Plus I'm interested in seeing how Jim deals with John Kricfalusi should the two cross paths.
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
- Start date
- Status
LOL, that would certainly be interesting. I'll put some thought that way.
I know Britt Allcroft already has the Railway Series on her radar in '79. I might pick your brain on that going forward.
I have a place for him and Roger Rabbit in mind and will certainly make an eventual appearance.
Thanks! I certainly hope so.
Meta-Discussion: 1980
Meta-Discussion: Setting the Stage…
The time: 1980. As cliché as it sounds to say, it truly was a year of transition. The turbulent 1970s, a decade marred by a costly and controversial war, economic downturn, a drug crisis, crime, racism, sexism, political corruption, social division, protests, and culture clash, was coming to an end[1], and yet the manic neon ‘80s had not yet taken form. Jimmy Carter was in his final year as President (though America didn’t yet know it and wouldn’t until November of that year) and he was facing crisis after crisis: an OPEC oil embargo that left long lines of cars waiting for gas, the Iranian Revolution, whose revolutionaries had stormed the US Embassy the year before and who still held several of the Americans they captured hostage, and an ill-fated attempt to rescue said hostages that met with disaster. The American “rust belt” was growing as factories closed, the Soviet army had seized Afghanistan, and everyone in the west was increasingly sure that the US was in decline and that the Soviet Union would be the emerging victors in the Cold War.
And then you had the omnipresent shadow of nuclear war.
China, meanwhile, was still just reemerging into the larger world under Deng Xiaoping after decades of isolation. Japan’s economy was booming, the first of the Asian Tigers to emerge, and it would be an economic and cultural force throughout the decade. Taiwan was famous in America as “the place where all the cheap plastic shit was made” and not yet recognized as a “Tiger” itself, though that would soon change. South Korea was barely more economically advanced or politically liberal than the North, which in part spawned a popular uprising that spring. Europe was divided between a NATO “west” and a Warsaw Pact “east”, a split most notably embodied by the divided Germany and the divided city of Berlin, physically split by a fortified wall that served as the most unavoidable metaphor in history. The EU was growing, the west was flourishing, and the east was stagnant and its citizens increasingly yearning for something better. And yet us ever-pessimistic Americans were sure the situation was the exact opposite.
Technologically speaking, the 1970s lingered. The Space Race had died down and Sky Lab became the only major space presence by humans, though commercial satellites were on the rise. US cars were still either giant steel behemoths (Cadillacs still sported vestigial fins!) or small, ugly “lemons” like the AMC Gremlin and Pacer, the latter ones a futile attempt to stem the tide of small, fuel efficient, and reliable Japanese cars flooding the market, much to the wounding of American industrial pride. For the family traveler, there was the venerable station wagon, where non-seat-belted kids could jostle over who got to sit in the rear-facing “tail gunner” seats. Dozens of airline companies competed for customers in the post-deregulation world and airport security, a new thing following the hijackings of the ‘70s, was limited to a single X-ray and metal detector station entering the terminal, which anyone could go through, with or without a ticket, to greet their family as soon as they stepped off the plane.
Home computers were starting to appear, such as the Apple 2, but few people really saw any use in such complicated contraptions. Cell phones were the size of a brick and only worked in major cities. If you were out and about and needed to make a call, there was a payphone available close by.
Culture was shifting too. Rubik’s Cube was the new craze. Disco was still holding on to the airwaves for dear life, but an angry backlash was growing against it, with “disco sucks” a mantra and disco record burnings an increasingly common event. Punk had emerged, reluctantly, from the underground. Rock & roll still held some sway, but newer, often more electronic sounds were starting to appear thanks to a New Wave of music led by bands like Devo and the Talking Heads. Michael Jackson had left the Jackson 5 but had not yet donned a single, spangled glove and moonwalked into megastar status. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had created the Blockbuster and thereby ended the New Hollywood movement. Movies would be louder, flashier, and by all definitions of the word bigger than ever. Computer effects were still primitive, but advances in practical effects and new ways of post-editing effects into existing film had transformed the magic that could be done with movies.
