If you grew up watching the puppetry of Sid and Marty Krofft, then you’re in for a treat. If this is the first you’ve heard of them, wait ‘til you get a load of these guys. The creator of shows with puppet monsters like Land of the Lost were on the set of the blockbuster movie version of Land of the Lost, commenting about the production and sharing old stories.
Crave Online: Were you guys fine with turning the show into a comedy?
Marty Krofft: Well, it didn’t happen that way. The studio only got the results of what we created. So we recreated Land of the Lost, we created it and then we got all the people, Brad [Silberling] and Bo [Welch] and then we pitched it to all the studios, the five studios. They all wanted it, and developed it all dramatic. but the bottom line was it was like another episode, and the scripts didn’t happen. So we figured that the best place to be was to have somebody with all the talent because we had all the properties. We’ve always had Will Ferrell eyed, we finally decided we were going to marry comedy with jeopardy, but the big secret is, the big unknown is, how do you get a great script? So that’s what we got. So we had Will Ferrell attached for like the last three years, so when we went out to pitch it, we already had the concept, and out script is great and it’s funny. The jeopardy is great and marrying those two together is a little unusual, and then we’ve kept the integrity of the original show, and they’ve really honored it. Now the one reason for us that it’s at Universal, Ron Myer was the head of Universal, we were his first clients at CAA, so I had my agent here at Universal. They let us do a major picture here, this is a picture that goes to a hundred places.
Sid Krofft: Every three of four minutes you’re going to be in another location, something else. The dinosaurs, usually you see them in a jungle or through foliage. Well, in our movie you’re going to see them in the dunes, wide open places. Paramount and Disney and Sony, they just wanted to do another episode, but that’s not what we wanted, and one day, I said, “Do you know what this is? It’s Bud Abbot and Lou Costello meets Frankenstein.” And the writer’s went, “We got it.” Frankenstein’s the dinosaur. Nobody’s every approached a dinosaur that way. Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, they didn’t disturb Frankenstein, they kept that character and he was still scary. The fans, they’re going to be so happy, I know they are. I’ve been in this business a long time, the other day I spent four hours just looking at the dailies, by myself, again, and whoa. If it goes together, you don’t know until you put it together, but trust me, I know.
Crave Online: Dinosaurs are wild enough. How did you come up with Sleestaks?
Sid Krofft: When I was eleven years old, my dad took me to see One Million B.C. with Victor Mature, it scared the hell out of me, because we never, ever saw a dinosaur moving. Yeah, in old King Kong or whatever some of those, way back in the ‘30s, but nothing like One Million B.C. It made such an impression on me that every year when we came up with a new show I always thought, “Dinosaurs, wow, wouldn’t that blow everybody away?” Especially kids are so in love with them because every single show has a family, or a little boy or a little girl that is lost in this world and like The Wizard of Oz, and you just, at home root for them because you love them and you can relate to them and you can’t understand why they can’t get home. That’s very disturbing. So I knew about that element, and every one of our shows had that element. Now when we started opening it up, okay, I had a father, a son, and a daughter, which was perfect, because little girls, little boys, and everybody loves their dad, so that gave me a good beginning. Then we originally thought of a Tarzan type of a character, and I didn’t like that because it wasn’t original. That’s where Chaka came from, the Pakunis. See, it just started unfolding. Now the Sleestaks, they were sleazy and they were very tall, that’s where the name came from, and the Sleetstaks came from the dinosaur, because they were living.
Crave Online: What about the movie going audience that never got to see the original show? What will attract them to the movie?
Sid Krofft: The Sleestaks and the dinosaurs. The Dinosaurs, you know Jurassic Park, but here’s one really important factor. The second batch of Star Wars, kids didn’t know Star Wars. Their dads, and their moms, and their big brothers said, “Oh my god, this is what I grew up with, wait until you see this!” TV Guide told us, we’ve got thirty million fans today for Land of the Lost. Now you’ve got kids, you’re going to take them, you don’t know if they movie’s good or bad yet until you see it, but you’re going to take them, you’re going to go see it.
Crave Online: During development, when did you decide to make all three of them adults?
