Fraggle fans: Did you ever find yourselves singing along to the “Fraggle Rock” theme song and thinking, “You know, this is a great show, but it could be edgier”?
If so, help is on the way, courtesy of the Weinstein Company. Slashfilm noted this morning that writer-director Cory Edwards (Hoodwinked!), who has been developing a Fraggle Rock feature film for the Weinstein Company, posted an ominous note on his blog warning of “some dark days ahead.”
Apparently the Weinstein Company, unsatisfied with Edwards’ screenplay, has begun searching for a new screenwriter to rewrite it, perhaps from scratch. By itself, that doesn’t tell us much, but according to Edwards the studio’s complaint is that his script is “not edgy enough.”
Hoo boy. I have to admit that I find it possible that Edwards’ script leaves something to be desired. I didn’t think Hoodwinked! was any great shakes, though it was successful, and I thought it showed some promise. (I never saw the sequel, Hoodwinked 2: Hood vs. Evil.) (Side note: Edwards is a Christian.)
Buuut the idea of a gaggle of head-shaking suits at Weinstein reading Edwards’ screenplay and saying “Not edgy enough” fills me with trepidation—and I was never even a Fraggle Rock fan. (Not that I had anything against it. It came along during my high school years, when, as recently disclosed, I was busy watching Knight Rider and The A-Team.)
“Edgy” is a good word for a Batman movie or a Daniel Craig James Bond movie. Coraline was “edgy,” and so was Where the Wild Things Are, maybe. Maybe even “The Muppet Show” was a little bit edgy, although the longer this paragraph goes on the less clear I am about what that word actually means in the first place.
At any rate, when I think of Fraggles, I do not think “edgy.” Fraggles are round, soft and fuzzy, with fuzzy Hobbity names like Gobo, Mokey and Wembley. There’s a talking trash heap and little critters called Doozers who look like pint-sized versions of Bob the Builder. The Fraggle Rock theme song, which Wikipedia reports reached #33 on the British pop charts during the show’s height, goes like this:
Dance your cares away
Worry’s for another day
Let the music play
Down at Fraggle Rock.
That’s about as un-edgy as it gets, folks. I sympathize with Cory’s lament (and I had to include his links, which are hilarious):
“EDGY.” That’s the note. That’s what they are trying to do to the Fraggle Rock movie. EDGE it up! Let me say right now that “edgy” is one of my least favorite words. Since my earliest days in the client video business, “edgy” has been a sign of someone who doesn’t know what they want. Not only is “edgy” a nebulous, abstract word that means something different to everyone, but it chases the immediate whims of pop culture. WHAT is edgy?? Faster edits? Rock music for the score? Boober wearing some gangsta bling? I have no idea. What I DO know is that the word “edgy” should not be anywhere near this movie.
What if “Toy Story” was edgy? “Toy Story” can be relevant, sharply written, and fast paced, but it has a genuine heart and sincere characters. Like “Toy Story,” Fraggle Rock’s success is not only due to it’s anti-edginess, but in its absolute DEFIANCE of all that is edgy and trendy and pop in this world.
It’s easy to concur with the Slashfilm writer Peter Sciretta when he concludes, “It seems clear to me that The Weinstein Co doesn’t even understand the property they are developing into a feature film.” And, really, this is an ongoing problem in one Hollywood adaptation after another, from the Narnia films to the likes of Robin Hood and King Arthur.
But Sciretta also has problems with the whole concept for the Fraggle film, which takes the characters “outside of their home in Fraggle Rock, where they interact with humans, which they think are aliens.” Sciretta writes:
My problem with the Fraggle Rock movie is that it removes the characters from Fraggle Rock. The Traveling Matt segments were some of the least interesting moments from the series, and the doozer-filler cave homes of the singing puppets was the most interesting aspect of the series. For me, you loose [sic] the magic of the world that Henson created by taking them out of the ‘Rock and putting them in the real world.
At this point, as a non-Fraggle fan I’m out of my depth. Like any feature adaptation of a TV show, a Fraggle movie would have to do something larger and more ambitious than a TV show episode, or it won’t sustain the film. Taking the Fraggles out of the Rock might be one way to do this, but Sciretta may have a point, especially if the world of the Rock is an integral part of the show’s appeal.
