Everyone who comes to New York from somewhere else has a different version of “making it.”
For some, it’s landing a gig for your band at a venue slightly better than an un-air-conditioned converted Bushwick warehouse; for others, it’s ditching the part-time gig at Trader Joe’s for a desk job that doesn’t involve knowing which brands of crackers are gluten-free.
But for kids like me growing up in the mid-’80s in Jersey, “making it” in the city meant having enough money for bus lockers for you and your chicken, pig and dog friends to sleep in for the night.
At least, that was the impression I got from watching “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” the brilliant make-it-or-break-it movie about the beloved puppet gang moving to New York after college and trying to sell a musical, which was released 30 years ago on Sunday.
When they first got here, they slept in lockers in a bus station — a sight gag, sure (and one that seems quaint in post-9/11 New York), but the friend’s cramped couch I slept on in Park Slope when I first got here was close enough.
Sure, I was just a kid (a wee 3 years old) when the movie came out, but growing up in the claustrophobic suburbs of coastal New Jersey, even the silly tales of puppet frogs and bears throwing themselves into the thick of New York City was enough to light a spark in me to get the hell out of there and into something bigger.
And the movie turned out to be a rudimentary blueprint on how to do it.
The plot is a simple New York story, except, you know, with Muppets.
After a successful run at college, the gang takes their “Manhattan Melodies” song-and-dance variety show to the big city to try to get a big break on Broadway.
Like lots of millennials applying for internships or entry-level office gigs in 2014 New York, they’re told “NO” as doors are slammed in their faces.
That’s just what the above song, “You Can’t Take No for an Answer,” is about: finding the one open door in a city full of locked and barred ones.
Disheartened, most of the gang eventually gives up, moving across the country to take various gigs, as seen in the above clip.
But Kermit, ever loyal, ever true, the indomitable spirit of will in felt-puppet form, won’t let it die. So he stays behind, takes a job at a greasy diner and keeps the home fires of his gang’s collective dreams lit.
It’s fiction — irreverent, oft-brilliant fiction. But it contains the real truth of living in New York.
After finally moving to Brooklyn at age 27, I saw scores of people come and go: friends who got overwhelmed by the rush of the city and slinked back off to their home states, full of shame and out of cash, or wannabe writers/artists/circus clowns/what-have-yous who just didn’t have the gene for the urban hustle, couldn’t grab onto the reins of New York as it was whooshing by, and were left forever on the sidelines.
Here’s the secret to New York you learn when working your way up through the ranks of crap jobs and rejections: The city rewards hustle, whatever form your hustle takes. In New York, everyone gets a chance to try.
There is always a crappy venue that will let your band play, a gallery that will hang your paintings, a blog that will publish your think pieces, an open-mike night that will give you a chance to work out a standup routine.
The city is forever a mildly curious casting director, standing in the wings saying, “OK, let’s see what you got.” After that, it’s up to you to show up and make something with the chance.
And that is what happens to Kermit in the movie: he works every Broadway angle — word of mouth campaigns, networking, sneaking into Sardi’s — until a young, unknown producer decides to give the gang a shot (the producer himself trying to “make it” in the city by signing a big new show).
Kermit is the hero because he kept his head down, put his shoulder into the dream and pushed it along while slinging greasy grub, as the other Muppets decamped for easier jobs (Rowlf takes a job at a kennel in Delaware, and Scooter works at a movie theater in Ohio, those most-un-New York of places).
And, unlike the trope of the annoying trust funder moving to Brooklyn to chase their artistic dreams, none of the Muppets take money from their parents. (By the way, do the Muppets have parents?)
In New York in 1984, both in Muppet life and actual modern city life, nothing comes without hard work.
So when I finally moved here six years ago, I did the same: kept plugging away at a nonideal job (yes, I still know all about the crackers at Trader Joe’s) until writing gigs started to click.
In the finale of the movie, the Muppets’ dream is finally realized in a hit show on Broadway. And it includes this sweet song about reuniting, all made possible by Kermit, the one member of the group who never gave up on New York.