Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (39 page)

Assistant Alex Rockwell remembered one thing of Henson above
all:

[H]is total generosity … a good idea could come from
anywhere … even this guy who I think was the janitor in the building would
come up to him almost every other day and have an idea, and Jim would sit and
actually really listen to the idea and if he liked it he would actually comment
on it and say, “Write it down.”
^[35]

Of course, not everyone’s vision
can
be incorporated
into the Muppets. As we saw with Skred at
SNL
, sometimes Henson needed
to protect his characters. Yet, unlike Disney, Henson seemed to reject
suggestions with gentle tact. Harry Belafonte explained:

If my suggestion was good, he accepted it without
question. If he rejected a suggestion, he would always explain why it wouldn’t
work.
^[36]

Brillstein wrote, “Jim was not the kind to act
stubborn.…If I had a counterargument, he always listened and considered
it fairly.”
^[37]
While Disney seemed to have no problem shutting another artist down, Brillstein
said Henson was careful not to stunt another’s creativity:

When I made a suggestion, if Jim liked it, I knew
right away. Otherwise, he’d give me one of two reactions. “Hmmmm” meant “not
good, not bad.” Silence meant he was thinking it through.…It was hard
for him to say no to anybody.
^[38]

And, unlike Disney, “He could never fire anybody,” Joan Ganz
Cooney said. “Jim feared that he couldn’t face people afterward, so he just
kept them on.”
^[39]
Oz recalled one prop specialist prone to mistakes that Henson didn’t have the
heart to fire. If Henson had been as devoted to his vision as Walt Disney, he
would not have tolerated this frustration, but since the feeling of the Muppets
required a certain “friendly atmosphere,” Henson put his
people
first,
knowing it would help them make better art.

In contrast to Disney’s egotism, Henson took the
time to give his artists credit in all the ways he could. Duncan Kenworthy said
that Frank Oz called Henson “the great appreciator” in that “he appreciated
everything and it extended to not just the performances, but also to any
expertise that anyone had.”
^[40]
In an early interview, he praised Oz as “the one person most responsible for the
wild humor of the Muppets.”
^[41]
One would think Henson would have given himself that award.

Though Walt Disney was an unforgettable
entrepreneur, Henson’s care for others seemed to supersede his perfectionism,
and in that he is decidedly different from Disney. It is possible to attribute
Disney’s egotism and unawareness of others to his tough homesteader upbringing,
his depression-era success, his harrowing job as an ambulance-driver in WWI, or
his missing out on a collegial university experience. Henson attended college
in the post-war boom of the fifties, allowing him a longer maturation process.
Moreover, for Disney to make the world’s first animated feature, his studio had
to grow rapidly to over a thousand people, and this alone seems to require a
tighter sense of control. Yet even if we set aside the exterior factors, Henson
and Disney were simply two different men.

Caitlin Hatakeyama noticed an interesting
difference in the way journalists described the two men’s reasons for making
art. To Disney, animation was “a way of … finding absolute control,”
^[42]
Whereas to Henson, puppetry was “a way of hiding.”
^[43]
Henson said it himself: “I’ve certainly always been a very shy person.”
^[44]
Though Henson’s shyness and reluctance to hurt others might
sound
weak,
especially in business, it is a powerful quality that may in fact be the best
way to manage talented artists, since
self
-control allows a person to hold
back, do no harm, and to listen more than he talks, to truly appreciate and
nurture the talent of
others
.

ALTERNATIVES: LORNE

Since Disney’s management style was more controlling than
Henson’s, perhaps a better comparison is to
Saturday Night Live
producer
Lorne Michaels. On
SNL
, with Michaels’s “not ready for primetime” cast,
perfectionism was thrown out the window in favor of rawer,
human
talent
and collaboration. Surely, Michaels is another of the twentieth century’s great
visionaries and
herders
of artists. It seems he was just as driven as Disney
or Henson. According to Lily Tomlin:

Lorne just believed in what he was doing and nobody
was going to get in his way.…His willpower outlasted everybody else’s. He
cared the most about this show. Everyone else cared more about something else.
^[45]

Michaels was a contemporary of Henson’s and they
shared much of the spirit of the 1970s. Michaels appreciated good work. In
Live
from New York
, the wonderful oral history by Tom Shales and James Miller, Gwyneth
Paltrow called Michaels “a fan of comedy and talent.”
^[46]
Unlike Disney, he gave his comedians the freedom to innovate, experiment, play—often
overly hard, as with John Belushi or Chris Farley. Alec Baldwin noted, “He was
very laissez-faire about the way he conduct[ed] the whole thing.”
^[47]
Though partying can seem “unprofessional,” it is in fact the essence of
collaboration, as
Sesame Street
—a much tamer group—cast member Sonia
Manzano said:

At the beginning, the cast was really close. I mean
we would party together. We would go out all the time. And I’m convinced that
makes great things happen.
^[48]

Like Henson, Michaels often worked all night. An
informal “boss,” Michaels had no problem smoking pot in the office with his
staff.
^[49]
Jerry Nelson said that Henson maybe smoked “a little grass,”
^[50]
and one of his puppeteers, Richard Hunt, brought it to parties.
^[51]
Lorne Michaels was so informal that Will Farrell didn’t even know he’d been
hired.
^[52]
This sounds eerily similar to the stories of Henson hiring Caroll Spinney and
Joseph Bailey, unbeknownst to them. Perhaps most similarly to Henson, Michaels was
described by Steve Martin as patient.
^[53]

Chevy Chase said, “He can’t fire anyone.”
^[54]
Even more Hensonlike, after Dan Aykroyd put his fist though Michaels’s office
wall, Michaels didn’t show anger, only disappointment, albeit through what Al
Franken called a “heavy, heavy sarcasm.”
^[55]

That the two men worked together on the first
year of
SNL
is interesting. Henson said, “I really respect Lorne.”
^[56]
Michaels said, “I have enormous respect for Jim.”
^[57]
Yet the two parted ways in 1975, working two separate shows on two separate
continents and with increasingly different management styles.

NOT LORNE

More than a few of Michaels’s performers thought of him as a
father figure, and this makes artistic sense, because if his comedians felt
childlike, they could better play and convey a sense of fun to the audience. One
of Henson’s builders said he was a “father figure” for her.
^[58]
Yet Michaels seems to be a very
specific
kind of father. Some described him
as “manipulative”
^[59]
or “infantilizing.”
^[60]

“He didn’t compliment us too much,”
^[61]
said one cast member. Of praise, Tina Fey said, “He does not give it out so
easily. And that just makes you want to get praise and approved from him more.”
^[62]
While Michaels appreciated comedy in the abstract, he seldom praised those he
asked to do it. By contrast, Henson seemed to conduct his crew
through
appreciation, as Goelz said:

He was aware of all the disciplines in the studio,
and he would suggest an additional light in the shot, but do so in a very
gentle unassertive way, and pretty soon the lighting guy would start to
realize, hey this guy really knows what he—he appreciates what
I’m
doing
too, and Jim did that with everybody, he was aware of all the jobs in the
studio.
^[63]

If Michaels was the father who made you successful to
finally
earn his respect, Henson was the father who made you successful by treating you
with that respect from the start and making you want to live up to it.

Brillstein said euphemistically of Michaels, “He
is the most articulate guy in the world,”
^[64]
meaning “talkative.” David Cross recalled his first time meeting Michaels, he
sat down in Michaels’s office and was given an impromptu lecture on
“alternative comedy” lasting a half hour.
^[65]
This is very different from the image of Henson listening to a janitor. While Michaels
loved to hear himself
talk
, Henson loved to
listen
. And while Michaels
was stingy with praise, Henson was reluctant to ever give criticism. “He always
used praise,” said Kevin Clash. “He never had to tell us when it wasn’t
working. We knew it.”
^[66]

Puppeteer Fran Brill recalled this as essential:

The whole Muppet thing works best when people are
free and open and feel like nobody will criticize you. And Jim was incredible
like that. He’d expect you to do the best you can, but he also knew where you
came from.
^[67]

Henson was indeed the “great appreciator,” so
much so that he never seemed to stigmatize failure the way the rest of us do.
Dave Goelz called it his “generosity”:

A very common image that I’m sure is burned into all
of us is Jim watching the playback on a monitor of some other people’s
characters, and just
laughing
. He on one hand was intent on refining
every take, every subsequent take, but at the same time, he enjoyed every one
for what was good about it, and we, I remember, most of us couldn’t do that. We
watched playbacks and thought, ughhh, blew that, blew that, gotta get that cue
faster. He was just very delighted to be a part of it all, and he was—next take
was better.
^[68]

Most of us think that we
need
negative feedback to
know what to do better next time. But as Goelz said, Henson himself used
delight
in the positive aspects of his work to make the next one better. He didn’t
need
shame, and he didn’t give it to others. When he met Caroll Spinney for the
first time, Spinney had just bombed on stage at a puppetry festival. Goelz
recalled:

Jim said, “I really loved what you were
trying
to do.” And he was absolutely sincere about it.
^[69]

Henson appreciated Spinney’s performance on the level of
concept, even if the execution was terrible. An artist has his own internal
judge of quality, and it’s not necessary, Henson knew, to point his mistakes out
to him.

This radical abstention from criticism can be
seen as
weak
. Duncan Kenworthy explained:

He would never ever say, and this was actually to a
fault, if he didn’t like something, if he thought something hadn’t been done
well, he would never ever say that, and he’d say, “Hey, I wonder if we just
should
try
…” and somehow he would turn the corner and it would be a
positive. “Let’s try it a different way.” He would never say, “God,
that
doesn’t work.”
^[70]

Henson’s inability to criticize can be described
as a weakness, but maybe, as adults, we are too afraid to let ourselves be
criticized as weak. We are tough on ourselves and tough on others. But perhaps
a better way to improve is to stop criticizing ourselves and simply appreciate
what is good about our work, so that the next take will be better. As an
artist, it is essential to first treat one’s own talent humanely. From there,
it is easier to treat others this same way. Oz said Henson kept a “gentle rein
on us lunatics.”
^[71]
Being
gentle
in business is certainly an uncommon approach, but one that
may suit creative companies the best.

A COMPASSIONATE MANAGEMENT STYLE
CENTER-OUT ORGANIZATION

Remember the four terrible bosses of
The Muppet Musicians
of Bremen
? As Kermit said, “The villains [in the story] are all people. I
hope none of you take that personally.” One is miserly, one fearful, one lazy,
and one angry, and they are all four of them thieves. By contrast, Kermit tells
us, “The heroes of our story are all animals.” The animals are natural
musicians—artists.

These four were the worst bosses an artist could
have. By contrast, Henson was the opposite of each one. He didn’t get angry.
Far from lazy, he worked harder than anyone in his company. He was not fearful,
but legendarily fearless. Instead of miserly, Henson was generous, going over budget
in order to give others the time and space to create. What made Henson’s
business
different
was that it didn’t start out with a traditional organizational
hierarchy—with an orderly chain of command of unbreakable ranks—and as it grew,
Henson Associates remained informal, with inspiration coming from the center,
rather than orders coming from above.

Bad bosses make their work harder for
themselves, because the more greedy, fearful, angry, and lazy you are, the
harder it becomes to compel others to do good work. If you are not productive
as a boss, then it becomes necessary to
trick
your workers into
productivity. On the other hand, by being fearless, hardworking, generous, and
calm, Henson’s attitude easily spread out in a contagious way to those around
him.