Michael Eisner: The Spielberg deal, Trump settlements & Bob Iger truth

13:14Graham Bensinger:Well, I didn't expect it would in the World Series. for the Angels. I didn't expect to get in the Stanley Cup for the Ducks. Nobody expected that. We've been at it for seven or eight years. The pyramid in English football, the pyramid starts with a Premier League with 20 teams, and then there's 72 teams in the EFL below the pyramid. And we're now in the league just below the Premier League championship. It's very exciting and very expensive. Everybody loses money. Parliament has made a law with an administrator who's going to adjudicate how the money gets determined. Right now, the Premier League in the media takes 96 % of the revenue for 20 teams, and 4 % goes to the other 72 teams, which means the other 72 teams are all losing money and going broke, except for the ones that are owned by super billionaires and Eastern monarchs and things like that.

14:26So the economics are very difficult, but they'll get better.

14:33Michael Eisner:How have you gone about figuring out the role your family plays in all of it?

14:37Graham Bensinger:Well, my kids are deferential to me. I wish they weren't. Really? Well, I'm not 25 years old. They're going to have to take it over. And my son in New York, because it's closer, Eric, is much more involved with the team. But my other two sons are involved. But we're, I don't know, 6 ,000 miles away. We do Zoom calls all the time. They're interested. but when it comes to the finances it's difficult they actually own the teams the three of them own the team and I've done that from the beginning I loan them the money to pay for the deficit it's a mess, it's complicated financially but I think we'll come out of this tunnel into the bright lights of not only being in the Premier League but being sustainable and that's a you know, word used, meaning you don't lose.

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16:15Michael Eisner:Add a touch of pistachio, a hint of strawberry, or vanilla, or make it a spring classic with lavender. Because this season, there's endless ways to chai at Starbucks. So speaking of family, you alluded to grandparents when I was talking to you and your wife earlier. I want to take you way back and talk a little bit about family. But first, explain who your maternal grandfather, Milton, was.

16:45Graham Bensinger:Well, he was my maternal grandfather. He came from Washington, D.C., poor. I don't know how poor he was, but he certainly worked his way through Georgetown Law School. And eventually was the CEO and not the founder, but I'm not exactly sure, but they invented the safety razor, you know, avoid the five o 'clock shadow. And I used to go to the Yankee Stadium with him. and he would he had a little they didn't have boxes but they had a little section that was cordoned off and he not watched the game Mickey Mantle uh etc uh and he'd point out to right field to the gem their company ad join say that Michael look at the ad look at gem avoid the 5 o 'clock shadow so he was very proud that he had worked his way up to actually having an ad in right field for Gem Razor Company.

17:59Michael Eisner:What do you remember from Cedar Knoll Farm? Well, he was self-made, and he had a farm outside of New York in Bedford Hills.

18:14Graham Bensinger:And we lived in a building, a house on the back of it, in the summers. and weekends. And not even now you know the name, Cedanel Farm, but that was the name. And my first car was a hand-me-down, which I took to college, and it had Cedanel Farm written on the side. So that was my grandfather's property.

18:42Michael Eisner:One of the things that I found remarkable about you as part of preparing for it is, You know, you grew up well off. There are so many people that grow up well off and make very little of themselves. What do you think it was about your upbringing that instilled hard work and didn't kind of dampen motivation?

19:08Graham Bensinger:Well, everybody has the wrong idea of this. There are 350 million people in the country. it's a very small number of people that are brought up well off comparatively speaking so most of the people that make it are in the 350 million people that are not well off and the same percentage maybe of people that are well off make it but it's a much tinier number so they everybody figures that if you're well off you're going to be sitting by a swimming pool, drinking a margarita, and being a cast off.

19:48Michael Eisner:Yeah, but I grew up with a lot of those folks. They just kind of coast along, do enough to get by.

19:57Graham Bensinger:There are a lot of people, the majority on both sides, that just coast by. It is the unique, whether it's environmental, family, IQ, emotional aggressiveness, picking the right spouse, all of those things go into it. But the people that say to me, how did you make it? Because a lot of people who had a wealthy family never bothered to work. And I said, well, I just don't find that true. I know a lot of people that I grew up with are doing very, very well.

20:39Michael Eisner:Although that is a conversation I'll have often with folks that we profile who are first generation wealthy because they're then parents and they have unlimited resource, the ability to create whatever opportunities they want for their children and what the balance is between that and dampening motivation.

21:00Graham Bensinger:You just don't know. You don't know if you have a child that you've worked with and ends up at Harvard and Yale Law School and then fails. And then you have another child who may be on the spectrum or has a learning difficulty and ends up Elon Musk. You just don't know. You don't know if somebody who comes from the Kennedy family or the Rockefeller family becomes a governor and the president or somebody from a family of immigrants, first generation of immigrants. So it's just a cliche.

21:43Michael Eisner:For every hour that you wanted to watch TV growing up, you had to read for two hours.

