Jim Henson: The Biography (78 page)

Several years earlier, Jim and John had been driving near Taos, New Mexico, when Jim had pointed to a small cluster of foothills. “
See those hills over there?” he asked John, smiling into the sunlight. “I feel like I’m supposed to live there. I really feel like that’s the place I’m supposed to be.” “I could never figure out exactly which one [of the foothills] he was talking about,” John said later—but then he remembered a bit of advice from his father. “
I try to tune myself in to whatever it is that I’m supposed to be,” Jim had once written, “and I try to think of myself as a part of all of us—all mankind and all life.” John thought if he and the family went out to visit the Taos area again, he might be able to “tune in” to the precise spot Jim had pointed out—that place Jim felt he was “supposed to be.” They would scatter the ashes there.

In May 1992, then—exactly two years after Jim’s death—John drove his mother and his brother and sisters through a dried-up New Mexico riverbed, scouring the mountains around Taos until he spotted an oddly shaped foothill. “It just looked like a pyramid in the middle of nowhere,” remembered John. The family left their SUV and began their journey across the desert toward John’s pyramidal foothill, when Jane suddenly sat down on a boulder and declared she had walked far enough. John delicately reached into the urn and handed his mother a handful of Jim’s ashes; then the Henson children began the slow ascent up the foothill. (Lisa later joked that she was fairly certain “
we hiked up onto somebody’s personal property. I would never be able to find it again if my life depended on it.”) As they reached the top, John spotted small dark crystals scattered across the ground, glinting blue in the sunlight. “
This is it,” he said excitedly.

The Henson children took a moment to quietly remember their father—“to make peace with ourselves,” said John, “and remember our time with Dad”—then threw his ashes into the warm New Mexico wind, scattering them like the delicate dandelion seeds Jocelyn Stevenson had spoken of at the London memorial service.

Jim Henson’s physical body was gone, and yet that powerful
presence—that undefinable
something
that compelled men to seek his appreciation and approval, and that women found somehow irresistible—would always remain. Anyone who had ever smiled as Ernie tried to play a rhyming game with Bert, or laughed as Kermit had chased Fozzie off the stage, arms flailing, had felt it. Anyone who had ever wished they could explore a Fraggle hole, save the world with a crystal shard, or dance with a charismatic goblin king had been touched by it.

It was there now still, in the last words Jim had passed on to his children—the words in the second letter he had written in his hotel room in France that day in 1986. They were words of reassurance for his children, but anyone reading them would be reminded of the power of his presence, and that “ridiculous optimism” that Jim infused in everything he did and in every life he touched. For the last time, then, with his own words ringing happily, almost audibly, from the page, Jim stepped calmly into the center of a hurricane of sadness and uncertainty to assure his children that everything was going to be all right. The presence was still there. Just like Kermit. Just like always:

And finally, for his children, and for anyone touched by his life, his work, or his extraordinary imagination—those
Jim-seeds
that Jocelyn Stevenson had spoken of so lovingly—Jim offered a final benediction:

(
photo credit epl.1
)

I
N THE END, THE
W
ALT
D
ISNEY
C
OMPANY WOULD END UP OWNING THE
Muppets—but it would take nearly fifteen years to get them. In the weeks and months following Jim’s May 1990 death, negotiations between the two companies intensified—Disney CEO Michael Eisner even vowed to Bernie Brillstein that he was “
gonna make this deal go through and happen in memory of Jim”—but discussions, and relations, eroded rapidly. With Jim no longer there to be the “creative vitality” acquired in the deal, Disney went looking for other assets within the Henson organization, and began sniffing around the
Sesame Street
Muppets again. This time, it was the Henson children
who held firm;
Sesame Street
was still a nonstarter. Negotiations continued into the winter, but with no resolution. In December 1990, both sides walked away.

Ultimately, what scuttled the agreement was not the fact that Disney was no longer getting Jim in the deal—nor was it because Disney was trying to roll the
Sesame Street
Muppets into the transaction. Rather, it was
“death and taxes,” related Henson attorney Peter Schube. Jim’s death and the subsequent, staggering estate taxes put both sides in such a complicated and untenable position that neither could make the deal work to anyone’s benefit. Just as critically, the tone of the discussions—always important to Jim—had become toxic. While there would be a tight-lipped agreement that would allow Disney to complete and retain
Muppet*Vision 3D
, the excitement, the camaraderie Jim relished, was gone. “It finally became a situation where there was not enough joy left in the transaction for anybody,” said Schube. “There was no joy left in it for Disney and there was not enough joy left in it for the family.”

And so the deal evaporated—and with it The List. Although there were some who grumbled—a few people had even made some expensive purchases in anticipation of the expected windfall—most felt as Bernie Brillstein did: “
Believe me,” said the agent, “I’d have gladly given up the money to have him back.”

