Where's The Love For The Muppeteers?

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"Sound Stage 28 at Universal Studios in Burbank, Calif., looks like any other Hollywood set — littered with wires, crew members everywhere. We pick our way through cables and cameras and stuff that would make Oscar the Grouch's trash can look tidy.

But then we head up — up a flight of wooden stairs that leads to the old set of the 1925 Lon Chaney silent film The Phantom of the Opera. It's draped with dusty red-velvet swags, and it looks like it might still harbor a ghost or two.

This is where, for the first Muppet movie since 1999's Muppets in Space, a Hollywood crew has re-created the old Muppet Theatre — which, in the new film, is being threatened with demolition by a tycoon who wants to drill for oil.

We've come on a day when director James Bobin, co-creator of the HBO musical comedy Flight of the Conchords, is shooting a scene in a cramped balcony box overlooking the Muppet Theatre stage.

Below, a few puppets hang limply from various stands as their puppeteers ready themselves for action. Muppet captain Bill Barretta is in charge — checking sightlines, positioning monitors, tweaking costumes.

Barretta also performs: He's the man behind several characters previously enacted by the late Jim Henson, including the Swedish Chef, Rowlf the Dog and Dr. Teeth. He performs some newer characters, too — not least Pepe, the little Spanish-speaking shrimp.

"Not a shrimp, please — he's a king prawn, OK," Barrett objects, in Pepe's voice. "Big difference. Size is what matters, alright."

Barretta says his wife's Spanish aunt was the inspiration for Pepe.

"[She] had this great way of talking to people — she only spoke in statements," he explains. " 'Iz a black shirt, OK. Come on, Beulah, we go to the mall, OK.' That's what she said all the time: 'OK,' at the end of everything."

It happened that during a brainstorming session for a 1996 Muppets TV show, Barretta found himself describing his aunt-in-law.

"She was a little bit selfish in a way, and I said, you know, 'She's very fun but a little shellfish,' by mistake. And one of the writer-directors said, 'Wait a minute, OK, maybe it's a lobster or it's a crab or a shrimp — no wait, it's a king prawn, 'cause maybe he has a problem with size.' "

Sometimes, it takes a village to make a Muppet.

But then, collaboration is a Muppet tradition, according to Barretta.

"That was something Jim created," he says, "and I'm just glad to be part of that process."

Barretta's aunt-in-law, by the way, loved the character. "She said, 'Iz OK, OK.' "