T: Do you remember knocking Tony Daniels over?

TP: I remember the day I had to knock Anthony Daniels over with the Left Arm, which was a potentialy dangerous move (for him!) If I remember rightly, for the shot (after some rehearsal) he just wore the top part of the suit so that he had his legs free to stumble back safely (and I guess people caught him out of shot). Oh, for a diary of the period...

T: Do you feel that the puppet world is going to fade away due to computer animation?

TP: I don’t think live performance will ever be entirely replaced. You can listen to your favourite band on CD as often as you like, but a lot of people still want to go see them do it for real. Similarly, low-budget filmmakers may still go on using that approach – unless, and until, the CGI software becomes really cheap and universal.

With my background in puppetry and live performance and theatre and circus, I KNOW the different impact of the live "feel." On TV we have seen Olympic gymnasts doing impossible things, but that isn’t the same as watching an old clown doing a pratfall off a trampette right in front of you (I was doing that only five years ago). People still go "OOF!" in a live show when you appear to hurt yourself…and then laugh when you merely look puzzled about what just happened.

T: What was the biggest mistake you ever saw happen on a film set?

TP: Well it depends if you are talking about bloopers or just serious mistakes. On Dark Crystal, when we were shooting outside there was a giant crane for the safety wires on the stilt guys in the Landstriders. One tea-break someone decided to move a large vehicle with it, not realizing that it had a long extension on the arm, and was only set to carry the weight of a person. Yup, they broke the arm of the crane, no one was hurt but the crane driver was sent home in shock (he’d seen the cable whipping back towards him - alone in his cab 150 feet in the air) and everyone went awful quiet for a bit, thinking about what might have happened.

T: Have you ever turned down an offer to work on a film or show and then later thought to yourself, "Well, that was a bad move."

TP: Not really, rather the opposite. I am very proud of all my films. I am really glad that I didn’t compete with Tim Rose to go do Howard the Duck, although I was envious at the time. Now I am glad I didn’t win the "Golden Turkey."

I auditioned for Return to Oz for Brian Henson and thought I was on the short list. I even was told to come to Elstree Studios "Monday morning" and walked along the familiar route humming to myself and mentally signing on the dotted line and spending the money. When I walked towards to the office, Waldo Roeg came out and walked down the corridor towards me looking dismayed, with his hands out helpless saying, "Sorry, Toby, I don't know what to say..."

I was so upset, but wanted to be cool, so I replied, "I think you just said it," and turned on my heel, went home to tell my partner, holding back the tears. Showbiz can be rough. I have no idea what had happened over that weekend to change their minds – and whose friend got the job, etc. So when it got bad reviews I was, shall we say, secretly pleased.

T: Out of all the films you worked on, which one left you most satisfied? Which was the most fun?

TP: That’s a difficult one, because it was almost all fun for seven years. I guess I have to pick The Dark Crystal, as it was my first. I was involved for nearly a year, and worked on all aspects of the film. There was little hanging around on that set, as we were drawn into all sorts of little supporting roles whenever we weren’t shooting our main characters.

T: Did you ever see George Lucas on the sets of Dark Crystal or Labyrinth?

TP: I remember him turning up on The Dark Crystal. Jim’s original conception was going to be a "difficult" film with creatures talking in strange tongues, etc. It was George’s influence, I suspect, which made it more accessible. Think of that "Many, many years ago…" opening narration.

T: What exactly did you do on Roger Rabbit? Tell me about that experience as a whole. It must have been quite exciting.

TP: Dave Barclay called me back from the top of a mountain in Spain, with yet another "state-of-the-art" job. He was the chief puppeteer, and put together a great puppet team of six versatile people whose job was to improvise solutions on the set. The SFX department had time and budget to work on effects. What we did was to dive in and find simple but effective methods of getting the shot. This is not the same as making a consistent method for live shows: get it in the can, and move on. Sometimes I would be above the set, manipulating live objects on "invisible" strings; sometimes hidden under a box, wobbling it when Roger jumped on; or in the ceiling (revolving a fan) when Roger was playing on it.

At one point Geoff Felix and I spent an afternoon with the second unit under a toilet! Roger came through the window, fell in, came up with a gun, then grabbed the toilet chain to pull himself up, and flushed himself away! Geoff had the gun on a wire, I had to spin and pull the chain with an invisible string. It’s been cut very short in the movie, but we spent hours down there, getting soaked. The crew gave us a round of applause at the end of that day!

Other days the puppeteers would be all together. The octopus barman is on screen for a split second, but all his props are real, and operated by marionette strings. Not having a reputation to lose (with string puppets) I was the first to try pouring real liquid from a bottle to a glass, but once I proved it could be done, that job went to the real marionette people. I lit the actress’s cigarette with a lighter (the supporting wires ran up to a battery, so I could both manipulate it AND light it! My mixed background as puppeteer, juggler, acrobat and magician made me the go-for-it member of the team. The others were serious puppeteers – with specialized skills.

