Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers,
Speaker 1: to hear their stories, What inspires their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influenced their work? Happy Days
Speaker 1: Barney Miller, Greece, Raiders of the Lost Arc. Michael Eisner,
Speaker 1: my guest today, had a hand in bringing all of
Speaker 1: these projects to life. At ABC. He helped turn the
Speaker 1: network from number three to number one in prime time,
Speaker 1: daytime and children's television. While he was president of Paramount Pictures,
Speaker 1: the company moved from last place to first among the
Speaker 1: six major studios. But Eisner is best known as the
Speaker 1: former chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, a
Speaker 1: position that he held for over two decades. Michael Eisner
Speaker 1: grew up and started his career in New York, but
Speaker 1: an early trip out West changed that. I asked where
Speaker 1: the people stayed that went to l A. Had never
Speaker 1: been to l A. And they said the bel Air Hotel.
Speaker 1: And I got to the bel Air Hotel and there
Speaker 1: were swans, and there was flowers, and there were weddings
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. I called my wife, and I said,
Speaker 1: I think we should move to l A. And then
Speaker 1: I it took me three years to manipulate it. That
Speaker 1: to convince ABC that being in New York was not
Speaker 1: going to be effective, that that I was always a
Speaker 1: day late and getting casting, getting scripts. Uh, we were
Speaker 1: fourth among three, and nobody cared about ABC. And they
Speaker 1: paid us through the owned stations. They couldn't even pay
Speaker 1: us through the network. They didn't have enough money. And
Speaker 1: and I was lucky because the things that I was
Speaker 1: in charge of just happened to turn to number one
Speaker 1: when I got there, so it looked like I did it.
Speaker 1: So when I said, you you have to move to
Speaker 1: l A, we have to we have to do it
Speaker 1: in l A. And in that era, l A was
Speaker 1: very laid back. People came in at ten, they left
Speaker 1: at eleven. They looked like they were gonna play golf.
Speaker 1: And Barry Diller and I both moved to l A,
Speaker 1: and we were wearing suits, and we had this New
Speaker 1: York mentality, and we actually arrived earlier in the morning
Speaker 1: and we stayed late, and we were Type a's and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, ABC became a Type A administration,
Speaker 1: and we eventually became number one and even in prime
Speaker 1: time with a movie that week and a lot of
Speaker 1: other stuff. Spelling it was we convinced Aaron Spelling to
Speaker 1: UH to make a direct deal with us, not to
Speaker 1: go through his agent. That created a lot of unpleasantness
Speaker 1: for me because I didn't realize the power of William Morris.
Speaker 1: They went to the chairman of I forgot about this
Speaker 1: for about thirty years. They went to the chairman of
Speaker 1: of ABC and asked for both of us, Barry and
Speaker 1: I to be fired because we were not we can
Speaker 1: do and Norman, oh no, it was a last vogel.
Speaker 1: It was even above Norman. And they and Leonard Goldenson
Speaker 1: called us into his office. We thought, I thought it
Speaker 1: were gonna be fired for for not dealing with the
Speaker 1: system and the great of the agency, package commissions and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And he put his hand across the
Speaker 1: table and gratulate us for trying to change the business.
Speaker 1: So I know, But why when you got out of
Speaker 1: college did you go to television in the first place?
Speaker 1: What about it? No one in your family was in media, correct, No? Uh,
Speaker 1: I graduated from college. I was a premed. I was
Speaker 1: an English major, and then was a theater major. Because
Speaker 1: there was a girl that wouldn't date me, so I
Speaker 1: wrote a play for her, and then she still wouldn't
Speaker 1: date me. But I became a theater major. I went
Speaker 1: to Europe to become a writer for a year. I
Speaker 1: stayed a week, came back and got a job as
Speaker 1: an usher usher at NBC. I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was gonna do. I moved out of my parents apartment.
Speaker 1: I found my own apartment. I thought that was pretty good.
Speaker 1: I was liberated. Um and I became an usher and
Speaker 1: I worked backstage with Jack Parr. I took telephone calls.
Speaker 1: I gave tickets to the Tonight Show. And I loved it.
Speaker 1: It was like fun. It was like it wasn't a job.
Speaker 1: And and and I always like theater. And I grew
Speaker 1: up in Manhattan, and every my kids always went to
Speaker 1: check E Geese on their birthdays. But we when I
Speaker 1: grew up in New York. He went to a show,
Speaker 1: you went to see you know, Charlie's Aunt or Where's Charlie?
Speaker 1: You went to Sea House Pacific in Oklahoma and Arthur
Speaker 1: Miller and all this stuff. So I really had it
Speaker 1: at the bug I did. And then and then I
Speaker 1: just worked my way up at UH at ABC. I
Speaker 1: really decided. Actually, my father was kind of a gentleman
Speaker 1: farmer in Vermont, and he bought the apple orchard next
Speaker 1: to him, and then he bought a lot of apple orchards.
Speaker 1: And we've been in the apple business for fifty years,
Speaker 1: my family, and we made a profit twice in fifty years.
Speaker 1: And I decided that I was not going to be
Speaker 1: a business in a business where God was my partner.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't take the the frosts and the lack
Speaker 1: of blossoms for the bees and the but but I
Speaker 1: decided I was gonna do I actually know something I
Speaker 1: wasn't really equipped to anything else. Described for me what
Speaker 1: made Diller successful? Because he because he becomes a huge
Speaker 1: figure in your life and and a big you know,
Speaker 1: mentor in your life, and you follow him around for
Speaker 1: quite a bit. He takes you with him and and
Speaker 1: elevates you. What made Diller Diller? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: he's extremely smart, So let's start there. And and uh,
Speaker 1: he came comes from Los Angeles, and he understood he
Speaker 1: would in the William Morris office, and you know, like
Speaker 1: I worked at the page, he worked in the mail room.
Speaker 1: We're exactly the same age, although he looks much older
Speaker 1: than the I know. Um. We started ABC within three
Speaker 1: months of each other. He worked for a vice president
Speaker 1: who actually had power. I worked for a vice presidents
Speaker 1: being fired. I didn't know it, uh, And he was
Speaker 1: brusque and he was dominating, but I could deal with him.
Speaker 1: And then we all did different things. I mean I
Speaker 1: did when I was doing daytime, he was doing this.
Speaker 1: Eventually I went to California worked for him, and then
Speaker 1: eventually he left ABC and went to Paramount, and then
Speaker 1: I joined him. So you and he were running the
Speaker 1: network in California. How long were you there in California
Speaker 1: before he goes to Paramount? He went a year after
Speaker 1: I came to California. I went three years later. I
Speaker 1: was I was kind of too state at ABC while
Speaker 1: he's at Paramount. For two years, I was very declass A.
