DisneyWar
June 16th 2006 07:54
DisneyWar, Australian cover.
James B. Stewart is a big-time American writing journalist of some sort, and he released this book last year. It's quite big, about 800 pages or so and it follows a twenty year period from 1984 (or thereabouts) to the present day, charting Disney's re-birth in the late eighties to it's fiery internal multi-billion dollar bitchfights in the late 90s. It all starts and ends with the man named Michael Eisner... a man who sought to inherit Walt Disney's mantle, install himself as it's new figurehead, generate massive and obscene amounts of cash for himself and divorce the last remaining members of the Disney family from their legacy. Yes, he goes that far! Most troubling of all is the up-close view we get of the way he jealously guarded his position as CEO... for more than a decade the man refused to name a second-in-charge, fearing to give anyone any leverage against him. Disturbingly, in this book we watch him take on a protege in Jeffrey Katzenberg, a thoroughly unlikeable man who helped put Disney back on the map once and for all with The Lion King, only to push him away when it becomes clear that Katzenberg wishes to stand as second-in-charge and be officially recognised as next in line.
These guys are pretty much all unlikeable characters. The most sympathetic people are the older and less pushy types, like Walt Disney's nephew Roy. Unfortunately, these aren't the sort of people who get ahead in business, and I could feel my anger and fury boiling as I read about greedy corporate men like Michael Eisner and co. exploiting Disney for their own gain whilst nice guys like Roy Disney - who actually care about the family values Disney stand for - get pushed to the sidelines. And the egos of these corporate guys! The egos here are like the massive and mythical egos in Greek tragedies... but these guys don't really ever get brought down by their hubris, instead they back off a bit and bide their time, raking in millions upon millions of dollars on a yearly basis, and then move back in again - never letting go, never giving quarter, never doing the right thing by anyone but themselves.
The book isn't all jealousy and teeth-gnashing though, there are plenty of interesting anecdotes about how various Disney films got made the way they did, how EuroDisney failed so spectacularly, how Disney had a hit with shows like 'Lost' and movies like 'Pirates of the Caribbean' despite Eisner doing everything in his power to hinder the creative processes behind them! The book also follows the schism between Katzenberg and Eisner and how it led to the formation of Dreamworks... most amusingly, 'Shrek' (Katzenberg's first big hit with Dreamworks) features a villain based loosely on Eisner. It's amazing how petty big men can get when there's so much money involved.
Michale Eisner, the man who would be king.
This is a really interesting book and not one just for Disney or film buffs. I actually picked it up out of the politics section of the bookstore, such is the significance of the power plays detailed in 'DisneyWar'. I guess when there are billions of dollars being generated yearly it becomes less about trivia and more about politics. A really fascinating read.
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