Certainly a page-turner despite its length and (ostensibly) dry subject-matter, but I did feel it start to drag almost at the start of the second part. The book is divided into three parts, like acts of a movie, in which we follow the rise and fall of Michael Eisner as CEO of Disney. It was made apparent, painfully at times with the amount of repetitive sequences in which Eisner finds moments of inspiration or worries over “competition,” that Eisner was both talented as a creative CEO and unfit to lead. He was constantly undermining those he feared would try to overthrow his position and he developed a culture from the top down of two-faced miscommunication. Without anyone to rein him in properly he promoted a culture of fear and dysfunction. The first part/act exhibits his rise along with other important figures like Katzenberg and Wells, and once his relationship with the former sours, I felt the point for the whole book was succinctly illustrated. Then, the second part outlines a number of other successes and failures after the fallout of that separation, including several similar fallouts with other executives, and a general downturn in production. Hearing the same tale over and over formed a clear pattern of behavior for the reader, and it was still page-turning intrigue, but I had tired of it. I felt that the book could’ve skipped over a lot of middle chunks for the sake of narrative momentum—but I appreciated the breaks from the repetitive backstabbing where Stewart highlights some actual movie developments like Toy Story or Pirates of the Caribbean. This is a pretty exciting book, especially if you have the Succession theme song playing in your head like me. I just would’ve appreciated it more if it were slightly shorter. ( )

Very early on in the book, Stewart reveals a fascinating bit of trivia about the Disney leadership's corporate culture: every senior executive, no matter if they're the public face of the company or if they're in a behind-the-scenes workhorse position, has to spend a day at a Disney theme park in costume as a character. They do this not as a hazing ritual, but to help the people who run the company understand that for many people, Disney isn't just another media/entertainment company - it's the creator of their childhoods. It's one thing to work in the office making deals, planning strategy, and cutting costs; it's quite another to put on a Goofy suit and give a high-five to a 4-year-old who thinks you're the greatest thing that's ever happened to them. The unique nature of Disney products - the word "magical" gets thrown around a lot - means that the stakes around any business decision they make are about as high as it gets in the entertainment world. That's why it's so fascinating to read all the downright un-magical behind-the-scenes material about the tumultuous tenure of superstar CEO Michael Eisner that Stewart unearthed. Rarely will you get see so many men worth hundreds of millions of dollars, each dedicated to the careful curation of childhood, act so childishly themselves.

I was born in 1984, the year that Eisner became CEO of Disney after stints as a highly successful executive at ABC and Paramount. It's a truism that most people consider the pop culture that was produced during their childhoods to be the best (see all of those obnoxious "only 90s kids will get this!" articles), but it's undeniable that when Eisner took over what was then a troubled enterprise, he started a golden age. Along with new President/COO Frank Wells and studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg (an incredibly smart guy who's cruelly referred to as Eisner's "golden retriever"), he oversaw a solid decade of immensely successful, distinctively creative, era-defining classics. The stretch of animated films from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King would be enough to endear Eisner to anyone, to say nothing of live-action films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

But the first half of Eisner's reign at Disney saw immense profits on nearly all fronts and a newly aggressive wave of acquisitions. From animation to live action to television, from Miramax to ABC to Touchstone, Eisner not only rescued Disney from the threat of being bought out by another studio, he transformed it into the premiere studio that it remains to this day. Stewart doesn't use this term in the book, but the Disney Renaissance was one of the more dramatic turnarounds in entertainment history. Many studios have been founded, expanded, reached their apex, and then been acquired or have failed; that Disney didn't suffer that fate is a testament not only to Eisner's team, but his own instincts and judgment.

The bulk of the book is not devoted to Eisner's triumphs, however, but to his travails, above all his difficulties with his executive team. A CEO on the scale that Eisner was - at one point he was by far the highest-paid chief in America - is almost guaranteed to have psychological issues with control, and Stewart's chronicle of Eisner's decision-making processes is as baffling as it is riveting. Eisner seemed to have an uncanny ability to alienate people, especially his closest friends such as Katzenberg, a true creative partner and perhaps more responsible for Disney's turnaround than anyone else, Eisner included. The sections where Eisner costs Disney millions upon millions of dollar in legal fees due to contract disputes with Katzenberg are eye-opening in how petty they are.

