But if it wasnt his creativity that the company sought when they hired him, then what was it?
It was simple.
Ron Miller and most people inside Disney pre-1984 knew that Disney had to re-establish itself as a serious player in Hollywood. That's why Ron Miller started Touchstone Pictures, why he restructured Animation after
The Black Caldron fiasco and why he hired an unknown director (Ron Howard) to put an unknown television actor (Tom Hanks) into a little unknown soon to be mega blockbuster movie called
Splash.
This plan was so obvious that even Roy Disney could follow it. So when Roy and the Bass Brothers made their take over attempt on Disney, they went shopping for someone with strong Hollywood 'street cred'.
They found Frank Wells.
He had been running the business side of Warner Brothers and had successfully turned that company around. Frank had always had a soft spot in his heart for Disney and leapt at the chance. But Frank knew that he was strictly on the business and creative side of Hollywood. Disney was going to need the 'let's do lunch', 'have your people call my people', 'get Lindsay another hooker, a pound of blow and get her on the set'! kind of Hollywood type. These people are the connection to the real "creative" forces around town, the ones that could convince/con/swindle/intimidate actors, directors, producers and lessor types to work on a studios project. Think Ari from 'Entourage'.
As luck would have it, Michael Eisner was available because he had just been fired from Paramount. (Note: I'm writing this from memory, I'll have to go back and check some sources so I'll correct any mistakes in the chronology that I find).
Michael Eisner had achieved some early success in low rent television shows like 'Laverne and Shirley'. He parlayed that into claiming credit for 'Flash Dance'. Always a smooth operator, he maneuvered up to a post at Paramount Studios working for Barry Diller.
At that job, Eisner was a disaster. He was put in charge of creating Paramount Television, a then new "fourth network". It was to be anchored by
Star Trek - The New Voyages. But Eisner was unable to assemble people to make shows for the new network. He was unable to secure stations or buy airtime.
Star Trek ran up millions in expenses without a single second of tape. Diller and Paramount owners Gulf+Western pulled the plug on the network. A few days later Eisner held a press conference to announce the launch of the new network and
Star Trek to the press.
Oopps.
To salvage something from the mess, others at Paramount turned the 'Star Trek' television series into
Stat Trek: The Motion Picture. It soon became on of the most expensive movies ever made in Hollywood up unto that time. Things were so bad that there is a Hollywood story of an unknown assistant (named Jeffery Katzenberg) that everyone called Michael's dog (I think the real nickname was 'Labrador', but I'll have to check). Things were running so badly on the production that Katzenberg was unspooling reels of freshly developed film on the floor of a soundstage, so it could dry into time to make the first public showing at the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. the very next morning.
Eisner continued on at Paramount, but he had lost the confidence of Barry Diller. Then he lost the confidence of Gulf+Western. Sensing that something was up, Eisner went job hunting. Roy Disney too was running out of time. He had secured millions from the Bass Brothers, but need more money to close the deal. Wall Street was demanding to see a plan before they handed over anymore cash.
So Disney settled for Eisner. In what should have been a signal of what was to come, Eisner immediately made ego-driven demands. He wanted to report to the board, not Frank Wells (the comprise was that both Eisner and Wells reported only to the board). Eisner didn't want to be co-president. Frank, not one for titles, agreed because he fully expected to be running the day-to-day operations anyway.
Roy Disney was happy because he could present a "seasoned" management team to Wall Street. The Master of the Universe MBA suits back east know nothing of Hollywood and even less of Eisner's history. They bought the story faster than they bought up junk mortgages.
The rest is history.
Welcome to the boards Mr. Dancer. You still have a lot of learning to do about Hollywood.
) and a creative genius like him doesn't come around too often. Nobody with 100% certainty can ever know what he would do if around today and that's ok, they don't have to. I don't think people here are saying that Disney should remain 100% stuck in the 50's or 60's like when Walt was around. That would be unrealistic too and not what is being argued. What I have a problem with is the apparent change in direction away from a basic philosophy that Walt instituted...a philosophy that he lived and breathed and put into everything he did. Certainly Disney is a different financial animal today then it was in Walt's era and I think most know that. But when money is THE deciding factor and how can things be done cheaper to maximize profit...that's where the rub is.
