Customer Reviews

The Keys to the Kingdom: How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Those of us that "love" the Disney Company have been having our hearts torn out for years watching this show of shows in the Team Disney Building. Finally, a book that dares to tell the truth, Michael just plain does not care for the people that work for him. It seems Kim missed the recent quote in the trade papers by Michael saying: "Unless I am completly out of touch, we have the best morale of any major company in America". Dear Mr. out of touch.... Well researched and well written it's a page turner even if you are not employed by the mouse house. Buy this book and see the other side of the "Tragic Kingdom". There is honest information here, not only about the name players but about those that they brush aside without a thought. (And people wonder why every time there is an earth quake we say "Well, there's Walt turning over."

Michael Eisner is routinely credited (and has been handsomely rewarded) with the great Disney turnaround. Was it genius or luck? Kim Master's Key's to the Kingdom-How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip is a well researched and thoroughly entertaining look into the Hollywood scene and the Walt Disney Company in particular from 1984 to 1999. We are given a rare unfiltered peek over the burm and into the inner sanctum of the Magic Kingdom. In the end, one comes away with the intended impression that Bravado, Ego and Greed are the three horseman of Hollywood. We are left with an unflattering portrait of Michael Eisner as a parsimonious and deeply flawed leader clearly out of touch with the world around him.

So how did such a flawed leader turn a Two Billion Dollar company into a Sixty Billion Dollar juggernaut of American industry? Frank Well's summed up the situation best when shortly after the Eisner/Wells team ascended to the leadership of Disney, Well's noted "Every time I open a door at this company, there's money behind it."

What is glossed over and unappreciated in Kim Master's book is the fact that when Walt Disney died in 1966 he left the Disney organization without a well groomed leader. From 1966 to 1984 Walt literally ruled Disney from the grave and no one in the incestuous leadership of the company dared peek into the cupboard or look behind any door.

The two to sixty billion dollar story, weaved by Kim Masters leaves the reader with the clear impression that it was Michael Eisner's luck rather than his talent which was at the core of this success. Michael's early failure to appreciate the value of animation, his obsession with paying the minimum for talent, the lost movie opportunities, the personal vendetta against Jeffrey Katzenberg, the hiring and firing of Michael Ovitz, the yet to pay off acquisition of ABC/CapitalCities are all fascinating vignette's in a passion play which could easily be called "As the Mouse Turns."

Despite the negative tone of the book in general, Master's paints a flattering picture of Frank Well's insightful decision making and tactful backroom smoothing of feathers, leaving the reader to conclude that it was perhaps Well's talents and not Eisner's that were in fact were the real Keys to the Kingdom.

With fewer doors to look behind and all the cupboards bare, it is interesting to note that since Well's death in 1994 Disney stock has grown only at about the same rate as the S&P 500.

While insisting that most talent work for the minimum, we are told that Eisner in 1996 signed a long term employment contract with Disney which provided in addition to a $750,000 base salary, annual bonus participation and options for an additional 24,000,000 shares of Disney stock.

In fairness to Michael Eisner the shareholders of Disney have profited handsomely during his tenure at the Company. Nevertheless even as Eisner himself might say "Yes, but could we have made the deal without giving up so much money?"

A tremendously insightful juggernaut of accounts that takes you on a ride through one of the most fascinating journeys in recent Hollywood history. Kim Masters does a great job of establishing "who's who" and "who did what to who" by detailing key defining moments in the careers and lives of such Disney icons as Michael Eisner, Frank G. Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz, Roy E. Disney, et al - not to mention former Paramount chair Barry Diller.

This is just one of those books I started to peruse on my weekly Sunday trip to the bookstore and simply COULD NOT PUT DOWN! Too bad it was published before Masters had a chance to tell us a bit about Bob Iger's rise to the Presidency of The Walt Disney Company.

I found this book to be an interesting read. I have also read Michael Eisner's autobiography and was looking forward to reading more about his tenure at Disney.

I appreciated the way that Kim Masters brought a different perspective to the events leading up to Eisner's taking the helm at Disney as well as the time since Eisner took over. There certainly were many things that Masters discussed that Eisner did not cover very well or at all in his book. I think it is important to get more of the total picture on events such as these and not just one point of view. I felt that Masters presented a point of view that was much more broad than the view presented by Eisner.

Now for some of the things I did not like about this book. There is many times in this book that Masters' tone seemed almost gossipy which is something I do not like. Also, Masters seemed to dwell on the negative aspects of Eisner as well as other people that held or continue to hold power in the entertainment industry. She seemed very critical of anyone holding that power and said very little positive about them. There is (hopefully) good and bad in everyone, I would have liked to get a more balanced story from an author with Master's talent.

Overall, I recommend this book. It is a good source of information that I have not found elsewhere. However, I too felt this book left me unconvinced that Eisner has "Lost His Grip."

