been getting ready to work with the June Hansen. And so when I passed the audition and became part of their team of ten, I found that I'd graduated from a man working in the street and passing the hat to somebody in the film business. And that was the Dark Crystal. And I worked on it for like six months from pre-production right through to the end. Um, and that was my foot in the door, and suddenly I I felt like I'd um qualified somehow. I'd passed a test and I'd moved into proper showbiz.

Greg Staffa 14:24

When you were doing this on paper, a lot of it seems like you were doing it to survive, but yet on the other hand, there's a lot of creativity that went into what you were doing. Did you see yourself as a survivalist, or did you see yourself seeking a creative outlet that you knew that you had and kind of that bundled up energy that you were looking for an avenue to put it out in?

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Yeah, uh I mean, of course I was survivalist in the sense that I wasn't making much money. For a long time I lived in a shed at the well, not a shed, a little studio, but at the bottom of someone's garden, and they um they made me a great deal. They said when you're here you pay rent, and when you're away, you don't. So if I went off touring Holland for a couple of weeks, I didn't pay rent, and yet I had somewhere to come back to. Really kind people, you know. I mean, I I I owe a lot of that first year or two to kind and generous people. But yeah, I mean, I did I did think it was something I might do for the rest of my life. You know, my dad had gone from performing puppets to teaching workshops to writing books about it. And my mum had gone from a performer, like an actress and singer, to a teacher. And I found that half my income was running these evening classes and workshops, and half of it was being a performer. So I did think of it as a long-term uh creative outlet. I did, you know, uh I did work with a couple of small groups and I did a couple of double acts with people, but essentially I was a solo performer. Um I just found it easier to be responsible for myself. And if if anyone turned up late or made mistakes, it would be me. And I I wouldn't be grumpy about other performers. But I mean, I enjoyed doing my double acts and my uh working with little groups of three and four people. We were all being very uh creative and adventurous at the time. So it was more than just surviving and hoping to come out the other side. I was hoping to leave a trace, and certainly it's fun to meet performers now that that started off in my workshops. Of course, in a workshop there's 20 people, and you know, 15 of them are just doing it for fun, and two or three are ambitious but don't make it, and one or two actually succeed and turn it into a living. So it's lovely to see them succeeding. Um, and also uh I I think the the key skill in all of that was juggling because at that point nobody was doing it, so it got me lots of work. Just you know, I founded gigs on TV and things because they couldn't find anybody who could juggle. Well, of course, I taught hundreds of people, they all taught 10 people each. Um, we had our first juggling get together when I contacted a couple of guys in other countries in 1978. Uh, eleven of us got together down in Brighton uh on the coast in England, uh people from five different countries, and we swapped ideas and skills and uh were impressed by each other. Well, that juggling convention of 11, the following year we did it, and it was 25, and then the following year it was 50. And nowadays there is a European convention, for instance, that changes country each year, and thousands of people turn up, three or four thousand people. So it's like a festival. I mean, there's a of course it isn't only juggling, it's it's all the peripheral skills as well. But uh that that started in America. There's there's in America, there's the IJA, the International Juggler's Association, and they have a convention each year. Well, when we started our ours, theirs was about 45 people, and ours was about 11. After about five years, drawing on the whole of Europe, right? And and it's a much smaller area, so it's easier for people to travel to different countries. In America, it goes from the East Coast to the West Coast and so on, but a lot of people aren't going to travel 3,000 miles for a get-together. Whereas in if you have it in Paris, people can come from Holland and Denmark and Germany and England. So ours actually ended up bigger than than the one in America. Uh, although there's it's called international, and house is called European. Um juggling is now a thing, you know, there's there's manufacturers of juggling equipment, there's there's videos, of course, uh educational videos, there's books, and there's some extraordinary performers. I mean, the skill level is way beyond what I was doing. But uh that's 50 years for you. I mean, if you take uh the difference between 11 people and 3,000 people, for instance, um if you were in a small country like Iceland and you pick your national football team, you've probably got the only 11 people in the country who play football. So you're not gonna be that good. If you if you choose a um the best 11 out of the 60 million in the UK, that that team is probably going to be better. So when you've got thousands of people applying creativity to juggling, the the the competitive aspect and the creative aspect uh accelerate. So rather than the film work, one of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that juggling's turned from an obscure little skill to uh a national pastime. You know, uh it's fantastic. But that's you know, that's that's not what the internet is interested in. They want to know if I still juggling, and I go, I gave up 25 years ago. I, you know, I reached when I turned 50, I got my arms got tired, I just you know I wasn't going to get any better. And uh I could have carried on teaching, I suppose, but even then students were turning up who are already better than me. And then they want to learn something. Well, the only thing I had to offer then was how to turn it into an act. Um but because of my roots in the street and so on, um I don't create the kind of act that Cabaret wants, or you know, modern hotels or cruise ships and so on. Um mine was always much more punkish and um street level. I mean, so much so that some of my students in the 80s um became street performers, started winning awards as the you know the best street performers at in the Edinburgh Festival and things like that. Um and they eventually decided to form a little circus. So they went out and bought a big top and some caravans and generators and things.