21:48Graham Bensinger:I did, but I found a way to cheat on that. But in any event, everybody, there's a different story. In every family, it's obviously better to have a family that has a mother and father, that has an image of what a mother is, what a father is, what masculinity is. It is always better to have a family that encourages, like a lot of immigrant families, education, starting at the bottom, not being afraid. like a lot of wealthy people, I can't start in the mailroom. I got to start as a vice president, that kind of attitude. All of that stuff I've heard my whole life in various different places. And there is no answer to that.

22:30It's obviously better to have a solid family.

22:35Graham Bensinger:A single mother in the ghetto is not good for her children. No question about that. That doesn't mean every single mother who has a child in the ghetto, that child can't be president of the United States. What do you think you learned from your mom? How to put up with my father. Really? Yeah, I mean, you learn a lot from your relationship with your parents. My father always said to me, never tell your mother a secret. Trust me, she's married to me. I'm going to find out everything you say to her. So don't tell her anything you don't want me to hear. So I learned that. He also said to me, or she said to me, one I can't remember.

23:20Graham Bensinger:I just say yes. No matter how angry he gets, whatever you want, I say yes. And then an hour later, I do what I want to do.

23:28Michael Eisner:In what ways was she more ambitious and goal-oriented than your dad?

23:33Graham Bensinger:Well, if she had been a contemporary mother, she'd run General Motors. What makes you say that? because she just was very organized and very smart and had a lot of a lot of aggression just in her era that was pretty much impossible and she didn't want to do that she was she wanted to be supportive of you know what you learn by going to the movies you know in those days your

23:59Michael Eisner:father uh lester was away at war the few first few years of your life flying transport planes in the Air Force. How do you think that impacted your family?

24:10Graham Bensinger:I was pretty young. I do know that he started an airline in Ecuador. I do know that he bought two DC-3s for$20 ,000,$10 ,000 each to start this airline. I do know that he loaned$10 ,000 to this guy, Tony Blauner, haven't thought of that name in 70 years, as his partner. I do know that my mother was not wild being in Ecuador. And I do know that we were thrown out of Ecuador during a revolution. And we lost the two planes and he never got paid back for$10 ,000. And I do know that it was cheaper for Ecuadorians to fly to Quito inside the plane if they were dead. So they would be flying dead people in seats because it was cheaper than going in a coffin.

25:04Graham Bensinger:I do remember that.

25:05Michael Eisner:I don't know if this is correct or not, but I read he was never quite comfortable in the fatherly type role.

25:13Graham Bensinger:No, that's not true. You may know that because I called him by his first name because my sister's older, he said pronounce daddy or dad right. So we called him by his first name. So all my friends thought he was my stepfather. But he wasn't. He was my father. But I don't think he wanted to get older. I don't think he was a Peter Pan character. But we did call him by his first name.

25:43Michael Eisner:You mentioned his mom's passing. How do you think that kind of influenced his life?

25:50Graham Bensinger:I think if you're 10 years old and your mother dies, your life is forever influenced. I don't know the answer.

26:01Graham Bensinger:I wasn't his son. I wasn't his. But I know they were married 50 years, and they were close to both their sides, their parents. And most people that write memoirs or do these interviews will tell you that they were beaten, they were thrown out the window, they were never given the right amount of food, they were ignored. I don't know. I didn't have that. I'm sorry but I can't make it more theatrical

26:30Michael Eisner:I wasn't looking for that you wrote a wonderful book about camp obviously and the impact it had on your life you went to camp in some way shape or form until you were I think 22 but tell about this boxing match he set up for you when you were 7 years old

26:48Graham Bensinger:he was one of those fathers that wanted his son to be older than he was from the day he was born He was a polo player. He had me riding in Central Park when I was six years old. He had me leaving the barn in Westchester and galloping until the horses were soaking wet for one straight hour. I'd fall off. I'd get back on. He wanted me to do everything age-inappropriate. Could have waited a couple years. So I started the camp at 8. We went up at 7 to see it with him, father-son thing. And we went to the camp and they put me in the young group overnight, which I was even younger than. And they had me, my father had me in the head of the camp had me boxing, which now they don't even do at the camp anymore.

27:41Graham Bensinger:As a visitor with some kid that was six feet, four, 400 pounds. I think he probably thought that was a bad idea. If my mother was there, that wouldn't have happened.

27:53Michael Eisner:You said one of the biggest areas of conflict in your life was trying to meet your father's expectations.

28:02Graham Bensinger:Yeah, he would have liked his son to have straight A's, to always have his homework done, to be the captain of the football team and all that. I was some of that, but not all of that. I mean, I was pretty independent. I mean, I can remember going to Father's Day at my grade school having not done my homework. How stupid is that? And when I was called to the board to do something in math, I didn't know what they were talking about. He was not thrilled with that.

28:40Michael Eisner:You were originally going to be pre-med, later majored in English. He was kind of disappointed that you chose to go to Denison.

