Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (18 page)

Hijack
commercials and commercialism. Use
it to create ads for you. For your continued creativity. For you to get to keep
making art.

It is no easy task to be a part of the commercial world and
yet be above it. Plenty of our finest creative talents have entered the
advertising business and been swallowed up, exploited, burnt out. The key for
those of us who would follow in Henson’s footsteps is not simply how to
enter
business. It is how to conceptually rethink the relationship between ourselves,
our group of likeminded people, and those outside that group.

The world of advertising, for example, is a
group. Henson was able to permeate the boundary of that group while not
becoming trapped. What artists of today need, then, is not a push to the dark
side—as it were—but a re-imagining of the nature of that boundary.

Advertising was just one extension of Henson’s
work, and we can wonder how he was able to work for hire even while it was “not
really easy on a creative person.”
^[1]
The answer is that he had a very uncommon attitude toward this group. Henson
didn’t assimilate to advertising culture, or to network executive culture. He
didn’t want to destroy them, but he didn’t want to join them, either.

He wanted
them
to join
him
.

This is one of the big conceptual shifts an
artist must make in order to achieve Henson-like success, and it requires a
change in the relative size of what we would think of as our territory. Your
world is limitless. If you don’t see eye to eye with someone, invite them into
your
world.

THE REAL JIM HENSON
WHICH ONE WAS HE?

Henson demonstrated an ability to glide between modes, like
business and art, with ease—to put on a pitchman hat and then a replace it with
his groovy beaded headband. In his
Sell, Sell, Sell
film, his character
Leo says archly, “I won’t apologize for this great democratic free enterprise
system of America. We’re here to make an honest dollar!”
^[2]
Yet, in the
Youth ’68
documentary, Henson uses a very different quote
from Reverend Coffin: “If we don’t learn to be meek, nobody is going to inherit
the earth.”
^[3]
There is always a resonant
honesty
in Henson’s voice, even in a
character we
know
is lying, such as his ironic narration in the Wilson’s
Meats spoofs—and even when his various characters contradict themselves. It can
lead us to wonder, who was the
real
Jim Henson?

Henson’s 1980s assistant Alex Rockwell
remembered Henson switching back and forth:

He’d be doing Kermit the Frog, come off stage and I’d
fire some random deal-making question at him that our business guy needed the
answer to and he would respond to that and then he’d go back and do Kermit
brilliantly.
^[4]

Henson could glide between roles, but notably, when he was
an artist, he seemed to be
all
artist. When Henson made a deal, he
surely had to consider how it would affect the art. Yet when he performed a
character, I don’t think a deal—money—was allowed into his mind.
Muppets
Take Manhattan
actress Juliana Donald remembered:

Henson was crazy busy with a number of other projects.… We were shooting the jogging scene in Central Park and there were a few
camera problems which caused a delay. Before Jim’s assistant could whisk him
away to the awaiting car a little boy walked up, his mouth agape at the sight
of Kermit the Frog. The little boy started talking to Kermit, totally oblivious
to Jim’s arm coming out one side, wide eyed to the wonder of the moment. It was
so memorable to me because time just stopped; Jim started interacting with the
little boy oblivious to all the commotion around him. Before long other kids
walked up and soon Jim was entertaining an entire group of kids. It was a
wonderfully magical moment where you experience someone’s true joy with their
work.”
^[5]

This idea that “time just stopped” would feel
familiar to artists who often lose track of time when they work. In truth, they
lose track of much more than time—they often forget hunger, cleanliness, money,
and other worldly preoccupations while “in the zone,” the saying goes, or in
what Hyde might call the “protected gift-sphere where the work is created.”
^[6]

The scene in Central Park might lead us to
believe that Henson’s “true” self was a children’s performer. Though he could
certainly put on that hat, it was just another extension of Henson’s career—not
the real core of him. In fact, even though
Sesame Street
made Henson
famous beyond belief, he reportedly called up the show’s co-creator, Joan Ganz
Cooney, and told her, “You have ruined my life. Why did you have to be so
successful? I am now living my worst nightmare.”
^[7]

Though
Sesame Street
jump-started
Henson’s career, he was now pigeonholed as a children’s entertainer. Henson did
not want to be stuck working for just
one
group of people. Just as his
true calling was not commercials, neither was it educational TV.  Henson wanted
to entertain
everyone
.