Speaker 1: I was TV and the movies were in and all
Speaker 1: the important people in the movies at the Bob Evans
Speaker 1: and the Sioux Angers and all those people. And I
Speaker 1: was still doing TV, but the movies weren't doing so
Speaker 1: well in that era. And so somebody came to me
Speaker 1: from another company and Barry heard about it, and he
Speaker 1: called me up and he brought me over there. Uh
Speaker 1: he said, I was. I resolved my problems, one of
Speaker 1: which is I wasn't beturing my phone calls quickly and
Speaker 1: things like that. So I resolved that. And other than
Speaker 1: the fact that I kept calling movies shows, which drove
Speaker 1: him out of his mind. And until we had yes,
Speaker 1: there was I was still talking, you know, Happy Days,
Speaker 1: and he was talking, you know, Atlantic City. So uh.
Speaker 1: But then when we hit was Saturday night Fever in
Speaker 1: Greece and Heavington waited and foul playing all that, it
Speaker 1: was okay that I called them shows, But but we
Speaker 1: still describe I mean, this is a broad question to
Speaker 1: described what was the movie business like you're a paramount
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy six to nineteen eighty four. You're thirty
Speaker 1: four years old. I mean you're I mean, there are
Speaker 1: there there are younger men that have keptained some of
Speaker 1: these companies, but that's still pretty young. And you're over
Speaker 1: there with him running the show from seventies eighty four.
Speaker 1: What was the state of the movie business in seventy six, Well, uh,
Speaker 1: it was, it was up and down. It wasn't as
Speaker 1: bad as five years earlier or seven years earlier, an
Speaker 1: easy rider kind of changed the whole nature of the business.
Speaker 1: Paramount wasn't doing well, but we decided we would use
Speaker 1: our like minor leagues to baseball, television and movies. We
Speaker 1: would use our kind of creativity in a box. We
Speaker 1: would create a financial box and then anything inside the
Speaker 1: box was okay. You just had to be responsible. And
Speaker 1: we over the next uh eight ten years, were number
Speaker 1: one almost every year. Warner Brothers was number one when
Speaker 1: we weren't those years, and Warner Brothers had a completely
Speaker 1: differ philosophy. They dealt only with stars. They would send
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg's dog to Wide and meet him. They they
Speaker 1: had Steve Steve Ross, Steve Ross, They had you know,
Speaker 1: villas in Mexico, and we were like traveling coach and
Speaker 1: uh half of ourn he he did, except for we
Speaker 1: were number one financially and we were number one of
Speaker 1: the box office, all on strong ideas young or talented directors,
Speaker 1: new talent, old talent too. They accused us of waiting
Speaker 1: outside of Betty Ford a rehab center and getting actors
Speaker 1: at a discount. We did down and out in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: I guess that was our first movie at Disney, but
Speaker 1: we kept this philosophy going with that. Middle and Nick Nolty,
Speaker 1: who both had graduated from there, who did a pretty
Speaker 1: good movie for us. So our strategy, you was needed
Speaker 1: a hit, and we needed a hit, and it worked well.
Speaker 1: And I've done a lot of movies of them. It
Speaker 1: all worked, not all, but most. I think the idea
Speaker 1: of we were always twenty or more times less than
Speaker 1: the industry average and movies, and we always were number
Speaker 1: one or two, by the way, for thirty years, twenty
Speaker 1: six of those years, I was number one or number two,
Speaker 1: always being economically thoughtful, but going with instinct good material,
Speaker 1: interesting material, different material as best we could. But so
Speaker 1: that that leads to a question that's a really important
Speaker 1: one for me, which is um, and I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this in a critical way, but you never spent a
Speaker 1: moment as a salary and salaried employee on the set
Speaker 1: of a film in any of the crafts you know,
Speaker 1: you were in a sound mixer, or you didn't direct films,
Speaker 1: you didn't do costumes, you didn't do any editing. What
Speaker 1: have you? You've been on the set of films, your
Speaker 1: entire career as an executive described for people what that
Speaker 1: creative processes like, meaning, for example, in Paramount in the
Speaker 1: Slate seventies and early eighties, what number of creative staff
Speaker 1: did you have that advice you want, what films you
Speaker 1: should be making and should not be making? How many
Speaker 1: people did you listen to? Well, I was kind of
Speaker 1: in the weeds. I did a lot of it myself.
Speaker 1: There was a guy by the name of Don Simpson
Speaker 1: who was in the story department. And he was the
Speaker 1: only person that I found when I arrived other than Barry,
Speaker 1: that I trusted. So what about him? Did your trust?
Speaker 1: He just seemed smart, he worked, he was came from Alaska.
Speaker 1: I would he was single. I was married with a
Speaker 1: bunch of kids. We would go on we would go
Speaker 1: on film testing and all sorts of different states around
Speaker 1: the country. I love being with him. He told me
Speaker 1: all these great stories that I couldn't participate in, that
Speaker 1: that it was a different breed he was. He was
Speaker 1: just he finally had a problem with drugs. But but
Speaker 1: that's somebody I listened to. But but mainly I was
Speaker 1: an English major mostly uh, I was a theater goer
Speaker 1: mostly all my life and I love the written word.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how a movie has made. My
Speaker 1: son is a director. I can't even talk to him
Speaker 1: about I don't understand even where the film goes. What
Speaker 1: I'm think I'm good at is recognizing good ideas, really
Speaker 1: good with the written word, And I'm good in the
Speaker 1: post production area. I can see a film and and
Speaker 1: and work with it. As far as how I just
Speaker 1: read about Angle making this movie. They just got a
Speaker 1: tremendous reception technically and in Las Vegas. If somebody said
Speaker 1: to me you had to do that would be like
Speaker 1: saying to me, you had to operate on somebody's brain.
Speaker 1: My strength is so limited two the idea, the script,
Speaker 1: the casting, the director, the putting it together and bringing
Speaker 1: the most talented people ago you can and try and
Speaker 1: in find somebody that nobody else's those is talented, defining
Speaker 1: the people that are talented that have yet been not discovered.
Speaker 1: I always say that we know, I said we I said,
Speaker 1: we were working on this film. I was doing an
Speaker 1: Alden Erin Reich, who actually played my son, he played
Speaker 1: Kate Planchett's son, and Blue Jasmine that I did with Woody,
Speaker 1: and we were saying No, we don't just want alden
Speaker 1: Aran Reich. We want cheap alden erin Reich before he
Speaker 1: really hits it big and becomes too expensive for us.