Teaching Others And No Fit State

SPEAKER_02 21:16

And um They came and found me teaching in a circus school and said, Do you want to run away with a circus? So from 1990 to 97. I was touring on the road uh 20, 25 weeks a year um with a little non-animal circus made up of my students. And that circus is still going now. It's it's been going, what, 40, 50 years? 40 years, something like that. And uh they are now an international company. I mean they're huge, you know. They've they've been to New York and Hong Kong and Perth in Australia, and you know, they're a touring company. So not as big as Cirque du Soleil, but they grew from uh You know, a three-handed street performing uh juggling uh group. Uh again, I'm really proud of them because they I was just a seed. I was just a spark that but how lovely to see them succeed and carry on the whole process that I found so fascinating. Particularly uh trying to involve people, um trying to get people to do it themselves, not to just sit there passively going, you know, I'm the audience and you're the act, but to to involve people, which is why running workshops is a lot more fun than doing a show, for instance. Because of the glee that people get when they discover they can juggle three balls, and the the twinkle in their eyes, then they're wow, you know, is it's still exciting to me even now. Um but uh for some people it manifests as a you know as a real job that um they will spend their life doing, which is fantastic. Um you can see how miles away from the film business. The film business for me was a period of seven years when just by by chance I had trained myself up to be the the thing that they needed for practical puppets. I mean, nowadays so much of it's CGI that I'd be better off being a computer person. Um but at that point, if you think of Yoda, for instance, George Lucas was using practical puppets, Jim Henson was certainly doing everything for real, no CGI. And it was just a phase when movies were doing it that way. Um, you know, gremlins and uh E.T. and all those um it was just I just landed on my feet. I was just I've been very lucky, I've got to say this. I think luck has a lot to do with it, as well as talent and and application and hard work and all that. But uh I was very fortunate. It's it's a it's one of those curious coincidences, actually, because my dad um uh had not been well, and he died in 70 1978. And because it made me uh it was a shock. I mean, you know, you your dad dies, even even a a fairly remote dad, right like mine, uh, it it hits you harder than you think, and I couldn't go out and be funny. Uh my my solo clown show was suffering. I was just I was just very wobbly. So I decided to take some time and just learn a new skill. And what I chose was um to go and study mime for three months with a mime teacher, just to just to steady my nerve and to learn a new skill. And it was that very mime teacher who told me to go and uh apply for a job with Jim Henson. So it was curious that uh uh a year after my dad, the puppeteer, died, I ended up working with the best puppeteer on the planet. It was just one of those. That's is that luck or is you know, thanks, Dad. I look up at the ceiling sometimes and go, did he organize that? He wanted me to be into puppets.

Greg Staffa 25:18

So did you think of it almost as a tribute to your dad or just a matter of luck?

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Well, uh, you know, I I I'm not religious, so I I I you know I I didn't really think he had done it. But at the same time, the fact that I am comfortable around puppets, I grew up around puppets. The fact that my surname is his surname, so Jim Henson may well have known who my dad was, and he may have even thought that I'd spent more time being a puppeteer than I had. I mean, for all I know, he thought he was getting someone who'd spent their whole life doing puppets. I never asked him. He he did once say to me, I I think I know your mum, and I went, Well, no, you know my dad's second wife, um, because she was well known in the puppet world. Maybe my surname uh helped um get me the job. I I really don't know. I like to think it's my talent, but yeah.

