Jim Henson: The Biography

by Brian Jay Jones

  With The Muppets Take Manhattan due to premiere in July 1984, Jim and the merchandising department at Henson Associates spent their spring reviewing agreements on toys and other movie-related tie-ins, including deals with Frito-Lay, McDonald’s, General Mills, and even Oral-B, which would be marketing a line of Muppet toothbrushes. While the Muppet films had always generated a good share of revenue for the company with related merchandise, The Muppets Take Manhattan would prove particularly profitable because it had something going for it the other two Muppet films didn’t: Muppet Babies. To Jim’s surprise, lucrative offers came in from companies wanting to produce items targeted specifically toward families with infants and toddlers, including Procter & Gamble, which wanted the Muppet Babies to help sell Pampers diapers. Jim arched an eyebrow coyly. “You’re going to let kids shit on my name?” he asked in mock annoyance—then agreed to the deal.

  The most successful Muppet Babies–related product wasn’t in stuffed animals or diapers, but in a market Jim had intentionally long avoided: Saturday morning cartoons. “I’d always stayed away from Saturday morning, not really thinking it was an area in which I would feel comfortable working,” said Jim. Jerry Juhl, too, was wary of putting animated Muppets on Saturday morning television, as he was concerned whether this was “the right way to meet our characters for the first time.” But Jim eventually shrugged off that particular concern. “If the kids are already watching on Saturday morning, then we should be there, too,” he told Juhl, “and maybe we could do something different.” When he was approached by executives from Marvel Productions—the animation wing of Marvel Comics—and CBS television about developing an animated Muppet Babies series, Jim was willing to listen, bringing in Michael Frith and several others for an all-day “concept meeting” in March.

  It was important to Jim that the Muppet Babies—like Fraggle Rock—“have a nice reason for being.” Where Fraggle’s overarching theme was one of harmony and understanding, Muppet Babies “can be used to develop creativity,” Jim told his writers. “I think we can try to do something rather important with this show. There is almost no ‘teaching’ of creativity that I know of.… We can … show the Muppet Babies using their individual creativity in how each one can do the same thing differently. There is no right or wrong to it.” In the same way five different people could look at an ink blot and see something different, Jim wanted Muppet Babies to examine how different creative approaches could all solve the same problem—by “trying many different approaches, trying something no one has ever tried before, and not being satisfied with the way it’s always been.”

  With that objective as its guiding principle, then, Jim agreed to create a joint production with Marvel that allowed Henson Associates to maintain quality control of the project while handing off the majority of the day-to-day work to Marvel’s writers and animators. With both Jim and Marvel on board, CBS gave its enthusiastic backing, paying $250,000 per show for the initial thirteen episodes, and putting it at the center of its Saturday morning lineup. Frith was enlisted as a “creative consultant,” overseeing not only the look and design of the series, but reviewing scripts and story ideas with the same fervor he had devoted to Fraggle Rock, and sending the same kind of detailed—and entertaining—notes back to Marvel’s story writers that Jim had once sent to Jerry Juhl. The commitment paid off: when the first episodes went on the air in September 1984—only six months after closing the deal—Muppet Babies was an immediate critical and commercial success, winning its time slot, pulling in huge ratings (though it usually finished second to another CBS juggernaut, Pee-wee’s Playhouse), and winning the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for the first four years of its seven-year run. It would also spawn a cringe-inducing sub-industry of Your Favorite Characters as Children! cartoons like Flintstone Kids and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, none of which had quite the spark of Muppet Babies—probably because they didn’t aspire to Jim’s lofty objectives.

