Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (16 page)

We hate ads because they are false, because they lie to us. But
I will give you two examples of ads Henson took out in major periodicals that
were truthful communication and hopeful promotion of art.

In 1968, Henson took out a full-page ad that
said:

The Muppets are very happy to be represented by the
Bernie Brillstein Company.

144 South Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills Calif.
^[57]

This ad had a picture of Rowlf, who was performing regularly
on
The Jimmy Dean Show
, and an assortment of monsters and creatures. But
to understand why Henson paid for this ad, we must consider the context.
Henson’s manager, Bernie Brillstein, had just left William Morris and moved to
Los Angeles to start out on his own. Out of loyalty, Henson stayed with
Brillstein, even though striking out as an entrepreneur made Brillstein much
more small-time in terms of connections: people looking to book Henson would
not necessarily know whom to contact.

To clear up confusion, Henson paid for this ad,
giving Brillstein’s start-up some much-needed publicity. When you see ads like
this one in the newspaper—expensive full-page spots that have the feel of a
want-ad—you think of marriage proposals towed by an airplane or missed
connections on craigslist. It changes the way you think of advertising. It
becomes less like a scam and more like communicating something important to a
large number of people.

Henson took out another ad from that same year
that filled the entire back page of
Variety
:

GOOD THINGS

by henson associates

YOUTH ’68 [Inset: beautiful hippy with round sunglasses]

TIMEPIECE [Inset: Henson running with top hat]

MUPPETS [Inset: Rowlf the Dog]

TV Commercials [Inset: Wilkins and Wontkins]
^[58]

Through positive reviews and description, this ad explained
that these seemingly unconnected projects were brought to us by one company,
Henson’s, so that viewers and industry people would understand his work. Why
might viewers need clarification? Well, Henson’s was a company with diverse
interests—commercial work, certainly, but also narrative puppetry shows, and
even stranger still, avant-garde thought-pieces like the existentialist
anti-drama
The Cube
, the experimental film
Time Piece,
and the
rock-star-laden, trippily edited, literature-quoting documentary
Youth ’68
.
This clever ad positioned Henson as a force in entertainment—one page in a
national newspaper turned twelve years of commercials into ads for Henson
Associates. It was not so much a call for more commercial work, because that
was the year he was began to consider leaving the ad business. This full-page
message to the public seemed, then, like a call for more
experimental
challenges, demonstrating what he, as an artist, was capable of.

And this is how Henson
hijacked
the ad. Today,
Henson’s name is world famous, but I can’t find Wilkins Coffee
anywhere
.
Henson’s ads for Wilkins were memorable—just about every single one of 179
^[59]
spots featured injury for refusal to drink the product—“Wontkins” is stabbed in
a knife-throwing routine, threatened with trampling by wild horses, drowned in
a swimming pool, nearing a throat-slitting by a barber’s straight razor,
branded by a cowboy, thrown off a plane at five miles up, and flat-out executed
with a big prop cannon. The humor in them is infectious, but while it may have
helped people remember the name “Wilkins” and associate it with laughter, they
more effectively helped people remember funny-faced puppets on TV with goofy
voices telling jokes. Just as Henson’s print ads merely stated that he made
art, the commercials, with their mini-puppet shows, demonstrated what he did.
While the ads were ostensibly for various purchasables, they more effectively
advertised something intangible—Henson’s potential.

When CTW’s Joan Ganz Cooney put together
Sesame
Street
, she was told they
had
to get Jim Henson. Then she remembered
she had seen Henson’s work before, in a theater:

When I was doing the study for Carnegie, my friend
Edith Zornow called me and said, “Joan, I want you to come with me to the
Johnny Victor Theater to see a screening of the commercials done by a guy named
Jim Henson.” I went to the … theater and was on the floor. I couldn’t
believe puppets could be so hip and funny.
^[60]

I would ask you, how many times have
you
been to a
theater to watch a screening of commercials? Ever? I haven’t. That’s because they
don’t have screenings of commercials at theaters. Theaters show
art
.

For a second job, Henson made commercials
work
for him. Yet as Hopper and Henson both show, when you can afford to give up
your day job, artists do—and should. Although commercial work may have given Henson
some of his ten thousand hours of puppetry, eventually day jobs tend to drain
energy away from one’s art. In 1969, Henson quit the ad game, and his move suggests
that in the long run, it is a game an artist really can’t win.

STOP AS SOON AS YOU CAN
SAY NO TO ADS WHEN YOU CAN AFFORD TO

The Muppet Movie
’s Doc Hopper, like many Muppet
villains, is an exploiter. As the owner of a fast-food franchising operation,
he wants Kermit to dance in his commercials, promoting fried frog legs. He
wants to steal Kermit’s gift and use it for profit.

The Muppet Movie
was Henson’s very first
movie. This choice of antagonist shows he was keenly aware that his skills at
advertising were a threat to his art. In the end, Kermit refuses to cede to
commercialism. This is not simply a good ending for a film; it represents, as
Kermit tells Robin at the beginning of the film, “approximately” “how the
Muppets really got together.” Throughout the sixties, there were times Henson had
to say no to commercialism.

His agent Bernie Brillstein recalled:

When we were first together, I’d get offers of fifty
or sixty grand for him to do a commercial. Jim needed the money, so I’d say,
“Let’s do it to pay the overhead.” Sometimes he’d agree, but usually he’d pass.
“Not this one,” he’d say, “because they want to own the character.” Jim’s rule
was simple: Don’t sell [the copyrights to] anything.
^[61]

Even early on, when he arguably needed it most, Henson
refused
some money. If inflation calculators can be trusted, that would look more like $400,000
today. When Hyde talks about “making peace with the market,” it is at the same
time a “peace” with barriers, with reservations and refusals. In 1969, he put
up a great wall.

