Work in Progress (Penguin business) - Hardcover

Eisner, Michael; Schwartz, Tony

3.67

33 ratings by Goodreads

9780140281989: Work in Progress (Penguin business)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0140281983 ISBN 13: 9780140281989

Publisher: Penguin, 1999

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In a remarkable career spanning more than thirty years, Michael Eisner has lived and worked at the centre of American popular culture. As Chairman of Disney, he has orchestrated the transformation of a beloved but struggling company into a multimedia giant. In WORK IN PROGRESS, Eisner describes the daily challenge of a rapidly changing market-place, countless creative choices, painful setbacks and dramatic triumphs. Eisner tells his story with humour, insight and unstinting honesty. Blending the personal and the professional, he recounts the extraordinary revival of Disney's animation business, and the early struggles of Disneyland Paris, alongside the tragic death of his partner, and his own emergency quadruple bypass surgery.

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Review:

In 1964, NBC clerk Michael Eisner made $65 a week. Though he only took one business course in his life--accounting--he did have a head for business: as CEO of Disney, he earned more than half a billion bucks in 1997. Though he had no foundation in finance, he averted the bloody dismemberment of Disney by takeover sharks when he took over in 1984, and by May 1998 he earned more than $80 billion for Disney stockholders. Not bad for a guy who, on his first day in Walt's old office, met a manager of the film division BVD (Buena Vista Distribution) and innocently asked whether "Disney made underwear."

In his memoir, Eisner doesn't air quite as much dirty laundry as we could hope he'd be dopey enough to do. Still, it is revealing and since it's unheard of for Hollywood potentates to spill any beans at all, this book is required reading for anyone interested in America's major export, popular culture.

We learn a fair bit of personal stuff: the crucial impact of Eisner's sternly withholding father, who drove Michael to succeed and made him less than effusive himself in praising underlings; his favourite book in youth (The Catcher in the Rye); his encounters with more madcap Hollywood types; his brush with death from heart disease; the day he got the idea for Beverly Hills Cop by getting physically roughed up by a Beverly Hills cop; his plan to add the naughtier cartoon character Mortimer Mouse to Mickey's family.

Eisner gives us his negotiating secret (be willing to walk), his view of pre-release audience testing of shows ("it's almost worthless"), his management strategy (incite raucous debate within strict institutional checks and balances, then make gut decisions), the key to success in movies and TV (strong two-man partnerships: Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg at Universal, Bob Daly and Terry Semel at Warner Bros., and pre-eminently Eisner and Frank Wells at Disney). Eisner gives a provocative analysis of why Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Ovitz proved disastrous partners for him at Disney and even confesses to a few screwups of his own (losing his temper and helping to blow the Disney America historical park development). -- Tim Appelo, Amazon.com

About the Author:

Michael Eisner has been the CEO of The Walt Disney Company for the last 14 years. His creative instincts have been responsible for the series 'Happy Days' and 'Roots' at ABC television; films ranging from 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' to 'Witness' at Paramount; and a new generation of animation at Disney, including 'Beauty and the Beast', 'Aladdin', 'The Lion King' and 'Mulan'.

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