Chapter 14: The War for Disney (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian
The “Fall” had settled over Los Angeles, California, though Jim Henson found it hard to think of the season by that name when you could still wear short sleeves. The temperature had abated from its summer blaze down to a cool, breezy chill that teased the brief but torrential winter wet season to come. For Jim, the rainy season brought not the depression and annoyance that it was for most Angelinos, but a sense of cleansing and rejuvenation.
And after a long and challenging summer, it was certainly welcome. Not only had Disney faced down a hostile takeover attempt, but he’d been officially separated from both his wife and the company they founded together. Sure, he still technically owned the majority share of the combined company, but the small, intimate Henson Associates – HA! – was now a small cog in a much larger machine. With Jane and Heather back living in Connecticut, Jim sold the family house in Dana Point and moved into a historic seaside cottage in Laguna Beach, which he had completely refurbished and decorated in an eclectic mix of old fashioned, international, and high tech hyper-modern. It was, he thought, the perfect “bachelor pad” from which to begin this new phase in his life.
As if in complement to his new life, it was also now a new Disney as well. Jim felt a new sense of creative freedom and for the first time since he joined Disney felt truly empowered to push the limits of what Disney could be. Card and Donn were fully retired, gone from the board and the Executive Committee alike. Roy was back and in charge of Animation and openly supportive. Ron Miller fully supported him as well. And Frank Wells had assumed the Presidency and was already talking about big restructuring initiatives. Jim and Frank had gotten along well during the takeover battle. Jim had appreciated the man’s calm, polite, focused professionalism in the midst of a divided and squabbling board, a beacon of light in the midst of the darkness. If Jim was always the eye of the creative storm, then Frank had surely been the eye of a monetary one.
Jim liked Wells’ polite and even compassionate approach to the generally cold-hearted world of business management. He was certain that they’d get along swimmingly.
He was also certain that there’d be disagreements, albeit polite ones. Already, Wells was questioning the budgets for the studios, in particular animation, which was giving “poor returns”. This was an alien idea to Jim and Roy alike. How do you put a price on
Snow White and the generations of magic she’d brought? Easy: the price is $3.36 a ticket or $29.95 per VHS, Jim sardonically told himself. But how do you translate the non-monetary value of a work of art to someone with an accountant’s mind? Advertising for the park? Brand recognition? Merchandise? He predicted that budget meetings were about to get more interesting.
One area where the two definitely saw eye to eye was in the need for efficiency. Neither liked the afternoon slack that took over after lunch, particularly on Thursdays and Fridays. Jim loved the job, and it struck him as strange that others did not! Since first coming to the studio, Jim had worked in ways both subtle and overt to increase productivity. Simply threatening an employee with termination wasn’t his style, and a captive artist was, in Jim’s experience, a poor artist who took shortcuts and only worked hard enough to not get fired, or worse sought revenge in small and petty ways[1].
Instead, he sought to motivate employees. He pushed for pay raises (the studio workers barely made scale!) and better benefits, and was generally frustrated by Disney management in this regard. The company that self-destructively never wanted to raise ticket prices in the parks also didn’t want to properly compensate its artists. It seemed like a simple formula to him: raise revenues and invest that in your greatest assets, the creative people of the company.
When improved compensation wasn’t an option, Jim instead looked to provide motivation through opportunity. He assumed most of the artists wanted the same thing that he did: a chance to enact their own personal vision. He used the
World of Magic show as an opportunity to give bored, frustrated employees an outlet. Now, as long as it didn’t interfere with your main job, you could work on the side (and on the clock) for something that you
did want to do. His straight-to-the-employees approach ran into roadblocks from angry middle managers – a position that held little value to Jim – so Soft Pitch Fridays was born. And it worked. The total number of cels created per day went up considerably as inbetweeners and ink-and-painters got right to work first thing in the morning so that they could work on the thing that they really wanted to do in the afternoon and evening, once their daily target was met.
He also looked for, and eliminated, aggravations. One day in 1983, shortly after becoming Studio President, Jim called the employees to the lot. There was a table with a cloth-shrouded object. “I have heard many complaints about a certain team member,” he began, “one who has been damaging morale with his cold, heartless, unbending mechanical demands upon you all. I’d just like to let you all know that he has been terminated from his position here.” He then pulled back the cloth to reveal the hated punch card time clock. A huge cheer rose up through the assembled crowd.
