A House, a Mouse, and a Louse

December 10, 2006 4:05 AM

Tom Hignite wasn't content owning one of Wisconsin's most successful companies, Miracle Homes. The evangelical contracting magnate had a dream. He would be the Walt Disney(sound) of the 21st century. So he turned a portion of his 7,000 square foot house into a studio, hired a crew of veteran Disney and Warner Bros. animators, and proceeded to make a feature film QT starring his own creation, Miracle Mouse. This is the story of how it all went wrong.
posted by maryh (53 comments total)

Some personal stories from former employees collected here.
posted by maryh at 4:05 AM on December 10, 2006

Fairly reasonable-sounding response to the last-linked article from its subject here.
posted by thparkth at 4:48 AM on December 10, 2006

I've met Disney - and you, sir, are no Disney.

Thankfully. I don't think the world could survive another Disney.

We were branding ourselves as creative innovators

Err...

For our young one-and-a-half year old studio, the project's completion represents another step closer to reaching our overall goal of producing our first animated feature.

Yes. Because of course the first things you do before even doing a short-short is "brand yourselves as creative innovators" and talk about how great you're going to be.

Is there a simple, snappy word for resting on your laurels before they're even awarded? Cocky and hubristic don't seem to quite fit here. Anyway, isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins?



This is an old tale. I would like to say that it's a sad, old tale but I'm not sure how much sadness I can have for what amounts to a rather common and well known tale.

Hubris and malicious pride are mistaken once again for vision, focus, drive and caring. While the extremes may manifest in similar ways, they are far, far removed from being even distant cousins.

One must drive and goad hubris forward, often with a whip - and it requires delicate care and feeding to survive. It does not survive without very carefully maintained conditions of ignorance and futility. It must be cultivated.

Creative visions - conversely - are cruel, consuming masters and plagues. It goads the sane, driving them into poverty and lamentations with obsessions of arts and crafts. It demands the impossible. It requires no cultivation, and if properly formed it will thrive in the bleak barrens of space.


Non-artists like Tom Hignite will not understand this one bit, and yet they wonder why they fail.
posted by loquacious at 5:04 AM on December 10, 2006 [5 favorites]

I like the way he even cribbed elements of Disney's signature, notably the loop over the "i". I mean, Disney's no great role model, but this guy is a real arsehole.
posted by imperium at 5:15 AM on December 10, 2006

An amazing story of one man trying to mold himself in the image of god, uh, I mean, Walt Disney. Thanks for posting this.

I am amazed that they weren't swamped with a hoard of Disney™ lawyers. They violated so many intellectual property rights in so many ways...
posted by jpburns at 5:19 AM on December 10, 2006

Maybe it's so obvious it doesn't need to be said but I suspect that a man in his fifties who is that obsessed with Disney has serious psychiatric problems. I'm a bit shocked Disney's hordes of lawyers haven't pounced all over this guy yet (especially after the home show which appears to have been as much about Disney as it was these "Miracle" homes he builds.

Also I think the phrase "A Christian business!" which he chirps at the end of his lushly animated (!) and orchestra-scored (!!) commercials is possibly the most obnoxious, offensive thing a business person could say.
posted by inoculatedcities at 5:22 AM on December 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Yes a very interesting story, thanks for the post. The quality of the animation they produced is high (although Miracle Mouse does have a very weird-looking head - I think the characters are poor), I just feel sorry for those animators who were taken for a ride.
posted by mokey at 5:24 AM on December 10, 2006

this is awesome reading/watching.
hooray for megalomania!

reminded a bit of 'Big Love'
posted by Busithoth at 5:28 AM on December 10, 2006

I built a pond in the back so my staff could have a pond, so they could have nice experiences.… It’s all about experiences.… When we die tomorrow, the only thing they’ll recall at your eulogy are the experiences we gave to each other.”

Lust...

here is Hignite’s personal residence, all 7,500 square feet of it, a countrified manor with a basketball court, movie theater and a bookcase with a trap door that opens to a secret hallway and antechamber where Hignite stores part of his massive collection of Disney paraphernalia

Avarice...

