Memories of Muppet Vision 3D: The Man Behind Rizzo the Rat Shares His Memories of Making a Disney World Classic Attraction

Friends of Kermit and Miss Piggy are having a tough month. On June 7th, the film-attraction Muppet Vision 3D — Jim Henson’s final project before his death — will run for the last time at Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios. historical Muppet attraction. 

Many fans have also taken issue with how Disney is handling the dismantling of Muppet Vision 3D: that is, without any fanfare and only vague references to somehow “preserving” the film. Disney representatives have also declined any interviews with current Muppet performers.

However, Steve Whitmire, the former Muppet performer who played Bean Bunny, Rizzo the Rat and Waldo C. Graphic in the attraction (he also inherited Kermit the Frog after Henson’s ing), was happy to take a walk down memory lane with me. 

Below, Whitmire shares his memories from the making of the film and how he thinks Henson would feel about the closure of Muppet Vision 3D.

What do you about the lead-up to Muppet Vision 3D?

During that time, Jim was making the decision to sell the entirety of his company to the Walt Disney Company. I being at my house and getting a call from Jim where he just said, “Hey, I want to tell you in person before it hits the press that I’m thinking of doing this.” His real purpose for the sale was twofold: I think he felt that Disney was going to offer the characters longevity, and also, it was going to free him up. As much as he loved the core Muppet characters, I think he was looking for a little more freedom.

If I correctly, there were a certain number of years that Jim would be a part of the Walt Disney Company creative team. He would be coming in very much like someone like John Lasseter was at Pixar, a major creative force who was going to have this great freedom in Disney to do many, many things. He was really looking forward to that, and the first real project was this 3D film. That was prior to anything definite happening on the sale.

So, the lead-up was that that was all in negotiation, yet we’re producing this huge thing at the same time. I believe the first thing we did was go to New York and shoot the pre-show, which was the bit that took place in the lobby. Rizzo is a big part of that, and it was a fun thing for us to shoot because we did it with three cameras with a little space between them. We worked in a real space running between the three cameras to get the three images that sync together on the three monitors. It was really clever and fun.

Rizzo as Mickey Mouse is such a highlight.

Yeah, it was a defining moment for Rizzo. I’ve been hearing about that one for years.

So, then we got into actual production on the whole thing. It was Jim’s first real production with Disney, and he and all of us were getting used to the Disney machine — and the 3D cameras too. At the time, these two massive film cameras were running side-by-side shooting the same image. They were incredibly loud, clacking machines. They would have to start them in-sync and shoot the two parts. They were always breaking down and the film was getting jammed and there were lots of problems. A lot of the audio had to be dubbed because the cameras were so loud that it was picking up the sound of the cameras on our microphones. But it was a cool process, and we were all very excited about the idea of it. It felt like, at that point, we were all going to be moving to Orlando to do nothing but work out of the Disney studios at the time.

Jim must have been excited about the technology of it. He was really into that stuff, right?

He was. He was interested in whatever the latest technology was. Like Waldo, the character who flies around in Muppet Vision 3D, for instance, we had used that technology already on the television series The Jim Henson Hour. It was this giant metal arm that went down to a t and up again, and the camera was mounted on one side and I’m on the other side with this mitt on that ran the mouth. So, whenever the character moved, I was flying around with this big metal arm that translated all of that movement into a huge computer. Then, all that data was sent back to California and it would take six months for them to render this character. When we did it live, all we had was a wireframe character flying around in space as our reference.

I know it was kind of cutting it close to when Jim ed from a bacterial infection. And, since the cameras were so loud, was he able to re-record all of his Kermit dialogue before he ed?

Yes, everything with Kermit was done prior to Jim becoming ill. It was a really interesting timeframe. We were all looking forward to this next phase of everything, and Jim was super excited. And then, as you know, it all kind of fell apart after his death. His company actually didn’t sell to Disney at that point. It was many, many years later that that came back around again. But we got that one big project out of that early relationship, as well as a special we did about the Muppets going to Walt Disney World.

That was the very last thing we did before Jim ed away. We were all together in Orlando shooting that special. We had already shot most of the 3D film by then. We went back and did some finishing touches on Muppet Vision where Frank Oz was directing. I working with Frank on the last of the Waldo stuff in post, but the real last thing was this Muppets go to Disney World television special.

Does anything stand out to you about The Muppets at Walt Disney World?

I how much Jim loved being in the theme parks. He loved the atmosphere, and he loved the thought of producing material for the parks. One memory that stands out is when we were in front of the park's replica of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. There was a little seating area with a few park benches in this shady area. In between shots one day, Jerry Nelson, one of our main performers, myself, my wife Melissa (she was puppeteering on that show) and Jim were sitting around taking a break. 

My wife had a Cosmopolitan magazine with a quiz in it, so we decided we were all going to take the Cosmo quiz. The quiz was “How Long Will You Live?” The questions were lifestyle questions that were supposed to calculate your lifespan. “Did you smoke? Did you overuse alcohol? Did you exercise? Did you eat right?” — things like that. We all took this quiz and Jim and I had exactly the same result, which was that we were going to live to be in our 80s. We both looked at each other, and he said, “That sounds about right, doesn’t it?” And I said, “Yeah, that sounds good.” That was one of the last sit-around talks we all had together. Then, of course, two to three weeks later is when Jim ed away.

When Jim ed, did Muppet Vision 3D take on an increased importance for everybody? 

Yeah, I think it probably did. For one thing, we had a project that we needed to finish, and I think we all felt invested in finishing it because it was Jim’s last big project. We went forward with that in mind. That energy also transferred in a very big way to Muppet Christmas Carol because that was the next big project that we undertook after we all had a big meeting and said, “Are the Muppets going to go on? Do we want this to go on?” Brian Henson and the rest of the Henson family brought us into that. If we had said, “No, we don’t think it should, we should stop it,” I think they might have considered ending the Muppets.

Is there anything you want to say about its closure?

I know a lot of people are disappointed about it, and I understand that. I can feel a certain amount of that too. At the same time, I know firsthand that Jim never looked at his past work. He didn’t hold it in any kind of a particularly reverent, precious place. He always wanted to move to the next thing and move forward and create something new. So with that, in my mind, I don’t think Jim would’ve had a problem with seeing this go away, frankly, because he would’ve been onto a dozen other things that would’ve taken his interest.

So, for those of us who are looking back at Jim and maybe thinking about his ing, the fact is, the Muppets have changed enormously. They’re not who they were in so many ways. I could go on about that for a whole ‘nother interview, but I won’t. Anyway, there is some regret about it going away, but truthfully, Jim would’ve been fine with it.