Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner berated the company’s capitulation before authoritarian MAGA threats, but in many ways, he set the example.
Disney CEO Bob Iger holds a 2016 press conference at Disney’s Shanghai resort.
(Johannes Eisele / AFP via Getty Images)
Last night, Jimmy Kimmel’s “indefinite” suspension from ABC ended with his emotional return to Jimmy Kimmel Live! According to Puck’s entertainment correspondent Kim Masters, the studio, owned by the Disney Corporation, was moved to abruptly reverse its Kimmel decision—which came in response to right-wing protests over comments about the Trump administration’s political response to the killing of Charlie Kirk—in part as a result of scathing social media comments from former Disney chair and CEO Michael Eisner. Though Eisner’s post didn’t name any names, it was clearly aimed squarely at his successor in the Happiest Place on Earth, Robert Iger.
“Where has all the leadership gone?” Eisner asked on X.com. “If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment? The ‘suspending indefinitely’ of Jimmy Kimmel immediately after the Chairman of the FCC’s aggressive yet hollow threatening of the Disney Company is yet another example of out-of-control intimidation.”
Eisner was referring to the interview that Brendan Carr, Trump’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave to a right-wing podcaster last week, in which he said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” That same day, Sinclair Media and Nexstar, two companies that own dozens of ABC affiliates in major media markets, announced that they would no longer carry Kimmel’s show. Disney then announced Kimmel’s suspension.
According to Masters, the long history between Eisner and Iger and the ugly battle that ushered Eisner out of and Iger into his job played an emotional role in Iger’s decision to reverse the suspension. Conscience? Pride? Who knows? The full story behind Kimmel’s restoration will come out soon enough, and bottom-line considerations will no doubt loom large. Iger and his team may have simply toted up the value of Sinclair and Nexstar ABC affiliate stations in a fading “linear broadcasting” network that Disney keeps hemming and hawing about selling anyway against the long-term costs to Disney of losing millions of subscribers for its Disney+ and Hulu streaming platforms over Kimmel’s suspension.
Another cost-benefit calculation that may have occurred to the Disney brass is that it’s not worth it to appease a bully. After all, it paid Trump $15 million dollars in a nuisance lawsuit against ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, and then still faced federal threats to the company’s broadcasting license over its late-night comedian’s jokes. The company may have come to the belated conclusion that simply doing the right thing and keeping Kimmel on the air would prove cheaper than facing a never-ending regress of Trump administration shakedowns.
Whatever the ultimate reason for the call, Kimmel’s return is welcome news, because when a company with the cultural footprint the size of Disney’s makes a bad move, the ugly results stay with us for decades. Say, for instance, that Disney had folded to the demands of an autocratic regime by silencing critics and artists opposing it. That, as it happens, is Michael Eisner’s own legacy at Disney, after he caved in to China’s market-bullying demands. And the artist Eisner silenced was the acclaimed film director Martin Scorsese.
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In 1996, while Eisner held a top spot at Disney, the studio greenlighted a $28 million budget for Scorsese to film Melissa Mathison’s screenplay Kundun, a historical epic about the life of the 14th Dalai Lama and the People’s Republic of China’s invasion of Tibet. Throughout the 1990s, the crusade of Tibetan liberation, fueled in part by a spiritual fascination with Buddhism, became a cause célèbre in the entertainment industry.
Richard Gere used his moment presenting an Art Direction Oscar at the 1993 Academy Awards to make a personal plea to the chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, Deng Xiaoping, to withdraw Chinese troops from Tibet. The late Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys helped organize the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, the first of which took place at the Polo Fields of San Francico’s Golden Gate Park before an audience of 100,000 people. By 1996, two major studios greenlighted movies about Tibet, Sony’s Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, and Disney’s Kundun. ABC even had a hit sitcom called Dharma and Greg.
Two days into Scorsese’s location shoot for Kundun, with Morocco standing in for Tibet, Disney executive Peter Murphy got a call from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC. As Erich Schwartzel reports in his book Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, the embassy official told Murphy, “You started, in the last 48 hours, shooting a film in Morocco about the Dalai Lama called Kundun.”
