Jim Henson: The Biography (63 page)

Jim continued editing
Labyrinth
into the winter—often working alongside an editor with the serendipitous name of John Grover—and regularly reviewed rough cuts of the film with George Lucas. In early January 1986, Jim put Digital Productions—the computer animation firm with whom he had discussed the
Starboppers
project—to work on the film’s opening credits, a two-and-a-half-minute sequence featuring a computer-generated white owl soaring over a labyrinth and across the credits. While computer-generated images (CGI) had been used in films before—most notably in 1984’s
The Last Starfighter
, which featured CGI spaceships
(
also produced by Digital Productions)
—Labyrinth
’s opening sequence marked the first time a realistic, real-world animal had been created and animated in the computer. The result, said Jim later, “
was really quite beautiful.”

As he put the finishing touches on
Labyrinth
, Jim checked himself into the Colombe d’Or hotel in France to spend a weekend banging out a proposal for IBM Europe, whose CEO had dangled a tantalizing offer for Jim to come up with a television project he
might do if
“money were no object.” Jim’s response, for a show called
Muppet Voyager
, was typically high-minded. “Television is one of the greatest connectors around,” he wrote. “The world is an immense network of human relationships, and peace and the resolution of conflict can only come through greater awareness of our connections. I think it’s possible to change the world by reinforcing our inter-connectiveness, the spirit of one family of man, to the children of the world.” Building on the objectives of
Fraggle Rock
, Jim envisioned a series centered around an intergalactic documentary film crew, reporting back to their home planet about life on Earth—much as Traveling Matt had reported back to the Fraggle residents on his adventures in “outer space”—while making the point that all life on the planet is connected. The project never got beyond an illustrated proposal, but Jim was serious about ensuring he had a meaningful presence on television—especially since
Fraggle Rock
was coming to an end.

Due to some difficulties with HBO—Jim would never let on exactly what had happened, but there were murmurings that
Fraggle
had been collateral damage in another battle over exclusive content for the network—it had been decided that
Fraggle Rock
would end after ninety-six episodes. While that was four shy of the one hundred usually needed for syndication, cable television was making it increasingly easier to syndicate shows with fewer episodes. However, Jim still wanted
Fraggle
to run for five seasons, which meant stretching the final twenty-six episodes out over two years. So while Jim and the
Fraggle Rock
team would be filming the final episode in Toronto in May 1986, the episode itself wouldn’t air until March 1987—nearly a year later.

In the year since their “Future of Fraggles” meeting, Jerry Juhl and Jocelyn Stevenson had overseen the writing of a final arc of stories that brought some closure to the story of the Fraggles and their relationship with the Gorgs, the Doozers, and even Doc, who, in one of
Fraggle Rock
’s most memorable moments would finally discover the Fraggles. While Jim had initially resisted a final episode, he agreed with producer Larry Mirkin’s assessment of the final story arc: “
Those last four shows are just beautiful.” “
We who were totally involved in the creation of the world through the years, came to feel
so strongly that we wanted a sense of … not ending, but a sense of roundness and finality to the series,” said Juhl. “We tied up the threads.”

And so, Jim had returned to play the minstrel Cantus in the second-to-last episode, dispensing his usual nuggets of cryptic wisdom in a typically calm manner as he helps the Fraggles find their way. While Jim wasn’t directly involved in the final episode, Jerry Juhl’s script seemed to capture much of Jim’s own view of the universe. “Everyone is magic,” the Trash Heap oracle tells Gobo. “The silly creatures are sometimes just too silly to remember that.… You go to him and you say this … 
‘You cannot leave the magic.’
 ” In the end, Doc and Sprocket move to a new home far out in the desert, sadly leaving their beloved workshop and the Fraggles behind—only to discover a new Fraggle hole has magically appeared behind a box in their new home. “
I think we all cried when we watched it,” said Jerry Nelson. As the Fraggles sang and danced in Doc’s new apartment, a final, loving dedication appeared at the end of the closing credits: “
THIS SHOW IS FOR
D
ON
S
AHLIN.
”

Following the taping of the final episode in May, Jim threw a wrap party for the entire
Fraggle
team. “
This whole project has been a joy from the beginning,” he told the crew earnestly. “It’s fun when you start off trying to do something that makes a positive statement … that brings out the best in a lot of people. [
Fraggle Rock
] is something that’s going to stay around and something that all of us are going to be proud of for a long time. And that’s really nice.”
You cannot leave the magic
.

Despite his intentionally arm’s-length engagement with the show,
Fraggle Rock
had been something special for Jim—a higher calling for television as well as an embodiment of his own views of what was right about the world. “
Jim wanted to make a difference,” said Jerry Juhl later. “He knew that television shows do not bring peace to the world, but he wasn’t so cynical to say we can’t think about it. There was a kind of idealism there that could seem naive and childlike, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t come true.”

That idealism—that ridiculous optimism—carried over to
Labyrinth
as well. As Jim made the rounds with the press in the weeks leading up to the film’s June 27, 1986, release, he was brimming with
excited anticipation and was clearly proud of the movie. “
When I go see a film, when I leave the theater, I like a few things,” he explained. “I like to be happier than I was when I went in. I like a film to leave me with an ‘up’ feeling. And I like a picture to have a sense of substance. I like it to be about life, about things that matter to me. And so I think it’s what we’re trying to do with this film, is trying to do a film that would make a difference to you if you saw it.”