Speaker 1: But so so essentially you let me. Let me say
Speaker 1: this because because I'm always accused of trying to find
Speaker 1: the new inexpensive. There are many actors who are worth
Speaker 1: everything they get paid. Give me an example, Well, you're
Speaker 1: an example that's very I mean like Hanks Crews. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There there are actors who, by very nature of being
Speaker 1: in the movies, you get two things. One, they're actually
Speaker 1: very good. When you sit and talk to Dustin Hoffman,
Speaker 1: it is not an accident that he's been so good.
Speaker 1: He really is good. So you get what you paid
Speaker 1: for Set and Lee. There are actors who actually appeal
Speaker 1: to people. The movie would not perform as well without
Speaker 1: those actors. So for that, in the business of the movies,
Speaker 1: it is totally worth paying up whatever it takes. Who's
Speaker 1: a filmmaker you loved working with back then in the
Speaker 1: earlier Who's someone you said, God, this is a great experience,
Speaker 1: scor said, he's the same with people that that that
Speaker 1: you would name Alan Parker, Uh, what'd you do with
Speaker 1: Alan he made a small movie. I'm trying to make
Speaker 1: a name of it in the in the seventies. I
Speaker 1: cannot after fame or before fame, before fame really early. Um,
Speaker 1: it just was a you know, there's something about dealing
Speaker 1: with any in any field. It could be my son
Speaker 1: is in the in the cottage cheese business, and my
Speaker 1: young son uh and and I'm serious. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in the entertainment business. My other two sons
Speaker 1: in the entertainment business. He went, he's kind of an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: He went to the grocery stores. He looked at what
Speaker 1: hadn't been innovated. You know, yogurt had been innovated. Everything
Speaker 1: else to be had innovation. Cottage cheese had not. I said,
Speaker 1: are you crazy? He did example he he is in
Speaker 1: every whole foods now with his good culture cottage cheese.
Speaker 1: And meeting the young people that he has in cottage
Speaker 1: cheese is like meeting a new young actress, a new
Speaker 1: young actor, a new young doc age. She's the way
Speaker 1: you felt about TV back there. And maybe maybe, but
Speaker 1: the fact is, I really like I like my children's
Speaker 1: friends that all went to film school. I talked to
Speaker 1: all of them. I keep saying to my wife and
Speaker 1: mother talked to them and talked to our friends, and
Speaker 1: she gets very upset about that. But no, I like
Speaker 1: I like the new But so at Paramount, you're there
Speaker 1: and Dealer is the head guy, and you're with Dialer
Speaker 1: and explain to people who don't know how Dealer acquiescence
Speaker 1: to you, and you say to him, these are the
Speaker 1: movies that we're gonna make. Did he have did you
Speaker 1: confer with him? Did he ever say to you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like this. Were you completely on your own?
Speaker 1: You were self determining by and how many releases on
Speaker 1: average were you doing back then? We were probably doing
Speaker 1: fourteen and twenty releases. Um, he, we were a team.
Speaker 1: I did not do any of my own. He did
Speaker 1: not do any of his own. I mean we talked
Speaker 1: twenty times a day. Uh. Mostly he would say I
Speaker 1: hate it, and I would say, well, then, Barry, we
Speaker 1: have no films. And then we would argue about the film.
Speaker 1: Or he would call me up and say we talked
Speaker 1: about Warren Baby for a Warren has a film that
Speaker 1: is a problem at Warners. Uh, let's read it in
Speaker 1: the next hour, and if we say yes, Warren will
Speaker 1: do it paramount, so that took an hour. Some films
Speaker 1: American Jigglow or or other films. Officer and a gentleman
Speaker 1: in terms of a German took longer. But we discussed.
Speaker 1: We argued always in private. In public we were one team,
Speaker 1: a team, and uh, it just weren't he was. He's
Speaker 1: a very good critic. Uh, And we we discussed it
Speaker 1: a lot. What's the movie you bet on and you
Speaker 1: were wrong? What's the movie? You really went to the
Speaker 1: mattresses before he said we got to make this movie
Speaker 1: us his name one. I never had to go to
Speaker 1: the mattress. We always came to an agreement. But we
Speaker 1: made a movie called White Dog, which I still think
Speaker 1: was misunderstood. I hated that movie White Dog, my guy.
Speaker 1: I couldn't stand White Dog. Well, you were not alone,
Speaker 1: so I can't believe you could confessing you made because
Speaker 1: I always wondered, I wonder if I ever meet the guy,
Speaker 1: the greenlit White Dog man, I am not going to
Speaker 1: give him a piece of my mind. I want my
Speaker 1: money back. You want to hear what the idea was posted,
Speaker 1: because a lot of times you go from the script
Speaker 1: to the stage to the screen and it's not what
Speaker 1: you thought it was. Many times it's been the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's turned out so much better than I
Speaker 1: thought it would be. With our Lion King or whatever was.
Speaker 1: There's an actress and she's a young actress and she's
Speaker 1: driving to Beka commercial and she's she hits a dog,
Speaker 1: a white dog, right German chef, and she is so beset.
Speaker 1: She goes, she thinks the dog to the vet. She
Speaker 1: brings the dog home. So the first act is her
Speaker 1: love affair with this dog and they're inseparable. And then
Speaker 1: she brings the dog to a a set to make
Speaker 1: a commercial. And sometimes how in the set the dog
Speaker 1: sees somebody walk across and goes after him. To make
Speaker 1: a longer story short, the whole second act is the
Speaker 1: dog is somehow a racist. This dog is a racist.
Speaker 1: She goes to the supermarket and the dogs in the
Speaker 1: car and African American family walks by, and this dog
Speaker 1: goes nuts. The bottom line is you it really is
Speaker 1: a white dog. It's white on many levels, no question
Speaker 1: about it. Then the third act you find out that
Speaker 1: this white dog was trained in a southern state to
Speaker 1: be a attack dog, and so she takes the dog
Speaker 1: to another trainer to untrained the dog in this thing,
Speaker 1: and eventually the trainer that D programmed D program And
Speaker 1: the whole idea of the film was supposed to be
Speaker 1: that prejudice is learned. You aren't born with prejudice. It's
Speaker 1: part of your environment, as part of your parents, as
Speaker 1: part of your community, and you can if you're trained
Speaker 1: to be a racist, you can be maybe trained to
Speaker 1: get to not well. We picked the director who was
Speaker 1: an action or end director, who was a mistake. He
Speaker 1: made a film that basically we got killed for her.
