Welcome And Guest Intro

Greg Staffa 0:00

You're listening to the Staffa Corner Podcast, a Staffatarian look, an entertainment in life with your host, Greg Staffa. My guest this episode is Andrew James Spooner, of talented actor, puppeteer, and voice artist, whose work includes Muppet Treasure Island, Muppet's Most Wanted, and many others. Andrew, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to be here, Greg. How are you, man? Not too bad. So tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your upbringing.

Growing Up Offline In Kent

Greg Staffa 0:49

Where are you from?

Andrew James Spooner 0:50

Oh gosh, that's one that's one question I've never been asked in a in a podcast. That's a really good one, actually. I grew up in a very uh small kind of bucolic country village um in Kent, which is the southeast of the UK, um in the 1970s. And, you know, lots of tr my my childhood is you know pretty idyllic when it comes to those things. It's like, you know, lots of trees, lots of woods, lots of fields, that kind of thing. So I had a fairly kind of outdoorsy kind of childhood. So, you know, even thinking about doing things like I do now was was an impossibility because my life was more of a I don't I don't know what you what kind of image you have of the UK, but if you think of where I grew up, you've got a village church, you've got a little village shop, you've got maybe a pub or something like that, but it takes you about half an hour to an hour to get anywhere else. So it was it was isolated in its own way, but no, it's something that I really appreciate now, and I'm kind of trying to recreate that upbringing with my kids. So yeah, I mean it was a it was a fairly I'm not gonna say standard upbringing. It was a it was a very village-y, countryside kind of upbringing for me.

Greg Staffa 2:05

And growing up in that kind of culture and environment, did you see yourself as a creative person? And you're you're living kind of isolated a little bit. Were you creative? Were you, you know, pretending that you were this and that or imaginative at all in any way or not?

Andrew James Spooner 2:20

Oh yeah. I mean, totally. I mean, I i I mean, I don't think you ever I still have sort of a difficulty now kind of considering myself a creative person, in the sense that the kind of stuff that I I do you don't do in isolation, it's it's you do with teams of other people. But certainly as a kid growing up, especially in the 70s, you know, pre-computers, pre-digital, all of that, we didn't have a TV in our house for quite a while. We just had a radio, so I fell in love with radio and all that kind of stuff, and initially that's kind of what I wanted to go into. But you know, my entire childhood it was about getting outside and building things and just doing things and yeah, make-believe and and that kind of thing. And so consequently, when things like Star Wars came out and various other things, it was just like playing with all the toys, uh the Star Wars toys that I could get my hands on and creating little sit you know, little vignettes in the garden and stuff. I remember I used to kind of create I had a like a basic selection of Star Wars figures when I was growing up. Um like I probably had a Han Solo and a Darth Vader and a Luke Skywalker and a C3PO and stuff like that, but we couldn't afford like the slightly bigger playsets, so I would get cardboard boxes and I would paint them and I would create little, you know, the the corridors in the Death Star and stuff like that. And I had a little camera, a film camera, and I'd set these things up and I'd take photographs of them. And yeah, so I mean in that sense it was the kind of childhood where you know you had to apply yourself and apply your imagination and create and make things because they weren't just handed to you on a screen or anything like that. And so obviously I look back on that now and go, yeah, the the seeds were there pretty early. Um, I think really from even when I was at school when I was like seven, eight, or nine, I kind of knew that I wanted to do something that was creative. I didn't know what it was. Uh Star Wars came out, and I was just like, I don't know what that is, but I want to do something like that. But there was no real way into it back then, especially you know, for somebody that wasn't living in a major city, didn't really have any friends or family that was in the industry in any way, shape, or form. So it was completely alien to me, and it was like, well, well, how do you do this? And for a while you kind of just you put it on the back burner a bit because you go, Well, that's a nice dream. But uh, you know, uh how do you even begin to do that for a living? I remember mentioning it to my careers officer at school. Occasionally they'll bring somebody in to help you pick a career and saying, I want you know, radio or TV or something, and they just they looked at me with horror because you know, late 70s, early 80s, small village countryside in England, that just wasn't the kind of thing that you did. You went and got a job at the local bank or or whatever else there was locally. So, yeah, doing what I'm doing now, it I I kind of pinched myself a little bit because it is you know, it's not although it's not exactly what I dreamt of when I was seven years old, it's I'm so happy to be doing what I'm doing because it it seemed so distant and impossible when I was growing up.

