Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (3 page)

You may not work in show business, but whatever your art, there is some business in which you participate. Scientists, inventors, and teachers all in some way resemble Henson in that they are professions of “the gift,” of working for the benefit of others. If you simply want to do work of higher quality than business-as-usual seems to allow, you know the spirit of the gift, and you are not alone. It may be crazy to take turkey feathers, make them supple, cut their spines in half, bleach and clean them, dye the tips bright yellow, dye the bases golden yellow, adjust the tones so they look “gorgeous”
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on both the US and British electron-firing color systems, separate them into five grades, take the top three grades, and have them ready at every shoot to replace anything that falls off of Big Bird. It might seem crazy, but to an artist like Henson, those are all necessary steps.
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And if you are reading this book, you probably don’t think it’s crazy at all—intuitively we know that the magic of Big Bird depends on the spirit of the gift—in a
careful
dance with the market. It is the goal of this book to illustrate that dance. By closely examining Jim Henson’s relationship with money, we can derive a philosophy that will serve us in our own careers—no matter what they may be.

In his office, Henson hung a “Shrine to the Almighty Dollar”—a comically-large dollar bill with a small pyre at its feet. Decorated with paint and pennies, it may have been “tongue-in-cheek”
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as the Henson Archivist writes, but what is a shrine? It is a place—a physical object—upon which to focus one’s thoughts. Like the restaurant owner who frames his first taste of success, Henson must have meditated on that shrine, thanked the dollar for its generosity, and hoped for more of its abundance. The dollar meant something to Henson—it meant more art. How might you make a shrine to the money that will fuel your art? A shrine may not actually
do
anything, but as artists, you know the value of focusing one’s thoughts.

And what is a hero but a person upon whom to focus one’s thoughts—to
imagine
one’s dreams? I would not have written this book if I did not believe that a Henson-like path is possible for today’s artists. In search of that path—for myself and all the artists I know—I’ve read everything I can find about Henson and money.

For simplicity’s sake, here are ten Muppety lessons. Use them to develop your own ideas, to notice new ways to look at your own career and jot down things that you might like to try. Use this book as an object to focus your thoughts about art and money. And then go beyond it.

The real breakthrough in Henson’s career—the thing that would make him a mogul—was
Sesame Street
. It debuted in 1969, a good fifteen years into Henson’s television career. Because it taught children across the country, Henson became a household name, and through
Sesame Street
toys, Henson became a millionaire. In short, merchandizing is the “secret” to Henson’s success. However, licensing toys, to Henson, felt like selling out. Before he became a mogul, he had to find a good reason to do so.

For Henson—like any artist—finding funding had always been a problem. From 1957 until 1969, Henson funded his workshop, his experimental television, and his films with commercials. This had been a “second job” as catering is to actors and teaching is to many poets. One of the virtues of the second job is that Hyde says it makes it easy for artists to “mark the boundary between their art and the market.”
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Henson didn’t confuse his commercials with his shows—there was a clear boundary. And the money from these commercials insulated him from the market to a great extent. He could spend as much money as he wanted on his projects, using this second job for income. Similarly, Hyde notes that for many years Edward Hopper did commercial drafting for magazines before his real work became profitable. In the meantime, the magazine money allowed him to keep painting.

But with commercials, there
were
drawbacks. No matter how reputable the product or how honest the company, some part of Henson’s content was always dictated by the sponsor. Later, he would look back on commercials and say, “It was a pleasure to get out of that world. If you’ve ever worked in commercials, it’s a world of compromise and a world of …”
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He trailed off mid-sentence in this interview, suggesting a kind of self-censorship—commercials were more than a
compromise
for Henson. They were something he didn’t want to describe on record. Even when he was highly respected in the industry, he said, “The whole process is really not easy on a creative person.”
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So, in 1969, Jim Henson decided to stop making commercials. He had a good excuse—he felt it was confusing to the impressionable viewers of
Sesame Street
to use his characters to both sell snacks and teach the alphabet. Artistically, this was a good decision, giving Henson more time to focus on
Sesame Street
. The only trouble was that Henson no longer had the buffer of commercial pay to keep his projects funded. Henson essentially cut a deal for the nonprofit Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) for his first-rate services on
Sesame Street
. As
Sesame
profiler Mike Davis wrote, his pay was “modest by show-business standards.”
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To keep funding his high-quality work, Henson needed another option to emerge, and almost like karma, one did—merchandizing. Davis writes that “within weeks of
Sesame Street
’s debut there was no shortage of opportunities.… [Co-creator Joan Ganz] Cooney began fielding cold calls from marketers eager to attach the likenesses of Muppet characters on to products, in exchange for a licensing fee.”
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Like commercials, toy merchandizing offered Henson a way to be his own bankroller, and it would be better than commercials, because there would be no boss above his own creative vision; however, at first, Henson refused.

