Michael Eisner

I hear the requests you are making, I see the stories you create, and I find value in them too.

And in terms of the parks, that is a perspective that's different than any of the previous Disney CEOs, at least in terms of clarity and depth related to the parks, and also suggests that the expansion and revisions to the parks might have a different element of collaboration with fan interests, which is different than the Hollywood-centric models of leadership that have been embraced by the previous two CEOs, specifically Bob Iger and Michael Eisner.

And over time, in these statements on stage, there was the hope that this would move the parks and resorts in the years ahead in stronger directions.

Now let's take a look at some actual work that's going on around Disneyland.

While the show is in production, Eisendrath and the production team have noted in the years since the amount of support they receive from ESPN, with notes and fact-checking for football-related matters and a relaxed hands-off approach to subject matter.

While the network may have supported their creative team at the time, the league they are portraying did not, with then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue putting pressure on Disney CEO Michael Eisner before the show's premiere and ads for it being pulled from Sunday Night Football.

Just to irritate Jeff, here is a quote from Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie.

How would they like it if Minnie Mouse is portrayed as Pablo Escobar and the Magic Kingdom a drug cartel?

And here's the facade.

And then Michael Eisner came into the company and went, this isn't a ride.

It's a park.

And then they started doing a park and then they had all these ideas for scenes and they didn't get the rights to half the stuff because universal.

He was great.

And Michael Eisner, who was running Disney at the time.

Wow.

You know, when you're a Disney employee, you wear a name tag with your first name.

And then after big ratings hit for a version of Gypsy starring Bette Midler in the 90s, ABC was looking to relaunch the Wonderful World of Disney series with a musical.

And Michael Eisner, very smartly, approved the Whitney Houston idea immediately.

Now, with a new star, it was shot over a 28-day period at the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, which at the time was owned by MGM and considered the mecca for movie musicals during its heyday, of course.

Now, this is what I was talking about before.

which I just didn't think about when I saw it the first time, but just the fact that you really do feel like you're in this world.

But the thing that was most interesting to me, so I did not know about this for many years, but evidently for a long time, this movie has had this reputation in the Hollywood industry about it being Katzenberg's big FU to Michael Eisner and Disney, because he got forced out by Eisner in the mid-90s, and then he went and formed DreamWorks with Spielberg.

So Spielberg got the rights to this back in 91, the book that it's based on.

But then they altered it fairly significantly for the sake of the movie.

And so this Farkward character is basically understood to be a stand in for Michael Eisner, although ironically, Eisner is really tall and Farkward is really small.

But yeah.

uh but it's it's it's interesting because like the way they had him like designed like he's trying to create this perfect little world just like eisner with disney and disney world right it's all trying to be perfect and even the name is meant to be similar to like fuckwad it's like it's like all these little things like so it's like it's all these little things that they do to try to make him uh be i guess uh kind of like eisner and The fact that it's then deliberately subverting all these standard Disney stereotypes about the princess being rescued and all that.