Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (21 page)

Even though you’ve been
greedy and vicious, you are still a man with a heart and soul.… I don't
think you’re a bad man, Doc. But if you look in your heart, you’ll find you
really want to let me and my friends go.
^[55]

Henson once said, “I try hard not to judge anyone.”
^[56]
This is interesting from a man whose puppets could be incredibly satirical. But
the kind of parody Henson gave people who were different from him was the kind
of mirror that does not lie, but offers a chance to join “us.”

Henson himself said:

Even the most worldly of our characters is innocent.
Our villains are innocent, really. And it’s that innocence that I think is the
connection to the audience.
^[57]

In 1986, Jim Henson was asked what his underlying message
was. “It’s basically just a sort of positive approach: taking the attitude that
life is good and people are good.”
^[58]

It is my belief that the successful people in
this world who, like Henson, achieve universality, are almost always those who
truly
want
to—who want to talk to everybody and bring everyone together.
Their staggering reach can give them great wealth and power, but in some truly
beautiful cases, it’s done “for the right reasons.”

And who knows, the next great universal voice
could be yours.

Henson was able to reach diverse groups of people so
effectively because he himself refused to be categorized by any one group. As a
result, he had a very enigmatic personality. Let us look at some of the
boundaries Henson transcended.

Between Hippies and Squares:

Of
Youth ’68
, Karen Falk writes:

The show attempted not to editorialize but to
demonstrate the juxtaposition of different value systems within the context of
a changing world. Because Jim was young but also professionally established, he
felt like he was a part of both generations. By contrasting the different
viewpoints and attitudes of each age, Jim created a portrait of society as a
whole.
^[59]

One viewer called it “the best TV show I have ever seen.”
^[60]
Another letter to the network read: “Youth 68!?! Where on earth did they get
those awful creeps? From old hippie pad? What is their contribution to this
country other than peddling marijuana?”
^[61]
Henson kept the negative letter. Someone else might have thrown it away as an
unnecessary voice. I don’t think Henson thought such a thing existed.

Between America and the World:

Henson was born in Mississippi, but he traveled
often beyond the United States, and lived in London for many years.
The
Muppet Show
, at the time the most watched show on earth
was
“broadcast in over 100 countries to over 250 million children and adults.”
^[62]
Tellingly, a 1984 article reported that “the [
Muppet Show
] characters
most popular in the United States are the most popular everywhere.”
^[63]
Every nation, it seems, fell in love with the singular Miss Piggy. Henson’s
global view is evident in his public service announcement that suggested we
imagine everyone on earth living in “One house.” In it, Kermit adds, “We do!”

Between Positivism and Realism:

David Odell wrote of Henson, “He was wildly
enthusiastic and tended to ignore obstacles.… [A]t
the same time he was very practical and realistic and able to laugh at his
excessive flights of fancy.”
^[64]
Although Henson was very idealistic and positive about humanity, he was very
aware of how the world
actually
worked. Henson’s realism is what allowed
him to
market
his idealism, leaving the world a little better than he
found it.

Between Violence and Pacifism:

Henson said in a 1986 interview, “I am certainly
quite strongly against violence on television. It is near criminal what the
networks are doing.”
^[65]
Yet, at the same time, his own early commercials featured a revolver pointed at
a Muppet and fired. His Creature Shop even made the turtle suits for
Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles
. Brian Henson said:

Turtles was pushing the edge of what my father
thought we should be doing because it was violent. He was always worried that
it was glamorizing violence for kids, but Steve Barron convinced him that the
violence was very cartoonlike.
^[66]

It is a narrow line between cartoon violence and being
mistaken for condoning violence. Henson drew a line in the sand, and yet, when
given the right reasons, he crossed that line. Eschewing absolutes in favor of
his own judgment, it is possible that nothing was considered truly “off limits.”

Between High and Low:

Jim Henson promised in
The
Muppet Show
pitch reel his work would appeal to both “eggheads” and families, and like Mark
Twain, he always seemed to combine the common with the intellectual. This was
also part of the beauty of
Sesame Street
’s workshops.

Throughout the show, there was a balance between
the practical knowledge of the director and puppeteers and the book-smarts of
the curriculum specialists, Rhodes scholars, and child psychologists. As
Sesame
Street
research director Dr. Lewis Bernstein described:

We bring in the experts to allow the writer to soak
in expertise. We in Research bring in people to provide the information, and
then the artistry of the writer takes over, as they integrate what they’ve
heard.
^[67]

If we picture Jim Henson and Maurice Sendak doodling in the
back of the classroom at the
Sesame Street
teach-ins in Cambridge 1968,
we have the right idea. A mix of high and low culture is what made
Sesame
Street
a classic.

Between Rich and Poor:

Caroll Spinney wrote, “[Jim Henson] told me that
as a kid he’d wanted something of the good life. Like me, he wanted things that
he saw but couldn’t have, and he decided that one day he’d get them.… He
loved tuxedo nights and limousines, and it was thrilling to be included in an
evening with Jim.”
^[68]

Yet, Henson’s business manager, David Lazer,
recalled that he found the moon’s reflection to be more enchanting than the
stars of Cannes:

The evening ended with a party on a private yacht
loaded with stars and movers and shakers. We left the yacht at one o’clock in
the morning and walked along the dock. Even the moon seemed to do a shimmer
dance on the water just for Jim. He was mesmerized by the beauty, the serenity,
and the nurturing power of Nature. None of the glitz of Cannes or all the
accolades he received had this effect on him.
^[69]

Lazer noted:

His values were not materialistic. Even though he
liked to dress up and eat in nice places, he was one with the universe. He
could look at a sunset and it would feed him. It was as if someone else got a
million-dollar check.
^[70]

