Michael Eisner Interview

We hear your dad required two hours of reading every night. Could you tell us about that?

Michael Eisner: Well, I had to read two hours for every hour of television I wanted to watch. So if I didn't want to watch any television, then I didn't have to read. But when I was growing up, Hopalong Cassidy was popular, and Milton Berle. Dad was pretty unrelenting. Of course, we found ways around that.

What did you like to read?

Michael Eisner: I liked Jack London. This started when I was about five, so I read the things you read in nursery school and kindergarten. When I got older I liked adventure stories, the Hardy Boys, just the stuff that everybody else was reading at that time.

Did you think reading was fun?

Michael Eisner: Not particularly, no. My wife tells me that was her life. She came from a small town in western New York State, with a lot of snow in the winter.

I came from Manhattan, and when you're made to read so you can watch this new technology called television... honestly, to me reading was kind of a chore. Not that I still feel that way, and not that I should have felt that way but, you know, it wasn't a punishment, but it was a necessity to be able to get done what I wanted to get done. Therefore, as a kid I would have rebelled against that. Maybe that's why I went into television.
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I was just being facetious. I'm saying that, because I was forced to read at a very young age in order to do something that I wanted to do, which was watch Hopalong Cassidy, maybe in some twisted way that was how I ended up becoming an usher at NBC.
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What did you want to do?

Michael Eisner: Well, I think I'm very different than most of the people that are invited to the Academy of Achievement. My sister would have been invited, I would have been the sibling that was left home.

My sister was a competitive ice skater, and very accomplished, and an A student, and I was kind of just breezing my way through grade school. I loved athletics, I played baseball, and basketball and soccer and stuff like that. I was interested in just existing. I didn't have major goals. I watched Ozzie and Harriet, and Leave it to Beaver, and Doris Day movies, and went to college, co-ed college, joined a fraternity and had periodic battles with my father, and built myself into being influenced by a lot of my teachers. Became very interested in the arts, even though I was a pre-med. Maybe I just didn't like the sight of blood, I don't know, but I moved in that direction.
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When did you realize TV was a strong attraction for you?

Michael Eisner: I'd like to say I had this vision. I was an English major and a pre-med at college. There was a very attractive girl that was in the theater department; I decided I'd write a play to impress her. I was interested in doing that, that was fun.

I needed a summer job, I became an usher at NBC, because I came from New York. I loved being an usher, I loved handing out tickets for The Tonight Show. I thought it was great being near Jack Paar then, later, Johnny Carson. I just had a good time. I loved the concept of creating intellectual property. I thought I'd be a writer. I wrote a lot of plays, all very mediocre, all written in about two days. Went to Paris to be Ernest Hemingway, stayed a week and came home, and went to work, and just had one job after another in this area of creating ideas. And seeing the effect that one could have culturally, if you really paid attention.
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