Jim Henson clearly understood how to talk to
different audiences, whether it was a group of kids in the park or a group of
IBM salesmen in Nassau. He spoke each’s language. For the businessmen, he spoke
business-ese. The pitch reel for
The Muppet Show
explained to CBS executives
that the show’s great ratings were going to make everyone rich. Henson’s
character promised it would be

[a] show that will be loved and adored by every Nielson
home in the country. Small children will love the cute, cuddly characters.
Young people will love the fresh and innovative comedy. College kids and
intellectual eggheads will love the underlying symbolism of everything. Freaky,
longhaired, dirty, cynical hippies will love our freaky, longhaired, dirty,
cynical Muppets. Because that’s what show business is all about!
^[8]

Was Henson “on the side” of the CBS executives
who wanted Nielson ratings or “on the side of” the longhaired, dirty, cynical
hippies? Like a double-agent movie, do we know where Henson’s loyalties really
lay? The answer requires us to do away with this concept of being on one side. Henson
said in 1979 that the Muppets “transcend all age groups. Their satiric comment
on society seems to delight all ages.”
^[9]
Henson’s satire—like the gentle mockery of Don Quixote—parodied everyone. He
didn’t just parody the businessmen for the artists or the artists for the
businessmen. He parodied all of us for all of us.

Henson wasn’t lying to the executives when he
said he wanted his new show to be a hit across all demographics. He truly wanted
the ratings that they wanted, but for a different reason. In
Street Gang
,
Michael Davis explains that Henson and
Sesame Street
director Jon Stone
had a very specific idea about entertainment, one that many of us today do not:

Because Henson and Stone were children of radio’s
golden age, in adulthood they sought ways to provide contemporary families with
a reason to sit around and be entertained, just as many once had in front of a
full-throated Philco floor model.
^[10]

This calls to mind that image of Henson’s whole family
gathered together at his grandmother’s house: “fifteen or twenty people would
be there … my family, sitting around the dinner table, making each other
laugh.”
^[11]
Was Henson’s a family of storytellers because they listened to the radio, or
did they listen to the radio because they were a family of storytellers?
Whichever the case, this image of a whole family gathered in one place—grandparents,
adults, children, laughing at the same thing—seems to be at the core of
Henson’s artistic mission. He didn’t want to entertain only the men, only the
housewives, only the children. Henson’s happy memories of his whole family
coming together as a child and laughing—it seemed to give him hope that
differences can be overcome. Even serious cultural conflicts.

Fraggle Rock
doesn’t seem like a place
for war, but in the episode entitled “Fraggle Wars,” Mokey is kidnapped by a
group of stranger-Fraggles. The World’s Oldest Fraggle then tries to convince
his people to hate them: “They’re not the same as you and me. Their kind just
lives for cruelty. They never laugh. They never even smile.”

It is clearly a Cold War satire with McCarthyism
overtones, since Mokey is forced to repeat, “My name is Mokey Fraggle. I am not
now nor have I ever been a member of the enemy Fraggles.” With a little
laughter, Red Fraggle and Beige—one of the enemy Fraggles—diffuse the conflict:
the other Fraggles think that the funniest thing about throwing a pie in
someone’s face is getting to clean it all up. While they have different senses
of humor, they
both
think pie-facing is good fun. Red and Beige count to
three and pie-face their leaders, which causes everyone to laugh at the same
time. When both armies devolve into laughter, the war ends.