Screens, Reading, And Modern Inspiration

Greg Staffa 5:33

I often wonder where we're gonna be in about 10, maybe 15 years, because there's so many people from around the world that I've talked to that have uh almost similar story to yours, where they were born a certain year and they they saw Star Wars and then all of a sudden created this this you know imaginative. I mean, it it's almost like a launching point for so many careers. And you wonder nowadays with kids and their you know, iPads and TikTok and where are they getting that kind of inspiration from? And for so many in the 70s and 80s, they trace it back to Star Wars and say what you will about that film, but it it sparked some imagination in so many people that I wonder where that next spark is gonna come from and feel the the next generation of what they're gonna say, this is what inspired me, or if it's just gonna be a lack of imagination, because it seems like just my own opinion, kids these days don't have that cardboard Death Star drive in them that someone growing up in our age used to have.

Andrew James Spooner 6:43

And now it's I don't know. I mean it's it it's a tri I I hear you, it's a tricky thing, isn't it? I mean, I I've got two children, they're both teenagers now, and they couldn't be more different. My daughter is uh just turned 18, and when we were bringing her up, we didn't have any screens or any electronic devices of any kind until she was about four. It wa it wasn't really like a strident kind of we're doing this kind of thing. It's it's just something w that we didn't do. But we made sure that we left plenty of, you know, colouring books, art supplies, you know, any anything that you could pick up and build and create with, and books and comics and stuff like that. And as a result, she's you know, she's eighteen, she's looking to possibly going into film school um in a couple of years. And she's, you know, she's fascinated by movies and TV and stuff like that. Whereas my son, who's slightly younger than her, about by about three or four years, he he had a screen much earlier, and it's been almost impossible to engage him with reading and stuff like that. He does read, but he won't do it for pleasure, whereas my daughter will. And I do think that, you know, that influence of the screen, of the TV, of the tablet or whatever, is just so immediate and easy, but it's also passive. You know, it it takes away any kind of um decision making, really. Not not so much video games and stuff like that. There's there's an active component to those, but if you're just, you know, flicking through TikTok and everything like that, it's it's a passive thing. Whereas my daughter grew up in um a situation that was, you know, she had to get up and do things, because as I said, I was trying to, in a way, almost recreate my own childhood. But, you know, that's just my my daughter. I've heard, you know, stories from plenty of my friends that have children about the same age, where they did more or less the same thing, but they can't get their kids to read at all or engage in anything like that. I I I think it's down to personality. And yeah, I I hear you. I do wonder what the next big cultural shift will be, because I mean Star Wars was such a big thing at the time, there'd been nothing like it, and it kind of blew all the competition away. Whereas now there's just so much stuff, and it's all vying for your attention all the time. That I I don't know, and this is just probably me being a grumpy old man, but it it takes the the specialness out of it of of all these things that are coming out all the time. You know, back in the 70s, 80s there was maybe three or four movies a year that you wanted to see that were kind of those big imaginative blockbusters, but now it just it seems like there's one every week. And that's not and that's just in the cinema. We're not adding, you know, we're not talking about what's on Amazon or Netflix or or or whatever. So you're just swamped with content, and I think it's much harder for things to punch through. And when they do, it it makes a big noise, and people think, oh, you know, the cinema's back or TV's back or whatever. But yeah, no, it's a really good question. I don't know where that where that next big cultural shift like Star Wars is is going to be. But I mean, perversely, there's so many tools now that you know the kids can be creative with. You know, they've got access to cameras and editing and all this stuff, which as a kid I, you know, never had access to. I had a an eight millimeter Cine camera, which I got on my like 12th birthday, and I made little movies with that in the back garden. And I'm I'm I'm sure you've heard stories like this before, and it was just kind of mag magic, kind of filming something and then putting it together. Well, not even not even putting it together, but filming it and then having to wait for six weeks while it got developed and sent back to you, whereas now everything is, you know, you can do it in an instant. My camera on my phone is better than most cameras I've ever had. So you've got all this access to all these creative tools that you can use, but it's difficult to rise above the noise of the social media and get your stuff seen and taken seriously. Yeah, I mean it it it's it's weird. It was harder to create stuff back then and maybe required a little bit more of an application, and you certainly had to do it because you just wanted to do it, because you know, you weren't creating these little movies on your Cine camera and then posting them anywhere, there was nowhere to put them. Whereas now I wonder if a lot of people are just doing it for the for the clicks. Do you know they that they want to get as many clicks and reposts as possible, and that's the intention, rather than just the enjoyment of making something? I don't know. I don't know. I'm I'm sounding like a grumpy old man. No, I I

From Acting To Henson Boot Camp

Andrew James Spooner 11:17

fully agree.

Greg Staffa 11:17

It's like a sort of grumpy together. So before puppetry, you got you were an actor. What got you into acting? Well, I mean, it was a mixture of things.

