After the meeting, Tarses said nothing to Davies. When they passed in the hallway, she looked the other way. When he said “hello,” there was no response. The silence extended for weeks, then months. Davies never formally quit ABC, nor was he officially fired. One day Bloomberg, who remained friendly, called to discuss a severance deal, and shortly after, Davies left.
Eisner’s long-awaited autobiography, Work in Progress, written with Tony Schwartz, was published in the fall of 1998 by Random House. It was heavily edited by Disney people, including Sandy Litvack and John Dreyer. Some readers maintained that while Eisner stressed his low-budget, “single and doubles” movie strategy, Disney had in fact embarked on the same big-budget, event-driven schedule that he criticized in others, Armageddon being just one example. Others pointed out that, for all Eisner’s talk about the importance of “creativity,” there were few concrete examples. Numerous characters—Dennis Hightower, for one—entered the story, only to vanish without explanation after being fired, or pushed out, or resigning.
Almost the entire chapter about Ovitz was cut, deemed too controversial. The Katzenberg sections were heavily sanitized, since the Katzenberg lawsuit was still pending. Even so, the book managed to infuriate people, either by not mentioning them at all, or mentioning them with faint praise. Eisner’s relationship with author Tony Schwartz had also become strained. On more than one occasion, Eisner had threatened not to publish the book. He had come to feel that the book had lost much of his voice, and certainly his sense of humor. But in the end, he expressed appreciation to Schwartz, taking a swipe at Joe Roth and Bob Iger. “I appreciate all the hard work you’ve done,” Eisner wrote Schwartz in an email. “It really has been fun and rewarding. I wish all the execs here, Joe and Bob especially, worked the way you do.”
For someone so eager to psychoanalyze the people around him, Eisner’s book is surprisingly unreflective. There is little sense of what motivated him, what satisfaction he derived, or what meaning he found in his career. Yet there are flashes of what seem to be inadvertent self-revelation. In his acknowledgments, Eisner begins by noting that “I don’t praise people enough, partly because receiving praise so embarrasses me. Except when it comes to my children, I am too stingy with compliments and too slow to express my appreciation, even though I know how much people need it and how often they deserve it.” He doesn’t offer any explanation for why praise would embarrass him, or why, if that were so, he bestowed false praise on people like Ovitz, Katzenberg, and others he intended to fire or push out. At the end of the book, Eisner describes a harshly competitive, almost Hobbesian philosophy seemingly at odds with the sunny optimism he so often invoked to describe his own nature: “Life is a race that I began when I was born, but didn’t truly appreciate until I nearly died. The race is about getting it all in.” And later, “I spend far less time looking back in regret than I do looking forward with anticipation. There is so much to be done.”
Twelve
Acting on Eisner’s mandate to cut costs, in July 1998, Roth merged the Touchstone, Hollywood, and Disney studios under the Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group headed by David Vogel, whom Roth had wanted to have fired just a few months earlier. Vogel wrote Eisner a note thanking him for the promotion and for including him in a recent management retreat. “I want to assure you that Walt Disney Pictures will always be foremost on my mind,” he said. Eisner was always telling him that he was the only executive who understood the Walt Disney brand, and Vogel wanted to assure Eisner that he could do adult live-action films at the same time. He had one of his assistants hand-deliver the note to Eisner’s office.
Joe Roth confronted him almost immediately. “Are you corresponding with Michael?”
Vogel assumed Roth or one of his assistants had seen his own assistant carrying the note. “Yes,” he replied, and told Roth what was in the note.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t go behind my back,” Roth said.
“Why would I go behind your back?” Vogel indignantly responded. “Michael makes everybody miserable. He makes you miserable. He made Jeffrey miserable. Why would I want that?” Vogel was not going to get close to Eisner only to have his head chopped off, as he put it. He’d had plenty of opportunities, but had remained loyal to Roth. In the intrigue-filled corridors of the Team Disney building, Roth obviously didn’t trust him, or anyone else for that matter.
