Mickey, Goofy and I Feel Your Pain, Mike

Michael Eisner

Chief Executive Officer

The Walt Disney Co.

Burbank, Calif.

Dear Mr. Eisner:

Trends, it is said, travel from west to east, while news travels from east to west. That’s the way it is, isn’t it? Visionaries such as yourself make things happen and then those Eastern pundits offer their knee-jerk, two-bit reactions.

These reflexes can form a trend of their own. These days, it seems like everybody’s piling on you and your company. And I, for one, don’t like it.

Where does Washington Post columnist James Glassman get off saying that your pal and former colleague Michael Ovitz should donate his hard-earned $70-million-plus Disney severance to charity? And just who does Newsweek’s Robert J. Samuelson think he is, writing that open letter in the Post recommending that you pay Ovitz’s severance out of your own pocket? This way, Samuelson said, you could erase this public relations “calamity.”

And what about that “humorist” Calvin Trillin?

In his Time magazine column, Trillin didn’t just echo Samuelson, he also recalled something Joan Didion said back in 1988, during the Hollywood screenwriters’ bitter strike, partly over the studios’ efforts to cut payment for reruns. Didion pointed out that some 9,000 members of the Writers Guild had received $58 million and that your compensation the previous year was an estimated $63 million. If you had covered the writers, Trillin noted, you’d still have $5 million to live on.

And then Trillin when on to recall one of his own ideas: how, when Disney was planning to build a theme park near Civil War battlefields, the company wanted Virginia taxpayers to finance $132 million worth of road improvements.

“By that time,” Trillin wrote, “Eisner was making $202 million a year, so I suggested publicly that he pay for the roads himself. We knew he could live on that, because he’d got by on $7 million less in 1987. Didn’t happen.”

The title of Trillin’s piece was “Deep Pocket, Short Reach.” And as if those cheap shots weren’t enough, there was that unforgivable cartoon. Time’s got a lot of nerve parodying one of America’s great corporate leaders as a man in mouse ears whose derriere calls to mind the largest of the Three Little Pigs’, minus the curly tail. Instead of the tail, the caricaturist shows you wearing a golden padlock on your wallet pocket and preparing to swallow its golden key. The implication is that you’re loath to share the wealth. What gall!

The Pirates of the Caribbean, politically correct or not, don’t deserve such broadsides. And to think, it might have been worse. All of these attacks were leveled before Disney announced your new 10-year contract, the one that provided 8 million stock options that Disney estimates to be worth $195 million. This, of course, is on top of your $750,000 annual salary and this year’s $8-million bonus.

Coming so soon after Ovitz put on the diamond-studded golden parachute, only God or Satan knows how Samuelson and Trillin would have twisted all that. Obviously they lack proper respect for modern corporate capitalism. They wouldn’t understand that golden handcuffs were required to keep you at the helm of the good ship Disney.

Being a columnist, I can detect a couple of lazy, jealous bums. The “open letter” is an old gimmick. And all Trillin did was recycle Samuelson’s and Didion’s and his own musings. Hey, yours truly could do that much. Why, I could get self-indulgent too and remind readers that, in a previous letter, I proposed that we might merge the Harris family fortune with your income for one year and create Ei$nerland, “where everybody feels like a million!”

You haven’t said yes, but then you haven’t said no, either. I’m not discouraged, not in the least. I know it’s a good idea, and I know you know. But I also know it’s best to defer to your capitalist genius--that we’ll make our move when the time is right.

And, certainly, your timing has always been impeccable. You were hired at Disney when it was down in the dumps, then took it to new heights. And I’ve got a hunch you’ll demonstrate that sense of timing again as the fund-raising campaign for the stalled Walt Disney Concert Hall at the Music Center approaches its financial deadlines.

I’ve got to admit, I was surprised when a little bird who ought to know told me that, so far, you haven’t contributed a dime to this community project. As you know, Walt Disney’s widow, Lillian, launched the project with a $50-million gift. You must be waiting for the perfect moment to appear like Tinkerbell with a big contribution of your own. Some people have suggested this is Ovitz’s duty, but as you know, nobody has benefited more from Walt’s legacy than yourself. Not only would a hefty contribution silence the critics, but your board of directors will be delighted to have the Disney name promoted yet again.

But even if I’m wrong about that, I’d figure you had your reasons and they must be good ones, just as I’m sure Disney has good reasons for jacking up Angels ticket prices as Ovitz departs with all that money. Pundits had a field day with that too, but I’m sure the criticism wasn’t justified, even if I can’t articulate why. You’re the genius, not me.

So all I really want to say, big guy, is don’t let the nattering nabobs get you down. Don’t go changin’ to try to please them. I love you just the way you are--and can take a meeting any time, anyplace.

Sincerely,

Your friend,

Scott Harris

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number.