Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (17 page)

As for myself, I don’t intend to leave
commercial television. This is where the Muppets and I have worked for many
years, and it is the income from commercial TV that makes my participation in
educational TV possible.

What I will try to do is what I have tried to do
on Sesame Street this season, that is, to work with a degree of integrity and
responsibility to the children of the country.

Yours truly,

Jim Henson
^[70]

Henson kept a copy of his letter to Gould, which
implies it was sent, but there is no evidence it ever appeared in print. One
can imagine it was a personal sting to have his integrity questioned like this.
Yet, for Henson, compromise had actually
led him
to integrity. In his
own words, “it is the income from commercial TV that makes my participation in
educational TV possible.”

When
The Muppet Show
aired in 1975,
Henson could have used the characters—who were in no way educational—in
commercials, yet he did so only sparingly. At that point, his business
generated enough money on its own that commercials were not necessary, and
Henson could afford to be choosy. Throughout the seventies and eighties, Henson
only made a handful of commercials, according to archivist Falk, “where he felt
the situation and product was particularly appropriate.”
^[71]
This included a Polaroid commercial, since the camera “held a special place in
Jim’s memories.”
^[72]
In 1975, he made a commercial for a soft drink that Pepsi promised not to air
in the United States, so that it would not confuse young PBS viewers.
^[73]

He appeared in a 1977 ad campaign for American
Express
,
saying, “When I travel, I take the American Express Card.”
^[74]
Falk notes, “For the record, he even signed an affidavit confirming that his
experience using the card matched his statements in the commercial.”
^[75]

And quite often, Henson used his Muppets to make
public service announcements, in essence commercials for cherished causes. In a
1988 PSA for The Better World Society, Kermit and the Muppets asked “What if
everyone in the world lived in one house? … We do.”
^[76]
Henson made one called “Food” and another on “Bombs.”
^[77]
In a 1988 PSA for the National Wildlife Federation, Kermit says, “Our forests
are in trouble. They’re being threatened by development and people who don’t
treat ’em with respect!”
^[78]
Henson saw commercials for what they are—tools. And tools are neither good nor
bad; it’s what
you make
that is.

Muppet heroes stand up to Muppet villains who
want to use their powers to do unjust things. In the showdown at the end of
The
Muppet Movie
, Doc Hopper threatens Kermit one last time: “Are you gonna do
my TV commercial live or stuffed?” Kermit refuses to be extorted: “If what I’m
saying really doesn’t make sense to you, then go ahead and kill me.” A Muppet
protagonist would rather die than be the puppet of an unjust cause. The Muppet musicians
of Bremen leave their thieving, abusive owners to make music “for folks.” Santa
Claus breaks free of Scam’s prison and delivers the toys to everyone—even Scam.
The happy ending in a Muppet story involves breaking free of exploitation. But
it doesn’t mean the Muppets stop performing. They don’t stop
dancing
with frog legs or making music or delivering presents. Their power, their
art
—which
makes them attractive to advertisers/exploiters in the first place—is theirs to
use. To their own ends.

Looking back on Henson’s career, one thing led
to another.
Sam and Friends
led to commercials. Commercials led to
Sesame
Street
.
Sesame Street
led to licensing. Licensing led to
The
Muppet Show
, and
The Muppet Show
led to movies. Henson made art make
money and then made money make art. And though it was right for Henson to quit
ads when he did, they were an important step along the way.

THE ONLY WAY TO STOP IS TO
(FIRST) START
RETHINKING THE AD

Jim Henson will be remembered as an innovator in both
television and movies, but he was far more
financially
successful in
television. Part of that is because of something TV has that movies don’t—commercials.

His assistant Alex Rockwell explained:

Jim had not been able to make a successful movie in a
long time. There was a chunk of time there where it wasn’t quite working.
^[79]

The chunk of time in particular included the box-office
disappointments
of
The Dark Crystal
and
The Labyrinth
. Brian
Henson recalled:

When “Labyrinth” was not a commercial success, that,
I think, that was quite a blow to him. At that point, I think he was starting
to feel like, “I love the Muppets, but I have more in me. Why did this not
work? How could this not have worked?”
^[80]

Today, these works are considered classic fantasy films. They’ve
been criticized for their scripts, but a good deal of box office
hits
have scripts that pale next to David Odell’s and Terry Jones’s.

Unfortunately for Henson, whose dream was to
make big-budget movies, there is a fundamental difference in the economies of
movies and television. And it is especially important for an artist, whose work
operates in a gift economy. Movies, by nature, are less
gift
than TV.
With TV, fans don’t buy a show—advertisers do. By the time the fans see it,
it’s like a free lunch. Moviegoers don’t get a free lunch. They get the lunch
they’ve paid for. Though movie theaters increasingly show ads before the film, they
don’t require you to sit through them mid-film, and they do require a ticket
for
each
film. A world where you had to pay for each individual show you
watched on television would create very different programming—it’s a very
different sales model.

And perhaps this is why it didn’t quite work for
Henson to make the shift from television to movies. It seemed like it would
when
The Muppet Movie
made $76 million, but perhaps that was because it
was a first, a novelty. Once Henson started to rely on the fans
themselves
to pay for his gift to them, the system—built on giving more than getting—fell
apart.

The truth is that ads are not just thievery.
They are also benefactors. Because of network TV, viewers who buy a TV once can
be given gifts. TV directors can give the viewer more than he expects, and it’s
paid for by a sponsor. In this way, we might rethink the ad. Ads can be exploitative
and obnoxious, but if you’re smart enough to ignore them—if you’re happy with
your life and aren’t tempted to buy other people’s lives—what ads really do is
facilitate the consumption of
free art
. In Henson’s lifetime, TV, of all
the available mediums, had the most potential for art—because no other medium
had as many ads.

