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There’s never been a time that Jason Segel hasn’t thought was the right one to put on music. To light the lights. To get things started (again) on “The Muppets.” So when it finally happened, he went a little Fozzy.
Segel, a 6-foot-4 Muppet himself, tells The Post of the emotional start to realizing his dream of a new Muppets movie, which opens Tuesday, after laboring on multiple drafts of the movie with co-writer Nicholas Stoller.
“Disney had flown me from New Orleans to do the first table reading,” he remembers. “So we had never heard the script. They surprised me by having all the puppets there. So we were sitting around a table. I had expected it to just be the puppeteers, but they had the puppets with them, and the first line that Kermit said was very simple. It was, ‘Hi-ho, how can I help you?’ And I literally burst into tears at the table reading.”
It was a hard-won “hi-ho.”
At one point before the project was even officially greenlit in 2008, Segel mentioned the movie was happening while making an appearance on “Craig Ferguson” to nudge Disney along in the process. “It was a chess move,” says Segel, 31, best known for starring in “How I Met Your Mother” and, of course, his unforgettable full-frontal turn in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” “I figured, now it’s up to Disney to either make me look dumb, or they’re going to look dumb or neither of us will look dumb.”
The challenge in making the movie for Segel was re-introducing a band of characters whose heyday in the ’70s and ’80s seemed dated to executives, with the paltry $16 million domestic gross of 1999’s “Muppets from Space” as proof. But Segel saw an opportunity in the demise of the franchise. Rather than framing it as “the next in a line of Muppet movies,” he sought to sell it as a “comeback movie.”
Segel, whose comedy-loving mom made him watch “Harold and Maude” when he was only 10 and played all the old Muppets movies and shows for him when he was growing up, knew he needed to introduce the cynicism-free puppets to an entirely new generation of CGI-jaded kids.
After Jim Henson’s death in 1990 at age 53, the puppet troupe lost its leader and ultimately was acquired by Disney from the Jim Henson Company in 2004. But not much was done with the property aside from occasional Web videos and a TV movie in 2005 — until Segel expressed his die-hard puppetry fandom, and had the weight of Judd Apatow-level box office success behind him to make it happen.
Now the PG-rated, $40 million musical comedy is riding on the young grown-up’s love of all things Kermie. (Segel confesses to having a room filled entirely with puppets in his Hollywood home. Co-star Amy Adams warns it will keep him single.)
In the movie, Segel plays hard-core Muppet fan Gary, who, along with his sweet, singing-and-dancing girlfriend Mary (Adams), takes his younger brother, new Muppet character Walter — a big-time follower of stars Miss Piggy and Kermit — to Los Angeles to try to save the original Muppet Theater from being destroyed by a diabolical oil baron (Chris Cooper). Thankfully, saving the day involves, why yes, putting on a show!
Enlisting a slew of cameos by stars ranging from Sarah Silverman to Zach Galifianakis to Neil Patrick Harris to a larger part played by Jack Black, Segel says getting Hollywood’s A-list onboard was easy once the movie picked up steam. Last year, “Flight of the Conchords” co-star Bret McKenzie joined as music supervisor for the movie.
“For young comedians, there’s a love and respect for the Muppets because coming up, they’re sort of your first exposure to comedy, so we didn’t have to make many outgoing calls,” Segel says. Or, as Sarah Silverman told a reporter, “Kermit is my personal Jesus.”
That doesn’t mean everyone’s been wholeheartedly on board. Legendary puppeteer Frank Oz declined to be involved after reading the script, and several veteran Muppets puppeteers have approached the new project with trepidation.
Many who helped found the Muppet franchise are simply cautious, explains Rick Lyon, a friend and co-worker of Henson’s who went on to create the puppets for Tony-winning “Avenue Q.” “There’s a fine line between nostalgic and being dated, but I do feel that in the world of entertainment right now, people have sort of burned out on CGI and things that aren’t real,” he says. “Whatever you want to say about the Muppets, they are real.”
While the movie introduces the new Muppet character Walter, Lyon wishes there were even more new faces. The challenge, he says, is to avoid doing what might appear to be only an imitation of a Muppets movie rather than an actual Muppets movie. “Jim Henson was like this Zen performer,” Lyon recalls of the difficulty of ever reaching his puppetry heights. “He had this incredible warmth to his performance that is nearly impossible to match. And in his prime, Frank Oz was just untouchable. You could see the puppet think. This is a guy who did Yoda.”
Lyon hopes the movie will succeed, and says he imagines Henson would want to see it do well. “Jim was in the middle of trying to secure a deal with Disney to help perpetuate the Muppets when he died. But he was thinking about the characters living on beyond him. It’s definitely something that he wanted.”
For Segel, it is a dream come true. “I think of myself as a footnote in the legacy,” he says. “But the nicest thing was that the Henson family saw the film and said some very nice things. [Jim’s daughter] Lisa Henson called it a ‘love letter to the Muppets.’ ”
As the movie developed, Segel says he and his collaborators were careful to pay close attention to what he calls “Muppet rules.” Meaning, “the Muppets are never mean to anyone,” he explains. “The Muppets don’t lie. The Muppets don’t get laughs at other people’s expense.”
Another big rule was violated in the original script, which imagined Walter as an actual puppet, outside of the Muppet world. “They explained to us that it becomes very confusing for a kid to differentiate a world where Kermit is a frog, but Walter is a puppet. You know what I mean?”
Hence, Walter the Muppet was born.
“Watching Walter was analogue for me,” Segel says. “The way that he interacted with Kermit and the way that he tried to remind them how important the Muppet style of comedy was: That’s what I felt most special about. That we had created a character who didn’t have to be Bart Simpson. He didn’t have to have a sardonic side or a sarcastic side. He was just a very, very pure innocent.”
The Post, through the magic of Muppets speechwriters, was able to interview several of the felt-padded stars of the new movie to get their firsthand take on what it means to be back in the spotlight. It’s no surprise that Kermit had some of the most heartfelt insights.
“I guess it comes down to this,” he tells The Post. “If you have a dream and a bunch of friends who believe in you and your dream, it can come true.
“Also, if you spend enough time with chickens, bears, pigs and frogs, be careful, ’cause you’re going to start acting like one of us.”
mstadtmiller@nypost.com