Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (38 page)

To hear Henson’s “employees” speak of him as their “fearless
leader,” it can sometimes seem over-the-top exultant. Longtime Muppets writer
Jerry Juhl often spoke of “the joys that Jim gave us”
^[1]
when recounting his time on
Fraggle Rock
and other projects. It’s a bit
hard to believe if you only hear about it—maybe they’re all acting or
brainwashed—but when you see Frank Oz tear up during a CNN interview at the
loss of his friend and mentor, it dispels all cynicism.
^[2]

We intuitively know that Henson was a “good
boss.” But how should we define a “good boss,” and better yet, how can we
become one? Brian Henson has said of his father:

He taught me to identify a person’s talent, nurture
that talent, and encourage them to look to themselves for a solution.
^[3]

A good boss, like a good teacher, empowers his employees. This,
though, is too easy to
say
and very hard to actually
do
. Maybe I
could do it once or twice, but every day for thirty years? Most of us have egos
that get in the way, worrying we will be thought of as too soft, slow, or
indecisive. According to one article, Henson’s wife, Jane, “once said that Jim
is so patient she sometimes wants to kick him.”
^[4]
Jim Henson had what was indeed a very
rare
management style—one of
radical kindness, a compassion so strong it seems to most of us like a violent
denial of one’s own ego.

In our era of interconnected gadgets, we tend to
exalt the self-made men of Silicon Valley, hard-headed—and antisocial—entrepreneurs
like Steve Jobs, because they cut through the traditional business model and
invented their own way of doing business. Yet biographers paint Jobs as
egotistical to the point that it
hurt
others. According to David Price,
“He made a habit of informing Atari engineers that they were moronic and their
designs were lousy.”
^[5]
Price continues:

While many at Apple admired Jobs’s vision and
perfectionism, he had an obnoxious side that antagonized employees up and down
the ranks. Jef Raskin, originator of the Macintosh project, made an
eleven-point list of the reasons Jobs was impossible to work with and later
resigned from the company. (Item 3: “Does not give credit where due.” Item 4: “Often
reacts
ad hominem
.” Item 10: “Often irresponsible and inconsiderate.”)
^[6]

Steve Jobs’s beautiful products have enticed many of us try
to think more like Jobs in our own careers. WWSJD? What would Steve Jobs do? However,
insulting arrogance is not
necessary
for a successful career in art or
innovation.

Jim Henson’s career also changed the world as we
know it—and with
Sesame Street
shown round the world, probably more than
we know. It’s easy to spot Apple’s influence in the physical world, but
Henson’s lessons are so imbedded in our psyches we don’t even notice them.
Generation X and Millennials can credit Henson with much of their idealism. And
as we might expect from these generations of lovers and dreamers, Henson’s
management style was radically kind, radically gentle, and unlike Jobs, it bore
a causal link to the kind of success an artist truly
wants
. In
Of
Muppets and Men
, Henson says:

The kind of comedy we do depends on being able to
work in a certain atmosphere—it’s something we work consciously to create.…If we didn’t manage to maintain a friendly atmosphere, we’d be in deep
trouble.
^[7]

It is easy for CEOs to
say
that they want to foster creativity,
but it takes a radical approach to actually create that kind of environment. To
foster collaboration, Steve Jobs designed the Pixar building to have only two
bathrooms—both in the front lobby,
forcing
people to interact more and
combine their ideas. Yet this is superficial and dictatorial, and it seems
designed to ensure bladder discomfort. The real way to create innovation and
collaboration is by setting an example—starting with oneself. Jerry Juhl has
called Henson’s spirit “infectious”:

One of the images that I think we all have of Jim
that we’ve seen repeatedly is Jim standing in the studio with his hand in the
air and a puppet and he’s laughing uncontrollably. Everything has come to a
complete stop, and that kind of infectious enthusiasm kind of spread through
all casts and crews, and Jim balanced that with a desire to do the work as well
as possible. So you were working at the top of your form, but you were also
having as much fun as possible, and I think that was very infectious.
^[8]

Henson’s leadership is noteworthy. Dave Goelz remarked
recently, “We had a [
Fraggle Rock
] reunion last year, and many past
employees came. Over and over we heard them say it was the best job they ever
had.”
^[9]
Those employees have had over twenty years since Henson’s death in which to
experience the alternatives.

Martin Baker, one of Henson’s producers said, “You
can’t replace someone like that—he was [a] true one off—you don’t replace
them.”
^[10]
As uncommon as Henson was as a leader, I hope this isn’t true. I hope his
management style can be replicated. Let us imagine for a minute that
anyone
can manage talent like Henson. What might that look like? First, let us
distinguish Henson’s approach from those who resemble him most.

ALTERNATIVES: WALT

Comparisons between Walt Disney and Henson are ubiquitous,
and for good reason—it is almost uncanny how these two visionaries line up.
Starting from the ground up, each created a successful business by making
quality popular art that would last for generations. As artists, they had much
in common.

Disney had a knack for seeing
character
—in
animals and people. Animators Thomas and Johnston recalled:

Walt … would get up at the story meetings, enter
his trance, and suddenly transform himself uninhibitedly into … an old
hunting dog. “Y’know this old guy would come snuffin’ along like a vacuum
cleaner, his muzzle spread all over the ground,” Walt would say as he recalled
a dog from his childhood in Marceline and turned himself into that dog.…He
would imitate the expressions of the dog, and look from one side to the other,
and raise first one brow and then the other as he tried to figure things out.
^[11]

It is eerily similarly to hear Henson speak of a family
hound:

He was so expressive. I would watch this dog for
hours. Just in the area of the dog’s eyes and eyebrows, you could read an
enormous world of emotion going by.
^[12]

Both men owned their own companies yet were capable of
getting into the mind of a goofy mutt. By studying the subtle expressions that
give a character emotion and depth, each could transform this awareness into
lifelike characters.

When it came to managing their companies, both recognized
the importance of a “relaxed” environment for artists. Gabler compared the mood
of Disney Studios in the 1930s to the “jocularity and informality” of a college
campus:

“[M]aybe an Ivy League campus,” said one employee.…[O]ne new artist wrote friends, “If this is not a crazy house, then I don’t
know what is.”
^[13]

And it seems that this excited
feeling
somehow made
it into Disney’s pictures themselves. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper said of
Disney’s studio, “The whole atmosphere is conducive to the light-heartedness
and gayety that you find in Disney’s pictures.”
^[14]
There were often “sophomoric pranks” at the Hyperion studio, such as Ward
Kimball coming to work dressed in a gorilla outfit. The humor and fraternity of
the place calls to mind the cottage of the seven dwarfs on a scale of hundreds.

Similarly, pranks were common in Henson’s
workshops and studios, often perpetrated by Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire. A
mouse on a string terrorized Caroly Wilcox’s puppet shop. Lew Grade’s limo was
mooned on the highway by a bus filled with Muppeteers and crew.
^[15]

Jerry Nelson paints the right image of
“playfulness,” describing a recording session for an underwater number:

I wish there was footage of us trying to gargle and
then sing. We all tried it, even Jim. We were all cracking up at each other. It
was hilarious.
^[16]

 Jerry Juhl described the world of the Muppets as one of
“affectionate anarchy.”
^[17]

And both Henson and Disney nurtured their talented
artists. Disney drove his animators to night classes at the Chouinard Art
Institute, and then hired the teacher, Donald Graham, to set up the “great
Disney Art School,” teaching figurative drawing, “the effect of gravity on
mass, and how flesh and muscle move.”
^[18]

Henson likewise nurtured homegrown talent, as he
explained to Judy Harris:

The whole process of learning our style and becoming
good at it takes nearly a year, I would say, at least.…[W]henever we’re
in production, we try to have a couple of people working with us on a—not
exactly apprenticed—but the new people learning.…[Y]ou just
have to do it a lot until it gets natural and totally without thinking.
^[19]

And both have been called perfectionists or, to
be more flattering,
adherents to
quality
.

