Contradiction, Part 2
Writing the last post, about Whitman and Las Vegas, got me thinking about my other internal contradictions. I went to film school and love art and foreign films, but E.T. is still my favorite movie and I think the Indiana Jones movies are just as valuable pieces of art as Citizen Kane. I love novels, but I think some of the best stuff being written today is in the form of comic books. But I think the most hard to reconcile contradiction concerns Disney. I am
at once against corporate greed and a Disney fan. Some people I know think these things are mutually exclusive. I, however, really do believe there are pieces of Disney, the theme parks in particular, that transcend the corporate BS.
You see, I have this theory about business. I have no problem with people making money doing something they are passionate about. . .and most small business owners, as well as the people who start what become large businesses, are usually doing what they do out of passion. But when the entrepreneurs leave a company, when the professional business people, the people who are passionate about nothing but business itself, take over – then I start having a problem. That’s when corporations start operating based solely on money, and that’s when bad things start to happen.
But when that strong leader, that entrepreneur, is still in control, any company, of any size, can still be a good thing – it can still be about more than just money. While Walt was alive, the Disney corporation wasn’t about money, it was about movies and tv and theme parks; it was about entertainment, about making people smile. He did things that had no visible financial upside, things no accountant would okay in a million years, but he did them and they ended up making more money than an accountant would dare to dream of in his spreadsheet.
All the things that make Disney the name that it is came from this kind of brilliance, this kind of vision. Feature length animated movies, imaginative television shows, and the theme parks. These all sprang out of passion and not a balance sheet, and it shows. A true Disney movie; Snow White, Cinderella, Fantasia, they are all magic. And underneath the overpriced admission tickets, the ever-present souvenirs and expensive food, the theme parks are truly amazing places designed to do one thing – make you smile.
But when Walt died, things changed. Disney went through a pretty bad spot. Without his vision, Disney became about ROI and package deals and merchandising rights. Those were dark times, filled with blatant money grabs (I’m looking at you Bambi 2 and Little Mermaid 3.) There were some high points, a revival when Aladdin and The Little Mermaid came about, but true to form, the Disney Corporation milked that “formula” for all it was worth and drove it into the ground (see Home on the Range.)
But they did do something right, almost in spite of themselves. During that time, they had an animator working for them named John Lasseter. John worked on some of mediocre, budget constrained movies before the Little Mermaid revival. Then he got interested in animating with computers. The “leaders” at Disney decided this was too expensive and they fired John. With a computer geek named Ed Catmull, he formed a little company called Pixar, and with the help of Steve Jobs, they got Disney to finance a movie called Toy Story. If you’ve watch “The Pixar Story,” you know they almost messed that one up as well and After the runaway sucess Pixar and Disney had, Michael Eisner almost completely messed things up by pushing Pixar away, just when Disney needed them most.
But someone’s prayers were answered, and Eisner retired, leaving Bob Iger in charge. And it turns out, Bob Iger knows his limitations. He knows he’s a business person and not the visionary leader Disney needs to keep it from falling into the morass of P&L sheets and TPS reports. So Bob Iger has found a new Walt, a new leader to keep Disney focused on what it’s true purpose is: John Lasseter. Iger has put Lasseter, the animator Disney fired back in the 80s, in charge of just about everything creative Disney has: movies, theme parks, you name it.
With Lasseter in charge, I think I can keep loving Disney.