The company, and the Muppets, remained in the control of the Henson children for the next decade, while Kermit the Frog was, quite literally, put in the able hands of Muppet veteran Steve Whitmire. With Brian Henson at the helm—joined later by Lisa—The Jim Henson Company, as it would finally come to be called, continued to produce noteworthy Muppet films and specials—many with the help of the Walt Disney Company—and expanded into children’s television, but it was becoming “
harder and harder for independent companies like ours,” said Brian Henson—and in 2000, the company, including its
Sesame Street
assets, was sold to EM.TV & Merchandising, a German media group. Over the next three years, however, EM.TV’s stock soured, and by 2003, the Hensons were able to buy their own company back again—minus the
Sesame Street
Muppets, which EM.TV had sold to CTW (now Sesame Workshop), the “
natural home for those characters,” said Lisa.

Finally, in February 2004, the Muppets were sold to Disney. While The Jim Henson Company would hold on to the Creature Shop, the Fraggles,
Labyrinth
, and
The Dark Crystal
, the Muppets were finally with Disney—just where Jim had wanted them. “
We are honored that the Henson family has agreed to pass on to us the stewardship of these cherished assets,” said Michael Eisner.

The Muppet legacy was secure—and Jim Henson’s own legacy seems to grow with each passing year, as each generation comes to discover—and in some cases rediscover—Jim and his work and claim both as their own. The first generation of children raised with Grover and
Sesame Street
grew up and raised their own children on the same familiar street with the old familiar friends.
The Dark Crystal
and
Labyrinth
—as Jim had known they would all along—found wide and devoted audiences, who savor and appreciate the films with the same adoration and intensity Jim put into making them. And the Muppets themselves—successfully and lovingly returned to the movie screen by Disney in 2011—only continue to grow brighter, more colorful, and more beloved.

Jim Henson’s legacy, however, will always be more than merely Muppets. In 1993, Jane Henson founded the nonprofit Jim Henson Legacy, a tribute celebrating Jim’s countless contributions to the worlds of puppetry, television, motion pictures, special effects, and media technology. Still, Jim’s legacy extends beyond those creative efforts—even beyond the foundation he established to promote the art of puppetry, still running strong today.

Simply, Jim Henson’s greatest legacy will always be Jim himself: the way he was, and the way he encouraged and inspired others to be—the simple grace and soft-spoken dignity he brought to the world (and expected, sometimes fruitlessly, of others), as well as his faith in a greater good that he believed he and his fellow inhabitants of the globe were capable of. “
Jim inspired people to be better than they thought they could be,” said Bernie Brillstein warmly, “and more creative, more daring, more outrageous, and ultimately more successful. And he did it all without raising his voice.”

In show business in particular, where so much depends on the ruthless art of the deal, Jim’s generosity and genuine respect for talent—as well as that faint aura of Southern gentleman that always
seemed to linger about him—made for an unconventional way of doing business. “
In this industry, people love you because you have something to give them, and they stop loving you if they feel that they don’t have any more they need from you,” said
Storyteller
writer Anthony Minghella. “With Jim, there was never any suspicion that his affection was predicated on what he might be able to take from you.” Muppet performer Jerry Nelson thought there was a quiet majesty in the way Jim lived and worked. “
I see Jim’s life as a very Zen kind of thing,” said Nelson. “I never heard him say rude or bad things about other people. He lived, I think, by example. To show other people how to be by who you are.”

Sometimes, said writer Jerry Juhl, Jim set that example by appreciating life’s absurdities. “
Jim had a sense of humor that just sorted out life,” said Juhl. “And, you know, too much of life for most people is involved in picking what are really fairly petty things and turning them into deep tragedies and horrible melodramas. Jim always cut through that.” Even in business, “
he could integrate play into the process,” said Dave Goelz. “As a parent, one of my goals is to see whether I can raise my children to survive in the world without losing that childlike innocence, trust, optimism, curiosity and decency. I am certain it is possible, because Jim was the living embodiment of it.” Indeed, it was that ridiculous optimism—that ability to look at life through a lens that seemed to bring out the brightest colors in nearly everything—that
Sesame Street
performer Fran Brill wanted to emulate in her own life as well. “
Even today, many, many years later, if I’m in a difficult position, I say to myself, ‘How would Jim have handled this?’ ” said Brill. “I just felt like if I tried to handle things the way he did, it might be easier to get through life sometimes.”

While Jim’s positive demeanor was exceptional, his talent remains extraordinary, and his imagination explosive—sometimes literally. “
He was a creatively restless individual always looking for something new,” said Lisa Henson. “Not just a new project, but a new way of
achieving
a project. He rarely repeated himself. It was not interesting to him to keep doing the same thing.” Brian Henson admired his father’s “mind-set”—a work ethic that valued both creativity and collaboration. “
That’s probably what he taught me more
than anything,” said Brian. “I learned from him to be very, very prepared and then very, very flexible—to know exactly what you’re going to do, until somebody has another idea … because that’s the way to work, you know.”