Andrew James Spooner 11:27

I wanted when I when I was a kid, I think, you know, I saw Star Wars, I watched shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who and the Muppets and all that stuff. I was heavily into creatures and monsters and special effects and all that kind of thing. But again, it was just how do you how do you do that? How do you he th th there's no mm pathway, there's no uh ready way to be able to do this for a living. So I thought, well, I w I definitely want to be involved in something in the media. Um radio was an option for a while there. I thought maybe I'll be a radio presenter or something like that. And that was an avenue I pursued for a while. But in the end it just seemed that the easiest way to get into even close to the kind of things that I wanted to do was to was the acting route. So you you know, I joined a local amateur dramatics group, and then after school I went to college for three years to study drama for my A levels, and then after that I went to drama school, and that was the kind of route that I took. But coming out of drama school, it was just like I I really enjoy acting. Um I I don't like being in front of an audience or in front of a camera, which is a bit of an issue. So I left drama school, and the first thing I did, and I I I don't know how I had it, but I had the address for the Jim Henson creature shop, which had a base in Camden in London, and um I just wrote to them. This was probably my late teens, going, I want to be a puppeteer, please. How do I do that? And much to my surprise they responded because what I didn't know was at the time they were starting to gear up for Muppet Treasure Island, and they were looking, they were just they would were starting to look for people. So I went along to an audition and got through that first audition and then got invited back to do a sort of two-week Muppet boot camp. There was probably about 40 of us, something like that, there in the first week, and they'd put us through lots of you know technical things, teaching us how to puppeteer, because most of us kind of had it we'd gone through the first auditions. They understood that we understood the principles of how it worked, but they wanted to you know you know really drill in how they do things. And at the end of each day, they'd read out a list of names, and if your name got called out, it meant you were coming back the next day. So it was pretty you know terrifying and brutal. And at the end of that first week I got invited back for the second week, and I think there was probably about ten of us, nine, ten of us, and we did like really intensive kind of like improvisation and character development and stuff like that, and that was my kind of audition, as it were, for the for the Henson company, and pretty much right off the back of that I started to work for them. You know, just little jobs here and there, nothing particularly amazing, little commercials, maybe a TV show here and there, but always as an assistant. But then about a year and a half later, they started filming Muppet Treasure Island at Shepperton in England, and they asked me in for a week, and I was I was there for a week, and it was all the stuff where Kermits arriving at the dock at the beginning of the movie and getting on the boat, and I was there for a week. I mean, I don't think you can see me. I think maybe you can see me if there's a 4K version of the movie somewhere. But at the end of that week, they asked me to stay for essentially the rest of the shoot. So I was there for I don't know, eight, nine weeks, something like that, and that was really my my training in puppetry. And, you know, the acting was there and I kept it ticking over in the background, and I always have, if a job comes up and we're an add or an addition, I'll do it do it. But my focus kind of changed then massively into puppetry because you know, once you've got the Muppets on your C V then it it sort of opens doors for you. So that resulted in me getting work in other TV shows in the UK, and that that that was the stepping off point for my my career as it is.

Greg Staffa 15:20

As an actor, you know, your facial expressions, your your movements, your you know, everything is part of that encompassing of a character. Whereas putting on a puppet, it's much more limiting. Was there an easy transition for you, or did it all come back to the childhood creative building the Death Star in your you know out of cardboard? Did you draw more on your childhood than any kind of experience that you had before? I think so.

Andrew James Spooner 15:48

Probably. There's something really wonderful about puppetry in the sense that when you're an actor, yeah, yeah, as you say, you've you've got everything at your disposal, you've got everything that your eyes are saying, everything that your face is doing and your body is doing. But you're you're inside your body, right? You you can't you're not outside looking in, so you can't really see what you're doing. So, you know, when you're acting on a project or whatever, you'll you'll do a scene and then maybe you'll all crowd around the monitor afterwards to see, and that gives you an idea. But with puppetry, especially the way the Hensons do it, you've got the puppet on your hand, you're holding it up in the air, and you've got a monitor down in front of you so you can see what the camera is seeing. And you put the puppet up and you can see the performance, and you immediately almost become a director and you become very aware of what the puppet looks like when it looks one way or it looks an another way, or its head tilts in a particular direction. So it's it's kind of weird because you're performing, but you're also watching the performance and making judgments and decisions in real time. And that to me is a bit more it that's that is closer to kind of playing around and all that imagination stuff that you had as a kid. I certainly, when I'm puppet puppeteering, and even when I'm doing voiceovers, I certainly feel more in touch with my the kid part of my personality than I do when I'm acting. There's an inherent play to it that I I find irresistible and I enjoy, and you know, it makes me smile every day I'm working on something like that, that I don't quite get as much with the straight acting. But yeah, I mean I think it all it does, it all goes back to that building stuff and creating worlds in your head when you were a kid.

