Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (49 page)

Getting this book published has been the biggest thrill of
my life. I owe the world to everyone who has helped me. I had a great publishing
team—Jason Allen Ashlock and Adam Chromy from Movable Type Management, editors
Julia Cheiffetz and Carly Hoffmann, and copyeditor Jodie Young. I was met with
generosity by the artists and thinkers in this book—David Young, Larry Mirkin,
Christopher Cerf, Jocelyn Stevenson, Karen Prell, Lewis Hyde, Karen Falk, and
Adam Grant. Though I never met them, the collaborators from Henson Associates
have inspired me deeply—Frank Oz, Jerry Juhl, Jane Henson, Jerry Nelson,
Richard Hunt, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Kathryn Mullen, Michael Frith, Louise
Gold, Jon Stone, Joe Raposo, Jeff Moss, Paul Williams, Kenneth Ascher, Philip
Balsam, Dennis Lee, Joan Ganz Cooney, and all the writers, illustrators, puppet
builders, engineers, businesspeople, and artists who gave us these works of
art. I owe much to the careful research of others, including biographers
Christopher Finch, Neal Gabler, Michael Davis, Judy Harris, and countless
Muppets fans who have kept this information alive for the rest of us. Thank you
to the creators and contributors to Muppet Wiki, Tough Pigs, Muppet Central,
Muppet Mindset, and the MuppetCast, including Andrew Leal, Kenneth Plume, Joe
Hennes, Phillip Chapman, D.W. McKim, Ryan Dosier, and Grant Baccioco for their
wonderful interviews.

Brilliant editors have so kindly helped me to publish
articles on this subject—Carrie Frye, Choire Sicha, Alex Balk, Benjamin Samuel,
Doree Shafrir, C. Max Magee, Mark Armstrong, Isaac Fitzgerald, and Alex Ludlum.
Thank you to all who helped me get here: Jess Grose, Mike Welch, Ron and Nancy
Standring, Mike and Janet Robinson, Anna Oliver, Andrew Innes, JoAnn Castano,
Allison Caso, Maria Hamel, Jessica Silk, Phil Chaffee, Brandon Freeman, Karl
Ljungquist, The Kilgore Trout Home for Wayward Writers (Christie Hauser, Lauren
Belski, David Greenwood, Helen Rubinstein, Wythe Marshall, Erin Harte, Stephen
Aubrey, Rosemary Midsary, Helen Rubinstein, and Christine Rath), Jeremy Meyers,
Megan Elizabeth Morris, Carlin Trammel, Jilly Gagnon, Nora Fussner, Karen
Russell, Teddy Wayne, George Saunders, Stephen Elliott, Maria Bustillos, my
amazing writing teachers at the Brooklyn College MFA Program (Michael
Cunningham, Francisco Goldman, Meera Nair, Jenny Offill, Gordon Lish, Josh
Henkin, and Elaine Brooks), Liz Hebert and the Modern Culture and Media
Department at Brown University, Alex Steele and Gotham Writer’s Workshop, Chris
Walsh, Anna Dalby and the Writing Program at Boston University, my students in
WR100 and WR150 at BU, Caitlin Hatakeyama and Ethan Higgins, the North Andover Public
Schools and their excellent teachers (Judith Hillner, Ann Ericson, Thomas
Rooney, Gerald Sanford, Tom McGowan, Paul and Mary Julie Gregoire, and
especially Millie Matasso), to public broadcasting, to public libraries and
coffee shops where I have worked (Outpost, Bloc 11, Diesel Café, and the
Brooklyn, North Andover, Natick, Somerville, and Cambridge Public Libraries),
Greg Skrupka, Linda Phoummalayvane Standring, Jarrod Standring, Jay Standring,
Corinna Hoey Standring, Judy and Stuart Cleland, Ben and Joanne Hyde, Kathy
Stevens, Beth Stevens, Judy Stevens, Jeffy Dunmire, and Cornelia Harris, all my
cousins, my incredible Gram, Caroline Rockwell Stevens, the amazing artists
Karl Stevens, Emi Brady, and Christopher Cooley, the talented photographer Natalia
Boltukhova, and my dear friend Helen Rubinstein.

Most importantly, I could not have finished this book
without my accountability partner and bestie, Cristina Kennedy; my loving and
encouraging partner, Tim Standring; my sister, Kate Innes, who loves me so much
it’s silly; my brother, Nat Stevens, who always makes me smile; and my dad,
Horace Nathaniel Stevens, who is the wisest man I know.

Thank you to my mother, Joanne Hyde Stevens, for all her
love, and to Jim Henson for his art. Your memories keep me strong, and I am
forever grateful.

Elizabeth Hyde Stevens created the Muppets, Mickey, and
Money research course at Boston University. Her analysis of Jim Henson’s career
has appeared online at The Awl, The Millions,
Electric Literature
, and
Rolling
Stone
. In 2011, her essay “Weekend at Kermie’s” was viewed over 160,000
times. Called “a long, brilliant thinkpiece" on Twitter, it was praised by
Internet curators Brain Pickings,
Mother Jones
, Longreads, Longform,
Wired
,
IMDB, IFC,
Reader’s Digest
, and Kurt Loder. Stevens attended public
school in North Andover, Massachusetts, and went on to study art semiotics at
Brown University and creative writing at the Brooklyn College MFA program. She
is a member of the Brooklyn writers’ collective The Kilgore Trout Home for
Wayward Writers and teaches fiction at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Her writing
has earned the Himan Brown Award and the Somerville Arts Council Fellowship for
Literature. Everything she knows about business she learned from watching
Sesame
Street
.

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