The Sixth Sense wasn’t helping Vogel’s relationship with Roth. After committing to star in Armageddon as part of a two-picture deal with Disney, Bruce Willis had negotiated the right to choose from every leading man role in development at the studio. So Vogel, after buying the rights to The Sixth Sense, had sent the script to Willis’s agent, Arnold Rifkind, as he did all the scripts he acquired. He didn’t imagine that a star of Willis’s stature would be at all interested in a small-budget thriller from an unknown writer-director. So Vogel was shocked when Rifkind called producer Kathleen Kennedy and said, “This is our movie.”
The next day Rifkind called Vogel. Willis wanted to play the role of Malcolm Crowe, the child psychologist. “The script is good, but Night’s not directing,” he said.
Vogel realized the star treatment was starting. “He has a pay-and-play commitment,” Vogel explained.
“How could you be so stupid?” Rifkind asked.
This infuriated Vogel, who’d only guaranteed Shyamalan the chance to direct in order to get the script. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he exclaimed. “This guy wrote it, and that’s how I got it.”
Both he and Joe Roth, who was dismayed that Willis had chosen The Sixth Sense rather than sticking with his action picture franchise, figured that Willis would walk when he found out Shyamalan was directing. In some ways, it would be easier if he did. Because of Willis, the budget would vault the film into the “event” category. But Rifkind backed down, and Willis stayed attached to the project. Since he had other commitments, the shooting schedule got delayed. But by the summer of 1998, filming was under way.
About three-quarters of the way though the production, Vogel got a call from Roger Birnbaum, head of Spyglass Entertainment, an independent producer. “I just wanted to tell you that Sixth Sense is my baby now.” Spyglass had bought all foreign and domestic rights to the film from Disney. “In terms of going forward, you have to run all your budget overages by me first.”
Vogel was reeling. Roth sold his movie, without even telling him? Not just foreign, but domestic rights, too? To reduce risk and recoup some of their investment, studios often sold some rights to the films they had in development or production, but rarely both foreign and domestic. So all Disney would get was a distribution fee. Birnbaum added that he expected a producer credit on the film.
“Roger, you’re wrong,” Vogel countered. “You may be picking this up, but you have to wait until I’m done and stop talking to me like that. It’s upsetting to me. I may be getting screwed out of this, but not yet. It’s still mine.”
Minutes later, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall were on the line. No one had told them, either, and they were furious.
Vogel wanted to run upstairs and confront Roth. But he held back. What was the point? He knew Roth was competing to succeed Ovitz as president of Disney, and he was under pressure from Eisner to cut costs drastically. Roth would just say that he’d never really liked the script, and that Willis had driven up costs.
The next day, Vogel and Roth met to discuss something else. Vogel was still in shock. Neither said anything about The Sixth Sense. But after that, Vogel felt their relationship was never the same. What camaraderie had existed faded. Roth pretty much left Vogel alone.
Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein also bore the brunt of Eisner’s crackdown on big-budget event movies. Just as Disney was selling off foreign and domestic rights to The Sixth Sense to reduce costs, Weinstein approached Eisner with a cherished project: a multipicture deal to turn J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings into a film. Rights to the beloved classic were held by British producer
Saul Zaentz, who had been notoriously reluctant to give them up. But Zaentz had developed a close relationship with Weinstein when Zaentz co-produced the wildly successful The English Patient with Miramax (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1997). After Weinstein introduced Zaentz to New Zealand director Peter Jackson, Zaentz was captivated by Jackson’s grandiose vision for a Tolkien epic, and readily agreed to sell the rights to Miramax for a Jackson-directed production.
Miramax spent about $14 million to develop the project, but because of the projected budget, Weinstein needed Disney and Eisner’s approval to go ahead. He arranged a meeting with Roth to show him the concept, some storyboards, and “animatics,” models of the computer-generated sets and a few battle sequences that Jackson had created. Weinstein made the pitch for two films, with a projected budget of no more than $180 million. Expensive, yes, but $90 million per film was substantially less than Armageddon or other Bruckheimer projects. “Joe, this will be the movie of our lifetimes,” Weinstein enthused to Roth. “We’ll sell foreign, we’ll get half our costs back off the top.”
Roth called Weinstein after he took the project up with Eisner. “Michael passed,” he said.
“He what?” Weinstein replied, incredulous.