28:50Graham Bensinger:No, not. Well, yes and no. I mean, they all went to Princeton, and I went to a school called Lawrenceville, which was down the road from Princeton.

29:00Michael Eisner:Toughest place you've ever been?

29:02Graham Bensinger:By far. You know, all boys, schools through Saturday, chapel every day. But I did it. I did it four years. but one day somebody walked past me with a brochure from Denison which I never heard of and there was this beautiful blonde Doris Day looking girl on the cover beautiful chapel in the background this is in February I hadn't applied and you had to have to administer support it was a Baptist college didn't persuade me i got the headmaster of the school who was a minister he filled it out i got in i told my father in june was not thrilled we drove out we get to the front gate it's a beautiful school uh it did say on the front gate christian school for men and women women was the key my father looked at me and said what are you doing I don't know.

30:14Graham Bensinger:Seemed like a good place to go.

30:16Michael Eisner:And he'd already vetoed California for college.

30:19Graham Bensinger:He had vetoed mostly Japan because he lost a brother in World War II in Japan. He vetoed California because it was too expensive to fly out. He loved Denison. I think they picked the women by their looks. It was heaven. I never had a—it was great. It was great. It was 2 ,000 students, not 25 ,000 students. I could write plays, have them produced, stuff like that.

30:54Michael Eisner:Speaking of writing plays, why did your parish apartment smell like urine?

30:59Graham Bensinger:Well, after I graduated from Venice, and I went to Europe to write the great American novel, following whatever. And I went with a friend and we found a place in the left bank. We had a budget and we had a little bedroom, tiny, and the wall opposite where the headboard was, it was the men's bathroom. So every time the toilet flushed, you knew what had happened. So it smelled. and I noticed that all the Americans were kind of running away, seemed unhealthy. One of them jumped out of the steeple of Notre Dame, committed suicide, and I thought, you know what? This is a stupid idea. And I got on a plane and came home and got a job at NBC.

32:01Graham Bensinger:Tell about to stop a river. It was originally called to metastasize a river. You want to talk about not understanding what that word meant. Well, I was a denizen. I was a pre-med. I finally became a theater major and an English major because I didn't like organic chemistry. I liked the theater. And there was a girl who would not date me who was in the theater. was the big college star. So I wrote a play for her, which was called, I eventually called it To Stop a River.

32:43Graham Bensinger:She still wouldn't date me. Well, she dated me once, but she wouldn't date me. So I wrote a play and then I wrote more. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso.

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33:49Michael Eisner:How well do you recall the rejections in the attempts to sell the play?

33:56Graham Bensinger:Well, the play got a very good review in the Newark, Ohio Advocate, I think. I can't remember the other thing. I wrote it. I was bored with what I wrote. I didn't like rewriting it. I saw it on opening night, and I never went back again. I thought it was too dull. But then I wrote another play. But I think on that play, my father knew an agent at William Morris. And I sent, my father's secretary typed it for me, and I sent it to him. And I sensed that he liked it. I think he told me he liked it, but he died the next day. And then when I went back to William Morris to say, hey, this guy died, somebody else read the play, nobody else ever read it.

34:46Graham Bensinger:So that was the end of the play. It was very sophomoric. My wife still has not read it. She has not read. I wrote three plays in about three weeks. She hasn't read any of them. And we decided she would read them at my 25th anniversary, then my 35th anniversary, then at my 50th anniversary. She still hasn't read them. I have them in boxes somewhere.

35:09Michael Eisner:You said before, patience is almost always rewarded in the entertainment business. How so?

35:18Graham Bensinger:Well, I am not patient. So it's something you have to learn. And we do a show called BoJack Horseman. a big hit, great show. Somebody said to me, there's a person that works on a writer's room at a CBS mediocre show. We met him down the hall, and he told my associate his three ideas, and I said to him, you've got two minutes. Which one of those three do you want me to hear? And he told me about BoJack Horseman. and since I liked what was the show The Talking Horse anyway some show of my youth I thought oh this would be fun to do go write that he wrote it it came back it was fantastic fantastic this is Raphael Bob Waksberg who also has Long Story Short now just now on Netflix and And, but we couldn't, I'm the only one of the people here that thought it was great.

36:29Graham Bensinger:So then we decided we would make it ourselves. And we made a 12-minute version of it. And luckily, there was one guy, because everybody else passed, one guy at Netflix that loved it. And it got ordered. And it's become probably their best-reviewed show. so patience which is your question if we didn't have patience which I don't have which I forced myself to have nothing would ever happen because all it takes if you have 10 people in a room and one person is negative and a buyer it fails so you have to keep pushing and trying and we have I don't know 20 shows in development and we keep pushing and so forth when I was a buyer I'd like to think that I wasn't that way.

37:17Graham Bensinger:If somebody came in with an idea I liked, this was before streaming, I'd just say yes. And there were only three networks or four networks. So I had, you know, I just said yes to, I don't know, 15 different shows, which is why I succeeded, because I was lucky I picked the right ones.