Sid Krofft: Well, because it was like repeating, and then it was going to be a G movie. Hey, I’m really doing it for you guys first, and I’m being very careful because I don’t want them to be pissed off at us. They were when they heard that we were doing a comedy. We took this property that so many people loved, and grew up with. And it’s amazing to me that you’ve taken it with you all these years, I mean, Marshall, Will, and Holly. I mean when Will Ferrell learned how to play a banjo, and in one scene he starts singing them this song, it brought tears to my eyes, the whole crew just freaked out hearing that song.
Crave Online: Were you aware that he’d played a character named Marshall Willenholly in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?
Sid Krofft: No. I was never aware.
Crave Online: No one’s brought that up?
Sid Krofft: No, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Crave Online: Does Chaka still have the same language in the movie?
Sid Krofft: Oh yeah! And the guy playing Chaka, he’s just unbelievable. He learned the language and he spent week’s studying chimps in the zoo.
Marty Krofft: Well, we had this lady, Gloria Frompkin, who created the Pakuni language. She was a professor at UCLA, and I think she really believed that she created it. At the time we created the language NBC came to us and said, “You’ve got to have some social value in it.” So we said, “Okay, how about this language?” Oh, that’s educational, so we got four points for that. But the reasons that the Sleestaks are slow, I remember, is because the network said don’t make them fast, and they did us a favor because it works.
Crave Online: Is that part the comedic aspect, tat they’re not fast?
Marty Krofft: Well I don’t think it’s funny.
Sid Krofft: It’s very scary.
Marty Krofft: No, let me tell you, it ain’t funny. All these guys are telling me that they were scared sh*tless of these guys when they grew up.
Sid Krofft: You know, the reason that they move, slow like that, the original reason is that when we all have a dream and something is chasing us and it almost paralyzes us, and everything moves in slow motion. So that’s where really that came from, and not only that, the sound stage that we’re on was probably as big as this tent. Where the hell where they going to run?
Crave Online: What are some specifics where you pay honor to the original show in the movie?
Sid Krofft: All the locations are there, and the Sleestaks and Chaka and the skeleton is there, of what you grew up with.
Marty Krofft: It goes back to how we honored the series, we made sure that we didn’t change the names and the look, like we upgraded the Sleestaks, because if we had changed the way they look and would have come up on the screen, I think the audience would have booed. Now they may cheer, I don’t know.
Crave Online: Are their anymore Sid and Marty Krofft properties that will be coming to theaters?
Sid and Marty Krofft: Yes.
Marty Krofft: Well, we’re working on it, we’re close on Pufnstuf and Sigmund’s.
Crave Online: After Land of the Lost was green lit, were you suddenly taking meetings about all your other shows?
Marty Krofft: All of a sudden we went from hero to zero back to hero, so you can never count anybody out. This thing about giving up that we learned from our father, “Never, ever give up.” If someone tells you to give up, get rid of them, because if you give up on Tuesday, there is no Wednesday. So I never gave up. If I had listened to other people, my family, outside of my family, we wouldn’t be there today, we would have sold the company for $1.98. So we’re not interested in selling our company. We’re the only really independent left that has a library. Paramount or DiC may have a big library with a thousand titles, but of our 12 titles, I would say 10 of them are movies, and/or television series. We’re developing The Bugaloos for kids right now. I mean, we’re working on some new things, developing another new country show. We did country for the whole country. We wrote country music to America, for the whole country, it was very segmented. So we’ve got something now coming, and that again I think, we’re working with some great people. We don’t talk about it. It’s easy to hype, but hype gets you nowhere other then trouble.
Crave Online: How do you decide what should be a movie and what should be a new TV show?
Marty Krofft: I think right now we are focusing mostly on film, where we think it’d work on film. I mean, look, how many things do we need to do? We didn’t wait for this to open to do something else. I think there are a number of titles that are conducive to film. Like Lidsville, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, I know that there is a big star that wants to be Electra Woman. While we were doing Land of the Lost, we sold three other shows, at the same time, so I went to Sid, and he wanted me to do another one and I said, “Sid, if we do one more show then we’lle be bankrupt.” Because we funded everything, that’s why we own everything. I mean, Jerry Bruckheimer, now he makes lot of money, but he don’t own nothing, but he’s probably better off than I am. And I asked him, “are you happy?” And he said yes.
