IPOD
RADIO
Marty Krofft
By Daniel Robert Epstein
May 23, 2006
Sid and Marty Krofft haunt my nightmares. Well not so much them personally, it would be weird if two AARP members bedeviled me in my sleep. But I saw some show of theirs where some fat dude got stuck with porcupine quills and now for some reason that makes me wake up in a cold sweat. Now that Rhino Home Entertainment is releasing the Krofft’s second show, The Bugaloos, on DVD, I can watch those episodes and see if that porcupine thing is in there. But besides being a seminal part of so many childhoods, The Bugaloos is still some seriously tripped out madness. From the very first episode the viewer is dropped into this wild world of British kids with wings singing songs and old school Hollywood types driving tripped out cars and hanging with giant yellow dudes with no teeth.
Buy the DVD of The Bugaloos
Daniel Robert Epstein: I believe The Bugaloos was your first project after H.R. Pufnstuf.
Marty Krofft: It was right after H.R. Pufnstuf. We went to England to get The Bugaloos; just like we went to England to get Jack Wild after he was The Artful Dodger in Oliver. That was right when The Beatles and everything was happening. So we went and we did auditions for The Bugaloos in London and we must have had about 4000 kids standing in line.
DRE:
How did you end up casting Jack Wild in Pufnstuf in the first place?
MK:
We knew Lionel Bart who wrote all the music for Oliver. We went to the premiere with him and when we saw Jack we said, “Oh my God that’s the kid.” We didn’t have any intention of picking up somebody with a cockney accent because we were afraid nobody would understand them. But when that worked, we did the same thing with The Bugaloos.
DRE:
I’m a bit young, so I wasn’t around when these shows first aired, was Pufnstuf a big hit right away?
MK:
Yeah it was. By the time I showed it to the president of RCA and NBC, they all knew this was happening. Before that we did The Banana Splits. So Hanna Barbera came to us before we did Pufnstuf and they asked us if we could help create the Banana Splits. At that point, when we were building the Banana Splits we saw that the head of programming of NBC was coming to see us. They said, “Next season, why don’t you create your own show.” Then we did Pufnstuf and we immediately created The Bugaloos.
DRE:
Were you and your brother given more freedom because Pufnstuf was a hit?
MK:
I think we were given freedom on both because I don’t think anybody at the network knew what we were doing. So they trusted us. We’d already had a reputation doing our big puppet shows. Before we ever had done Pufnstuf, we did puppet shows as opening acts for stars Judy Garland, Sinatra and Liberace. Then we did an adult only puppet show called Les Poupee des Paris which was a big hit in the 60’s. So it isn’t like we were an overnight success.
DRE:
I’ve been very excited about doing this interview for about a week so I’ve been telling a lot of people about it. Then when I tell people that it is for The Bugaloos and they all start singing “The Bugaloos, The Bugaloos.” Who created that song?
MK:
It was Charles Fox. In fact I’m still talking to him. Charles Fox also wrote the song Killing Me Softly for Roberta Flak. We’re thinking about doing a Broadway show on Pufnstuf and we’re doing something new with The Bugaloos as we speak. Even though we only did 17 episodes of the Bugaloos.
DRE:
What’s going on with the Bugaloos now?
MK:
We had developed it once for Jersey Films, which is Danny DeVito’s company at Universal. But it never got off the ground script-wise. So because we have Land of the Lost and Pufnstuf in more than development at Universal, we decided we’re going to do a Bugaloos preschool show, like the Mickey Mouse Club, and cast new Bugaloos that are around 13 and 14 years old. In the old show, Benita Bizarre [played by Martha Raye] lived in a jukebox. Now since kids don’t know about jukeboxes anymore, they will live in a giant iPod called an Eye-pod, so we don’t get sued.
DRE:
Is your stuff being remade because everyone that grew up on it is now heads of movie studios?
MK:
Yep, you got it. Ron Meyer, who’s the head of Universal, was our agent when we were the first clients at CAA, Creative Artists. I guess we messed with the heads of kids in the 70’s because they’re still into us in 2006. They now have children, nieces and nephews. Monetarily we thought of the preschool shoe because last year The Wiggles made more money last year than Mel Gibson. We’re working with a guy named Savage Steve Holland [writer/director of Better Off Dead and creator of Eek! the Cat].