  Fraggle Rock and Muppet Babies were colorful reflections of Jim’s own personal principles—and lately, Jim was becoming more personally and publicly involved in a number of causes. Though never overly political—in fact, he rarely voted—Jim’s own leanings were firmly Democrat, and the issues with which he chose to involve himself—and the Muppets—were markedly left of center. He was particularly passionate about ecology and the environment, embracing conservation, wildlife preservation, and clean air and water. “At some point in my life,” said Jim, “I decided, rightly or wrongly, that there are many situations in this life that I can’t do much about: acts of terrorism, feelings of nationalistic prejudice, cold war, etc. So what I should do is concentrate on the situations my energy can affect.” In 1983, then, he had agreed to produce several public service announcements for the National Wildlife Federation, filming Kermit and Fozzie in Central Park talking about clean water as they fished junk out of a pond, and in March 1984, Kermit delivered the keynote address at the National Wildlife Federation’s annual meeting. Several years later, Jim would get similarly involved with the more politically inclined Better World Society, an organization founded by media giant Ted Turner to educate the media on global and social issues. In 1989, Kermit even served as “spokesfrog” for the organization, and Jim would direct several thoughtful public service announcements to promote conservation and arms reduction, scoring serious social and political points in a typically colorful and agreeable Muppet style.

  Jim was most fired up when it came to the environment. Nature was both his muse and his solace. It “recharged and re-inspired” him. “The beauty of nature has been one of the great inspirations in my life,” wrote Jim. “Growing up as an artist, I’ve always been in awe of the incredible beauty of every last bit of design in nature. The wonderful color schemes of nature that always work harmoniously are particularly dazzling to me.” Whenever he could find a rare moment of quiet or solitude, he would fling himself down on the ground and stare up into the sky, dreamily losing himself in the clouds, the sun, the moon, or whatever happened to cross his line of sight, just as he had done as a boy in Leland. “One of my happiest moments of inspiration came to me many years ago as I lay on the grass, looking up into the leaves and branches of a big old tree in California,” wrote Jim. “I remember feeling very much a part of everything and everyone.”

  Jim traveled widely in the weeks leading up to the release of The Muppets Take Manhattan—usually with one or more of the kids in tow—interviewing puppeteers on camera for Jim Henson Presents with John, taking Heather to London and New Orleans for a symposium, then heading to Connecticut in time to proudly attend Cheryl’s graduation from Yale on a rainy Saturday in May. As always, Jim talked with each of his five children about his work, gauging their reactions to ideas and seeking their opinions on just about anything. And their honesty, while refreshing, could sometimes be frustrating—especially when Jim had his mind made up about something, as he had, at the moment, about one of the key roles to be cast in Labyrinth.

  In the early discussions on Labyrinth, Jim had assumed that Jareth, Labyrinth’s charismatic goblin king, would be performed as another elaborate puppet, similar to the Skeksis in The Dark Crystal. After further thought, however, he decided to make Jareth one of the roles filled by a live actor. Initially, he considered offering the role to either Simon MacCorkindale, who had just played one of the heroes in the fantasy film The Sword and the Sorcerer, or to Kevin Kline, at that time one of New York’s most respected and energetic stage performers. And then, said Jim, “while we were considering various and sundry actors, we thought to make Jareth a music person, someone who could change the film’s whole musical style.”

  For Jim, the choice for Jareth was obvious: Sting, the brooding front man from the New Wave group the Police. But both Brian and John Henson stridently protested that decision, arguing in favor of one of their idols, the innovative and enigmatic rock ’n’ roller David Bowie—who also happened to be a proven actor—as the better choice. John, in fact, went immediately to the
Sherry-Netherland to make the case to his dad directly, arguing that Sting was simply “happening now, whereas David Bowie is an artist, he’s got longevity. You don’t want to go with Sting,” John told Jim adamantly, “you want to go with Bowie.”