Greg Staffa 26:12

And then just to backtrack a second, because you didn't mention it, but the name of the circus that you were talking about, that is the No Fit State Circus, correct? That's right. And you can find them online, they have a website and it goes out, talks about their history, uh, and their involvement and stuff like that. So I invite people to check that out and I'll put a link to them because they're still very active.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Um they're in Wales at the moment, but um yeah, they tour internationally. Um, go ahead. So I was just gonna say the reason that they're called No Fit State Circus, by the way, it's a student joke. They were students when I met them. Um and there was the Moscow State Circus and the Chinese State Circus. So being Stone students, they thought, well, we'll call ourselves the No Fit State uh Circus. It was one of those, and then we got stuck with it. You know, it's a joke name, and people would say, What is this Nofit State? You go, no, Nofit State, oh dear, dear. You know, we'd have sort of a snappier title, but it was too late. That was what we were known as. In fact, most people call us NoFit State. They don't bother with the circus word anymore. Just because it looks great on a t-shirt. You know, No Fit State works really well for a for a for a crew t-shirt. A fan t-shirt, whatever. Yeah, they're I mean, they're they're out there and and they are now a really classy kind of act. They were very good street performers. And you can find little clips of them. Uh the three-man group. There was a two-man group and a three-man group. The three-man group were called Risky in Pink. And uh you you can find a 10-minute routine of them uh doing club passing and stuff like that. I uh a few years ago, on the 30th anniversary for them, which is what, 2015 or something, I spent a year making an archive for them. So, as well as their own live website now, there is the remnants, the leftovers of an archive I put together, which has loads of video clips of early shows. They're a bit embarrassed by them because they're, of course, amateurish and rather silly. But there are uh I did a timeline for the first 30 years and showing all the posters and programs and uh interviewing all the performers. We spent a fun year uh putting that together, but of course it's now it's 10 years out of date already, um, which is amazing. I mean, just it just keeps on growing.

Learning Film Craft Beside Henson

Greg Staffa 28:38

Now you mentioned that doing your street performances and all the acrobatics and the juggling really prepared you for working with Jim Henson on things like the Dark Crystal and eventually going on to Star Wars. But what was it like? Because as a street performer, you have people there. There's an immediate reaction, there's an immediate feedback of your performance. You can tell if you're doing well or if you're losing the audience. Whereas Job of the Hut or Dark Crystal, you don't get that immediate response. As a performer, was that hard to kind of adjust and and realize that this is a performance, but a performance that won't be appreciated for months or even years?

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Oh, yeah, that was that was part of the kind of shock. But because uh because I'd been trying to change gear uh and try to manifest something different, because you know, I I'd kind of, as I say, my solo show was getting hard to do on my own. It was very interesting to switch from a live performance to working as one ant in an ante, or one bee in a beehive. Film, you know, a film takes well, I don't know, there's probably about two or three hundred people involved with the dark crystal. All the people building the costumes, building the sets, writing the scripts, writing the music, doing the makeup, doing the hair, uh, you know, and the performers, of course, the main pup Muppet performers who were very experienced with TV, but hadn't done much film. And there is a difference. With TV, you're making a whole program very quickly. So there's quite a lot of improvising, and they got very good at live performance and making each other laugh and all that sort of stuff. Filming is much more slow and much more meticulous. So, you know, you can do a 10-hour day and maybe only get three or four minutes of useful footage. So that's a long, long process. Uh they would make a half-hour program in a week, probably, for TV. So they were also learning something new because the TV show was always humans mingling with puppets. And Jim's uh dream for the Dark Crystal was that it would be all puppets and no people at all. So that they were doing something that they'd never done before, which helped uh a bit because we were all learning. What I learned from Jim was not just puppetry because he was directing our performance and so on, but also uh how to work on a film. I mean, I had never done a film before. I'd done little bits of TV, but again, they're quick. They they just ask you to do your act once or maybe twice and then send you home. To be clocking in at eight o'clock in the morning and working until six at night and getting these little details right was um was a whole different discipline. But you're only responsible for your bit. The thing about the solo show is of course, you know, win or lose, you you're responsible for all of it, whether people find it funny or not, or uh um or pay or whatever. With filming, I knew I was gonna get paid. I I didn't always know what I was gonna do when I walked into the studio in the morning. Sometimes we'd we would rehearse without the cameras, um more complicated moves, um, and then film it. But also I got assigned to Jim Henson's crew because each of the Muppet people, they were operating puppets that took three or four people. So each of the chief Muppet puppeteers would have a crew of people like me to do the other hand or the eyes or you know, uh a support crew. And somehow I got picked to be on Jim Henson's support crew. I'm not sure how that happened, whether whether he picked me uh I don't know. I somehow, so if Jim is doing the head of the ritual master with his right hand, and he's doing the the master's left hand, then I would be in Jim's armpit operating the right hand, or I'd be behind him making the eyes move or whatever. So uh not only was I doing my my big creatures, but I was standing right next to Jim while he is directing and performing. So that that was an honour, and it also meant that I was listening quite carefully to the the way it was the way movies were made. The the directing, talking to the sound man, talking to the lighting man, talking to the script girl, talking to continuity and all those. So it I had a real film education off Jim.

