Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (21 page)

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1982, then to a $33.3 million loss in 1983.18 By 1983, the studio would only release three films.

Things were only marginally better with the theme parks. While consistently making money for the company, profits remained stable rather than increased. Attempting to rejuvenate the profit margin, the company sunk an enormous amount of money into the building of EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow) at Walt Disney World. Opening to enormous fanfare, the increase in admissions was negligible and disappointing. As a result, when Japanese investors (under the name of the Oriental Land Company) proposed opening a Disney theme park outside of Tokyo, the company was risk-shy. While still demanding to oversee the construction of the park, the company was unwilling to devote much monetarily and allowed investors to basically license the Disney name. Consequently, the investors—not the company—would reap most of the huge profits after Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983.19 In the years immediately after designing EPCOT and Tokyo Disneyland, the “Imagineering” work force (as the Walt Disney Company designates those who help create the attractions for the parks) was reduced from 2,000 to 450.20

In March of 1983, Ron Miller was elected chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company over the objections of rival and fellow board member Roy Disney, Jr. One of Miller’s first moves was to form a new subsidiary to Walt Disney Pictures. The newly christened Touchstone Pictures would deal with more mature themes than those pictures under the Disney logo and would aim at attracting specifically teenagers and adults, possibly even with a “PG” rating. Yet, even with a branch of the company specifically created to reach beyond the stifling family image that the Disney name meant to most customers, the first picture to carry the Touchstone symbol engendered enormous controversy within the company.

Splash
(1983) told the story of a mermaid who becomes human for a short while in her pursuit of the human male she loves. At any other studio during the 1980s, such a comedic premise would be occasion for lots of sexual innuendo and female “jiggle.” The original script called for some brief nudity scenes, occurring before the mermaid learns that humans wear clothing. This had veteran Disney executives aghast.

Even Miller was quoted as saying, “The day Disney makes an R-rated film is the day I leave the company.”21 The project was only given the go-ahead when these scenes were reworked. In the final film, Darryl F I N D I N G A P L AC E I N T H E K I N G D O M

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Hannah (who plays the mermaid) had her hair strategically taped to cover her breasts during scenes where the character was supposed to be topless. Many stockholders, though, were still dissatisfied that the company had “succumbed” to the pressures within the industry to loosen its morals. Although
Splash
was a sizable hit for the company (making $69 million in its original domestic release), the day that the film premiered Roy Disney, Jr. submitted his letter of resignation and began strategizing a hostile takeover bid for the corporation.

A few alert stock traders took the resignation to mean that Roy was distancing himself from the executive board in order to either start a proxy fight or attempt to buy out the entire company. While Roy worked with lawyer and confidant Stanley Gold to consolidate his plans, others began buying every piece of Disney stock that they could get their hands on. The first prominent threat to the studio was not Roy Disney but renowned financier Saul Steinberg, who had helped pioneer the wave of “leveraged buyouts,” “junk bond schemes” and “greenmail techniques” that dominated 1980s corporate America. By April of that year, Roy owned just less than 5 percent of the company’s stock, but Steinberg had bought up more than 8 percent and in May announced his intention to buy up to 49.9 percent.22

The company was able to keep Steinberg at bay eventually after paying him over $300 million to buy back his stock. Steinberg’s attempt was only the beginning, and it alerted other big players in the market to Disney’s precariousness. Soon, rumors were ripe that a number of sharks were circling the company, including such high-powered corporate raiders as Rupert Murdoch, Kirk Kervorkian and Irwin Jacobs. Roy Disney and Stanley Gold realized that they could not beat such competition in a head-to-head buyout, but they still retained enough power to force the company to place both of them on the executive board. As members of the board, they argued that a decisive management shakeup was needed to convince stockholders not to sell their holdings and to strengthen the company’s image. It was not too long after this that Ron Miller was forced to resign, and hired to replace him were Roy’s groomed choices: Michael Eisner and Frank Wells.

Frank Wells had already had an illustrious career at Warner Bros., and Michael Eisner had established himself at Paramount. Yet, both felt they had gone as far as they could go at their respective studios.

Wells had retired for a few years in the early 1980s and returned to a basically ceremonial position at Warners; Eisner, after working his 106

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way up to president of Paramount Pictures, realized that political forces within the studio’s parent company, Gulf & Western, were going to keep him from rising any higher. Together, they formed the new leadership of the Walt Disney Company. Eisner’s creativity would be harnessed as the chairman and CEO of Walt Disney Productions, while Wells’ attention to the details of business management would serve in his function as president of the Walt Disney Company. Together with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Eisner’s right-hand man while at Paramount who accompanied him to Disney as Vice-President in Charge of Production, their reign over the studio almost completely and immediately revamped the philosophy and the day-today experience of life in the company.

The driving motive within the company now was no longer “What would Walt have done?” but “What will make a profit for the company?” Now, money was money, and any way to squeeze it out was considered. All aspects of the corporation were evaluated for their profit potential: the admission price for the theme parks was raised; films considered “too sacred” to release on home video were now going on video store shelves; marketing of the theme parks and film releases was substantially increased and reconceived. Although many executives and stockholders were sometimes aghast at the decisions imple-mented by this new team of executives, no one could argue their success rate. While in the early ’80s, Walt Disney Productions held the lowest box-office market share of any major studio, by 1988, it held the top box-office share of any studio—a status it held by and large throughout the 1990s. In 1991, Disney became the first entertainment-based corporation to be placed within the Dow Jones average, signaling the economic community’s conviction of the company’s strength and longevity.

During these years, Eisner, Wells and Katzenberg did whatever they felt they could to pump up the strength of the company, even if it seemingly flew in the face of the Disney image and reputation. First and foremost in the minds of the new executives was Touchstone Pictures.