But the list of people Eisner alienated doesn't end with Katzenberg, who masterminded many of the best of the Renaissance movies and brokered several of the key partnerships like Pixar before leaving to found Dreamworks after an acrimonious split. Eisner also managed to poison the well with Paramount producer Larry Gordon, who Eisner literally jumped in a lake to avoid after their falling-out; as well as best friend and super-agent Michael Ovitz, whose prodigious talents at dealmaking and client relationships were wasted in a brief and unhappy role as President of Disney after Wells' unfortunate death in a helicopter accident. All of these supremely bright and motivated talents saw themselves frustrated and eventually cut off as Eisner's increasingly imperious and arbitrary rule slowly started to choke off the sources of growth the Renaissance depended on.

Fascinatingly, Eisner himself augured this turn of events in a phone call to Sid Bass, Disney's largest shareholder, before he even became CEO: "Companies like Disney are always founded by creative entrepreneurs but eventually the founder dies or gets pushed out, or moves on to something else. Inevitably the business people take over - the managers - and they focus on preserving the vision that made the company great in the first place. They don't have any creative ideas themselves and they end up surrounding themselves instead with analysts and accountants to try to control the creative people and cut costs. In the process, they discourage change and new initiatives and reinvention. In time, the company begins to ossify and atrophy and die." Eisner's leadership was at its best when he surrounded himself with driven, creative people and allowed them the freedom to run their own parts of the company, and when he allowed others to give him advice.

Unfortunately, the skills to transform a moribund studio into a powerhouse are not necessarily the same as it takes to maintain a powerhouse, and so Eisner eventually began to stumble, such as pushing forward with the incredibly expensive Euro Disney project, and continuing with his increasingly damaging streak of alienating talented executives who disagreed with his decisions. Along the way, Stewart uncovers a lot of interesting business decisions that offer plenty to ponder: the shift from consistent but smaller movies ("singles and doubles", in Eisner's term) to the very star-laden blockbuster system he had initially disdained; the questionable management of relationships between different parts of a studio (ABC in particular); the inability to know when to demand creative control over every facet of a project and when to delegate; failure to properly structure the relationship between board of directors and the management team (Disney had one of the most lickspittle boards imaginable); appalling pay structures for executives and artists; and perhaps most interestingly, poor decisions about the production, marketing, and distribution of content. Check out a partial list of properties Disney either ignored or missed profiting on:
- The Sixth Sense
- CSI
- Survivor
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Apprentice

That's billions of dollars, right there.

Disney is a protean company, as evidenced by its latest resurgence. This book was published in 2005, so many of its loose ends have been resolved by history. Robert Iger is now CEO and has evidently learned much from his somewhat neutered position under Eisner. The "Snow Queen" movie that looked to have a troubled development cycle was eventually released as Frozen, to universal acclaim and dump trucks full of money. Even that looming threat of the Comcast buyout has nearly vanished from memory. The Pixar relationship was mended happily by a merger, to be followed by acquisitions of Marvel and Lucasfilm, which ensures that Disney will maintain its near-monopoly on the notion of childhood for decades to come. One acquisition that could have stood some more investigation was that of ABC, whose ESPN subsidiary becomes more profitable by the minute. Eisner might not be around to enjoy it, but even if his poor decisions once threatened one of the most legendary companies in American culture, it still wouldn't be around today without him. ( )

I'm a pretty big fan of Disney content. For the past year and a half, I have been diving more into Disney history, specifically, Disney Theme Park history. Defunctland, Expedition Theme Park, Podcast: The Ride and Jenny Nicholson are just some of the creators where I've been watching/listening to hours of content. One name that keeps popping up, especially in context to the Disney from my childhood (1990's) is:

*cue dun dun dun noise* Michael Eisner.

The man that was Chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company during the Disney Renaissance, Euro Disney, the fall of Disney after the Renaissance, the acquisition of ABC, Fox Family (which became ABC Family and the creation of Go.com. A mix of success and failures. Plus, he enraged Jeffery Katzenberg so much that Shrek's Lord Farquaad's appearance is rumored to be based off of Eisner.