In 1970,
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two years into
Sesame Street
’s production, Jim Henson argued the issue with his agent, Bernie Brillstein. In his memoir,
Where Did I Go Right?
, Brillstein wrote:

Jim Henson and his wife, Jane, dropped by my house at 1240 Loma Vista. Soon we were pacing around the kitchen, arguing. If it was 110 degrees outside, it was definitely hotter inside.

This was the problem: I wanted Jim and Jane to make a merchandizing deal for the
Sesame Street
characters. They thought it was a bad idea. The Children’s Television Workshop needed the deal because the revenue would ensure continued independent support for what had become a huge public television hit. But Jim and Jane owned half the rights, and
both
sides had to approve any arrangement.

“You have to merchandise,” I said.

“No,” said Jim and Jane at the same time. Jim hated the idea of selling out.…

The Hensons were artsy-craftsy. They always wanted to do things for the right reasons. God bless them. They thought educating kids on public TV and then selling them toys based on the characters didn’t mix.… [T]he whole idea of merchandising made them feel like sell-outs. As artists, they couldn’t live with that perception.
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But Henson, we know, came around. In 1970, he started merchandizing the
Sesame Street
characters. He sold out—by his own standards. So what convinced him? Brillstein offered Henson three reasons:

Number one, you have every child in America watching this show, and one day it will hopefully be worldwide. You’re educating kids better and more creatively than TV ever has. Shouldn’t they have good dolls instead of the shit they’re buying now? Shouldn’t they have Kermit and Bert and Ernie? You can’t not give it to them.
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As we will see later, Henson did, in fact, take great pains to make sure the products that made him rich were not “shit.” But this reason was not alone convincing. So Brillstein assured him total veto control:

Second, you will have full control of what’s done. Yes or no. You will kill anything you want to kill. You’ll approve every license. Everything will be reasonably priced and above reproach.
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Sesame Street’s
mission
was to educate poor kids. It was a philanthropically funded program that offered school preparation for inner-city and isolated rural kids—so that they might have a better shot at success. Because it was free, it was democratic; once it became priced, someone would get priced out. Moreover, Henson did not want to sell kids things that were bad for them—we can imagine Cookie Monster cap guns would be out.

Essentially, Brillstein was saying Henson would always control the merchandizing; it would never control him. But this still wasn’t enough. Brillstein continued:

“Third, if what I believe will happen with this merchandising happens[,] … you will make enough money to have artistic freedom for the rest of your life.”

Artistic freedom. Those two words sold him … for an artist to imagine being able to do as his heart desired without asking anyone for money …

Jim and Jane said okay.
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Henson spent much of his career asking moneymen to fund his work. Working in commercials had given him some barrier against it—after the pitch was secured and a commercial was made, he was free to use the money however he liked, no strings attached. But after giving up commercials, that monetary buffer against outside control had dissolved. It seems counterintuitive, but the less he engaged with capitalism, the more he needed to
beg
, and the more he was subject to the market’s demands. It was the desire to be free from the market that ironically convinced Henson to become one of America’s great merchandisers.

Framed as “creative freedom,” merchandizing was in fact an
ethical
system for viewers to pay Henson back—to repay his gift of quality—proportional to their own feelings of gratitude. If a child recognizes the art put into Big Bird—his glorious yellow feathers, the pantomime of the puppeteer with arm overhead, the humor of the invented voice—then as a reward, the company would receive money in proportion to how much children love the character. It was—in a positive light—a way to fund Henson’s next project from the success of his last, the collection plate passed around after a sermon. At any rate, it was preferable to commercials, which by nature forced him to cede veto power to the client. Henson could refuse a job, but ultimately, the client was the final judge. Community Coffee, for instance, wouldn’t pay Henson to make something that didn’t at the very least say the name of their product. With merchandizing,
Henson
had the veto power. He was the one in complete control of his art, and as we will see, he would ensure that the toys were more than commodities, that they would be art themselves, or at least approach it.