DRE:
He’s a genius.
MK:
What we always did was go after young talent. Now that we’re old, we’re still going after young talent. We have belief in the newcomers.
DRE:
Isn’t Savage Steve Holland about 50? [laughs]
MK:
That guy has experience. I don’t think he’s 50 but he looks about 38. But you could be right. His motorcycle and helmet don’t make him look like that age.
DRE:
In Hollywood working with older people is verboten. You and your brother are pushing 70, is there resistance on the studio’s part to having you involved?
MK:
First of all they want to see us because they want our autographs so we get in the door. We were always ahead of our time and no matter how old we are we’re still ahead of our time with what we’re doing. We still get goose bumps, things still excite us and we know that if we’re not working we will have to watch daytime television which could kill us immediately.
DRE:
I’m a big fan of Billy Barty’s who you worked with quite a lot.
MK:
We probably worked with more little people than anybody in recent times except for The Wizard of Oz. Billy Barty was in most of our shows and was one of the great people to work with. He was so talented and such a great guy.
DRE:
Mel Blanc revealed in his autobiography that Chuck Jones and the other Warner Bros. cartoon directors would go up to the top of Termite Terrace [the building on Sunset Boulevard where Looney Tunes cartoons were created], get high, come back down and storyboard.
MK:
Really? Well, I never was invited.
DRE:
[laughs] I’ve read that you and your brother have said that you never did drugs when you’re doing the shows. But how can you not when you got a show called Lidsville?
MK:
Well, you don’t have to have a show called Lidsville to do drugs. We were just smart. We had The Beatles calling us for our shows every week. Brian Epstein asked for all the Pufnstuf 16 millimeters and all The Bugaloos 16 millimeters to be sent to London every week. We knew we had something when that was going on. When we did those shows we weren’t thinking about college kids.
But we always did big shows and we always spent more money than any network gave us. For these shows we only got like 50 to 60,000 dollars an episode but we spent $100,000 on each one. Today that $100,000 would probably equal $350,000 but we put everything on the screen.
DRE:
But would you guys get high?
MK:
Now we’re back at the drug thing.
DRE:
Yeah, I only want to follow up.
MK:
It’s true that we weren’t doing acid and drugs when we were doing shows. Fortunately we’re not drug addicts or alcoholics. But I know many of them.
DRE:
What was the writing process between you and your brother on these shows?
MK:
We didn’t write the shows but we hired the best people we could find to do this. On Pufnstuf we had Lennie Weinrib, on The Bugaloos we had several writers and Si Rose who had done shows like McHale’s Navy. We called him up one day and said, “look, we’ve never done a TV series, could you come in and help us?” So he became the exec producer and head writer on a number of our shows.
DRE:
What was your process of creating something like The Bugaloos?
MK:
We drew the rough stuff but we had artists, in a place we called the show business factory. It was a 50,000 square foot building where we created everything. Then we had a shop that was about 25,000 square feet where we built everything.
DRE:
Were you guys competitive with places like Disney and Jim Henson?
MK:
Well late in life I met [daughter of Jim Henson and co-chair and co-CEO of the Jim Henson Company] Lisa Henson and she told me that she would always go to her father and say, “How come the Krofft’s have so many shows and we only have one show?” I think Hanna Barbera felt that we were coming in on their territory so they were always worried the most.
DRE:
[laughs] As they should have been.
MK:
Right.
DRE:
How many shows have you done?
MK:
We did 13 kids shows. But the big thing is we’re still independent. We’re probably the only independent left in the business. We own everything we ever did. We never made the mistake of selling everything to the majors. Our library is valuable because most of our titles are going to be made into movies. If we’re still around we’re going to enjoy it. If we’re not, I’ve got three daughters, three grandkids who are talented and could take over. Right now I’ve got one daughter that runs everything in the company as far as the administration. My brother and myself are still very active, of course I show up every day. My brother never showed up every day. So nothing’s changed just because we’re old.
DRE:
How was it possible that you didn’t sell it all over the years?