This seemed to be Henson’s great wish for the
world. Like Edgar Bergen on the radio making dad and son laugh at the same
time, Henson believed that puppetry could help the world overcome cultural
conflicts.
Fraggle Rock
was designed, in fact, to be shown in many
countries all over the world. Henson’s shows, he hoped, could be that pie in
the face.

In recalling the origins of the show, creative
consultants Jocelyn Stevenson and Duncan Kenworthy explained that a business
advisor had pitched to Henson the idea of an international kids’ show, a
business idea:

Jocelyn Stevenson:
Jim took that and sort of
thinking, okay international co-production for children, that means we can
reach a lot of children around the world …  Hmm, why don’t we do a series
that will help stop war?

Duncan Kenworthy:
And we all I think separately had this
same reaction where we all like laughed at him, because it was like how are you
going to make a children’s series to stop war in the world, it’s such a—on the
face of it—impossible, enormous, grandiose sort of idea. But …

Stevenson:
That’s how he was.

Kenworthy:
That was how he was.
^[12]

Most of us would feel foolish for thinking we
could stop war in the world. And most of us wouldn’t even try. But Henson
thought differently, as he always seemed to. Part of this difference was that
he wasn’t deluded by the thinking of any particular group of people. He didn’t
think about groups in the way that we do. A pie in the face reminds us not to
take anything or anyone too seriously.

Henson’s experience led him to think this way. His
work in puppetry opened doors and helped him transcend his country and class. There
is a picture of Henson shaking hands with Vice President Nixon when he won a
local TV award at age twenty-two.
^[13]
On one visit to the Nixon White House, Caroll Spinney “ran to the top of the
stairs and slid all the way down the banister.”
^[14]
Through puppetry, Henson performed for Queen Elizabeth II,
^[15]
for First Lady Rosalynn Carter at the White House,
^[16]
and had the honor of screening
The Labyrinth
for Princess Diana.
^[17]
The laughter that his characters inspired was able to break down barriers, proving
that even queens, presidents, and all other manner of Pooh-bahs are just
people
,
and their humanity is evident when they share a moment in laughter.

It wasn’t as crazy as it sounds for Henson to think
laughter could stop war, because in his experience, time and time again, laughter
brought unlike people together. In 1976, Henson performed on Japanese TV in
Kyoto. His producer was worried the humor in his script wouldn’t work. But,
Falk writes:

Much of what was scripted was physical, slapstick
comedy—and it turned out to work well for Japanese audiences. When they watched
the playback, the Japanese crew practically fell out of their chairs laughing.
Sensing an opportunity to rib his producer, Jim snapped some pictures to show
her in New York.
^[18]

Shared laughter breaks through barriers of
language, culture, and prejudice. Puppetry can do the same. Like math and
music, puppetry is a universal language. Art scholar John Bell wrote that
puppetry is “the material world in performance.”
^[19]
Puppets, he explains, can “articulate essential elements of modern life.”
^[20]
We learn about ourselves through puppetry. Puppetry—like the pie in the face—has
historically has been used for political activism, Bell explains, as with the Bread
and Puppet activist movement of the 1960s and the Little Theater Movement of
the 1920s. Going back further than that, puppetry seems to have a strong effect
on people of all cultures. At the funeral for ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, Henson
said:

It’s interesting to note that there have been puppets
as long as we have had records of mankind. Some of the early puppets were used
by witch doctors—or for religious purposes. In any case, puppets have often
been connected with magic.
^[21]

I do not think Henson is naïve to call puppetry
“magic,” because if something has a ceremonial role in bringing people
together, and we don’t really know how it works, and it’s of demonstrated value
to a group of people, “magic” seems like an appropriate label for such a thing.

We might look back on Henson’s work as frivolous kids’
stuff, and yet, to some extent, his work carried out a kind of international
diplomacy whose effects have never really been measured. In his essay “Muppets
and Money,” Andrew Leal points out: