Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) (25 page)

* * * * * * * * * *

I have great memories of working with Frank Wells. He could be totally focused for a 6:00
A.M.
meeting at his home about Euro Disney (he sometimes participated wearing his pajamas, bathrobe, and bedroom slippers), or completely unaware that he was calling you at 3:00
A.M.
(Wherever he was in the world, that was the time it was
everywhere
in the world!) I watched him manipulate heads of corporations (he became the best salesman and steward of corporate alliances, signing multimillion, multiyear sponsorships for attractions in the Disney parks). And I was in the right place when he had to borrow $10 to pay for parking at the Century Plaza Hotel because he left home without his wallet. One morning in Tokyo, he asked me and Pete Clark, then responsible for park sponsorships, to jog with him around the Imperial Palace; the four-mile distance, and Frank’s slow pace, gave us plenty of time to resolve the issues he wanted to discuss. Pete, a jogger of some note, finally asked if we could pick up the pace for the last mile so we could work up a sweat.

The Frank Wells stories were legendary at Disney. One day he was racing to finish a very important memo when he realized he had to catch a flight to New York. He asked Shari Kimoto, his assistant, to accompany him on the drive to the airport while he finished dictating. Still not finished, he bought Shari a ticket and continued dictating all the way across the country. The next morning, Shari typed a draft at the Disney corporate office. Now it was revision time. On their second morning in New York, the locals asked Shari why she was still wearing the same clothes she had arrived in. Frank, of course, never noticed; he was totally focused on the task at hand.

Frank never let apparent obstacles get in his way. One morning when I was on vacation, Frank called me. “What are you doing, Marty?” he asked.

“Well, Frank, I’m in my bathing suit looking out at the Pacific Ocean—in fact, there are some dolphins swimming past right now.”

Frank pretended not to hear me. “How would you like to come to New York?” he said.

“Great,” I replied. “I’ll be back from vacation next Monday.”

“I need you here for a meeting
tomorrow morning
,” the voice on the telephone said.

“But Frank,” I told him, “my wife and I are going to the Hollywood Bowl tonight with some friends.”

“Okay,” Frank replied, “but let your friends drive so they can take Leah home—I’ll have you picked up at intermission, and get you to LAX in time to catch the midnight flight to New York.”

Of course you know what the outcome was. I took the red-eye to New York from Los Angeles at midnight, arriving at JFK just before 7:00
A.M.
A driver met me and took me about ten minutes away to a waiting helicopter, which flew me to New Jersey, where another car met me and drove to a nearby hotel. By 8:00
A.M.
I had showered and shaved, and was in Frank Wells’s suite for a continental breakfast—and my instructions. By 10:00
A.M.
we were in a meeting with the president of AT&T, and Frank called on me for the concept and design information he wanted conveyed from the horse’s mouth—from the creative leader of Imagineering to the president of AT&T.

By 11:30, I was out the door and the process was reversed: limousine to helicopter, helicopter back to New York, driver to the airport, a 1:00
P.M.
flight back to Los Angeles. And then another limousine to another helicopter, which flew me thirty miles to Orange County, where another driver met me and drove to my vacation “hideaway” on the beach, looking out on the Pacific Ocean, where I arrived at 6:30
P.M.
—exactly twenty-one hours since I had left the Hollywood Bowl, and about thirty hours since Frank Wells first telephoned me about my new travel plans. “At the end of the day” (one of Frank’s favorite expressions), we made the deal. And, I had to admit, Frank Wells did need me there to say my piece and put the deal over the top. But believe me, it was a very long day!

Frank’s expression made a big impression on me. It was a metaphor for how he wanted us to leave a meeting—with a decision, with agreement on the next steps. It was the way he wanted to conclude negotiations with another company—you either made the deal or didn’t, but you walked away knowing that “at the end of the day” you brought all the resources you needed to the table and gave it your best shot.

Eisner’s enthusiasm and Wells’s management and business skills were often a magic combination. One of the best examples is the path that led to the launching of the third Disney park at Walt Disney World—the Disney-MGM Studios. (The name was changed in 2009 to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.)