Television was ruled by the Big Three network stations of ABC, NBC, and CBS. PBS was there as well, and Henson’s Muppets still entertained the kids there on Sesame Street. Some local population centers had a fifth or even sixth channel thanks to UHF broadcasting, though the Fox channel didn’t yet exist. The rest of the numbered channels on the big, clunking knob inevitably played the incessant white noise of static, which younger generations may know as “that fizzy thing HBO does with its logo”. On special days with weird weather events, depending on how you adjusted the “rabbit ear” antennae, you might even pick up a channel or two from a neighboring city!
Cable TV was there, and satellite TV too (the dishes were 10-20 feet across!), but only a few people bothered to pay all that money for those indulgent 28 extra channels! HBO was an up-and-coming premium network that mostly played movies. CNN had just started and was expected to fail (most people got their news from the local networks or newspapers). MTV was still 2 years away.
Color TV was becoming the norm, but black & white sets were still common. Flat screens and high definition were sci-fi stuff you might see demo’ed at a trade show or World’s Fair, along with the flying cars we all knew we’d have in the amazing, mythical, far off year of 2000.
Cassette tapes were pushing 8-track tapes off the shelves, especially in car audio, but vinyl was still the preferred source of sound. Laser disk existed, but was only used by a handful of technophiles. Affordable home video had appeared in the mid ‘70s in the form of the Betamax and VHS formats, whose long war would soon end in victory for VHS[2], but both remained a relative luxury item. It was this emerging decade that would make home video a “thing” for most people. Atari introduced the world to home videogames beyond “Pong” with their 2600 console. This saw a growing market share that led to new competition like the ColecoVision and Commodore 64. All would see their smashing success continue…right up until the great videogame crash of ’83. Still, they were poor substitutes for the Real Thing at those great, loud, flashy, quarter-consuming black holes, the Video Arcades, where Pac Man and Donkey Kong[3] would soon push aside Space Invaders as the kings of videogames.
Everybody smoked. Everywhere. Constantly. Huge piles of spent butts piled high like mountains in the omnipresent ashtrays on every table. American beer was primarily cans of light pseudo-pilsner (Bud, Coors, Miller Lite, etc.) and “Imports” like Heineken had a pretentious association loved by Yuppies and hated by everyone else. Classic cocktails (martinis, etc.) were on the way out and sugary stuff (the fuzzy navel, etc.) was on the way in. “Wine coolers” would soon be a thing. The jogging, yoga, and other health crazes of the ‘70s were dying out, or at least going on hiatus. Hippie drugs like pot and acid were out in favor of the true sponsor of the 1980s: cocaine. So much cocaine[4].
And from this crazy mix would emerge a new world: flashier, neon and pastels, more transient, more faddish, more image-conscious, luxury-obsessed, popularity-seeking, and competitive. Labels became de rigueur, be they the conspicuously-placed ones on your designer clothing or the ones that served as your social identifier (“jock”, “nerd”, “prep”, “yuppie”). “Teen” culture flourished, and the corporate world scrambled to capitalize. Mergers and corporate takeovers became the new unofficial American sport. Companies shifted from long-term pursuit of a single “product area” into “diversified” portfolios of dozens to thousands of products. Alternately, they “vertically integrated” to control the entire product lifecycle. Shell companies and junk bonds created wealth out of thin air. The stock market soared and “greed”, for lack of a better word, became “good”.
This is the world into which we emerge. The Blockbuster. The Music Video. The Yuppie. The Bomb.
It’s a strange time for a hippie.
[1] Oh, so different from today.
[2] There were many reasons why VHS won the war, but many cite the primary reason being that, unlike with Sony’s proprietary Betamax, VHS-based porn was available for easy purchase. Times change. People don’t.
[3] Which introduced the world to the mustachioed Italian protagonist Mario!
[4] It turned the drug lords of Central and South America into extra-governmental powers often more powerful and better armed than the actual governments.