37:35Michael Eisner:Bob Iger once said, you said, micromanaging is underrated. How so?

37:43Graham Bensinger:Well, I was criticized for being a micromanager, and I would say, well, why hire me? And you can't micromanage when you have 100 ,000 employees. That's ridiculous. But I was a micromanager in the sense that everything that had to do with taste, whether it was a theme park ride or a new theme park or the schedule at ABC or architecture particularly, I produced basically the first Broadway show we did because nobody wanted to do it. And the CEO producing a Broadway show is kind of weird. So that was why I was criticized for being a micromanager. And my point is the CEO should be a micromanager. But you can't really be a micromanager.

38:29Graham Bensinger:You have to pick your spots.

38:31Michael Eisner:Your longtime friend Barry Diller, he once said about you, he's paranoid. Michael is very suspicious of motives. What do you think the genesis is of that?

38:44Graham Bensinger:Well, it's very competitive in the executive world. He and I are within a month of each other of age and several months of each other of joining ABC. I wouldn't say we were competitive because he worked for a more important person than I did that I worked for a more important person than he did. And for the rest of my career, he was at a higher level than I was until I went to Disney. And he said to me, this is where it comes from, he said to me, after Charlie Bluthorn, who was the chairman of Gulf and Western, who we all love, was replaced by Marty Davis, when Marty died, and I heard it, I called Barry, he was in his car, and Barry's comment was, I hope it was painful.

39:37Graham Bensinger:So nobody liked this guy. And Barry said to me one day that Marty wanted me fired. And I said, well, that's not possible. We have five shows in the top ten. We've been the number one movie studio for seven years in a row.

39:52Michael Eisner:You guys turned Paramount around.

39:54Graham Bensinger:We were doing well.

39:56Michael Eisner:And that's a very conservative understatement.

40:00Graham Bensinger:Yeah, but I don't understand why he wanted me fired. I think I learned later that he didn't like the fact that Barry and I shared half of the bonus pool. I don't know. And Barry said, he said to Marty, I'm not going to fire him. And if you make me fire him, I'm quitting too. And I really didn't believe Barry. I mean, I did and I didn't. I thought, I didn't know what was going on. It turned out to be totally true. not only did he quit he went to Fox wanted me to go with him to Fox and I got a call from Roy Disney do you have a contract I said no I hadn't left Paramount yet and the week after I left Paramount I joined Disney so I've I'm you know one thing it's good to be lucky that's another thing we're taking advantage of it, but you've got to be good to be lucky.

40:57Michael Eisner:But hard work creates luck.

41:00Graham Bensinger:Yes. You're not lucky if you're a dope, but you've got to be lucky.

41:04Michael Eisner:Okay, so Barry also said, the only argument I've ever had with Michael is that he's an inch too tough. 85 % of his toughness is for good reasons. 15 % is over the line. Your thoughts? Well, I have a lot of thoughts.

41:22Graham Bensinger:First of all, I work extremely well with him. He's much smarter than me and most everybody else.

41:29Michael Eisner:You guys kind of both pushed each other in a way, like in the best way possible.

41:33Graham Bensinger:Yes, and I would fight. Fight is the wrong word. I would argue with him on a movie I'd want to make. He'd argue with him on a movie he'd want to make. We'd come to an agreement. I don't think we ever had an argument that didn't result in something good, and we never had an argument in front of anybody or anything like that.

41:49Michael Eisner:You guys almost respected each other more than anybody else. Yeah, and the thing about Barry is, which I learned early, he never lied to me, including the story I just told.

42:03Graham Bensinger:If we made a deal and we agreed on this and we didn't like the deal, we suck with the deal. Our word in this business is very important and we kept our word and we worked great together. And I worked great with him at ABC. I worked great with him at Paramount. I was the heavy in a lot of cases. He knew exactly what I was doing and how tough I was. I would say he's tougher than I am. Really? But I carried the water in those era.

42:40Michael Eisner:Why were you the only Hollywood exec to never get invited to Swifty's Oscar party? Oh, my God.

42:47Graham Bensinger:I would not let Bob Redford direct ordinary people, but for the same kind of deal that we would give any first time director. He was making millions as an actor and I said, you have to work for scale, first time director. The guy said, how can you ask this man to work for scale? I said, because we ask everybody. But on Swifty, so he had a book, and I can't what the book was. and then I found out he was going to be the producer and I thought that was a conflict of interest and I said no you're either the agent or you're the producer, you can't be both and he went to Barry and complained so Barry said to him you know I have to back the president I can't so I was bringing television ethics because television in those days was all the networks and the networks were licensed by government.

43:46Graham Bensinger:And if you screwed around with the government, it didn't end up well. The movie business was, oh my God, all for one, you know, it's just wild. And Barry and I were the first television people ever to go into the movie business. It was then followed by Warner Brothers and everybody else. We were the first. And we brought, we got there early in the morning, We worked hard. We wore a suit. We didn't play cards through lunch. And I wouldn't do deals that had conflicts in them.