T: Is there any particular reason you've stepped away from the mainstream entertainment business?

TP: I didn’t give films up. They gave me up. I don’t have just one theory. Foreign film productions were driven away from using the UK (and its skilful, but cheaper, labour, and slacker union rules) by Mrs. Thatcher not giving tax breaks to film, I gather.

When Jim died I think the Henson Organization regrouped with younger staff. Builders carried on working, but puppeteers are interchangeable, and so, disposable. Perhaps I didn’t hang around London enough, taking the right people to dinner. I kept rushing off with my juggling friends, to other parts of Europe. And I had a couple of personal events, which were a bit distressing, and demoralized me a bit. Stuff happens. I also didn’t want to work on horror movies (where a lot of rubber effects kept on going). I am glad I did basically life-enhancing movies.

T: Do you still talk to anyone from the JEDI shoots? Did you make any new friends there that you're still friendly with today?

TP: We all worked together off and on through until 1987, then there was a big break. When I came online in 1999 I started (slowly) to reconnect. I am working on a Jabba reunion, for instance. I think that would be great. It’s not easy. Dave is busy, and lives in LA. Mike is always working and traveling. I am regularly in contact with John Coppinger, who encouraged me to visit Jedicon in December because he knows I am not a shy puppeteer, but really enjoy talking to people.

T: Tell me in a few words about Jim Henson.

TP: A few words is tough. He gave me a job when I was having a hard time. He chose me to be on his support team for Dark Crystal, so I was close to him for a while (although we didn’t talk much – as he was not only performing, but also directing the movie and running the Henson Organization at the same time). We had to have an almost telepathic contact, and I placed myself entirely in his hands as an apprentice. I loved him, and respected him, and it was a dreadful shock when I heard he had died so young. And my invite to his funeral arrived too late. A great man, a humble genius.

T: Did you work closely with Frank "Yoda" Oz? Did you talk at all about Star Wars and Yoda?

TP: On Dark Crystal I knew Frank, but wasn’t on his team. We never talked about Star Wars. I got to know him a little better on Little Shop of Horrors because he had the wisdom to bring a table-tennis table onto the set for the dull moments of hanging around. So I have played both with him, and against him. He’s a demon at ping-pong.

T: Are you a fan of Star Wars or was Jedi just another job for you?

TP: Well, I don’t want to disappoint people, but I rarely lie. I am quite a bit older than a lot of fans. I had my 36th birthday while working on Jedi, so I was a bit old to have been drawn into the Star Wars universe. When the first film came out, I had been living without a television for seven years, and I worked most evenings as a juggler. I didn’t see a lot of films. To be honest my taste in sci-fi runs towards the comic, or the truly weird. I love Dark Star, for instance, and Galaxy Quest. I read Philip K Dick, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Kurt Vonnegut and those sort of guys. I wasn’t a Dr. Who fan; I was a fan of The Prisoner.

Still, I am well aware of how the Star Wars saga is a great myth. I was always a Joseph Campbell fan and can understand how people get so into it. I just come from the pre-media generation. I used to love film, but the 50's were not a great period for film. We didn’t see many of the great old movies (both silent movies like Keaton or Laurel and Hardy or the film noir stuff from the 40's) until television started showing them. I got my first television when I was about 15, and it was mostly live shows, even then. I grew up on live shows both on stage and television. My dad took me to cartoon shows and sometimes we’d get a short film of one of the great clowns, but most of this stuff I saw as an adult. When I was "clowning," I called it research!

T: How have your convention experiences been going? Are you enjoying all the traveling and meeting fans around the world?

TP: I have only done a couple, but I have had a lot of fun. I know for some actors it has become a way of life, but to me it is just an opportunity to travel and meet people.

I am sure it might be possible to make a bit of money doing it, but I am not in showbiz anymore, so that isn’t really my main motive. After paying for the photos and hotels, etc. it isn’t that profitable at my level, but it’s a free weekend break and a bit of an adventure. I’ve met some really great people.

Let’s face it, we all got bought out of our contracts back in 1982 and haven’t received a penny since, so it’s nice to get a little feedback about how much our work got through to people. That’s very rewarding.

T: What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

TP: I was getting stressed out in Spain once, and this guy said "¡Tranquilo, hombre!" (Take it Easy, Man! Slow Down!) which I always thought was great advice and it sounds even better in Spanish.

But of course, Mr. Bob Dylan sang this to me when I was young and planning to live an outlaw life: "To live outside the law you must be honest..."

Many thanks to Toby Philpott for taking time to conduct this interview for the fans out there. If you want to know more about Toby, check out his website at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/toby.p.

Special thanks goes out to the wonderful site Blue Harvest. Their interview with Toby is located at http://www.blueharvest.net/scoops/toby.shtml.

Check out Mike Edmonds, John Coppinger, and David Barclay as well!

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