On his way back to New York, Jim stopped for several days in New Mexico to visit Mary Ann. “The trips were often whirlwinds,” said Mary Ann. Ever since their reconciliation, she and Jim had tried to continue seeing each other as regularly as possible, but with Jim’s schedule they often had to cram as much activity as they could into three or four days. Jim liked casually strolling the galleries and museums in Santa Fe or riding horses along the arroyos near Albuquerque—and if there was time, they would get in a ski trip to Taos, or take long drives to Chimayó to explore spiritual sites. Jim, thought Mary Ann, was always “light [and] relaxed,” in New Mexico.
Things weren’t as light and relaxed back in New York, however, where Jim spent two days being briefed by his attorneys on the status of the Disney deal. On the evening of October 17, Jim boarded an all-night flight for London, where he would spend a week with producer Martin Baker meeting with Disney executives at Shepperton Studios—and he wasn’t happy. Jim “was frustrated,” said Brillstein, “as Disney fought over every single point.” The day after his arrival at Shepperton, Jim fired off a note to Lazer, enclosing a draft of a letter he wanted to send to Eisner and Katzenberg, “communicat[ing] to both … my concern about our relationship.” While Jim never raised his voice in meetings, his draft letter to the Disney chiefs had a markedly sharp timbre to it. “I feel we are getting started in a way that is not going to work for me in the future,” Jim warned:
The tone of the negotiations does not seem to me to be the way two parties should be relating to each other if they intend to go into a long term relationship. Jeffrey [Katzenberg] has said that this is what our respective lawyers are supposed to do—to fight like hell and give in as little as possible; but somehow this doesn’t seem correct to me. The kind of deal I like is one in which both parties try to arrive at a fair settlement and everyone walks away satisfied. I really don’t intend to do battle with you guys for the next fifteen years. My impression is that Disney is standing firm on all issues, assuming that my company is committed to this deal and thus we will eventually cave in. This is not a wise assumption.
He was further annoyed by his treatment at the hands of Disney’s accounting department, which was haggling over the costs he was billing for the 3-D film. Jim had asked for $1.2 million—most of which, he reminded them, would be paid to the puppeteers—and he was “disturbed” that Disney considered his fee for directing (which was “a couple hundred thousand dollars”) to be “too high and precedent breaking.” As their first major collaboration, he warned, “this doesn’t bode well for the future.” “I think I can make major contributions to the Disney company,” Jim concluded, “but if I’m going to have to spend my time defending my value to you, or in combat with your business affairs people, it’s good to know this now, because perhaps we would do better to go our separate ways.”
Lazer—who called himself “the peacemaker” in the discussions—was eventually able to talk Jim down and the storm passed. But it was clear, only a month into talks, that it was going to be a long negotiation. “It was a tough process,” said Henson Associates attorney Peter Schube. “[Disney] was very aggressive and very thorough … [but] no one should have been surprised.… This was not a bait and switch. This was not anything other than them being who they promised and announced themselves to be.” For Jim, though, the tone of the negotiations mattered as much as the content. Jim might have been a realist when it came to business, said Steve Whitmire, “but I think his idealism wasn’t able to deal with this cutt-hroat world … where suddenly everything is about being a commodity and it’s about buying and selling.”
Jim spent much of the autumn bouncing across from coast to coast, meeting with Imagineers in Los Angeles one week, then spending the next week walking his corner of Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, pointing out potential locations for Muppet attractions. To his delight, Jim found Disney’s Imagineers—unlike their counterparts in the accounting department—to be willing conspirators in almost any plan, no matter how ridiculous, or expensive, an idea might be. “He loved the fact that the bar for excellence was set so high inside the theme parks,” said Schube. “Jim loved to solve really hard problems in the production work that he did … [and] Disney does that all day long in the theme parks. That’s all they do … and he loved how well they did it.” During one walk through the park, Jim and Michael Frith pointed out to an Imagineer a set of power lines that were visible as visitors entered the area where the Muppet pavilion would be located and mused that it was unfortunate there wasn’t a facade or a small building blocking the wires from sight. The Imagineer never even blinked. “When do you need it?” he asked.
