Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (34 page)

Not only was it Henson’s job to pitch to the public, but to the
company’s salesmen as well. Falk describes Henson’s visit to the Ideal Toys
sales team:

After a bit of shtick, they introduced Kermit, and
they practiced some sales techniques together, skewering Ideal with jokes about
rival Mattel. Finally, the toy versions of Kermit came out and made their
pitch. They were a hit. In an appreciative letter, the Director of Sales
Promotion Bill Reese wrote Jim, “Not only were you entertaining, you created an
attitude and environment for our friends, The Muppets, that is bound to
influence every single salesman who was a witness to the show. They now have ‘a
feel’ of the characters and the merchandise, which should send them on their
way well motivated towards successful selling.”
^[22]

This only furthers the idea that there is
no
good
time to stop pitching. Even when Ideal Toys had salesmen to do Henson’s job
for
him
, Henson still needed to prime those salesmen to understand his ethos.
But with such a wide range of projects Henson was involved in, we are starting
to see a
split
—a growing apart of ads and art. Because on the one hand
we have something quite commercial, toy licensing; and on the other, we have
his experimental film,
Time Piece
.

Time Piece
went on to garner an Oscar
nomination, and yet, just because it was artistic, abstractly symbolic, and
without a clear “message,” does not mean Henson was freed from pitching. Even
when he became an auteur and “authored” an art house film, Henson had to
hustle. Falk writes:

When Jim completed production on his short
film Time Piece in early 1965, he … invited his
friends and colleagues to a private screening on May 6th at the Museum of
Modern Art. He sent prints of the film to potential distributors, underwriters,
and clients. Copies went to the U.S. Steel Corporation’s Applied Research
Laboratory … [who] offered to show it at the Industrial Audio-Visual
Association meeting in Boston.…Through the William Morris Agency, he
sent a print to Eastman Kodak.…Jim submitted the film to festivals in
Germany and Italy where it got much recognition.
^[23]

For noncommercial works of art,
distribution
makes
all the difference, and often, indie artists have to do the distribution themselves.
When you look at the work Henson did sending his film out, it starts to become
clear that when you are promoting your art, it’s no longer a con. At least it
doesn’t feel that way. When you’ve put so much of your time, effort, and
passion into something, it is hard
not
to feel like proselytizing.

And yet, in this 1960s period, Henson promoted
both this art film
and
kiddie toys. This period of experimentation
seemed to create a split—on the one hand Henson Associates made the documentary
Youth ’68
, juxtaposing quotes from the founding fathers and revolutionary
rockers of the youth culture; on the other, they made commercials for products like
Wheels, Flutes and Crowns—Bugle-like snacks that weren’t exactly nutritious.
^[24]
Brillstein wrote, “It was as if the guy had two careers: one public and
successful, the other personal and noncommercial. They fed each other.”
^[25]

It is my hypothesis that this period allowed
Henson a crucial realization: it is easier to pitch something that is
both
commercial and good than it is to pitch either alone. From all this unfocused
dart-throwing, we see that neither the film project nor the toy brand led to
anything long-lasting. Henson didn’t continue to make art-house films, and he
likewise stopped making commercials. But Henson’s longest-running project to
date marked the end of this period, when he found something truly worth
pitching—PBS’s great experiment,
Sesame Street
.

3)
Sesame Street
1969-1975 |
Bull’s-eye: Pitch
to find a home, then pitch to fly the coop

Although Henson was always working on multiple ideas at
once, the
Sesame Street
era brought stability to his company. The
network PBS gave his characters a home that allowed them to grow and allowed the
public to grow fond of them. Part of the beauty of
Sesame Street
was
that it was perfect for Henson—it combined both his commercial, persuasive
skills and his philanthropic, artistic skills. Henson was able to harness his Convincing
John powers in service of a good cause: to sell kids on reading. So, when it
came time to pitch
this
project, Henson was all in.

It is strange to think of anyone needing to “pitch”
Sesame Street
, and yet that is precisely what happened. First, CTW
needed to win over the press. So Henson and director Jon Stone made a “sales
film” for a press conference. Though it was clearly an educational show, in the
film, a Muppet boardroom spit-balled titles like a commercial network would,
coming up with the “Itty-Bitty, Farm and City, Witty-Ditty, Nitty-Gritty, Dog
and Kitty, Pretty Little Kiddie Show” or simply “Hey, Stupid!”
^[26]
Even when the show aired, it needed to win over parents and teachers—the
guardians who could control whether children watched or not. NBC aired a
“preview” called “This Way to Sesame Street” meant to bring parents on board.
^[27]
Sesame Street
was a new idea, and its premise—using commercial
techniques to lure kids into learning—could have backfired. It is in great part
due to Henson’s pitching prowess that
Sesame Street
won the country’s
hearts.

Yet a moment of stability, like every other
period of time, is not a good time to stop pitching. When
Sesame Street
made Henson a household name, he felt that it had “ruined [his] life” by
barring his career from ever taking an adult route. Since he’d never wanted to
relegate himself to the role of children’s entertainer, in this era, Henson
pitched all the harder, this time to escape the pigeonhole he’d found himself
in.

He continued to pitch work for adults like the
existentialist anti-drama
The Cube
, and a pilot for
The Wizard of Id.
^[28]
And now, as a reaction to the squeaky-clean Sesame stigma, Henson ramped up his
adult content. He cheekily titled a pilot for ABC
Sex and Violence
. Brillstein
got him a spot on the first season of the edgy night show
Saturday Night
Live
with a race of puppet aliens with very
adult
marital issues.
Sample sketches were called “Scred and Peuta’s Affair” and “Scred’s Sex
Device.”
^[29]
These projects seemed almost designed to question Henson’s kids-only image.
What strikes me in examining this period is that Henson was driven to pitch
more in this period in order to
avoid
something. His characters already
had a home on TV, but it wasn’t his
own
show—on
Sesame Street
, he
had to answer to curriculum specialists. It wasn’t quite the Muppet series
Henson had been dreaming of.