They had? Murphy did not get the call because he was a movie executive. He was Disney’s chief executive for strategic planning. He barely knew Kundun existed—but he knew why an unhappy China mattered a great deal. Years before, he had been to China to discuss plans to open a Shanghai Disneyland, a project the Chinese had been pushing for since 1990. Yes, China still looked like a Cold War tyrant to supporters of Tibet and the protesters of Tiananmen Square, but it had opened up its large, lucrative markets to Disney’s film and television divisions—a potent revenue stream that would only increase over time.
What happened next was the stuff of Armando Ianucci comedies—equal parts Veep and The Death of Stalin. As Schwartzel reports, Eisner’s team quickly put Henry Kissinger on retainer as its China adviser. At China’s DC embassy, Kissinger sat next to Murphy while Murphy explained to China’s diplomats, “You do not want us to kill this film. It’s not good for either of us.” Murphy at least demonstrated an understanding of American audiences that current Disney executives failed to achieve over the last week.
Under Eisner’s direction, Disney decided to throw Scorsese’s movie over the Great Wall and abandon Kundun. The company would spend as little as possible to market it, release its movie about religious freedom on Christmas Day 1997 in two theaters, and then allow a limited release with little press. And that’s exactly what happened.
“Obviously the Chinese, on principle, won’t be happy with the film,” Scorsese told The New York Times in 1997. “It’s a special film. I just hope it gets the best release it can. I’m going to fight for this film.” Disney was fighting, too—to shut down the studio’s own movie. Eisner’s plan worked, and Kundun earned but a fraction of its budget back, and then Eisner disappeared it.
For Eisner, the man scolding Iger over suspending Jimmy Kimmel, the thought that America’s greatest living filmmaker had made a film for his studio meant nothing compared to what Disney might lose over the long term in China. “We made a stupid mistake in releasing Kundun,” he told Chinese officials in Beijing in 1998. “This film was a form of insult to our friends. The bad news is that the film was made; the good news is that nobody watched it. Here I want to apologize,” he said. His groveling worked. To this day, Disney makes sure no one sees Kundun. It’s not streaming on Disney+ or anywhere else, nor does it have a current distributor for a Blu-Ray or DVD release. There are two films so toxic to the Disney brand that they remain in solitary confinement cells in the company’s legendary intellectual-property vault. The first is Walt Disney’s odious celebration of all things Jim Crow, 1946’s Song of the South. The other is an anti-communist film about religious freedom, Kundun.
Sony at least allows Americans to see Seven Years in Tibet and you can stream it today. Still, in order to keep selling Sony electronics in China, the company issued a mealy-mouthed apology for making the movie, and never allowed itself to court China’s displeasure again.
Indeed, all of Hollywood got the message. The major film studios have remained silent on Tibet since 1998. China has also been targeting musicians and promoters who took part in the Tibetan Freedom Concerts and banning them from performing there. Casualties of this blacklist include Oasis, Bjork, and Kraftwerk (whose transgression was almost appearing at a Free Tibet concert). Would Richard Gere get away with denouncing China over Tibet on ABC’s annual Oscar-cast today? Hardly. After a 20-year ban from appearing onstage at the Oscars, he appeared at the 2013 show. To give an idea just how serious an offense the Academy considered Gere’s plea to Deng, Will Smith only got a 10-year ban for slapping Chris Rock. To this day, Gere says, he is still considered a box office risk who will kill international financing of a film because of China’s long-standing grudge against him.
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China did everything in its power to silence artist activism on Tibet, and Eisner’s capitulation sent a loud signal throughout the industry. The American conversation on Tibet, once as high-profile as today’s on Gaza and Ukraine, has all but vanished. It’s as if Tibet simply doesn’t exist in American pop culture. In 2016, Disney’s Marvel line of superhero movies released Dr. Strange, with the comic book’s original Tibetan setting stripped away, even though the comics were never critical of China’s occupation. The same year, Shanghai Disneyland finally opened, after a quarter century of planning and a $5.5 billion investment. The park no doubt recouped all $28 million of Kundun’s sunken production costs in a matter of days.
If Kimmel’s return really did hinge on Eisner’s X.com post last week, let’s hope it was thanks to some good old-fashioned Hollywood spite: Maybe Iger just wanted to walk out the door with a better legacy than his chief critic.
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