airlarry! said:
DB, judged from the outside, the Disney tree looked healthy. But was it really? There were warning signs in 1994 that you are ignoring.
The Lion King was huge...and Ei$ner saw right then and there that there was gold in animation. So he treated it like a regular movie studio, ramping up production, tossing money at any problem in story, and requiring the animation unit to hit home runs everytime.
Are we talking about the Eisner who has gutted internal animation development because he doesn't believe in it, or the guy who threw too much money at animation?
In any event, you're jumping ahead in time. I'm not arguing that Eisner has done well by internal animation since 1994. But certainly they were still going strong with Pocahontas, Hunchback, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan and Fantasia 2000 coming out in 1995-2000. Not to mention Dinosaur. Whether you like all of those movies or not, there was still a commitment to feature animation. Pocahontas had beautiful effects, Hunchback had sophisticated songs, Fantasia was not really a commercial project, and Dinosaur represented an investment in the new CGI technology (the problem was not abandoning that track later).
I agree that Lion King created problems because it lead to a blockbuster mentality about animation.
Pixar's debut: Two sides to this--one that Disney itself let someone else Out-Disney them, which is inexcusable, especially since John Lassiter is an admitted Disneyphile. And two, that Ei$ner didn't better handle the relationship. Don't tell me he didn't mismanage it, i've already admitted to you that you were right about the contract language, but everyone knows that Ei$ner and Job$ let personalities get in the way. In other words, it doesn't come as a surprise considering Ei$ner's pitiful legacy with other people that the Pixar deal has gone sour.
Again, you're jumping ahead in time. It wasn't until Toy Story became an incredible success that Jobs wanted to accelerate his separation from Disney.
The Grand Floridian and other hotels. Many critics argue that the GF was Ei$ner's biggest mistake, not the biggest kudo. Impersonal, elitist, devoid of magic and themeing.
Many people would also argue otherwise, of course.
But it signaled the end of the managed park era, and instead Disney went all SuperWalmartShopping Center, abandoning any sense of planning in the parks. Traffic, bus delays, separation from parks and shopping, all of these showed an extreme lack of vision for anything other than a quick buck.
I guess we could go back to the "no master plan" discussion, but, as to the GF specifically, of course there was a hotel planned for the GF site going way back, so it's hard to see how that proves the "no plan" point.
Studios and other parks. Here's the most damaging. Ei$ner was seduced into thinking that the pent up demand for more activities in orlando means that his 'philosophy' (and it is his and his alone) of building halfsize parks and letting them fill up slowly over the ten or twenty years as the profits roll in---was a viable philosophy. The Euro studios, DCA, and AK parks proved he was dead wrong.
Jumping ahead in time again.
Indy Jones. Do you realize that it has been 10 years since Disneyland had an E*ticket ride? TEN YEARS.
Again.
But 1994 showed a hunger. Ei$ner wanted more. He saw that he could farm out creativity to other people and still be successful.
What are you talking about here? Toy Story was yet to come. What 1994 should have told Eisner was how strong the core Disney Company could be. Instead, without Wells around, he wanted to build an empire.
I think people, and the interaction of people, is a complex thing. People are neither wholly evil or wholly good, and their mix of evil and good may change over time.
Have you ever been part of some group endeavor--an office, a sports team, a volunteer group, whatever, where everything just clicks--folks get along, get things accomplished, and things feel great. And then something changes. Maybe one or two people in the group leave and new people come in, or someone in the group has some distraction in their personal life or change in their situation which affects their behavior. And, although the group is 90% the same as what it was, something has changed. A chemistry is lost, and the group is never the same.
That is essentially how I see the Disney situation. Eisner was never a perfect man, but during his first decade, because of whatever chemistry arose out of what Disney was at the time--the new blood, the old hands, the nature of the business, etc.--his best tendencies were brought out, and his worst tendencies suppressed.
Then, after Wells death, and the various other circumstances (EuroDisney's problems creating an excuse to pursue the 1/2 park philosophy, Lion King leading to blockbuster mentality in animation, Katzenberg pushing for Wells' job, the success of the Pixar movies, etc.), Eisner's worst tendencies, particularly his ego telling him he could make all of the decisions, buy a network, etc., were brought to the fore.