At first, it seemed the reviews would bear out Jim’s high expectations and enthusiasm. Nina Darnton of
The New York Times
hailed
Labyrinth
as “
fabulous” and “a remarkable achievement” marred only by what Darnton thought to be a weak performance from Connelly. That, unfortunately, was as good as it was going to get.
Chicago Sun-Times
critic Roger Ebert, always an admirer, tried hard to make lemonade from what he found to be a most bitter lemon. “
[It’s] obviously made with infinite care and pains, and it began with real inspiration [with] impressive production that is often good to look at,” said Ebert sympathetically. “Yet, there’s something missing. It never really comes alive.” Nick Roddick, a critic for
Cinema Papers
, also tried gamely to point out
Labyrinth
’s merits. “
[It] has quite a lot going for it,” wrote Roddick, “but it all somehow fails to gel.… It’s all admirably clever rather than compulsive watching.” Perhaps, the critic gently suggested, Jim’s talents were “not the stuff of adult fantasy.”

More typical, however, were reviews like the one in
Variety
, which took a nearly morbid glee in dashing Jim and the film repeatedly against the rocks. “
A crashing bore,” the reviewer sneered, unimpressed by puppets he found “terminally cute with no real charm” and which “become annoying rather than endearing.” Even Connelly was “stiff and childish.” (Despite early criticism of her
Labyrinth
performance, Connelly would go on to have a very successful acting career; in 2002, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for
A Beautiful Mind
.) Meanwhile, over at the
Chicago Tribune
, critic Gene Siskel was positively cranky. “
Jim Henson knows what he’s doing with his Muppet characters on TV and in the movies,” wrote Siskel. “But he’s completely at sea when he tries to create more mature entertainment.”
Labyrinth
was “quite awful,” its creatures were “visually ugly,” and Jim had stooped to “one of the
sleaziest gimmicks a film can employ” by placing a baby in peril as the center of the plot. All in all, thundered Siskel, the film was “an enormous waste of talent and money.”

While critics were split on what it was about
Labyrinth
that annoyed them the most—was it trying to be a music video? Was it supposed to be scary?—most agreed that the biggest problem was the story. There had been too many hands at work on the screenplay, and it showed; the resulting patch job had turned the movie into a “
series of incidents,” wrote Ebert. “Sarah does this, she does that … until at last nothing much matters.” In the end, “it doesn’t have a story that does justice to the production.”
Variety
sniffed that the story “
loses its way and never comes close to the archetypical myths and fears of great fairy tales.… [It’s a] silly and flat excursion to a land you can’t wait to leave.”

While that was probably all fair criticism, the real problem—as Jim had feared from the beginning—was with the character of Sarah. Despite the best efforts of Phillips and May, Sarah remained an empty, slightly brusque character, whose motivations were suspect and who didn’t seem to have evolved or grown by the end of the film. Jerry Nelson summed up the problem perhaps most succinctly: “
I didn’t give a fuck whether she got her brother back or not. I just didn’t like her at all.… You had to care about her, and you had to care about her getting her brother back. And I just didn’t.” Neither did audiences. After a relatively strong opening weekend,
Labyrinth
began losing money so rapidly that distributor Tri-Star Pictures pulled the film from theaters after three weeks. In the end,
Labyrinth
only grossed $12 million on its $25 million budget—a “
costly bore,” snarked
Variety
.

Jim was devastated by the response. “
I was stunned and dazed for several months trying to figure out what went wrong—where
I
went wrong,” he said later. “
[It] was a real blow,” added Jane Henson. “He couldn’t understand it.” “
I think that was the closest I’ve ever seen him to turning in on himself and getting quite depressed,” said Brian Henson. “It was rather a bad time.”
Arthur Novell, Jim’s publicist, thought the response took a physical toll as well. “
[It was] really despair,” said Novell. “He changed physically … the beard got lighter.… He had great hopes for
Labyrinth
. The buildup
toward it was so heavy and strong and positive, and he got bit by it. He was stung by the criticism. But it was
never
about the money. It wasn’t about … what he lost, what he spent.”

As with
The Dark Crystal
, it had been all about artistic vision and artistic integrity.
Labyrinth
was “
absolutely the closest project to him,” said Jane, the one in which he had invested most of his creative capital—and to have audiences reject it felt to Jim like they were rejecting
him
personally. “
That movie looked exactly the way Jim wanted,” said creative consultant Larry Mirkin. “Everything you see on the screen looks exactly the way Jim imagined it.” But as Oz noted, apart from the grousing of a few perpetually unhappy critics, the problem really wasn’t with Jim’s vision; it was with the storytelling. “
Take a look at
Labyrinth
and forget the story for a moment,” said Oz. “The images you get are abso
-fucking
-lutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. That’s Jim’s production design and that’s what his love was. It was just staggering the work he did. But as a story, it just didn’t hold up.”

“
Life is a kind of labyrinth,” Jim had once mused, “with all its twists and turns, its straight paths and occasional dead ends.” For the moment,
Labyrinth
itself was one of those dead ends—and so, it seemed, were movies. He had wandered down a blind passage into a stone wall—but a bit of offhanded good advice at a party, courtesy of a drunken Jerry Nelson, would help set him back on course again. “
You know,” slurred Nelson, draping an arm warmly around Jim’s shoulders, “you should stick with television.”