Jim Henson's "Time Piece" (1965)

Above is an excerpt from Jim Henson's 1965 experimental short Time Piece, nominated for an Academy Award. It was unique because, for one thing, it doesn't feature any puppetry! The surreal film stars Henson and includes cameos from Henson Associates employees like Frank Oz (Yoda, etc!), Jerry Suhl, Don Sahlin, and Diana Birkenfield. More info at the Muppet Wiki. Watch the whole thing at MySpace here. (Thanks, Sarah Ruxin!)

• [robdobbs]

  He also made the first version of The Cube. 
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cube_(1969_film)
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film_series)

  • [Jorpho]

     A truly beautiful film, Henson’s “The Cube” (the color version used to be on Google Video under “ebuc eht”), but no relation at all to the horror movies, aside from perhaps some vaguely similar themes.

• [thekinginyellow]

  ” doesn’t feature any puppetry”

  hmm, i saw several segments that could be constituted as puppetry.

  • [mat catastrophe]

    I believe the word you want is “construed”.

• [Michael Johnson]

  And, anyone who grew up watch sesame street in the 70′s will recognize the film style immediately.

  • [Rich Keller]

    When the waiter took the dome off of the tray at the dinner table I expected Henson to sing “One… severed human head!” and fall down some stairs

• [bcsizemo]

  NTSC telecine errr…
  (internal raging)

  also, LSD it’s a hell of a drug.

• [awjt]

  “BOING! BOING!”

• [awjt]

  You know what’s especially unsettling? Jim Henson died of a massive systemic infection because he refused antibiotics due to his devout Christian Scientist beliefs.  And here he is  pulling the covers up over over his own dead body in a hospital bed.  Weird.

  • [mat catastrophe]

    http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7ElPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KgMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4502,372385&dq=jim-henson+christian-scientist&hl=en

    • [awjt]

      Nice article, but I don’t think he *actually* took the antibiotics.

  • [robdobbs]

    I thought it was a form of Strep – the flesh eating kind. Antibiotics were useless.
    (Now I will go investigate the webs and prove myself WrRiOgNhGt.

• [ken ray]

  awww…video removed? Talk about the Streisand Effect: 
  http://duckduckgo.com/?q=timepiece+1965+torrent

  • [Toby]

     I found it on Youtube:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDwCwMIRJlI

• [strangefriend]

  Here it is (the complete video) on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/video/charlie/time-piece/42739744

  • [David Pescovitz]

    Thanks. I embedded the YouTube except and linked to the video on MySpace. I appreciate it, Toby and Strangefriend!

• [Nikhil]

  Nobody from India can view this as the Vimeo player is banned here. World’s largest democracy hard at work.

• [mat catastrophe]

  I used to marvel at the crappy nature of student videos in college. Now I see that every once in a looooooooooooooong time, someone who does one makes up for it.

• [Substance McGravitas]

  Jerry Juhl.

• [3William56]

  I’m a huge fan of Jim Henson’s work, but if that got an Oscar nod, it must have been a pretty lean year (and Terry Gilliam might want a word).

  • [Felton / Moderator]

    As far as I can tell, this predates all of Terry Gilliam’s film/animation work.

• [Vanwall Green]

  I used to see this as one of a series of short films  before the main midnight special, once opening for “Freaks”. It was sometimes shown with “Solo”, the Oscar-winning mountain climbing short  by Mike Hoover, and a number of other quirky shorts.  

• [zezzledog]

  The name is Jerry Juhl, not Suhl

• [Doug Lucchetti]

  While showing my age, I recall seeing this as a sophmore in High School in 67 as part of some educational program from Princeton…or somewhere. Needless to say it must have worked as I can still recall it and am still impressed by it…and I wish Henson were still around.

• [Sparg]

  I kept waiting for Rover to come bouncing after the runners.