Fraggle fans: What do you think?
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That’s hollywood for you. Take something wholesome and add some “Edgy-ness” and you end up with a movie that sinks us lower and lower.
How many sexual innuendos will be added?
How many times will they use a word that could be a bad word (as you see when they are talking about a wise donkey)?
Why is it not possible to just have a rich, wholesome, unspoiled movie? The Fraggles would have been a great foundation for that film…
I actually am a huge Fraggle Rock fan. We didn’t have a TV growing up and the only time we could watch prime-time TV was when we’d visit my grandparents, and Fraggle Rock always seemed to be on during those occasional visits. So there is a fair bit of nostalgic cache there for me.
That said, if you go back and watch the show now, parts of it actually ARE pretty edgy. There’s one early episode where Mokey (if I recall correctly), the liberal hippie Fraggle, decides that it’s wrong for the Fraggles to eat the Doozers’ buildings (as has always been done, for generations) because the Doozers work so hard at it. So she convinces everyone to stop eating the structures and in short order not only are the Fraggles miserable, but the Doozers are too—to the point where, once they’ve filled up the Fraggle cave with buildings, lay around lethargically, ready to die, since they have no more purpose in life. This seemed radically counter-cultural to me, when I saw it recently: people need work to give meaning to their lives, and frequently tradition trumps sentimentality.
So if that’s what they mean by “edgy”, I’m all for it. If on the other hand “edgy” means turning the Fraggles into C.H.U.D.s, I would not be in favor of that.
Also, for what it’s worth, “Toy Story”, conceived at a time when Katzenberg was running the studio, WAS originally intended to be edgy (I learned this from watching “The Pixar Story” documnetary). When it got taken to the point where Woody was such a complete and total prick that he wasn’t at all likeable anymore, Lasseter bascially scrapped what they’d done so far and started over. So there you go.
Thanks for your comments, Victor. Amazingly, that episode you cite is about the only episode of “FR” I know anything about—not because I saw it, but because the same plot points you mention are detailed on the show’s Wikipedia entry in the section on the Doozers.
I guess it all comes down to “What is edgy?” To me, what you’re describing is what I would call “thoughtful” and “provocative.” Thoughtful and provocative is not what I think of as “edgy.” I guess that brings us back to Edwards’ complaint.
The more I think about it, though, the more I suspect that “edgy” in this case means something some combination of the following: “hip,” “snarky,” “self-aware,” “off-color,” and/or “appealing to teens and lazy-minded adults with pop-culture references.” Can I get a “Yuck”? Or am I being unfair?
Also, yes, the original Toy Story is somewhat “edgy” in how flawed Woody is and how generally quarrelsome Andy’s toys are. I didn’t know that Lasseter had pulled back here; one could question whether he pulled back far enough. Certainly he could have pulled back more. My six-year-old daughter Anna has a hard time watching the first one because she doesn’t like all the fighting. Certainly I’m glad that the characters are generally quite a bit more sympathetic and nuanced in the sequel.
I am a huge Fraggle fan (part and parcel of being a Jim Henson fan) as were most in my large family growing up. One of my children even has my brother, Matthew, as godfather who would send postcards from his many work travels and sign them “Uncle Traveling Matt”!
The edginess issue with Hollywood as a whole is their refusal to see the power and strength in innocence. Much like the vampires they keep shoving down our throats, they can’t even seem to stand the light of innocence touch their skin much less be put on paper or film. A good story line, with a plot all can enjoy and laugh at is something so nuanced and complex they can’t seem to manage it.
I also remember that same Fraggle episode, along with many others, wherein a real lesson was put forth in a manner that everyone could learn from (even it was just a silly song!).
(if you’re interested in seeing them now you can check out episodes via Netflix)
Oh, it could have been MUCH worse. As much of a jerk as Woody was in the first movie (and yeah, it’s a little shocking going back and watching it right after something as sweet as “WALL-E”) he COULD have wound up being a total db (if Roy Disney, of all people, hadn’t intervened).
Imagine Woody asking Mr. Potato Head if he wants to be “Mr. MASHED-Potato Head”.