Back in New York, he had another construction project that was a bit more problematic, but just as much fun; his apartment at the Sherry-Netherland was again being refurbished, mostly to deal with problems caused by a crumbling inner wall. It was an expensive mess—Jim would spend nearly $140,000 on renovations—but he made the most of the chaos, bringing in subcontractors to install new fixtures, repaint, and clean all the carpets and marble surfaces. His collection of antiques had continued to grow over the years; he had recently added a carved chess set, which he intermingled with an ancient imperial Roman perfume bottle, a carved Egyptian cat dating back to 500 B.C., and a two-thousand-year-old grinning terracotta pig from Syria. On one wall, a brass elevator door from Selfridge’s department store in London hung alongside a Mystic cloak from The Dark Crystal. Comfortable and quirky, the apartment would always be a warm and welcoming place.
That December, Jim couldn’t resist throwing one more of his large, elaborate Christmas parties for his staff. Jim was notably relaxed, perhaps appreciating this would be the last Christmas party he would host before the company’s absorption into Disney. But in the throes of his Christmas cheer and benevolence, he made a regrettable error, and informed a few partygoers of the existence of The List and—even more critically—exactly how much money he would be giving them when the Disney deal finally went through. “It was like he was Santa for the night,” recalled Mary Ann, but not everyone took the news with the gratitude Jim expected. Some grumbled they should have received more; others were miffed when they learned of the amounts others would receive compared to their own. Jim was stunned by the reaction. “It was a little bit heartbreaking,” said Lisa Henson, “because he was giving money from the bottom of his heart.”
Christmas itself, however, was a much happier affair, as Jim spent several days with Lisa, John, Heather, and Mary Ann at Walt Disney World. Each morning, Jim and the kids would dive eagerly into the parks, enjoying the rides but taking the time to savor the small things—the hedges clipped to resemble Disney characters, the inside jokes etched in the windows overlooking Main Street—that made up “the Disney experience.” “My dad liked everything,” said Heather, “the atmosphere, walking around … he was so in awe.” He loved the parks, and was looking forward “to having his characters be so alive and well maintained” as the other iconic characters in the parks. On Christmas Day, Jim participated in his first Disney Christmas Parade, singing “Sleigh Ride” with Kermit from the top of a float, and then diving into the crowd with Kermit in his reporter outfit to interview parade watchers for television. John Henson remembered his father being truly happy that day. “I gave him a bottle of white zinfandel wine [as a Christmas gift,] and he was just so appreciative of it. He was so thankful.” It would be Jim’s last Christmas.
In the second week of January 1990, Jim began production on the Muppet 3-D film—to be called Muppet*Vision 3D—shooting the majority of the movie on the gigantic Stage 3 at Disney Studios in California, where 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea had been filmed thirty-six years earlier. “He was more relaxed in a lot of ways,” said Muppet performer Jerry Nelson. “I think it was because he thought he had found the solution to not having to chase the money … that he would just have these projects and be able to create stuff.” And yet, said Nelson, the more he talked with Jim about the details of the deal,
the more he worried it wouldn’t be everything Jim wanted it to be. Jim was growing more concerned, for example, that his production company, regardless of its structure, would be anything but independent once it was under the Disney umbrella. “I think they would not have let him just do projects as he wanted,” said Nelson. “I think their production people would’ve just gotten in the way of all of it.… It would not have been a company that Jim was running.”
Jim’s larger concern, however, was still for his performers. There had been no resolution on whether Jim would be permitted to participate in the selection and training of puppeteers, or whether his performers would be seamlessly transferred over to Disney. “I don’t think they understood it took Jim years to get a single puppeteer up to speed,” said Joan Cooney. Jim was growing particularly irritated with Katzenberg, who he found condescending toward the puppeteers and contemptuous of the art of puppetry. Even inside the Disney organization, Katzenberg was famously haughty and combative; Roy Disney—Walt’s nephew and vice chairman of the company—found him rude, arrogant, and dismissive of the concerns of artists. In 1987, The Wall Street Journal, with grudging admiration, described Kaztzenberg as “the most brutal, the stingiest, most compulsive—and possibly the best—deal maker in town.” Such a style may have gotten results, but “that’s not the way Jim operated,” said Lazer, who spent countless evenings on the phone with Jim, trying to smooth things over after one of Jim’s encounters with the abrasive Katzenberg. “Many times, the deal was off,” said Lazer, “and I brought it back to life again.” Lazer’s advice: talk with Eisner. “Every time he would go see Eisner, it got better,” said Lazer. “Eisner made it better.”