MK:
We’ve gone through a lot of pain because we never did. When you’re an independent, you’re struggling all the time financially. So as of this date and this phone call we’re still independent. By two o’clock today, things could be different.
DRE:
[laughs] What’s the dynamic between you and your brother?
MK:
My brother only deals in creative areas and mostly my creativity is to take some of his dreams and make them come true and take some of my dreams and make them come true. So I really run the place and I make it happen. It is one thing to have an idea, it’s another thing to get it to happen. That in itself is creative.
DRE:
Have you guys seen a lot of the satires of your work?
MK:
Yeah I saw Mr. Show. They thought we were going to sue them.
DRE:
Did you guys ever meet Bob Odenkirk and David Cross?
MK:
Of course. They have come over to the offices over the years to talk about ideas.
DRE:
Have you heard about this new one called Saul of the Mole Men that’s going to be on Adult Swim?
MK:
No, I haven’t. That’s live action?
DRE:
It’s a live action but with greenscreen and very low budget effects. But it looks hysterical.
MK:
Have you seen it?
DRE:
I’ve seen a clip of it and it looks great.
MK:
Is it a Krofft look?
DRE:
Oh yeah.
MK:
Of course.
There’s a guy who does a preschool show out of Iceland called LazyTown, who says his show is like Land of the Lost on acid.
DRE:
How far along is the Land of the Lost movie?
MK:
The second draft of the script just arrived in my office so we’re moving along pretty good. It will probably get released sometime in 2007. Chris Henchy, who’s married to Brooke Shields and Dennis McNicholas who was the head writer on Saturday Night Live wrote it. Will Ferrell is attached to star with [Anchorman director] Adam McKay set to direct.
DRE:
How close are you with the Pufnstuf Broadway show?
MK:
That’s not close at all. We’re first developing a Pufnstuf movie at Sony. Julian Fellowes [Oscar winning screenwriter of Gosford Park] will be writing the Pufnstuf movie. He also wrote the London stage version of Mary Poppins which is coming to Broadway.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Sid and Marty Krofft haunt my nightmares. Well not so much them personally, it would be weird if two AARP members bedeviled me in my sleep. But I saw some show of theirs where some fat dude got stuck with porcupine quills and now for some reason that makes me wake up in a cold sweat. Now that Rhino Home Entertainment is releasing the Krofft’s second show, The Bugaloos, on DVD, I can watch those episodes and see if that porcupine thing is in there. But besides being a seminal part of so many childhoods, The Bugaloos is still some seriously tripped out madness. From the very first episode the viewer is dropped into this wild world of British kids with wings singing songs and old school Hollywood types driving tripped out cars and hanging with giant yellow dudes with no teeth.
Buy the DVD of The Bugaloos
Daniel Robert Epstein: I believe The Bugaloos was your first project after H.R. Pufnstuf.
Marty Krofft: It was right after H.R. Pufnstuf. We went to England to get The Bugaloos; just like we went to England to get Jack Wild after he was The Artful Dodger in Oliver. That was right when The Beatles and everything was happening. So we went and we did auditions for The Bugaloos in London and we must have had about 4000 kids standing in line.
DRE:
How did you end up casting Jack Wild in Pufnstuf in the first place?
MK:
We knew Lionel Bart who wrote all the music for Oliver. We went to the premiere with him and when we saw Jack we said, “Oh my God that’s the kid.” We didn’t have any intention of picking up somebody with a cockney accent because we were afraid nobody would understand them. But when that worked, we did the same thing with The Bugaloos.
DRE:
I’m a bit young, so I wasn’t around when these shows first aired, was Pufnstuf a big hit right away?
MK:
Yeah it was. By the time I showed it to the president of RCA and NBC, they all knew this was happening. Before that we did The Banana Splits. So Hanna Barbera came to us before we did Pufnstuf and they asked us if we could help create the Banana Splits. At that point, when we were building the Banana Splits we saw that the head of programming of NBC was coming to see us. They said, “Next season, why don’t you create your own show.” Then we did Pufnstuf and we immediately created The Bugaloos.
DRE:
Were you and your brother given more freedom because Pufnstuf was a hit?
