Is Lisa Frank a real person? Is she really an artist who built a career on airbrushed puppies and dolphins? The answer, according to the new Prime Video docu-series Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story, is complicated. While Lisa Frank is indeed a real person, over the course of this series’ four episodes, we find out that the real brain of her namesake operation was her ex-husband James. But while James takes credit for the artistic side of things, he lays the blame for the company’s toxic environment squarely at Lisa’s feet. Ultimately though, the problem is that the film makes it hard to know who to trust because everyone seems pretty terrible.
Opening Shot: “Let’s say I was an alien with no idea, how would you describe the Lisa Frank style?” a director asks several of the film’s interviewees. One by one, they respond with answers like, “It was an explosion of color.” “It was bright, it was vibrant.” Happy.” “Magical.” “Anything with, like, a dolphin on it? Forget it.” And of course, there’s the one thing that signifies Lisa Frank more than anything else: “Unicorns and rainbows!”
The Gist: The name Lisa Frank is synonymous with a certain aesthetic, colorful, bright fluorescents mixed with glitter and metallics and whimsical, cute animals. But who the hell is Lisa Frank and what’s her deal? Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story is a four-part documentary that focuses on the real woman behind the massive brand that got its start in the 1980s churning out colorful stickers at the height of that craze, and evolved into school supplies, toys and decor.
Despite selling an upbeat vision of a world filled with cute characters and imagery that evoked whimsy and happiness, employees at the Lisa Frank company were taken advantage of and having their pay reduced to the point that they needed to go on food stamps despite working full time (and despite watching Lisa and her business partner-turned-husband James Green luxuriating in large, staffed homes and wearing designer clothes). After Frank and Green had two children and Lisa became a scarcer presence in the office, Green began to rule by fear at the office, intimidating employees, often having angry outbursts, and even attempting to lock people in the building so they couldn’t leave early (something that was ultimately against fire code).
But is this just a tale of disgruntled employees? Later in the series, James gets his turn to speak, and not only does he reject all of the accusations against him, but he also comes across as cold and unemotional, discussing his marriage to Lisa as something purely transactional, and even explaining matter-of-factly that he never wanted to have children with her. James doesn’t seem very likeable in his interviews, perhaps because he has a directness that, combined with a smug confidence, comes off as brutal honesty with little empathy. But as the story evolves, it’s harder to tell if James is the tyrant everyone says he is, or if Lisa is the real monster, as he now claims. Ousted from the company after the couple’s bitter divorce, James has no fond feelings for his ex, and in the course of the show, he and his oldest son, Hunter, also now estranged from his mother, paint a picture of a woman whose ambition was stymied by her own lack of talent, and she used James as a means to an end.
Unfortunately, the series meanders from one accusation to the next, making everyone involved seem unlikable. (Initially, James is set up as the bigger villain, but as things progress, every piles on Lisa herself for taking advantage of James, alienating her kids and employees, and screwing over other artists and entrepreneurs.) There are victims here: the company’s former employees and business associates who speak on the record here all seem to have experienced the wrath of this couple and it’s obvious that their time at Lisa Frank was miserable and they suffered emotionally and financially. But the question remains, is Lisa Frank herself truly terrible, does she just surround herself with terrible people, or is she simply an inept businessperson? Without her side of the story, it’s hard to really know.
Our Take: We love a complicated success story, but for a good complicated success story to be told well, it helps to have the participation of everyone involved. Martha, the Netflix documentary about Martha Stewart, may not have earned rave reviews from Stewart herself, but to her credit, when she appears in it she is a fairly open book, admitting her flaws, infidelities and indiscretions, a full and willing participant. We have the chance to decide if she’s worth vilifying based on evidence we’ve seen with our own eyes.
Though Lisa Frank offered a written statement to the producers of this docu-series, her absence and elusiveness hurts this documentary, because it allows everyone else to paint a picture of what she’s like without letting the audience formulate that opinion for themselves. And while, yes, this is mostly a story of Lisa Frank the brand, it creates a negative impression of Lisa Frank the person, thanks to the bitter, complicated relationships she seems to have now with her estranged ex-husband and one of her sons, who describes his mother as a Jekyll and Hyde character. To characterize Frank this way might very well be true, but it also feels like an uncomfortable airing of family laundry. And several of the people in this doc, especially James Green, don’t feel like reliable narrators, as most of the rest of the people interviewed for the film seem to hate him. Ultimately, all of this back and forth name-calling only proved the film’s most obvious point, that Lisa Frank was, for many people, a terrible, borderline abusive place to work. This kind of exposé is unfortunately all too common, from White Hot: Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch to Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed, where greed and impropriety result in abusive working conditions and/or the tarnished legacy of a beloved brand.
And while the experiences of the employees who suffered under Green and Frank’s regime sound terrible, the fact is that this film simply reflects something that happens regularly and unsurprisingly at many successful brands. The pressure to make money and to stay successful, coupled with unscrupulous leadership, creates a toxic workplace. The thing that sets this story apart from others is simply the – ironic – presence of puppies and rainbows that helped to gloss over that fact until now.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Episode one culminates in dozens of accusations against James Green, ranging from cruel treatment of his staff to one employee’s accusation that he attempted to place padlocks on the doors of the building. But in the final moments of the episode, we see Green ready for his own interview to rebut these accusations. He explains, he was no tyrant, “The tyrant was on the other side,” he adds, saying, “There’s a time to be quiet and a time to speak… this is the time to speak.”
Performance Worth Watching: She doesn’t appear until episode two, but Rhonda Rowlette, the head of human resources at Lisa Frank at the height of the company’s success, is a Lisa and James loyalist who seems unbothered by the fact that she herself worked 15-hour days every single day of the year (except Christmas) and fired over 100 people in her time with the company. Safe to say, she has a distinct vibe that’s riveting to watch and impossible to understand.
Memorable Dialogue: “Not everything was rainbows and unicorns.”
Our Call: SKIP IT. There’s definitely an interesting and dramatic story in Glitter and Greed about a company selling an image that’s contradicted by the people who ran it. But if we’re focused on telling the story of this dysfunctional company, it drags a bit and four episodes feels like too many. By episode three, the story begins to feel unfocused and like a personal attack, especially with regard to the way James and Lisa’s divorce and child custody battle played out, it feels unbalanced and like the filmmakers allowed Green’s narrative to become the defining one in this story.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.