Tom Hignite had always been free with money: It was part of the corporate strategy, it made tangible the “Miracle” of Miracle Homes. “He spent like it was nothing,” says one former employee, who was familiar with the company’s financials. The employee says Hignite once spent $30,000 for custom drapery in one of the model homes and $27,000 for a grand piano in another.

Gluttony...

“He was trying to compare himself to Walt Disney,” says O’Donnell, “and I [told him that] before Walt had done Snow White, he had done 30 animated shorts.”

Envy...

“Nothing really matters that much,” Hignite said the first time we met last May, as he sat beside his wife on their living room couch. “I live in a nice house now, but I’m going to be selling this house really shortly. I intend to put it on the market next month.” His soothing contralto made everything sound as if he were reciting a bedtime story, as though the real world was barely connected to the dreams he was weaving.

Sloth...

the bank was suggesting that he curb the spending on village construction. Instead, Hignite decided to kick it into high gear. “He tried to get as much done,” says O’Donnell, “so that when the bank saw it, they wouldn’t stop him. Instead, they would say, ‘Well, you’re this far, so go ahead.’

Hubris...

“He would push it up to the limit until he got sued,” one animator says. “What bothered me was he was putting all our lives at stake.”

More hubris...

What I personally find so galling is the syncophantic-Socratic like defense of those who claim to be religious without actually acting religiously...

“Any skirmish with a client gets magnified because you are Christian-based,” Hignite notes. “You should be perfect. And we’re not. We’re so far from it. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. We’re trying to give credit to God for bringing us to where He brought us.”
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:52 AM on December 10, 2006 [2 favorites]

Is there a simple, snappy word for resting on your laurels before they're even awarded?
"Business as usual"?
yeah, I know, that's 3 words...call my lawyer

Anyway, judging by my experience in small-to-midsize corporate America, I'd say such puffery is par for the course. I mean, how many corps don't sell themselves as being "cutting edge" or "an industry leader" or "setting the standard"? It's all part of the mandatory self-delusion of corporate culture these days. You must believe the work is world/paradigm/industry-changing or you just aren't a team-player.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:12 AM on December 10, 2006

Civil_Disobedient forgot one other sin:

“Any skirmish with a client gets magnified because you are Christian-based,” Hignite notes. “You should be perfect. And we’re not. We’re so far from it. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. We’re trying to give credit to God for bringing us to where He brought us.”

Wrath.

For those who missed it, here's the Onion article with its eerily similar it'll-end-in-tears motif: Laid-Off Ford Employee Decides To Start Own Car Company.
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:38 AM on December 10, 2006

And through the magic of USENET, here's the real-life counterpart to the Onion story Hignite should've heeded: A run in with Excelsior Henderson or Jenny Hanlon is going to heaven.
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:42 AM on December 10, 2006

that last link seems to be down for me.
posted by quonsar at 6:49 AM on December 10, 2006

after reading the article (which is reproduced on the animation nation site) and reading the tom hignite response, i can only say that daniel libit is typical of the malicious, lying, slanderous pieces of shit inhabiting much of the "journalism" industry. what an asshole.
posted by quonsar at 7:07 AM on December 10, 2006

quonsar - did you also read the forum link that maryh posted?

I generally prefer the consensus opinion of the people (animators) actually in the trenches than either the journalist or the person being interviewed.

Most of the comments on the AnimationNation forum validated the article - none fundamentally disagreed and yet they were balanced enough that you could tell the posters had worked there.
posted by jkaczor at 7:32 AM on December 10, 2006

Well the animators responses seem to backup most of what Libit says. This guy reminds me of some of my website clients. God I hate non artists who think they know what they are doing.
posted by meta87 at 7:36 AM on December 10, 2006

Regarding surprise some seem to have that Disney lawyers hadn't attacked. This bit from the last linked article seems about right:

One former employee said he was told by a Disney friend that scrutiny of Miracle Studios’ activities had reached the vice presidential level. They presumed Disney was waiting to see if Hignite turned a profit before its copyright beagles pounced on him in earnest.

