Podcast: Interview with Frank Oz (1986)

Audrey II and Rick Moranis in a scene from Frank Oz's Little Shop Of Horrors (1986)

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts, at CJRT-FM (today Jazz 91.1) in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields.

In 1986, one of those interviews was with director Franz Oz, who was in Toronto promoting his musical comedy Little Shop Of Horrors, a film featuring Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, and a 15-foot-tall talking plant. At the time, he would have been better known for his work with Jim Henson, voicing Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal on The Muppet Show and Cookie Monster, Grover, and Bert on Sesame Street. Little Shop of Horrors was Oz's first feature film that didn't involve Henson.

– Kevin Courrier.

Here is the full interview with Frank Oz as it aired on CJRT-FM in 1986.

Tom Fulton was the host and producer of On the Arts for CJRT-FM in Toronto for 23 years, beginning in 1975. 

Kevin Courrier is a freelance writer/broadcaster, film critic and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams, 33 1/3 Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of The Beatles Utopian Dream). Courrier teaches part-time film courses to seniors through the LIFE Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto and other venues. His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism.