Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (48 page)

Besides the shattering personal loss, Henson Associates was
left rudderless. The company’s logo was Kermit the Frog, and it seemed as
though they needed Kermit in order to keep the company going.

Brian Henson recalled, “It took a while for us
to decide what we were going to do with Kermit, as a family—just the family
involved in that decision of how Kermit would continue and how we would do it.”
^[96]
At the urging of Disney, they filmed a special called “The Muppets Celebrate
Jim Henson” in which death is acknowledged, but Kermit returns in the last
scene, played by Steve Whitmire. According to
The Disney Touch
:

With Henson’s sudden death, the deal which had not
yet been signed fell into uncertainty. Now, Disney executives began trying to
put together a memorial for Henson in the form of a TV special. Long-time
Henson collaborator Frank Oz agreed to direct the Disney special, which would
use the Muppet characters in short film pieces. CBS was interested, as was NBC.
Eisner, who had been out of town at the time of Henson’s death, called to New
York to discuss the project with Henson’s widow. A day into the planning, she
decided against doing the show.
^[97]

There was resistance to the special, in part because, at the
same time, a real memorial was being held in New York on a short five-day
notice at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, according to Henson’s
instructions.
^[98]
At the service, no one
wore black, a big Dixieland band played “When the Saints Go Marching In” and
friends and puppets sang many of Henson’s favorite songs. Big Bird sang a
lilting “Bein’ Green,” and as Davis describes, “Just before Big Bird trudged
off, he looked skyward and said, ‘Thank you, Kermit.’”
^[99]
Big Bird—and many others—assumed that
Kermit
had died.

Author Michael Davis laments an irreplaceable
loss:

It’s very hard for me to watch Ernie and Bert’s “Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” duet in Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. It
makes me so sad, I just couldn’t watch it this year. Because what it always
brings me back to is that it can’t happen again.
^[100]

But the business model of copyright demands that
it happen again. And, today, Ernie and Bert sing together—without Henson or Oz.
It’s very peculiar, since the characters seem so close to the personalities of
these men. Willard Scott went so far as to say, “Jim was not simply the voice
of Kermit. Kermit was the soul of Jim.”
^[101]
Cheryl Henson said,

Kermit is so much my father’s character.… Kermit
is was the first character that my father really allowed to be himself.… I
think Steve does a wonderful job of Kermit, but it’s not quite the same.
Kermit, to me, will always be my father’s Kermit.
^[102]

Puppeteer Terry Angus said of the new Kermit:

It doesn’t have the same authority that Jim’s Kermit had,
but hey, Steve is not Jim, and I am not Jim. We can impersonate Jim, but we
can’t really be him.
^[103]

Keeping the Muppets group together means keeping
Kermit alive, and yet, prior to Henson’s death, no fully developed Muppet character
had ever been transferred to a new puppeteer like this.

Muppets writer Jerry Juhl said:

We would never want a performer to be doing a copycat
imitation, it’s a true acting job in that sense. Since our comedy is
character-based, they can’t be static. They need to be able to grow.… I’m
a strong believer in having the main characters evolve and keeping them fresh
and finding new places to put them. Otherwise, they would just be corporate
icons.
^[104]

Yet Kermit has rather become a corporate icon, for financial
reasons. The 1998 “Mickey Mouse Protection Act,” as it is called, extended
copyright protection to a full seventy years beyond the creator’s death.
Trademark law, by contrast, is valid indefinitely—as long as Mickey represents
Disney, or Kermit represents the Muppets Holding Company—that is, as long as a
company uses a character as a logo. Essentially, forever.

Did Henson really want Kermit to live forever?

The Dark Crystal
contains much of
Henson’s philosophy. The movie’s writer, Dave Odell, called it “spiritual” and
called Henson a “spiritual searcher” who “developed his own ideas that seemed
to combine a little bit of … various philosophies.”
^[105]
In the film, the race of “cruel” Skeksis live in the castle, guarding their
power source—the crystal—and chant, “We will live forever!” On the other hand,
the natural wizards, the gentle Mystics, die in peace. Skeksis fight death and
die in agony. It is not a reach to interpret the message of this film as saying
that it is better to accept death as a part of life than to “cheat death” as
the Skeksis do.

According to
The Washington Post
:

Henson had two objectives when he decided to sell to
Disney. He put the Muppets in a sort of Valhalla, where the Disney experts
could package and promote them for all time. The deal also allowed Henson to
get away from the bureaucracy so he could focus on and fund new productions.
^[106]

Ostensibly, it would appear that putting Kermit
in Valhalla seems to be a motive for Henson. And though the Disney–Henson
merger devolved into “invective-filled”
^[107]
lawsuits in 1990,
Henson’s heirs did eventually decide to sell the Muppet copyrights to Disney in
2004 and used the money from the sale to keep their current projects going.
When asked how they feel about it, the usual answer is: “It’s what my father
wanted.”
^[108]

However, I think it is more fair to say this is
what he wanted in 1990 in a specific context, along with many other things.
More than feeling a powerful need to keep Kermit alive, Henson seems to have
felt a weary responsibility to do so. My guess is that he didn’t know if it was
really
possible
. More importantly,
as an artist
, Henson would
rather have done more interesting things like big fantasy movies and 3-D,
rather than keeping a corporate icon in suspended animation. Henson had spoken
to Whitmire about replacing him as Kermit, but not necessarily after his death.
Brian Henson said, “I think he was starting to feel like, ‘I love the Muppets,
but I have more in me.’”
^[109]
We could imagine
Whitmire as Kermit might free up a still-living Henson to do other things.

It’s possible that his main reason for the
Disney deal was to have the “creative freedom” to
not
have
to
keep Kermit alive—to get someone else, someone who valued that—to take that
burden off his back.

Michael Davis wrote:

Henson had successfully propelled Kermit into an
orbit few characters ever reach. Keeping him there for generations hence would
be a business worry Henson would no longer have to shoulder if he sold to
Disney. Plus, he could still be around for the fun part: providing Kermit’s
voice, movements, and expressions as a paid performer.
^[110]

Unfortunately, Henson didn’t get to be around
for the fun part. And just as Kermit’s future was uncertain, so was the future
of Henson Associates. Henson hadn’t groomed a protégé who could take over
both
the business
and
the creative aspects of the company. Indeed, such a
person would be hard to find. Eventually, Henson’s daughter Lisa—a former
president at Columbia Pictures—became the CEO, and Brian—a
puppeteer/director/producer—became Chairman. The company continues to innovate
and contribute to children’s entertainment, without the Muppets. Like The
Disney Company in the years after Walt’s death, the company has had trouble
finding its financial footing. But while they haven’t hit upon the same success
as Jim Henson, they continue to create new projects like
Bear in the Big
Blue House
,
Sid the Science Kid
, the off-Broadway hit
Stuffed and
Unstrung
, and the creatures in
Where the Wild Things Are
. One gets
the sense that it is in this small company, still family-run, that Kermit’s
energy was meant to live on—perhaps not in the same copyrightable shape, but in
the same spirit of collective creativity.

HOW TO
RETAIN OWNERSHIP

Henson’s role as an artist–entrepreneur gave him great
freedom—artistic freedom—which rested on his copyrights and the shares of stock
he owned in his own company. His rule had been simple: “Own everything.” And it
feels symbolic that the year we lost Jim Henson was the year he broke this
rule. Reading about culture clashes, merger problems, and lawsuits can make an
artist weary of business, but let us go back to that moment when Jim Henson
owned all the shares to his company and all the copyrights. That is how we
would all like to be as artist–entrepreneurs.

It’s tempting to cash out. Many tech start-ups
start
just so that someone big will buy them out. Yet, for an artist, it is harder to
truly cash
out
, because the things you’ve made are not mere impersonal
gadgets or algorithms; they are extensions of your personality. They are more
like our children. Protect your art. Hold onto it. Control its destiny.

Jim Henson chose to sell the Muppets because he
was ready to move on to other things, yet even when you
think
you can
leave your project in someone else’s hands, the giant who wants to buy them may
demand more than you’re willing to give. Like Disney wanting the
Sesame
Street
characters in addition to the Muppets, it is often not enough to
sell
part
of your work—a savvy corporation will want it
all
,
effectively turning you into its servant.

Henson was hopeful to see the goodness in
everyone, and most of his stories end with the villain being reformed, but
that’s not the case in “Happy Girl Meets a Monster.” In this early
Ed Sullivan
sketch, the girl, an optimist, can’t convince the monster, a pessimist, to
see things positively, no matter how hard she tries. He eats her flowers,
shoots her singing bird. With a sneaky look in her eye, the girl says:

You’re so perfectly awful that it’s beautiful. I’m
sure that you’ve tried all your life to be perfectly awful. Working and working
year after year just to be as bad as possible. And now all your toil and
self-sacrifice has made you a success. You set yourself a goal and you have
succeeded. Perfection is a beautiful goal to strive for. You should be
congratulated. Yes, you’re so awful it is truly awful. You’re a perfect example
of beautiful awfulness.
^[111]

As she flatters him, the monster starts to shrink. When he
is small enough, she
flattens
him with a fly swatter, then says to the
camera: “You have to talk your troubles down to a size where you can handle
them.”
^[112]

You can’t change everyone, the skit implies.
Though Henson most often practiced the philosophy “invite the outside in,” he
could only do that if he had a
house
to invite them into. If the outside
owns your house, well then, something is off. Although it may not have seemed
like it, in 1989, Henson was in a position of
power
in the negotiation
with Disney—his giant
had
a heart. When the merger seemed to be
destructive, he could very well have walked away from the deal.

Be aware that if your business becomes too big,
quality will be hard to maintain. But do not be tempted by the words of even
bigger giants who tell you that you can go back to being small by shaking hands
with them. Like a very tall tree, you must continue to try to stand on your own
weight. You cannot go back in time—the only ways to shrink are to prune back or
to fall. You might try cutting back—layoffs. A better strategy is prevention—to
keep your company manageable
from the start
.

It is baffling that Henson groomed a protégé for
Kermit but didn’t train someone to run his company. Yet Disney before him had
the same trouble—how do you replace the irreplaceable? Both companies were
family-run in the years after their creators’ deaths, and both reached the
brink of failure. In order to right themselves, The Disney Company went
corporate, and the Henson Company sold its most successful characters. This
does not lead an artist to be very optimistic about the health of his company
without him, but perhaps that is as it should be.

When watching Henson’s films and shows, one
notices a very
healthy
relationship with death—Mr. Hooper’s death on
Sesame
Street
and Mudwell’s death on
Fraggle Rock
seem intended to teach
children that death is a part of life. In the end of
The
Dark Crystal
,
both races cruel and wise are “made whole” and
leave
the universe,
telling Jen and Kira to take care of each other, not abuse the crystal’s power,
and “make their world in its light.” I think that must be what Henson would
want the artists who come after him to do.

What Jim Henson did with his life was amazing. He seemed to
approach his career with the idea that he could
do
anything, so what was
worth
doing?

Sesame Street
,
The Muppet Show
,
and
Fraggle Rock
have inspired children from 1969 to the present—all
over the world. Those works of art inspire us to be kind, light-hearted,
accepting, and creative. Henson’s work has had a deceptively powerful effect on
a generation of creatives.
Sesame Street
tells us that it’s okay to stay
innocent, and as a result, Generation Henson values art and collaboration in
some cases more than it values financial security.
Time
wrote that
Henson “helped sustain the qualities of fancifulness, warmth and consideration
that have been threatened by our coarse, cynical age.”
^[113]
Mel Brooks once said that the Muppets stood for one thing: “The meek shall
inherit the earth.”
^[114]
I think he was right.
There are kinder people walking the earth today
because
of Henson. In
many ways, the meek have
already
inherited it.

The message to children in
Labyrinth
was
to grow up and yet stay innocent at the same time. In the last episode of
Fraggle
Rock
, we are told, “You cannot leave the magic.” This is the way Henson
lived his life. Though he was the head of a large company, he had a sense of
wonder about life that celebrated its surprises, its people, and their humor. I
have heard young people declare in their most mature voices, “Professor,
sometimes you just
have
to be cutthroat.” I don’t think Henson believed
that rubbish.

To my mind, Henson had just about the best
attitude toward money that an artist can have. I would be inspired if people
living today—if
you
—could somehow hit upon Henson’s powerful and
uncommon entrepreneurship, and prove it is possible to recreate the kind of
magic he left us.

I’ve drawn some surprisingly serious analyses
from Henson’s “children’s” shows. I’m not alone: Dave Odell, a collaborator on
The
Dark Crystal
, called Henson a “spiritual
searcher,”
^[115]
who “developed his own
ideas that seemed to combine a little bit of theosophy, Hinduism, Taoism, and
various new age philosophies,”
^[116]
and surely these
philosophical insights appear in the film.

Odell recalled that many of the themes were
“accidental”:

I pointed out to Jim once the similarity in the
endings of
The Dark Crystal
and
The Muppet Movie
. The roof falls
away and the puppets are bathed in a blast of light from heaven, which seems to
solve all their problems. I asked him if it was a personal symbol of something,
like the Christian paraclete or the beginning of Genesis: “Let there be light.”
He said he had never connected the two scenes in his mind, but he found strange
echoes of things were always turning up in his work.
^[117]

Art helps us explore what we believe through
self-exploration, and often we uncover ideas we didn’t know we had. At the same
time, Henson’s themes were often planned explicitly. In his 1978 developmental
notes for
The Dark Crystal
, Henson described the two sides, what could
perhaps be called good and evil, if Henson believed in this duality, which he
didn’t. Evil just wasn’t a part of Henson’s worldview; to him, people were just
different. Here, he sums up the Skeksis and what would later become the
Mystics:

This conflict—between business and
spirituality—should look familiar; it went all the way back to 1968’s
“Business, Business,” which uses many of the very same words. And there are
clear parallels between it and Henson’s own biographical statement,
“Maintaining a balance between art and business has always been a part of what
I do.”
^[119]
The parallels I’ve
drawn between
The Gift
and Henson are also not unfounded.
Fraggle
Rock
writer David Young said he gave
The Gift
to Jerry Juhl and
Jocelyn Stevenson, and that “they all had that kind of energy” at
Fraggle
Rock
.
^[120]

Henson may have been more of a visual artist
than a writer, but he most definitely had a message. Odell recalls that Henson
wanted him to understand his philosophy before he wrote
The Dark Crystal
.
He gave Odell a copy of another philosophical book called
Seth Speaks
,
and it later showed up in the movie:

[Henson] had a lot of copies of this book and gave
them away to people. (He also gave a copy to Brian Froud.) I was flattered that
Jim wanted me to understand his spiritual insights before we collaborated.… One of Jim’s favorite lines that I wrote in
The Dark Crystal
script
was when Aughra asks Jen where his master is, and Jen says he’s dead. Aughra
looks around suspiciously and mutters, “He could be anywhere then.” I couldn’t
have written that if I hadn’t read the Seth book.
^[121]

The
Seth Speaks
book contained many interesting ideas
about the nature of creativity, such as that it is possible to create
“multidimensional” art using one’s life the way a painter uses pigment and
canvas. Your life is your art. After Henson gave Jocelyn Stevenson a copy of
Seth
Speaks
, she wrote the
Fraggle Rock
episode “Believe it or Not,”
which deals with the idea that we create our own reality, something Henson
himself professed:

I believe that we form
our own lives, that we create our own reality, and that everything works out
for the best. I know that I drive some people
crazy with what seems to be ridiculous optimism, but it has always
worked for me.
^[122]

It is possible Henson got this idea from
Seth
Speaks
, but it is more likely he found resonance in the book with his own
philosophy. According to
Seth Speaks
, nothing is due to luck:

The great artists, for example, did not emerge out of
a particular time simply because they were born into it, or (because) those
conditions were favorable.… Periods of renaissance—spiritual, artistic, or
psychic—occur because the intense inner focus of those involved in the drama
are directed towards those ends.
^[123]

Essentially, this “intense inner focus” of
artists can create a new reality. Henson truly believed this and lived his life
accordingly. He felt what we might call “self-actualized,” saying:

Most people, and particularly kids, don’t realize
that they are in control of their lives and they’re the ones that are going to
make the decisions and they’re the ones that are going to make it either way.
Usually adolescence is a time when kids feel that the world is doing it to them
.… Somewhere in there, you have to learn that you’re not the victim, but
instead you’re the one who’s doing it.… All of a sudden you realize that
you are the person who had control of your life.
^[124]

If
The Dark Crystal
can be read as a
parable of our modern “culture wars,” now is the time for the Mystics to return
to the castle. In the film, the land was dying because the beings themselves
were fragmented into gross caricatures. Instead of a race of whole beings, the
Skeksis became all-greedy and the Mystics became all-artist. Each being was
starving a part of itself. To become whole, the artist needs to join with his
opposite—the businessman.

Maybe the roof won’t fall away to reveal an
all-encompassing light, but maybe our own lives will become better, stronger,
more creative. Perhaps our lives will serve as multidimensional art for others
yet to come.

Can ten lessons comprise a foolproof system to
make money from your art?
Fraggle Rock
mocks the very notion of rules
ensuring success. In “Gobo’s School for Explorers,” Gobo learns the hard way
that you can’t just blindly follow the rules and ignore your own intuition. No
true explorer would let a set of rules tell him what to do. He’d have to see
for himself. 

If you disagree with anything in these lessons,
trust your intuition. What do
you
see in Henson’s life? I have shown you
what I’ve seen, not so that you will trust it without testing it, but instead
to show you an example of how you might think about Henson in a new way—not
just as a familiar memory from childhood, but as someone whose career was
remarkable and perhaps similar to your own. You don’t need ten lessons to see
that connection—you need the
spirit
of the lessons.

More than that, what we
really
need is a
hero. Henson is perhaps the only entrepreneur I would trust as a mentor,
because of the way he lived his life. Through delving into his decisions, their
outcomes, and his motives, I’ve learned more about business than I thought
possible. Though it’s too soon to tell if I’ll make
millions
, I’m
getting incrementally closer. If you’re reading this, I have at least succeeded
in publishing my first book. By picturing Henson and the way he lived his life,
I can envision myself successful. It seems to be working.

More than anything, I’m incredibly grateful that
I’ve had the chance to work on this project for the last few years—doing
something I love that feels important to me—and that with the income from
teaching and a book advance, I could afford to do so. While I had a lot of
support, it is a dream that came from me, and I knew that it was my
responsibility to make it happen. No one was going to write it for me. And it
reminds me of something Jim Henson said: “The feeling of accomplishment is more
real and satisfying than finishing a good meal or looking at one’s accumulated
wealth.”
^[125]
When you make your
heart the boss of your life, you can accomplish things that no one can take
away from you. They can take away the money, but for artists, it’s never really
about the money.

Whether you are a painter, a writer, or
inventor—if you feel
emboldened
by what Henson has done, then know that
you have it in you to do it, too. Before you read this book, you were already
quite Hensonlike, because you learned his values through the art. As you continue
in your career, I hope you will find your mind returning to these ideas.
Henson’s approach to money has been helpful to me, and I hope it can be helpful
to you.

I hope you will talk about these ideas with
other artists. Find others like yourself who are interested in
both
art
and money and discuss your heroes, your careers, your dreams. What have you
tried? What has worked for you? What did you learn from Henson, and what have
you learned from others? If you want, write to me. You can contact me on my website
ElizabethHydeStevens.com
. I’m
always happy to explore these concepts.

Consider one more thing. At the age of
twenty-eight, Jim Henson did something very smart. He started a career journal.
It was a little red book, and on the first page, he wrote in playful script:

The life and

times of

THE MUPPETS
As documented by

Jim Henson

and begun this 7
^th

day of June, in the

year of our Lord 1965

Henson wrote short one-line descriptions all of the
important things that had occurred in his career so far—in a section called
“Ancient History.” And he continued to add events until 1988. A journal like
this is meditative, because it allows you to see your career more objectively,
more playfully. By turning it into a narrative, it allows you to treat your own
life as a kind of art. Add to this career—let it grow.

Art and money are very often in conflict, and
yet, while Jim Henson was clearly aware of this conflict, his career proves
that they
can
be combined in a meaningful way that adds
value
to
the world. You can do something like this, too. How do I know it’s possible?
Because someone did it already—Jim Henson.

There are millions of people out there who’ll
tell you it can’t be done. They are the naysayers, the been-there-done-thats,
the people in the audience who know the ending already. Believe in the
never-before. The miracle. The surprise. Because no one knows the future. Even
the smartest scientist and the most jaded historian will tell you he has no
idea what tomorrow will bring.

Jim Henson believed that we create our own
reality. Do you?