44:24Michael Eisner:How about the lengths to which you went to at summer camp when Larry Gordon was walking for you?

44:33Graham Bensinger:Well, he and I have a different version of this. I supported him for decades. and when he asked me to direct the film, I thought that was a great idea because I think he's talented. I'm actually doing a show now with him so we've made up. But I said to him, you have to work for scale. Bob Redford worked for scale. You have to work for scale. Instead of which, he went and made a deal at Universal. So I took all of his furniture and put it out on Melrose Avenue and threw him off the lot. And then he went to a judge and sued us and won. So for the next two years, he was still back on the lot. And my wife wrote a television series with his wife.

45:24Graham Bensinger:My kids went to school with his kids. They went to camp with his kids. And he kept trying to make up, and I wouldn't make up. I was too upset. and at camp one day he walked out of the dock to try to schmooze me and I dove in with all my clothes and swam away so we did have a little coffee what did Jane say to you after that oh then I decided to write a script not me writing it so I commissioned a script called worst friends about lawyers. And one lawyer was ethical and honest and straightforward and the other was a little bit of an angle player. I was the lawyer that was honest. I was going to have Redford play me and I was going to have Danny DeVito play Larry.

46:15Graham Bensinger:And I was moving. I mean, I didn't have either of them. I haven't talked to anybody. And she said, Michael, you've got to stop. You can't keep doing this. So I didn't know any further. there. Script is pretty good.

46:27Michael Eisner:You've crossed paths with obviously so many folks over the years and from so many different eras. We came up with a list of mile, a mile long of folks I wanted to ask you about, but we've narrowed it down to just a handful. And I'm curious, just starting kind of in the media world, John Malone, you once said you didn't really feel comfortable with him and you kind of self-protectively kept your distance.

46:57Graham Bensinger:Why? I didn't understand a word he said. He's the smartest man in the entertainment business. Every one of his deals is very complicated, tax-oriented, and I just knew I was over my head. Barry did deal with him, and Barry, you know, Expedia and IAC and other things did very well with him. I'm to me everybody else he's the only one I think I'm not I don't think I'm alone in finding him brilliant because he always ends up with fantastic deals nicest man in the world by the way I have a very pleasant relationship with him but I'm not going to negotiate against him

47:42Michael Eisner:how about most interesting time you ever had with Rupert Murdoch

47:46Graham Bensinger:I never really was in business This was Rupert. Oh, yeah, I had one bad thing with him. Yeah, but he was a competitor. He was at Fox. He bought Sky television and he wanted all our movies. And I wouldn't sell him our movies for what he was asking. But I said I would sell him if he sold us half of Sky. So he agreed. so we knew half of Sky but he had the management control and we could never find out what was going on except for losing money in that era so eventually I asked Barry if he could set up a meeting with Rupert so we had a meeting at Paramount and we had lunch with them, Barry, Rupert and us and them and we started he turned his chair facing away from the round table never said a word in the entire meeting.

48:47Graham Bensinger:Not a word. Then he sued us, so we sued him. And I met him at the Mayfair Hotel in New York six months later. And I settled the lawsuit with him in five minutes. How does that happen? I wanted out. He wanted 100%. I said, you have to buy the movies? He said, yes. And that was that.

49:18Michael Eisner:Steven Spielberg and George Lucas bring you Raiders of the Lost Ark. What do you recall from the first time you went to see Lucas on his ranch?

49:30Graham Bensinger:Well, everybody had passed on Raiders because the scene opening Raiders with a ball looked like it would cost as much as any movie ever made, just that scene. And I thought the script was fantastic. And we made the deal, and I went to meet Stephen and George and tell them we have a$17 million budget. And you've got to bring it in at that. Today, it would cost$200 million. and Stephen said I can do a budget at any at any price and he said we'll take the scene when the plane goes to Malaysia wherever it was going over the Pacific he said if you want I can build a plane I can get a plane I can do it on the plane I can go there or I think what I'll do is I'll just have a little piece of the end of the wing and a door and Harrison Ford will walk through the door the engines will start you'll hear a plane take off and the next thing they'll do is there'll be a map showing going across the Pacific and I said well fine and that scene is in the movie and he did the movie on budget and it's history was made and I've talked to Stephen about there was some movie that he wanted to do with only the whole thing was going to be from one camera and it was all going to be about somebody like Six Million Dollar Man who was stuck in a bed and everything in the movie was from his point of view it was a very good script I could not understand how you could have one camera and he explained how he would do it and he made it seem so simple

51:30Michael Eisner:you know there's nobody like him what was harvey weinstein like to work with horrible how so he was

51:38Graham Bensinger:just a pig uh he was he was rude uh but he was a closet intellectual he looked like a truck driver he acted like a truck driver he had great independent film taste and nobody at disney would deal with him but me. And he just couldn't tell the truth. He didn't stick to the contracts. But he made Shakespeare Love and all these great movies. And we bought the company. We did not have a small movie division. We bought the company for$70 million. But he turned into wanting to make$100 million movies. He turned into...

