Ep 32 - Jim Lewis

Jim Lewis Show Notes

On this episode, The Barretta Brothers welcome Emmy Award-winning writer/producer, Jim Lewis to discuss his decades of work with The Muppets, The Jim Henson Company, and much more.

 

ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Jim Lewis

JIM LEWIS is an Emmy Award-winning writer/producer, who has been writing for frogs, pigs and other Muppets since 1985, where he worked with the late Jim Henson.  

At The Jim Henson Company and later at The Walt Disney Company, Jim Lewis has written for, produced, consulted on and otherwise aided and abetted Muppet ventures in television and movies (e.g. Muppets Tonight!, A Very Merry Muppet Christmas) , theme parks (e.g. MuppetVision 3D, Great Moments In History…But Mostly America), as well as consumer products, live performances (e.g. The Muppets Take The Hollywood Bowl, The Muppets The O2) and media appearances, public relations and marketing. He has ghostwritten books for Kermit the Frog (“Look Before You Leap”), Miss Piggy (“The Diva Code”) and Pepe the King Prawn (“It’s Hard Out Here For a Shrimp”). He also developed and wrote a Muppet feature script with Frank Oz, “The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever”. He still believes this should be the next Muppet theatrical feature.

In addition to his Muppet work, Jim was also executive producer of the Hallmark Channel series Telling Stories with Tomie dePaola, wrote the theater production G2K R&H: Getting To Know Rodgers & Hammerstein for the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, has penned scripts for VeggieTales, Sid The Science Kid, Barney & Friends, etc, Las Vegas ventriloquist/impressionist Terry Fator, as well as done comedy “punch up” on Disney Executives (which is more fun than you can imagine).

Prior to purveying mirth and myth, Lewis was a newspaper reporter, magazine editor and worked at Lewis & Carey, his family’s New Jersey funeral home.  This explains a lot. Jim lives in Burbank, California with his wife, Judy, and son Danny. His daughter Mary Grace is at UC Berkeley and currently has green hair. No doubt a vestige of her living with a parent who has spent his life writing for a frog.