Michael Eisner Calls Writers' Strike "Insanity" and "Stupid"

By Katey Rich

We've been reading about the creative chants the striking writers are coming up with (it is their job, after all), so don't be surprised if you start hearing some choice words paired with "Eisner." The former chairman of Disney apparently has nothing to lose these days, and mouthed off during a Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money conference about how the strike is "insanity."

"For a writer to give up today's money for a nonexistent piece of the future -- they should do it in three years, shouldn't be doing it now -- they are misguided they should not have gone on the strike. I've seen stupid strikes, I've seen less stupid strikes, and this strike is just a stupid strike."

Wow. I'm sure that's been going through many a studio executive's head in the last few days, but leave it to Michael Eisner to come out and call the strike "stupid." I think it's fallacious to say there is no money being made by the studios from the Internet these days, but an interesting point that, in a few years, the entire landscape of Internet revenue will likely have changed. The biggest hurdle, offering movies for legal and fast download, still hasn't really been crossed. As bandwidth increases, computers get faster and consumers get wiser, though, who knows what might happen?

At the same time, how can the writers sit back and watch their content bring in money from Internet distribution for the next several years without seeing any benefit from it? The residuals policy and contract re-negotiation are both far too complicated for me to figure out at this point, but Eisner's suggestion seems more like sleight-of-hand, "Wait! Look over there!" trickery than an actual solution. Also, quite simply, I do not like his tone. "Studios are there because they have to be there. They don't want to be in the transportation business and telling people they should be in the train business -- god forbid they should miss yet another track." First of all I have no idea what he's trying to say here, but second, that "god forbid" seems awfully testy. Strikers should check the bushes by the studio gates to make sure Eisner isn't preparing to lob rotten eggs at them.