Ex-Disney CEO BREAKS SILENCE on Bob Iger & The Truth About Disney | PBD Podcast #864

You just signed my death warrant. What I should have done is seen the smoke on the horizon. In the beginning, I saw what happened to Jay. I saw what happened to Tom, but I'm different. That's not going to happen to me. I think he got a taste of retirement or, frankly, a.k.a. less relevance. And I don't think he liked it. He didn't like being the color commentary guy. He wanted to be the play-by-play guy. He looked miserable sitting next to you. And I knew that I was going to have a rough time. And then I just started piling on. I was closing down all of their points. Where I knew I really had a problem is when he did the New York Times article. Either way, I had no idea it was coming. He didn't tell me. His publicist didn't tell me. And it's my understanding that the board didn't even know. Well, I'm at home, and someone calls me. He says, you lost your job already. Members brought back Bob Eiger to lead a CEO. You signed my execution papers. How do I recover from this? Disney clearly screwed it up. From then on, it was a death by 1,000 cuts. King Hollywood is back for it. It's not a miracle that I lost my job. It's a miracle that it took three years. Was there ever a conversation that we effed up behind closed doors, pushing too much LGBTQ to kids and families? There was plenty of conversation as to what was the right direction for the company. When I got the CEO job, I was concerned that this could create a backlash. Are you long by on Disney? I'd have to see where Josh is going to take it. I think it's going to take some courage. He has to confront Eiger. He has to confront legacy management decisions. He has to be bold. He has to have courage. Bob had a lot of support from loyalists on the board. The four board members that he replaced from Eisner. I think Bob was always very, very confident that he can have his job back whenever he wanted. He hasn't called you since. So I'm going to ask an indirect way of helping our guys, our production team, that works so hard, get a raise. Do you want to help them get a raise? This is how you can help us out. 49% of you watch our podcast that our editors work so hard, producers, cutters, all of them, our production team, 32 of them that work here. They work very, very hard to deliver a good quality to you. If you enjoy our show and you want to help this thing get bigger, so we can take our talent that we have in house that supports this production all the time. And maybe even give them a raise. Then please subscribe to the channel that allows us to get more viewership. And indirectly, it makes bigger opportunities for our current team that we have. Thank you so much. So Disney, the story of Disney for the audience that doesn't know. Did you pursue it? Was it accidental? Did it happen where there was a job opening? Hey, babe, maybe we should think about it. How did that happen? Good question. So I was talking to a friend and I said, you know, I really feel like I need to get back to California because I'd spend a little bit of time with H.J. Heins and Long Beach. Really would like to get back to California since in Eddie's great. But Andy says, well, I have a friend who just applied for a director of marketing job at Disney. He didn't get the job, but I know there's one that's open. So I just wrote a letter to the hiring manager. And interestingly enough, I got a call back. And when I got the call back, it was only like maybe five days later, they said, well, we have a job, but we're not really hiring right now. We're going to be hiring in like three or four months. And I didn't want to let that opportunity go. So I stuck my foot in the door before she can shut. I said, I have a commercial shoot on my current job in Los Angeles next week. Would you mind if I just stopped by one day as long as I'm going to be in town and just say hello? This is the one with World Chamberlain. Yeah. Yes, it was. Exactly it was. And I was, see, how was World Chamberlain? He's great. He was great. I knew I was he flirting with the girls because he was going to be a magician. He's got the reputation. Yeah. No, he was a gentleman. He was a gentleman. He was a gentleman. That's good. Playing basketball in dress shoes, which was interesting. But it was one of those things where they said, OK, if you're going to be in town, share, come on in. And three days later, I had an opportunity. Well, they actually gave me an opportunity to come back the next day, but I was supposed to be on a flight back to Cincinnati with my boss. And I figured that would be kind of awkward to try to explain why I'm staying. So I said, I come back Monday, they agreed. And I think by Wednesday, I had a job offer. So I went in like five days from getting the phone calls, saying we're not hiring anybody to getting the job. How many interviews did you do? Was it an extensive interview? Yeah, it was even at that time. Six or seven. And who you're meeting with. What did this start with? I met with the president of the segment. I met with the vice president of marketing and the whole host of the direct reports of the president. What did they ask you? Do you remember the questions? I know it's-- I know they were trying to figure out how legitimate I was. Disney at that time really was all about the theatrical business, movies and theaters. And now they had this package goods item, which was videotapes, because it was kind of coming off the era of-- I mean, depending on your age, this may make sense, blockbuster, or photo-mat. People were running videos. And this was the first chance to actually own a movie to create a library. And that business was in its infancy. And so I think-- I give credit to Andy Ali, who was the president of the division at that time, to know that they needed to do more than just sort of photo copy the theatrical marketing plan. Renting a movie or watching a movie in theaters a little bit different process than I want to own that forever. And this business model that I was working on was really the ownership side primarily. And so they wanted a package goods marketer. And again, the Disney thing just happened to be a fantastic product category for me to do that in and ended up getting the job. And that's how it started. So they want to know if you were real or not, you're going through six interviews. Then you get the job. So you come back and is it fairly quickly that you moved to LA? Six weeks later. You moved to LA, OK? And when you get there, somebody, five minutes before you got there, got laid off. What was the story about the person I got laid off right before you? Well, I had mentioned that this was a very quick turn between the time I got there and the time I got the job. One of the reasons why they said that it was a work and process the job was because they hadn't actually removed the person who was in the job yet. That's an awkward moment. It was a termination. And I get there and I'm sitting in the lobby waiting to start my first day. I'm early. I'm going home. I'm ready to roll. Just moved to Los Angeles. And I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. And it's really taking a long time. I'm like, well, I've been out here for an hour and a half, two hours waiting. And something doesn't feel right. Well, they were in the process of actually firing the person. Did you actually see him getting fired coming out of you? I did not. I did not. But one-- They didn't in the different conference room. They did in different conference room. It was like two ships passing in the night. We didn't see. They showed me to my office. Welcome me. I said hello to my new administrative assistant who was completely shocked because she just found out five minutes earlier. And she was his. She was his. So she learned immediately. He's gone. And here's his replacement within five minutes. I got there and his papers were all over the desk. Did you ever talk to him or you and him never interacted? We had an interaction after that. Just like what you find is, how does this work? Well, no, I've just wanted to introduce myself and wish him luck. And that's your day one. That's my day one. So you got a day one that leads to a nice story. Yeah, it does. OK, so what happens next? Because you end up having quite a few victories. You did some stuff. A lot of-- the main word that I saw all over the place in a book was as a disruptor. You would disrupt some segments of the business that even some people would say, Bob, you sure we want to do this? You sure this is going to work at it? And ended up working on multiple times. That's sort of my history. Would you mind sharing some of those successes on how that happened? Sure. Well, I always like to think that I see-- one of the things that I think is one of my strengths is I see clarity through objectivity. And sometimes there's a lot of learned behaviors or expectations or norms that get layered on objectivity that turn it into subjectivity or turn it into dogma. And one of my strengths always was to kind of cut through the dogma and find out what's been layered on over the years that may not even be necessary or critical or advantageous and I like to kind of strip it down. And so throughout my career, whether it was in the studio and the home video side or whether it was in Disney consumer products or whether it was in theme parks or even at the CEO level, I like to think that I was able to kind of cut through all of that, find the truth and then act on the truth, even if it was something that defied convention. And it seemed to be a pretty good formula for me throughout the years. What were some of the victories? I know the DVDs and some of the-- Yeah, I mean-- Was it VHS when it came to-- It was VHS when I came there. So, you know, whether it was, you know, my contribution to the moratorium and the Disney vault, you know, the idea is if you want to sell something you make it available. Well, this idea was completely different. This idea was by taking it away, you create scarcity and people will buy it more. And that was just a head scratcher for a lot of people. Wait, you're gonna tell me you're gonna take Dumbo or whatever the title might be. You can take Dumbo off the market for seven years. You release it for one year, and you're going to sell more in that one year at a higher price than you would in total for all seven years. Yes, and why. The reason is is that like any product, if it's just ubiquitous and it's out there, it loses, tends to loses its value. And I noticed when I walk through a Walmart or a target or a Best Buy, there's all these VHSs that were in dumpins. In other words, just they weren't the nice ones that were stacked that had just been new release. They were in and they all had holes drilled in them, which means it was old inventory, $1.99. And I saw classic movies from other studios with holes drilled into them. You know, basically $1.99. I'm like, how could that be? 1999 a year ago, and now it's $1.99. Well, the reason is to sell slowed. So my thought was rather than trading your product that way, what if we were a verit? What if we pump it up and make it its release? Like they would, a big deal, but you make its removal a big deal to the Disney fault. And then you withhold it from the market for seven years and then you bring it back into the marketplace, possibly in a new format, but at least a gold edition platinum edition, silver edition, whatever edition you add a extras to it, you somehow make it better restored. Newly restored. How do you sell that to the board or the team? If it's like for seven years, I'm not going to get the revenue on this product, but trust me in seven years, we're going to blow out. Well, we tried it. We tried it on individual titles. How did they push back? What did he say to you? Well, it just counterintuitive. And then then the biggest thing was once it was successful. Anytime an executive who was actually managing the segment or division wanted to make a number, they wanted to open up the vault because they saw how crazy it was when we released something, whether it was in the same format or maybe a successive format. In other words, VHS gets replaced by DVD. DVD gets replaced by Blu-ray. Blu-ray gets replaced by digital. Every time that happens, that, you know, we can sell. And so what you would, we were selling at that time, geez, you know, 10 million copies of a title, 10 million copies at $20 a piece. We would announce it coming out into the market. We would announce it was going away. We would, you know, have a mnemonic where the vault door would slam, you know, going into the vault for the next seven years, you know, I don't care, boom. How would you promote that to the audience? Because I don't remember that. How would you promote it to the audience? That's going to show, you know, going away, you know, into the Disney vault. The last chance to buy it. Is that how it was? It's the last chance. Exactly what it was. And we would like put a timer on it, seven days more, six days more, five days more. And where do I need that on your site? On the television. On television. Yeah. And the reason that was important. Again, there was an objective, strategic reason that was important. That number. Well, the number one reason why people never bought a title wasn't because they weren't interested in it, is that they never got around to it. So you created urgency by doing that, right? An urgency by doing it. And it was, I mean, until distribution went digital and there was now ubiquity of product. It really was the main driver for studio profitability for 20 years. But then, you know, product became digitally distributed. And there was no more value to because you can get a title anytime you wanted, you know, once we started distributing it digitally. And so it, you know, lived out its normal life, but there you go. There's a little bit. Exactly. Is there a video? The difference is that that vault door would shut, going back into the Disney vault, you know, Aladdin, boom. And you'd show it. And so let me ask you when that happened, was there eBay outback then or not yet? No, not back yet. So were people going out auctions and buying stuff online, like, if I pay 90 bucks, now I'm selling it for $300. Yes, there you go. There