MK:
I think we were given freedom on both because I don’t think anybody at the network knew what we were doing. So they trusted us. We’d already had a reputation doing our big puppet shows. Before we ever had done Pufnstuf, we did puppet shows as opening acts for stars Judy Garland, Sinatra and Liberace. Then we did an adult only puppet show called Les Poupee des Paris which was a big hit in the 60’s. So it isn’t like we were an overnight success.
DRE:
I’ve been very excited about doing this interview for about a week so I’ve been telling a lot of people about it. Then when I tell people that it is for The Bugaloos and they all start singing “The Bugaloos, The Bugaloos.” Who created that song?
MK:
It was Charles Fox. In fact I’m still talking to him. Charles Fox also wrote the song Killing Me Softly for Roberta Flak. We’re thinking about doing a Broadway show on Pufnstuf and we’re doing something new with The Bugaloos as we speak. Even though we only did 17 episodes of the Bugaloos.
DRE:
What’s going on with the Bugaloos now?
MK:
We had developed it once for Jersey Films, which is Danny DeVito’s company at Universal. But it never got off the ground script-wise. So because we have Land of the Lost and Pufnstuf in more than development at Universal, we decided we’re going to do a Bugaloos preschool show, like the Mickey Mouse Club, and cast new Bugaloos that are around 13 and 14 years old. In the old show, Benita Bizarre [played by Martha Raye] lived in a jukebox. Now since kids don’t know about jukeboxes anymore, they will live in a giant iPod called an Eye-pod, so we don’t get sued.
DRE:
Is your stuff being remade because everyone that grew up on it is now heads of movie studios?
MK:
Yep, you got it. Ron Meyer, who’s the head of Universal, was our agent when we were the first clients at CAA, Creative Artists. I guess we messed with the heads of kids in the 70’s because they’re still into us in 2006. They now have children, nieces and nephews. Monetarily we thought of the preschool shoe because last year The Wiggles made more money last year than Mel Gibson. We’re working with a guy named Savage Steve Holland [writer/director of Better Off Dead and creator of Eek! the Cat].
DRE:
He’s a genius.
MK:
What we always did was go after young talent. Now that we’re old, we’re still going after young talent. We have belief in the newcomers.
DRE:
Isn’t Savage Steve Holland about 50? [laughs]
MK:
That guy has experience. I don’t think he’s 50 but he looks about 38. But you could be right. His motorcycle and helmet don’t make him look like that age.
DRE:
In Hollywood working with older people is verboten. You and your brother are pushing 70, is there resistance on the studio’s part to having you involved?
MK:
First of all they want to see us because they want our autographs so we get in the door. We were always ahead of our time and no matter how old we are we’re still ahead of our time with what we’re doing. We still get goose bumps, things still excite us and we know that if we’re not working we will have to watch daytime television which could kill us immediately.
DRE:
I’m a big fan of Billy Barty’s who you worked with quite a lot.
MK:
We probably worked with more little people than anybody in recent times except for The Wizard of Oz. Billy Barty was in most of our shows and was one of the great people to work with. He was so talented and such a great guy.
DRE:
Mel Blanc revealed in his autobiography that Chuck Jones and the other Warner Bros. cartoon directors would go up to the top of Termite Terrace [the building on Sunset Boulevard where Looney Tunes cartoons were created], get high, come back down and storyboard.
MK:
Really? Well, I never was invited.
DRE:
[laughs] I’ve read that you and your brother have said that you never did drugs when you’re doing the shows. But how can you not when you got a show called Lidsville?
MK:
Well, you don’t have to have a show called Lidsville to do drugs. We were just smart. We had The Beatles calling us for our shows every week. Brian Epstein asked for all the Pufnstuf 16 millimeters and all The Bugaloos 16 millimeters to be sent to London every week. We knew we had something when that was going on. When we did those shows we weren’t thinking about college kids.
But we always did big shows and we always spent more money than any network gave us. For these shows we only got like 50 to 60,000 dollars an episode but we spent $100,000 on each one. Today that $100,000 would probably equal $350,000 but we put everything on the screen.
But we always did big shows and we always spent more money than any network gave us. For these shows we only got like 50 to 60,000 dollars an episode but we spent $100,000 on each one. Today that $100,000 would probably equal $350,000 but we put everything on the screen.