Yet, Henson enjoyed sports cars like a Jaguar XJ6 and a BMW.
According to Spinney, “Jim would walk across the set, and Richard would say out
loud in front of me, ‘Here comes that rich bastard millionaire.’”
^[71]
Hunt was joking, but Henson
was
a millionaire. Still, Henson seemed to enjoy
sharing his wealth and threw lavish parties yearly for everyone in his company.
Spinney wrote, “Jim never scrimped when he entertained, and there was caviar
and hors d’oeuvres and lots of champagne.”
^[72]

Between Business and Art:

Let us come back to the topic that started this
book. Caroll Spinney wrote, “Business suits were not for Jim. He’d wear “cool”
clothes, peasant shirts and one-of-a-kind items he’d find in his travels.”
^[73]
Yet when it was good for the art, he’d dress up. In one interview, the reporter
said that except for his “wearing an understated club tie speckled with
Kermits,” he “could pass for a stockbroker.”
^[74]
In
The Muppets Take Manhattan
, Kermit dresses up like an agent in order
to trick a Broadway bigwig into producing his show, saying it’s “Boffo, Lenny!
Socko, Lenny! … Let’s do lunch.”
^[75]
Later, he thinks he’s an advertising executive and comes up with a brilliant
slogan for soap: “It gets you clean.”

Yet, it is important to remind ourselves here
that as much as Henson permeated the boundaries between business and art, the
driving force of his life was art. He called himself a “purist,”
^[76]
described puppetry as his “palette,”
^[77]
waxed, “performance is where the humanity is, where the relationship is,”
^[78]
and described how difficult it was to make Big Bird look “gorgeous”
^[79]
on TV sets. A 1990 interviewer said of Henson, “
If I spoke business with him, he was friendly but
matter-of-fact. On the subject of puppets, his voice lit up, with Kermit’s
looping tones detectable somewhere beneath the enthusiasm.”
^[80]

In the TV special
The Muppets Celebrate Jim
Henson
, made just after Henson’s death, Rizzo finds Henson’s name written
on a paycheck and Gonzo says: “That must mean he was … an accountant!”
^[81]
Yet accountants are often the butt of jokes in the Muppet world—in
Dog City
,
they say being the child of accountants is worse than being an orphan. Harvard
Business Scholar Clayton Christensen, the author of
The Innovator’s Dilemma
,
has said, “God doesn’t employ accountants or statisticians. God doesn’t aggregate.
God doesn’t count.”
^[82]
Meaning that, when you decide how to
live your life
, numbers shouldn’t
really come into it. And that includes money. In
The Gift
, Hyde warns that
“[w]ealth ceases to move freely when all things are counted and priced.”
^[83]

THE ONLY BOUNDARY YOU NEED
CANNOT BE TORN DOWN

As we saw in the filming of
The Muppets Take Manhattan
,
Henson could become Kermit, arrange a business deal, and go back to being Kermit.
But if a child walked up to him in Central Park, he would lose himself completely
in the performance, for the joy of it. He was a businessman and an artist, and
he proves that these roles can coexist in one person.

But there are two things that could have
destroyed Henson’s art if he had not maintained
some
boundary between art
and money. The first would have been if had truly forgotten art when he came
off the stage with Kermit on his hand to answer deal-making questions—if he had
lost himself in business. The second would be if he had been considering deals and
dollar signs when he was performing for the little boy in the park. The
boundary between art and business
should
be uneven. When you pass into
business, the boundary should be porous, but when you are in the gift-sphere,
the boundary should be thick as a wall. The strength of this wall is what
allows you to do what Henson did—invite the outside in.

 How much of a boundary do you need? Just enough
so that they don’t convince you to join
them
. Enough so that you’re on
the inside wherever you go. When you find yourself walking into a business, do
you find yourself feeling like you’re on someone else’s turf? Or do you feel
that you bring your own turf with you?

Jim Henson liked to transcend barriers between
groups and invite
everyone
in. So how will you invite them in? Start by
noticing the uniqueness of your enemies. Who don’t you see eye to eye with?
Critics, corporations, squares, hippies? Who are they exactly, and what do they
want? Study these people, and look for ways in which they are really not all
that different from you.

Show them there is a way out—show them, with
your art, that the line is permeable. Make them laugh. Puppet them. Spend some
time really studying them and do an impression. “Boffo, Lenny, Socko, Lenny.”
Speak the way they do, but turn it into a song—“Money, money, money, money,
money.” Whatever your art, your calling, you can integrate a bit of parody into
it. How might you think of parody as a gift? Dale Carnegie once said that the
most beautiful word to any speaker of English is his own name.

When you understand your outside, give them a
gift, but what kind of gift? Something you like or something they like? How
might you translate your goals and gifts into their language? In my writing
career I have learned to code-switch between my aim—sharing my ideas around the
world—and the things that matter to publishers: the numbers. Pageviews, Twitter
followers, and community members mean profits for the business side of writing,
and luckily for me, I want those things, because to me, it means I get to engage
readers to discuss things that matter to me. How do you code-switch in your
art? In what ways do you actually see eye to eye with the accountants? If you
want to explore this idea further, then share what you think on my website,
ElizabethHydeStevens.com
. Who are the “enemy Fraggles” in your life?

Never forget that you’re more than any one
group. You’re more than your country, your church, or your family. Even though
we all stick to our little cults, try to see yourself from the outside and to
speak from that wisdom. If you truly
want
to include everyone, I think
you can. You’re a human being, and all human beings start out as artists. If
you’ve chosen a life of art, well then, that’s the only boundary you can’t
transcend.

If you are always an artist, and you experience
the abundance of the artistic gift, you are always on your own home turf. When
you truly feel this way, when your ego is expansive enough, they’ll all line up
to join
you
.