you go. There's the vault door. Put this up to the world. And they would see that something's going into the vault. They would see something's going into the vault. And then I would get calls from friends. Hey, my daughter's got a birthday. Could you open the Disney vault? There's no such thing as a vault though. Well, there's a vault, but it doesn't look anything like that. It was where the masters were held. But we didn't store 20 million units inside that that vault there. But there was a bunch of people that were involved in this with me, some exceptional markers, marketers by the name of Lauren McPherson, Gordon, Ho, Andy Seditsky, who are all part of this. And they did a spectacular job. We all had different pieces. I had the Disney brand. I was working on marketing the Disney brand products because, you know, we had other brands like, you know, touchstone Hollywood pictures and things like that. So there was a whole bunch of brands and they didn't those non-Disney brands didn't have the benefit of having the Disney vault. But we all really, really did some exceptional things back then when you opened it up when the seven years came by and you're opening it up. Yep. What were some numbers you guys would put up on day one. It depends on the title, but, you know, Snow White. Okay. So Snow White was the classic because there's one that started them all. Right. And that particular title, I think we did in excess. I believe over 10 million units. And that would have been at, by the way, at $20. You would have. Yeah. That would have been $1.99 and we would have sold 100,000 of them if we didn't have that strategy. But we wanted to protect Disney's all about the content. It's all about the equity. It's all about the brand. So we needed to protect that at the same time commercialize it. How do you do it? Make it scarce. And don't treat it like something that belongs in a dump in with a whole drilled in it. And, uh, 10 million units in a day at 20 bucks of a movie made in 1937. That is unbelievable. So now when the board see in this and saying, Hey, good job, Bob. What's the reaction from the board from the leadership team? I get made president of home video. And this is when the guy was leaving a Microsoft and your wife wasn't feeling well and he was going to be the EVP. You applied for the EVP. But they said instead of giving you EVP, they're going to give you the president. Is this the. Yeah. So this is very important lesson for the average person if you don't mind unpacking because at that time, you know, when you talk about in the book, your wife's going through a real health issue. We're not talking about something. This is a challenge and time for you. So you have an opportunity to and Cindy, right? If I'm if I'm. And you have an opportunity to take on a life, changing job. It's going to pay well, but it's kind of come with responsibilities, time, all of that stuff. But at the same time, your wife has leukemia. How are you managing this season of your life? Through perseverance and just mental toughness. So I went in to see my my boss to let him know that my wife had leukemia and was going to need a bone marrow transplant, which serious today, but it was really serious back then. And he said, well, before you tell me what you got to tell me, I'm leaving. I want to tell you I'm leaving. And my job's going to be open and you can apply if you want. And so, yeah, I was like, here's my chance to, you know, reach reach for the all I can be. Is this guy Mitch? Is it was a miss joke? Yeah. Yes. Good guy. But at the same time, I've got a bigger priority. So I went home and told my wife and she goes, you got to do this. You got to do this. Good for. So shortly thereafter, she went in to City of Hope. Fantastic place. They saved her life. City of Hope for a bone marrow transplant and her brother was the donor. But that basically meant that for about six weeks, she was in the bubble, like, you know, there's no, no. Anything could have killed her if it was a virus or a bacteria. So she was in tough situation. And we have three kids. And we were about an hour and a half away from Duarte, where city of Hope was. And so I would go to work. Well, first of all, I would get up. I would work out at about three o'clock in the morning because I needed the stress relief. I would go and get the kids breakfast. I would pack up their homework, get them breakfast and take them off to school and then go to the Disney studio, which was about an hour away from where I lived. That was in Burbank. I would work until about noon, and then I would head back to pick them up from school at about 130. And then I would take them. That's so that's another hour. I would take them another hour and a half because that's even past Burbank about another 45 minutes. Probably know where that's. That's a deal. Yeah. And two 10 134. Yeah. Exactly. And so I would take them to Duarte every day to see their mom get there about four o'clock 4 30. We would stay about two hours. I would drive them home, pick up some food as bad as it is in the car as they did their homework, get them home, give them baths, put them in the bed. We didn't have any family in the area. All our family is back in the Midwest in Indiana. So, and about 11 o'clock, I would, you know, finish up laundry. and collapse and get up and do it again. And I did that pretty much every day for six weeks, being sort of dad, being, you know, housekeeper doing everything that I could for her, both physically and psychologically, and cut my teeth as a first time president at Disney. So, you know, it's amazing what people can do when they have to. You know, when you're pushed to the limit, that's when you're the best you can be. And I felt that even though I was, you know, operating, you know, probably at 50% of time capacity, because of my other obligations, I was 100% on it. I was performing at 110% of capacity at 50% of the time. - What gave you strength at that time to go through it? You're by yourself. It's not like you got a sibling to go see a friend to go, what gave you strength to go through it? - My wife had to do it for her. You know, and the story you tell of the fact that what are the chances that the matching bone mirror was the brother rob, I think, right? - Rob, right, right. You know, her other siblings, she's got three other, the two of our other siblings, and they weren't even close. There was not one allele match. They matched my alleles, and Rob was six out of six alleles. And as a result, he was the donor, and he saved her life. - You mentioned the doctor. The doctor sounded like you had a Persian name. - Not a money. - Yeah, he was a, that's a Persian lesson. It could be an Indian lesson, but it's also. - Yeah, I'm not sure, but Dr. Nadi, as she's called, was amazing. She was really amazing. She used to get a kick out of me because I would study the blood journal before I'd go in from one of Cindy's appointments, and I'd be asking her about different drugs. She was like, "Hi, where'd you get that?" I said, "Well, I read the blood journal." - You mentioned it, so it's kind of-- - Well, I say kind of, it kind of did. So, you know, I always wondered, "Why, it's 'cause my career." - It makes no sense, which I agree with. - So far away from, you know, microbiology, what did I do that? Well, it really came in handy because I was able, and then unfortunately, three years later, despite the bone marrow transplant, one or two cells survived and started replicating, and actually the treatment that she ended up getting was something that I found in a blood journal, and because Dr. Nadi was thinking of a more traditional treatment, I said, "Well, what about a donor lymphocyte infusion?" And she goes, "How do you know about donor lymphocyte infusion?" I said, "Well, I've been doing my research, and she goes, it's very risky, but it's very effective, and you just have to understand the risks, and that's what she ended up doing, is not very common treatment, at least then, I'm not sure now, but Rob came back in, they spun out his lymphocytes, was very scary, because it went wrong in the beginning, but I had a lot of guilt about that, but she survived it. - Well, then God, it's girl boy girl, right? I think the sun's in the middle, or the sun's the, for me, are kids? Yeah, girl boy girl. - Girl boy girl, right? - And at that time while you're going through it, by the way, what did Mitch end up doing when he went to Microsoft? Did he end up climbing as well? - Yeah, I think he did well. I think he did well. I don't recall exactly what he did when, but he stayed there for quite a long time. - So now you make it past this transition. How much is Disney also watching you and saying, "Sky's legit, he can have some mental toughness, and he can handle tough times?" Are they sizing you up that way as well, or not necessarily? - I don't know how aware they really were of my personal situation. Obviously they were aware because, you know, I wasn't there in the afternoon for six weeks when I first got the job. - Were you communicating with at that time? Was it at the president level? - At that point, I believe I was communicating with Dick Cook. - Okay. - And what position? - It was the head of the studio. - Oh, so you're dealing directly with the head of the studio. So he knows what, he has an idea with it. - And he was aware, right? He was aware that I was going through challenges, but one of the things that I was really, really fortunate is that they always gave me a lot of leash in my jobs. They gave me a lot of room to do what I wanted to do. And as a challenged dogma, they were always, you know, no one ever said, don't do it. Michael Eisner was very supportive as well. When it came to some bigger things, that would require his approval. And there's all really very positive, very enabling. - What wouldn't they compromise? You can't become a, at one point, a half a trillion dollar company with this kind of a brand that's one of the most famous brands in them. What did they not compromise? - Anything that risk brand equity. - What does that mean? - Steve Jobs used to talk about brand deposits and brand withdrawal. And, you know, because obviously Apple's very similar, you always have to be conscious of making a brand withdrawal. You have to put in a lot more than you can ever take out. And so, creativity and the brand are the two things that Disney that are, you cannot compromise whatsoever. - What areas did they invigorate creativity or was it more like they recruited creativity? They couldn't take a six and making creative. - It's culture, it's a cultural thing. They, you know, I mean, obviously they got great, great of telling them and look at Disney's history. But it really, it's a cultural thing. It's a, those two elements, stewardship of the brand and, and, you know, really fostering creativity are two of the biggest hallmarks that I think have made Disney what, what Disney is. And that goes true, you know, all the way back to Walt. - Yeah, it's interesting to, to, you know, build a brand like that. And then you, you, what would the thing they imagineeers? That would imagineeers. - Imagineeers are the group of artists, engineers and architects. - Fascinating documentary on that. - Yeah. - I don't know how many years, like, 48, I don't know how many episodes it is. That's a long list of-- - It is, it is a long one. But they, they're responsible essentially for a lot of things in the company, but most notably the theme parks and putting in the, you know, developing the attractions, developing the restaurants, the themeing the whole places towards story, cruise ships, designing cruise ships, designing hotels, extraordinarily talented group of people. - Who created that? Who came up with that idea? - Well, I think it was the, I think it was, Roy, I think it was, was it Roy that did it? - It was a real thing, it was like a real, like, and the people who were imagineeers, was that, who got that qualification? What would take for me to be that? - Generally, you had to, it's more of a physical thing than a film thing, although obviously there's elements of film and attractions and things. You basically, most of the, imagineeers were from architecture schools. - Architecture school. - Yeah, there, yeah, it's a real balance between, right? Practical, because if you have an attraction, that's gonna run a million times a day and holds a certain number of people, that's a very scientific, you know, sort of a basis of approaching things, but it had to be storytelling at the same time and architects were very good at bringing those two together. Now don't get me wrong, there's people that are into costuming there. There's people that are into music. There's people that are into film. There's a whole variety of people, but the core of the people are people that design attractions. And, you know, there's physics involved, but there's creativity. They all have to tell a story. And so you get some really incredibly talented people that have gone through the doors there at Imagineering. - You know, in many sales organizations, they'll say, "Sailless King." In many tech companies, we'll say, "Engineers are King." Who was King at Disney? Who was Protecting? - It would be the animators. - The animators, why the animators? - Well, because Disney's creativity, Disney's content really started out in animation. And as a result, they were revered. They were revered and protected, probably more than anybody. But the Imagineers were closely behind. The nine old men. That's the genesis of it all right there. And to this day, those gentlemen are plastered all over the building and their work is, I mean, you still can experience their work when you go to Disneyland. - At Apple, Apple created six levels of engineers. If you type in Apple six levels of engineers, you'll see it. And then they made it very public. Where it's like, if you're level one engineer, you make, yeah, there you go. If you're level one, yeah, there you go. Level one, can you go back real quick? They would call it ICT. I make it small, right there, there you go. If you were an ICT2, you would make 166 to 180. ICT3, 250 to 260, go a little bit lower. ICT4, 345 to 380. And then you go to 480 to 560 and then 750 to a million. And if you make ICT6 plus 15 