Jim Henson: The Biography (57 page)

“
I thought I had failed miserably and I just couldn’t watch it,” said Kathy Mullen, who had spent six months performing Kira. Over time, however, she came to appreciate what had been accomplished. “What you have here is something that could never have been done before and will never be done again,” she said. “It stands alone as the only all-hand-puppet, all-live-action extravaganza ever made.… Today you’d rely on computers or visual effects to accomplish all that we did. But back then, everything on the screen—
everything
—was handmade.… That makes
The Dark Crystal
a
unique artifact from a unique moment in media history. I think that’s a phenomenal thing.”

Oz, however, thought it was even simpler than that. “
The most impressive thing is that
it was done at all
. It came from Jim’s head and it actually happened. Yeah, it didn’t go over quite the way Jim wanted. But he’s a phoenix,” said Oz, “he rose again.”

Jim with the heroes of 1986’s
Labyrinth. (
photo credit 12.1
)

“W
E HAVE BEEN VERY PLEASED WITH THE RESULTS OF
T
HE
D
ARK
C
RYSTAL
,” wrote Jim in early 1983—and with good reason. Despite Universal’s marked lack of faith and a tepid response from critics,
Dark Crystal
ended up being one of the most successful films distributed by the studio in 1982, eventually grossing over $60 million worldwide in less than a year. Part of its success was likely due to Jim’s active promotion, especially in the foreign market; in the first three months of 1983, Jim traveled to Italy, England, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, and Australia (“
first time,” Jim noted in his journal) to chat about the film.

If Jim had been frustrated by moviegoers who didn’t seem to appreciate the art of
The Dark Crystal
, he found a much more receptive audience among science fiction and fantasy fans who more fully understood just how groundbreaking the film was. In France,
Dark Crystal
was awarded the best film at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, while the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films presented Jim with its prestigious Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film—not bad for a year in which it was competing with heavy hitters like
E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial
and
Blade Runner
. For Jim, the critical acclaim was even more gratifying than the financial success. “[
The Dark Crystal
]
was a huge undertaking—a vision I had,” he wrote, “and one which ultimately has helped to carry our art form to a more sophisticated and technically advanced stage. The most important thing, however, is to love what you’re doing and to go after those visions, no matter where they lead.”

Although his schedule in early 1983 sent him leaping from continent to continent for press junkets for
Dark Crystal
and to Toronto to work intermittently on
Fraggle Rock
, for the first time in more than seven years Jim had neither a weekly series nor a film in production. For all his involvement with
Fraggle
, its day-to-day operation was left largely in the hands of producers Diana Birkenfield and Larry Mirkin. That left him time to do a bit of skiing and dog sledding in Aspen in January, followed by a two-day vacation with family at the recently opened EPCOT theme park at Walt Disney World, a place Jim quickly came to love.

As she watched Jim interact with the cast of
Fraggle Rock
that winter, Diana Birkenfield—who had only recently returned to Henson Associates after seven years away—thought Jim had changed much in the last decade.
The Muppet Show
had made both Jim and his characters internationally famous; wherever he went now, he was recognized—and, indeed, was slightly flabbergasted if he was
not
. While living in London, he flitted from private club to private club, drove to the theater in his low-slung Lotus, hosted loud dinner parties, and joyously flew kites on Hampstead Heath. Those experiences, that lifestyle, had made him more cultivated and—though he might argue otherwise—trendier and hipper.

And he even
looked
hipper. While Jim would always enjoy bright
colors and would continue wearing fashionably cozy and flashy Missoni sweaters, he had lately begun dressing entirely in white, wearing white linen pants and comfortable jackets with no tie, with white canvas shoes. He had even become a “white meat vegetarian,” eating only vegetables with white fish or chicken, and drinking
kir
or white wine. His beard was more tightly trimmed now, shaped closer to his face, and his hair, lightly flecked with gray, was cut shorter, and often swept back, falling just onto his collar and exposing a very visible widow’s peak. He had to wear glasses every now and then, too, sporting chic, rectangular lenses in tortoiseshell frames that shaped his face and made him look studious.

There were some who grumbled that he looked and acted as if he had “gone Hollywood”—an accusation Jerry Juhl thought was inevitable for anyone who happened to make films. “
In this business, there is nothing more compelling, more exciting [than] … feature films,” said Juhl kindly. “There’s something seductive about the process.… I think Jim really felt it. He really loved it. And got caught up in it.” Bernie Brillstein thought it was more about celebrating and enjoying success and fame. “
He loved the good things,” said Brillstein. “And he loved to be in the world of celebrities.”

Yet, when it came to family, Jim remained as grounded as ever. A devoted and diligent son, he had always made an effort to visit his father whenever he could, dropping into Albuquerque on his way to California, and was now traveling regularly to and from Ahoskie, North Carolina, where he was having a house built for his dad and Bobby. But it was the five Henson children who would always be the most important part of his life—he frequently alluded to them as his proudest accomplishment—and Jim would work with some, and travel and vacation with others.

And then there was Jane. Their marriage had grown increasingly fractious over the last decade; further, it had become well known that Jim had dated several women while in London—including some of his own employees—and Jim did little to deny or defend his reputation for a wandering eye. Even in the Muppet workshops, there would always be whispering about which female employee Jim might favor at a given moment, though such conversations rarely erupted into the open. Still, Jim was mindful of Jane’s feelings, doing his best
to do his going out—as Jane still called it—as discreetly as he could. Discussing it with Jane wasn’t his style, and hurt feelings weren’t Jim’s way; instead, he merely compartmentalized his life into two distinct pieces, Work Jim and Home Jim, with one on each side of the Atlantic. “
He wanted my mom to be happy,” said Cheryl, “and he wanted it all to be okay, so he wound up living a London life and a New York life.”

Now, however, with
Dark Crystal
completed and the London workshop idle, Jim’s London life had come to an end. After years in the house in bustling and picturesque Hampstead, it was time to return to the suburbs of Bedford, New York—and to Jane. One afternoon, Jane came home to find Jim looking wistfully at his surroundings and at the life they had built in Bedford. “
I can’t come back here,” he told Jane quietly. In fact, he told her, he had already found himself an apartment on the nineteenth floor of the upscale Sherry-Netherland hotel in Manhattan. “Fine,” said Jane, mistakenly thinking Jim was merely looking for a place in the city where he could stay when he was working, instead of camping in the top-floor suite of One Seventeen as he usually did. Over omelets the next morning, Jane asked Jim how they would decorate the new apartment. “I thought we were sort of still doing things together, like we did in the house in London,” said Jane. But Jim just shook his head. “This time,” he said softly, “I’m doing it by myself.”

Refusing Jane’s help with the decorating was an indication of the state of their marriage—and was likely as confrontational as Jim was ever going to get about it. “It was the first time that had ever happened,” said Jane. “It felt very poignant.” Yet, Jim
still
wasn’t ready to ask for a divorce. “Jim wanted to be separated
and
married,” Jane said. “He wanted to do both. He didn’t really
not
want to be married.” The truth was, Jim loved the idea of family. “He could have asked for a divorce at any time, but he didn’t, and neither did I,” said Jane. “He held the family together. He liked to come home to a house and kids and pets.”

After much discussion, however, Jim and Jane agreed to legally separate—a “
handshake of a separation,” Jane would call it—something that would permit Jim to “
have an above-board independent life,” said Lisa Henson, allowing him to openly have other
relationships, without the associated guilt he always felt. Typically, Jim favored keeping the proceedings as quiet as possible, asking Al Gottesman and Karen Barnes—two of Henson Associates’ most trusted and discreet attorneys—to represent him and Jane in the negotiations. It was an ill-advised jumbling of private and professional affairs, tangling company business in Jim and Jane’s private disagreement—and things “
escalated quickly,” remarked Jane, with the most contentious point being Jane’s rightful share in Henson Associates. It was “
painful and inevitable,” recalled Lisa, and the finalized agreement would separate Jane not only from Jim, but from the company she had helped him found and build more than two decades ago.

The formal separation would remain in place for the rest of Jim’s life—and the stack of legal papers would eventually tower to nearly a foot high, with an eye toward divvying up the company and permanently dissolving their marriage. Heather Henson, then twelve, remembered being “really upset” and burst into tears when she learned her parents were separating and heading toward divorce. “There was a part of me that wanted them to stay married, even though all this hoo-hah was going on,” said Heather later. For now, Jim and Jane would officially separate, and Jane and Heather would remain in the house in Bedford while Jim moved out of the suburbs and into his Fifth Avenue apartment in the sky. As if modeling himself on the UrSkeks in
The Dark Crystal
, he was at last merging his two separate selves—Work Jim and Home Jim—into a single Jim Henson.

A
s the weather warmed, Jim had two major projects under way. The first was another Muppet-related movie—at the moment titled simply
Muppet Movie III
—that he was planning to put before the cameras in late spring. Jim had decided to serve as a producer of the film, along with David Lazer, but had placed the directing duties squarely in the hands of Frank Oz. “
I was looking at the year ahead and I thought my own life was going to be very busy,” said Jim, “and I thought maybe this is a time to have Frank try directing one of these.… He went into shock first, then said he wanted a couple of days to think about it.” Oz didn’t need long to tell Jim yes. “
I had
learned a lot about directing by co-directing with Jim on
The Dark Crystal
, and I think he just felt at this point he could trust me not to fuck it up,” said Oz. “I think by producing it with Dave, Jim could be a part of it and still do other things he wanted to do.”

What Jim really wanted to do was his
other
project—another sprawling, ambitious collaboration with Brian Froud, based on an idea the two of them had cooked up in a limo as they left a lackluster showing of
The Dark Crystal
in San Francisco. As the limo pulled away from the theater, Jim and Froud stared at each other in stunned silence. Then Jim started giggling. “
The next one will be
so much better
!” laughed Jim, and excitedly began describing several Eastern and Indian folktales he had heard from Lisa, who was studying mythology at Harvard. Jim pictured colorful gods soaring across the sky—but Froud was quiet; that sort of folklore, he told Jim, wasn’t really his forte; he much preferred goblin stories. Jim brightened. “Great!” he said—but explained that he didn’t want to repeat what he thought had been
The Dark Crystal
’s most fatal flaw. “
This time,” he told Froud, “I want
people
in the film.”