A test case is
Fraggle Rock
, which aired in
the United States on HBO, a subscription-based network without ads. HBO has
been an amazing benefactor to the arts—and
Fraggle Rock
was its first original
series—starting a legacy that would go on to include
The Sopranos
and
Girls
.
HBO’s strength is that it doesn’t let commercial sponsors call the shots, but
that’s also its weakness. Because it doesn’t have commercials, viewers must pay
to subscribe to the channel. It becomes more like the movie economy.

Most Canadian children of a certain age equate Fraggles
with childhood. There, the show aired on the government-subsidized CBC and was
free to all. But in the US,
Fraggle Rock
is a gem that was enjoyed by a
precious few. Had it aired on a national US network, commercial sponsors would
have made it available to all. The two countries saw the same show, but in a
slightly different economic model. Unlike the CBC, HBO was not free to view.

The Muppet Show
was. And it was a smash
hit in the US, as much as it was abroad. Aired right before primetime network
TV, it had ads. Free to view on CBS, it was, effectively, a gift. Hyde writes
that artists have historically found “patrons” to support them and today that
often takes the form of grants.
^[81]
But it could also look like a TV commercial.
Time
magazine called Big
Bird “TV’s Gift to Children.” The Ford and Carnegie philanthropic foundations
and PBS gave us Big Bird. But Henson’s characters were also a gift—ads’ gift to
everyone.

For Jim Henson, working in television
commercials was a
complex
second job, to put it mildly. He was
participating in an ethically dicey line of work. But ads are themselves tools—exposure—that
can be used for various purposes, including good ones. In
The Great Muppet
Caper
, it is telling that both the crooks
and
Kermit break into the
museum. They both have tools—glass cutters and whoopee cushions, respectively.
The crooks were there to steal the jewels. The Muppets were there to catch the
crooks. The Muppets’ break-in is designed to alert the police to the identity
of the real criminal. And Henson’s commercials seem to aim at this, too—to get
the viewer to
wise up
.

It’s ethically confusing, and that is why most
idealists don’t participate in advertising. Yet, without the big heist scene,
there could be no movie. Yes, Henson ultimately had to refuse commercials to
protect
Sesame Street
. But without Henson’s participation in
commercials, there would be no
Sesame Street
to protect.

HOW TO
HIJACK YOUR DAY JOB

As artists, how can we learn from Jim Henson’s complex
relationship with ads? So much has changed: today, corporations can sponsor a
human being and his car with a tattoo and a paint job. At the same time, regular
humans resent ads even more than they did in the sixties. Still, that makes a
particularly gift-like ad all the more appreciated. Filmmakers Errol Morris and
Christopher Guest both make television commercials as a source of income, and
their “gift” makes TV a little better than it might otherwise be.

Where might we hijack advertising? Product
placement is perhaps the worst ad of all—because it is so insidious,
exploitative, and sneaky. But what if it weren’t? It is entirely
possible
to Henson-ize the product placement. A video game could feature a side-game for
Pepsi that is more fun, self-satirizing, and inventive than the rest of the
game. It could wind up becoming an ad for the full-length game you’re going to
make in ten years. It could be the exposure you need to get people interested. I’m
not saying this is
your
answer, but it’s an example of the type of
thinking that could lead us to our own answers.

For myself, my second job is teaching, but I am
keenly interested in the ways advertising factors into my writing and how it is
read. An essay on a website like
The Awl
has the potential to go viral
and reach readers everywhere because it is funded by advertisements, whereas
currently, the
New York Times
is locked behind a subscriber paywall. From
a certain point of view, an artist might
rather
publish a free
New
Yorker
blog post than a proper
New Yorker
feature, which you can’t
send a friend, even if you really love it. Interestingly, wherever we place
ads, we are given a gift—a cat video on YouTube, a game of Words with Friends,
a show on Hulu. These experiences of art are free to view and free to share.
When my Kindle Fire goes to the lock screen, it shows an ad for a television
show or a book, and honestly, I enjoy them, because I know they’re subsidizing
my tablet experience.

I’m the kind of person who despises billboards,
brand names, and the Home Shopping Network, but when I see a good commercial, I
will tweet it. For artists who came of age as the Internet did, there are many new
places to put an ad, and we might think of these as
places to put your art
.
Think of the places where ads are most annoying, where you groan and curse the
company for their shortsighted idea of “monetizing”—the shameless interruptions
to your Facebook and Twitter feeds. These are the places that need a little
more of the “gift” spirit of art. If Jim Henson had been born a little later, perhaps
he would be making us laugh with Promoted Tweets and Suggested Posts.

Where is the money right now? Where are the
thieves? Where is the most potential to impress people with a little art? Where
might you come in?

If you do use commercials for a second job, be
very
careful. Refuse anything that is not consistent with your vision. Make money
with ads, by all means, but if you
do
go into advertising,
hijack
the ad. Make it an ad for
you
, for your continued work, for your idealistic
worldview, for the smart viewers you
want
to have. Don’t talk down to
people. Don’t say anything you don’t believe. If you think something is bogus,
say so. Parody it. See if they pay you anyway, as long as you produce work
according to your own standards. Don’t fall into the trap of becoming jaded, of
becoming a liar—remember, one foot in the pool only.

Just as Henson reserved a separate “gift-sphere”
for his art, make the time to work on your non-paying projects. Reserve hours
or whole days that are just for art. Don’t let your day job take over your life
simply because it has a more immediate payoff. Never forget why your second job
is there:
to support your art
.

What is your day job? Does it help your art?
Does it hurt your art? In what ways is it a complex relationship? How might you
make it work better
for you
?