Speaker 1: So that was a film that I really felt was
Speaker 1: an interesting idea with an interesting character that just never
Speaker 1: achieved what I wanted to. So I hope that the
Speaker 1: lesson for you was that you and Barry stopped bringing
Speaker 1: your park Avenue in Beverly Hills, lefty consciousness to the
Speaker 1: film slater and let's just make money and let's forget
Speaker 1: about de programming racist dogs. Was that the lesson for you?
Speaker 1: Or I never really was ever trying to make political films.
Speaker 1: I mean, we did make reds, we made we made
Speaker 1: any film that sounded interesting. It just happened. I thought
Speaker 1: this idea of this white dog and many people have
Speaker 1: made animal films. Was an interesting twist. I was completely wrong. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously the business is littered with there's a lot of
Speaker 1: twisted wreckage on the runway here of people in your
Speaker 1: position who the opposite is true. There's movies that you
Speaker 1: say goodbye to that you don't want to make, and
Speaker 1: they go off and become Because what's an example of
Speaker 1: that for you, of somebody who took a movie from
Speaker 1: you and they jampen into the hoop. Well, I had
Speaker 1: we made a movie, uh, with Goldie on called foul Play,
Speaker 1: and I'm very friendly with Goalie from that movie. And
Speaker 1: somebody presented a movie to us and I said, to
Speaker 1: her her William Mars agent. But I saw a picture
Speaker 1: of her. She's kind of heavy. Uh. He said, Oh,
Speaker 1: you ought to sit down with her. So I said, okay.
Speaker 1: So she came to the office and she said, so
Speaker 1: you think I'm fat? She said, you know, I just
Speaker 1: had a baby. I said I didn't know. Oh, I
Speaker 1: just said I'm sorry. So then she pitched uh and correctly,
Speaker 1: So uh, Private Benjamin one of my favorites. Right. So
Speaker 1: I met with her and I said and and and
Speaker 1: others uh, And I said, I don't think that's the
Speaker 1: third act. The first act is great when you have
Speaker 1: the guy died at the wedding and called Albert Brooks
Speaker 1: actually died away and Yale and right, and I thought
Speaker 1: Goldie Hans in the army. But you don't have a
Speaker 1: third act. So between not saying you're a third act
Speaker 1: and the next day they went and sold at the
Speaker 1: Columbia and the movie came out was a giant hit.
Speaker 1: It still didn't have a third act. It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: It was this unbelievable hit. And it was kind of
Speaker 1: a lesson for me because I knew this from television,
Speaker 1: from the movie of the Week, from Barry and I
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. That a really unbelievable concept. Unbelievable concept.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to kill, especially in TV where
Speaker 1: it's all about the promotion for the one time only
Speaker 1: it's not like word of mouth, and this concept of
Speaker 1: Goldie Horn playing Private Benjamin, you couldn't kill it. And
Speaker 1: I just was shortsighted about that because I just wanted
Speaker 1: a third act and it was stupid. The eventually, I
Speaker 1: guess it's what year does not that we would remember
Speaker 1: this eventually? Uh Diller leaves Paramount, and you're hoping you're
Speaker 1: going to get that job. Correct. Not really what happened
Speaker 1: was um Charlie Bluehorn, who was the CEO of Golfing Western,
Speaker 1: which owned Paramount. Jeffrey would always do his impersonations for me.
Speaker 1: That's good. So with Bob Evans. Bob Evans was good
Speaker 1: at it. So he was a great guy. He died
Speaker 1: very prematurely. And the guy that took over, Marty Davis,
Speaker 1: lay put this way. When I heard in the radio
Speaker 1: he died, I called Barry up and I said, Barry,
Speaker 1: you know Marty died, And Barry said, I hope it
Speaker 1: was painful. That's that's what we thought about this guy.
Speaker 1: He he was soft and so unpleasant and so nasty.
Speaker 1: And we worked for him for about a year and
Speaker 1: a half and we both decided this is not the
Speaker 1: place to be. And Barry got involved with Fox, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking about going with him to Fox, and
Speaker 1: then the Disney thing came up out of the blue,
Speaker 1: and we both how did the Disney thing come up?
Speaker 1: Because describe the shape the company was in at that time, Well,
Speaker 1: the company was in terrible shape. The company was being
Speaker 1: broken apart. It had a lot of investors trying to
Speaker 1: break it apart. I know Karan was trying to get
Speaker 1: the film library, and Mary it was trying to get
Speaker 1: the hotels. And it was over and I was at
Speaker 1: camp but the mid season with my kid, and I
Speaker 1: got a call saying to you have a contract to Paramount.
Speaker 1: And this was exactly at the time that I was
Speaker 1: not happy, as Barry wasn't happening. I said no, And
Speaker 1: two weeks later it was the CEO and chairman of
Speaker 1: Disney the board, Uh Frank Wells, who came as a president.
Speaker 1: I came as a chairman. Frank Wells kind of had
Speaker 1: been playing in this field for a year and Frank
Speaker 1: Wells knew what they needed was a CEO who was
Speaker 1: creatively oriented. They could get CEOs who needed to make
Speaker 1: better movies, yes, and they needed a whole vitality and
Speaker 1: and and Chaman aggressively not he had. He had taken
Speaker 1: over UH Warners at one point as the head guy,
Speaker 1: and then they did Exorcist to the next year, and
Speaker 1: then he didn't like having to make those decisions and
Speaker 1: he wanted He was the most selfless person I've ever met.
Speaker 1: I mean, they wanted us to be co chairman, And
Speaker 1: I said, I can't believe I said it, because I
Speaker 1: had hated Paramount at that point. I said, no, these
Speaker 1: companies have to be run. I one person has to
Speaker 1: be So when when Barry leaves, you're not pining for
Speaker 1: the job his job at Paramount, you want out of there,
Speaker 1: You don't really don't want to stay. Yeah, within a
Speaker 1: week I was going. And when then did anybody with
Speaker 1: the name Disney? I mean, there's a small list here.
Speaker 1: Didn done anybody with the last name Disney? Were they
Speaker 1: pivotal and getting you to get that job as well? Roy?
Speaker 1: What was going on with us? But the family? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the well, the family was dysfunctional, as has been written
Speaker 1: about a lot. And and Walt is the considered his
Speaker 1: his nephew Roy not up to anything on the other day,
Speaker 1: and Roy looked like Walt. And Roy was still there
Speaker 1: on the board, and Walter had died twenty two years earlier,
Speaker 1: and they treated Roy badly and they didn't let him
Speaker 1: do anything. And he was part of this takeover to
Speaker 1: to to bring Disney to its knees. And he's the
Speaker 1: one that called me up because I sat on a
Speaker 1: board for California's Through the Arts next to him. That's
Speaker 1: how I knew him. And he wanted this change, and
Speaker 1: he wanted, as he described, a out of control creative force.
