Chapter 16: Staring into the Sunset (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian
1990 and the new decade brought new possibility, but still, a melancholy hung over Jim. Death seemed to be everywhere. The previous December a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am flight returning to the US from Germany, killing hundreds. A man with a pistol killed a bunch of people at a McDonalds in West LA, seemingly for no reason at all. Gang violence and drug related deaths were growing across America. Closer to home, he’d learned from Bernie Brillstein about Corey Haim’s overdose death, followed all too soon by Corey Feldman’s fatal auto accident. He’d watched Howard growing weaker every day. Richard Hunt was visibly turning paler and thinner. The specter of that damned disease and the anemic response to it chewed at him.
The Song of Susan was a hit. It won awards. It raised awareness. It raised tens of millions of dollars for AIDS research. But it couldn’t save Richard and Howard, whose sands continued to slip away.
And yet a small but vocal group of shareholders were crying foul over the whole affair. Tens of millions were being “wasted” on charity. Even during its production some of these shareholders questioned why resources were being spent on “an AIDS flick”. It was a small minority, led by a vocal day trader and occasional arbitrageur, but the noise was increasing. Frank Wells said it was just a power play, and that most investors saw the advantages of positive publicity and brand improvement for long term growth, and yet with the economy sliding ever deeper into recession, some were starting to feel the bite in real time. Frank Wells ran as much interference as he could, pointing out (somewhat accurately) that with the charity they’d probably dodge enough taxes over the next three years to more than make up for the perceived “loss”, and yet even many of the more patient shareholders and their representatives were clamoring for an explanation as to why the company ever agreed to give up
all of the profits. Honestly, Frank had only agreed to the charity because no one expected the movie to be a hit with general audiences. Disney stock prices had actually
dropped because of it and papers were calling it “the costliest success in history”.
It baffled Jim. Disney had made them all a fortune between all of the other massive hits, the growing park attendance, and hotel revenues over the last seven years, and yet they wanted
more. How much did one man need? Jim was now so rich that he couldn’t think of anything to spend it on, so he spent it on son John’s charity work or new educational projects. He funneled his own bonuses back down to the employees. The shareholders hadn’t complained about the profits of
Maus all going to charity, but then again, that film only made a few million.
The Song of Susan broke $120 million gross. He accepted that he had a duty to the shareholders, but this was seriously ridiculous. He urged them to pay a visit to Howard and see the human cost, but for the most part the pleas fell on deaf ears.
It sucked the life from him.
Still, the company moved forward with a life of its own. Cheryl’s “The Song of the Cloud Forest” had been a major success on
Disney’s World of Magic. Its hyper-color puppetry was some of the most visually stunning and beautiful stuff the Muppet Workshop had produced in years. It was a beautiful and sentimental work that none the less addressed a serious existential issue: habitat destruction and extinction. He’d delighted in watching the life-affirming creation of his middle daughter’s new special, and was particularly proud and happy to present it on
World of Magic, but alas the reigns of production were almost completely out of his hands.
Instead, a darker picture absorbed his time:
Mort, a beautiful but bittersweet story that resonated with the context of Howard’s imminent passing. Howard’s chilling lyrics, set to Alan and Danny’s amazing, ethereal score with its mix of minor key and Phrygian scale, captured the longing, existential ennui of the four central characters. And certainly, the haunted and haunting (literally) Princess Keli was unlike any Disney Princess to come before! Jim and Terry Pratchett had gotten along very well during its creation. Terry mentioned that he had an idea for a follow-up to
Mort. While Disney generally didn’t do “sequels” Jim swore he’d give it a look when it arrived. He made a note to look at all of Terry’s writing. The animated feature was shaping up to be amazing. The pencil test sequences, tied to the fantastic voice work, was astonishing.