Inside Jabba The Hutt

SPEAKER_02 33:22

I mean, you know, people ask me about Star Wars, and I'm, you know, uh it's a fabulous job to have been jabbered out. But without Jim's um six-month education in filming and puppets, I would probably would have been too scared to do it. The the way I got the job, you see, was that Dave Barclay, who is the um uh a a lifelong puppeteer. I mean, it's he knew my dad probably better than I did, uh, because his family were puppeteers as well. The difference is I didn't go into it as a business. Whereas he m he not only makes puppets but performs them, even now. I mean just now, um uh he's got a movie out um Wiley Coyote versus Acme. It's it's just come out and he was doing the puppet, he had a real puppet for uh Wiley Coyote because it's actually going to be done as a cartoon, but for blocking the moves with the actors, he had a real puppet. So he's still working in the business. I mean for me it was a seven-year chunk of my life. Well, uh Dave had been making puppets for Jim Henson, but he hadn't been performing. So on Dark Crystal he was a maker. He was offered to make Jab of the Hut, but was too busy working for Jim. So they got back to him and said, Well, if you can't if you can't help us with the build, could you take uh the job as chief puppeteer? And he uh he got the job, which means he's doing the voice and the and uh he says, You'll need a partner, you know, it's a it's a big puppet, it needs two people. And he picked me. I mean what what can I say? He was my friend and uh you you you're gonna be really close. Stuck inside Jabba the Hut for weeks. And you need to be roughly the same uh build, same size to fit in. And we're both gonna be using both our hands, so choosing whether you're right-handed or left-handed is is arbitrary, really, because uh Dave is doing the right hand of Jabba with his right hand, and he's doing the mouth and all the talking with his left hand and a microphone, and I'm doing the left hand, and with my right hand inside, I'm moving the head about. So it's it's you know, it was a it was a double act, and we we are friends, and we are we do have because you have you end up wanting to be as almost telepathic. I mean, it happened with Jim, you know. Um I'm stuck in his armpit and I'm doing the the right hand. I'm trying not to uh upstage the performance, but I'm trying to compliment it. Well, we had almost no rehearsal because he's directing the movie. Most of the Muppet crews were working with their partners and going, when I turn the head that way, move the eyes this way, and so and so on. And they were getting hours of practice. I'm just standing next to Jim and he does all his directing jobs, and then he turned to me and he said, Okay, here we go then. And we would start performing. And he he never told me I did it wrong. He might have gone, um, try this, try that. That's not quite what I imagined, but never got angry, never lost his temper, and never really gave me much direction. I mean, he he was incredibly trusting, but it I think one of the reasons that I got picked may be that we we had a similar temperament. We you know I'm I know I'm talking a lot now, but he was a man of few words, uh almost shy, uh uh quiet spoken and just um a couple of times when I had nothing to do, and I'm just sitting next to him waiting for something. I I asked him about that, and he went, Oh I hire the best people I can get, and then I trust them to be creative. I uh you know um and he had a fantastic crew, and everyone loved him and loved working for him because he expected you to contribute. He wasn't a boss that went, it's gotta be this way and not that way, and you know, it was the opposite. He wanted you to be better than you thought you could be, and that was amazing.