years, million plus, some of them are making five, 10 million honors. Who were some of the highest paid people at Disney that the average person would never be able to guess? - Well, you know, I don't know what their compensation is 'cause that isn't something that, you know, we would ever share, nor would be shared with us. But, you know, there's a lot of legendary animators. You know, I had the pleasure of working with, you know, people that ran those, a lot of those jobs. Peter Schneider and Tom Schumacher, who were really responsible for the revival of Disney animation after a period of time where things got a little soft and-- Revive? Yeah, well, they saw that, you know, there was a bit of a blip, historical blip-- What year was that? Before, I was right before I came. It was, you know, probably the '80s. It was like-- I think it comes in '84, '85 right? Right. And then he was, I'm going to fix this. And basically, you know, a little mermaid, a ladden beauty in the beast, lying king. That is the cadence that, you know, the genius of Peter and Tom really shepherded within the company to bring Disney animation back. Outside of being a CEO of Disney, which you're one of seven to do so when you became the seven, what is the hardest position to get to? Like you have to be cream of the crop, top tier, to become an ex-wise yet Disney. What was that? Anywhere in a company or within the creative-- Anywhere in the company. Well, obviously, CEO would be-- Outside of CEO. Outside of anything. Outside of CEO. I would probably say head of animation. Head of animation. Head of animation. Because so much of the brand relies on what comes out of animation. As the heartbeat of the company always has been and, you know, it's, Pete Doctor is a person that I had the privilege of working with for so many years when he was a sort of a middle level animator. I was a middle level executive and we got a chance to work with each other and Pete. Pete was fantastic and has gone on to do great things there and he has certainly shepherded a lot of great animation history and it was great working with him. Very interesting. So, during this time when you become the president of the division you're running, what's the story about somebody that came knocking on your door for $100 million and you said no to them and all your competitors took them? What happened there? Well, I don't know if the competitors took them, but the story is there was an impending format change, okay? And the options were, this is when DVD was already established and there was going to be a high definition format. And there was proponents of HD DVD was essentially a DVD on steroids which maintained a lot of the intellectual property licenses and benefits, financial strings for people that had IP in the HD DVD format, the DVD format, because it was the same, you know, the same IP. And then there was a substart where Sony came in and said no, we can actually do something a little more revolutionary and have a much greater chance of completely transforming the business. And remember, the transformation of the business was important because then we can sell whole catalog all over again as opposed to some people making the transition to high definition HD DVD and versus people wholesale completely replacing all their library, you can understand how valuable that would be with the Disney library. So Blu-ray's out there from Sony, Warner and Toshiba had HD DVD and crazy me, I'm like, boy, a complete transition to the library with something that was revolutionary like Blu-ray sounds to me to be a lot more transformative than just going with two DVDs glued together. Which was what HD DVD was. But because there was a lot of powers at B in the industry, they wanted that, those revenue streams, you know, Warner's wanted the revenue stream, Toshiba wanted the revenue stream from DVD to continue, and went to Blu-ray then Sony was getting it. But I looked at it through a consumer lens and I said, what would be the most transformative thing for the consumer from an experienced standpoint, from an interactivity standpoint? Because this is where it wasn't just sit back and watch the movie, this was a little more lean forward. What year is this? Oh gosh. Ernie twos. Yeah, early twos, early twos. And sure enough, I lined up with Sony and the rest of the industry lined up with HD DVD and we had essentially a good old format war. And somebody did come to my office and essentially in the form of what would be replication credits. In other words, consideration for discounted disc replication because we make a lot of hundreds of millions of discs. And I took the offer to Bob Eiger at the time and he goes, what would you do? I said, the value to us of a complete format transformation to a format that's going to, you know, obsolete DVD is worth so much more than $100 million and I think it's short-sighted to take it. He goes, okay, you're call. So that's what I was talking about, the amount of freedom, the degrees of freedom that I got were enormous, but I always made it work. Was that the, what was your first interaction with Bob? Is that the first one or no? You guys met at the first one at an event, right? When you. Yeah, we met at an event and, you know, it was kind of a simple introduction. He said, "Hi, I said hi" and because, you know, he was much higher than me, obviously. He came over from ABC, went in the Cap City's ABC acquisition and so to me he was just another one of these kind of super executives and I was, you know, a division president. If there's a levels to the average person to understand what that means, like, let's just say level 30 of CEO. What is Bob at the time? What are you? So Bob at the time was right underneath Michael Eisner. Well, he's true. He was like, he was like company president, sort of the equivalent of a COO and then there would be chairman of the big conglomerates like Parks, the movie studio, right? And I was then a division president underneath that. So it would be Michael, it would be Bob, it would be chairman, like Dick Cook, the gentleman I mentioned earlier. And then a whole bunch of division presidents, I was the video guy. When you did the Sony deal, did you deal directly with Tommy or Matola or who was at. No, no, no, no, no, no. That was, the name's escaping me right now, I'll think of it in a second. Was Tommy still there or he was already out? He was on music though. So he was on music. Yeah, he was there. He was on your dealing with. Yeah, different division of Sony. DVD, you're dealing with, is it DVD and. Yeah, it was the, you know, it wasn't the biggest part of Sony because they didn't have the IP. So this was kind of an upstart for them because it was Warner Brothers and Toshiba. Their arch-nemesis Toshiba was minting the DVD business. They were going to mint the Blu-ray business if it worked, and it did work, and against all odds. Blu-ray won the format war. We were in a catbird seat because that's what we supported. And the rest is history, complete conversion in format. What was your experience, any experience working with Eisner, Michael Eisner? He's great. What was he like? I watch his interview. He is so easy to listen to. Yeah, very supportive. He told me when I got my first president's job, I was in his office, and he said, "I'll never fire you for failing. I won't only fire you for not taking a chance on something new." That's all I needed, you know. That's your language. That was my language. Yeah, I like that language, and, you know, so that, I think that. Was he a driver? Was he an expectation guy? Was he selling the dream and the vision? Was he a numbers operator? It would say he was more selling the dream and. He was? No, he was. Okay. And an expectation guy. He wasn't like a driver. He wasn't the kind of guy that was at least me, and, again, remember, I had a layer. Yeah. Makes sense. So, he may be driving a guy's above you that you never experienced that. Maybe, but, you know, he was so successful, even before he came to Disney, that he sort of knew how it needed to be done. And, you know, he wasn't afraid to share his vision about how you make that happen. And, of course, I was a sponge. Oh, what was the book? Did he write a book called "Working Together" or "Michaelites", a red book with a white. I don't know who he wrote, but it was like all these different stories. He wrote one of the chapters, I think, was about Studio 54. That's the one right there. Go back to where you were. No, no, no, no. Go back to the one above. The one above. The one above right there. Right there. I wrote this book a long time ago, and in it, but who was he talking about "Working Together"? Maybe he was telling stories of others working together. Yeah, in one of the chapters, he actually talks about how Studio 54, you know, him and the other guy worked together. That's a team. Very interesting stories he told in this book. Interesting. So, Michael Eisner, he was the CEO for almost 20 years. He was there for a minute. Right? He was there for a long time. And, you know, at what point, like when you and Bob got together and Bob asked you, should we accept that $100 million or not, what did that relationship with you and Bob start? when, when was it when it eventually led to you becoming the CEO. Well, we had a situation where Bob was really an innovator. He wanted to test new things. He wanted to try new things. When he took over from Michael when he became the CEO. And he wanted to do a window test. You know, for so long movies had to be in a theatrical window, meaning it couldn't be released to anything else for six months. And being sort of the video guy, I'm sitting there for six months, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my chance to go sell it while this thing's melting like an ice cube. You know, the heat from most of these titles goes away. And he always thought that that was wasteful. I always thought that was wasteful. So Bob made a change at the studio leadership. And at that, he put a gentleman named Rich Ross in as the new studio chief. And he kind of promoted me to manage distribution of all studio content across theatrical, across digital, across video, across DVD, blah, blah, blah. And one of the challenges he gave me as I want you to do a window test. Now a window test, meaning that instead of waiting for six months, we might wait for six weeks. That had been tried several times and each time the powers that be in the industry made sure that died, which were the theater exhibitors. The theater exhibitors wanted no part of having their selling window go down from six months to six weeks. Even though 98% of the business was done in the first month, they just didn't want anyone infringing on their window with the expectation that maybe if somebody knew it was coming, they would not go to a theater. So Bob came to me and said, I want to test this. You're going to get a lot of push back, but I want to do it. And I'm like, you got the right guy. Yes, sir. And there were some hairy moments because we picked a title, Alice in Wonderland, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, film, and not only did we put it in a window that was very non-traditional, which was March. Big movies only come out at big times, right? Fourth of July Thanksgiving Christmas. Well, I always believe that was some self-fulfilling, right? Of course, because that's the only time you put out big movies. What if we take a big movie like an Alice in Wonderland, put it in March, and use it as Bob's test, so we don't have to wait another six months to get a big film to do the test of Bob's windows, you know, taking it from six months to six weeks. So we did it. The whole world knew it was a short window because the theaters boycotted us. They said you're going to get zero distribution. So here we go, six weeks before the title comes out, four weeks before the title comes out in theaters, three weeks, two weeks, zero distribution. I'm flying around the world trying to get the exhibitors to agree to this, trying to convince them that a six week window was not going to cannibalize. We had research, we had everything they didn't care. They didn't want to do it. So it became a game of chicken. And I remember I was in London, and I was talking to Bob on the phone. I'm like, I believe they're going to cave. I believe the exhibitors will cave. They will show this film. There's no way they're not going to show this film. And he goes and it was bad. I mean, this is going on for a month. It was it was a face off. And Bob said, you really believe this is going to work? I'm like, it's going to work. A couple of days later, they acquiesced, they agreed, the movie went out in theaters, did a billion dollars in box office, the first billion dollar box office film outside those big windows. No, shit. As we had forced awareness, 100% forced awareness that this was going to be a short window, which directly contradicted the hypothesis of the theatrical exhibitors. If people know it's a short window, it will fail. It went on to do a billion dollars. We did a six week window. We had ubiquitous distribution. And everybody won. And we got a chance to see what would happen with the DVD sales when you didn't have to wait till it was ice cold to start selling it. The disruptor like that. I'm assuming Disney is a calendar based business, right? On the movie side. 100% so so what are the do's and don'ts on the calendar? Like is there don't touch October or don't mess with jet? Is there any? Well, I mean, if there's two big, two big rules, it would be pick a high seasonality time period when when people will come, right? And stay away from titles that are bigger than you. Stay away from titles that are bigger than you. What does that mean? Well, if if you have a competitive title and it's expected to do 500 million dollars in the box office and you think you're going to do 150, you might not want to compete with them because you'll lose. That makes sense. You're 150 will be 100. So how did you guys get access to know what the competitors are coming up with next in the next two, three, four, five years? Oh, they go to industry conventions and they show their trailers and coming next July on July 22nd. So everyone kind of sister say, Joe, they're July 22nd. What happens if we go July 4th? There's a whole group of people in theatrical distribution that that's what is that? What are those guys called? What do you call them? Like a strategic? What is their specific title for them? The guys that are calendar in the whole thing out? Just basically theatrical distribution. I mean, you got to be strategic to be. You got to be strategic to think about what your competitors are doing. And you know, you take every bit of information you get and you're like, you know, you talk to exhibitors and exhibitors say, well, that Sony film is really looking great right now. Or that Warner Brothers film is looking really strong. Did you ever change dates to demolish a competitors movie that they were really banking on? Like, was it that competitive? It wasn't to demolish somebody else's to advantage your own film, right? Your decision was about advancing your own not demolishing a competitor's just to demolish a competitor, right? So I mean, I know you guys had a heavy way to that. I'm sure people wanted to pick on you guys all the time. Or, or was it behind closed doors a bunch of friends? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, there was no no cooperation at all. This was it was a war, but you were really looking to advantage your title. And then sometimes you know, they they think they got the heavyweight you think you got the heavyweight and those titles go really close to each other. And then you find out who had the help tell me one of those where you guys are sitting there saying, guys, this could go because it's funny because I'm not in your space. I don't know how to think about it. But it's kind of like, you know, sometimes you got formula one, brought, I don't know if you go to formula one race or not. I don't know. Are you a Kentucky Derby guy? A little bit. Okay. So they fight, they do it in the same weekend, right? You know, formula one and Kentucky Derby some weekend. So sometimes you'll see fights, a boxing match at the same time as a UFC match. And it's just like, let me see who's going to do better. What was one story that you guys have where two heavy weights went against each other and you guys won? This happened it's basically, I can't give you one story because it happened every 4th of July, every Christmas and every Thanksgiving. That's what happens, right? Everybody it's that right. So the rest of the weeks, there's jockeying. But when it's the the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, everybody puts their monsters out and then you go toe to toe. If it's the week before Christmas, everybody puts their monsters out, you know, July 1st, everybody puts their monsters out. And so you would get those times where the seasonally, remember I said one of the things you look at a seasonally, where the seasonality is so big that no one's going to back down. And, you know, essentially, you go toe to toe. You guys see each other at events? Is it kind of like when you see each other like, Hey, so hey, congrats on the movie. Is it it like that? There's some of that. You know, they'll, you know, see each other socially in town. You know, the places that people go to dine or go play golf. But, you know, their competitors, you know, they're competitors. There's a lot of respect for each other. I get that. I mean, you know, there's that in sports and business and everything. But, um, I didn't think about asking you this question just curious what you say, how do everybody you work with at Disney for 30 years? Who was the biggest cycle competitor? Positive. Don't worry about the word psycho. I put as an adjective. I'm just thinking a competitor, uh, compared to. So I would probably say it was, uh, Warner Brothers, just because they sort of saw themselves as a version of Disney. You know, um, any general they had that was really driving on the back end that they felt they were bigger better than you guys. Well, there was a guy that was in the video space. I can speak to this because of the video space. Again, name Warren Lieberfarb, who was a legend, a legend. And he was an advocate for the HD DVD movement on the other side. And, you know, most people kind of stared away from Warren because he had a lot of influence, uh, throughout the industry. And it's another one of the kind of titans that was he, did he go with Tushiba? Is he who they went with her? Okay. You see the smile on your way. Yeah. So, but who was the most competitive at Disney? Like, who was like, you guys knew this guy was determined and super competitive? Was it I grew? Was it somebody else? Uh, I guess it depends on where, where in which, which business, you know, Disney, again, is as good cruise ships. It's got theme parks. It's got, you know, it was any department, any, any, any department. Uh, Michael Johnson's a guy who was my boss for a while. He ran a home video before I ran home video before Mitch Coke ran video. And Michael's a real competitor. Michael was like an Olympic skier. I mean, this guy was like the real deal. And, uh, you know, he, he, you know, he, he, he carried himself very like, Michael Johnson. And did he end up, uh, was he a guy that was ever considered as a sea? the opposition or not? - I don't know, but Michael went on to Herbalife. - Oh, that's the one, go back. - Yeah, yeah. - But Michael Johnson went to Herbalife. - Yeah. - What a weird transition. - Herbalife, CEO of 2003, 2020. And you know, he's a-- - He's a 2002. - So this is the time where Bill Ackman and Carl Ackon are going up against each other and he was a CEO there. And Bill Ackman was against Herbalife and he was trying to destroy their stock. - He had to live through this. - You ever seen that exchange with Ackon and Bill Ackman? - No. - Legendary, if you've never seen it. - You've never seen it? - Oh, you just showed 30 seconds of it for shits and giggles. Can you go to YouTube? And we shouldn't show the whole interview 'cause it's long, but just go to that one. Go to that first one right there. Listen, just listen. Yeah, go ahead. - You should have had it with this guy, Ackman. He's like the crybaby in the school yard. He was like, "Well, this little Jewish boy is crying "that the world was taking advantage of him." Most like in the old song, "You were the day I ever met the guy." He was like the favorite song, something called "Schmuck Insurance." I got to show my inventors that make it money. And well, that's perhaps that, you know, on Wall Street, if you want a friend, get a door. - It's a book about this whole story called "Coffin's Game," which is worth a read. And that context we're winding down the fun. What he called "Schmuck Insurance," because Carl Ackon, unfortunately, does not have a good reputation. Stick with me 'cause it's just important and got a few more points to make. Stick with me for one second. - Yeah, so if you-- - And it was a run or a life. So it's interesting. Michael Johnson goes too. So he was a real driver. He was a competitive guy. - He was a competitive guy. Real competitive guy. I skied with him several times. I played golf with him several times. And he is a competitive guy. - I liked that. - Who else? Who a second person? Anyone else at Disney? - There's a lot of competitive people in a different-- - In a different way. Harvey Weinstein was, you know, a competitive guy, but he wasn't a competitive guy on the sports field. But he's certainly a competitive guy in, you know, the boardroom meeting room. Pushing the envelope, negotiating, pinning people against each other at all costs. What was, 'cause you've done this-- - My way or the highway, kind of-- - Him, his style. - Oh, yeah. - And was he truly as feared as people say he was? - Oh, I guess so. - Fear it. Was he as feared as people say he was? - In his business, yeah. In his business, yeah. Yeah, I believe he thought he could make or break people. - He could destroy someone's career. - So it goes? - Yeah. You said Michael Johnson was a former skier? - It was a skier. I think he was like an Olympic alternate. Skying with Michael was interesting because he would ski with, you know, the mayor brothers. You go skiing with Michael and he'd bring the mayor brothers. You know, the twins. And it was very quickly when, you know, I got-- - You mean? - No. - I skied once a year, Michael skied a lot. So, you know, pretty much after a couple times down the hill, they could tear it away and for you and they'd go ahead. - What did Disney recruit? - Hand made in Portugal. Their craftsmanship is a way of life. For those who move through life differently, from some of it decks to nights that never need an occasion, every detail is considered, every step effortless. Crafted from fine swayed and built with builder technology designed to move with you. - Because true luxury isn't about being noticed, it's about how you feel when you arrive. The FLB icon Lova made for the life you've earned. - Did they recruit former athletes? Was there like a pattern of who they looked for? Or is there any-- - No, no, generally big schools. - Big schools were kind of a thing, you know, Stanford, Chicago, MIT. - They were pretty conscious of that kind of thing, which makes my background even more. - Indiana, to become good, that's what makes it a great story. - Yeah, well, I really didn't fit any of those bills, but my results spoke for themselves. - Respect. And in this part, there's a part of the book that was fascinating to me, where you talk about Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs came in and the Pixar deal is getting done and he's talking to you and then they're gonna go into streaming and you know if they go streaming, it's like an overnight shift where the people that are relying on DVD and Blu-ray, all that stuff. And then Walmart's calling you, Target's calling you. I think even Best Buy was calling you when you're getting all these calls. How chaotic was that season? - Well, you know, I didn't know this was coming. Bob had been working with Steve very quietly. - Keep him low on streaming. - Yeah, yeah, because he knew that everyone was gonna say, remember, remember what I had to face with theatrical when I only wanted to shorten the window. Imagine that you're going to release a product that eventually is gonna obsolete physical media, right? With iTunes. And he didn't want to have to debate anybody. He and Steve figured out that they had the best path forward and they did, they did. But that doesn't mean it was gonna be easy for the people in the business units that were legacy business units to go to their customers and say, well, it's gonna be, 'cause remember, we got all the advantages on DVD. DVD and Blu-ray and VHS really paid the bills for the studio for a long time over a decade. And one of the reasons we got that is because all the retailers use those products as a loss leader. In other words, they would buy 'em for 20 bucks and they would price 'em at 15. - Stop it. - Oh yeah. - Stop. - Loss money on every one of 'em. - So you sold at retail to them, you're not even selling wholesale? - No. - So let me know. - No, we would sell at wholesale. They would price below wholesale. - But if I'm Walmart, if I'm buying it from you, am I paying you 19 bucks per DVD? - Yeah. - You're expecting 20 bucks from me on DVD, your Disney? - Yeah. - You wouldn't sell it to me at six or seven bucks, even though your cost is 35 cents, 45 cents. - We set the wholesale price where they set retailer was up to them. And they used it as a loss leader for over a decade. Remember used to go to a target or a Walmart or a Best Buy? And if the title was Pirates of the Caribbean, you would have palettes of that. And it would be picked clean by the end of the day. And then we'd bring in more palettes. And so it was bringing people in. You know, one would, you know. - I got it. - I said 50 cents lower than the next one became a price war. We're still getting our 1999. - That is crazy. - That is crazy. So these people that are generating all this business for us, selling this product at a loss, wake up one day. I, by the way, I learned about it just like they did. Said Disney's now going to release their movies. - How much did that cost them? - Cost who? - Them, the fact that now everything's going into-- - Well, I tried to convince them that it would be a long burnout rate and that we would do things to protect the physical goods. And it took, by the way, it took the better part of a decade for it to go, you know, really peter out. You know, actually it was slower than we even in our projections. So to some extent, we were right. It was going to be a long burn. But, you know, the DVD sections then started doing this. They stopped promoting it at the front of the store. But it was a necessary move and they were both geniuses for doing it because we had to make that turn to the digital evolution. And so it was the right thing to do. Just would have been nice to have a little heads up. So I could have prepared for the onslaught of angry calls. So walk me through the steps of, you know, when he's doing the Fox deal, and this is Bob Eiger, he's doing the Fox deal. And at that time, everybody's, I'm speculating, everybody's thinking who's going to be replacing him? And he whisper something to you and says, hey, I think if I do this Fox deal, I'm going to need to stay sealed a little bit longer. You can correct me on this, but that's kind of how I took it. - Sure. - And there were a couple guys that were waiting to see if that was going to be their job. Rosula was one, Stags was another one. And Kevin Meyer eventually became another candidate as well. During this season, what's he telling you? Just be patient, Bob. You're one of the candidates. Or did you kind of know you were one of the guys poised to be the next CEO? - At the time that Jay and Tom were sort of the front runners, or at least, you know, it's all what's rumored, what's in your window, Bob doesn't go in, say, generally, you know, they're the front runners. I was just, you know, I wasn't high on the awareness scale for that kind of job. And he did come to visit me once when he was trying to make his decision. And he asked, he came to my office, which was rare. Normally you go to see, Bob, I was in a peripheral campus in Glendale, our main offices are in Burbank. So he had to drive