Why sue him in production when he can either a) hang himself or b) make a ton of money which he can then pay to you when you sue him for infringement?
posted by moonbiter at 7:47 AM on December 10, 2006

Why sue him in production when he can either a) hang himself or b) make a ton of money which he can then pay to you when you sue him for infringement?

Due diligence?
posted by carsonb at 8:45 AM on December 10, 2006

Perhaps the Disney lawyers are just, you know, intelligent, and don't see the point in wasting money suing an asshole who doesn't have any money, and as such was doomed for failure.

Oh please. Since when are corporate lawyers above suing someone without substantial assets just to make a point? While I'm certainly no champion of lawyers (let alone Disney lawyers) has he not massively infringed on their copyrights in an effort to generate profit for himself?
posted by inoculatedcities at 9:20 AM on December 10, 2006

This may be the most pathetic thing I've seen this week. Or at least this weekend.
posted by Hildegarde at 9:25 AM on December 10, 2006

I'm with quonsar; the piece skews toward the malicious and gloating. The guy may be a schmuck, but Libit doesn't look so good either.
posted by atchafalaya at 9:41 AM on December 10, 2006

Fascinating post, thanks.
posted by interrobang at 9:57 AM on December 10, 2006

“I think if you ask people,” he says, “most people would say I wish we could have the 1950s back.”

He says something like this in the little documentary feature, too. There must be some way to convince these people that the 1950s they saw on television were an illusion.
posted by interrobang at 10:08 AM on December 10, 2006

That's what happens when you let baby boomers run the show. Great story.
posted by furtive at 10:21 AM on December 10, 2006

Oh please. Since when are corporate lawyers above suing someone without substantial assets just to make a point?

Ok, then, what's your explanation for why Disney's lawyers aren't suing the pants off him? Are they stupid? From Libit's article:

The animators were much less ethereal. For months, they had been hearing from friends at Disney that Hignite was on the company’s radar. One former employee said he was told by a Disney friend that scrutiny of Miracle Studios’ activities had reached the vice presidential level. They presumed Disney was waiting to see if Hignite turned a profit before its copyright beagles pounced on him in earnest.
posted by mediareport at 10:30 AM on December 10, 2006

His response is several times longer than the original article. But not nearly as entertaining.
posted by cytherea at 10:32 AM on December 10, 2006

It's also a little weird that Miracle Mouse's catchphrase is "Cheez Whiz™!" and they haven't been sued for that yet.
posted by interrobang at 10:33 AM on December 10, 2006

There are two blatant vocabulary errors (not to mention the use of apostophes in a pluralization) in that article that made me question the quality of the magazine: one is using the word "tact" to mean "tack" (His tact in these moments was to go around the room over and over until no’s transformed into yeses.), and the other I can't find again for the life of me, but if someone else can find it, I would like to give him/her a prize. It's in the article before the "tact" error, but I don't remember where.
posted by Hildegarde at 10:34 AM on December 10, 2006

Those could just be simple copy editing mistakes, Hildegarde. But if even half of the errors Hignite cites are true, it does look like Libit's reporting was sorta sloppy.
posted by mediareport at 10:39 AM on December 10, 2006

I'm really quite curious about the '50s mystique. It seems like it was an odd time for America, with "Leave it to Beaver" and its unrealistic wholesomeness happening at the very same time Jack Kerouac was "On The Road" participating in or witnessing every possible vice and deed.

Someone should really do an exposé on the 1950s.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:05 AM on December 10, 2006

Hildegarde, I think he called a motion sensor a 'censor'.
posted by Phantomx at 11:09 AM on December 10, 2006

The responses of the former employees suggest it's not the magazine article that's at variance with the truth.
posted by cytherea at 11:16 AM on December 10, 2006

How long do new businesses survive? From the USSBA study, Redefining Business Success: Distinguishing Between Closure and Failure^PDF:

BITS shows that 66 percent of new employers survive two years or more, 50 percent survive four years or more, and 40 percent survive six years or more (see Appendix). These results are strikingly similar to findings from Phillips and Kirchhoff showing about three-quarters of all businesses surviving two years or more, about half surviving four years or more, and about 40 percent surviving six years or more.