Why Practical Effects Still Connect

Greg Staffa 17:28

Bubba's Treasure Island came out a few years ago. Uh but I I fully admit that I probably listen to Boom Shakalaka at least a dozen times a week. It's kind of my motivational go-to whenever you kind of need to feel kind of pumped up. It's uh it's the fun I listen to. We look at movies these days, and CGI and everything has to be so real, and we have to create these environments that are real. We have the volume, which is an you know, uh uh environment where you can digitally create any kind of background and it all looks real. And yet, you know, this week, uh Wildwood is a new stop motion animated fix that looks amazing. It does. You know, Muppets Treasure Island is still a beloved classic. In a day and age where everything we strive to be so real, what is it about films like Muppets Treasure Island or the stop motion film that makes us kind of revert and enjoy the more simpler things as well?

Andrew James Spooner 18:34

I think I think it it's what you've said it. There's a there's a there's a simplicity to it, although I would never call Wildwood simple in any way, shape, or form. But the concept is simple. You've got an object, you move it, you take a picture, you move it again, you take another picture, and you create movement, and then you know it expands out and you create a story. Whereas the Muppets, again, it's the same thing. I would never say it's simple, but at the heart of it it's uh it's a sock with your hand in and a couple of ping-pong balls. So it's it's easy and it's tactile. I think what I like about the analogue stuff and growing up in the 70s is I would watch something like Yoda on the TV or The Muppets or whatever, and I would instinctively understand how it was done, and then I would grab a sock or I would grab a whatever and I would create something with um my dad very early on was an early adopter of video cameras. So I would stick his video camera on top of the TV and use the TV as a monitor, and I I would try and recreate what I'd seen on the TV. Whereas with the digital stuff, it looks lovely and it looks great. I'm not I'm not a I'm never gonna diss CGI um because there's some amazing stuff that's done. But instinctively it's I think it's harder for people to grasp how it's done. You kind of look at it and you understand I d I understand this is computers, I understand that that's how it works, and it's kind of based on animation and stuff, but I've got no idea how they did that. So for me, and this is again, this is only my opinion, it kind of creates a wall between you and the creativity. Um I've never been particularly technically savvy. I mean, I'm okay, I can edit and I can mix and sound and stuff, but when it comes to things like animation um and CGI, I'm I'm a huge fan of some of it, but I do not claim to understand how any of it works. Whereas, yeah, as I said, something like The Muppets or Star Trek or Doctor Who, you see something and you just go, oh, and you go and grab a sock and you you're halfway there already. It's it it feels more accessible. You don't need any special equipment. It always felt like the keyboard and the computer were between me and what I wanted to do. And actually, what I wanted to do was just pick up a camera and go out and make something. There's an immediacy, I think, to the analogue stuff, and I think that's why that stuff is still appreciated and people still love it. But you you you know with a Muppet movie or something like Wild Wood that most of what you are watching was all done in camera on the day in real time, and there's a charm to that and there's an immediacy to that, and certainly when it comes to stuff like The Muppets and Muppet Treasure Island, there's some stuff in that movie which you know was improvised on the spot or was a happy accident, something happened, so it ended up and they liked it and it ended up in the movie. And I think you it's hard to recreate that spontaneity with a keyboard and a screen in front of you. Those happy little accidents that kind of lift things sometimes. It's it's it's virtually impossible to do that. And I'm not I'm not dissing it. I mean, I the volume is an astonishing thing, and I I remember watching the first season of The Mandalorian, having no idea that that's how they'd done that, and wondering how they got, you know, they'd paid for all these expansive vistas, but at the same time I knew something was going on. Something felt no, I'm not gonna say weird, but I was looking at it going, they've done something. I don't quite understand how it works. Maybe it's a map painting, maybe it's something like that. Um I'm still a big proponent of people going out and building sets and building things, and I know they say it's cost prohibitive, but I I don't know. Maybe maybe it is, but maybe if you if it if you're smart, I sat down and watched um uh Raiders of the Lost Ark again recently, and it was just a real pleasure to go, yeah, they built that, that entire dig where they're in the desert looking for the right uh uh the Ark of the Covenant. They they built all that, and y I don't know, you can just tell there's a grit under the fingernails, uh a sense of reality to it, which you don't get with a lot of CG. But I mean having said that, I've watched things, movies, and not even been aware that CG was used until I've watched a making of later and gone, oh no, that that's that's really, really good. But I think back to your question, I think there's just an immediacy to just making stuff with your own hands. I made my first like movie when I was off sick from school when I was probably about six, you know. My I borrowed my dad's camera and I had three minutes of film, and I think I made Star Wars III because I think the uh Star Wars I was out, a new hope was out, and I just got some action figures together and filmed something up against a a bit of black velvet or something, and I just made something and there it was. Because I, you know, I didn't need to have a knowledge of computers or or coding or programming or Blender or anything like that. I could literally just pick up a camera, pick up one of my action figures, maybe bash a spaceship together with a bit of air fix or something like that, and make something. Um and I I kind I kind of miss that. I kind of miss that my kids don't I mean, they obviously have the opportunity to do it, but that as I said, screens are so pervasive now that they don't even think of that as an option, I don't think.