like 15, 20 minutes to get there. And he was coming to see me, which I thought was highly unusual. And he said, can I come see you today? I'm like, this is 29th December. - Yeah, no, no, no. This was back when I was consumer products of 2013, '24. - Oh, okay, this is way before you come see you. - Yeah, we're eight years before, okay, got it, got it. - Right, right. And he said, you know, Bob doesn't usually, you know, ask you who he should promote. That's not, you know, that's not something he collaborates on. Especially me being a whole notch below these guys. And he goes, so debating Tom or Jay, who should I promote? And I say, he asks you. - Yeah, what's your opinion? No, big, big call. And I said, neither. And he said, who? I said, me. He said, that's what I thought you'd say. And we shook hands and that was it. - Wow, and that's, well, what month was it exactly in '20? - Oh, I don't. [BLANK_AUDIO] - But it's 2013. - Well, I'm gonna guess because I got the park's job in 2015 and this was a couple of years, I think before I got parks. So I'm gonna guess it's 2013, 2015. - Okay, so when this was the only outcome of why he came in met with you. - Yeah, yeah. - This was not normal. - This was highly unusual. And that was the first indication I had that, maybe that long list was a little longer than I thought. - Did you call Cindy and say, "Baby, you won't believe what just happened." - I think I waited till that night, but yeah, I told her, obviously. - What was the reaction to it? - I think to some extent, she was surprised as the way it went down, but she always had a lot of confidence in me to achieve that goal that I said I was going to achieve when I was in college. - That's right, for a second date or first date. So when this happens, Bob, when is the next time he brings it up to say, "Hey, that last conversation, are you getting ready?" Like, does that happen again? - No, it doesn't happen for. - No, it's just that Bob promoted Tom to COO. J left, right? So there goes J, great guy, but there goes J. And then eventually, Tom left the company as well. And then there's myself and Kevin Mayer, at least in terms of presumably. Presumably. - Kevin's won your generals, right? - No, no, no, Kevin ran strategic planning for the company. - Who was your general that you had? You had a, I thought you had a Kevin as well. Who was your guy that when they. - Karim? - Karim, yeah, Karim is who was, right? - Yeah, Karim wasn't in that conversation. - He was a chief of staff or he was a. - Karim was sort of my equivalent of a head of strap planning for my businesses, incredibly talented guy. - And at this time, Bob, who is Josh Diamaro? - Josh was sort of, I'm gonna guess he was probably a VP maybe at Walt Disney World. And as soon as I met Josh, I thought he was great. He certainly had the social skills, the personality, the charisma. But he also had all the hard skills too. And he had an ability and elasticity to learn. And I remember, Tom, Bob, you know, usually do succession planning every year, you know, who's on the rise, who's somebody to watch. There's all these categories. And I put him on the list and, you know, Bob said you should go give him some encouragement that you're gonna give him some opportunities. And I was about to promote him to President of Disneyland. - So he's your guy. - He's my guy and he's telling me to wind up someone else. You know, so at that point, I'm starting to think, well, maybe there is, there's another, he never came to me and had another one of those meetings. But, you know, I'm saying this guy's got, he's, I think he's the real deal. So I literally flew down to Orlando and met with Josh alone and said, you know, you're gonna start moving because I believe in you, but, you know, you need to do more than support somebody who runs a business and made him president of Disneyland. I remember, he tells the story where I called him and he was driving down the road and he took my call and he pulled over and I said, you're gonna be president of Disneyland and he talks about the story all the time about what that meant to him because it was his chance. I mean, that's a pretty big job, President. - 1 million subscribers or 1.1. - Oh, it's annual pass holders. - Pass holders? - That's what it was then. - At an average price, $1,000 or I don't got, the top is what, $18,99 right now. So it's a big business. - It's a big business and then, you know, eventually then I made him head of Walt Disney World and now he's a CEO. So I had a lot of confidence in him, saw potential in him and obviously it's confidence that everyone shared. He was on my succession list as long as I had the big job. - So you know he was special. There was something special about that. - Yeah, 100%. - So now walk me through you, become and CEO. How does that happen? - Well. It was December, you know, bonus time. Usually whatever personal conversation about you and your career. A lot of times it happens around bonus time because you're just too busy. The rest of the time you're actually, we're just running the business and, you know, I'm sitting there, you know, getting ready to, get the number revealed to me. What my bonus was for that year. And Bob said, I think, I think I'm gonna retire. I think this is it. And I had heard this a number of times before and so I was a little skeptical, honestly. So I didn't put a lot of credence into it. And so he goes, Susan, Susan Arnold who was the chairman of the board will be contacting you. And now I'm like, this sounds a little more serious than, you know, sort of the every two or three year I'm retiring. - Could you average person? They don't know who Susan is. - Susan was chairman of the board. - She is a super, super heavyweight. If she calls you, some's going on. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, wow, well, this is interesting. Maybe a little more credibility to this one, but I had been sort of expectation set. And you know, he said, I recommended you to Susan as my replacement, Susan's gonna call you. We're sure enough, Susan called me, said, let's go have lunch at the Rotunda, which was the executive dining room. And she told me that Bob had decided that he was ready to move on. And that Bob made the recommendation that I would be his replacement and that the board unanimously agreed and that this was going to move very, very fast. And, you know, Bob had mentioned to me that there's gonna be a period of time where you're going to, you know, you wanna go visit the board members and, you know, because the board had, A, had sort of turned over at this point, you know, we had a board, I think we had like four board members, I think I don't know exactly remember the number who all turned out at the same time. They're old Michael Eisner board members. And, you know, Bob had replaced all of them with his choices. And so I knew most of them, but I didn't know them intimately, I knew some of them intimately. And so I figured, you know, I would, you know, take the month of January and go fly around to their individual cities and sort of, you know, make sure that, you know, we all knew what the score was and that they had confidence in me. And I thought I knew what the score was. And, and she says, no, this is gonna happen right away. It's gonna happen right away. And, so. - Was that kind of weird that they said they're gonna do it right away? Did it create-- - I thought it red flags, but it's kind of weird. - You know, this had gone on, remember, the first time Bob came in and asked me who he should promote was six years earlier. So in many ways, it was quick, but in many ways, it wasn't so I-- - Got it. - You know, when this kind of thing is thrown open to you, you don't ask a lot of questions. You're just like, yes, or may I have another, you know? And so I, you know, I said, great. And it was, and I think what she said was, it's gonna be weeks, not months. And now, at this point, she's really got my attention. That's how I did call my wife. - Yeah. - Yeah, I said, you know, I don't know if it's real, but it certainly seems real. And, gosh, it was like two weeks later, three weeks later, that the satellite trucks pulled up into the lot and the announcement was made. - And the date I have it here is February 25, 2020. - Yep. - Right? You take over. The two of you guys are doing that CNBC interview, which I watched last night multiple times, okay? Just to see his body language, 'cause you talk about it in the opening of the book, where you say, and by the way, fascinating book, we're gonna put the link below, if you haven't ordered it, ordered it, I highly, highly recommend. In the book, you say, trying to see where it was, where you said, I looked at his face, I went back and looked at it again, and I knew this is gonna be trouble, right? Because he did not want to give up his job. You're saying that in the introduction. - Well, I brought to my attention by a reporter who said, have you watched the interview? Did you see his body language? And of course, I'm not gonna respond to a reporter, because I'm not gonna feed that story. So I did go back and watch and I did see the body language, but it was, obviously not only to me, it was obvious to a lot of other people. - A lot of other people. - The market as well. - The market saw it as well. It wasn't like it was just maybe insiders in Disney. Others looked at it and says, that's a little bit, even Michael Eisner was asked about it. And he says, you know, he said things about the co-seal. It says, I don't think that's gonna work. That's gonna be a problem if they do that. He said that in an interview with somebody. But I'm going through the timeline. So if February 25, 2020, you take over. Then the CNBC interview happens. Weeks after that, it's COVID. Now, when I say, it's already in COVID, but it gets pretty nasty COVID. You guys shutting down the park. I mean, LA actually at the Beverly, O'Silton, when Disney shut down could have been March 12, 13, 14. Subdate like that. 'Cause we were gonna take the family there. June 28, 2020, to Disney unanimously, extends Chapex contracts, right? Saying, hey, you're the guy. She talks to you. Your art, we like you. You know, we're picking you. And then board says, you know, you don't talk to Bob I grew enough. This is the whole session that they're going back and for you should call them more often. You said, I talked to them 30 minutes to 45 minutes every day. Then on November 20, 2022, the board announced Chapex was out. Iger was back, they blocked your email, you couldn't even send one last email to the people you were working with. One of your general's Kareem Daniel, which I mentioned earlier, Chief of Staff, Arthur Bachner and Assistant Jackie Hart, they're out. Iger was back and you were done. This timeline that the average person sees, how fast did this timeline go by for you? That timeline between the time that I got the extension, another three extension seemed like an eternity. It didn't go by fast because not only was I dealing with trying to bring the company back from the pandemic where we have almost all of our revenue streams shut down, but I'm also trying to launch a brand new growth business for the company which is streaming, which is, you know, we're only a decade behind Netflix, but it's going very well. But I'm taking sniper fire, friendly sniper fire, at the same time, which was not helpful. So you might think I would say, well, the time between the extension and the faithful November day was quick. It wasn't, it felt like it was an eternity. It felt like an eternity. So you said something in the book, which was very interesting. You said, some people told you, and I'm curious who these people are, that Bob knew COVID was coming and he was setting you up. He was almost setting you up for you to fall. What did you mean by that? Well, I didn't exactly say it that way. What I said was people volunteered to me that he likely knew, in their opinion, that he likely knew more than the average Joe did about a pandemic being around the corner. Now, I don't know if that's true or not because you'd have to ask him. He denied that COVID was ever an element in his resignation when he resigned. But I heard it one time and I completely disregarded it. I heard it a second time and I was like, God, that's funny. I heard that again. I heard it about five times. From credible heavyweights? Incredible heavyweights. From Disney or even outside? Outside Disney. Outside Disney. I don't want to go any further with it. But suffice to say that like, wow, you know, and by the way, may not be true. I don't know, may not be true. But this is what outsiders told me is that there was some awareness there. And you know, if Bob's one thing, he's a great executive. A lot of success, very, very excellent leader, very excellent executive. But he also really protects his image very carefully. And I'm sure if he had awareness that, you know, what I eventually had to do was lay off 110,000 people out of 200,000 would not be high on his list. Now again, that may be circumstantial. But I'm just saying there was enough people. My dad used to say where there's smoke, there's fire and a lot of smoke. But again, I don't know if that's true. And he's denied it. But the timing is curious because it was so fast. Bob's, you know, after all this twang around where I'm going to resign, now I'm going to get back. Sorry about the call. Right. No, I'm not. Yes, I am. No, I'm not. I'm aware of, as Susan said, weeks, not months. And it just was weird that I get the job in a couple of weeks later. I find out there's a global pandemic, which of course, I had no idea. And again, maybe, maybe he didn't, maybe it was just pure random circumstance. Well, one part which was kind of interesting, Bob, is when you became CEO, he had a CEO office. If he's not going to be the executive chairman, and he has a CEO office with a shower and everything, he didn't let you go into that office as the new CEO. That's kind of weird. Or was it like when Michael Eisner lost his, when Michael Eisner stepped away as a CEO, was his office given to the next CEO? I believe it was. But, you know, frankly, I've never been one caught up with the trappings. You know, I just kind of keep my head down. It's weird, though, Bob. It was weird. But frankly, I knew that Bob sort of celebrated these kind of things. Or things that were important to him. And he said to me, he says, having an shower in your office is not important to you. You don't go out, you know, on the town and do power dinners like I do, you know, you won't miss it. It's important to me. What? Great. That was his reason. Yeah. That was his reason. And, you know, a lot's been made out of the media. Somehow this story's gotten out. To me, it wasn't really a big deal. Maybe it should have been. You wrote about it in the book. Well, I wrote about it in the book because now on hindsight, it was meaningful. Bob's saying, at the time, I'm like, well, because remember, I knew I knew there was going to be some trouble in paradise as soon as the CNBC interview, which you showed us, you know, a still from shoot as a CNBC interview, play very awkward, right? It was very awkward. So I knew there was going to be a problem. And then you knew one to keep the office. So these things are just kind of piling up. I think the main thing is that 34 seconds. So played from 25 seconds. I watched it sing four or five times last night, played from right there, press play. And he's going to go in the short term. Over time though, as we all both recognize disruption and transformation are just inevitable in this business. And it hits each one of our businesses a little bit differently, but it's inevitable that those businesses will be disrupted and it's recognizing at that time, when we'll need to shift. And that's, I think, the. And it's important for the audience to know what question was asked. If she asked the question, in what way will you lead differently than him? And you gave that answer, right? And so if you watched the whole thing, did you watch the interview that he did with Josh D. Amaro? No. You haven't seen that interview? No. Okay. Why I saw it. And if you haven't seen it, the body language is very different. So I watched it multiple times last night just to see the body language here. If you go. Okay. And if you fast forward a little bit, you can go to the point where they're together. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Okay. Right there. In life. For years going forward. Well, I think you touch upon something that is critical in terms of what the next CEO appreciates and what the next CEO is capable of doing. And that is truly, truly appreciating Disney's position in the world and to people. Disney's not just another company. Disney really is a cultural institution. You fast forward a little touch, timeline, keep going. Hundreds of millions of right there. For now over a hundred years. When he speaks of working with Bob for all of those years, first from a distance and now much more up close and personal. And I've watched probably the best of the best. All the balanced, mild, and entire times. And he wasn't smiling in the interview with you. So I thought about it two different ways and I want you to break in down and maybe give your thoughts. One I thought about, okay, you were set up to go up there to take the heat, to say, oh my God, we need I grew back. Sometimes CEOs don't want to give up the throne and they want to be missed. And there is a internal battle between not a founder, but a CEO. Founder wants the business to grow forever. CEO is kind of like, man, you know, I want the next guy to transition to do better than me, but man, I also don't want them to forget about me because I've been so important for 38 years. Right of a lifetime. I've read right of a lifetime. Sometimes as well, it's a phenomenal book on what he did. It's a great story of all the deals that he did, but then set him up, leave. And this time around that he wants to leave, he truly wants to leave and he learned from the mistake on the way he did it to set him up in a different way. How do you process it? I think it's a different time in his life. I think he got a taste of retirement or, frankly, AKA less relevance, and I don't think he liked it. And I think he immediately knew during that interview that he didn't like being the color commentary guy. I think after three more years of it, and frankly, a rough three years because stock prices, when he left, it's pretty much where it was when he got it. So three years in no growth while the rest of the markets exploding, he realized, "Oh, you know, this post-COVID world is really kind of tough." And so I think he was a lot more willing to smile at Josh and give Josh the reins and support Josh. And by the way, after doing it to me, he couldn't do it twice for sure. So I think he was a lot more ready and I think you can look at it in his face. By the way, that happened on the first day of the job. So it wasn't like I did anything to earn that. It just was the situation that I walked into. And you know, that was the first of many. He looked miserable. He looked miserable. When I knew I really had a problem is when he did the New York Times article with Ben Smith via email, and he reasserted himself back as CEO. That was a weirdis article. By the way, had no idea it was coming. He didn't tell me. And it's my understanding that the board didn't even know that he did that. Susan didn't know. My understanding. Wouldn't Susan need to prove that if you did executive chairman like you? Yeah, but Bob did this thing that I called management by pronouncement. We're just like the Apple iTunes. You don't want to debate it. You just make the announcement. And he says, "Oh, gosh, it's already announced." There's a very classic tool that he used. And so I'm at home and someone calls me and says, "I'm at home." You lost your job already like this is a month after I after I got it in covid's and I'm just like and I'm like what do you talk about because I just reasserted himself as the CEO in a in an interview with New York Times, I'm like what are you talking about? Is this pre-Suzans meeting with you? No, no, no, this is after I got the job, but only like a month after I got the job got it and I'm like what are you talking about so now I've got a real tangible idea that he wants his that he wants his job back. It's not the next day we had a conversation. What was I call like? Not good from I have you know I'm very much a almost like a military kind of guy where yes sir I'll take the hill and I never push back I just say yes, and I'll figure out a way to get it done This was a little on characteristic and I think I caught him by off guard because I said you just signed my death warrant You just literally signed my offer. Yeah, I told him you signed my execution papers because how do I recover from this? You just go and reassert that you're you're coming back and I said you saw my death warrant and From then on it was a death by a thousand cuts because it continued these types things continued and You know, I don't know who else gets a job after after a day after a month and You know his predecessor asserts to the New York Times in an email interview so there was no misquoting that I I because of the circumstances I need to come back. I mean it was my epitaph that was it and I say in the book that it's not a miracle that I lost my job. It's a miracle that it took three years and I got an extension right before it happened Did you call Susan because won't call us to him? But did you know that was I said Susan's given you reassurance that don't worry, Bob We're thinking with you. He's only going to be here for a couple more years. Don't worry, Bob. It's that's just Bob You know, I'm like Are they best friends? No, or they're not I would not characterize them as best friends So then the edge goes to you So doesn't she have to vote to bring him back as the board voted to bring him back? Oh Yeah, two and a half years later, but why would she do that if they're not good friends? It's more complicated and that there's more board members and Susan There are other people that are highly influential on the board. So if it was Susan, she wouldn't be back I can't say I can't say yes or no body language tells me if I'm a poker player I read it as there's no way she would be voting for him to be back You can come to whatever conclusion you want all I know is that Bob had a lot of support from loyalists on the board because and he always believed the four from Michael Eisner Who say the four board members that he replaced from Eisner? Well, yeah, and and all of them at that point well, but but in summit. Yes, but yes, summer in particular I think Bob was always very Very confident that he can have his job back whenever he wanted Very confident. So if we if we speculate it would be one he set you up two He missed a limelight and just wanted to be back or three, you know, just a very honest, you know The business was not doing good and this wasn't a good choice for you to be the CEO Which one of those three do you lean towards? He regretted his decision immediately upon making it and You saw it for some some time from the time period where he Said I'm leaving to the time period that that first press interview came you can tell you already regretted it and Whatever attempts he made to go through whatever process he might have maybe none To reassert himself as CEO. He just decided to do it by pronouncement with the New York Times That's my that's my belief and again, it's my hypothesis, but look at the evidence in book and tell me you can possibly come to any other conclusion than that No, that's that's very weird and and I call some people around to just kind of fun But I've been following I'm just so you know, I think Disney needs to be a trillion out of company right now Not a 200 whatever billion out of them You guys had a good week this week because you know some of the announcements that will make I think like 21 for I don't know what the numbers But it was a decent week for Disney this week you guys made a decision and Numbers went up I believe slightly but I believe this is a trillion dollar valuation Have you ever read to book right of a lifetime? Yeah, of course, okay Do you remember in right of a lifetime when he says he's sitting with rubored Murdoch while they're doing the Fox deal? I think was rubored or else. I think it's rubored Murdoch. He's sitting there and then Questions are being asked about what he's gonna be doing. Hey, you know Bob Have you ever thought about running for president? Oh, no, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life Did you ever think maybe at that time? He was like thinking about running for office, and then he's like no, I'm just gonna go back to Disney because he's got the Personality to be able to run for president and he had aspirations at one point. I think of he had Any reason to believe he could be president. I'd still have that job Remember he wanted to bring it out NFL team to Los Angeles. That didn't work out He clearly had aspirations to be president. Mm-hmm Whatever reason that didn't work out and You know oh I want that Disney job. Got it. That's my hypothesis. So it's a possibility that the moment He may be realized that president job may not be a job for him at that time. Let me go back and get my Disney job back Possibility certainly looks like a possibility, doesn't it? And that people at Disney know that he had aspirations of being a president. Was that a known thing or no? Everybody knew everybody knew Yeah, everybody sent for since then like 20 years 15 years 10 years 10 years 50 meaning like did they know in 2000? No, no, no, no, no, no, this was a sort of A later revelation and it was kind of like Bob's gonna make a run at it Well, not that he's going to but he had interest in it of being it By the way, he would have been happy. I would have loved to have seen him how he would have campaigned for it because It would have been interesting. Do you have any idea on why he didn't why he didn't pursue it? There are Hypothesis out there You know, you have to have support of the party. I guess is one assumption Well, he had relationships with Emmanuel and not Ari the other one Ram from Ram. Yeah from Illinois, right? Because he was a player with Uh, with what do you call it with Obama and Bob was a pretty connected guy to a lot of the guy so very connected I'm surprised you're saying he may have not had the support from the party Well, I'm saying that is one reason why maybe he'd never chose to go forward Hmm, man Was he a perfectionist? Is he a guy that's a perfectionist like he won't take risks that the odds are not fully in his favor Is here. No, he will take the risks. Yeah, take the risk. He did Pixar. I'm so curious. He did Marvel He did look as those could have gone belly up Who's in the who in the history of this business has done more deals than him? The size of the deals nobody He's the goat of the deal making in the media space. I don't know if anybody's done these deals correct You know the deal Some of the things every time you would look at him There's no way he can close this deal and he would keep closing and closing and closing and closing so if The political thing would have gone a little bit more Bob Chapeck is still the CEO of Disney today I think Part of the dynamic was that some of the things he thought he would do after retirement Never came to fruition to football thing. Yeah, bring the team. Yeah, got it Got it and that's a pure speculation that you felt like He didn't have the momentum to go pursue it So let me come back to this. Do you think this this time with Josh Diamaro? Do you think there's a possibility like if Josh is going to be watching this interview for sure Bob Eiger is going to be watching this video. I think Michael Iser is probably going to be watching this video Because we sold some of his books today because I think people need to go by his book as well on top of yours, but If Josh is watching a video it's like I hope the same thing doesn't happen to him What did the likelihood that you think I grew will do the same thing to Josh that he did to you? I think zero. Okay, I think number one because I have gone public with my story So I think the hazards of that happening You're welcome Josh And then I think the second thing is the fact that he's already got his next gig now with the Lakers so His equivalent of bringing an NFL team to Los Angeles has been realized through the NBA so If