  Jim may have been intrigued with the idea, but he wouldn’t commit. Instead he arranged to meet with Bowie in New York, mainly just to size the singer up, but brought along a handful of Froud’s drawings, Terry Jones’s recently completed first draft of the script, and a videotape of The Dark Crystal. “Jim … outlined his basic concept for Labyrinth and showed me some of Brian Froud’s artwork,” recalled Bowie. “That impressed me for openers, but he also gave me a tape of The Dark Crystal, which really excited me. I could see the potential of adding humans to his world of creatures.” As the conversation continued, Jim was convinced Brian and John were right. When the meeting ended, Jim gave Bowie a copy of Jones’s script to take with him. “If you like the script,” he said quietly to Bowie, “would you consider being Jareth and singing and writing songs for him?” Bowie was encouraging. “I’d always wanted to be involved in the music writing aspect of a movie that would appeal to everyone,” said the musician, “so I was pretty well hooked from the beginning.”

  On July 13, 1984, The Muppets Take Manhattan opened in the United States. For the most part, postproduction on the film had gone smoothly, but up until nearly the last minute, one contentious point remained: Oz’s on-screen credit. Oz, who had directed the film, significantly rewritten the script, and performed several main characters, wanted The Muppets Take Manhattan to be credited as “A Frank Oz Film.” “I thought it was fair,” said Oz, “or, at least, my ego wanted that.” But Jim kept putting Oz off, casually dismissing him with, “We’ll see.” Finally, a month before the film’s release, Oz received a gift from Jim and David Lazer: a beautiful mantelpiece clock with “A Frank Oz Film” inscribed on top. “That’s when I knew,” said Oz. The final cut of the film would, indeed, be credited as “A Frank Oz Film.”

  The response from critics to The Muppets Take Manhattan was largely one of amused toleration. In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert noted the film’s central plot was “not original” but was, nonetheless, “a good one.” Most agreed the film was funny, though somewhat lacking in the normal Muppet madness—a criticism Oz thought was fair. “It doesn’t have enough lunacy,” said Oz. “I think the story is your basic old-fashioned story, and it was a well-crafted thing because of that. But it didn’t have flights of fantasy like The Muppet Movie. I just wanted to make sure that the Muppets’ characters came out, and their relationships, that’s all.” Only The Washington Post seemed truly unimpressed, griping under the headline “The Muppet Mope” that Kermit and Miss Piggy’s staged marriage was “a terminally sappy idea to begin with” and that the Muppet Babies were “grotesquely cute.” But Jim was pleased, and the film performed well enough, grossing $25 million on Jim’s $8 million investment.

  Meanwhile, in London, Connie Peterson, Faz Fazakas, and Duncan Kenworthy had finally knocked the workshop at 1B Downshire Hill into shape—but with The Dark Crystal long finished and Jim still months, if not years, away from beginning work on Labyrinth, the lights at Downshire Hill were off, Faz’s heavy machines silent. Jim had been reluctant to dismiss the eclectic staff of sculptors, jewelers, armorers, silversmiths, and puppet makers who had given The Dark Crystal its distinctive look and feel—nor did he want to merge them into the New York workshop alongside the Muppet builders who derisively referred to the London craftsmen as the staff on “that brown film.” Instead, Jim wanted to keep them together, preferably in the same place, until he was ready for them to start the build for Labyrinth. But with nothing to do, there was no way to hold the crew together, and most of the staff had moved on—some to Elstree to work on Disney’s Return to Oz, others to California, where they had built and performed Jabba the Hutt for George Lucas.

  Earlier in the spring, however—at about the time Jim and Marvel were discussing the Muppet Babies in New York—Duncan Kenworthy had read a script by TV writer Dennis Potter called Dreamchild, a faux-biographical drama about the elderly Alice Liddell, who, as a child, had inspired Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As the aged Liddell recalls her friendship with Carroll through flashbacks, she encounters grotesque versions of some of Wonderland’s inhabitants, including a terrifying Gryphon and a truly insane-looking Mad Hatter—and Kenworthy thought the London workshop would be the perfect place to build such fantastic puppets. “I was always keen to try and get the company working in drama,” said Kenworthy, “and Dreamchild really was the perfect combination of realism and fantasy.” Jim, too, loved Potter’s story, and with Universal Studios backing the film and footing the bill, Jim gave the okay to reassemble the London team and begin production on the creatures needed for Dreamchild—“the first time my father had considered doing puppets for other people,” said Brian Henson.