Sesame Street
gave Henson the excuse he
needed to refuse commercials altogether. We can forget today that there was a
time before the government required networks to air educational content for
children, now that
Sesame Street
has been on the air for over forty
years. In the 1960s, there was no program on TV with a “curriculum.” There was
no
Sesame Street
. The first nonprofit public television stations were
beginning to emerge. Idealistic minds were starting to get excited about what
could be done with television.
Sesame Street
was born of 1960s idealism,
and it was revolutionary. Henson signed on to the project before anyone knew that
Sesame Street
would be a success, because he believed it had a mission
worth supporting.

According to its website, the Sesame Workshop’s
mission is “to use the educational power of media to help children everywhere
reach their highest potential.”
^[62]
Originally,
Sesame Street
’s goal was to reach poor children who might
fall through the cracks. It was pitched as potentially cheaper and more
effective than a pre-school “head start” program.
^[63]
Its founders convinced the Carnegie and Ford Foundations to give them a million
dollars each
^[64]
to try this grand experiment, to educate kids where they lived—parked in front
of the TV.

When Jim Henson signed onto
Sesame Street
,
he took the responsibility very seriously—being an educator meant he had to
change. If a child saw his friend Cookie Monster (or a close cousin) selling
cookies in an ad, it just wouldn’t be right. With
Sesame Street
came a
firm
moral
reason for Henson to quit his second job.

One company, Frito-Lay, didn’t take no for an
answer. Wanting Henson to continue making ads, their legal department sent a
proposal in 1969. According to Falk, it acknowledged that Henson’s agent Bernie
Brillstein had “advised that Jim Henson, in an effort to avoid
commercialization of
Sesame Street
, and also because of a demanding
schedule, is not interested in making new commercials.”
^[65]
As a work-around, they
proposed Henson somehow
oversee
the work done by a puppet studio—no
doubt erasing all appearance of wrongdoing by removing his name. Falk says,

After much discussion, Jim’s lawyer crafted a
response that underlined Jim’s high regard for Young & Rubicam while also
turning them down. Jim was determined to leave advertising behind to protect
the young viewers of
Sesame Street
.
^[66]

Henson couldn’t make commercials
and
Sesame
Street
, because he was channeling the power of advertising now
for good
.
Sesame Street
was, in fact,
all
ads. There were no commercial
breaks, but every episode was brought to you by letters like W and T or by the
number 4. The flashy colors, animation, and quick-cut bits were designed to look
and feel like commercials. This is Gladwell’s point when he says
Sesame
Street
grew out of commercials. The creator-producer of
Sesame Street
,
Joan Ganz Cooney, explained in her research:

Parents report that their children learn to recite
all sorts of advertising slogans, read product names on the screen (and, more
remarkably, elsewhere) and to sing commercial jingles.
^[67]

Sesame Street
, on purpose, used what was already
transfixing young minds to their TVs. Michael Davis put it best:

If the neurotransmitters in their little brains could
snap, crackle
, and
pop
for a cereal commercial, couldn’t similar
electrical activity be duplicated by teaching children the concepts of
over
,
around
,
under
, and
through
?”
^[68]

The segments on
Sesame Street
were ads—ads for
literacy, good behavior, number skills, peace, and love.

If Henson were to continue making commercials,
it would be damaging to his credibility as an educator. In fact, that is
exactly what
New York Times
television reviewer Jack Gould criticized
him for after the 1970 airing of
Hey, Cinderella!
—a television special
Henson had made with Jon Stone a few years before. When it aired on commercial TV
a year into
Sesame Street
, something looked quite amiss. Gould panned
the show:

Kermit the Frog, one of the deservedly major
attractions of “Sesame Street,” was more or less the host. One of whose
functions was to introduce the commercials. Apparently the Children’s
Television Workshop, producer of “Sesame Street,” is not adverse to cashing in
when success strikes. Whatever television may be called, public or commercial,
sooner or later the compromises start if the ratings are right. “Sesame Street”
last night lost a little of its luster as Kermit broke the faith and became one
more pitchman.
^[69]

Gould had a point. According to an advertisement sold on
eBay, one of the show’s sponsors was “RJR Foods,” a subsidiary of cigarette manufacturer
RJ Reynolds. It would look terrible if Kermit told viewers to watch the
commercials for a cigarette company. However, commercials are an unavoidable
part of commercial television. And from Henson’s point of view, it seems
strange that the type of work he had been doing for the past ten years was suddenly
reprehensible. For someone who had recently refused incredibly well-paid commercial
deals, it would be a very hard review to read. In Henson’s defense, Gould
didn’t know that
Hey Cinderella!
predated
Sesame Street
.

Henson’s response says a good deal about the way
he felt about commercials:

April 13, 1970

Dear Mr. Gould:

In your April 11 review of our special,
Hey,
Cinderella
, you made an erroneous assumption, which I believe it is
important to correct.

Because there were several people from the
Sesame
Street
staff involved in the production of the special, you inferred that
they, and Kermit, the frog, who is very close to my heart, were capitalizing on
the success of Sesame Street and had sold out to commercialism.

Kermit, the frog, is a Muppet I made over ten
years ago and have used on many network shows and commercials. For the past ten
or twelve years, approximately half my income has been derived from producing
Muppet commercials.…

However, since the advent of Sesame Street, and
my own interest and concern for children’s television (I am an enthusiastic
member of Action for Children’s Television), I have become a great deal more
selective, and have turned down many lucrative offers that seemed to be trying
to capitalize on Sesame Street.…

The Children’s Television Workshop is a very
dedicated group of people who function with the highest sense of integrity. To
mistakenly attribute a motive of exploitation to these people is not only
insulting but potentially quite damaging to the job they are doing.