Speaker 1: Uh that was like his uncle, That's the way he
Speaker 1: described it. I said, I'm not gonna give you that.
Speaker 1: I'm not your uncle, but I am maybe out of
Speaker 1: control and and and and ambitious. And well I was
Speaker 1: less ambitious than I was. I just liked, you know,
Speaker 1: the party I was going to. I liked I'd never
Speaker 1: had been to Disneyland twice with my kids. I liked
Speaker 1: that idea of building parts. I liked the idea of
Speaker 1: the real estate. I liked the idea of that you
Speaker 1: can put it all back together again the right way,
Speaker 1: or would be thrilling right. And they and what happened
Speaker 1: was this, this family in Texas by the name of
Speaker 1: the Best, said Bass, and his brothers recognized the opportunity.
Speaker 1: And it was really interesting because they the day before
Speaker 1: the last board meeting, they kind intacted us and they
Speaker 1: said they wanted Frank Wells, not me, because Frank had
Speaker 1: this Rhodes scholar legal, beautiful person, you know, very waspy,
Speaker 1: and I was this, uh different, let's put that way.
Speaker 1: And so Frank came over on a Saturday, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe he's manipulating it because I didn't know him. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, let's call them in Texas. And we
Speaker 1: called them and I had one speaker phone in my house.
Speaker 1: Frank ran over because he was a runner, so he
Speaker 1: was soaking wet, dripping on our floor and he and
Speaker 1: I called them who were in the office. There are
Speaker 1: about six of them the office in Fort Worth. And
Speaker 1: I gave a kind of a Jimmy Stewart, you know,
Speaker 1: uh speech in front of Congress about how the Disney
Speaker 1: Company how to be run from a creative point of view.
Speaker 1: It had to be about what is the movie? What
Speaker 1: is the theme park? What is television? How do you
Speaker 1: get back into television? How do you get the video?
Speaker 1: And I went on for maybe I don't know, a minute.
Speaker 1: There was a pause of five seconds and said they said,
Speaker 1: you're a guy. You should be chairman. And it was
Speaker 1: under Eisner's direction that Disney transformed from a film and
Speaker 1: theme park company into a global media empire. Explore the
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing Archives. I talked with Lorne Michael's, the
Speaker 1: creator and producer of Saturday Night Live, about what he
Speaker 1: felt after the very first episode wrapped. I was the
Speaker 1: same way then that I am now. I only see
Speaker 1: the mistakes, and I tend to wear that up until
Speaker 1: about the second drink at the party. Even last week's
Speaker 1: show takes me really through midway through Sunday. You just
Speaker 1: take me a couple of days. I'm gonna get over
Speaker 1: it now in a day. Because you're always hoping that
Speaker 1: everything's gonna work the way you were hoping it's gonna work.
Speaker 1: Take a listen that Here's the thing, Dot Org. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Michael Eisner, who is, among many
Speaker 1: other things, the former CEO of the Walt Disney Company.
Speaker 1: Eisener is shrewd and hardly risk averse that he explains
Speaker 1: the rapid and astronomical growth of the company during his
Speaker 1: tenure in more magical terms. It just happened. I mean
Speaker 1: the first day, on the way to the office, I
Speaker 1: got a call from Cia asked me whether we be
Speaker 1: interested in in Golden Girls, which I said yes. That
Speaker 1: was the first day. The second day was palmser Ski,
Speaker 1: who was having a bad relationship at Fox. Would we
Speaker 1: want to make down and out in Beverly Hills with
Speaker 1: you know, turned out to be Bette Midler and Nicknosy.
Speaker 1: So it was like going to a Chinese restaurant and
Speaker 1: picking the best choices there were. There are always, which
Speaker 1: is what amazes me about the entertainments which I love.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of choices. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of great things. The key is having an instinct seeing
Speaker 1: what it is, seeing who's doing it, enthusiasm for it. Uh,
Speaker 1: willing to fail because you know, if you if you
Speaker 1: want to accelerate your your your potential for success, you've
Speaker 1: got to double your failure rate. I mean that's kind
Speaker 1: of a Watson IBM theory and it's true. And then
Speaker 1: you have to you just go. You just do it now.
Speaker 1: Did you think, though, that not that the live action
Speaker 1: division was underperforming or that they weren't earning as many awards,
Speaker 1: but was there a craving for more quality and more
Speaker 1: rewards and things when you purchased Mirramax? What was in
Speaker 1: the Mirramax purchase? Did you think you're gonna buy some
Speaker 1: oscars when you brought Mirramax? No? Uh. When I was
Speaker 1: at Paramount, Charlie blue Edoor call up and say I
Speaker 1: don't care about oscars. I want you to win the
Speaker 1: Back of America Award. I mean that was what that
Speaker 1: was what he was Jones. I can't do the accent,
Speaker 1: but that you could do it. That's what he did
Speaker 1: and I never thought about. Honestly, I don't like research.
Speaker 1: I don't mind exit poll. You know, you do a
Speaker 1: movie and you see what the audience liked after they
Speaker 1: see it. I've never believed in asking an audience what
Speaker 1: they want. We never did research. We simply made movies
Speaker 1: and television that we thought was fun to make and
Speaker 1: interesting to make. We never thought about awards or any
Speaker 1: of that. You just did it day in and day out.
Speaker 1: So live action was easier because it's quicker, and Disney
Speaker 1: needed stuff we needed to get going. We had. We
Speaker 1: didn't have a distribution company. We put out three movies
Speaker 1: a year. It was nothing. We had no international. Um
Speaker 1: you know what. I don't know how it worked, I
Speaker 1: really don't. It just did, and it's worked for me
Speaker 1: in this one little area, which is what maybe I'm
Speaker 1: like an idiot savant in this one little area, which
Speaker 1: is uh being attracted to new ideas. Just it's not
Speaker 1: a job. I never thought it was a job I
Speaker 1: never asked, you know, there was all this, a lot
Speaker 1: of publicity about it, how well I did financially, which
Speaker 1: I'd never I'd never asked for anything. Anybody said I
Speaker 1: didn't even as anything, and so so complaints to you
Speaker 1: about your compensation. I just rolled off your back. No,
Speaker 1: because I believe everything I read in the New York
Speaker 1: Times or anywhere except for it's about me. And then
Speaker 1: as I don't believe any of it, so I you know,
Speaker 1: you never like to people say they don't care about criticism,
Speaker 1: you don't like to see it. I find the executives
Speaker 1: care more than the actress. Sometimes about the criticis axtly,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. No, as I'm going in a car
Speaker 1: to Disney to meet the board the first day, somebody
Speaker 1: says to me, what deal do you want? And I said,
Speaker 1: We'll just I'll just take whatever my paramount deal was.