Another good reason to merchandize was for
Sesame Street
itself. Brillstein said in his argument that “Children’s Television Workshop needed the deal.”
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Had it been only Henson’s company at stake, he might not have done it. The partnership with CTW allowed Henson to see
his
needs through the unclouded mirror of
their
needs. Presented in this way, those needs became real. In
Street Gang
, Davis explains why CTW’s funding was running out: “Foundations like Ford and Carnegie exist to seed projects, not sustain them … CTW needed a revenue stream.”
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This same revenue stream was necessary to allow
Henson
to stay independent.

The reason that
Sesame Street
became so lucrative for Henson was copyright and trademark—intellectual property. When he agreed to work with the show’s main creator, Joan Ganz Cooney, Henson stipulated that “the trademark for any Muppet characters created for the show would remain with his company,” and that “any future revenues made from the licensing and merchandizing of those characters would be split between him and CTW,” according to Davis.
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Copyright is a key to making money as an artist, because it allows a work of art to be made once at great cost—making it, in a sense, a gift—and then reproduced relatively cheaply, giving back to the creator infinite profits. Though commodities, these products still bear the stamp of the expensive original, reminding us of the gift.

Toy sales can be quite lucrative, especially with the rise of plastics, and by 1990, CTW and Henson split $15 million a year between them.
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According to
Street Gang
, “both organizations depended on that revenue for survival.”
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This “revenue stream” allowed Henson to weather the ups and downs of the market relatively unscathed. You see, not
all
of Henson’s projects made money.
The Muppet Movie
did, but
The Muppets Take Manhattan
didn’t.
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On the books, the original run of
The Muppet Show
just broke even; profit came in re-syndicating
The Muppet Show
to TNT, years later.
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The Dark Crystal
definitely didn’t make a profit at the box office;
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profit came with the invention of DVDs, years later.
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These words “years later” are narrative consolation, but when a company must pay its yearly expenses, they can mean bankruptcy.

Yet, profit for art is
usually
a long-term prospect. It was artistic risk that made the Muppet “brand” successful, but that is a long-term approach to value that requires a steady and separate revenue stream—to continually invest in one’s quality and to give, in the short term, more than one receives. To get to a point where he could afford to take a chance on
Sesame Street
, he first had to make commercials.

If commercials were the “second job” option, then toy merchandizing was what Hyde would call “plac[ing] the work on the market.” Hyde cautioned that it can be harder to keep a boundary between art and money in this option—but Henson at least had the distinction between puppet show and toy, right? He would not confuse a Fisher-Price Kermit for his palette. In a simple sense, toys make money and puppet shows spend it.

Yet, when characters become commodities, it can be harder to do things “for the right reasons.”

THE SLEAZY TOYMAKER
AND HOW HENSON AND CTW ADDRESSED THIS INHERENT GROSSNESS

In our age, merchandizing is so common we almost take it for granted. The merchandizing for
Star Wars
allowed George Lucas to fund his own Industrial Light & Magic special effects, which spawned what is now Pixar Animation Studios. Set free after Lucas’s divorce, Pixar in turn made their first movie protagonists
toys
, which then went on to sell very well
as toys.
Cartoons today have toys built into their business plans. A walk through Toys“R”Us can make you dizzy with plastic wrap, TM symbols, and LED flashbacks, but at the heart of this “marketing scheme” is the simple act of making a child happy. The Hensons wanted to do everything for “the right reasons,” in Brillstein’s words, but what exactly is so
wrong
with selling toys?

In
Follow that Bird
, Big Bird is kidnapped by the owners of a carnival, Sid and Sam Sleaze. With their hats turned sideways, they charge a nickel to go up the Ferris wheel and a nickel to come back down. It’s a racket. The fact that the kid—not a
child
, in their eyes, just some dumb
kid
—is vulnerable up there makes him an easy target. Kids’ shows that make money off both commercials and merchandizing are pulling this same double-dip. The kids are easy targets. Their parents use TV to babysit, and then they buy them cartloads of toys every December that were advertised by their babysitter. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s one thing if you’re playing this game with adults—who might get what they deserve—but children don’t have the experience with money to realize that their friends are only using them for profit. Sid and Sam Sleaze aren’t in children’s entertainment for “the right reasons,” because they exploit kids for money without giving anything back. At night they count their money, while Big Bird sits alone in a cage, exploited for profit.

No one wants to grow up to be a Sleaze, and neither did CTW.
Sesame Street
may have needed toys for survival—because they
didn’t
sell ads—but it still
looked
cheap to sell toys. Some in the CTW camp didn’t want to. Gene Aleinikoff, legal consultant to CTW, reportedly said, “It’s a whore’s way of doing things.”
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Though it sounds vulgar, selling something that should be a gift is precisely what prostitution is.