Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (37 page)

Henson wrote in his journal, “10/26/1982 Lunch with Neil
Simon—B’way.” Whatever it was—other projects in the way, people backing out, or
perhaps not enough lunches in the day, Broadway never saw a Muppets show.
Brillstein wrote, “My one regret is that I never got him to do
An Evening
with the Muppets
on Broadway. I believe if he had, it would still be
running today.”
^[76]

With all the dealing, planning, and failure of
the never-made B’way show, it is hard to picture myself doing something like
this—trying and failing for two decades to make something happen. B’way was a
failure every year of Henson’s career. But it was also a possibility every year
of his career—because he refused to close the door on something just because it
was difficult to achieve. Henson’s long view is an attitude any artist can
benefit from. Jerry Nelson said of Henson, “If [Jim] could see it happening in
his mind’s eye and knew that it would work, he would dog it until it
worked.”
^[77]

In
Muppets Take Manhattan
, Rowlf sang
about failure. When the Muppets tried to get their Broadway show produced,
doors slammed in their faces. Yet, in spite of rejection, Rowlf sang, “You
can’t take no for an answer. No no no.” The theme of that song, and that movie,
is that artists—like you—
need
to be able to fail
this
hard
and to be able to get back up and try again.

Some doors are closed
permanently—but if you look at it another way, they’re not really closed—they’re
just angled to lead somewhere new.

REUSE, REPURPOSE, RECYCLE

Since Henson owned his copyrights, nothing was ever truly
wasted
,
even if it seems like it came to nothing. We see elements from
Johnny Carson
and the Muppet Machine
—a janitor with a broom, an exploding machine, a
world of cave dwellers, a labyrinth rooted in the explorer’s fears—in many
later Henson works. The spectacle of Cyclia reappears in Henson’s lavish masked
ball scene in
Labyrinth
. And though Henson never made a Broadway show,
the Muppets did, fictionally, in a movie.

Time
called
Muppets Take Manhattan
“a lullaby to Broadway.” The Muppets endure relentless failure with agents,
producers, and other B’way types. But they succeed in the fictional film when
the son of a producer falls in love with the novelty of their idea. Though we
might see this as Henson’s swan song for his B’way dreams, in a way, the movie
was
also
a pitch for the B’way show that might
yet
be made—by the
next generation of angel investors. As a pitch, the big wedding at the end—a
masterful song and dance number—showed any producers watching that it could
still
work.

The beauty of turning Henson’s Broadway failure
into a Hollywood love story is that he was at once accepting defeat in the
present and holding onto the possibility of success in the future. If he never
made a B’way show—which he didn’t—then the film would recycle many of his ideas
and make them bear fruit. People saw
Muppets Take Manhattan
. It has a Wikipedia
page. That’s something. The B’way project doesn’t.

Another recycled “waste” is Leo from the
Muppet
Show
pitch reel. Henson reused Leo’s pitch as the meeting film
Sell,
Sell, Sell
. Even if it didn’t work with CBS, it did work as a business-to-business
rental. This DVD is still for sale for $445, or for rent for $250 a week.
^[78]
Recycling made Leo bear fruit—meaning money to fund projects—but also more. Leo
gave Henson exposure in a new market. Though the
Muppet Show
pitch reel
was seen by only a handful of CBS executives, the
Sell, Sell, Sell
film
was seen by many employees at companies like IBM—adults—who probably became
more likely to become fans of the
Muppet Show
, once it was put in an
adult context.