Greg Staffa 37:28

It's fascinating. I mean, I can't believe our time has gone by so fast. It's fascinating listening to you and seeing the connections that are made that almost seemed planned and strategic. You talk about, you know, being in Jim Henson's armpit and learning how to communicate and how that worked with a puppet led to you being, you know, the bit one of the biggest puppets out there in Java and having to rely on that kind of communication and that working together in tandem to make something come alive and working as one. And it it sounds almost strategic, but yet it kind of just fell into place that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

Well, yeah, I mean, I I was lucky, as I say, Dave Bach is carefully worked from childhood. He's wanted to be a puppeteer, make puppets, perform puppets, and he he's definitely worked his way through all the different levels of that in the business. Uh mine was lucky in the sense that it wasn't what I thought I was going to be doing. So I thought I was going to carry on doing circusy stuff. And there was this sort of, I don't know, seven-year hiatus when I did when I did um the films and puppets. Well, when CGI started

CGI Shift And Library Life

SPEAKER_02 38:50

and when Mrs. Thatcher changed the tax breaks, the film business migrated to other countries. You know, the film business uh was in London at the time, everyone was there at that point, and suddenly they migrated. And they were filming in Israel and Spain and New Zealand and and they take with them the top technicians and the main stars, but the the the m l lesser talents like me are hired locally, of course. Um and then CGI came in and really put the kibosh on practical effects. That was that was the end of that as a as a way of making a living. I now I know some people migrated to TV, um, some people, of course, like Dave, uh carried on making uh puppets or even um making motion capture software and and so on and moving with the with the times. Well, I I didn't. Uh that's when my talent uh petered out, or my or my enthusiasm, I'm not sure. And in the late 90s, uh, when I turned 50, I I moved to a smaller town and I didn't have any showbiz jobs. So I got my first ever real job, which was in the library, because I am a very bookish person. And almost the sort of thing I would have done if I'd stayed at school and university. But it would have been, you know, fun, um, but relatively boring. I landed on my feet because it was just at that point where the government in the UK said, uh, the ordinary people have got to get into this internet thing. So we're gonna offer it free through the libraries. So one minute I'm handling books, and the next minute I'm putting my hands up as a volunteer to help teach the public how to use computers. And so I was my job, my day job was to s to study the internet, teach the staff, teach the public. And um, this is before Google and before Facebook, you know, this is uh MySpace and uh Netscape Navigator and stuff. It was just a complete change to have a steady job and to find myself doing a freelance role because there was no one to teach me how to do this. No one had ever done the internet before. So I was left to myself, really. It was almost like a freelance job. There was the guy who'd been doing the the library uh um computers, but he wasn't that interested in the public. And um, you know, my street performing meant that I was very comfortable talking to people and helping people and running workshops and things. So um, from what felt like a little winter job for an actor, turned into a full-time job for for me. Uh, and I built a website because you had to put a website up. I had to learn how to do everything. Well, I put a website up and somebody said uh within a within a few weeks, somebody found me and said, Did you work on Star Wars? I went, yeah. And they went, you know, there's conventions and things out here where people want to meet the all the performers. And I went, no. Well, that's 20 years ago now, and uh you can still find me out at conventions meeting fans, chatting about this peculiar time in my life, you know, these seven years when I I worked on half a dozen movies. So that that's my only connection with Shobies now is talking about years ago as we are now.

Jabba’s Legacy And Staying Curious

Greg Staffa 42:15

And I I'm going past our time and I apologize for that. I just got uh one or two questions and then I'll let you go. When you do these performances, you're you know, you're you're kind of stuck in Jabba's you know body doing it. Yeah. But when you go to the movie and you see it for the first time, are you able to separate yourself and see? I mean, to us, Jabba was real. I mean, to a kid growing up, Jabba was real. Are you able to watch and separate yourself and see Jabba as a character, or is you seeing, oh, there's my right or left arm doing, you know, this motion?

