  Marty Krofft (left) and elder brother Sid admit to being weird, and who would argue with shows such as H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Bugaloos and Land Of The Lost in their resume? They own 11 properties, nine of which have, will be or could be made into movies. |
I’ve always scoffed at those claims of Pokemon-induced seizures. After all, I grew up on the kaleidoscopic oeuvre of Sid and Marty Krofft — Saturday morning TV fare such as Lidsville and H.R. Pufnstuf — and it didn’t mess up my mind.
Oh wait a minute. Yes, it did.
The two veteran puppet-masters — Sid is now 79 and Marty is 72 — will admit to being weird. Marty jokingly attributes it to being Canadian (they were born in Montreal). But they insist no hallucinogens were ever involved.
“We’ve been accused all through our career of being hip and trippy,” says Sid, with kid brother Marty piping in, “but if we did as many drugs as we’re accused of, we’d both be in Forest Lawn Cemetery right now. You cannot create anything (while) stoned.”
The brothers — who in their day were responsible for some of the most surreal stuff ever to appear on TV (including infamously strange variety shows starring The Brady Bunch and a Japanese girl band called Pink Lady) — are back in the news, with the Will Ferrell big-screen movie Land Of The Lost, which opens in theatres on Friday.
Produced by the Kroffts themselves, it’s a comic homage to their ’70s TV series about a park ranger and his family who fall through a time vortex in a cave, and end up in a world occupied by dinosaurs, slow-moving hostile humanoid lizards called Sleestaks and adorable, mischievous monkey-people.
“We’re totally behind this movie,” says Marty, “and everybody that was hired — from the director Brad Silberling to the cinematographer — they all grew up with our stuff. We wouldn’t have hired anybody that hadn’t.
“And they honoured everything. The opening of the cave is the same as on the TV show. There’s some great low-tech in there. At the same time I think we’ve got the best dinosaurs ever done for a movie. The movie’s very funny, and we were smart enough to get Will Ferrell — our manager manages him.”
Interestingly, lizard- and monkey-people notwithstanding, Land Of The Lost was one of the least weird things the Krofft brothers ever did — using real actors and not a single human-sized puppet that looked anything like Mayor McCheese.
“That was our fifth show,” Sid says. “There was Pufnstuf in ’69 (about a boy and his dragon), and then the Bugaloos (about a British pop band of human bugs) and Lidsville (about a kid lost in a land of hat-people), and Sigmund And The Sea Monsters (about two boys and their sea-monster friend).
“And we were kind of on a streak, and all three networks would wait every year to see what our next show was going to be.
“And I said to Marty, ‘Y’know, these kids that started with us (with Pufnstuf) are in their teens already. We have to create something for them. And my love for dinosaurs goes back to when I was 11 years old. My dad took me to see probably one of the first movies every made with dinosaurs, One Million B.C. with Victor Mature. And even today, every adult and every kid on the planet has a fascination for dinosaurs. So I said, ‘That’s got to be it!’
“So we added this Swiss Family Robinson premise and, oddly enough, the first title we had for the show was Lost.
“And then we looked at each other and said, ‘What does that mean, Lost?’ It needed a place, and that’s why it became Land Of The Lost.”
“I mean, who knew you could get a hit out of a show called Lost?” Marty adds with a chuckle. Land Of The Lost ran for two seasons on NBC (1974-75 and 1975-76), and seemingly forever in syndication.
Lifelong performers who were openers for Judy Garland (Sid was a child star who performed with the Ringling Bros. Circus and Sonje Henie’s Ice Show on Broadway), the Krofft brothers came late to the TV production game. One of the catalysts was an encounter in the ’60s with Walt Disney.
“He said, ‘Can I give you guys a little advice?’ ” Sid recalls, “and we looked at each other saying, ‘Wow, Walt Disney is giving us advice!’ And he said, ‘Always put your name above everything that you create. Because some day it’s going to be worth something.’”