“He said we’re not going to spend this kind of money.”
Weinstein called Eisner. Eisner wouldn’t back down. From his point of view, Weinstein was asking him to risk a huge sum of money on an unproven director, with no finished scripts, no sure market, no partners. This was not the kind of low-budget, independent movie Miramax was supposed to be doing. Besides, he didn’t think Lord of the Rings would translate well to film. An earlier animated version had failed. There was a limited audience for the fantasy genre.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Weinstein practically screamed. “This will be the franchise to end all franchises.”
After Eisner’s rejection, Weinstein reluctantly let Jackson shop the project to other studios. All turned it down. But then New Line, a division of Time Warner, agreed to reconsider. After sitting through Jackson’s presentation, New Line’s chief executive, Robert Shaye, committed to three films with a combined budget of $350 million, an even more ambitious venture than Weinstein had dared to contemplate.
New Line was so eager to do the project that it agreed to reimburse Miramax’s costs, and Weinstein insisted on keeping the right to 5 percent of the gross. When Weinstein reported the deal to Eisner, he just shrugged, which angered Weinstein. Here he’d acquired the rights to one of the most sought-after literary properties in the world, Eisner had killed the project, and now he didn’t seem to care that Weinstein had brought him a 5 percent stake. “You don’t believe in this,” Weinstein finally said in exasperation. “So give me half the five percent.” Eisner agreed; Weinsteins’ contract specified that the brothers would each be paid 25 percent of any revenues Disney received, “without limitation.”
Still, Weinstein was seething. This wasn’t the first time he felt Eisner had thwarted him. Eisner had rejected his cable deal. He wouldn’t invest in the Broadway musical The Producers when Weinstein wanted to help out Mel Brooks. (Weinstein put his own money in the show.) He blocked a deal to buy One Times Square for Miramax headquarters. But this was a feature film that Weinstein desperately wanted to make. It didn’t matter to him that Eisner was fully within his rights. Weinstein had had to grovel before Eisner, only to be turned down.
Lloyd Braun, the thirty-nine-year-old president of Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, was intrigued when he got a call from Joe Roth inviting him to breakfast to discuss Disney’s troubled Touchstone TV studio. Brillstein-Grey had thrived in the year since Ovitz left Disney, producing “Just Shoot Me” and “NewsRadio” for NBC, and the late-night “Politically Incorrect” with Bill Maher for ABC. Braun, a lawyer and manager who numbered Cher and “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David as clients, was probably best known as the character named Lloyd Braun whom David kept writing into “Seinfeld” plots.
Another one of Braun’s clients was TV writer-producer David Chase. Braun had been trying to develop a new series with him for Brillstein-Grey. But none of Chase’s ideas seemed quite right. “I know you’ve got a great show in you,” Braun persisted. While walking Chase out of the office after another disappointing pitch session, Braun said, “These ideas you’re coming up with aren’t coming from the heart. Bring me something controversial, different.”
“Like what?” Chase asked.
“I don’t know,” Braun said, thinking for a moment. “You know, I’ve always wanted to do a modern-day Godfather. Set in today’s world. You know, a guy who lives with his kids and deals with everyday life except he’s in the Mob.”
“That’s interesting. Did you know I was Italian?” Chase asked.
“No, but that’s even better.”
Two days later, Chase was back, with a proposal for a series about a suburban New Jersey Mob family, set in the present, a family beset with all the problems of any other American family, as well as a dark, parallel existence in the Mob. Despite the “high concept”—a modern-day Godfather—it wasn’t an easy idea to sell. The three major networks passed on “The Sopranos.” On a long shot, Chase sent the treatment to Chris Albrecht at Home Box Office, the pay-cable channel that was developing various series deemed too sophisticated for the networks. Albrecht wasn’t sure if the script was “edgy” enough, but went ahead and ordered a pilot.