Regardless of how much truth is in this rumor, the resemblance is definitely there.

He's a bit of a joke in most of the Disney Park groups I'm in. As the man responsible for Euro Disney, Alien Encounter and many cost cutting measures, it's not surprising. I wanted to know more about Michael Eisner and what happened from the start of his career at Disney to the end, but wasn't sure where to start. Then, I saw Lindsay Ellis' video essay of the 2017 Beauty and the Beast movie (a remake I REALLY didn't like of a movie I love). She used this quote from Michael Eisner in her essay: "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." At the end of the essay, she mentioned this book as one of her sources in her video. She also mentioned listening to the audiobook version of this title. I decided to check it out, opting for the eBook version of this title instead of the audiobook.

The story of Michael Eisner's tenure at Disney is full of drama. Reading about how Eisner got the company back up from its late 70's, early 80's slump, with the help of other employees, including Katzenberg, Frank Wells and other talented people. Talented people, who, for the most part, Eisner isolated and iced out of their jobs. Who ended up leaving to go work at other companies. The more and more people Eisner lied to and betrayed, the more and more his control and micromanagement over different departments grew. Throw in some lawsuits and successful and failing projects and you've got one interesting story.

James Stewart was granted access to different departments and people within Disney to write a book. His narration sometimes borders on sensationalist. It's hard to tell if it's fact or embellishment. Eisner is written as a very charming and manipulative individual, which both seems like an exaggeration, but also has to have some truth to it, based on how many former Disney executives are now at different companies who do not have a great view of Eisner. There's a lot of interesting stories and tidbits about how Eisner ran Disney, putting choices made by the Disney company into a narrative that makes sense. The choices themselves do not (see EuroDisney and Go.com), but the reasons why they were made does. Personally, I just wasn't as big a fan of the embellishments made to the narration. The number of people that Stewart describes as "stunned" or "shocked" got to be ridiculous. The story has plenty of intrigue and drama and could probably stand on its own.

At 593 pages, it will probably only appeal to the hardcore Disney fans. The ones who watch or listen to many hours of Disney content. Who want to know more about what on Earth could've been going through Eisner's mind during his tenure at Disney. And, if he could've predicted what would happen when he pissed off Jeffery Katzenberg so much that he, along with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg, created one of Disney's biggest competitors- Dreamworks Pictures.

So, all in all, if like me, you want to learn more about Disney during Eisner's tenure and more about Eisner himself, I recommend this book. Just take some of the embellishments with a grain of salt. ( )

This was a great read and had my hair standing on end much of the time. I guess we all know that those in power in Hollywood behave badly, but this close examination is alarming. What I appreciate most is that in popular discourse we talk about "Disney" as if it is a single-minded monolithic entity. This book reveals the dozens of personalities, agendas, and aspirations at play behind the scenes, and all of the projects that might have been but weren't. It also makes clear what I tell my students all of the time: the company's products and projects fail more frequently than they succeed. It's a vivid lesson in the long-term strength of a conglomerate. ( )

I just finished this book and I was amazed at how much detailed information and juicy gossip about the workings of one of the world's biggest companies during a period of turmoil and crisis. I choose to read the book because I have always had an interest in the Disney Company and have always wanted to work for their Consumer Products division one day (the book covers the Disney Co. during CEO Michael Eisner’s tenure, with background on the start of the company by the Disney brothers).

I wanted to do a little background reading on the history of the company for any future reference (possible job interviews, etc) and I expected to be bored out of my mind reading a lengthy business biography; however, at times I could not put the book down! I would be reading and wouldn't want to stop when something unexpected or especially scandalous came along! I love how much evidence Stewart was able to get, from first-hand experiences, conversations with actual people involved and physical paperwork, memos, e-mails, etc.

Another interesting thing was reading about what was happening behind the scenes of some of Disney’s business hits and flops, including the acquisition of ABC, the Pixar controversy and Eisner turning down some of the bigger TV hits like CSI and Survivor.

I definitely recommend this book for anyone either interested in the Disney Company or business studies (or those just intrigued by a little office gossip!) ( )