The video quality isn’t the greatest (and apologies for the Portuguese subtitles), but for just a taste of what might have been, here’s the relevant section from “The Pixar Story” (and the happy resolution is in the next segment of the film, following). And yes, Lasseter invokes the term “edgy”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnyXl4RcQJ0#t=06m50s
But I definitely agree with your definition of edgy. It’s no coincidence, considering their respective outputs, that Katzenberg wound up co-founding Dreamworks after he left Disney. “Edgy” almost very nearly killed Pixar, but it made Dreamworks a household name.
*deep movie preview guy voice*
“In a world where fuzzy, furry creatures known as Fraggles laugh and dance their cares away, only one thing could distress them enough to keep them from childlike joy.”
Mokey: “What is it you see through your telescope, Gobo?”
Gobo: “I’m not sure…it’s hard to define…it’s…edgy…”
Mokey: “Edgy?!”
*cut to another scene*
Red: “Mokey! What do you mean you don’t remember me? We’re best friends!”
Mokey: “I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before in my life!”
Red (thoughtfully): “Something is erasing the past!”
*cut back to the observatory*
Gobo (quietly peering through the telescope, then becoming nervous and searching for the red phone): “Mr. President, Mr. President! It’s…edgy…sir. Sharp, even, and it’s headed straight for us!”
*cut scenes*
Government agent: “Mr. Dozer, your country needs you. You and your team are the most experienced diggers and builders in the world. We have a special project for you.”
Dozer: “What kind of project?”
Agent: “I don’t know. Your security clearance is higher than mine.”
Dozer: “I have security clearance?”
*cut to Dozer in a meeting with the president*
Dozer: “Okay, sir. We’ll do it, but we don’t ever want to pay taxes again.”
*cut to Gobo debriefing Dozer on the schematics and technical requirements*
Gobo: “The great and mighty edgy thing is heading for us. It seems to be destroying time as it moves. It may have something to do with the theoretical consciousness field. No one can fall asleep. We need you to build a quantum entanglement device.”
*cut to rapid succession of scenes*
Red: “Dozer, I love you! I don’t care if breaks our Fraggle class system! I LOVE YOU!”
Dozer: “I don’t have time for this!”
Gobo: “It’s closer than we thought, Dozer. We need you to finish the device within the next 48 hours.”
Boober: “I don’t know what to do!!!”
Gobo: “Nobody fall asleep!”
Red (peering ominously from her cavern window into the world above): “Here it comes.”
*Boober is seen patiently washing socks, having resigned himself to accept his demise*
Red: “Dozer! Dozer! Where are you?!”
Builder #7: “Who’s Dozer?”
Gobo: “The edginess…it’s…TEETH!”
*movie guy voice*
“Next summer, the world as they know it is coming to an end.”
“Fraggles vs. Langoliers. Summer 2011.”
So far Micah Murphy is way out in front for best in combox.
Victor, thanks for sharing the video—it’s a textbook case of what it looks like is happening behind the scenes with Fraggle Rock. Edwards should post that video on his blog. (Without the Portuguese subtitles.)
“It’s no coincidence, considering their respective outputs, that Katzenberg wound up co-founding Dreamworks after he left Disney.”
Indeed. I’ve heard before that Katzenberg is congenitally allergic to any hint of what he considers “juvenile.” Apparently he prefers adolescent. I’ve argued before that Pixar : childlike :: DreamWorks : adolescent (see specifically Toy Story : Shrek, Finding Nemo : Shark Tale, A Bug’s Life : Antz). As I’ve said before, I’m more in touch with my inner child than my inner adolescent, so, I prefer the Pixar ... like pretty much the rest of the world.
“‘Edgy’ almost very nearly killed Pixar, but it made Dreamworks a household name.”
Well, okay, but you could also say it consigned them to permanent #2 status.
>> “‘Edgy’ almost very nearly killed Pixar, but it made Dreamworks a household name.”
> Well, okay, but you could also say it consigned them to permanent #2 status.
Being #2 is still a whole heckuvalot better than being Fox Animation Studios :-)
Glad I could keep y’all amused.