Gabler writes:

Walt said to me, “Mickey wouldn’t think this way,”
said storyman Leo Salkin.
^[20]

Henson said something similar to
SNL
writer Alan
Zweibel:

Jim Henson’s reading the pages, and he gets to a line
and he says, “Oh, Skred wouldn’t say this.”
^[21]

This kind of loyalty to the characters can seem crazy, but in
many ways, being a visionary means protecting your vision. Mickey and Kermit
would not be “characters” had Disney and Henson not
known
them—who they
were and weren’t.

Both men became workaholics to get the kind of
quality they wanted. Behind each Muppet and Disney film lay hours of rehearsal,
screen tests, and outtakes. Henson once spent 233 takes trying to get a drum to
roll out a door to his liking, trying to match the practice try.
^[22]
David Lazer said he had “a whim of steel.”
^[23]
Similarly, Disney was detail-oriented, observable in the way he fine-tuned
every detail of
Snow White
: slightly lowering a dwarf’s fanny or
removing two of a hummingbird’s six pick-ups.
^[24]
Yet Disney’s attention to quality could become the kind of micromanagement that
most artists find damaging to their talent. Both men asked for great quality
from their artists, yet, on closer inspection, Henson and Disney could not
appear more different.

NOT WALT

Disney had a vision that was not just strong, but unilateral
and absolute. Gabler writes that, “for all the talk of collaboration, no one at
the studio doubted that the job was less to exhibit his own talent than to
realize on screen what Walt was visualizing in his head.”
^[25]
“He could be brutal,”
^[26]
said one animator, in his criticism. We have seen this perfectionism in action:
“God help you,” a writer warned, if you took his idea in the wrong direction.
Disney’s eyebrow would shoot up and he would tell the writer he simply didn’t
“get it.”
^[27]
Disney’s iconic raised eyebrow signifies his strong will—something we admire
him for today—but you did not want to be on the wrong side of that eyebrow.

And, unlike Henson, “Walt thought nothing of
firing someone who he felt had outlived his usefulness, calling it ‘weeding out
marginal people’ or getting rid of ‘deadwood.’”
^[28]
From the earliest days, Ub Iwerks remembered Disney spending his lunch breaks
not socializing, but practicing his signature. Some of the animators felt hurt
when their names were left off the credits, and Disney’s were so clearly
stamped over the whole picture. But when someone suggested giving internal awards
to boost morale, he said, “If there’s going to be any awards made, I’m going to
get them.”
^[29]

This attitude was part of what led roughly 700
of Disney’s animators to strike in 1941. One animator said, “He was a genius at
using someone else’s genius.” Picket signs read, “1 Genius Against 1,200 Guinea
Pigs,” and “Walt Disney and the 700 Dwarfs.”
^[30]
By contrast, Henson’s employees never went on strike, except in nationwide
movements, such as when Juhl participated in a national writers’ strike. England
in the seventies was a time of many union strikes, and this occasionally
affected
The Muppet Show
. Yet when, during the production of
The Muppet
Show
, England’s power company workers went on strike, they “put out a news
release stating that they would not cut the power anywhere while
The Muppet
Show
was being broadcast.” According to Joseph Bailey, they wanted to keep
the public on their side.
^[31]

Unlike Disney, Henson happily listened to others
and incorporated their visions into his own.

Christopher Finch writes that he
was “generous in that he is always open to suggestion”:
^[32]

Henson is a good listener and if someone has an idea
that is better than his own, he accepts it without hesitation. It is because of
this that the others listen to him and accept direction without feeling
resentment.
^[33]

Caroll Spinney adds:

One of the wonderful aspects of Jim’s genius was his
openness to new ideas from the people around him.…Jim used several of my
suggestions, like having a child sit with one of the puppets in an unscripted
bit, talking about letters or numbers.
^[34]