Jim Henson: The Biography

by Brian Jay Jones

as Jim had learned from Walt Kelly’s Pogo, your audience was willing to let you be a little subversive when you were giving them something fun to look at and, more important, when they were being entertained.

“The attitude you have as a parent is what your kids will learn from more than what you tell them,” Jim said later. “They don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”

As Kermit sat on a park bench overlooking a lake, Jim had filmed Jerry Nelson and his daughter, Christine, walking past. “Look, Dad, there’s a bear!” said Christine brightly, pointing to Kermit. “No, Christine, that’s a frog,” replied Jerry. “Bears wear hats.” It was a moment Jim had put in just for a bit of fun for Christine. The following September, Christine Nelson would die of complications from cystic fibrosis at age twenty-two. Jim attended the service, his presence quietly reassuring Nelson—but Jim’s actions always spoke louder than any words. Several years earlier, when Henson Associates’ insurance provider had notified Jim that it would no longer be paying all of Christine’s medical expenses, Jim had insisted that Henson Associates change insurance companies to ensure her costs would continue to be fully covered. Nelson had gone to Jim’s office and tearfully thanked him in person, nearly choking on emotion. “Jerry,” said Jim, smiling, “that’s what insurance companies are for.”

If they were going to make another Muppet film, Oz said testily, they would have to “figure out a way to do a really low-budget kind of thing.” That was all Juhl needed. Hunching over his Macintosh computer in his home office in California, he quickly pounded out a treatment for a film called The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made. In Juhl’s first treatment, Kermit allows Gonzo to write and direct a bad adventure movie called Into the Jaws of the Demons of Death—with “this cheesy, terrible plot,” as Juhl put it, “that made absolutely no sense whatsoever, about something being stolen that led to a chase around the world.” In his enthusiasm, Gonzo spends his entire budget on an impressive opening credits sequence, then has no money left for the rest of the film. As the movie proceeds, the film quality gets worse and worse, eventually eroding into black-and-white Super 8 film, then a slide show, and finally just storyboards—until Gonzo sells out to corporate sponsors and finishes the movie in a beautiful, high-definition, widescreen format.

Other times, he would simply sit quietly as he watched the ocean stretch out toward the horizon—“just a few minutes in meditation and prayer each morning,” he said. “I find that this really helps me to start the day with a good frame of reference. As part of my prayers, I thank whoever is helping me—I’m sure somebody or something is—I express gratitude for all my blessings and I try to forgive the people that I’m feeling negative toward. I try hard not to judge anyone, and I try to bless everyone who is part of my life, particularly anyone with whom I am having any problems.”

“I learned from him to be very, very prepared and then very, very flexible—to know exactly what you’re going to do, until somebody has another idea … because that’s the way to work, you know.”

“What’s a whole lot tougher is to offer alternatives, to present other ways conflicts can be resolved, and to show that you can have a positive impact on your world. To do that, you have to put yourself out on a limb, take chances, and run the risk of being called a do-gooder.”