Micah Murphy wrote:
Gobo: “The edginess…it’s…TEETH!”
I reply:
No, it is I who will eat YOU!!!!!!!
The fraggles may not have been “edgy”, but they were deep. They made you think. Henson created them to give children a way to think about cooperation between cultures. They’re definitely not just fun fluffy puppet. There were episodes that dealt with tradition, with death, and getting along with people who are different.
And yes, I was a HUGE fan and still am. :)
Edward, your comment frightens me. :-|
Micah, if you’re unfamiliar with the etiology of Edward’s riposte, Google it. :)
Rachel, thanks, it sounds to me like your comments go to “thoughtful” and “provocative,” like Victor’s.
Any fan thoughts about the pros or cons of the Fraggles leaving the Rock?
Micah:
The quote I posted originated with a photo caption on JimmyAkin.org, where SDG often posts.
See: http://www.jimmyakin.org/2005/08/monday_photo_ca_2.html#comments
No need to be frightened, I intended it in good fun. :)
FWIW, DreamWorks might be “permanently #2” in North America, but Fox Animation holds the record for top-grossing movie of all time overseas.
Indeed, not only is Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs the top-grossing cartoon ever over there, it is the 4th-highest-grossing film of *any* genre overseas (though Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland could catch up to it very soon).
Shrek 2—a DreamWorks film—is still the top-grossing animated movie of all time worldwide, mainly because it is the fifth-highest-grossing movie of any genre whatsoever in North America. Ice Age 3 is the second-highest-grossing cartoon of all time worldwide, and Pixar’s Finding Nemo is third-highest.
I googled it with no conclusive results on its origin or meaning, but interestingly, it has appeared in responses here, on Mr. Akin’s blog, and on 4marks. Must be a Catholic thing, but I haven’t heard of it.
Ah, thank you Edward. I wasn’t really frightened, though. I’ve lived in government housing. Nothing frightens me. :p
My wife loves Fraggle Rock. I’ll have to let her know about this when she comes home from work.
My wife also loves Fraggle Rock. I will NOT let her know about this; we have enough troubles without the “edginess” invading the Fraggle world. I will pray that this project never comes to fruition.
Thanks, Peter! I hadn’t realized that Fox was reborn after the whole “Titan AE” fiasco. But I see that they also released “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” which I loved (though I know not everyone here shares that opinion… AHEMMM!). I wonder who is poised for a comeback next? Orion?
As for the Fraggles leaving the Rock, there is only one Fraggle whom canon dictates may do so, and that is the Traveling Fraggle, Traveling Matt (not to be confused with the other traveling Matt). Unless that mantle was handed off to Gobo at some point. Any other Fraggles leaving the Rock should not be considered canon.
Yer welcome, vic.
Man, Titan A.E. (2000) seems so long ago, now. I think the bigger loser there was not Fox but Don Bluth, the former Disney animator who used to be Mickey’s biggest rival during the 1980s; given a choice between The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988) on the one hand, and The Black Cauldron (1985) on the other hand, it’s not too hard to see why some people thought Bluth was doing better than Disney at the time. But Bluth stumbled with All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) right around the time Disney revived itself with The Little Mermaid etc., and he never recovered. The closest he came, I think, was with Anastasia (1997), and even that still did only a fraction of the business that Disney was doing at the time—to say nothing of Pixar, which had released the first Toy Story (1995) just two years earlier.
Anyway. DreamWorks established itself as the anti-Disney from the beginning, so it wasn’t too surprising that some of their films did really well—but the big shocker to me was when Fox released the first Ice Age (2002), which was produced not by Bluth but by a former CG-effects company called Blue Sky. Here was a film that was neither Disney nor anti-Disney—it was just a computer-animated cartoon, period—and it still made a lot of money, at a time when Disney’s home-grown efforts (2000’s The Emperor’s New Groove, 2001’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, 2002’s Treasure Planet) were floundering more often than not. Indeed, at the time, Ice Age was the 7th-highest-grossing cartoon ever, at least in North America (behind two Disney films, three Pixar films and the original Shrek)—and it laid the foundation not only for its sequels, but for other successful Fox cartoons like Robots and Horton Hears a Who.