When Roth called Braun, rumors of chaos at Disney’s television studio were swirling. The marriage between the studio and the ABC network had been ill-fated. Although one of the driving forces of the acquisition was to provide an outlet for Disney-made programming, it was almost as though ABC, with Tarses at the programming helm, went out of its way to reject Touchstone-made pilots. Those that did get on the air, like “Hiller and Diller,” were flops. The fate of Touchstone-produced “Ellen” was uncertain after its star, Ellen DeGeneres, came out on the show as a lesbian. ABC wants to “forge our identity as a network that takes chances,” Tarses told the Los Angeles Times, a comment that sent shudders through Disney’s upper ranks.
But during their breakfast together, Roth was charming and persuasive, hinting at changes to come and potential opportunities for Braun. They hit it off instantly. At a second breakfast, Braun arrived to find that Eisner had joined Roth. The pleasantries were barely over when they started arguing about ABC and Disney’s TV studio. Braun was characteristically candid. The relationship between the studio and the network was “dysfunctional,” Braun said. “You should merge the studio and the network. As it is now, there’s a terrible rivalry. There’s no sense of the common good. People won’t pull for each other. They root for each other to fail.” Somewhat to Braun’s surprise, Eisner listened. In the middle of the discussion, Eisner interrupted Braun and asked, “How do I get you to do this?”
Braun saw the offer as an interesting challenge. He joined Disney as chairman of the Buena Vista Television Group in March 1998, reporting to Joe Roth. From the beginning, he faced the problem he’d already identified: Far from favoring Disney productions, ABC resented any pressure to pick up Touchstone pilots. Braun often compared the mood at ABC to occupied France under the Nazis. At the same time, the other networks were highly suspicious of the studio’s relationship to ABC, assuming that it was steering its best projects to its sister network and offering them warmed-over rejects. Braun was in a catch-22: He couldn’t sell to the other networks and ABC seemed hostile to any Disney product. Braun became convinced that it was urgent to merge the studio and network, and pushed the idea at Eisner’s staff lunches. By the summer of 1999, Eisner seemed to agree, and began sounding it out with Joe Roth (who favored the idea) and Bob Iger (who opposed it).
Bringing Touchstone and ABC together posed some delicate management issues, starting with who would be in charge of the merged division. Roth, who was close to Braun and had brought him into the company, was a strong advocate for Braun. Bob Iger, as head of ABC, and by now R
oth’s chief rival for the Disney presidency, was suspicious of Braun as a potential Roth ally. Eisner suggested that Braun, as head of Touchstone, report to Stu Bloomberg and Jamie Tarses. Braun rejected that idea out of hand—he had little respect for Tarses, and there was no way he would even consider reporting to her. When Braun once tried to circumvent Tarses by going directly to Bloomberg, she said, “If you think by going directly to Stu you will get what you want, you’re mistaken. Stu has no power here.” Braun countered that he should run the combined network and studio, with Bloomberg and Tarses reporting to him.
It was Roth who suggested a way out, proposing that Braun and Bloomberg run the combined network and studio together, with Tarses reporting to the two of them. The idea was that Braun would be the senior partner for the studio, Bloomberg the senior partner for the network. “It’s the only possible solution,” Roth argued to Eisner. Clearly, it further marginalized Tarses. Braun was open to the idea, but Iger still resisted, saying Braun and Bloomberg couldn’t work together.
Braun barely knew Bloomberg, but he called and invited him to his house in Brentwood. “I know what you’ve been told,” Braun said, “I’m a viper. It’s not true.” As the discussion continued, they discovered they had much in common. Despite Iger’s skepticism, Bloomberg was won over. At the end of the afternoon, the two shook hands and agreed to work together.
Braun arrived at ABC that summer, moving into a new office down the hall from Tarses and Bloomberg in the ABC Entertainment complex in Century City. He also kept an office at the TV studio. Tarses’s reaction was predictably hostile. As with Davies after the “Millionaire” meeting, her demeanor toward Braun was glacial. At meetings, she ignored him, sometimes swiveling her chair so she didn’t have to face him. She didn’t copy him on emails or memos. It was as if he and his position didn’t exist.
The cold shoulder extended through the ranks below Tarses. Braun’s presence was barely acknowledged. Finally Jeff Bader, the head of scheduling for the network, came into his office and confided that Tarses had ordered that no one who reported to her was to speak to Braun. “If she sees me in here, I’ll be fired,” he said, half-seriously.
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