The time: 1980. As cliché as it sounds to say, it truly was a year of transition. The turbulent 1970s, a decade marred by a costly and controversial war, economic downturn, a drug crisis, crime, racism, sexism, political corruption, social division, protests, and culture clash, was coming to an end[1], and yet the manic neon ‘80s had not yet taken form. Jimmy Carter was in his final year as President (though America didn’t yet know it and wouldn’t until November of that year) and he was facing crisis after crisis: an OPEC oil embargo that left long lines of cars waiting for gas, the Iranian Revolution, whose revolutionaries had stormed the US Embassy the year before and who still held several of the Americans they captured hostage, and an ill-fated attempt to rescue said hostages that met with disaster. The American “rust belt” was growing as factories closed, the Soviet army had seized Afghanistan, and everyone in the west was increasingly sure that the US was in decline and that the Soviet Union would be the emerging victors in the Cold War.
And then you had the omnipresent shadow of nuclear war.
China, meanwhile, was still just reemerging into the larger world under Deng Xiaoping after decades of isolation. Japan’s economy was booming, the first of the Asian Tigers to emerge, and it would be an economic and cultural force throughout the decade. Taiwan was famous in America as “the place where all the cheap plastic shit was made” and not yet recognized as a “Tiger” itself, though that would soon change. South Korea was barely more economically advanced or politically liberal than the North, which in part spawned a popular uprising that spring. Europe was divided between a NATO “west” and a Warsaw Pact “east”, a split most notably embodied by the divided Germany and the divided city of Berlin, physically split by a fortified wall that served as the most unavoidable metaphor in history. The EU was growing, the west was flourishing, and the east was stagnant and its citizens increasingly yearning for something better. And yet us ever-pessimistic Americans were sure the situation was the exact opposite.
Technologically speaking, the 1970s lingered. The Space Race had died down and Sky Lab became the only major space presence by humans, though commercial satellites were on the rise. US cars were still either giant steel behemoths (Cadillacs still sported vestigial fins!) or small, ugly “lemons” like the AMC Gremlin and Pacer, the latter ones a futile attempt to stem the tide of small, fuel efficient, and reliable Japanese cars flooding the market, much to the wounding of American industrial pride. For the family traveler, there was the venerable station wagon, where non-seat-belted kids could jostle over who got to sit in the rear-facing “tail gunner” seats. Dozens of airline companies competed for customers in the post-deregulation world and airport security, a new thing following the hijackings of the ‘70s, was limited to a single X-ray and metal detector station entering the terminal, which anyone could go through, with or without a ticket, to greet their family as soon as they stepped off the plane.
Home computers were starting to appear, such as the Apple 2, but few people really saw any use in such complicated contraptions. Cell phones were the size of a brick and only worked in major cities. If you were out and about and needed to make a call, there was a payphone available close by.
Culture was shifting too. Rubik’s Cube was the new craze. Disco was still holding on to the airwaves for dear life, but an angry backlash was growing against it, with “disco sucks” a mantra and disco record burnings an increasingly common event. Punk had emerged, reluctantly, from the underground. Rock & roll still held some sway, but newer, often more electronic sounds were starting to appear thanks to a New Wave of music led by bands like Devo and the Talking Heads. Michael Jackson had left the Jackson 5 but had not yet donned a single, spangled glove and moonwalked into megastar status. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had created the Blockbuster and thereby ended the New Hollywood movement. Movies would be louder, flashier, and by all definitions of the word bigger than ever. Computer effects were still primitive, but advances in practical effects and new ways of post-editing effects into existing film had transformed the magic that could be done with movies.
Television was ruled by the Big Three network stations of ABC, NBC, and CBS. PBS was there as well, and Henson’s Muppets still entertained the kids there on Sesame Street. Some local population centers had a fifth or even sixth channel thanks to UHF broadcasting, though the Fox channel didn’t yet exist. The rest of the numbered channels on the big, clunking knob inevitably played the incessant white noise of static, which younger generations may know as “that fizzy thing HBO does with its logo”. On special days with weird weather events, depending on how you adjusted the “rabbit ear” antennae, you might even pick up a channel or two from a neighboring city!
Cable TV was there, and satellite TV too (the dishes were 10-20 feet across!), but only a few people bothered to pay all that money for those indulgent 28 extra channels! HBO was an up-and-coming premium network that mostly played movies. CNN had just started and was expected to fail (most people got their news from the local networks or newspapers). MTV was still 2 years away.