Greg Staffa 23:58

It all goes back to the early childhood, it seems, for for so many of us. Because what you said is exactly how I kind of view things, and I just like I said earlier, I wonder where we're gonna be 15 years from now, or these where are these kids gonna draw from from those kind of things, and I think it makes for better better television, better films to have that that little kid, you know, like you said, the cardboard Death Star. That mentality. I and I wondered if, you know, we're down a path where things become a little bit less feeling real or being I don't know, there's just something about Wildwood and and the Muppets that just even though we strive to be more technology appreciative, that callback to those kind of things is still something that and I hope I mean this film looks amazing and I hope it does really well. I'm nervous because it is a medium that isn't exactly you know popular or whatnot, but it just visually looks amazing.

Andrew James Spooner 24:59

No, I hope so too. I mean it it it's it's not a it's not a rec um a huge IP. I know it's based on a book um from what I've gathered, but I mean people are always saying Hollywood or whoever needs to go out there and make new original interesting movies, and why aren't they? Um and I'm always going, they're there. They're there. You can go onto Netflix, Amazon, there's a huge catalogue of stuff that's being made. There is stuff that's really good out there, you've just got to hump for it. It's just the the big stuff that's getting into the cinemas is you know, all your Star Wars and your Marvels and all the the big companies, IPs that are probably the only ones that can afford to put you know movies out into the cinemas for any length of time. Um, but there is really cool, interesting stuff out there, and certainly Wildwood is one of them. My daughter's really eager to see it because she liked the um oh, what was the other one called? Kubo and the two strings?

Greg Staffa 25:55

Caroline was another one that they did.

Andrew James Spooner 25:58

Yeah, I love that movie as well. So, you know, there is a there is definitely a taste for that stuff. It's just it needs to be pushed a little bit more,

AI, De-Aging, And Creative Ethics

Andrew James Spooner 26:08

I think. And this is not me being draconian, I think that AI has its place, and that's gonna make me enemies right out the gate. But certainly as a tool, as a replacement, if you're talking about using AI, generative AI, to like, well, we don't need to have actors, we don't need to have um directors, we don't need to have costume designers, then no, because I think you lose something fundamental to what entertainment should be. You you you can't do that. I wouldn't be interested in seeing that. But as a tool to make things easier and maybe cheaper and more um easier for people to access so they can make their own things, yes. It's a bit of a mess out there with AI at the moment. There's a lot of you know reshuffling going on as we all try and figure out what it means and what we can hang on to, and what is clearly unfortunately, uh whether you like it or not, going to be pushed to one side.

Greg Staffa 27:04

Yeah, these next few years when it comes to AI is gonna be very, very interesting to see what Hollywood reacts, how the fans react, because nowadays there's YouTube videos of like Christopher Reeves, you know, as Superman, and it looks real and it looks amaz and there's like nostalgia going, I would watch this, I would watch a movie like this because it's Christopher Reeves back in his youth as super and it's just it looks visually amazing, and you're like, God, I wish we could have a movie like this, or a young Indiana Jones, yeah. And it's like, wow, imagine the technology if we could create a you know, because the the most recent Indiana Jones, they did a de-aging thing with it. Yes, yeah it looked like an old Indiana Jones movie, and it's like, God, I would love to see a version of this and just use Harrison Ford's voice, and then you're like, well, wait a minute.

Andrew James Spooner 28:02

And maybe that's the way forward, yeah. I don't know. I've seen a lot of I'm I'm a bit of a bit draconian, I'm afraid. If I see uh a YouTube station uh uh page comes up on my computer and it's clearly all AI generated. So in other words, it's just prompts and somebody's um you know, they've recreated a scene that was never filmed or they've created another story, I I I tend to pass it on by. I don't know why this uh it just doesn't sit well with me. And the stuff with Christopher Reeve, I again I completely understand, but it makes me feel slightly uneasy, partly because it's not Christopher Reeve, it's a pretend Christopher Reeve. And I also m just my adult brain is going, well, have they got his family's permission to do this? And if they have, are they getting paid? You know, it it's such a grey area at the moment. Yeah, and and the de-aging, yeah. I mean, if they can make de-aging work but still use the original actors, then yeah, then that's a great tool. Um, I don't know. I it's it's very up in the air. It's it's it's a really interesting subject, and over the next five, ten years there are going to be huge changes. And I I for one certainly can't foresee what any of them are.