Up next was
Aladdin, Howard’s personal passion project fashioned in the vein of the old Bob Hope/Bing Crosby musicals and the old Swing Age jazz scene with a Genie based on Cab Calloway. Jim flew out to New York, checked on the plays and
Sesame Street, and went up to Fishkill. Howard and Alan were rushing to finish the music while Howard still breathed, but the clock was ticking. The doctors claimed that there was less than a year. Howard, voice weaker than it had been just weeks before, lamented how much he wanted to stay longer, but there was so much to do and so little time. Jim, though not facing Howard’s definite looming mortality, knew all too well about that.
Jim drove down to Philadelphia, nearly getting into an accident on I-95 as his mind wandered, to check on the Disneytown, set to open that year. He was happy to visit Sesame Place, which held a special place in his heart. He wanted to stay longer, but time was running out. He had to fly down to check on Typhoon Lagoon and then jet back to Burbank.
The latest Studio Ghibli release,
Kiki’s Delivery Service, a brilliant story about when the “magic” of talent is lost due to the drudgery of work, had made a good $36 million, not
My Neighbor Totoro success, but more in keeping with the usual returns on Japanese anime imports. The continued success of the partnership led Henson and Miyazaki to establish an “animator’s exchange program”.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was about to release. Jim was exceptionally proud of the film and glad that they’d managed to beat out Warner Brothers and Paramount to make it
[1]. The animatronics were working exceptionally well and really bringing the Eastman and Laird characters to life.
Batman had been a smashing success (he sent his congratulations to Lisa’s boyfriend Sam), so they greenlit
Spiderman in partnership with Orion Pictures after reclaiming the film rights from Canon when they reverted in 1990. It was to be the first time the webslinger had been on the big screen to the best of his knowledge. They put it under MGM. Lisa’s own Indiana Jones movie,
The Judgement of Anubis, her first credit as Producer, was likewise a smashing success. In the excitement of their twin blockbusters, Sam and Lisa decided to get married. The spur-of-the-moment wedding was a fun chance for the whole family to gather, but the marriage itself wouldn’t last, ending in amicable divorce in 1991.
As for MGM, the Entertainment Pavilion and its MGM-themed Great Movie Ride was a smashing success, though Universal Studios, under construction in Orlando, could pose a challenge once it opened. Frank was furious at the Universal plan and wanted to build up a competing resort. It seemed to Jim like a waste of time and money just to hypothetically “compete” with Universal Studios. Instead, why not make the existing parks more attractive? A new Indiana Jones themed stunt show in Adventureland seemed like the obvious choice. Triad, owners of Paramount, were happy to support anything that undermined arch-rival Universal. As for studio tours, the newly expanded Burbank lot offered the perfect place for tours, and with sets much more likely to actually be occupied and “in production” than some hypothetical new lot in Kissimmee. And as the number of active productions increased, they indeed began building new studios and sound stages in Orlando, with a “yellow brick road” from the Entertainment Pavilion that offered Studio tours from EPCOT as well.
Then you had Port Disney and the DisneySea park to go with it. And there was Disneyland Valencia…he really needed to find the time to visit the site again. He and Frank spent hours of time going over concept art, test reels, blueprints, spreadsheets, schedules, release plans…still so little time for it all.
He took a little time off, and most of it was spent at Sunset Puppetry doing increasingly surreal and adult shows for the teens and young adults on the Sunset Strip. At one point he and his kids went scrambling when a gunfight broke out on Sunset Boulevard, apparently a drug deal gone bad. Having lived in New York in the 1970s, he was no stranger to urban crime, but LA was getting bad. There was this feeling of a bottle under pressure just waiting to explode when the right stimulus came along. He wondered if he needed to find a quieter, less dangerous pastime!