Color TV was becoming the norm, but black & white sets were still common. Flat screens and high definition were sci-fi stuff you might see demo’ed at a trade show or World’s Fair, along with the flying cars we all knew we’d have in the amazing, mythical, far off year of 2000.
Cassette tapes were pushing 8-track tapes off the shelves, especially in car audio, but vinyl was still the preferred source of sound. Laser disk existed, but was only used by a handful of technophiles. Affordable home video had appeared in the mid ‘70s in the form of the Betamax and VHS formats, whose long war would soon end in victory for VHS[2], but both remained a relative luxury item. It was this emerging decade that would make home video a “thing” for most people. Atari introduced the world to home videogames beyond “Pong” with their 2600 console. This saw a growing market share that led to new competition like the ColecoVision and Commodore 64. All would see their smashing success continue…right up until the great videogame crash of ’83. Still, they were poor substitutes for the Real Thing at those great, loud, flashy, quarter-consuming black holes, the Video Arcades, where Pac Man and Donkey Kong[3] would soon push aside Space Invaders as the kings of videogames.
Everybody smoked. Everywhere. Constantly. Huge piles of spent butts piled high like mountains in the omnipresent ashtrays on every table. American beer was primarily cans of light pseudo-pilsner (Bud, Coors, Miller Lite, etc.) and “Imports” like Heineken had a pretentious association loved by Yuppies and hated by everyone else. Classic cocktails (martinis, etc.) were on the way out and sugary stuff (the fuzzy navel, etc.) was on the way in. “Wine coolers” would soon be a thing. The jogging, yoga, and other health crazes of the ‘70s were dying out, or at least going on hiatus. Hippie drugs like pot and acid were out in favor of the true sponsor of the 1980s: cocaine. So much cocaine[4].
And from this crazy mix would emerge a new world: flashier, neon and pastels, more transient, more faddish, more image-conscious, luxury-obsessed, popularity-seeking, and competitive. Labels became de rigueur, be they the conspicuously-placed ones on your designer clothing or the ones that served as your social identifier (“jock”, “nerd”, “prep”, “yuppie”). “Teen” culture flourished, and the corporate world scrambled to capitalize. Mergers and corporate takeovers became the new unofficial American sport. Companies shifted from long-term pursuit of a single “product area” into “diversified” portfolios of dozens to thousands of products. Alternately, they “vertically integrated” to control the entire product lifecycle. Shell companies and junk bonds created wealth out of thin air. The stock market soared and “greed”, for lack of a better word, became “good”.
This is the world into which we emerge. The Blockbuster. The Music Video. The Yuppie. The Bomb.
It’s a strange time for a hippie.
[1] Oh, so different from today.
[2] There were many reasons why VHS won the war, but many cite the primary reason being that, unlike with Sony’s proprietary Betamax, VHS-based porn was available for easy purchase. Times change. People don’t.
[3] Which introduced the world to the mustachioed Italian protagonist Mario!
[4] It turned the drug lords of Central and South America into extra-governmental powers often more powerful and better armed than the actual governments.
I think he'd be head of the animation depp along if Jim had his way, probably working closely with Tim Burton or someone. One thing is for sure. If The Jim Henson Company merges with Disney, we'll probably be seeing Muppets in MGM with a larger presence and Sesame Street attractions in EPCOT. A Dark Crystal dark ride wouldn't go amiss either. With Jim's animatronic team as part of Disney, there's no doubt that the company will push a ton of boundaries when it comes to what they put on screen. The whole company will go in a much better direction, meaning that if Don Bluth wants to stay ahead, he'll be wanting to hire some up and coming animators of his own.
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I love sweeping overviews, and this one was just great! The dawn of the 1980s were a very, very different time from the Neon Decade that would ensue.
Regarding, Don Bluth, The Secret of NIMH did bomb but I think Bluth might not go crawling back to Disney right away even if Henson does put out feelers. The most financially successful period of his career (Dragon's Lair, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time) is still ahead, but once he and Spielberg part ways and then he crashes and burns on his own against the renewed colossus that was the Disney Renaissance, then he might go back. And he might be the shot in the arm Disney needs once Howard Ashman passes. (Sadly I don't think we can butterfly his death from AIDS, not as late as 1980. Going to be a lot tragic deaths in the next decade or so...)