52:21Michael Eisner:He brought you Lord of the Rings, didn't he?

52:23Graham Bensinger:He did bring me Lord of the Rings, and I passed on Lord of the Rings, stupidly, because the budget was so astronomical. And I just didn't think he was—I was wrong.

52:35Michael Eisner:Yeah, but the reality is nobody bets$1 ,000. No. And you were right more than you were wrong, which is why you've had all the success you've had.

52:42Graham Bensinger:I can tell you the three things—the four things I passed on that became big hits. But mostly we were right. Wait, what were they?

52:49Michael Eisner:I'm sure. I know Private Benjamin. I didn't pass on it, but I didn't like the third act. Goldie Hawn.

52:58Graham Bensinger:Yeah, I asked. First I thought Goldie Hawn looked heavy, and I told it to her agent. He said, why doesn't she come in and talk to you? She came in and talked to me, and the first thing she said is, you know I was pregnant. Or no, I just had the baby or something. So I was, and I did not like the third act. and they went and sold it to Columbia. It didn't matter. Goldie Hawn in a uniform, you didn't even need a third act. So I was wrong about that. I can't remember who the others were.

53:29Michael Eisner:What interactions did you have with Johnny Carson over the years?

53:33Graham Bensinger:Not much. He was not on ABC. Right. I saw him. Like, once he was telling me how it's interesting in today's world that he—why does he not support a political party more? He says, 50 % of the country is one way and 50 % is the other. Why should I have a show that only goes to 50 % of the country? Which is a good piece of—and that's the way Disney was. we supported both equally Democrats and Republicans. We want everybody to go to Disneyland. We don't just want Republicans or whatever. But today, I think too many, even though I'm the one that was the first one out to support Jimmy Kimmel, I think it probably would have been better if he went after Democrats as well as going after Republicans.

54:35Graham Bensinger:Maybe he does.

54:37Michael Eisner:Because broadens your audience, doesn't get people that disagree with you to turn off.

54:43Graham Bensinger:If you're going to be an entertainer, you want everybody. And you can certainly be critical and have an edge, but you've got to be that way to everybody.

54:55Michael Eisner:Warren Buffett, obviously instrumental in your deal to the choir, Capital Cities, ABC. what you recall from the kind of chance encounter you guys had that led to what was one of the biggest, the first or second biggest acquisition in corporate history at the time?

55:22Graham Bensinger:No, it was the biggest. And I knew him. I would go to his conference, his investor meeting, and I knew ABC having worked there for 10 years very well and at one point we were gonna buy them very early before capital cities capital cities bought them a year before we did buy them I had a conversation and wouldn't step up to what they wanted. And I, let's see, how did this work? I was at Sun Valley. I was walking through the parking lot and I saw first Larry Tisch.

56:20Graham Bensinger:And he said, why don't you buy CBS? And we didn't really want to buy CBS. They didn't have ESPN.

56:30Graham Bensinger:But I don't know. Let me think about it. And then I bumped into Warren. And I said, Larry Tish just offered me the company. And he said, why don't you buy ABC? And I said, okay. And he was playing golf with Tom Murphy, who was five cars away or ten cars away. Come over, Tom, and Michael wants to buy capital C's at ABC. I think we should sell it. Tom said, let me think about it. And Warren said, no, no, what do you think? He said, I think he said$18 a share. I can't remember exactly.

57:15Graham Bensinger:okay, I'll sell it to over$18 a year. And then I went and told our CFO. I went back to here. I called him up and said, and I'm making this up because I can't remember, $17.50 or something. He said, no, Michael, it's$18. And you did this to me a year ago because I did the same thing. So I said, okay, okay, okay. and I got in the plane, picked Sid Bass, our largest shareholder, went to New York and announced the deal closed on Good Morning America on Monday. Three days, no due diligence. And then Tom told me he sold it way too cheap, which he did, because ESPN was just exploding.

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58:31Graham Bensinger:Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They go perfectly with music, podcasts, and welcome back to the show. Even nature sounds. Oh, and the thing where someone crinkles tissue and whispers at you. Hello. Look, I'm not here to judge what you listen to. I'm here to judge you for not eating Reese's while you listen to it. Reese's. Ashley, go back to the nature sounds. Nice. Yeah, it's really nice.

59:02Michael Eisner:And you and Warren spent quite a bit of time together over the years. you and Jane would have dinner, I think, with Warren and Susie. We did, but he was, when we announced it, there's nobody like this guy. We all announced that Warren was there, and he became our largest shareholder. And I said to him, after the ceremony right there, I hope you continue being our largest shareholder. he said

59:35Graham Bensinger:I never make a decision to sell and buy the same thing on the same day and I knew right then he was not going to hold the time yeah anybody says to you I never make the same decision he did sell and buy on the same day and within 6 months he sold which he regrets

59:59Michael Eisner:understandably so with how you grew the company Last one for you, Steve Jobs. In what ways could he be difficult?