SPEAKER_02 42:51

Oh no, I I buy it completely. You've got to bear in mind we didn't really see, well, I think Dave saw some rushes, but we didn't really see any film of footage. While we were shooting, we were basically uh almost working blind and just just taking direction from Richard Marquand. So um it took it was about a year, year and a half later, that we saw the film. Now you imagine they do a crew showing before the public sit, and that means they get a cinema. There's 400 people in there, and they've all done something on the film. They've all worked on it. Which means on that first view, of course, you watch your own bit to see how well you did. So the first time through, yes, when my left arm hits C3PO and the whole cinema gasps, I went, yes, you know, that's me, I got it right. But nowadays, when I watch it, now I see Jabba because now I try and watch what the other guys were doing. I mean, you know, what what Dave Barclay is doing, what the guys working the eyes were doing, uh Mike Edmonds working the tail. Uh and he is real. It's a he's he holds up. He's still better than the CGI. The practical jabber is just alive. You know, he's he's really there.

Greg Staffa 44:05

It it is amazing to see them resorting to CGI because it doesn't seem real. I mean, the job of the puppet, even though we all know he's a puppet, it just seems more real than the CGI stuff that we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Yeah, he's three-dimensional and he looks as though he weighs a ton and he does. He looks as though he's smelly and nasty and sticky, and he is. CGI just looks very clean to me, you know. He looks disgusting. The puppet looks because he he's really gross, you know.

Greg Staffa 44:35

I'm trying to figure out in listening to you, is it modesty? Is it not you? I mean, like I said in what in our intro, you shaped my generation. I mean, your work and and others, I mean, there's others involved, but from Labyrinth to Little Shop of Horrors to Who Framed Roger Rabbit to Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, to Dark Crystal, yeah. Do you what at what point did you kind of realize that yeah, it was only a short period in your life, but are you able to kind of process and fully realize how much your work has meant to generations like mine? That or is it just this was a job and I did it and for some reason people seem to enjoy it and talking to me? Is there a part of you that can kind of because it doesn't you seem almost too modest, like, oh yeah, it was job of the hut, it was fun job.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

Yeah, no, yeah. I mean, I I do it both ways. You know, there's one bit of me that goes, uh uh think people think of me as jab of the hut, and I go, It was five weeks' work, guys, 40 years ago. At the same time, of all the stuff that I've done, he is world famous. I mean, he's he's in the language, you know. I mean, he so I no, I from going to conventions, I'm aware of how much he's affected and influenced people. You know, I've been meeting fans all over the place. And occasionally they're fans of Dark Crystal, they're fans of Labyrinths, for instance, but mostly it's Star Wars fans. And as I say, Jabba is um they haven't improved on him. The reason I'm modest is very simple. Um the guy who sculpted him, John Coppinger, uh, did most of the work. I mean, when we walked on the set, Jabba was sitting there and he looked as good as he does now. He just looked asleep. So our job is bringing him to life, you know, getting inside and making him move about. But the sculpt is fantastic, and the technology of the eyes for that period in the 80s. It it was it was quite extraordinary. I've counted a team uh of how many people really uh were involved, and it gets to about 15 people. If you start with Phil Tiffett, I won't go through the list, but there were six builders, three puppeteers, uh, you know, the and then the guy, Ben Burt, who did the sound effects and the squelching, and Larry Ward who did the voice, um, because uh Dave Barclay's voice was in English, it was just a marker track done on the set. So it's you know, it's 15 people. So I'm a 15th of Jabber, that's why I'm being modest. True.