They felt it vital to announce that the studio could and would make films aimed at adult audiences, with no intention of attracting children.

In order to underline that point, Eisner and Katzenberg were determined that
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
(1986), the first Touchstone picture made under their tenure, would get an “R” rating. When Eisner screened the film for the executive board, he cut short any attempts to F I N D I N G A P L AC E I N T H E K I N G D O M

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rework the material as had been done with
Splash
in 1983. According to
New York Magazine,
Eisner told the board, “This company has the reputation of being a censor.” If the film were sanitized, this would imply that for all the hype about a new era for the company, nothing had really changed, and such talk might inhibit people from choosing to make films there.23

Down and Out in Beverly Hills
was the first film to be released by the Walt Disney Company with an “R” rating, mainly for its sexual content than for any violence. Actress Bette Midler swears throughout the film and screams so loudly during a sexual orgasm that everyone in the entire household hears. Also included are scenes of Midler’s husband (played by Richard Dreyfuss) and their houseguest (Nick Nolte) having sex with the Latina maid of the house, and there are intimations that the son in the family is gay. Older Disney executives gritted their teeth, and the film went on to make $62 million in domestic grosses. Following in this film’s footsteps,
Ruthless People
was another flashy raunchy comedy with Bette Midler and an ensemble cast that went on to take in $71.6

million at the box office.24

By 1991, Team Disney, as the new executive team christened themselves, had swept out many previous employees and brought in their own people. Unlike many of the older employees who had been insu-lated from the rest of the film industry while at Disney, many of these new employees had worked with Eisner, Wells or Katzenberg at Paramount or Warner Bros., had numerous contacts with the rest of the film industry in Hollywood and “knew how the game was played.” They were used to hustling, dealing and working long hours and on weekends to get projects moving. These employees also came from studios that were not as overtly concerned about a moral image as Disney had always been. In fact, many of these new employees were openly gay and lesbian, and they were not going back into the closet simply because they now worked for Disney.25 In 1991, the entire company (not just the studio) formally instituted a nondiscrimination policy based on sexual orientation.

This development also tied into the concerted attempt by the studio to be taken seriously by those working within the industry and to attract talent that had never previously considered making a film for the company. In this new atmosphere, no one seemed to care what you did in your private life, as long as you helped bring in revenue to the company. Many of the high-profile artists who began to work 108

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predominantly at the Disney Studio were openly gay, such as songwriters Howard Ashman and Elton John and director Emile Ardolino.

Jeffrey Katzenberg was so impressed by Ashman’s talent and his ability to resurrect the popularity of Disney’s animated features that Katzenberg and Ashman became extremely close friends. Ashman’s death as result of AIDS seems to have had a profound effect on Katzenberg and, consequently, on those gay and lesbian employees working under Katzenberg.

Thomas Pasatieri, an openly gay composer and orchestrater who arranged scores for some of Disney’s films over the past decade, described the music department as so gay-friendly that when one straight artist was let go from a project, he threatened to sue the studio for sexual discrimination against heterosexuals!26 An anecdote amongst Disney’s homosexual employees, and reported in at least one industry periodical, demonstrates that even Disney’s top-ranking executives often agreed that an inordinate number of homosexuals were now working for the company.27 As homosexual Disney employees began calling for the company to grant domestic partners of homosexual employees the benefits that were given to the spouses of married heterosexual employees, an Apple computer executive met Michael Eisner at a charity function. When this executive cornered Eisner in order to discuss domestic partner benefits (Apple, like most of the computer industry, had already begun these benefits), Eisner reportedly stated that he feared a huge loss of money because he figured that about 40 percent of Disney’s work force was gay or lesbian.

By November 1994, when the gay periodical
Out
released a special

“Out in Hollywood” issue, a large number of those profiled were working for Disney or one of its subsidiaries—Touchstone or Hollywood Pictures.28 Amongst these were: Lauren Lloyd, senior vice-president for Hollywood Pictures; Andreas Deja, a supervisor in the Animation Division; Tammy Balik, casting director for Touchstone Television’s series
Ellen
; and Garrett Hicks, an administrative assistant in the Animation Division and then co-chair of Disney’s employee group LEAGUE. It was this more accepting environment for openly lesbian and gay employees at the Walt Disney Company that helped the founding of LEAGUE. Yet, LEAGUE’s founding and its first few years of existence were accompanied by trepidations, often over “queer” politics entering the workplace—worries shared not only by studio executives but also by a number of lesbian and gay employees.

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A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN: THE LESBIAN AND

GAY EMPLOYEES OF TEAM DISNEY

The startup of Hollywood Supports had a specific effect on the foundation of LEAGUE. According to Garrett Hicks, he and Sass Nielsen, who worked in the film information services department at Disney, met at a Hollywood Supports meeting. Together, they discussed the value of Hollywood Supports and brainstormed the notion of organizing a homosexual employees group at Disney. No other studio had such a group for Hicks or Nielsen to use as a model. In fact, Hicks and Nielsen never formally organized a plan together, and the two did not meet up again to discuss this idea.

Rather, Nielsen on her own initiative began getting things moving.

Nielsen was aware of the number of various employee groups (ranging from a bowling group to the Mac Club, a computer users network).

Such groups were sponsored by the company and advertised in the studio’s employee newsletter, the
Newsreel.
Jeff Kurti, an employee in the corporate synergy department, recalled an “unwritten” policy that nurtured new clubs by running announcements of new organizations in the
Newsreel
and providing about $200 in start-up funds.29 With this in mind, Nielsen asked Disney University, the division that publishes the newsletter, to print an announcement of a meeting of lesbian and gay employees.