1:00:10Graham Bensinger:Well, he was clearly one of the most creative people ever in understanding simplicity and marketing and enough technology to be, in the best way, dangerous. He did not really know about Pixar.

1:00:35Graham Bensinger:They bought Pixar from George Lucas for the technology and made a film called Toy Story Because for us, we encouraged it because we thought their technology could revolutionize the whole idea of computer-generated animation. And because it was, and this is maybe what Barry's referring to, because it was our idea, I wouldn't say the movie was our idea, but the whole idea of making it was our idea. And we went through a lot of cuts of it and so forth and it became a big hit. But because it was a first time, I go back to the first time, a first time production of this company, they were on a net deal.

1:01:39and to simplify it, we owned probably 85 or 90 % of the film.

1:01:47Graham Bensinger:And then we made a second film where we did the same thing. And then Steve came to me, and I may have all this, you know, somebody can correct me. He wanted to change the deal. And he agreed that he'd put up half the money. and I said fine and we made a new three picture deal and I said of course we have to have a distribution fee and he wasn't as knowledgeable of the business at that point as I was and he agreed to a hefty distribution deal so we got a big piece off the top so instead of 50-50 it was more like 70 % ours or something which really drove him crazy and I wouldn't change it

1:02:34Michael Eisner:How about the toughest conversation the two of you ever had?

1:02:38Graham Bensinger:I don't think we had tough conversations. I just wouldn't do it. And he then said he wouldn't make a new deal. And I became stubborn and decided to make Toy Story 3 ourselves. And Bob Iger was a lot smarter than I was. How so? because we owned all the films and he wanted an amount of money to pay for something that we already owned and I thought we owned it Bob wanted peace and wanted a new deal and wanted the creativity of them to be part of Disney because our creativity was not as what it was and he paid up for it which should have to be the right thing to do.

1:03:34Michael Eisner:Bob Iger has made the comment before that if Steve Jobs was still running Apple, he thinks the Walt Disney Company and Apple would have combined somehow. What are your thoughts on that?

1:03:48Graham Bensinger:I have no idea. I doubt I would have wanted to do that, but maybe.

1:03:54Michael Eisner:You mentioned this a moment ago. You were critical of Disney's decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel. What made you decide to come out and kind of vocalize that?

1:04:12Graham Bensinger:Well, I did it with the advice of my wife, who said, don't do it. I did it with the advice of Matt Trow, who's around here somewhere, who said, you're playing with fire. The only person that wanted me to do it was Breck, who's around somewhere, and his wife, who really wanted me to do it. I just was finally fed up with universities, law firms. I left law firms that had made deals with the administration. I thought that was bad. I didn't think I had any voice anymore, really, so it didn't matter what I did. And there was a Peter, Paul, and Mary song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, which was an anti-Vietnam song.

1:05:09Graham Bensinger:So I just wrote out, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? I like that. And I just did it.

1:05:19Graham Bensinger:On instinct, three million people contacted me the next day. Really? Three million. Why? They just thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Somebody finally stood up. And all these celebrities. I don't know if I broke the dam. I don't know whether I began the snowball. I don't know whether it would have happened anyway. I don't know because I have not talked to Bob about it. Whether or not they would have put him back on just as they did. I have no idea. I just was. It wasn't that necessarily that Disney had done this. although it was my alma mater. It was a series of events, particularly with the law firms, and then the universities.

1:06:04Michael Eisner:What did you think of Disney's settlement with President Trump?

1:06:08Graham Bensinger:Well, I didn't like any of that. I thought the CBS settlement was ridiculous. I think ABC settling, paying him$16 million, which somebody told me went directly to him, directly to Donald Trump. I don't know if that's true or not. I tried to think, what would have I done in that position?

1:06:26Michael Eisner:Because you're kind of between a rock and a hard place.

1:06:29Graham Bensinger:I am sure there was a lot of conversation. I would like to think that I wouldn't have settled like CBS did, like law firms did, but maybe I would have. Maybe just the taking away your funding or not letting you buy a company. It wasn't the money because the$17 million for Disney is meaningless. But the image of it, CBS was worse because CBS had 60 Minutes and such a gold standard of news that I know they wanted to get, Sherry Redstone wanted to sell the company. Barry and I were actually looking at it. We made an offer.

1:07:26Michael Eisner:Why didn't it work out?

1:07:28Graham Bensinger:Because Ellison has more money than anybody. I think he's a third richest man in the world. So you're not going to outbid them.

1:07:38Graham Bensinger:But them settling to get that deal done, in the long run, maybe it made sense, but it was terrible for 60 minutes.