Greg Staffa 47:12

But I also think, I mean, look at how many directors these days said that they were influenced and got their start from watching the you know the original trilogy. And so I think that you had a big part in that. And so for me, that's someone that grew up, I mean, you know, 83, I was what, five, six, eight years old. So for an eight-year-old to see a job of the hut on screen, you know, that was a living creature to me. And so to be able to talk to you is in all sincerity quite an honor. And I know you don't fully grasp that hard or are modest about it, but uh I've sincerely enjoyed listening to you. I think this last hour is the least amount of questions that I've asked someone, uh, because your story is just it's at some point you just gotta realize so shut up and listen. And hearing you talk about all the things that you went through and how that journey brought you to one of the the greatest sci-fi films, you know, trilogy out there, to to Labyrinth. I when when I saw Labyrinth, I went out and bought a juggling book, not to juggle the way that you were doing it, but in the film, uh David Bowie's character does a form of juggling with that uh glass sphere. Um I bought a book on trying to learn how to do that. I was never successful, but that was my introduction to juggling. But the films you the films that you were involved in really shaped a generation of filmmakers, uh, shaped a generation of fans, and I think it was the last period where creativity really was was front and center in filmmaking. I think we've started relying too much on CGI, and so you were kind of that last generation of creative minds. I mean, there's still creativity in filmmaking, but you were those last kind of hands-on creative minds, and so I think that your story and the others that were involved are just something to be honored.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

So well, I mean you you've got to bear in mind at that point London was was the place to be for filmmakers. Kubrick was living in London. Uh George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, um they were all using the the London studios. So when I, you know, part of this luck thing is is that was where people were making movies. That's where all the creative people were. Uh almost like the 60s with with um rock music, you know. There are cities that have moments where everyone's there. Like it could be Austin, Texas, it could be Barcelona, um, could be San Francisco. But uh you know, London was a very, very creative hub at that point. And um yeah, I was in the right place at the right time.

The Mirror Question And A Book

Greg Staffa 50:07

So, final question, this is a quick one. But when we think of Toby Philpot, we we automatically come up with Job of the Hut. Um, we automatically think of Labyrinth, we automatically think of Dark Crystal. It's hard to say your name and not kind of tie yourself to the despite those being back in the 80s. But when you get up in the morning, you go into the bathroom, you splash a little water on your face, and you look in the mirror, who is it that you see?

SPEAKER_02 50:34

Oh dear. Well, an old man who's had quite a lot of fun. I'm 80 this year, right? So uh conventions are still fun for me. I've been to three different countries this year. Um, it give gives me a little bit of adventure. Meeting up people uh like yourself to whom uh the work was um significant and important. I get to do a little bit of traveling, like you know, which is what my original plan was. I mean, the reason for not being an actor is because when you're acting, you act in English, okay? The thing about circus is that you can do your act in Russia or China or anywhere you like, because you don't need the words. And that was my main reason for as a street performer for being into circusy skills, because you don't need to talk. I do talk too much, as you can tell. But um it was possible to make a living without speaking English. That was the thing. So yeah, uh, I still enjoy the adventure. And and it's Jabba that gets me mostly jabba that gets me to other countries.

Greg Staffa 51:37

And I have to squeeze in one last question. Have you thought about writing a book or anything? Or have you? Yeah, I I did.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

I started um I was doing a bit of uh creative writing uh ten years ago, and I started doing um a kind of an autobiography because this journalist had put together a Wikipedia page for me. Because he'd he called it or he'd scraped it all off my website, and um then he started s suggesting it could be a book, and I went, well, if it is a book, I want to write it. Well, I wrote half of it, and then I kind of ground to a halt, and it's still sitting there half done, I'm afraid. But uh that could be a project for the coming year, I suppose, to get that finished.

Greg Staffa 52:18

Again, Toby Philpot, thank you so much for coming on. It has been a sincere honor to talk to you. Like I said, I've done a lot of celebrity interviews, but this one is close to the heart for the eight-year-old and me, and I appreciate your time and talking today.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Yeah, no worries. I'm sorry, you you have to learn to stop me. I do talk uh a thousand words a minute, you know.

Greg Staffa 52:43

No, you stop people when they're not interesting, but your story, honestly, just hearing all that was fascinating to the point where my questions mean nothing. Uh my questions you've answered a thousand times, but hearing your story and your journey and seeing it slowly connect is almost like a murder mystery where you start seeing it unveil and you start realizing you know what's going on to see you going from Jim Henson's armpit on a puppet to then I mean it's just it all makes sense. And hearing you tell that story from the beginning was fascinating. So I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

Well, thank you, man. That's great.