Remember eighth grade? Relationships were fickle and fleeting.
Perhaps you had a good friend. And maybe one day the friendship
veered in the wrong direction. Who knows why. Unkind words were
exchanged. Someone leveled ugly slurs about someone's mother. Icy
hallway stare-downs ensued. Emissaries were called in to mediate.
There was frantic note passing in fourth period math class --- an
effort to arrange an after-school summit among the power players.
But, of course, the relationship could not be salvaged. Years
later, you looked back on eighth grade as a lot of contrived drama
--- energy wasted on nothing, really. James B. Stewart -- in his
engrossing new book, DISNEYWAR --- tells us, in excruciating
detail, that under Michael Eisner's stewardship the powerful
corridors of Disney Inc. were not very different from eighth
grade.


Eisner made his mark as the golden boy of the ABC television
network in the 1970s. A young, creative executive, Eisner developed
some of the most-watched shows on television, including "Happy
Days" and "Laverne and Shirley." In his high-profile job, Eisner
became a hot property in the corporate world. His ascension at ABC
led to a top job at Paramount film studio. At the time, the house
of Mickey Mouse was in disarray. Disney was badly off-course in the
late 1970s and early 1980s. Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, sat on the
Disney board and was eager to bring Disney back to greatness. He
and fellow board member Stanley Gold decided Eisner was the man to
restore Disney's glory. Roy and Stanley got their wish --- Eisner
did restore the glory, and for many years he brought the company
periods of immense wealth. But Roy and Stanley got much more than
glory and financial security. They got the unimaginably weird world
of Michael Eisner.


Life was good for Disney shareholders in Eisner's early years. The
live action and animated film studios were churning out hit after
hit, including Pretty Woman and The Little Mermaid.
The wildly innovative Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was a
creative watershed and another financial blockbuster. On top of
this success, the Disney theme park franchise enjoyed unprecedented
prosperity. Eisner introduced a retail business --- stores hawking
Disney wares --- that, like everything else at Disney, opened a
financial spigot from which shareholders, employees and officers
fed. Eisner became an unstoppable force, Wall Street's darling. And
yet, as Stewart tells it, as a manager Eisner was stuck hopelessly
in eighth grade hell.


DISNEYWAR is mostly a chronicle of the snake pit culture that
Eisner assiduously cultivated, and the consequences stemming from
that. Lies, obfuscations, half-truths, and backstabbing were
Eisner's preferred management tools. And these things came easily
to almost everyone in Disney's executive suite. Eisner's
lieutenants --- Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz, Sandy Litvack
and others --- were, to a man, duplicitous, scheming and loathsome.
In their wake, a trail of broken deals, ruined careers and,
eventually, bad business decisions marked Eisner's tenure as one
with mixed results, at best.


James B. Stewart is a gifted writer. His rich material --- the
intersection of Hollywood, power, and pathological men --- is used
to great advantage, especially when the action is focused on
Eisner's boardroom shenanigans. At times, however, Stewart strays
far from course. He devotes too much time, for example, on
meaningless rivalries among low-level executives. The pages on the
rise and fall of the Disney-produced "Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire" is another low point that could have used a good edit.
On balance, however, DISNEYWAR offers a fascinating peek into the
brutal world that was Michael Eisner's Disney Inc., one that will
appeal to the eighth grader in all of us.