Speaker 1: And that was the last negotiation I had for seven years.
Speaker 1: We did so well. The company went from billion five
Speaker 1: to eight billion dollars in value, and I benefited from that.
Speaker 1: You know. We we we bought the Los Angeles Angels
Speaker 1: and we started the Anaheim Ducks. And people talk about
Speaker 1: salaries of players. You know, to find somebody that can
Speaker 1: throw a hundred mile an pitch. If that person exists,
Speaker 1: that's a competitive environment. Now, the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is he can only do it for about six years.
Speaker 1: And many actors who get paid well don't get paid
Speaker 1: well for fourty or fifty years. They they have they
Speaker 1: have a high point. I do not have a problem
Speaker 1: with salaries. I don't even have problems with executive salaries
Speaker 1: as long as executive salaries are tied to performers. When
Speaker 1: there when executives get paid when the performance is bad
Speaker 1: and they manipulate the SYS, that to me is atrocious.
Speaker 1: But but our system is what it is. And by
Speaker 1: the way, when I was making seventy a week as
Speaker 1: an usher and I would read about the chairman of
Speaker 1: that point, it was our c A or NBC making
Speaker 1: all this money. I thought that was great. That was like, oh, someday,
Speaker 1: maybe I can get to that level. And almost everybody
Speaker 1: I deal with in the entertainment business, almost everybody comes
Speaker 1: from very modest backgrounds and they've worked there. There's no
Speaker 1: cast system. You know, when you read a writer script,
Speaker 1: you don't care who that writer is, what that writer
Speaker 1: looks like if it's good, it's good. It's just, it's just,
Speaker 1: it's based on merit. You stay at Disney until two
Speaker 1: thousand five, you stay longer, and then eventually you leave.
Speaker 1: Why did you want to leave in two thousand five?
Speaker 1: Well it was a different era. Describe how different? Well
Speaker 1: it was different, and that we had gone from nothing
Speaker 1: to this giant company. Uh. I was. I had had
Speaker 1: a heart issue twenty years earlier. I was still had
Speaker 1: ten scripts sitting in my bedstand unread every night. I
Speaker 1: was still traveling all over the world. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of dissension I was. I was in conflict with
Speaker 1: the Weinstein's. I was in conflict a little bit with
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs. I was in conflict with Roy Disney, and
Speaker 1: my point of view was and in hindsight, I wasn't
Speaker 1: political enough. Now I read all about politics and Marine
Speaker 1: Dowd the other day about running doing what's right as
Speaker 1: opposed to doing what's political. I was doing towards the
Speaker 1: end of my UH career of Disney, through my arrogance
Speaker 1: and success, always where I thought was right and never
Speaker 1: where I thought was political. So even though the Weinstein's
Speaker 1: were the darling of New York and the media. We
Speaker 1: were losing a fortune because Harvey wanted to be more
Speaker 1: than what he's great at, which is a kind of
Speaker 1: independent filmmaker. He wanted to make very expensive films. He
Speaker 1: wanted to be in all these other businesses. So I
Speaker 1: was in conflict with him, books, all the stuff, and
Speaker 1: so we had a difficult time. Steve Jobs was very difficult.
Speaker 1: Uh no, right, And I was the point man on
Speaker 1: on that, and you know, we made before he really
Speaker 1: knew about it, toy story, and then he got involved
Speaker 1: and we did we did, you know well, but we
Speaker 1: were in conflict. And Roy Disney, who was not of talent,
Speaker 1: was trying to do a lot of things that I
Speaker 1: felt were wrong creatively and had a style them. So
Speaker 1: I was in conflict. So the combination of that conflict,
Speaker 1: even though we would performed fantastically for twenty years, we
Speaker 1: were everything was it was, and which Bob Eiker has
Speaker 1: then taken and done great jobs with. Um, it was time.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, like sixty five, and it was
Speaker 1: time to go do other things, and which I have done. Um.
Speaker 1: I have a show on Netflix called bow Jack Horseman,
Speaker 1: which I think is we want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about that about right, which is which is great fun
Speaker 1: and doing great and uh, I'm doing a lot of
Speaker 1: other things. And I now I'm able to exercise from
Speaker 1: eight to nine in the morning. I don't have to
Speaker 1: be the opposite seven thirty. And maybe I'm still alive
Speaker 1: because of that. The just just just to touch on
Speaker 1: this because and this is the last thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about about that past. There's so much more
Speaker 1: we could cover, but I'm just so intrigued by having
Speaker 1: someone who has had the incredible success when you talk
Speaker 1: about to say this to flatter you, but as you said,
Speaker 1: to go from however many billion to eighty billion, and
Speaker 1: the roy Disneys the world, I'm going to assume that
Speaker 1: they were major stockholders. You put a lot of money
Speaker 1: in their pocket when you inflated the value of that company,
Speaker 1: no doubt. And you know, you're considered one of the
Speaker 1: most successful motion picture executives in history. You know, you
Speaker 1: and Ross and Daily and Samuel had that great run
Speaker 1: at Warner Brothers and just printed money with Batman and
Speaker 1: all these Mail Gibson movies, and you know, what you
Speaker 1: did at Disney is just unparalleled. And then the time
Speaker 1: comes for you to end and you don't make Catsenburg
Speaker 1: your replacement when you leave. Was it a tough decision
Speaker 1: for you? Well, that was ten years earlier. That was
Speaker 1: when Frank Wells died. Frank died in correct, and the
Speaker 1: board came to me, particularly Roy, and said, if you
Speaker 1: make Jeffrey Cansenburg anything, we will sort of proxy fight.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that they said that? Honestly, I
Speaker 1: think jeff wasn't that material to be the head guy.
Speaker 1: It was well with Roy, it was emotional. Jeffrey Cassenberg
Speaker 1: is great at being charming and rate at dealing with
Speaker 1: important people, and they great at all of those things.
Speaker 1: He was Roy was was made titular head of animation.
