ON a chance encounter with Walt Disney in the 1960s, the sibling puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft received a valuable lesson. “He said, ‘Always put your name above everything that you create,’ ” Sid Krofft recalled in a recent interview, “ ‘because someday it’ll be worth something.’ ”
Heeding that advice, the Krofft brothers created and became indelibly associated with some of the grooviest Saturday morning children’s television programming of the 1970s, including the colorful hits “H. R. Pufnstuf,” “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters” and “The Bugaloos.” Yet for all the trippy nostalgia the Kroffts have induced, it has been nearly 40 years since one of their shows has been adapted into a film, a drought that ends when “Land of the Lost” (starring Will Ferrell and a bunch of dinosaurs) opens on Friday. Here Sid, 79, and Marty, 72, recount how “Land of the Lost” evolved from small screen to big screen and discuss the plans that they and Hollywood have for four more of their shows. Should a couple more hits be added to their portfolio, Marty Krofft said, it might compensate for the one crucial lesson that Disney didn’t pass along: “He didn’t tell us how to save our money.”
LAND OF THE LOST
The 1974 adventure series about three companions trapped in a prehistoric world (whose working titles included “Lost”) spawned a 1991 remake that ran for two seasons on ABC’s Saturday morning schedule. In the mid-1990s the Kroffts struck a deal with the Walt Disney Company for a film adaptation of the show; two different scripts were prepared by two different writers, but the Kroffts were disappointed with both. “Everybody wanted to do another episode, and that just really didn’t work,” Sid Krofft said. “It needed something special.”
The brothers moved the property to Sony’s family division, which the studio shut down on the day a new “Land of the Lost” script was delivered. Finally they joined up with Mosaic Entertainment Group, the powerhouse management company, whose clients Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell were considered for the lead role. (Mr. Ferrell, a “Land of the Lost” fan since childhood, got the job.) The project landed at Universal, where Mr. Ferrell’s longtime collaborator Adam McKay (the director of “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”) considered directing, as did Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”), before Brad Silberling (“Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”) was signed. The film cost an estimated $100 million, or as Marty Krofft said, “more, probably, than the whole career we did.”
SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS
The 1973 series, about a gentle sea monster (played by the dwarf Billy Barty, in a day-glo green costume with googly eyes) ostracized by his evil relatives, is being developed as a feature for Universal. Dana Gould, the stand-up comedian and longtime writer for “The Simpsons,” is writing a script. The challenge the project faces, the Kroffts said, is finding a role for an A-list actor whose celebrity can help carry the project, as Mr. Ferrell has done for “Land of the Lost.” The principal human lineup of television’s “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters” offered just two boys and their aunt, and, as Marty Krofft said, “There won’t be a star inside of Sigmund unless we find a very short star.”
H. R. PUFNSTUF
The 1969 television series, about a boy (Jack Wild of “Oliver!”) in a magical realm run by a dragon mayor, established the trippy bona fides of the Kroffts, who say they were inspired by the era’s colorful counterculture but never indulged in it. It gave birth to a 1970 feature film whose cast included Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. Sony attempted a big-budget remake around 2001, with Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”) attached to write the script, but dropped the project. (The lesson learned: “Don’t have anybody around who didn’t grow up with the shows,” Marty Krofft said.) The studio is now looking to revive “Pufnstuf,” with Dennis McNicholas (a screenwriter of “Land of the Lost”) writing and Conrad Vernon (“Shrek 2,” “Monsters Vs. Aliens”) directing. The Kroffts hope Johnny Depp plays the villainous sorceress Witchiepoo, though they emphasize that Mr. Depp is not attached to the film.
ELECTRA WOMAN AND THE DYNA GIRL
The gender-bending 1976 gloss on Batman, about a pair of female crime fighters, was revisited for a 2001 WB pilot starring Markie Post (“Night Court”) as a washed-up Electra Woman, whose husband had left her for Dyna Girl. (The cynical approach didn’t get far with the network.) At present there are no feature plans for the property, though the Kroffts would love to see it made into a movie starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, or possibly Diablo Cody, whom Marty Krofft met on the “Land of the Lost” set.
“I said, ‘How do you make a regular living?’ ” he recalled asking Ms. Cody, the writer of “Juno.” “She said, ‘I write screenplays.’ I said: ‘Really? Have you ever gotten any success?’ ”
THE BUGALOOS
The Kroffts’ attempt to grapple with the British music invasion of the 1960s, about a young British pop band whose members were insect-human hybrids who lived in a world of talking plants, had a one-season run in 1970. Jersey Films, the production company then run by Danny DeVito, Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg, started development on a film for Universal in the mid-’90s, but nothing came of it. (“The writer never put pencil to paper,” Marty Krofft said.) Today the Kroffts would like to revive the show for younger viewers, though the project is still in the larval stage. “We’re not sure whether it’s preschool, 6 to 12, or prime time,” Marty Krofft said. “We’re not even there yet.”
Da The New York Times, 31 maggio 2009