When Epcot opened in October 1982—two years before Eisner and Wells came to Disney—our creative team at Imagineering began an analysis of subjects and stories we felt were missing from the Future World area, and countries we especially hoped to include in the future at World Showcase. In our own assessment, we found a glaring omission: there was no pavilion related to show business. Yes, the park itself was all about entertainment and fun—but what about exploring television, the Broadway stage, or how movies are made?

We began development of our “Entertainment Pavilion” for Epcot. By the time we showed early concepts to Michael and Frank, we were all excited about its potential—and they quickly saw a new potential: why not place it
outside
but immediately adjacent to Epcot, and make it into a separate experience—perhaps a half-day park? It would quickly add another key attraction to the Walt Disney World mix, giving guests new reasons to lengthen their stay.

A young designer, Bob Weis, trained as an architect, quickly became the champion of the project. Bob had learned the Imagineering ropes as a design coordinator at Tokyo Disneyland. Suddenly, the idea took off. As often happens with competition, the concept assumed a life of its own when Universal Studios announced that they were going to build a “Studio Park” in Central Florida based on their Universal Hollywood attraction, whose major appeal was its tour of
real
movie sets where movies were actually made. In fact, its true history (“This was Lucille Ball’s dressing room”) was the major marketing pitch.

Competition is often like a water spigot to a design organization: turn that faucet on, and watch the writers, architects, and engineers run. Suddenly, Michael and Frank were drenching us—and the Imagineers were cranking out drawings as fast as they could. As quickly as you could say, “Let’s get there first!” we were off on a sprint to the finish. The “half-day park” died a quick death, but our head start had given us the advantage in creating a much larger park that opened a full year before Universal Studios Orlando.

But development of the concept was not a simple matter in those early days of Eisner-Wells. The widespread belief was that the success of Universal’s tour in Hollywood was dependent on the fact that real production took place on those studio back lots. How was a park outside Orlando, Florida, to make that same marketing statement which Michael believed was a must?

The answer was twofold: 1) by building soundstages where TV shows like a new
Mickey Mouse Club
and some movies could be produced while guests watched from enclosed corridors above and at one end of the stages; and 2) by showcasing Disney animators at work as part of a walking tour depicting the animation process. This requirement immediately caused an ongoing conflict between the Imagineers and Disney’s Feature Animation group, headed by Peter Schneider. In retrospect, the conflict was understandable. At a time when Feature Animation was building a new organization that would soon produce
Beauty and the Beast
(1991) and
The Lion King
(1994), they also had to create an animation team far from its Burbank leadership…one that would work not in obscure offices, but in wide-open spaces, visible to tourists through large windows. It was not an easy sell to the animators, and I believe that credit belongs to Jeffrey Katzenberg, then studio chief, for making it work.

Years later, when interest in viewing artists at their animation boards waned (as often as not, those drawing boards were unoccupied), the animators moved to an adjacent building and were responsible for creating the popular film
Lilo & Stitch
.

The Disney-MGM Studios name itself is an excellent example of the way Michael and Frank worked as one voice. It was Michael who worried that Disney films alone, as of the mid-1980s, did not provide enough variety to create and market the park. Frank, knowing that Warner Bros. (where he once was a top executive), Paramount (Eisner’s former employer), Sony, and of course Universal would never license their films to Disney, made a preemptive and convincing pitch to acquire the rights to use the MGM name and a selection of their films in a twenty-year agreement.

Frank Wells worked his side of the street by reaching out to another lawyer. Frank Rothman had built his reputation in sports law (his clients included the National Football League), as well as in the entertainment field. As Rothman was nearing the end of his time as board chairman of the MGM Studios, Frank Wells asked Bob Weis and me to review our concept for the Studio project with Rothman. The name deal, which also included access to certain films (ownership of the MGM library was a confused web, with many films by then controlled by Ted Turner’s company) followed quickly thereafter.