Making Muppet Treasure Island For Real

Greg Staffa 29:14

Yeah, it'll be interesting. When you I mean you you reached out and you talked to the Jim Henson creature shop, you got a job. As an outsider, you know, I look at you know, a few things in the industry, Jim Henson Creature Shop being one, ILM being another, yeah, the um, oh, what's his name? The creature shop. Uh the Stan Winston? Stan Winston. Thank you. You know, those are kind of almost like the biblical trio of, you know, those kind of things. When you were there, did it feel like you were doing something special or was this just another job? Did you realize what you had going with you?

Andrew James Spooner 29:55

Oh no, definitely. I mean, because it was I was lucky in the sense that the the the Muppet Treasure Island was essentially my it wasn't my first job, but it was my first big job. I'd literally just finished a I got the call to go in on Muppet Treasure Island. They called me on a Friday, and I had to start on a Monday, the next Monday. And the Friday they called me, I'd just finished a tour of Romeo and Julia in North Wales, which is a pretty dark and cold place in the beginning of January, which is I think it was January, April, maybe something like that, uh, which is when this was. So I was I was acutely aware of the opportunity that I was being handed. And even so, even even before then, when I was doing the the boot camp, because I remember one day we were all working on in the second week of the boot camp before we shot Treasure Island, we were all doing some choreography to some songs, they were trying, you know, getting us to learn to work work in unison, and we'd all all learnt this song and we'd done choreography for it, and we were performing it and they were filming it, and then Brian Henson walks in, who who's been in and around, so we knew he was there, and he's brought this guy in who he's showing around the creature shop, and I'm looking at him going, I know you. I know where do I know you from? And it I'm just like I'm trying not to get distracted. He's over there, he's got a beard, he's got glasses, and it's not George Lucas, no, it's not George Lucas, and I was thinking about it, and then suddenly it clicked. I was just like, Oh my goodness, it's Francis Ford Coppola.

Greg Staffa 31:25

Oh wow.

Andrew James Spooner 31:26

No. Um, he he'd come to visit the creature shop in Camden because at the time it fell through in the end, he was planning on doing a live action version of Pinocchio with a uh puppet Pinocchio, and he was just, I guess, touring effects houses to see who and obviously the sensible one, if you're prov you know thinking about having a creature, but also performance would be go to the would be to go to the Henson Company. And so, yeah, you know, he's just wandering around looking at us perform, and I'm trying desperately not to hyperventilate and pass out. It's unfortunate that film never happened. They Henson's did go on and do a live action um Pinocchio, uh, but it wasn't it wasn't with him. So yeah, oh no, of course, I was constantly pinching myself. And to a uh a big degree, uh Muppet Treasure Island was such a wonderful experience for me. I had such an amazing time and made so many friends that I'm still friends with now, that it's kind of like the benchmark that I hold every other job up to because they were this was pre-Disney, although Disney were distributing Henson stuff at this point. They had some sort of distribution agreement, but they weren't owned by Disney. So it was still very much in the hands of the Henson family. And so it was weird because it was like a big movie and it was costing a lot. We had all these amazing sound stages at Shepperton filled with all the sets, but at the same time it felt kind of like a weird little cottage industry. Again, just the hands-on nature of it. It was it was all there. You could see it. The island, it wasn't CGI put in afterwards, the island was just there. The boat was real, you could go and stand on the boat and it had hydraulics and it would rock and tilt, and we all had to take um uh sea sickness, seasickness pills because if you were in it all day and it was rocking backwards and forwards, you'd get seasickness pretty quickly. But yeah, no, I was constantly pinching myself, and I still do. I mean, pretty much every job that I do, I'm still pinching myself that I've managed to take this kind of childlike creativity that I had and turn it into a career. I mean, I'm not gonna pretend it was easy, and it took me a long time, um, and it's taken a lot of persistence over the years, and you have good years and you have bad years, but you know, I'm 55 and I'm still here and I'm still doing it, and I I consider myself incredibly lucky.

Greg Staffa 33:50

You have two children of your own, I believe you said. Yes.

Andrew James Spooner 33:53

A boy and a girl.

Greg Staffa 33:55

When they got of a certain age, were you able to show them the movie? Were you able to separate yourself from you know working on it to uh being a fan of the film? What was their reactions to seeing it and knowing that dad was a part of that?

