Yep, this has nothing to do with Dubai or being married, but I have to mention that today Michael D. Eisner, former Chairman and CEO of Disney, is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Special guest?
John Travolta.
?!?
Okay, okay, I guess Eisner deserves a star more than some people (Billy Dee Williams, Charlie Sheen, Chuck Norris, Dudley Moore, Jamie Foxx, Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck and Kirstie Alley, I'm looking at you). He did some good things at Disney ... for the first decade. Then, somewhere in the mid-1990s, he lost it.
My personal theory is that former Disney President and COO Frank Wells kept Eisner in check. Then he died in April of 1994, and everything went downhill at the Mouse.
(Well, except for Eisner's pay. In 1997 he took home somewhere around $550 million in stock options).
I'll bore you with one real-life interaction I had with the Eisner from my days at Walt Disney Feature Animation. On days when the big man was coming in for a meeting, my job was to greet Eisner in the lobby of the animation building, walk him to the elevator (about twenty feet away), push the third floor button, then walk him to whichever conference room the creative executives were meeting in, then go back to my cubicle and lament ever getting a degree in film. (Which is really only useful in one specific situation).
Anyway, this particular day was a week after Disney corporate announced the closure of the Florida animation studio (the one that used to be in the
Hundreds of animators were being thrown out onto the streets. And in Florida, no less. On the streets of Florida one's likely to get run over by a sports car with neon 'underlights' in some kind of Fast-And-Or-Furious related accident if one isn't careful. And animators? Not careful.
Anyway, in effort to make the 30-second elevator ride to the third floor more interesting, Eisner asks how the morale is, you know, in the building.
Um, Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt, publicly resigned as board member and chairman of Feature Animation AND sold all of his Disney stock and now 250 animators and production people are getting fired, and you want to know how morale is?
I said, through gritted-teeth, that everyone was looking forward to Home on the Range. Which was a complete lie, as everyone in the building knew was horrid.
But hey, he's a billionaire, and I'm ... what am I?
I dunno, but it sure doesn't include a star on Hollywood Boulevard ...