Later, it was rumored that Kirk Kerkorian, with his controlling interest in MGM, was not happy that Rothman had signed on with Disney, especially with the inclusion of one of the world’s great icons, the MGM lion. But by then, we were off and running, and the Disney-MGM Studios was a
fait accompli
.

For many years, the famous MGM lion roared from the logo of the Disney-MGM Studios, and by the time the licensing agreement ended in 2009, the newly named Disney’s Hollywood Studios had become the fifth most attended park in the United States (trailing only its Disney brethren the Magic Kingdom, Disneyland, Epcot, and the Animal Kingdom).

* * * * * * * * * *

One of the most positive aspects of the Eisner-Wells partnership was the adjacency of their offices. If you were meeting with either one, especially Frank, and a question came up requiring the other’s opinion, they would simply open the connecting door, ask if the other were available, and, more often than not, you would get a decision on the spot.

A major issue was related to the separation of the creative and operating arms of the Disney parks. As stated earlier, before Eisner took the helm, Dick Nunis, as a member of the Disney board of directors, completely abandoned his former football teammate and supported the removal of CEO and President Ron Miller. In fact, it was broadly reported that Nunis wrote a letter to Chairman Ray Watson suggesting that the company’s new president be Richard A. Nunis.

When his offer was not accepted, and the board engaged Eisner and Wells, Nunis sought to increase his power, again attempting to take control over the Imagineers. To their credit, Michael and Frank quickly realized what Walt Disney and later Card Walker had understood: that two points of view are often better than one, and that friction and tension between the creative and operating teams can bring out all the issues
before
a project begins. That tension was the reason Walt had kept Buzz Price as an
outside
consultant. As Buzz put it so succinctly, “I didn’t have to be a ‘yes man’!”

On one occasion, after consulting Eisner, Frank instructed me to “call Nunis and tell him we want to proceed” with whatever project was under discussion. I realized immediately that my call would start another Attractions-Imagineering verbal war. After all, I had just been through another “discussion” with Nunis, this time to hear him accuse an Imagineer of using drugs. “Give me the proof and I’ll deal with it immediately,” I told Dick. I never heard from him again on that subject. It was just part of his bullying style.

“Frank,” I protested, “doesn’t Dick report to you?”

“Of course he does,” Frank Wells replied.

“Well, why don’t you just call Dick and tell him what you and Michael decided—you know he will call you as soon as he hangs up with me,” I said.

“Yes,” came Frank’s reply, “and I’ll be ready to deal with it.”

An incident in the early days of the Disney-MGM Studios finally caused me to violate every professional and civil standard I practiced throughout my career. Early in the life of the project, it was clear that the elevated corridors we had designed for the tour had major show challenges. To compensate for a lack of TV or film production, and the fact that setup time on a show set takes up far more time than the actual shooting does, our team produced several short videos that were viewed at strategic points along the corridors.

They included many top stars, among them Warren Beatty, Tom Selleck, Carol Burnett, and Goldie Hawn. Leading up to a theater where guests were seated for the finale of the Backstage Tour were
The Editing Story
, featuring George Lucas, and
The Audio Story
, starring Mel Gibson and Pee-Wee Herman. Then came the finale theater, featuring trailers of Disney films to be released in the near future.

Tom Fitzgerald recalls the presentation:

Working with Feature Animation, we came up with the notion of creating a special piece of film to bookend the trailers. Directed by Jerry Rees, the live-action/ animation film (remember this was in the time of
Roger Rabbit
when this technique was new and unique) featured Michael Eisner and Mickey Mouse at the Studio, heading down to the screening room to see some coming attractions. Animated characters and live Studio staff all met in the theater. A highlight moment was when Eisner told Chernabog [the monster from
Fantasia
] that he was blocking everyone’s view. A sheepish Chernabog replied, “Sorry Mr. Eisner, it’ll never happen again!”

The paucity of real production to watch, however, diminished the appeal of the elevated corridors. Eventually, they were abandoned and the space was incorporated into other shows. But in year one, we were in our learning curve, trying a variety of programs and productions, gauging and understanding the public’s interest. But that was not good enough for Dick Nunis.