My dad Jim Henson, the creative genius behind 'The Muppets'
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How did growing up in Jim Henson’s workshop shape Lisa Henson’s childhood?
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When Lisa Henson was a little kid, her friends felt kind of sorry for her because her dad had some weird job as a children's birthday entertainer, some kind of puppeteer. But then, when Lisa was nine, Sesame Street exploded onto television and suddenly Lisa's dad had a very, very cool job. Jim Henson first started messing around with puppets as a teenager and not long afterwards he began collaborating with Lisa's mum, Jane, and together they founded Muppets Inc. Puppets became the way that Jim could share his extraordinary imagination with the world and he went on to become one of the most influential creative talents of the 20th century. His legacy includes the TV shows Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and the movies The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
While his creations, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, The Cookie Monster, remain recognisable and beloved all around the world. Jim Henson died in 1990, but the Jim Henson Company is still a family business. Jim's eldest child, Lisa, is CEO. Lisa has had a big career of her own in entertainment, including as president of Columbia Pictures. And she is in Australia for a huge exhibition of Jim Henson creations, which has just opened at Quagoma in Brisbane. Hi, Lisa. Hello. Take me back to that time in your life when you were nine or so and suddenly Sesame Street appeared on TV. What was that like for you and your siblings?
Well, I was not of an age where I was learning from Sesame Street, although I had younger siblings who were that young. For me, it was another exciting production for me to go on the set and see the puppeteers and the puppet builders and enjoy the excitement of the production process, which I always loved talking to my father about how things were put together. From a very young age, I really wanted to be a producer. So I liked to see the process. In terms of him becoming famous, it was a little bit gradual. You know, Sesame Street was an immediate hit and was, you know, cover of Time magazine. Sesame Street also premiered the very first year that our public television stations were put together into the PBS network.
So the birth of Sesame Street is the birth of public television network in America. By the time he did an American Express commercial where it typed out his name and he announced himself as Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, at that point he was famous and recognizable everywhere.
In terms of Sesame Street, as you go back to that moment about the kind of landscape that it appeared in, I mean, how radical it was compared to other kinds of entertainment for kids on TV at that time. And partly because it took children seriously, like it took their entertainment seriously. It wanted to do a good show,
a great show. Yeah, Sesame Street came out of an academic collaboration between not initially my father, but between academics at Harvard and Joan Cooney and other television producers.
What was the impact of Sesame Street’s debut on the Henson family and on children’s TV?
They had something called the Children's Television Workshop, which was an actual workshop where they all brainstormed the idea of how could you use the medium of television to be educational and And out of this intellectual framework, they started to create a show. And then my father was hired as talent. He wasn't part of the educational mission of the show initially. He was really just bringing the funny and the puppets and the characters. But he became very associated with, you know, the creation of Sesame Street, really on the creative side more than the intellectual side.
Well, surely that's the only way that education, particularly for that age group, was ever going to work was through fun and silly and the joyfulness. And also that show, I imagine it reflected the way lots of kids lived in a different way than had been shown before. You know, it's multi-ethnic, it's kids in the city. There's all kind of recognisable factors for children.
Yeah.
Yeah, they were very mission-driven from the beginning, but I think they were also observant of children's viewing habits.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did growing up in Jim Henson’s workshop shape Lisa Henson’s childhood?
0:01–3:56
2
What was the impact of Sesame Street’s debut on the Henson family and on children’s TV?
3:56–9:53
3
How did Jim Henson innovate puppetry for television and what techniques did he develop?
9:53–17:27
4
What creative challenges did Jim Henson face while making The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth?
17:27–25:24
5
How did the Henson family transition the company after Jim’s death and what is Lisa’s role as CEO?
25:24–31:13
6
What lessons did Lisa learn about pitching ideas and running a studio from her own career?
31:13–38:59
7
What can visitors expect from the Jim Henson exhibition in Brisbane and why is it significant?
38:59–46:34
8
How does the Jim Henson Company balance legacy titles with new original projects today?
46:34–51:19
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Conversations
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