Andrew James Spooner 34:11

Well, kid kids are amazing things. They go through uh I uh from a very young age, I was mm sticking both of them them in front of Star Wars and Doctor Here and stuff, you know. I'm not saying it's indoctrination, it's not, but they they obviously get get sucked into the kind of stuff that you like. W w when they're young, they don't quite understand, obviously. They think the Muppets are real, they think computer games are real. As they get older, when they were probably the sweet spot for them thinking I was cool was from about the age of nine to about the age of thirteen. I think anything after about thirteen, fourteen, they're just embarrassed by everything you do. They just think you're stupid. Um my daughter's starting to come out of that now. She's turned 18, and I think she's starting to think that what I do for a living is cool. Um, but certainly my son kind of like uh I had a game come out uh a week or two ago, and so I was pushing that a lot on social media, and he would just roll his eyes and go, You've posted again, and I'm like, No, well yeah, I've got to get my name out there. He just finds it intensely embarrassing, but that that's just his age.

How Muppet Filmmaking Changed

Greg Staffa 35:19

Going forward, you'd also did something like Muppets Most Wanted. Yeah. Was the technology and everything pretty much the same going from those two major films, the the Muppet films was uh was a lot of it doing I mean, I know you've done other puppetry since and you've done more, but something as big and iconic as both of those turned out to be, you know, was there a difference going back into that kind of environment?

Andrew James Spooner 35:45

Yeah, I mean the the two main differences that I would that that seem obvious to me is I mean the basic technology and everything that we were doing as puppeteers was pretty much the same. Not nothing had really changed on that level. I mean, maybe some of the animatronics and stuff that were used, obviously the the technology involved in those is uh slightly better now. What do I mean, slightly better, a lot better? But I mean the principles are exactly the same. I would say there was a lot less set building. There was uh because of the nature of the story on Muppets Most Wanted, there was a lot of location shooting, which we never had on Treasure Island. That was completely studio-based. But when we were in studio, you know, they did they did build stuff, and the craftsmanship is certainly still there, but there was a lot more green screen, blue screen, uh kind of set extensions, that kind of stuff. And I know nothing really about obviously cinematography or anything like that, but I will say it was it was all shot digitally, and I will say that the thing that surprised me, the difference if you're saying between the technology of Treasure Island and Muppets Most Wanted, is that when we were shooting Muppets Muppet Treasure Island, there was a lot of time spent between setups getting the lighting right. Uh the lighting was really important, it had a very specific look that Brian was going for. And I think I think, you know, certainly those those two movies, um Christmas Carol and Treasure Island, look amazing. Uh with Muppets Most Wanted, it was much quicker. And I think, I don't know anything, it'd be interesting if you ever have a cinematographer on, it was because so much of that kind of stuff is done in post-production now. So it was kind of the setups between shots was much quicker. We were able to get through material much quicker because it was just kind of lit flat and then I guess just goes through some kind of post-production and grading to add nuance to make it look more interesting. I don't know. So that would that was the biggest change for me, and I kind of miss that. Again, it's that thing of technology versus how we used to do it. I still think older movies tend to look better. They spent more time lighting things and building things. I'm not saying that modern movies don't look good. I think there are some amazingly beautiful movies out there, but I think it's that it's that horrible kind of balance between commerce and entertainment. I think there's, you know, there's always a push to do things as quickly as possible. So, you know, maybe lighting everything fairly flat and then tweaking in the grading afterwards is quicker and therefore cheaper. But um, yeah, those those those those two that that that was the major difference. I guess the other big difference was I worked on a series for Netflix with the Hensons um Dark Crystal TV show. I can't remember what it was called. Resistance, Dark Crystal Resistance? My brain's gone. Um Dark Crystal Rise. Anyway, it was the Dark Crystal series for uh Netflix. And the big difference there, again, a lot of set building was all the set extensions and blue screen, and the animatronics for the creatures was m much lighter and easier to handle than it had been, you know, back in the period in the mid-90s when we were doing Muppet Treasure Island. So things, you know, creatures aren't quite as heavy for you as a performer, so you can spend a little bit more time in there without, you know, feeling the pressure physically. So yeah, the the the technology's definitely changed, and certain things that were difficult practically are easier now. And I think that goes to show why people are still using practical effects. I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there still being done, and I think people like practical effects and like to see them in movies, and the technology has kind of kept abreast of that, and it's constantly getting better and more efficient and smaller and lighter.

New Voiceover Roles And Where To Follow

Greg Staffa 39:49

Wow. And wrapping things up, and again, I sincerely appreciate coming on because this has been a real treat. Like I said, the the Muppets Treasure Island is a soundtrack that I've listened to often, especially Boom Shakalaka. Uh is one of my favorites. But what can fans of yours, what you know, what kind of projects are you working on? You said you recently did a video game. What are you able to talk about the work that you've done that fans can see you in?

