Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (13 page)

Freelance work is risky because one doesn’t know
in advance one’s yearly earnings, yet for many salaried employees, the ax can
drop at any moment as well. There are really no days in the year on which we can
wake up and be totally secure in our financial future. Working freelance simply
makes one more aware of that reality.

It’s also worthwhile to note that Henson’s first
work at WRC was as a freelancer.
^[72]
It gave him exposure without being weighted down by what were effectively
stepping stones in his career. It was likely he was himself an AFTRA union
member at the time, and when he was working on such unambitious programs like
Footlight
Theater
and
Circle 4 Ranch
, he was perhaps happy to know his job had
an end date. During Henson’s “very major big year”
^[73]
of 1979, Henson had seventy-one full-time employees.
^[74]
But he also had a wide net of freelancers, past and present, with whom he could
potentially collaborate on future projects. Seventy-one is a
small
number
for such a successful company, but even so, taking care of seventy-one people
is a lot of responsibility for one artist to take on. It’s not easy being a
boss.

HERE’S ANOTHER OPTION
YOU CAN BE A HENSON OR YOU CAN BE A SPINNEY

Jim Henson and Caroll Spinney are both geniuses of puppetry
who believed in the power of hard work. But they worked differently. Henson
liked to work the whole night through and into the day and into the night
again. He was willing to sacrifice family and a normal life for his work.
Spinney wasn’t, and he told Henson so. When Henson asked if he liked to work
all night, Spinney recalled, “I should have been diplomatic and said that I
did, but the truth was out. ‘No way!’ I said. I like a solid eight hours’ sleep
every night.”
^[75]
Spinney was destined to be famous and successful, but he was not destined to be
a boss.

Tellingly, they differed when it came to the way
they treated
puppets
. Jim Henson believed that a puppet’s personality
came from what it looked like—down to every minute eye placement and seam. But
he wasn’t precious about the physical puppets. His first Kermit was made from
one of his mother’s old coats. He had to destroy something valuable to make
art. On the other hand, Spinney’s first puppets were sewn by his mother or
bought from a store with saved-up money. They were precious to him.

Spinney describes the difference:

Jim was never sentimental about the puppets.… Jim
just started ripping Oscar apart to reuse the material, which actually came
from a bath mat dyed orange. I was horrified.… Jim and Don didn’t care.
They had the puppet stripped down in a few minutes and were thinking about how
to build another one. “Let’s keep the eyebrows,” I suggested.
^[76]

In another instance:

Jim dropped the puppet on the floor. He had to get a
prop, and since Ernie was in his way, he nudged him aside with his foot. I
picked Ernie up and said to him, “Oh, Ernie. Jim didn’t mean to do that.”

Jim said, “Yes, I did. He was in my way.” Then
he asked, “Do you really talk to the puppets?”

I told him that I did. When I drop Picklepuss, I
apologize to him.

Jim smiled. He said, “To me, the puppets are
just tools to get the scenes done. I’m not sentimental about them.”
^[77]

The difference shows up in the shape of Henson and Spinney’s
careers. They are both great artists who can channel the forces inside their
bodies, minds, and hearts into great performance. But though Henson was
famously unable to fire anyone, he
could
hire people, which for many of
us is just as hard.

Henson never kicked an employee or ripped one
apart, but he had to tell Nelson there wasn’t enough work to keep him. He had
to lose good people and make hard choices so that the organization would stay afloat
and people would get paid. The curse of the boss is often losing sleep over the
responsibility that is yours alone. The beauty of being an employee is not
having to take your work home with you.

In many ways, Spinney is truer to what we think
an artist
should be
. He never had to fire anyone, ask anyone to give up
a vacation or work for cheap. He has delighted children through the character
of Big Bird for forty-five years without having to run a business. Clearly,
there
is
a choice.

Michael Davis noted a similar difference between
Henson and a predecessor of TV puppets, Burr Tillstrom:

I don’t think Jim ever thought the characters were
too precious. That’s why I did so much in the book about Burr Tillstrom.…
[I]t’s because Burr created a very different model about how he felt about
those characters. He didn’t want any commercialism at all. He didn’t want a
Kukla and Ollie in the stories. He felt that there was only one Kukla and one
Ollie and those were the puppets on his hands. He felt that they had a soul and
a life of their own. Jim didn’t, he kept the puppets in a plastic bag, he
didn’t think that they were alive. He knew that the performers were the ones
giving them life.

[Tillstrom] could have been a gazillionaire. I’m
old enough to remember Kukla, Fran and Ollie on television and they were it.
They were it for a while. They could have been in every five and dime, every
drug store, every toy store, but he didn’t want it. And then here you have Jim
who went about it carefully, cautiously, but he was interested in making money
from the characters. Why? Because it gave him the freedom to do the things he
really wanted to do like the
Dark Crystal
and
Labyrinth
. He
wanted to expand and make sure that the people who worked for him made a good
wage. It’s two different ways of looking at the world.
^[78]

If one is too “precious” about one’s art, one can’t leverage
its power as well to the benefit and survival of that art. And because he was
not too “precious” about the characters, Henson was able to be a boss, to make
tough decisions, to sacrifice one thing for another. Tillstrom succeeded on his
own terms—he was the biggest thing in puppets in his lifetime. Spinney is also
amazingly successful on his own terms, not running a business or licensing
anything, but getting to create on a daily basis the work he was born to do.