Speaker 1: He really didn't have anything to do. Jeffrey was in charge,
Speaker 1: and Jeffrey ignored him because his ideas were terrible. And
Speaker 1: I would say to Jeffrey off and Jeffrey, just treat
Speaker 1: him like he would treat an agent. Treat him well,
Speaker 1: just be nice to him. And Jeffrey and I understand
Speaker 1: it didn't have the time. Jeffrey was on a treadmill
Speaker 1: going on thousand miles an hour, and he didn't have
Speaker 1: a time to be politic with Roy. And when Frank died.
Speaker 1: Roy made it clear that this guy was not going
Speaker 1: to be promoted. That and the fact I personally thought
Speaker 1: he wasn't ready. The combination of those two things led
Speaker 1: him to leave and start dream Work. So he leaves
Speaker 1: and starts DreamWorks. And then you get into the whole
Speaker 1: situation with Ovin's. Well, now it's about a year later, um,
Speaker 1: and we buy Capital Cities ABC, right, and UM, now
Speaker 1: I am. I had had heart surgery. J Scripps in
Speaker 1: the bin next to the bed. Jeffrey's gone, and my
Speaker 1: wife is saying, you need help. And Michael, whom I've
Speaker 1: known since he was in his young twenties, seemed like
Speaker 1: he could be a solution. And I was very ambivalent
Speaker 1: about that because I knew him well. My wife was
Speaker 1: very much in favor of it. My middle son told
Speaker 1: me I was crazy, and I did it and it
Speaker 1: was a terrible mistake. He was, he he had well,
Speaker 1: he was. He always ran a company where he didn't
Speaker 1: smell them, he sold them. He didn't care about what what,
Speaker 1: He didn't care that you were in exit movie. He
Speaker 1: cared how much money you were getting an ex movie.
Speaker 1: He was all about. He was an agent. He was
Speaker 1: an investment banker type I mean, and he did a
Speaker 1: very good job for his parents and he and by
Speaker 1: the way, I was the key person when the five
Speaker 1: of them left William Morris. I brought all five of
Speaker 1: them in the second week they left at ABC, had
Speaker 1: every I had a special daytime movies, everybody in the
Speaker 1: room and they weren't allowed to leave the room until
Speaker 1: they gave each one of those guys a deal. And
Speaker 1: he had good talent, but not what he used what
Speaker 1: he had later. And my motivation was he told me
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to charge timpercent commission package commission like
Speaker 1: William Morris, which of course they still they did quite
Speaker 1: soon there after. So my idea was I needed help.
Speaker 1: He would be a good successor. And it lasted a year.
Speaker 1: It was a disaster, and he had a as everybody knows,
Speaker 1: the whopping compensation package, which was adjudicated deep in a
Speaker 1: year after you left it. This wasn't resolved in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six apparently in Delaware. Correct again completely, which
Speaker 1: would not surprise you. Misrepresented in the media. The fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is, even I've been at forty million
Speaker 1: dollars in a company the size of Disney, which it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't working. We couldn't bring the company down
Speaker 1: by a mistake. It was my mistake, it was. And
Speaker 1: by the way, just so you know, every newspaper, all
Speaker 1: our shareholders, including Warren and everybody else, when I made
Speaker 1: the announcement called me to say it was the most
Speaker 1: brilliant thing I'd ever done at Disney, that I brought
Speaker 1: in the guy who wouldn't say that. There's as far
Speaker 1: as as far as executive tough business a decision that
Speaker 1: this was. I was bringing in the person news of
Speaker 1: the cover of Newsweek is the most powerful man in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: who made the miss Schuster deal to buy Universal and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I was bringing in a real leader
Speaker 1: and it didn't work. What kind of stuff are you
Speaker 1: working on now? Bow Jack Horseman is with Netflix now?
Speaker 1: People always complained to me and say that, you know,
Speaker 1: Netflix is great at once, but then no back end
Speaker 1: and Netflix, I mean, television has changed exponentially since you
Speaker 1: were running ABC and then when you bought ABC. I mean,
Speaker 1: one minute, you're fetching I don't know who you're fetching
Speaker 1: coffee for. Over there in the beginning in the seventies,
Speaker 1: when you're working there as a as a as an
Speaker 1: usher or whatever your first job. Anybody right, anyway that
Speaker 1: anybody that told you listen, kids a lot of longer
Speaker 1: with this type pressed and light starts in those shirts.
Speaker 1: But the UH. And then of course you have this
Speaker 1: fabled career and you buy ABC your company. What's changed
Speaker 1: for you? What what amazes you the most of the
Speaker 1: way it is now? Well, first of all, the secret
Speaker 1: on Netflix just answer that is it's fantastic. As a producer,
Speaker 1: I have in the first season, I have sent profit
Speaker 1: checks to the UH, to the talent. I did the
Speaker 1: same thing with the show I did on Nickelodeam. I
Speaker 1: don't believe in this idea of producing for so much
Speaker 1: more money than you get in. So we've had a
Speaker 1: very good relationship with Netflix and everybody that works on
Speaker 1: this show, Raphael Bob Waxburg, who's a genius. It's an
Speaker 1: animated adult type of show. Um loves it. So I'm
Speaker 1: doing a lot of that kind of stuff. I am.
Speaker 1: I own a company called Tops, which you may remember
Speaker 1: to baseball cards, and we are the governant with the Governant,
Speaker 1: but we are now a global company. We're very big
Speaker 1: in international football, Premier League bundes League, Champions League soccer. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: I am. I got about twenty investments and new ideas,
Speaker 1: new new digital companies. I'm an advisor to my three
Speaker 1: children who don't listen, but I still an advisor to
Speaker 1: him and doing exercising from eight tw nine o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. I have time to exercise. Uh, Like right now,
Speaker 1: I don't have thirty phone calls to return because something
Speaker 1: is how you do but them I can return them
Speaker 1: from now. Now. Your son, what's something you wanted him
Speaker 1: to know? Is he was coming up in the business.
Speaker 1: You said you knew nothing about directing and putting movies together,
Speaker 1: but you know a hell of a lot about the
Speaker 1: movie business. What did you want him to know? Well,
Speaker 1: the one thing that I'm proud of my three sons
Speaker 1: and they all have great spouses and tons of grandchildren
Speaker 1: and all that is that there decent and I think
Speaker 1: it's probably hard to follow a successful father. Um, they
Speaker 1: don't seem to think that. J. J. Abrams dad was
Speaker 1: a successful TV producer and he has certainly eclipsed his father, Jerry.
Speaker 1: I made many movies with Jerry, with Jerry and Jerry Eisenberg,
Speaker 1: the two of them that were a team and we
Speaker 1: made a lot of movies of the Week with them.