Thus, about 25-35% of new businesses fail within their first two years, 50% within four years, and 60% within six years. Success factors include: financing, industry, location, employer, homebased, owners, and the firm's age. The business owners' gender, race, age, education, reasons for starting, and previous experience were also studied, but their personal religious beliefs — or the lack thereof — were not.

Tom Hignite, or anyone else in the animation business for that matter, is no Walt Disney. Walt was a wonderful dreamer who infected his animators (and Hignite, apparently) with his enthusiam and vision, but he had a hard road up. Walt was no great animator or businessman: Disney studios failed (or came close) more than once under his leadership, and were rescued by Roy Disney several times.

Businesses fail for a lot of reasons. The demise of Miracle Studios is due more to poor management than Hignite's beliefs. No more than any other faith, Christianity is no guarantee of business success: witness the sad story of Veggie Tales.
posted by cenoxo at 11:18 AM on December 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

If you tell me you are running a Christian business, all I hear is that you fundamentally misunderstand Christianity, and probably business as well. It's good to see that God is as disinterested in shoddy Disney knockoffs as the rest of us, though.
posted by Nahum Tate at 11:32 AM on December 10, 2006

Didn't anyone else see the parallels to GW Bush?
posted by Brian B. at 11:46 AM on December 10, 2006

...it does look like Libit's reporting was sorta sloppy.

And Reporter Dan's piece (sounding oddly like an anti-Bush diatribe) isn't above slinging a pouchful of subjective stones, either:

...a bizarre style that may doom his empire.
...countrified manor...
...for glory is not without its costs...
...he had created something, well, heavenly.
...the illustriously named Grand Bay.
Want more?
More Still?
...cedar-and-stone cathedral...
...mausoleum of stuffed animals...
The claim of godliness...
...yet another outlandish project...
...land...purchased on the cheap...
...ever-growing empire...
...an almost child-like certainty...
...His soothing contralto made everything sound as if he were reciting a bedtime story, as though the real world was barely connected to the dreams he was weaving. [My personal favorite.]

Ad nauseum. Perhaps Milwaukee Magazine's hubrisitic slogan should be "200,000 readers can't be wronged."
posted by cenoxo at 12:08 PM on December 10, 2006

Those are good points, cenoxo, but I think you're missing the larger picture. The reporter is gloating, all right, but I don't think the story is off the mark.

I've been fascinated by this studio since I first heard of Hignite's call for animators; his timing was painfully perfect given that Disney had just chosen to shut down almost all of its 2D feature operations in Florida, Australia, and Hollywood. For 2D animators, a group of professionals with an increasingly archaic yet dizzyingly eclectic set of skills (draughtsman, choreographer, actor, designer etc) those layoffs were traumatic, to say the least. I wasn't at all surprised that he was able to staff up so quickly with a crew of such high quality, even though everything about his operation seemed vague. What really saddens me about the failure of the studio is the amount of faith his crew (and some outsiders) allowed him, even in the face of a pretty obvious lack of real direction.

If you read some of his posts at the animation site, or, for that matter, read anything he has posted on his own site, he comes across as someone more interested in projecting himself as a New Disney without investing any real energy in figuring out how the business of creating a film actually works. That this childish (not child-like) man with his daydreams of greatness was able to surround himself with devoted craftsmen charged with bringing his emaciated imagination to life depresses the living shit out of me. But as loquacious noted above, it's an old, old story.

I just hope everyone got paid.
posted by maryh at 1:26 PM on December 10, 2006

The animation was beautiful - it's a shame that the unemployed animators had to sully themselves with such a shallow project. The opening scene for the Miracle Mouse film at the end of the QT movie was just soooo dull.

fascinating post though...
posted by meech at 1:31 PM on December 10, 2006

“I think if you ask people,” he says, “most people would say I wish we could have the 1950s back.”

