picfor1000 | Fic: Disoriented, Demented, and a Little Nuts (Muppets/RPF)

Title: Disoriented, Demented, and a Little Nuts
Author: Amy (alexia@innergeekdom.net)
Fandom: Muppets/Canadian RPF. Um, I'm really sorry, if that helps at all.
Summary: A meta-statement on the culture of fandom and celebrity. With felt.
Notes: I'm not sure who I've decided to blame, but I blame them a LOT.

scrunchy and

pearl_o and

tellitslant and

joran and

lynnmathews are all at least partly to blame, though.
Title from "Cabin Fever", from Muppet Treasure Island.
For

picfor1000; image is here. 1500-word version here.
1,000 words. Duh.

Kermit said they were moving the filming of their latest feature to Canada because it was beautiful to see a foreign country. Important. Life-changing.

Cheaper.

It wasn't so much the location, or the housing, or even the dollars-to-Canadians ratio. It was the actors.

Kermit already knew Ben and Claudia. They'd been on Farscape, and Kermit was good friends with Horace, who had been working there as Rygel. So Ben and Claudia had agreed to help him find a house for everyone, not to mention agreed to brief cameo appearances for free.

Kermit signed autographs for all of Ben's kids, who, he assured him, were big fans, but could he maybe sign Miss Piggy's name instead? Ben ended up getting a picture with Piggy, and said he wasn't sure what his wife would think. And that was fine.

But Kermit hadn't realized that, once you left Hollywood, a group of singing, dancing bears, pigs, frogs, dogs, prawns, and whatevers were not something you'd see every day. In Vancouver, they were celebrities.

Hewlett was first. He approached Kermit in the grocery store.

"Excuse me," he said, and he stuttered a little. "Mr. Frog?"

"Hi-ho," Kermit said politely. "Can I help you?"

"Oh my god, you're actually talking to me! I, I'm Dave. David. David Hewlett."

"Pleased to meet you, Dave-David-David Hewlett. I'm Kermit the Frog."

They shook hand and flipper.

"I am," Dave-David-David said, "your biggest fan."

"It's always nice to meet people who like the show," Kermit said.

"Hey, could you sign this?" he asked, and he held out his wallet, which Kermit could see was a limited edition Muppets one. "To David," he added shyly.

Kermit signed with a flourish.

"You know," David added, "I work on this show that shoots around here. And we all really love your work. I mean, really, it's some of our favorite stuff out there. We can never get enough of how much craft, how much effort..."

"So you're in the business?" Kermit asked.

"Actor. I'm on Stargate Atlantis."

"Oh. I'm sorry, I thought you meant you were on a television show."

"We're on the Sci Fi Channel," David explained.

"Oh. Then I'm really sorry."

In the end, David persuaded him to agree to a cameo in the movie; David swore he'd done loads of independent films, and was a true artist who would brighten any picture he was in. And as long as he was going to let David in, could his friend Paulie come too? Paulie, he swore, was an actor. And a wrestler. And unlike that pussy Joe Flanigan, he wasn't allergic to felt.

Mostly, Kermit agreed to make him go away.

Katee Sackhoff was the next one. Kermit had taken to wearing a trench coat and glasses as a cunning disguise, but the blonde woman still threw her arms around him and squealed his name.

Kermit gulped. "How did you recognize me?" he asked.

"You're two feet tall and green," she said. "We don't get a lot of those in Vancouver."

Kermit decided to save the lecture about racial profiling for later. He signed her jacket, and promised to tug on his ear in the next live show as a sign to say hi to her. He figured by the time it aired, she'd forget, or else she'd notice frogs didn't have ears.

He met David's friend Paulie ("Paul," he insisted with a sheepish grin after Kermit, Fozzie, and Rizzo had signed autographs for him. "Just Paul. Like the Beatle."), as well as Torri, Rachel, and Jason, three days later when they decided to come to the set. "We stopped filming to see you," Rachel informed him. "Everyone wanted to come."

"Except Mitch," Jason said. Jason didn't seem to care much one way or another. He'd had Kermit autograph his bag of Cheetos.

"Except Mitch," Rachel agreed, "because he thinks he's a real actor. And Joe, because he's allergic."

"How can you be allergic to felt?" Torri asked.

"Joe is magic," David said solemnly. Then they all started laughing.

Well, everyone except Jason. He ate more Cheetos.

The whole Atlantis cast shot two scenes that they wrote on the spot. Neither scene actually made sense, but as it was the Muppets, and they were the cast of Stargate Atlantis, no one seemed to notice or mind.

It was like that on set for a while. Kermit was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. Canadian actors would do anything. One day, a Winnebago showed up outside the gates, and after three hours of confusion, Gonzo finally recognized one of them from Last Night, which he said was on his Top 500 Disaster Movies list. The twelve actors who spilled out were from Toronto, they explained, and except for Callum, who had a guest spot on something, they were just there to meet the Muppets.

Kermit signed so many autographs, his flipper grew sore.

The only people who the Muppets met in the months of filming that left them star-struck were Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell, and it turned out that the admiration was mutual. Mary had been a fan since the Muppet Show, and Eddie insisted he'd seen Rowlf in the Purina commercial. Mary signed Gonzo's tape of Independence Day, and Eddie autographed Pepe's DVD of Selena.

They shot a scene with Katee and Jamie. Katee looked at Kermit like she was confused about something. Jamie was British and no one understood him anyway, except for the Swedish Chef, with whom he appeared to form a deep and meaningful bond.

They finished shooting on a Monday, and spent the rest of the week relaxing in Vancouver. When they left, everyone waved goodbye and promised to write (which none of them, except Jason and Janis, actually followed through on) and soon the Muppets were on their way.

Kermit was pretty sure that, if the movie did well, they'd never return to Vancouver again. He loved Hollywood too much.

But it sure was a nice place to have as a spare.