somebody was looking at Kalshi odds Okay, of Eiger becoming a president one day What do you think are the percentages that he pursues politics now? Oh gosh, I don't know that I have a crystal ball to that, but I'd say near zero. Oh, near zero. So that that chapter has been closed In my own personal idea. I totally get that and I that's why I'm asking I totally get that on what you're saying This is brought to you by Kalshi if you remember if you go put it's going to be a risk So maybe the rate of return will be like the horse that Kentucky Derby that's one in 99 chance of winning But no one bets on that. Yeah, no one bets on it. Okay, so Then let's let's go through a couple of parts on this. What do you what do you take responsibility? to yourself, because the board did say, you said in the book summary, like, I should have gone and met with the board more often. I did not. You know, in the 18-month period during COVID, where you never met with the board face-to-face, what things do you think you could have done differently as a CEO? Yeah, that wouldn't have been one of them, by the way, because I couldn't. We were all locked up. Totally. Yeah. Right. We were locked down in home, so we couldn't get on planes. The board, you know, the first board meeting we had was like 18 months after COVID hit. And there was plenty of debate about not even doing that, and that was at the 18-month period. That was my first opportunity. So that was just a function of COVID that I really couldn't do that. I was on the phone with them all the time, but, you know, something about the, like, you and me, right now, right? We're talking, interpersonally, one-on-one, it'd be different if we were doing this via Zoom. That would not have been it. In my beginning? Like, previously? In the beginning, because, you know, here's the thing about human nature. You're different, right? I saw what happened to Jay. This is going to be different. Then I saw the interview. I was like, no, it'll be okay. It'll be okay. Then, you know, we had the incident on the plane where the CFO, Christine McCarthy says, hey, let's have our first one-on-one together. And so I said, oh, okay, and Bob's sitting next to us and he blew up, like Bob doesn't blow up. That's not his style. He blew up. That's disrespectful. You're going to have for your first one-on-one in front of me? I heard he had the job. All we're going to do is talk about what's on her tick list and what's on my tick list, right? You know, then the New York Times, you know, and then just keep going that the tweet about, you know, Black Lives Matter and not Black Lives Matter. But don't say gay. Don't say gay. Don't say gay. And, you know, and the list just keeps growing in each time, you know, when I really had awareness that, like, wow, I should have seen the smoke signals earlier was the New York Times. But at that point, he'd already told the world he's coming back. And so what's surprising to me is anybody has any difficulty at all believing the hypothesis that he wanted to come back and he was going to be determined to come back because he said that he said it in an interview, in an email interview. So there's no doubt that that's the situation. There is no other hypothesis. Read the New York Times interview. One month later. One month later. He's closed. So that's why I said the miracle isn't that I lost my job. It said it took three years and an extension for that to happen. Do you still talk to Susan? No. When's the last time you spoke to Bob? The first time I saw him was at Sun Valley, yeah, Sun Valley conference. I think I'm going to guess it was 22 Sun Valley conference. He was in a group of people. It was cordial. I stopped, shook his hand, said hi. He said hi and I moved on and that was pretty much it. Oh gosh, no. No. You think this book is going to prompt a phone call for you guys to have a conversation or no. I have doubt it. You doubt it. I doubt it. Okay. So let me go to a different phase with this on the few things that I myself as a customer of yours for 47 years as a kid that grew up in Iran watching Disney in Farsi, all of them. We collected all the VHS's. My sister has all the collection of the VHS's. That was like our inventory, dream, memories, crying, watching it. It was incredible stuff. The part that was confusing to me is the final on what Disney did. So Disney, you know, the whole woke, where Disney is going to woke. Disney is going to woke. I went and pulled up numbers and I said, you know what I want to know? I want to know why Disney chose to get all these LGBTQ, can you go to the other chart? Not this one. Go to the other one where this one right here. I said prior to 2019, how many gay characters or LGBTQ characters that Disney have? So we used AI and it pulled up the numbers. You guys wouldn't have characters and if you did, it wasn't even public. I think the first character that ever came out as I'm gay, it was 2019 because it was a newer thing. Even one time, what was that one movie where the fellow goes and dances with a boy with another guy and I was like the first sound where it's like, well, it's kind of weird. Why is a guy dancing with a guy? I don't know what the movie's name was, but that story is kind of out there on what happened with that story. But then afterwards, pulled this up to go to it. If you go back to this, go back to the charts that we had. All of a sudden, Disney decides to get every single time. I would go to movies with my kids and like, guys, this is out of control. If you're deciding to go and have gay characters with kids, why are you doing it to kids? You're doing a lot of this gay characters, LGBTQ. This is the part where I'm living in LA 20 some years. I leave LA. I go to Dallas, live in Dallas, and my wife and I are thinking about going back to Newport Beach to my house because that was a place we were looking at. And I saw this happen. I said, there's no way in the world I can live of. We come to Florida and we choose DeSantis over Newsom and you know during COVID because you were running the park. You're talking a book. You're in the middle of this thing. You're talking to Newsom and you're talking to him DeSantis. Why choose a brand like this that the parents, I'm your customer. I don't mind going and watching an adult movie with gay characters. That does nothing to me. But why did you guys choose to do this as a company? I'm not going to endorse a position or other, but I will say that there was a belief by the LGBTQ community and the advocates within Disney that they had made a lot of strides in acceptance and that they were about to move backwards. If you look at this time period here, understand that the way you've plotted this is when the movies come out. -For your strike. -Understand. Four to five years prior is the development. Also understand that I was not responsible for a creative development. Go back and read the announcement of my CEO. Bob Aguero will retain responsibility, he will be executive chairman and retain responsibility for creative and talent. The only time that I actually had as CEO or as any job responsibility for developing talent was in my last year, 2022, but those films were all greenlit back in 2018, 2019. I can't speak to what was going on in his mind when he made those decisions, but I will tell you what, I inherited that situation and it was obviously something that I knew was going to be very, very contentious. It's another thing I inherited, just like COVID. -Yes, you said in 2022, when you were asked directly what the Disney had become too woke, you said Disney's content should reflect the diverse world around us, that was your answer in 2022. So, respectfully, that's still your position and at that time as a parent, I'm your customer. -Yes. -I would literally move every one of the cartoons, I would go with my kids, I'm like, are you kidding me? We're leaving. I can't tell, but I left. And by the way, if you can go to the stock, there's one that matches all four of them. Yeah, I remember this. I read this tweet as well yesterday, I'm with the president on this, past this bill will put vulnerable young LGBT people in jeopardy. I remember this, don't say gay, but we'll come back to this. Bring the chart that has all four of them together. So this right here, if you look at this, the blue represents Disney stock, the green represents worldwide box office, then oranges, parks, and then yellow is the LGBTQ amount of a, you know, a film rate. Look how you guys are spiking and this shows pre-you, so respectfully, it shows what happened, and look at the stock. It kind of went down, the red stock's like, look, I don't want to mess with this. So there's a few names. I went to this because I wanted to ask this question and be fair to you, because a part of it is when I'm looking back, I bought a bunch of Disney shares last year, because this year, seven eight months ago, I believe in this product long term. So this is not coming from somebody that is just using this opportunity to criticize and yo, la la la, history of it. I wanted to know the history of LGBTQ with Disney. 1984 Michael Eisner comes in, he reverses his prohibition on same sex dancing at Disneyland in '85 and in 1995. Okay. So that's his position. Bob Eiger. 2019, Disney had earned a perfect human rights campaign corporate equality in the X Corps of 13 consecutive years, Disney also supported organizations like GLAD, you know, all these other HRC. Then, I said, who else was responsible for this? Latandra Newton was the name that popped up. She was a corporate diversity infrastructure. Eiger hired her as chief diversity officer in 2017, became prominent executive overseen diversity and inclusion, including LGBTQ workplace initiatives. This is Eiger's hire. Then he got Latoya Reveno, I don't know how to pronounce her name if I'm butchering in my apologies. Children's animation was an executive producer at Disney television animation. She's the person from the same leaked meeting who generated enormous controversy by joking about her not at all secret gay agenda, this leaked, we saw it and discussing adding queerness and same set couples to children's programming. That's one reason her name became prominent in criticism of Disney's children content specifically. She said, I add queerness. This is the recording. I don't know if you have it. I add queerness wherever I can. Anytime you see queerness, it's probably me. This is it. Can you please play this? I love Disney's content. I grew up watching. of all of the classics. They have been a huge, like, informative part of my life. But at the same time, like, I work at small studios, most of my career, and I'd heard, you know, hear whispers, like, I'd heard things like, oh, you know, they won't like you show this at a Disney show, and I'm like, okay, so I was a little like sus when I started, but then my experience was definitely the opposite of what I had heard. On my little pocket of, like, you know, proud family Disney TVA. The show renders were super welcoming, Meredith Roberts, and like, our leadership over there has been so-- - It's coming up. - Welcoming to, like, my, like, not at all secret gauge, and so, like, I feel like I felt like it was, I mean, like, maybe it was that way in the past, but I guess, like, something must have happened in the last, like, they're turning it around, they're going hard, and then all that, like, momentum that I felt, like, that sense of, I don't have to be afraid to, like, let's have these two characters kiss, let's, in the background, this, like, I was just, wherever I could just basically add inquireness to, like, the, if you see anything queer, the show will proud, though. But like, I just was like, no one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me. - It's just a little weird when we saw this. So that's, or saying she, and then, by the way, this is a heavyweight children's animation controversy. In Karen Burke, she was the president of ABC Entertainment and a later president of Disney General and the Entertainment Council. In the leak, 2022, Regium Main, tomorrow meeting, Burke said Disney had many, many LGBTQIA characters, but too few LGBTQ leads, and said she intended to focus more on that going forward. Critics subsequently made her one of the most visible faces of Disney, and I was critical at Kathleen Kennedy. I thought Kathleen Kennedy was behind it, and but respectfully, Kathleen Kennedy was actually hired by George Lucas, had nothing to do with Ivernor you. So my criticism to Kathleen Kennedy was unfair, and I publicly, I'm saying this, but you're a family guy, you got three kids, right? Two girls and a son. Didn't you sit there and say, "What are we doing guys?" Like, our customers are parents, and forget about that, I'm a conservative. You want some of my stuff, so you know where I'm leaning politically. - Yeah, I'm a conservative guy, and I grew up, but I love this product. Was there ever a conversation that we f'd up behind closed doors, pushing too much LGBTQ to kids and families? - I don't know if there was a conversation that "we f'd up," but there was plenty of conversation as to what was the right direction for the company. - You don't think this was enough up? - No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying we didn't have a conversation that did we f'd up, but there was a lot of debate what I'm saying is that it's the way you're phrasing it. - Sincere debate. - There's a lot of sincere debate as to where the company should be on this, because look at Disney's in a tough position, because in some ways it's matched up very well with the values of most of its customers, right? You know, families, that's where a lot of it's its families. - It's new, right? - I don't even think of this. - It has a political or anything. - Well, that's where exactly where I was going to go. - It doesn't need to be political. You guys made it political. - By the way, where was I on the announcement of what our position was going to be, I don't say gay? My announcement was that we were going to stay neutral because nothing comes, nothing positive comes. - Until Bob pushed you and Bob I grew pushed you with that tweet and then you came back and you sided with them with DeSantis because DeSantis never even said don't say give. All he said is, stop putting all these gay content to kids under the third grade. It wasn't that big of a thing that DeSantis was doing. - You do realize that there's a lot of voices in the room and you also realize that my, whatever I believe personally about any of this stuff is not what you as the CEO advocate for. You're advocating for what the company believes it should stand for, right? I have my own personal beliefs. Do I go around talking about a network? Hell no, right? So there's, I think you have to separate what a CEO does as he advocates for a position that a lot of people debate and come to a conclusion, this is probably where we should rest. When I got to the CEO job, again, not controlling creative and I saw the cadence of that spike, I was concerned that this could create a backlash. I was gonna, so you were worried that something could happen? - I was worried that this was gonna happen because remember, I had just gone through the, again, I hate the term, but don't say gay controversy where I said we respect everybody, but let's stay neutral and then, which is very fair as a consumer? I want that position. - Fair, but not necessarily the consensus after the impact of that statement in terms of where the company should reside and as the CEO of the company, I had to go make a statement that backtrack. - Did you call saying you should take a stronger position on that that people push you to make a stronger position on the LGBTQ? 