On my last trip to Disneyland, I found myself growing tired of hearing my sons whine about waiting in lines. So I took off running at 8 a.m. one day, hoping to grab FastPasses for Indiana Jones Adventure. Right around the Tiki Room, I was hip-checked by a guy wearing a T-shirt that read: “Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead.” I pressed on manfully and passed him at Jungle Cruise, but this episode from the Darwinian struggle sort of burst my notion of “a magic kingdom where life is a fairy tale and dreams really do come true.”
The same feeling came over me upon reading James B. Stewart’s “DisneyWar” (Simon & Schuster, 572 pages, $29.95), with its scenes from Michael Eisner CEO Adventures. Mr. Eisner probably regrets providing access to Mr. Stewart (a former editor at this newspaper and currently a weekly columnist). Why? Well, famously by now, the book does offer various details that play a part in current litigation over Disney’s management turnstile.
Disney War
But more comes to light than mere courtroom-related squalor. It doesn’t take long for the reader of “DisneyWar” to realize that Mr. Eisner’s mantra was written all over that T-shirt. He hasn’t aimed his trample-the-weak spirit outward toward competitors, however, but inward, toward everyone with an ounce of ambition who worked for him.
The magic of Disney is that it brings out the child in all of us, but you would hope that there would be adult supervision. No dice. With the maturity of someone in junior high, Mr. Eisner “stopped speaking to, and went to elaborate lengths to avoid in public” Barry Diller, his best friend Larry Gordon, Jeffrey Katzenberg, über-agent turned Disney president Michael Ovitz (another former best friend), Roy Disney, ABC head and current Disney president Bob Iger, and, habitually, his board of directors.
To Purgatory
Mr. Eisner managed by instinct. As Mr. Stewart writes, he “did not like to be told bad news, nor was he used to it. He had presided over a nearly unbroken string of successes, largely by acting on his creative impulses.” It worked for him in the 1980s at ABC, with “Happy Days” and “Laverne and Shirley” and for his first decade at Disney. No one could make a decision but he, and anyone who tried was fired or sent to purgatory — e.g., Disney stores or music. From the time Mr. Eisner joined the company in 1984, and on through 1992, his instinct was on the mark. Profits jumped. The company went from $2 billion in value to $22 billion. He pocketed at least $200 million for being right, too.
And little wonder. There are a lot of moving parts at Disney — parks, animation, live-action movies, music, ABC. We learn about all of them in Mr. Stewart’s book, which can be tedious at times, although worth the effort, for the details show something startling about Mr. Eisner’s executive style.
To take one example: Mr. Eisner had a fascination with architects. Robert A.M. Stern designed his house and many Disney buildings and (can you say conflict?) eventually joined the Disney board. Mr. Stewart names every architect asked to bid on the Euro Disney theme park.
Sensing Mr. Eisner’s micromanaging style (he selected the ashtrays in the company’s hotels), Aldo Rossi turned down the assignment, writing to Mr. Eisner: “The Cavalier Bernini, invited to Paris for the Louvre project, was tormented by a multitude of functionaries who continued to demand that changes be made to the project to make it more functional. It is clear that I am not Cavalier Bernini, but it is also clear that you are not the King of France.” This was news to Mr. Eisner, who in his mind was clearly a kind of Boy King.
And, like a boy, he was subject to whims and tantrums. Mr. Stewart’s stories are wonderful: the cat fight with Mr. Katzenberg, the overture to Mr. Ovitz, the anger at Mr. Iger, the ruckus with Roy over Disney’s direction. Like many adolescents, Mr. Eisner was nonconfrontational face to face. But as Mr. Stewart shows again and again, he would stab you in the back as soon as you turned around.
He wanted Mr. Katzenberg gone for the longest time, for instance, but all it took from Mr. Katzenberg was a quick pop into Mr. Eisner’s office and some friendly words and Mr. Eisner was going to bat for Mr. Katzenberg with the board. The next day, Mr. Eisner would be bad-mouthing him again. Mr. Eisner eventually designed the executive offices without a stairway to his floor to keep direct contact to a minimum.
Mr. Katzenberg felt that the spirit of Walt Disney was guiding him from the company’s animation archives, but that wouldn’t do, because Mr. Eisner thought he was the reincarnation of Walt Disney. Fellas, grow up! A dispute over Mr. Katzenberg’s contract could have been settled for $90 million but ended up costing a stubborn Mr. Eisner — er, Disney’s shareholders — $280 million. Mr. Ovitz got tossed a few years later for only $140 million, a bargain.
“DisneyWar,” full of up-to-date details, shows that not much has changed over the years. Mr. Eisner is still in charge, channeling his instincts and micromanaging. He turned down Miramax head Harvey Weinstein’s deal for “Lord of the Rings,” which went on to earn millions. And Mr. Weinstein is now leaving. Bob Iger pushed for ABC to run or at least produce “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” Mr. Eisner said no, and CBS is raking it in. Big mistakes, although, to be fair, a short tape of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” got shown and — guess what? — Mikey liked it.
Celebrities and Backstabbing
So what happens now? Mr. Iger is still around waiting in line, without a FastPass, hoping to outlast Mr. Eisner. But to this day, there is not really a succession plan. Mr. Eisner is done in 2006, sort of, maybe. Long live the king.
But was it Mr. Eisner who was responsible for the big revenue early in his reign? Back in the late 1980s, CFO Gary Wilson did a study and found that almost all the profits came from Disney’s raising prices, controlling its own hotels and distributing animated classics on home video. A good business model covers up a lot of corporate dirt.
Even today, Disney keeps raising prices — ESPN rates go up 20% a year. It builds and operates more hotels, and DVD is yet another lucrative outlet for the archives. For all the movies and celebrities and back-stabbing that Mr. Stewart describes in “DisneyWar,” it’s still just a business.
So I kept asking myself: Why am I so hungrily reading through this? “DisneyWar” is not a scandal book or a how-to guide with lessons for aspiring moguls. There are no accounting frauds or toga parties. Instead, like Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections,” it offers up the guilty pleasure of watching this 12-year-old patriarch and his dysfunctional family tear each other to shreds.
When Pinocchio is sent to Pleasure Island, wicked boys turn into donkeys. Now, as Mr. Stewart eloquently tells us, the fairy tale has come true.
Mr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author, most recently, of “Running Money.”
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