It's interesting to review a book a year after having read it, and without studying parts of it again....kind of highlights the overall significance, or lack of it. The best part of this book was the first half...Eisner's climb to the top, and inside stories on other big names in the business. Like most of these tales, very little of the behavior seems to be rational or fair...just greedy and petty. In the end this bogs down the story, especially the endless detail on Eisner's fight with Katzenberg. Overall, I guess I'm glad I read it, as I think Kim Masters paints a fairly authentic picture of what its like inside Hollywood. But I would only recommend it to people who are fanatics on the entertainment industry.

Kim Masters is a smart, knowing reporter, and this books shows off her skills as a journalist: reams of information are put together, quotes detailed, etc. She provides an even handed overview of Michael Eisner's career and his stewardship of Disney. But her main thesis, that his psychological state has caused him to isolate himself and become the lonely man of Mouseland, is poorly and erratically developed. It gets lost in tale after tale of corporate conniving. Next time I'd like to see Masters put some of her research on hold and develop a shrewd, insightful portrait of the mogul (or moguls) she is writing about. She seems capable of it, and it would be a logical, and rewarding, step in her writing career. This book is okay as far as it goes, but like the Geffen bio ("The Operator")its central thesis gets lost in a blizzard of factoids. I hope Masters abandons the trees for the forest in her next book and produces the one of a kind Hollywood bio that she, and very few others, has somewhere in her as a writer.

If you don't recognize names like Ovitz, Katzenberg, or Eisner, this book is probably too insider-oriented to be of interest, because Kim Masters goes into extraordinary detail about Michael Eisner, who perennially brings the wrong kind of attention upon himself due to his stellar pay package. When options are included, Eisner's pay is regularly in the hundreds of millions per year, a figure that defies explanation except that Eisner had stacked the board with his cronies. Eisner comes across as no genius, but neither is he stupid nor is he the boss-from-hell. True, Eisner does have an abrasive style and a fragile ego, but this is probably unremarkable among Hollywood movie moguls. Oddly, the book seems to be more about Katzenberg, who appears to have been the author's main source. Katzenberg eventually became Eisner's right-hand man, only to lose his job, allegedly because Eisner could not tolerate a strong person in the Number 2 position. The book's engaging style sweeps the reader into a world where 7-day weeks and 20-hour days (gulp!) were considered normal, and where even top-performing executives were cannon fodder on the battlefield of office politics.

I have to say that I am a Disney fan who read Eisner's book. I really wanted to read another book about him, having read his autobiography.

This book was great reading about his personalitiy and strenghts and weaknesses, but it never convinced me that he "lost the keys of the kingdom."

Every CEO of a major corporation has their own strengths and weaknesses. This book shows a lot of Eisner's strengths. It also focuses on some weaknesses, such as being a loner and being angry at some of the ambitions of some employees.

What the book did not deal with is the wonderful experience we have all been having a Disney since Eisner took the helm. Where else can you go where you know what you will experience?

This is a great book to buy and make your own conclusions from. It you are a fan a Disney, I would read it for the insights. Even though the content is not positive toward Disney, you can draw your own conclusions.

I have to say where else can you go for great entertainment that is wonderful? And who else can be responsible for this than Michael Eisner?

After reading Hit and Run and an excerpt from the this book in Vanity Fair, I couldn't wait to read "Keys to the Kingdom." I was not disappointed. Masters does a fine job of telling Eisner's (and the stories of those around him--Katzenberg, Diller, etc)story. Something about Eisner has always bit a bit unreal--even smarmy at times--and Masters holds nothing back. It isn't always balanced, but overall is fair. The details and stories are terrific--until the last 1/5th of the book. I was engrossed until the story turned the Katzenberg trial--where Masters drowned us in the details. I love details, but at times one needed a road map to keep. Masters is to be commended for a journalistic/insiders account of that dark time for Disney, but wow...I just had a time staying focused. However, on the whole the book is well worth the paper back price. You'll learn how Disney has never really gotten over the death of Frank Wells and why all those executives keep leaving. It is indeed a grim place; Eisner's inner sanctum. It is also another fascinating book.

Read this book through as soon as it arrived. While it is an interesting read in terms of drama, there are some blatant factual errors. For example, on page 268, Ms. Masters uses box office returns to show the decline of Disney animated films after Jeffrey K's departure. "Pocahontas" is credited with only generating $68 million at the box office, when in fact it made over $140 million domestically - not quite Lion King standards, but more than twice the amount that she quotes. Also, on page 325, "The Rescuers Down Under" is described as the failed sequel to "The Great Mouse Detective", when it is in fact the obvious sequel to "The Rescuers". While neither of these are unforgivable mistakes, it does reveal a certain sloppiness in the research behind this book. Personally, it makes me question the accuracy of the "behind the scenes" stories/dialogues in the rest of the book. Check this one out at the library or borrow it from a friend who already purchased it.