Yeah, great times back then. Rampant racism/discrimination, women stuck in kitchen, the Red Scare, etc...
posted by sharksandwich at 2:10 PM on December 10, 2006

this story definately reminded me of my band travelling to NYC to meet up with some 'rich guy' who had bought a tiny indy label, full of dreams of making a big label success story out of it. His money came from CD sales, and he wanted to get in on the 'real money'.

We signed with him, and watched the incompetant operation lurch from bedshitting to bedshitting, losing all confidence we might have had going in.

Surely, somewhere within his corpulent form there was an affection for music, but he was surrounded by music industry cokehead hacks, and the experience was disillusioning.

But the music world was more forgiving, it turns out, and after changing the label's name (too great a stigma from all the atrocious business deals early on), he got a couple of really big acts to make him his money back.

We still get invoices for how much we owe them.
A source of great mirth, them.
posted by Busithoth at 2:22 PM on December 10, 2006

Maryh - Perhaps by being more artistically inclined than businesslike, the ex-Disney animators made their own decision to work for Hignite. Obviously he didn't have the same experience or resources as their former employer, but they took the chance opportunity anyway.

Walt Disney was a hands-on animator (at least early on), but like Hignite he also had childlike qualities, dreams of greatness, a talent for self-promotion, and was extravagant in the pursuit of quality. This kept the studio hanging by a financial thread for several decades:

Walt Disney was always--and I do mean always--in dire financial straits until the opening of Disneyland. The primary reason wasn't that his cartoons weren't making money, because they were--at least until the war in Europe when the loss of that market meant disaster for the features. But even as they were making money, the studio was losing money because Walt was constitutionally incapable of cutting corners, enforcing economies, laying off staff. The only thing about which Walt Disney cared was quality. He thought that quality was the way to maintain his preeminence, though quality also had the psychological advantage of letting him perfect his world. The problem was that quality was expensive. To cite just one example, Walt spent more than a hundred thousand dollars setting up a training program for would-be animators, though even then the return was small because Walt was so picky that very few of the candidates actually qualified to work at the studio. Money meant very little to Walt Disney. It was only a means to an end, never an end in itself.

Evidently, Walt was too nice of a guy. He had a unique ability to motivate his craftspeople to create beautiful, appealing, and commercially successful films. Sometimes the Magic worked, and sometimes it didn't. As a company, Disney's persistence succeeded, but they have laid off (and continue to lay off) hundreds of animators. Is that because few things in life are certain, or because the Mouse is a louse?

Did Hignite sell the dream of Miracle Mouse to his animators, or did they willingly buy into it? Probably both — hope is powerful in a new venture, and who knows, maybe the dream will come true? Unfortunately, the Miracle didn't happen this time for them, but it's unfair to lay the whole blame on Hignite or his Christian beliefs.
posted by cenoxo at 3:50 PM on December 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

“I think if you ask people,” he says, “most people would say I wish we could have the 1950s back.”

Tom Hignite should have read The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
by Stephanie Coontz.
posted by found dog one eye at 3:56 PM on December 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Very well put, cenoxo.
posted by loquacious at 5:48 PM on December 10, 2006

Yup, the 50s has the best PR coverage of any recent decade. I love the clothes and movies myself.

If he really wants to make things like the were in the good old days, he can always ripoff the racist cartoons from that era!

He probably won't get sued over those.
posted by Freecola at 5:59 PM on December 10, 2006

I thought cenoxo was joking until now because his list was obviously unsupportive of his claim, but I checked, he did use a religious reference (pouchful of stones) that I didn't catch at first.
posted by Brian B. at 6:01 PM on December 10, 2006

an odd time for America, with "Leave it to Beaver" and its unrealistic wholesomeness happening at the very same time Jack Kerouac was "On The Road"

no, fff, leave it to beaver was a tv sitcom. there was no beaver, no ward, no june, no wally. tv, you see, isn't real. one day canadians will figure this out.
posted by quonsar at 8:03 PM on December 10, 2006

I thought cenoxo was joking until now because his list was obviously unsupportive of his claim.

Mildly sarcastic yes, but joking, no. Imagine all of those obviously loaded descriptors (and many not listed) in the front page story of your average big city newspaper*. Libit's piece is closer to a low-end Op-Ed rant than journalism.