Exposure is always a good thing. And then there
is the lucky-devil possibility that one of your rejecters will change their
mind. In 1966, Henson noted, “Wrote ‘The Cube’ with Jerry—NBC rejected.”
^[79]
According to Falk, NBC sent a “warm” rejection note:

The producer described Jim as “one of the most
brilliant creative artists of our time,” but that he saw “no hope for it at any
domestic network unless CBS Playhouse turns out to be far more courageous and
experimental that I expect them to be.” As it happened, in 1967, the NBC
television network began a series of one-hour Sunday afternoon programs under
the heading NBC Experiment in Television, conceived as an opportunity to
develop new television formats and concepts. In 1968, NBC bought
The
Cube
and Jim produced it for the series to air the following February.
^[80]

Rejection letters often contain the polite phrase “not for
us,” but sometimes, a rejection is the first step to a relationship. Henson was
ahead of his time. When NBC caught up and became more experimental, they
remembered Henson’s pitch. Had he not subjected himself to failure, he would
not have been forefront in their minds. We might picture it as a blessing to be
defined as “not for us,” when an executive thinks,
Oh where was that thing
that was not for us? It would be perfect for
this.

Henson’s pitch—though technically a failure—actually
primed NBC to be more aware of experimental content and its value to their
changing audience. It makes sense to keep in touch with warm rejecters, and to
never be less than warm back, no matter how much rejection may sting.

When we look at Henson’s disappointments with
NBC, the pitch reel, and
The Cube
, failure almost starts to seem like
getting a free distribution deal that no one took a cut of. Pitching your idea
is free, and it’s a free form of exposure. You take up the industry’s time by
pitching, and getting an audience with a network turned out to be incredibly
valuable to Henson, even if the pitches were met with “sorry, not for us.”

In many ways, a life of constant pitching is a
life of constant failure. The next time you watch
Muppets Take Manhattan
,
know that the kind of dogged, naïve enthusiasm that the Muppets display when
trying to get their Broadway show made was exactly what enabled Henson to make his
ideas
real
. When you watch an artist struggle and fail, think to
yourself,
How can I do that? How can I keep failing and keep pitching?

RE-SYNDICATE, CO-FUND, RE-PROFIT

Another benefit to pitching widely is that it tends to
create more offers to fund your work. And if no one funder can offer enough to
make your project, Henson realized, you could get
two
people to co-fund
you. With some clever sleight-of-hand, giving the same thing to multiple people
yields a higher amount of funding.

Usually, it is only prime time series that get
picked up for syndication.
Seinfeld,
for instance, started on prime time
NBC and was then licensed to smaller networks to fill their odd daytime
timeslots.
The Muppet Show
was never prime time. It came on at 7:30 p.m.
on most CBS affiliates, and because of that, most people
thought
it was
prime time. Because no one could tell it was syndicated, it could later be
re-syndicated as reruns by the TNT network. As we saw, the show made no money when
it first aired and became profitable only after it was re-syndicated. In this
sense, from the point of view of a historian, TNT and ATV effectively pooled
their resources so that the show would make a profit for Henson.

Brillstein wrote, “Most people then didn’t know
the difference between a network show and a syndicated show, so it seemed like
we were on CBS proper.”
^[81]
Henson would later use this same trick with
Fraggle Rock
.

In 1982, Henson needed more funding than he
could get from one network for
Fraggle Rock
. So he pitched it to both CBC
and HBO to co-fund. According to Duncan Kenworthy,

[t]he deal was that CBC were going to provide all the
facilities, so the crew and the studio and things that didn’t actually cost
them hard cash was the idea. And then we had to pitch it to HBO, was the idea,
to get the cash.…It was probably one of the only times—certainly
subsequently it became much harder to do—where we managed to get two countries
to pay for the entire show and then Henson’s owned the show. And were able to
then sell it and coproduce it and adapt it around the world.
^[82]

Most people in the US thought
Fraggle Rock
was a US show made by HBO. In Canada, you’d think it was a Canadian show made
by CBC. And with the coproductions, you might think it’s a British, German, or
French show, depending where you live, because you would see a different wraparound—a
“Doc” who lived in a Scottish lighthouse and was a captain, or who lived in a bakery
and was a French chef. The money came from many hands, but the show stayed in Henson’s.
To this day, it is The Henson Company that can sell DVDs of the show and
produce sequels.