DRE:
But would you guys get high?
MK:
Now we’re back at the drug thing.
DRE:
Yeah, I only want to follow up.
MK:
It’s true that we weren’t doing acid and drugs when we were doing shows. Fortunately we’re not drug addicts or alcoholics. But I know many of them.
DRE:
What was the writing process between you and your brother on these shows?
MK:
We didn’t write the shows but we hired the best people we could find to do this. On Pufnstuf we had Lennie Weinrib, on The Bugaloos we had several writers and Si Rose who had done shows like McHale’s Navy. We called him up one day and said, “look, we’ve never done a TV series, could you come in and help us?” So he became the exec producer and head writer on a number of our shows.
DRE:
What was your process of creating something like The Bugaloos?
MK:
We drew the rough stuff but we had artists, in a place we called the show business factory. It was a 50,000 square foot building where we created everything. Then we had a shop that was about 25,000 square feet where we built everything.
DRE:
Were you guys competitive with places like Disney and Jim Henson?
MK:
Well late in life I met [daughter of Jim Henson and co-chair and co-CEO of the Jim Henson Company] Lisa Henson and she told me that she would always go to her father and say, “How come the Krofft’s have so many shows and we only have one show?” I think Hanna Barbera felt that we were coming in on their territory so they were always worried the most.
DRE:
[laughs] As they should have been.
MK:
Right.
DRE:
How many shows have you done?
MK:
We did 13 kids shows. But the big thing is we’re still independent. We’re probably the only independent left in the business. We own everything we ever did. We never made the mistake of selling everything to the majors. Our library is valuable because most of our titles are going to be made into movies. If we’re still around we’re going to enjoy it. If we’re not, I’ve got three daughters, three grandkids who are talented and could take over. Right now I’ve got one daughter that runs everything in the company as far as the administration. My brother and myself are still very active, of course I show up every day. My brother never showed up every day. So nothing’s changed just because we’re old.
DRE:
How was it possible that you didn’t sell it all over the years?
MK:
We’ve gone through a lot of pain because we never did. When you’re an independent, you’re struggling all the time financially. So as of this date and this phone call we’re still independent. By two o’clock today, things could be different.
DRE:
[laughs] What’s the dynamic between you and your brother?
MK:
My brother only deals in creative areas and mostly my creativity is to take some of his dreams and make them come true and take some of my dreams and make them come true. So I really run the place and I make it happen. It is one thing to have an idea, it’s another thing to get it to happen. That in itself is creative.
DRE:
Have you guys seen a lot of the satires of your work?
MK:
Yeah I saw Mr. Show. They thought we were going to sue them.
DRE:
Did you guys ever meet Bob Odenkirk and David Cross?
MK:
Of course. They have come over to the offices over the years to talk about ideas.
DRE:
Have you heard about this new one called Saul of the Mole Men that’s going to be on Adult Swim?
MK:
No, I haven’t. That’s live action?
DRE:
It’s a live action but with greenscreen and very low budget effects. But it looks hysterical.
MK:
Have you seen it?
DRE:
I’ve seen a clip of it and it looks great.
MK:
Is it a Krofft look?
DRE:
Oh yeah.
MK:
Of course.
There’s a guy who does a preschool show out of Iceland called LazyTown, who says his show is like Land of the Lost on acid.
There’s a guy who does a preschool show out of Iceland called LazyTown, who says his show is like Land of the Lost on acid.
DRE:
How far along is the Land of the Lost movie?
MK:
The second draft of the script just arrived in my office so we’re moving along pretty good. It will probably get released sometime in 2007. Chris Henchy, who’s married to Brooke Shields and Dennis McNicholas who was the head writer on Saturday Night Live wrote it. Will Ferrell is attached to star with [Anchorman director] Adam McKay set to direct.
DRE:
How close are you with the Pufnstuf Broadway show?
MK:
That’s not close at all. We’re first developing a Pufnstuf movie at Sony. Julian Fellowes [Oscar winning screenwriter of Gosford Park] will be writing the Pufnstuf movie. He also wrote the London stage version of Mary Poppins which is coming to Broadway.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