Speaker 1: By the way, the people who ruin the entertainment business
Speaker 1: are all my children's age. They are all A lot
Speaker 1: of them are sons of friends of mine. I can't
Speaker 1: get them on the phone, but they're still friends of
Speaker 1: sons of friends of mine. You're not the Eisener that
Speaker 1: they want to call back anymore. There's another eis where
Speaker 1: they want to call, you know. I remember going to
Speaker 1: soccer fields with a y s osccer with my sons
Speaker 1: growing up, and somebody are going to a hockey games.
Speaker 1: Two of my sons made hockey and they would tell Eisner,
Speaker 1: like get on the field, and I was halfway on
Speaker 1: the field. No, I'm I'm Eisner. Now, I don't even move.
Speaker 1: I went a while back, a while back. I don't
Speaker 1: really I don't really see that many things. But a
Speaker 1: while back when the Last Batman came out, that Christian
Speaker 1: Bale was in and the trailers came on in advanced,
Speaker 1: and I must say, I'm not a squeamish person. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a I mean I'm somebody who's
Speaker 1: liked action films and if they have a violent component
Speaker 1: that serves the story. That's okay, But um my god,
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe how violent these movies were. They had
Speaker 1: to have eight or ten trailers, and everyone someone was
Speaker 1: by with their physical hands. In some martial arts, uh,
Speaker 1: ballet was just taking someone apart, or guns and some
Speaker 1: other advanced weaponry. Is that something that you've seen change
Speaker 1: in terms of the content of the movie business over
Speaker 1: the last several years. It's disturbed or you know, I
Speaker 1: feel that way. Well. At Paramount we must have made
Speaker 1: two hundred films and we only made two action films
Speaker 1: in that entire time, and we were still very successful.
Speaker 1: At Disney, we didn't make Star Trek Paramount, and at
Speaker 1: Disney most of our action stuff was modest. I am
Speaker 1: hoping that this live action films that you described is
Speaker 1: like car are like cartoons, that people in the audience
Speaker 1: realize its fiction, realize it's all bubble gum activity, right,
Speaker 1: because if it begot violence in a susceptible male audience,
Speaker 1: that would be bad. I've studied a lot about this
Speaker 1: because I ran children's program at ABC. I put on Batman,
Speaker 1: Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and one other In one show from
Speaker 1: wonders when I was there, and I am convinced that
Speaker 1: kids do not think they can get on kitchen tables
Speaker 1: and fly off of it. And I am convinced that
Speaker 1: when you see Batman or Superman or the all of
Speaker 1: Marvels stuff, they don't really think that they can emulate that.
Speaker 1: To me, the other kind of violence, the more realistic violence,
Speaker 1: this street violence, is more disturbing the bubble gun violence
Speaker 1: is like a cartoon, So I don't know how it's
Speaker 1: affecting uh are our civilization. I'm much more nervous about
Speaker 1: the ability to leave the theater and get a gun,
Speaker 1: which is so easy. I think that people who watch
Speaker 1: violent content and it motivates them to commit an act
Speaker 1: of violence as a whole other psychopathology before they enter
Speaker 1: the theater. I don't think the film business is responsible
Speaker 1: for that. Um, you're a man who's seen as as
Speaker 1: a consequence of the business shom You've seen hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of movies. When you go to the movies. Now,
Speaker 1: describe when Michael Eisner, the famous Michael Eisner, goes to
Speaker 1: the movies. What does he do? Is it a bucket
Speaker 1: of popcorn? Is it raised and that's what are you?
Speaker 1: Is in a screening room, moving in your own home?
Speaker 1: Or do you go to the theater. I almost only
Speaker 1: go to the theater. I go at least twice a week.
Speaker 1: And what do you doing? I often go at ten
Speaker 1: o'clock or midnight. Uh, can't drag my wife out. Usually
Speaker 1: I'll go in the afternoon. Uh. I can remember even
Speaker 1: being at ABC when I was twenty seven years old
Speaker 1: and having a fight with somebody and saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of here and go to Broadway and
Speaker 1: go to a movie. So I do see a lot
Speaker 1: of movies. Um, I like maybe it's age related. I
Speaker 1: like the dramas. I like, uh, the comedies. I'm a
Speaker 1: little little I admire the technology and the action films.
Speaker 1: The action films, but my wife likes those one than
Speaker 1: I do. What's a movie that when you were in
Speaker 1: charge of these movie companies you made. Guess there must
Speaker 1: have been obviously countless examples. Give me, but give me
Speaker 1: one example where you're and I'm being very Hollywood myself
Speaker 1: right now, you're in a screening room alone or with
Speaker 1: your associates. You sit there and you go, man, I'm
Speaker 1: proud of that movie. That we made. What's one that
Speaker 1: really really you think, God, I'm proud of that movie.
Speaker 1: I love that movie. Well, the problem is the first
Speaker 1: time you see it and it's really good, you keep
Speaker 1: hoping it's going to end quickly. It's like going to
Speaker 1: a hockey game where your son is the goalie and
Speaker 1: you and they're leading one nothing, and you just wanted
Speaker 1: to end because you keep being fearful that it's going
Speaker 1: to fall apart. Sometimes they fall apart in the first
Speaker 1: scene and then you then then then it's agony. I mean,
Speaker 1: but you sit there and if it actually ends and
Speaker 1: you still are related like you are from the beginning, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a great field. What's one you're very proud of?
Speaker 1: What's one that moved you? You said they're gonna God, damn,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I made that movie. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, because there's there were so many guys. If
Speaker 1: I fake back, I think when you know, John Travolta
Speaker 1: and I've had a lot of success together, and we
Speaker 1: started with Connor and then Boys in the Plastic Bubble
Speaker 1: and then he went into Saturday Night Fever and that
Speaker 1: was a leap for us Paramount. It was very early
Speaker 1: for him. I didn't know that it was a musical.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the b g were still alive. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that Robert Stick was the entrepreneur manager of
Speaker 1: the BGS was still alive. Uh. And when you sat
Speaker 1: down and you saw the main title and the feet
Speaker 1: walking down the street, you just knew instantly you're onto something.
Speaker 1: It was on something. Michael Eisner is still onto something
Speaker 1: right now. Netflix releases the third season of bow Jack Horseman,
Speaker 1: his animated series about a former sitcom star horse trying
Speaker 1: to make a comeback. This summer. And these days, Michael
Speaker 1: Eisner is making his mark outside the entertainment industry. To
Speaker 1: The Eisner Foundation supports programs that bring young people and
Speaker 1: the elderly together to solve problems. This is Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you were listening to Here's the Thing or