It may be better to be a Spinney. It’s
harder
to be a Henson. But who gave meaningful jobs to hundreds of creative artists? Spinneys
have a boss they can trust. Hensons have to wake up and be that boss every day,
rain or shine. It is difficult to say who had more of a lasting impact. I think
there are kinder people walking the planet today because of the artwork of both
these men. But every artist has a choice. You don’t have to be a Henson.

But if you’re going to be a Spinney, you need to
find
a Henson. It might not be easy—he might talk quietly or ask you to
take a pay cut. But ultimately, his business could be the key to your career in
art. Even Henson, in his early years, sought out a Henson. Henson didn’t work
for Tillstrom outright, but he attached himself to Tillstrom’s mentorship, and
it helped him to survive in New York City.
[79]

Even if you plan to be a Henson,
finding a
Henson
is a good start. You’ll get a lot further than you could on your own.
Reaching out is the first step to any collaboration.

HOW TO
START A SNOWBALL

You would not be reading this book if you didn’t dream of a
career like Henson’s, and the truth is that a great deal of his success came
not from him alone but from the snowballing of a lot of creative artists
working together. The first step towards harnessing that power is to hire someone—one
person—right now. Hire someone
before
you believe in yourself. It is the
kind of thing that will force you to believe in yourself, for their sake.

How can you guarantee paying someone when you’re
not even sure you can pay yourself? I think the better question is, what is
worth
paying someone for
? If it has worth, it will accrue value, and it will get
you more work. You might have to start with a freelancer—hire someone for a
one-off project. Think of something that might be better with a new set of
eyes. In turn, it will likely give
you
a new outlook on the work. When
Jim Henson came back from Europe to see how
Sam and Friends
fared
without him, he was surely surprised. Let other people surprise you.

Some artists—notably writers and painters—are
known for their solitude, but we benefit from collaboration as much as anyone
else. It was hard for me to ask an artist to illustrate one of my stories,
frankly because I know that art is invaluable and offering any amount of money
in return for it feels exploitative. But when you pay another artist to help
you, you give them more than the check; you give them the message that good art
is worth paying for. You also give yourself that message.

How have you added collaboration to your art?
Did it cost money? Some people are able to form collectives tied together by
common values instead of paychecks, and there are many good reasons we don’t
want money to enter into creative discussions. Yet oftentimes, without money,
collaboration cannot happen. What are your strategies for handling the money
aspect of your collaborations?

When you decide whom to hire, think about the
skills you want them to possess, but more importantly, think about how they
relate to you. What kind of humor is necessary in order to hang out with you
for as long as it takes to get the job done? Because you may be doing just that—and
at the end of as-long-as-it-takes, you will likely call that person a friend.

Please don’t fall into the trap of becoming
professional. Be yourself. Don’t be “businesslike” because you think that’s
what business
is
. That’s not what business is. The essence of business
was what Henson was after. Not the suits, ties, and “best practices” of HR.
Henson didn’t need that. To him, business was a handshake—an acknowledgment
that both parties were on the same page.

When you find good collaborators, you will do
your darnedest to keep them around. Good people are worth keeping. What
successes have you had with collaborators? What problems did you have? What
kept you together? What kept you coming to work each day? Strangely enough,
it’s easier to go into work when there’s a friend there to greet you. Chapter 9
will say more about Henson’s strategies for managing collaboration, but the
first step is very simple: reach out to other artists.

Take some time to find your people and reach out
to them. They called Jim Henson “fearless leader.” Imagine yourself as a
“fearless leader” of artists, leaving a legacy like his. Even if you choose not
to be the guy who writes the paychecks, you will probably have to be the guy who
keeps everyone together. Money is just the best way to do it. Without that
paycheck, family and life tend to get in the way—they tend to take groups
apart. Picture money as the four walls of that little office on 2nd Avenue—as
the thing that holds the snowball together. It’s not the main reason we make
art, but it helps keep pesky things like survival and supporting one’s family
from getting in the way.

When the right people appear in your life, they
will have their own reasons for joining you. And it is usually because you, for
whatever reason, can help them achieve their dreams. If you’ve already found
collaborators, where did you find them? Do you feel you have enough
collaboration in your work? These questions are worth journaling about. If you
like, share your answers on my website,
ElizabethHydeStevens.com
.

Collaboration with other artists lightens the
load for you. You don’t have to do it all by yourself. What do you dream of?
How can you find others who dream of that same thing? How will you know them
when you meet them? How can you help them get there?