Andrew James Spooner 40:15

I mean, I've got a website. You can all head over to andrewjamespooner.com. Uh, I'm also on Blue Sky Instagram and TikTok as The OnlySpoon. I mean, to be honest, we were talking about careers and stuff. I've mostly pivoted now to video games and voiceovers. I'm working a lot in voiceover as an actor and a director now. Recently I played the role of Brentis in Blood of Dawnwalker, which has been out now for a few weeks now. He's like the big bad in that video game. That was a great part. And a week ago, Star Wars Galactic Racer came out, uh pod racing game, which is amazing and looks amazing. And I play a character in that called Darius Pax, who's kind of like the uh Galactic League racing promoter, big bombastic part. And yeah, I've got lots of other things going on in the background. Um, unfortunately, I can't talk about any of them because I've signed NDAs, but uh, if if it's with more with regards to puppetry work, go online and look for a commercial that I did last year uh with an amazing team of puppeteers. I think it's called Critter's Carol. It was a commercial for the iPhone. In the woods? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one. Yeah, we shot that in Prague about almost exactly a year ago. We were over in Prague for like nine or ten days shooting that, and I was the raccoon uh in that and various other little bits and bobs. And again, that was one of those treat jobs because it's one of those ones that you don't think is gonna come around anymore because they don't really do that anymore, that kind of big-scale puppet practical thing. But they did. They we were in this sound stage, they built the woods for us, all the characters were handmade, you know, and it was all performed by an amazing team of puppeteers from the UK and locally from Prague as well. And yeah, it's it's out, I believe it must be on YouTube. There's uh behind the scenes uh documentary, short documentary about it as well. Critus Carroll, I think it's called, yeah.

Greg Staffa 42:17

Not to kiss up, but I I I don't know if I subconsciously knew or didn't know. I don't think I knew that you were part of that, but that is a beautiful commercial. I mean, take away the what you're selling, it's just it's uh it's I mean, almost like a mini movie. And if it I believe I'm thinking of the right commercial that you're talking about.

Andrew James Spooner 42:37

Yeah, so the people drop their phone, the animals come and pick it up and make a little music video. It's a flight of the Concord song.

Greg Staffa 42:44

Yeah. It's a gor I mean, I'll maybe I'll put a link to that along with the link to your your page and everything like that. Um, but yeah, I I don't think I realized that the something you had done, or if I just saw the commercial somewhere, but it's a gorgeous commercial.

Andrew James Spooner 42:59

Yeah, no, we were very lucky with that because again, we we were given a rehearsal period, which is absolutely unheard of. We we all flew out to Prague and it was being filmed at some studios just outside of the city, and we we had four or five days of rehearsal time to play with the puppets and work things out, which you very rarely get. So when it came to the shoot, we were good and prepped and ready and you knew what we could and we what we could do and what we couldn't do. And I've gotta say, uh, one of the best puppet teams I've ever worked with, and it just by the time I mean it was hard work, it was long hours. I can tell you. I think I'm still picking bits of fake snow out of my shoes to this day. But we were all so proud of the end product because we thought we had, yeah, you know, this looks really good. I think we've created something special here. So yeah, I'm thrilled that you liked it.

The Mirror Question And Final Thanks

Greg Staffa 43:55

So much of your work is tied to things that you've done. You know, it's hard to say, you know, Andrew James Spooner without mentioning Muppets Treasure Island or you know, Muppets Most Wanted. But when you get up in the morning and you go into the bathroom, vascular water on your face, and look in the mirror, who is it that you see?

Andrew James Spooner 44:14

I see a very tired dad who's got a lot to get done that day. That's pretty much it. I don't know. I've that's a really interesting question. I I see a jack of all trades, I think. I've I've been very lucky in that my career has been incredibly varied. I've been able to, you know, kind of dip my toe into all the things that I was interested in as a kid. I've done a bit of radio now. I was always interested in voiceovers and who who were these weird people that did the voices in cartoons. I've done a bit of that now. I work with the Muppets. Um I've now dipped my toe as a voice actor into the Star Wars universe. You know, and I've I've just starting to direct in video games now. So, you know, that that's something that I always wanted to do as well was to try directing. So I've I've been very, very lucky. And I guess when I when I look in the mirror, I see a bit of a hustler, a guy who's got a lot of persistence because that's the one thing you need to have in this industry, is you just gotta yeah, just gotta keep at it, you've got to keep at it, you've got to keep at it. And also who's just somebody who's just been incredibly lucky.

Greg Staffa 45:23

Well, Andrew James Spooner, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real treat, especially if someone is a fan of like Muppets Treasure Island, and I look forward to seeing what the future has for you, including maybe appearances on like the Mandalorian or something with bringing your character to the to the to the screen, not just the video screen. So thank you so much for coming on.

Andrew James Spooner 45:46

That's all right. It's been a real pleasure, Greg. Thanks for having me.