Fatefully, he decided that a return to the calm nature walks that he used to take with Emily would be a better pastime. One evening in May during sunset he was taking a walk along the coastal rocks. He’d spent a lot of time walking along these rocks and others like them and he’d received his share of cuts and scrapes and bruises from the occasional slip or stumble. When he slipped and gouged his leg on a rocky outcropping, the bleeding wasn’t excessive. He took the bandana from his head and fashioned it into a makeshift bandage and finished his walk. When he got home, Bob Forrest was there, strung out, paranoid. He and son John spent the night talking him down and trying in vain to convince him to go into rehab. He should have been thinking more about himself at the moment, but as always, he put the needs of others first.
The next morning Jim finally took a shower. The gouge on his leg was swollen and red now. He put some ice on it and went to work.
Mort was in full animation. He walked along the hallways of the Animation, 3D, and Ink & Paint buildings. Some of the animators remembered him having a slight limp. John Lasseter was managing the DIS animation stations and compilers, which were crunching through backgrounds, the framing effects for the Turtle-borne Discworld, and the digital animation for the thousands of life timers, their sands slowly slipping away. Inkers and painters were compiling cels of Death in a hundred poses and expressions: a looming menace, a kindly father, an angry spirit, a welcoming host.
Over the next two days the swelling in his leg got worse. The heat and discomfort throbbed, distracting him slightly as he watched the premier of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and spoke to the press. A white plug of pus filled the gouge. The red had travelled up his leg almost to the knee. John gave him some special teas, led him through some healing exercises, and suggested that he rest. Bob Forrest, still crashing there, suggested that he should see a doctor. Jim shrugged. He hated to be a bother. There was too much to do and too little time for it all. Work went on. He was exhausted when Saturday came around. John told him to go to bed, but he’d promised Dick Nunis that they would go surfing that morning and he never wanted to break a promise, however small.
He met Dick Nunis on the beach that day, but they wouldn’t make it to the waters that day. “I met him at the beach and I immediately saw the leg,” Nunis recalled. “It was infected, and bad. I said, ‘Jim, you stupid son of a bitch! We’re going to the hospital!’ He demurred and refused. He said he was ‘fine.’ I wasn’t having it. I physically dragged him to the car and drove him to the emergency room against his will
[2].
“He said something like, ‘Look, I really don’t want to impose,’ and I said to him, ‘don’t you think your dying might just impose on the rest of us who have to pick up the pieces?’”
The doctors immediately put him on intravenous vancomycin. They dug out the pus plug and drained the wound, wicking out the pus and infection, cleaning it thoroughly. “Another two days or so and he might have gone into septic shock,” said Nunis. “The attending physician explained to Jim what that meant in excruciating detail. Jim said he’d seen it happen and went white as a ghost.”
And seen it he had, just weeks before at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York as Howard Ashman struggled through a systemic infection that his body couldn’t fight.
“I didn’t want to be there [at the emergency room],” Jim said of it all later. “Hospitals freak me out. I hated all of the attention. The IV made my skin flush red and hot. I honestly didn’t shit right for a week, pardon my language. But Dick saved my life. It didn’t fully set in until later just how close I’d come. Terry’s Reaper seems like a nice guy given everything, but I’m in no personal hurry to meet him.”
The event would leave a lasting impression on Jim. The constantly flowing sands of time and his own looming mortality had always hung over his head, but always in the abstract. Here he’d literally faced death. He didn’t want to be a bother for others, but all of the attention he received afterwards made it clear to him that all that
they wanted was for him to be in their lives. The following days would reaffirm to him that, for as alone and isolated as he’d felt from atop the peak, he wasn’t alone as long as he had friends, family, and coworkers who loved and respected him as much as he loved and respected them.
Jim Henson wouldn’t spend another minute dwelling on the things that had been lost, only on what, and who, he had in his life. He’d been given more time, and he wasn’t going to waste a second of it.
Sunset…or Sunrise? (Image source “unsplash.com”)
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[1] In our timeline nobody wanted to take a risk on TMNT because the
He Man movie had been a total flop. In this timeline
He Man is a modest success, so there was a short bidding war for the popular characters.
[2] It’s necessary to be a Dick some days.
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