Ahem. My apologies. Certain subjects make me data-spew sometimes.
Turning to something *completely* different… I notice, Steve, that you say you haven’t seen Hoodwinked 2 yet. The reason for that is simple: the Weinstein Company hasn’t even *released* Hoodwinked 2 yet, despite the fact that they had a promotional deal with Burger King locked in earlier this year. (The Weinsteins yanked the movie off their schedule late last year, but Burger King sold the happy meals with the toys anyway.) And now the Weinsteins are engaged in a legal battle with their production partner on that film (a company called Kanbar), so who knows when or if that movie will ever be released.
I can only imagine how frustrating all of this must be for Cory. I sure hope at least one of his projects gets the go-ahead in the near future.
Tvtropes on “Edgy”:
“In theory, this trope usually means that a show will shift towards cynicism on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism. In this process, archetypes which we are usually accustomed to acting in a more noble setting will have to act one where they must think and act grimly in order to make progress, thus forcing re-examination of the tropes involved and making a different sort of character. In practice, though, writers often aren’t entirely sure what most of those words mean, and ending up “spicing up” a work with gratuitous gore, cursing, and sex. “
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarkerAndEdgier
I’m going to go curl up on the floor now…
You know, this is a great article, but it could be edgier.
Hi Peter! As you note, Blue Sky did seem to come out of nowhere. They had I think one short under their belt (albeit an Academy-Award winning short) but other than that they’d pretty much done commercials.
In their book they put out a few years back after the first Ice Age movie they talk about how their Braun (I think?) electric razor ad which featured a CGI razor flying around the screen was disqualified from some presitigious CG animation award because, OBVIOUSLY (in the eyes of the judges), it had been done with stop-motion animation and not CG.
Blue Sky was light years (ha! raytracing software pun) ahead of the rest of most of the industry at that point because their CG software was proprietary and developed in-house. But I think everyone would probably admit that Scrat was what made them a house-hold name. “Robots” I can take or leave.
I’m glad to see you posting here! Pixar is number one, in part, because of its script writers. Some of the “edgy” animation of Dreamworks doesn’t work because the scripts are lousy. “Edgy” edges out plot and characterization: that’s what left Nick Park so unsatisfied with the studio, and that’s why the later “Shrek” movies are blah.
Gobo: Mokey, how long have we known each other?
Mokey: It must be thousands of days by now. But Gobo, this is so… so sudden…
Gobo: You can’t deny you have feelings for me.
Mokey: Yes, but…
Gobo: Come on. Take it off.
Red: Gobo!
Gobo: Red, what are you doing here?
Red: Preventing a disaster, it looks like. If you’re going to take Mokey… You’ll have to take me too.
Gobo: ....
Boober: I cleaned your laundry. I hung up your dirty socks to dry. Any hard work, dirty work, boring work? Boober’s good for it! And never a word of appreciation—
Mokey: Boober, I’ve always appreciated—
Boober: Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!
Red: Boober, you untie Mokey and me right now!
Boober: Oh no, you’re not really sorry. Not really. But you will be. Oh yes. You will be. [Advances toward Red with the scalpel]
Red: Come on, Gobo, all the silly-creatures are doing it.
Gobo: Red, we’re fraggles, not silly-creatures!
Red: Come on. Just one puff.
Boy, that Red really is a spitfire, isn’t she?
Actually, I seem to recall there being a whole newsgroup dedicated to this sort of thing (alt.fraggles.edgy or somesuch) back in the ‘90s.
I think a movie about the Fraggles leaving the Rock is a great idea, and the most logical plot for a movie. Most of the Fraggles regarded Uncle Matt as a goofball, apart from the one true believer Gobo. You’ll have Gobo’s faith rewarded, and you can get a lot of laughs from the naivete of the Fraggles in “alien” territory. Yes the Uncle Traveling Matt sections were probably the worst of the show, but that’s because you had a one-trick pony makign essentially the same joke on every show; if Flounder in The Little Mermaid did nothing but come up with nonsensical names for common objects, he’d be boring too. The Fraggles in the “real world” would be a great idea for a movie.
So long as they don’t try to make it “edgy,” that is.
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