Still, even Jim’s relationship with Eisner could get prickly from time to time. The point of contention was usually the same: Sesame Street. Jim had continued to assure Joan Cooney that Disney wouldn’t acquire the Sesame Street Muppets in the deal, and had even personally informed Eisner that pursuing such a negotiation would be “a non-starter.” During one lunch meeting with Cooney and Eisner, however, Jim became visibly annoyed when Eisner even mentioned the words Sesame Street. “There you go again,” said Jim curtly. Eisner let the matter drop.
Also rocky was Jim’s relationship with Mary Ann. The two of them had been together almost constantly since Christmas, and in mid-January they were staying in Jim’s house in Malibu while Jim worked on Muppet*Vision 3D. With his regular team of performers all in one place again, Jim threw a party at the house, beaming happily as he moved comfortably among friends—including a number of women, noted Mary Ann, who seemed to know their way around Jim’s kitchen. “I felt like the writing was on the wall,” said Mary Ann.
Shortly thereafter, Mary Ann returned to New Mexico. Jim didn’t try to follow. “After a few weeks, we decided to let go,” she recalled, “and he said he would give me the space I needed. It was hard but very loving.” Several weeks later, however, Jim went out of his way to bump into her as she left a lunch meeting in Los Angeles, giving her an enormous hug as she waited for a car. If Jim was hoping for reconciliation, he was likely surprised by the cold reception. That evening, Mary Ann angrily called Jim at home, and shouted, “I was five weeks into building my own life again!” There would be no argument, however; Jim simply listened quietly and hung up—then called back the next evening. But her anger was too much for him, and when she finally asked Jim not to call again, he complied. “Later on, I felt badly, because even if you thought you were justified, it was hard to stay mad at Jim,” said Mary Ann. “But he understood.”
While Jim understood, it was painful for him not to be in a relationship—especially as he looked around him as his children and co-workers entered into serious relationships or marriages of their own. Lisa, now nearly thirty and a successful film executive, was in a long-term relationship with director Sam Raimi. Cheryl, too, was in a committed relationship, while twenty-six-year-old Brian Henson would soon marry costume designer Ellis Flyte. Frank Oz had been married since 1979 and was raising children, while several Muppet office romances had bloomed into matrimony: besides Brian Froud’s marriage to Wendy Midener, creative director Mike Frith had married performer Kathy Mullen. It made Jim feel lonely and old—and he sometimes wondered aloud if he would ever truly be in love again.
And then there was Jane. Despite their differences, “they were always very civil except when they weren’t,” reported Brian Henson. Jim trusted her to deliver an honest opinion, and the two of them would go to lunch or dinner regularly, where they would talk about the children and the company. More often now, Jim would lay out the details of the Disney discussions and ask her opinion. Jane would listen patiently, offering advice only when asked. She understood his frustration with Katzenberg. “Jim didn’t really want to work with somebody who had no respect for what he did,” said Jane. But she also knew Jim wanted the deal to work out. “He could see the possibilities of what could be done if he could be part of that big company.”