*Or heck, even in a MetaFilter FPP.
posted by cenoxo at 9:33 PM on December 10, 2006

Mildly sarcastic yes, but joking, no. Imagine all of those obviously loaded descriptors (and many not listed) in the front page story of your average big city newspaper*. Libit's piece is closer to a low-end Op-Ed rant than journalism.

It was modeled on the reportage style of high-end magazine articles found in The Atlantic, New Yorker, or Harper's.
posted by Brian B. at 9:56 PM on December 10, 2006

Unfortunately.
posted by cenoxo at 10:37 PM on December 10, 2006

Unfortunately.

Not for me, I enjoy high-end journalism.
posted by Brian B. at 11:21 PM on December 10, 2006

Cenoxo, you made a valid point in this comment about the animators who chose to take up Hignite's offer to move from the coasts to Wisconsin. They took the opportunity, fraught with risk, to haul themselves into a one studio town, to jobs that paid at most half of what they normally earned, without the protections or benefits of a union. Were they niave? Yes, of course. Were they, a largely Christian group, attracted to the explicitly Christian Hignite? From reading the forums, I suspect so.

I see in your comment that you appear to be basing an argument for Hignite's optimism on the career of Walt Disney. As far as I can tell, Hignite's self-identification with Disney is exactly his problem. Evidently, Walt was too nice of a guy. Really. Tell that to the animators who took part in the Disney Cartoonists' Strike of 1941. Disney was burned early in his career, and money was always an issue for him. He also learned from his early mistakes and he became a tough and focused businessman as a result, albeit one with a stong sense of story and a good manager's gift for finding the right people to translate his vision. His insistance on quality wasn't some pie in the sky love of the artsy-fartsy, it was a real competitive edge during the early years of American commercial animation.

Hignite is no Disney. He used his money to create a simulation of a Disneyesque studio but he never had an inkling of what it took to keep that sort of business solvent, or even nominally productive. You mentioned Phil Vischer of Veggie Tales, but Phil helmed a staff that produced a viable product for some time before his studio went under. Hignite has produced a few commercials and a teaser which, frankly, are all advertisements for his home-building company. In the teaser for his feature, Miracle Mouse is wearing a hardhat with the Miracle Homes logo. How lame is that?

Sorry you didn't approve of the hyperbole in the the Milwaukee Magazine piece, or my fpp. You can't please everyone, can you?
posted by maryh at 2:34 AM on December 11, 2006

maryh said: Hignite is no Disney.

No argument there — only Walt was Walt, then, now, and forever more. But he didn't have any idea (from a business standpoint) how to run a studio, either. His mind was preoccupied with art, and Disney's animated films are perhaps the most illusory art of all. All relies upon the image that is presented: reality has little to do with it.

I'm not equating Walt with Tom Hignite, but their self-motivation appears to be very similar. In the end, Walt was hugely successful, perhaps in spite of himself, and now he (and a stumpy, round-eared Mouse) are cultural icons. In the real world, creative and management must work together, and it took the likes of Roy Disney and other managers to get things on a sustainable financial keel.

Working off of resources earned as a homebuilder, Tom gave a new, unfamiliar venture the good old entrepreneurial try. Things didn't work out as he (and his animators) hoped due to unrealistic expectations, an unappealing product, and bad management. That's life, and all Miracle Studio employees walked in the front door with their eyes open.

Actually, this is a very good post, thanks. I enjoyed it, perhaps even more so because I disagree with the article's means and methods. If your FPP text has any ad hominem barbs, I certainly missed them. Had Miracle Studios ended happily, only your FPP's last word would need changing (from "wrong" to "right".)

Reportagee Dan's objectivism is another story altogether — perhaps he could take a lesson or two from you.
posted by cenoxo at 2:24 PM on December 11, 2006

BTW, in my earlier "Or heck, even in a MetaFilter FPP." comment I wasn't criticizing your FPP at all. I meant that we usually don't see FPPs using the same subjective wording as Libit's article.

My apologies for any confusion.
posted by cenoxo at 5:06 PM on December 11, 2006