Adds Marty, “So to this day, we own all our shows, and we robbed Peter to pay Paul all those years. We weren’t funded by Big Brother. So now we’ve got 11 properties, of which nine could be movies. So thank you, Walt Disney.”
Ironically, Disney was where the Kroffts started their quest to turn Land Of The Lost into a movie.
“We developed two scripts that were really not that great under the same contract at Disney from 1995,” Marty says. “We went to Sony Family, and the script still wasn’t great, but we didn’t have to worry about it because Sony Family went down the day we delivered the scripts. So we kept going and said to ourselves, ‘We gotta do this differently, we gotta have comedy against the action.”
Adds Sid, “When (writers) Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas came aboard, we said, ‘Y’know what? This is Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein, and the dinosaurs are Frankenstein.’ ”
Land Of The Lost represents possible redemption for the Kroffts, who feel they never achieved the Hollywood heights they set out for.
“I have a treehouse that’s 30 feet tall,” Sid says, “and people ask me why I built it. And I said, ‘’Cause you take one step at a time to get up there, and that’s what we’ve done our whole career.’ We just have never gotten to the top. After all these years this movie might be it.”
Certainly Hollywood seems to finally be “getting” them, run as it is these days by kids who grew up on their shows.
“We already have a deal for a Sigmund movie at Universal,” Sid says. “And Pufnstuf is just about a minute from being closed at Sony.”
Adds Marty, “I like to say, with just a little exaggeration, that we’ve gone from hero to zero to hero again.”
“The other thing we want to tell everybody,” Sid says, “is we made you and every kid happy in the ’70s. And it would make us happy if you showed up on June 5.”
Here are some reality-heighted highlights in the oeuvre of pop cultural heroes Sid and Marty Krofft:
H.R. Pufnstuf: The guys decided to go their own way after designing the characters for the ’68 kids series The Banana Splits. They based Pufnstuf on Luther, a character they created for an attraction at the San Antonio World’s Fair. And their human star was the hottest child actor of the day, Jack Wild, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing The Artful Dodger in Oliver!
Marty, in fact, became Wild’s legal guardian for the duration of filming. “Sadly, I did adopt Jack Wild,” he says. “I had two daughters and I had a teenager move in with his brother. That was one of the worst decisions I ever made.”
On the other hand, he adds, “I loved him. When he was nominated for his Oscar, I went to the awards with him, and we sat in the first row. And the first award is best supporting actor. So whoever it was, announced, “And the winner is Jack ... Albertson! So we had a heart attack.”
“Oh my God, his talent,” Sid says. “He could sing, he could dance, he could act.”
“He didn’t have it great after he left us, sadly.” (Wild battled alcoholism and died in 2006 of cancer).
The Bugaloos: The show about a music group with antennae and wings had a Monkees-style audition. Among the rejects: Phil Collins and John Reid, who became manager of Queen and Elton John. Of Reid, Marty says, “As a thank you for not picking him, he always gave us four tickets to Elton’s concerts whenever he was in town.”
Pink Lady And Jeff: Truly one of the most bizarre TV variety series ever, it starred an internationally popular Japanese girl band and comedian Jeff Altman. Only problem was the girls spoke no English. “You can’t kill Pink Lady with a baseball bat,” says Marty about the primetime car wreck people still talk about to this day. “Saturday Night Live, after we got cancelled, they did sketches about Pink Lady for, like, two or three years.
“It wasn’t even our idea,” Sid says. “That was (NBC boss) Fred Silverman’s. He told us they spoke English, and he lied.”
The Brady Bunch Hour: Take the ’70s favourite sitcom family and give them a variety show (minus Eve Plumb, a.k.a. Jan, who refused to take part and was replaced with another actor), with regular Rip Taylor and guests such as Tony Randall. How could it go wrong? “That’s the other one in the time capsule,” Marty says. “That was really interesting. We got a 50 share the first night and the next one we got a 20. So something went really wrong.” The Simpsons spoofed this one beautifully.
jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca
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