If Katzenberg was giving Jim headaches, he was nothing compared with Roald Dahl, who was positively fuming over The Witches, finally released in the middle of February 1990. Things had been quiet over the past few months while the film went into postproduction and final editing; but Dahl had finally seen the completed movie with an audience, and was “appalled” at what he considered “the vulgarity, the bad taste and the actual terror displayed in certain parts of the film.” Dahl fired off an angry letter to Duncan Kenworthy (since “Jim … does not seem to answer any of my letters” he complained) and demanded that his name, and the name of the book, be removed from the credits of the final film. If Jim refused to comply with this request, warned Dahl, “then I shall obviously have to do my best with press conferences, etc. to ensure that children don’t go and see the film.” Kenworthy refused to rise to the bait, merely responding that he was “saddened” to receive Dahl’s letter, and noting that the film had played well in test screenings. He assured Dahl that he would pass his letter on to Jim.
Jim responded to Dahl a week later, suitably apologetic, but tactfully ignoring Dahl’s threat. “I’m sorry that we didn’t stay in closer touch with you through the process of making the film,” wrote Jim. “We certainly had our problems, and perhaps you could have helped us through some of the rocky patches to a final product that you would be happier with.” Nonetheless, Jim liked the final film, and would stand by it. “It’s such a delightful book that you’ve given us to work with,” he told Dahl diplomatically. “I hope you will forgive us for falling short of your expectations.” Though he would never be happy with the film, Dahl grudgingly withdrew his threat.
Jim was spending more and more time at the Disney facilities in Orlando now, tending to his corner of the park, examining walkaround Muppet costumes, and recording voice tracks to be used inside of Disney World’s elaborate transportation system. As much as he enjoyed the Grand Floridian, he wanted a home of his own in the area, and had recently put in the paperwork to purchase a house overlooking Lake Down in the town of Windermere, an affluent suburb thirty minutes north of Walt Disney World. Jim had so enjoyed decorating his Steamboat Road home in Connecticut with Connie Beale that he hired her to help with his new home as well, flying her to Orlando regularly to shop for furniture and fabrics.
Negotiations with Disney dragged on through the spring, with no end in sight, though there had already been one casualty: Bernie Brillstein. Disney lawyers were insisting that Disney have the exclusive authority to sell and distribute Jim’s projects—and that meant Brillstein could no longer serve as Jim’s representative. Jim had flown to California to discuss the matter with Brillstein personally, breaking the news to the agent at his home. Brillstein understood. “Everyone who knows the Disney Company knows that they think they’re smarter than anyone who was ever born,” said Brillstein. But what Jim did next stunned him.
Brillstein’s name was at the very top of The List—the first name Jim had written down when assessing who had been vital to his success, and with l
ittle wonder: Brillstein had been watching out for Jim—and vice versa—for thirty years. “We’ve had a great, great time,” Jim told Brillstein. “I wanted to tell you myself, because I love you and you deserve it.” Jim handed Brillstein a check for $7 million—he promised another $3 million when the deal went through—and offered to pay the agent $500,000 annually in perpetuity to serve as his personal advisor. Brillstein was speechless. “Jesus Christ,” he finally croaked as he took the check. “Our bond was the unspoken certainty that we belonged together,” said Brillstein later.
Through it all, Jim continued working on Muppet*Vision 3D, as well as a live stage show for Disney-MGM called Here Come the Muppets and the television special The Muppets at Walt Disney World. There were some inside the organization who wondered why Jim would keep doing work for Disney without a formal agreement in place. Duncan Kenworthy thought it was typical not only of Jim’s work ethic, but Jim’s faith in Eisner. “Jim didn’t say, ‘We’re not going to do anything until the Disney deal is signed,’ ” recalled Kenworthy. “He said, ‘Hey guys, this is about relationships.’ Besides, he couldn’t sit on his hands for eight months. He just pitched in.”
It wasn’t just Disney getting work out of him; Jim was still actively pursuing and promoting projects for Henson Associates and the Creature Shop, most of which he would own as part of his production company once the agreement was complete. In early March, Jim began meeting with Henson Associates staff about a second series of Storyteller episodes based on Greek myths, and put the final touches on a family special called Living with Dinosaurs, about an asthmatic boy with a talking stuffed dinosaur, that had been intended as an installment of The Jim Henson Hour. By the end of the month, he was out promoting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which opened strongly on March 30 and earned rave reviews for the Creature Shop’s expressive turtle costumes.
Jim Henson: The Biography Page 54
