Production
This is one of the very few Muppet productions to feature Muppets associated with all four of the major Muppet franchises: The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and Muppet Babies (who are seen as actual puppets here instead of cartoon counterparts). This special also features an onscreen guest cameo by Jim Henson; he can be seen in the kitchen doing dishes towards the end of the movie. In addition the United Kingdom broadcast marked the first appearance of Doc on British television, as the UK version of Fraggle Rock featured new "Outer Space" segments, in which Sprocket's owner was a lighthouse keeper.
Because of the music rights being secured only for television, recent video releases of the special (at least on NTSC releases in the United States and Canada) leave out two musical numbers and at least four other scenes (see the alternate versions section of the Internet Movie Database link below for details, or an even more extensive list on Muppet Wiki found below as well). The exclusions have little effect on the plot, but many fans miss the material, and several of the edits are noticeably abrupt. However, PAL releases in countries like the United Kingdom and Germany keep almost every scene and musical number intact, mostly because US copyright laws do not apply in those countries.
TV Guide ranked the special number 8 on its 10 Best Family Holiday Specials list.
Read more about this topic: A Muppet Family Christmas
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“... this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)