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American Prestige

Bonus - The Muppet Christmas Carol w/ Justin Boyd and VJ Boyd (Preview)

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

News, History, Politics

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Subscribe now for the full episode. Use discount code XMAS2025 to get an annual subscription for $45! Danny welcomes writer Justin Boyd and writer/producer VJ Boyd to the show to talk about The Muppet Christmas Carol. They discuss Charles Dickens as a transitional figure in 19th-century literature, Victorian ghost stories and Christmas, Jim Henson’s pre-Disney career and the regional TV ecosystem that produced the Muppets, the film’s melancholy as a post-Henson/post–Richard Hunt work, Michael Caine’s performance and Jonathan Rosenbaum’s critique, anti-capitalist themes vs liberal moral reform, chronos versus kairos in Scrooge’s transformation, and why this adaptation endures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey folks, Derek here to wish a happy holidays to you and yours.

0:03.6

For a limited time, American Prestige is celebrating with a special discount on annual

0:07.7

subscriptions. Get one today for just $45 for your first year. That means you'll get all of our

0:13.2

content, including weekly bonus episodes, specials, and great series like our new Chinese

0:18.1

prestige for 10% off the regular price. Use the code Xmas 2025. That's

0:23.5

XMAS 2025 when you subscribe to unlock the deal. This offer expires on January 2nd, so please

0:30.9

take advantage while you can. And thanks for listening. This was a big deal. Like I was only

0:36.6

five or six at the time. And I remember like Jim Henson died. This was a big deal. I was only five or six at the time.

0:38.2

And I remember, like, Jim Henson died.

0:40.4

You know, it was like a really big deal.

0:42.9

And it was like that and Kirk Cobain were the two big deaths of the 90s that, like,

0:47.8

got wall-to-wall coverage and people had, like, thoughts about it.

0:51.5

And that, you know, brings us to the Muppet Christmas Carol, which was the first Muppet film that was

0:59.0

produced subsequent to Hinson's death. It was also the first one that was produced in cooperation

1:05.0

with Disney. It was also the first one, of course, where Steve Wittmeyer performed as permit, taking over from Jim Hinson,

1:14.5

and he would be a very iconic permit from that point until 2016, I believe, when he stopped.

1:24.3

The Muppet Christmas Carol was a moderate box office success, but as you mentioned before Danny,

1:33.4

like it was up against an incredible roster of films.

1:37.6

And just as a quick aside, I want to read you a list to some of those films just so that you can get really, really depressed about

1:44.7

the date of Denimaux in 2025.

1:47.6

Random December in 1992.

1:50.8

Yeah, this is what it was up against in December of 1992.

...

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