Jim hated that clock. It set a bad tone for the day in his mind as employees cursed and stressed in the Orange County traffic in a rush to punch in before they got their already paltry pay docked. Getting “off the clock”, i.e. being an employee senior enough to not need to use the punch clock, became a principle goal of employees. Card had always resisted Jim’s attempts to remove it, considering it critical to discipline and productivity. Jim saw it as the opposite: a small morale killer that knocked creative people off of their game and pitted leadership against the employees while simultaneously hurting productivity. Now it was gone.
Jim went further, pushing a flexible work schedule for employees like animators and story writers who didn’t have set filming schedules to meet. As long as you met or exceeded your production targets – and he was clear that they were “targets”, not “quotas” – Jim didn’t care when you showed up or left. Little breaks and small practical jokes were encouraged to help break up the monotony as long as the targets were met. When they weren’t, Jim pushed the idea of “friendly reminders” from managers rather than overt threats of termination. Any employee, or more often manager, that didn’t like this arrangement was offered a free letter of recommendation for their new jobs, all in the spirit of helping one find their own way in life.
He also led by example. Jim was inevitably the first person in the office and the last to leave, some days working through the night. Occasionally, incoming employees had to wake him up from whatever couch he’d fallen asleep on. As more and more employees began working increasingly odd hours, the Studio inevitably had to hire more guards and custodians as people came and left the studios pretty much 24/7, the early birds waving to the night owls on the way by.
Productivity skyrocketed, in defiance of the expectations of the traditional managers. In addition to meeting targets for production on
The Black Cauldron,
Basil of Baker Street was already in early production[2], five animated TV series for Saturday Mornings or the Disney Channel were in production[3], and dozens of animated Shorts in any number of styles and media were in various stages of production.
Card Walker shook his head in disbelief as the ball fields became empty and the desks and studios became full. The hippie bastard had somehow done it. Ray Watson and Frank Wells both took notice. “We need to increase his compensation,” Watson told Wells. On the down side, the increased activity hours at the studios and the number of productions, particularly the Shorts, which had negligible return on investment if any, were driving up overhead costs. Jim countered that the Shorts were bringing viewers to
World of Magic, which in turn was driving Disney Channel subscriptions, movie ticket and VHS sales, merchandise, and park visits.
He also pointed out their prestige value: The Shorts were dominating the Emmys and Oscars. Just that year “Oh, Big Brother”, a retro Donald Duck Short set in the George Orwell
1984 universe[4] and visually quoting the “Der Fuhrer’s Face” Short from 1943, managed to win
both awards after appearing both on
World of Magic and with the 1984 re-release of Pinocchio. Jim also maintained that the Shorts were proving an excellent testing ground for concepts, techniques, and talent, calling out in particular up-and-coming animators like Tim Burton and John Lasseter and the number of spin-off series and even movies coming out of the Shorts. For the time being, the Shorts would stay in production.
As 1984 came to a close, Jim Henson, along with sons Brian and John, daughter Cheryl, and friend Brian Froud, made a whirlwind trip to Wales, Glastonbury, and Cornwall for a much-earned vacation and to attend the world premiere of
The Black Cauldron. Jim had insisted that the premier happen not in LA, New York, or even London, but in Cardiff, Wales. Froud showed them around, visiting all the castles, churches, and druidic standing stone sites, including Stonehenge. They even made a special trip to Glastonbury Tor, associated by legend to King Arthur, in celebration of The Round Table Group’s victory.
The Black Cauldron received a standing ovation at its premier in the Theatr Newydd in Cardiff, Wales, and would go on to break box office records in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, and other Celtic-majority or Celtic-influenced places. With everyone patting him and Brian Froud on the back, Jim Henson believed, if only for a short time, that he had a true breakout hit on his hands.
- ∞ -
End of Part IV.
[1] The nude pinup hidden in
The Rescuers comes to mind.
[2] It was in pre-production prior to the Point of Departure. In our timeline it became
The Great Mouse Detective.
[3]
Muppet Babies,
Disney’s Three Musketeers,
Winnie the Pooh and Friends,
Figment and the Dreamfinders, and
The Rescuers.
[4] You can thank “Mrs. Khan” for this idea. In her mind, “Big Brother” was to be portrayed by old archive footage of Walt on a big screen. I wish I could do that! Even fictional Ron Miller and Lilly Disney aren’t letting me get away with that one, though. Instead, Big Brother is portrayed by the go-to antagonist Pete. And yes, references to Orwell’s
1984 were so common in the actual year 1984 as to become cliché, just as we all got swamped by
Back to the Future 2 references in 2015.