One problem with co-funding is that if one
backer backs out, you have to stop. You now have to worry about two funders.
Jerry Nelson explains why
Fraggle Rock
ended:

HBO, at that time, felt that they were over-extended
and needed to cut back.…CBC would have been perfectly happy keeping it,
and in fact, they tried to find some other way to carry on with it. Another
season would have been ideal.
^[83]

Co-funding, like crowdfunding, has its drawbacks, but it can
also lead to greater quality—while it lasts.

Because of co-funding,
Fraggle Rock
had a
generous budget. It gets expensive to have writers watch tapings and performers
attend writing meetings, or to pay for overtime when a writer wants to flood
the Gorgs’ basement, yet the “cash” from HBO, as Kenworthy put it, made such a collaboration
affordable. “We had plenty of money,” said producer Larry Mirkin.
^[84]
Designer Michael Frith wrote that when he came up with big idea,

[n]o one ever said it would be too expensive or too
time-consuming; people just pushed through the night to make things
happen—again and again … endless caverns, crystalline constructions, and
gleaming underground cities …
^[85]

The idea to make Doozers pogo is amazing, but not cheap.
Making it happen took three hours for fourteen seconds of video. Henson was
able to pay the
Fraggle Rock
writers, performers, and artists well
because of the extra money from both CBC and HBO. They were able to construct
lavish sets and beautiful creatures, and create unforgettable original music,
because they had twice as many funders as the average show. And to get them,
Henson had to make twice as many pitches.

For all the drawbacks that come with relentless pitching,
I believe it is the single most important thing that can allow an artist to
control his own financial destiny.

HOW TO
CULTIVATE YOUR PITCHIFICATION

So how can you become a pitchman? Find what it is that you
can’t shut up about. Henson had more success pitching projects that were
both
financially and artistically attractive. When you are selling good, marketable
things like
Sesame Street
, you will find it an easier sell than when you
are selling Wheels, Flutes and Crowns, which are just marketable. It also helps
that your “good” things have a potential payout, like
Sesame Street
toys
or
Muppet Show
re-syndication.

But you may also find that, like Henson, you
pitch more when you are trying to
avoid
something than when you are
trying to get
towards
something. If so, think of pitching as your way
out, and pitch as though your life depended on it. Your
artistic
life
just might.

Above all, know that Henson was not thrilled to
do promotion, either. Henson was a shy man with a quiet way of speaking. It was
only in the last year of his life that he agreed to appear on camera regularly
as himself as a recurring character in
The Jim Henson Hour
. Henson’s preachification
leads me to wonder—is the shyest, most reluctant self-promoter perhaps the
best
pitchman? If he finds something
worth
overcoming shyness to preach,
perhaps no one can silence him.

As I write this, I am burning with the sting of
a recent rejection from
Slate
. But it makes me smile to think that two
years ago,
Slate
told me my essay “Weekend at Kermie’s” wasn’t for them,
and instead of cutting it down to conform to their style, I made it even longer
and made a list of thirty more editors.
The Awl
ran it, and when it went
viral people tweeted things like, “This is the single best article I have read
this year.” When you make something really great on spec, it can be a risk, but
ultimately it gives you the power to control your artistic destiny. If you can
stomach failure, pitching allows you to say and do what
you
want, not just
what the market wants.

How do you feel about pitching? How does it feel
to be rejected? How does it feel to get the job? Does it get any easier with
time? What do you do to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and pitch again?

Because of the way Henson’s negotiation with
Disney turned sour—as we will explore in Episode 10—I don’t think it is
possible to truly “get out” of the pitching game. It seems a part of the
freelance artist lifestyle. In order to have your independence—your creative
freedom—as an artist, you have to just keep pitching.

You can convince people of anything, as long as
you try enough people, and as long as you really believe in it yourself. If you
believe
in your art, make a pitch for it today. Spend a day at the easel
working on a pitch of some kind. Watch Jim Henson’s impressive pitching for
inspiration, and then go out and sell, sell, sell!