Regarding, Don Bluth, The Secret of NIMH did bomb but I think Bluth might not go crawling back to Disney right away even if Henson does put out feelers. The most financially successful period of his career (Dragon's Lair, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time) is still ahead, but once he and Spielberg part ways and then he crashes and burns on his own against the renewed colossus that was the Disney Renaissance, then he might go back. And he might be the shot in the arm Disney needs once Howard Ashman passes. (Sadly I don't think we can butterfly his death from AIDS, not as late as 1980. Going to be a lot tragic deaths in the next decade or so...)
Assuming, that is, that Jim's presence at Disney doesn't cause Don's fortunes to change as well as he changes course. We don't know which animators, composers, writers, etc will be brought on to Disney and which ones won't ITTL. In all likelihood, there probably won't be any Disney Renaissance as we know it. It very well could be that most of the 80s will be Disney's to dominate while the late 80s and most of the 90s go down in history as Sullivan-Bluth's Golden Age.
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marathag
Banned
having got thru the '60s, '70s and '80s, will note that cocaine was huge in the mid '70s
Clapton did the hit _Cocaine_ in '77, and so much in Discos before that.
This is a valid point. Cocaine pretty much took over by the mid-1970s. It's something I've noticed before - at some indeterminate point mid-1970s, hallucinogens (acid, mushrooms, etc.) were wholesale replaced as the hard drugs of choice by stimulants (cocaine, speed, sometimes the two together). It's a fascinating phenomenon.
marathag
Banned
Lemmy got kicked from the Prog band Hawkwind in '75 for Drug Possession: that drug being Speed.
Had it been LSD, he wouldn't have got the boot, as acid was expected.
So he went off and formed Motörhead
Wow, I step away from the site for a weekend and totally miss the start of a thread that makes my brain go "And LO! There shalt be a thread that makes thine imagination explode, for it has witnessed the Rainbow and felt its Connection! The signs of its coming will be manifest in a simple question:"
[distant voice from some guy over there] - 'Hey! What if Jim Henson ran Disney for a bit in the 80's?'
(Happy Brain Noises ensue)
Instant add to the watch list, Praise the Great Khan!
[distant voice from some guy over there] - 'Hey! What if Jim Henson ran Disney for a bit in the 80's?'
(Happy Brain Noises ensue)
Instant add to the watch list, Praise the Great Khan!
Thanks! I sure hope so. Welcome aboard.
Bluth will certainly make appearances in their TL as more than just a "ghost". Ashman is just now entering the show in my "pre-writing" (I'm currently in 1986 on the "Master Doc") and how/when he shows should prove interesting. Alas he won't be the only way AIDS/HIV touches this TL.
Absolutely a fair point. Hell, cocaine was popular for a century before this TL. They used it for teething babies in the 1880s and it was a principle ingredient in the original original Coca-cola. For some reason incredibly addictive drugs always seem to find a market. My goal in that statement wasn't to suggest that cocaine was new, per se, but more trying to illustrate the cultural shift going in. Disco made cocaine "cool", and Wall Street made it "trendy".
"Wow, Susie and Tommy have been up for hours building that Little Log Cabin....how do they find the energy?"
Welcome aboard, Graham. I hope I keep up the "Connection".
I wonder if Anime or Manga both get more presence in the US ITTL. Hopefully Urusei Yatsura (One of my favorite 80s anime/manga.) at least gets a full official dub/translation ITTL, at least as early as 1982. Maybe it'll even be the one to kickstart Anime/Manga's popularity in the US ITTL.
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This sounds like a really fascinating idea. I've loved the Muppets and have also found the history of Disney to be quite interesting, so I'm curious what all will change.
If you're looking for resources, Defunctland on YouTube has a lot of interesting articles on the history of the Disney parks, including things during the Eisner era, taking a look into the strengths and flaws of Eisner's approach to the parks and how he changed over time.
