Michael Eisner

[cosmolinguist]

Michael Eisner is going to quit (oh, look, a newspaper article you can read without having to sign up first!). In two years! That's a bit anticlimactic. Also, two years' notice? Most people just need two weeks'!

Reading this, I see that Michael Eisner "led the Walt Disney Co. to huge success in the 1980s but more recently clashed with dissident stockholders including the founder's family."

Before that, the only thing I knew about Michael Eisner is that I used to think he was Walt Disney.

When I was little, my family watched the Wonderful World of Disney movies that were on Sunday evenings.* Not because we were such a great, wholesome American family, just because there was nothing else on at that time back when we only got four channels.

Anyway, Michael Eisner hosted the show, which meant he'd introduce the movies. And that's what I associated with Disney. Hey, I thought I was doing pretty well to realize that Walt Disney was an actual person (a hard concept, when a young mind is presented with such an iconic appellation).

Having made that inductive leap, I figured this guy on TV talking about Disney stuff must be him.

I know better now. But still, the only thing I know about Michael Eisner is that he's not Walt Disney.

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* Might still be; I haven't watched TV in a long time, and especially not ABC. And even if it is on, it's probably showing the crap new Disney stuff like The Haunted Mansion and The Princess Diaries, and not proper old Disney movies like Robin Hood and Fantasia.

Comments

[irkthepurist.livejournal.com]

i used to think hanna barbara cartoons were made by two women called hannah and barbara

[cosmolinguist]

I think I did too, now that you mention it. :-)

[irkthepurist.livejournal.com]

i pictured two housewifes, oddly, sat in the kitchen drawing cartoons for kids. i have no idea why. i had a vivid imagination...

[cosmolinguist]

What a nice image, though. Made me smile.

[irkthepurist.livejournal.com]

i also used to think that before films at the cinema, all the characters would mill about behind the curtain waiting for the film to start. this was because before "star wars" when i was about four or five or so, lots of kids would run up to the curtains at the hugely screened local cinema, lift it up and run back screaming to their chairs. in retrospect it was probably squeels of excitement, but as far as i was concerned they'd just seen darth vader and chewbacca having a chat in costume before they took their places.... VERY vivid memory of that

[cosmolinguist]

I was sort of like that with the radio. I didn't think the people were in my radio—I hadn't beem introduced to the concept of radio waves yet, but I realized that the people talking and singing obviously must be somewhere else—but I did think that the DJs were in a room somewhere with the musicians, so if they said, "This is Roy Orbison doing 'You Got It'," he and his band were there to play it! Made sense to me...

[hephaestos.livejournal.com]

Well you know, if you did remember the actual Walt Disney introducing the movies, that would mean you were my age, and you wouldn't want that. ;)

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

I thought Michael Esiner was Roy Disney, actually, until I was about eight, for the same reason. TV screwed with my head!

[hexar-le-saipe.livejournal.com]

Before that, the only thing I knew about Michael Eisner is that I used to think he was Walt Disney

No, he's the guy who wanted to change Mickey Mouse to "Mikey" and take Walt's name off the company completely. (I'm not going to Eisnerworld, ever.)