Crave Online: Do you have a favorite show or favorite character, both of you?
Marty Krofft: It’s Barney! No.
Sid Krofft: For me, it’s your first child. Pufnstuf was our first child, so for me it’s Pufnstuf.
Marty Krofft: You get one show, one show.
Sid Krofft: No, and then of course Land of the Lost.
Marty Krofft: I love them all. Pufnstuf, we’re working with Pufnstuf, something great is possibly happening with Punstuf.
Crave Online: I’m curious about Punstuf, because after its initial run it got adopted by a different audience, who maybe watched it under different circumstances?
Marty Krofft: Yeah we had seven kids.
Crave Online: Would the film address the other interpretations of it?
Marty Krofft: Well, first of all, Pufnstuf, I thought you were going in another direction, we are not talking about drugs. If we did as many drugs as you think we did we’d be dead. The fans did drugs, but let me tell you where it’s at. Where it was at and where it is today. Where it was at, we did seventeen episodes so we lost our tail, we lost a million dollars doing it, and that was frightening. Fortunately we were at Six Flags with shows, and we were creating rides for them, so we were taking from Peter to pay Paul. But Pufnstuf in this country, with the seventeen episodes, they ran in the first five years, they ran at least twenty times, each episode, so people talk to me now and they think it was a hundred episodes, but there wasn’t. Now that was the big thing. As far as the adults watching it, the high school kids, right now our main audience is 30-45, but under 30 there is a selective amount of them as our audience, that are coming. Now what we did to help that, we just made a partnership with MySpace where, if you just have a website forget about it, nobody finds it, but part of the deal, a partnership deal, a sharing deal, will be coming up this month. And we’re guaranteed 2 billion impressions on the front page, at least. Now that brings them to the front page where it says 80 million people a day. It costs 700 thousand dollars for that front page. How long do you think they’d have it? Let’s see, 700 thousand, let say one advertisement for Harry Potter. So we go from there, the first week they will probably be on 3 times, 4 times, to our site then to the store where we build up the merchandising.
Sid Krofft: Explain what’s going to be on MySpace?
Marty Krofft: I’m not through yet.
Sid Krofft: Well, we’ve got four more minutes.
Marty Krofft: My brother, you’re seeing what everybody’s seen in 35 years. So we’ve created this thing called trademark. Sony has many shows and we have Krofft Kwikies, four minutes episodes of Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, Sigmund. We’re going to premiere with three episodes of each for the first month, of the Krofft Kwikies. So the new kids will go from the front page to that, hopefully see it all through their drugs and for to the store.
Crave Online: Is there any chance that you are going to redo the TV show if this does really well?
Marty Krofft: Well, I think once the studio makes the film, they have most of the rights. I mean we’re included in everything. So yeah, if the movie does really well, there’s always a sequel, because they’ve run out of ideas, that’s why there’s sequels.
Sid Krofft: And it’s written for that.
Marty Krofft: But let me tell you, Pufnstuf is no piece of cake. Pufnstuf is tough. We’ve developed that three times, and it didn’t work. The last time it really didn’t work with Sony, but that’s another story. But it is very difficult to do Pufnstuf. What we think what we have now is going to nail it.
Sid Krofft: And just for the record, Pufnstuf, the name Pufnstuf, the big song was Puff the Magic Dragon that year, and that’s where that came from. H. R., he was the mayor, and we didn’t want to call him Mayor Pufnstuf, so he was the Royal Highness and we took R. H. and turned it around, it’s not “hand rolled.”
Marty Krofft: Nobody believes us. They did a survey on the internet, they asked a thousand people was the H. R. is. Nine hundred ninety-nine people said “hand rolled.” The network thought it was a sissy title.
Sid Krofft: Powder Puff they thought.
Marty Krofft: They didn’t know that a drug dealer named it for us.
Sid Krofft: They thought it meant Powder Puff, they said it was a girl’s title.