  Under the direction of sculptor and designer Lyle Conway, who had sculpted the heads for the Skeksis and Mystics for The Dark Crystal, the crew at Downshire Hill worked quickly—and on a shoestring budget—to produce six large puppets in only fourteen weeks. To keep costs down, there was little radio control involved in the figures; most were operated much as Yoda had been, with a mass of cables snaking out of the puppets’ necks, requiring large teams of puppeteers to operate the controls manually. When shooting began on Dreamchild on July 16—only three days after the premiere of The Muppets Take Manhattan—eleven puppeteers were needed to operate the complex facial movements of the Mad Hatter. “The Mad Hatter’s face was all over the place, and he looked absolutely insane,” said Kenworthy gleefully. “It was great.”

  Jim had left most of the work to Conway and his team, but he was delighted with the results. Not only had the team learned to work quickly and efficiently, stretching the budget as far as they could, but with every project the puppets were getting more complex, the mechanics smaller and more precise, and the resulting movements more subtle and realistic. In fact, with their seamless splicing of traditional puppetry with high-tech gadgetry, it probably wasn’t even accurate to refer to the figures as puppets anymore. “The characters are just not Muppets at all,” said Jim. “We hesitate to call them puppets even.… Instead, we’re trying to go toward a sense of realism—toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive and we’re mixing up puppetry and all kinds of other techniques.… You’re trying to create something that people will actually believe.”

  Partly to assuage the British unions, which insisted that craftsmen be engaged in some sort of identifiable trade, the workshop had begun referring to their complex puppets as animatronics—a term lifted from Walt Disney, who called the animated figures that moved and sang in attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean Audio-Animatronics. The distinction was small, but critical: while a Disney Audio-Animatronic moved in a preprogrammed manner to a prerecorded soundtrack (hence the need for the prefix Audio), with animatronics, it was the puppeteer, and not a computer program, who controlled every aspect of the figure. No matter how complicated it might be, the puppet was still just an extension of the live performer, with the gadgetry serving to enhance the performance rather than defining it. “I feel I’ve always done well at using the technical aspects of the medium to expand what we can do,” said Jim. “I find that combination of art and technology pretty exciting.”

  But as much as Jim liked the word animatronics (and there would be some in-fighting in the London workshop over who had first applied the term to their craft) it was just a bit too technical, too process-oriented. Nonetheless, “people say, ‘you really should have a term for that,’ ” Jim said, “but at the moment we’re saying creatures.” This name would stick, and from here on the London workshop would be known as the Creature Shop. That gave the London shop a personality and mission very different from its New York counterpart—which, Jim hoped, would help clarify whose project was whose and reduce some of the tensions between the two workshops.
New York was “more oriented to the Muppets,” explained Jim, while the Creature Shop was “more high tech … more into realistic detail, and so forth.”

  Regardless of whether it was creatures in London or Muppets in New York that were being built and performed, there was one term that Jim expressly would not allow to be used to describe his performers—and that was the word Muppeteer. While the media and others used the term freely to describe Jim’s occupation, Jim thought it was just a bit too gimmicky. In 1984, when the Apple computer company sent Jim a mock-up of a page from its annual report proudly hailing Jim as an Apple user and listing his occupation as “Muppeteer,” Jim scratched darkly through the term and wrote “Muppet performer” beneath it. He was a performer or a puppeteer. Not a Muppeteer.

  With a bit of rare downtime in the summer of 1984, Jim took an extended vacation—which for him meant four days—chartering a yacht with Cheryl, Heather, and John, and cruising the waters off the coast of Antigua. But even as Jim basked in the Caribbean sun, he had Al Gottesman and other executives hard at work back in New York trying to close one of the most important deals of his career.