I've also found that the website Theme Park Tourist has some interesting articles on the history of the Disney parks, usually by focusing on specific attractions and exploring larger trends. Here are a few I especially liked:
Actually, something that interests me is how in the early 70s, Disney scrapped a couple imaginative plans by Marc Davis, who helped design the Pirates and Haunted Mansion rides among others: Western River Expedition and a Snow Queen-based ride. Probably too late to do anything about Western River Expedition in Disney World since Big Thunder Mountain's already been built, but maybe Jim could be interested in the Snow Queen idea.
I also have the memoirs of Joseph Bailey, one of the staff writers for Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. He has a few interesting things to note about Jim:
If you're looking for resources, Defunctland on YouTube has a lot of interesting articles on the history of the Disney parks, including things during the Eisner era, taking a look into the strengths and flaws of Eisner's approach to the parks and how he changed over time.
I've also found that the website Theme Park Tourist has some interesting articles on the history of the Disney parks, usually by focusing on specific attractions and exploring larger trends. Here are a few I especially liked:
- ExtraTERRORestrial
- Backlot Tour
- WESTCOT
- Beastly Kingdom
- Disney's America
- Western River Expedition
- Snow Queen Fantasyland Ride
Actually, something that interests me is how in the early 70s, Disney scrapped a couple imaginative plans by Marc Davis, who helped design the Pirates and Haunted Mansion rides among others: Western River Expedition and a Snow Queen-based ride. Probably too late to do anything about Western River Expedition in Disney World since Big Thunder Mountain's already been built, but maybe Jim could be interested in the Snow Queen idea.
Yeah, he's a pretty complicated man, as I've come to realize, one who changed over time due to different triumphs and setbacks. Defunctland does a good job of exploring Eisner's character in some of their videos. It seems that at first, he was highly ambitious, only he sometimes didn't think things through. And after multiple fiascos like Paris and Disney's America, he went the opposite direction and started being overly cautious about investing into anything. Kind of the same with the animation. He was a really strong proponent for the animation studio at first, but the intense expectations hurt the quality, and by the end, he was disgusted by it. This bit from Unshaved Mouse sort of captures his transformed view on the matter:
Yeah, that would certainly be interesting. I am kind of curious if Disney might build up relations with Miyazaki and Ghibli sooner than IOTL. Actually, ever since reading some of the Ghibli and Henson parts of Who's the Doctor?, I've had this vague idea in the back of my mind for a collaboration between Henson and Miyazaki.
I also have the memoirs of Joseph Bailey, one of the staff writers for Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. He has a few interesting things to note about Jim:
- Jim and Joseph had a fast metabolism, and at a dinner the two of them had this witty conversation where they compared all the different desserts on the menu, wondering aloud if they "had enough calories".
- Jim would sometimes, rather than bother booking reservations, just walk into an airport and pay a passenger $50 plus their ticket price for their seat.
- In the early days of the Muppets, Jerry Juhl was going house hunting, but Jim insisted that Jerry use Jim's vehicle - a second-hand Rolls Royce - which apparently made it hard to find a cheap apartment.
- As a Christmas present, Jim gave Frank Oz a wall hanging with various busts of Bert. The large Bert's eyes were hollow, letting you peer inside, where you would see an...interesting picture. See, months back, Jim asked Frank to pose naked and look at the camera in utter shock; that picture, capturing the sort of dazed, utterly baffled look Bert often has, was hidden inside the gift.
- One of Jim's methods of dealing with writers was to throw out a subject and give them free rein to see what they could do with it.
- A common Muppet writing rule was: A joke that's too bad to be used once may be bad enough to use three times.
I actually just added something anime-related to the master file. It'll be a while before I get there, but you will see.
Yep. Defunctland/DefuntTV, Disney Dan, Rob Plays, Theme Park Tourist, Destination Theme Park...all have been excellent resources for this TL. I highly recomend the DefunctTV 4-part series on Jim Henson and the Rob Plays 4-part series on the Saul Steinberg greenmail drama. I have a Reference List coming soon.
I am covering alternate rides. I've got a couple of Marty Sklar books on my to-read list. I'll take a look at those.
Eisner was and is a complex human being. Disney War paints an interesting picture of his Disney years.
Great anecdotes, thanks!
Ron and Jim have an interesting relationship too.
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