BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : APRIL 24, 2000 ISSUE
BOOKS The Not-So-Wonderful World of Disney THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip By Kim Masters William Morrow 469pp $27.50 No place loves a nasty fight better than Hollywood. And one that would be hard to top came last year, when Walt Disney Chairman Michael Eisner squared off against his former studio chief, Jeffrey Katzenberg, in a legal battle brimming with anger, petulance, and name-calling. But while the two Hollywood titans were tussling over millions, another drama was also taking place. That one featured Kim Masters, the dogged Vanity Fair and Time magazine entertainment reporter, who was involved in her own dustup with Disney. Random House, with whom Masters had a contract for a book on Eisner, had rejected her manuscript. This, Masters claimed, was a result of pressure from Disney. (Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, Random House was also the publisher of Eisner's autobiography, Work in Progress.) Although the publisher vigorously denied any tampering by Disney, Masters hired Bert Fields--the same lawyer Katzenberg was using in his suit against Disney--to pursue her grievances. No one will talk about how Masters' legal fight was resolved, although the speculation is that Random House allowed Masters to keep half her reported $700,000 advance and shop her account elsewhere. Eventually, the book found its way to HarperCollins, whose William Morrow imprint has just published this immensely entertaining tale as The Keys to the Kingdom: How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip. As the title indicates, this is no puff piece. In fact, Masters wastes few opportunities to denigrate one of Hollywood's most storied corporate figures--and in the end, paints him as untrustworthy, volatile, ''too arrogant'' to properly lead the entertainment behemoth, and an ''increasingly isolated Nixonian executive.'' That's unduly harsh. And the immediate question is whether Masters, still smarting from her legal skirmish with Eisner, has piled on the invectives in what was already likely to have been an unflattering portrait. Certainly, no one close to Eisner seems to be spared Masters' scattergun. She disproportionately blames Disney's top public-relations executive for helping to kill a planned Disney attraction in Virginia by alienating reporters at The Washington Post. Even Eisner's wife, Jane, is demeaned as not being ''beautiful enough'' to suit the parents of the future media mogul. Morrow editor Henry Ferris denies that Masters changed the book to make it tougher, adding that the Katzenberg litigation provided the author with a trove of new information. The irony is that, for all of Masters' vituperations, she deftly chronicles one of modern corporate history's great turnarounds. Encircled by corporate raiders in 1984, Eisner and company President Frank Wells raised ticket prices at the theme parks, put out scores of vintage Disney animated films on videocassette, and built Disney's live-action studio from a Hollywood afterthought into a box-office leader. This is familiar stuff, and Masters doesn't stray from the story as told by several other books. But she does add new snippets, such as the hostile reaction of longtime Disney insiders when Eisner and Katzenberg brought in film legends Francis Coppola and George Lucas to make the 3-D film for the Captain EO thrill ride. Ultimately, Masters claims, the budget jumped to $17 million, from $11 million, and the film was finished only when Lucas re-edited the flick that Coppola delivered. Masters is at her reportorial best when she's digging out such details, assembling a mosaic of the often arcane backroom dealings that make Hollywood so interesting. For instance, she considers the oft-stated assertion that Barry Diller ''invented'' the movie of the week while heading ABC--and claims instead that it was Roy Huggins, a TV producer at Universal whose resume included the Fugitive series. And she shows how Disney fought against superstar talent agent Michael Ovitz' Creative Artists Agency when both entities were racing to line up telephone companies that would provide TV shows over phone lines. Masters depicts Eisner, in the hospital for heart-bypass surgery, calling Katzenberg to speed up Disney's negotiations after overhearing a visiting Ovitz ''pounding out the final details of a deal'' by phone. At times, though, such gossipy details make The Keys to the Kingdom read like a compilation of the sort of profiles and backroom accounts that Masters has been known for at Vanity Fair and Time. Not terribly well-written, the book suffers from occasional inaccuracies, too. To make a point that Disney's animation studio was falling into disrepair following Katzenberg's 1994 resignation, Masters says the box-office gross for Pocahontas was only $68 million. In fact, the film pulled in $141 million. Eisner refused to cooperate with Masters. ''I'm Peter Guber, right?'' Eisner said when she approached him--a reference to the former Sony studio chief that Masters skewered in Hit and Run, the adroit book on Sony that she co-authored with former Premiere magazine writer Nancy Griffin. But it seems that just about everyone else in Hollywood talked to the well-connected Masters. Among others, she interviewed Diller, Ovitz, investment banker Herbert A. Allen, Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., and former MCA President Sid Sheinberg. From those interviews, Masters paints a fascinating picture of how Disney's often delicate balance was upset by Frank Wells's 1994 death in a helicopter accident. Wells was undeniably the glue that held Disney together during its rebound in the 1980s, and he struggled to keep an increasingly difficult relationship between Eisner and Katzenberg from rupturing further. When Wells died, Katzenberg made an ill-fated grab for the presidency, then resigned and formed DreamWorks SKG with fellow moguls Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. Wells's death opened the door for Eisner to hire Ovitz as his No. 2, a move that ultimately resulted in one of the messiest firings in recent memory. And it set off a chain reaction that allowed longtime Ovitz partner Ron Meyer to run Universal Pictures for Seagram's Bronfman. The most riveting parts of The Keys to the Kingdom, however, deal with the high-profile fight with Katzenberg over the more than $300 million he said he was owed for bonuses not paid during his 10-year term as studio chief. Katzenberg is portrayed as conciliatory, urging Disney board member and former Capital Cities/ABC Inc. Chairman Tom Murphy to mediate the dispute. In a highly embarrassing public display, while testifying in the Katzenberg case, Eisner was confronted with subpoenaed notes he had prepared for his own autobiography. In them, he punctuated his often volatile relationship with Katzenberg by saying he ''hated the little midget.'' After mediation by Disney board member Stanley Gold, the company settled with Katzenberg, for what Masters says was $270 million. Masters gives her readers an exciting, sometimes turbulent, and incomplete ride through Disney's recent history. Company executives have told this reviewer that she ends her saga too early, intentionally giving short shrift to details of Disney's recent revival propelled by earnings from last year's Toy Story 2 and ABC's hot Who Wants to be a Millionaire. And there is evidence to support their theory: Other than in a photo caption, there is little mention of the elevation earlier this year of former ABC chief Robert Iger to the Disney presidency. The caption adds that Iger's critics charge he was ''a bit too eager to ingratiate himself with the boss.'' Moreover, as a whole, there is a disturbing tone to The Keys to the Kingdom. As Masters knows, sometimes you have to be ruthless to survive in cutthroat Hollywood. Rupert Murdoch is no saint, nor is Diller, nor former MCA chieftain Lew Wasserman. Eisner can be disarming, witty, and, just as easily, manipulative and aggressive. But for shareholders, now enjoying a resumption of the strong returns that Disney had for over a decade, those are traits to depend on. By RONALD GROVER Los Angeles Bureau Chief Grover has covered Hollywood since 1986. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The Not-So-Wonderful World of Disney PHOTO: Cover, ``The Keys to the Kingdom'' INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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