And yet, in order for Henson to get to the place
he wanted—a show for adults
and
children—he had to achieve media
momentum, and since the only exposure the networks wanted to give him was
predominantly light “family” fare, that is much of what he pitched.

He aired an hour-long special called
The
Great Santa Claus Switch
on
The
Ed Sullivan Show
in this
period, in 1970 after seven years of pitching. It was closer to his own show,
and yet the holiday theme seemed something the market wanted, not something the
artist wanted. When you watch the skits on
The Ed Sullivan Show
, Sullivan
seems most delighted when he can say the puppets are “for the kiddies.” When he
says they are for adults, he seems uncomfortable. Falk explains how Henson
pitched
The Great Santa Claus Switch
:

In order to sell the idea to television executives,
Jim created watercolor illustrations to accompany a written proposal.
^[30]

For someone who did not want to be known as a children’s
entertainer, it seems incongruous to work
that
hard—painting watercolors—for
a special that was clearly for “the kiddies.” Yet here we see Henson’s long
patience embodied, and we also see something else: an uncommon kind of pitchman.

Typically, we may think of a pitch as a bit of
fast-talking, the forked tongue of a televangelist or a snake-oil–selling
carpetbagger. Yet for the kind of pitching artists do, we ought to replace that
image with one of a man sitting down to paint a watercolor—careful, meticulous
artistic creation. Since the “pitch” was for someone to fund Henson doing more
painting and puppetry, it seems less like a con and more like something any of
us can do. The only difference between painting and pitching in this case was
that the watercolor was
purposed
towards a future artwork. The art
promised more art. In that, it was a pitch. When used strategically, art can
be
a pitch.

Perhaps the holiday specials made sense to
Henson, since they were to be aired at a time when the whole family was apt to
watch TV together. David Lazer said in
Of Muppets and Men
:

Our pitch for presenting the Muppets case to the networks
was that this was a family show, a show that would appeal to all age groups.
The network didn’t feel that it was possible for us to reach both children and
adults.
^[31]

At Christmas, families were supposed to spend time together,
so parents were forced to watch with children, and perhaps Henson thought this
exposure—even if it seemed like moving backward—could help him get to his
dream. Falk writes of a shift in focus:

Around 1968, … Jim started to seriously pitch his
idea for a regular variety show hosted by the Muppets. Building on ideas from
his guest appearances on
The Ed Sullivan Show
,
The Tonight
Show
and the like, Jim created numerous proposals illustrating his
concepts which he circulated to the networks, producers, and via his agent Bernie
Brillstein. There seemed to be little interest in a full scale series, so Jim
switched gears and started trying to sell Muppet variety specials themed around
holidays.
^[32]

Henson made compromises in order to be on television. His shows
from this period included
The
Muppets Valentine Show
with Mia
Farrow and an Afterschool Special called
Out to Lunch
. In these
instances, Henson seemed to be giving the networks what they
said
they
wanted—tame kiddie fare—but also gave them what he
knew
was better—anarchic
adult glee. In the Valentine’s Day special, we learned that some people can
love objects like a mop and women love mice with motorcycles. There is innuendo
that delivers a shock today, forty years later. In Henson’s Afterschool Special,
he explained, when the network goes “Out to Lunch,” “all these wild people
break into the studio and take over. It’s really a parody of commercial
television.”
^[33]
Henson pitched and made these shows because the perfect is the enemy of the
good. A gooey Valentine’s Day special became a stone on his path to what he
did
want. Yet it didn’t happen right away—it took a few more pitches.

When ABC ultimately passed on
The Muppet Show
,
according to Falk, Henson was “undeterred” and “continued to try to sell the
show and Jim continued writing up ideas.”
^[34]
In 1975, he made a Muppet Show pitch reel for CBS in which a Muppet who looks
just like Leo from
Sell, Sell, Sell
makes an over-the-top plea for
Henson to get his show:

In conclusion I would like to point out that it is
time for a revolutionary new look in primetime variety television.…And
what is this fusion of creative juices called?
The Muppet Show
! A show
that will be loved and adored by every Neilson family 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 is what
show business is all about! Yes, and when this show hits, the careers of the
men who made the decision to put this show on the air will skyrocket.…Friends, the United States of America
needs
The Muppet Show
! And
you should buy this show! Now, we’re not pulling any punches here, I mean
there’s nothing subtle about this pitch! So buy the show, and put it on the
air, and we’ll all be famous. The Muppets will be famous, and CBS will be
famous because we’ll have a hit show on our hands, and we’ll all get temperamental
and hard to work with, but you won’t care, because we’ll all make a lot of
money!

This pitch also failed. And yet now we are caught up to the
moment when ITC’s Abe Mandell “just so happened” to see
Sex and Violence
on TV and wanted to give Henson a syndicated show. Far from a
deus ex
machina
,
The Muppet Show
had been pitched seriously for about six
years before the angel funder came along. And even then, it had to be pitched—to
him.

Falk writes, “Jim was ready with his presentation
film.”
^[35]
Physically, Brillstein said, it was he who “flew to New York with my
twelve-minute Muppet presentation. I took a car to his house in Scarsdale.…Mandel wore an eye patch. His den floor was flooded.” This does not seem like
a simple sell. Just as ABC had done, ITC wanted to evaluate a pilot, so Mandell
offered Brillstein a hundred thousand dollars to make a pilot. “You don’t have
to spend a hundred thousand,” Brillstein told him. “I have the pilot in my
pocket.”
^[36]