'Cause I know a lot of Disney employees on the inside, I know people that are working at Disney and they're careful because they're Disney employees that love Disney, but they're conservative. So they don't publicize their political, but there's a lot of people in Disney employees that are on the left and woke who are louder. Conservatives can't be loud at Disney. You know that, if conservatives are loud at Disney, you'll get fired, you're not gonna move up. So you're better off just staying quiet and just kind of going with the flow. - Right, so the question, the question is, was a part of you knowing your employees who are on the other side could turn against you, wanted you to be more vocal on the LGBTQ, or cause you to cave inside with them. - It wasn't necessarily that it was the synthesis of such an opinion by a larger group of people who believe that there were risks both sides and where we landed as a company, where we landed in that first particular example with the, you know, we should stay neutral, was something everybody thought was the appropriate landing spy agreement? Up, yep. And let's just say it wasn't just throngs of employees who didn't agree with that. It was the synthesis of a lot of people's opinion that the company's statement needed to be amended. - Company's statement needed to be amended. - On the back end, where, you know, I look at your flywheel very closely, Disney's flywheel. And I remember the first one in 1957. This is Disney's flywheel in Ferguson. I'm sure you've seen this, right? - 100%. - That's a great story. The Atrical Studios merchandise license and all this stuff. Then if you go to 12 years later, this is the flywheel. Get bigger, add another park, et cetera, et cetera. Then bring it to the flywheel today. And if you zoom in, you guys are a behemoth, your small country is what you are, right? And the companies that you own, if an average person knew, they wouldn't believe the companies that you own, right? Do you know a man named Al Weiss? - Yeah. - Okay. So Al Weiss was a heavyweight at Disney. Maybe if you can share with the audience who Al Weiss was, because you know better than I do. - Yeah. Al was a legend. He spent a lot of years in parks and experiences. Well, we call it parks and experiences in parks. And he was a legend in Orlando. Headed up operations for the parks and very well respected. And he left the company, I believe maybe about 10 years ago, and is a prominent citizen in Orlando, advocating for hospitals and things like that. So I do know Al very well. - Was there any rumors ever of him becoming a CEO? 'Cause I talked to a few people that said, there were some conversations that he may have become the eventual CEO. - I don't know, because that's at a time before, when that might have been the case, I don't know, at a time before I had any-- - Makes sense, 'cause it would have been like your 15th year and you were like that. - Yeah, I was too low, I wasn't-- - So the reason why I'm asking this question is, because Al Weiss, based on some of the folks I spoke to, when he was an insider, he was offered to be the CEO of Disney, at least seeing if he had any interest, but he didn't wanna do it 'cause he didn't wanna move to LA, 'cause he was in Orlando and his job, he didn't wanna leave Orlando with his family. But one thing was with Al that the average person doesn't know, I think the fans need to know this. This guy was a massive conservative. He was a Christian guy. He was a leader in the company. He created an organization called Vision 360. And he made an argument at one point, Disney cruise ships can be as profitable without gambling and casino. He ended up being right with the argument that he made, that we don't need to do that. And then he joined Disney 72, stayed there for 39 years. And now Vision 360 is a national multi-denominational Christian, church planting organization based out of Florida, founding it was established in '04, and he does what he does. The question for you. - Could a conservative man, if a guy like Al Weiss would have become the CEO, who is an operator, he gets the job done as well. Let's say he takes the job instead of Iger. Let's just say, even let you say that speculations out there. And Disney doesn't make the massive hiccup of going and doing the woke stuff. You think Disney would have the same valuation it has today? - Oh gosh, there's a whole bunch of hypotheticals in there. - I like hypotheticals. - Yeah, I could say, layered about three. If it's hard to say. Look, L's a good guy, you know, and let's be honest. West Coast, Disney, East Coast, Disney. Different animals. - You're right. - West Coast Governor, East Coast Governor. Different animals. You are trying to please, one is trying to please. A lot of different masters when you're CEO of Disney. And I can attest to the fact that it's very, very difficult. I have my own opinions where the company should be on these matters. I'm sure Josh Domaro has his opinions. I'm sure Bob Eiger had his opinions. I'm sure Michael Eisner, well, is before all this kind of really blew up. But suffice it to say that oftentimes, when someone gets up in front of a crowd and makes a statement for the company, he's making or she is making a statement for the company. They may have their own points of view that may match up with that or may not match up with that. But, you know, that's part of the job. - You think this is one of the five big screw ups the last six years? Could this be ranked as one of the big six screw ups? - Yeah, well, I know what I think was number one, but the number one we already addressed, right. We went through it up. We do think this is a top three matter. - I think the company unnecessarily put itself into a fire that it didn't have to. - You don't need to touch that. Why even touch that like there's certain things? I don't even want to put the pressure on you. Nobody should even ask you, hey, Bob, are you a Republican or Democrat? It's none of my flip and business. Go make good cartoons, go make a good product. Can you tap in Disney's stock, just go to Disney's stock. And this is the last thing I'll stay on this end. And I'm gonna go, go max. If you can go to max, max, yeah. If you go to max, it goes not that far. It goes to 1985, okay? So, you know all I'm sharing with you? If you go from 85 to 2019, look how great you did without any LGBTQ characters and cartoons. You guys crushed it. And then what do you do? Your valuation today is the same as it was in 2014. How does that make any sense? - I think there's a lot of independent variables that lead to that dependent variable and the one you point out is one. - What did you get? - Well, yeah, yeah, okay. Cable television. We're the gods of cable television for a long period of time. It became, you know, cable, cord cutting, that became sort of irrelevant, you know, that happened. And that's, you guys made a very good move to remove from Netflix. Disney used to be on Netflix, right? And you put it on Disney. That was a massive valuation play. I thought it was a brilliant move. And I don't know who made that decision. Whoever did, brilliant flip and move for a valuation. You're bigger than everybody. Yeah, we can have our own audience. So guess what I'm forced to do? I have Disney as well, right? So I think there were, don't you guys own Hulu? Isn't Hulu also yours? - Yeah, yeah, but it's being de-emphasized. - It's being de-emphasized. So I think Hulu is a massive upside. It's being de-emphasized. - Yeah. - What a weird, I cannot believe you guys are de-emphasizing Hulu. - It's all, no, no, no, no, it's all past me. My point is, is that there's a lot of variables that track that. It wasn't just one. It wasn't the company's stance on that. - That's a big one though. - But it is one. And I think it would be a mistake to look at that as the dependent variable and say it's because of one thing, there's a lot of things. You know, I was asked a question earlier today in an interview, if I had one wish for the company, what would it be? My wish would be that it had a growth vehicle. Because I think that is a function of the company not having something that Wall Street sees as an obvious growth vehicle. Streaming looked like it was going to be it. And now they're selling Disney content off to other third parties that aren't streamers. It's not exclusive to Disney anymore. There's a lot of things that there's, so there's a lot that goes into this. But I think this speaks if you would ask anybody from Wall Street. This speaks to as much of that, yeah, we don't see a real strong growth driver. We know that, you know, the cable business, broadcast business going away. We know ESPN has challenged because of, you know, cost of sports rights relative to what it can charge. And it's trying now to invest in streaming. You know, Park is doing well, you know, but where's the growth going to come from? I think it's going to take some courage to go long on Disney. He has to confront the Eiger. He has to be bold. Is he a strong character guy? Strong character guy, yeah. That's good. There's a strong foundation with him as an individual that-- Oh, yeah, yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, yeah. And is your family guy? He is. He is. Very much so. Good. Very much so. Listen, to me, I'm the guy where, when a local business shuts down and say, I've been going to that place for 10 years, I don't like that. It's like a funeral to me. Right. And I'm a guy that loves America. And one of the things about America to me is Disney. I don't think you can say America. And Disney is not a part of the story. Walt, what he did, him and his brother, Rory. Rory was the CEO for the first 40 years, and him the creative. It's an incredible story. It's an incredible story on what happened there. By the way, selfish question. This has got nothing to do with the interview. Do you think Johnny Depp's going to come back to do a pirate to the Caribbean? I don't know. I've been too far removed after three and a half years out. So I remember when he said, even if they gave me 300 million, I remember that. Yeah, I can't say. I don't have any knowledge of-- Would you want to see it? No comment. No comment. Yeah. Interesting. I'm staying away from that one. With Johnny Depp. Well, I'm just the subject matter. Who I want to see. Oh, I said I got it. Yeah, I don't want to be quoted there. Interesting. Really? Out of everything? That's a no comment. I have a lot of no comments. You've been pretty good today. You've not been no comment. You know when I've read the book, I can't-- Look, Johnny Depp was fantastic. I mean, his characters may be one of my favorite and most beloved characters of all time. There's-- I mean, you know, even Alice in Wonderland. I mean, the guy is absolutely amazing. It depends on the script. A creative studio is always have a situation where they break somebody back 10, 15, 20 years later. And Harrison Ford, how do you integrate them? It's not as simple. That's why I didn't want to get into it. It's not as simple as would you like to see them come back? In what role? What's the story? It's all part of the integration. And that's why-- There's only one-- But he's spectacular. Jack Sparrow. There's only one Jack Sparrow. I hope he gets the money. Bob, let me just say this to the audience before I say to you. I read the book. My son had homework to do last night till midnight. So I got all these AI clawed and all the stuff. A summary that you put in there, you kind of go through them. We kept asking you for the audio book and all this stuff because you wanted to go through it. And I read the book. Highly recommend you read the book. So many things I haven't even covered you right now. We're going to put the link below for you go read it on your own. But I'll give you the final thoughts here, Bob, on where you're at right now, the future. Any last thing you want to share with the audience before we wrap up? This is a great company. It's got a great brand that doesn't mean that it doesn't face challenges. A lot of times, there's uncontrollable challenges from the outside world, whether it be COVID or things happening in the business environment. But sometimes, you know, unforced failures happen for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with, you know, the environment, the business environment or COVID or whatever the world's going to throw at you social things. And I think if Josh, tomorrow, can stay clear of those issues and has a board that actually supports him in doing that, then he's going to be tremendously successful. But you got to have the support. From Iger? No. From the board. From the board. We'll finish on that. Bob, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you. This was great. Hand made in Portugal. 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