1:07:47Michael Eisner:I want to ask you about Disney today and then just kind of the changing media landscape. First, what do you think of the state of the company today?

1:07:57Graham Bensinger:I think the company is in great shape. I think Bob has been an excellent CEO. I'm happy that he was a person that I recommended, that I got it through the board. He was not the board's first choice in the beginning. He ended up being a unanimous choice. He came out of ABC. He was a president under me for a decade. He understands the company.

1:08:23Michael Eisner:It has to make you quite proud that you got that right, because oftentimes you have somebody who successfully run a company for a really long time, and succession doesn't go as well.

1:08:38Graham Bensinger:Most of the time, succession doesn't go well. Most of the time, you know, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. So going to the outside is dangerous. If you have people on the inside that are capable, that's a better way to go. But Bob, his predecessor died. He became... Frank Lowe's. Right. He became the number two in the company after a mistake, which we've all made. And he was great. he did all the stuff that Frank did and more and he understood it and he spent a decade with me and our design people and the parks and he knew it it was so obvious so I think he did a good job

1:09:23Michael Eisner:you think Chapek was given enough time?

1:09:26Graham Bensinger:that was a marriage made it hell what? Bob and Chapek it just was a mistake you know Bob really wasn't ready to leave completely and Chapek was going to prove that he was the boss doing stupid things, not necessary things, separating the distribution from the creative and the movie business, all those things like that. Bob recognized it, couldn't help himself probably in noting it. Chapek was a mistake. I don't know if I hired him, but I certainly approved him to run home video. He did a great job at home video. He did, I think, a good job with the parks. But he just was the wrong choice, that's all.

1:10:09I ask this from the lens of when you were hired to run Disney.

1:10:14Michael Eisner:Initially, they wanted you and Frank Wells to be kind of co-CEOs. The reports are that Disney's now considering a co-CEO post-Bob Iger structure. Apparently, they've consulted Netflix because Netflix is a similar structure. but what's your view of that today?

1:10:34Graham Bensinger:Well, I don't know when you're going to air this, but it hasn't...

1:10:37Michael Eisner:It's possible that a decision could have already been made when this airs, yeah.

1:10:41Graham Bensinger:I just don't know when you're going to air this, but I want to make a point that they haven't made a decision. It is ridiculous. That is not to run the bakery. It doesn't work.

1:10:53Michael Eisner:It is in Netflix, though, apparently.

1:10:55Graham Bensinger:Well, they are... It's a completely different company. It's a technology company and an entertainment company. And it has been basically co-CEOs with Reed Hastings being the founder and the guru and Ted Sarandas. It's not applicable. And I still think it's a bad idea. I think it would be a really big mistake for Disney. Pick the person you think should be the CEO and hopefully the second person will be number two. And when Frank Wells and I were having that conversation, first our shareholders wanted a CEO. I think they wanted Coe and then they wanted Frank and then I said no. And then Frank said, Frank said Michael should be the CEO.

1:11:53Graham Bensinger:It should be run from a creative point of view. I'll be happy to be number two. And it was great. And I can't believe I said it, because I don't know if I meant it. I said I wouldn't, because I didn't want to stay at Paramount. I said I won't come unless I'm a CEO. I probably would have folded on that. But anyway, I did say it. And they believed it.

1:12:14Michael Eisner:And the rest is history.

1:12:15Graham Bensinger:Right. So I would recommend them strongly. I'm not going to say anything if they do that. but because I want to point out again they haven't done it, they haven't announced it I would hope they don't do that

1:12:26Michael Eisner:The changing media landscape you've said everybody in the industry is running around scared now all the time, how so?

1:12:36Graham Bensinger:They've always run around scared every decision is a big decision if you make a movie for $300 million with marketing you can really put your company in jeopardy forever So the mistakes are gigantic. The successes are few. I was saved many times by a one film that just turned everything around. Television, same thing. I've always thought, I looked at my job as like a manager of a baseball team. Every manager gets fired. So I thought, okay, I got this job. If it doesn't work, I'm going to get fired. I'll get another job. I always told myself, just do it. These are temporary jobs. Eventually, you're going to fail.

1:13:28Graham Bensinger:But do what you think is right, always along the line, always ethically. Stick to your thoughts. You told me about my father before. My father was maniacal about ethics.

1:13:44Michael Eisner:Almost to his detriment, right?

1:13:45Graham Bensinger:Yes, to his detriment at times. But it was driven into me and I driven into my children. What have you learned about the need to evolve and change with the times? Well, you need to. Whether I did or not, enough is a question. You have to be prescient. you have to look to the future you have to see that home video is coming to an end or that streaming is I mean if I was Reed Hastings Disney would be Netflix you know you have to especially in the media you can't you have to reinvent you constantly reinvent somebody else reinvents for you you're afraid you try to protect your assets so you want to protect home video which is making all this money.

1:14:40Graham Bensinger:You don't want to do something that's going to kill home video. And what do you do? You kill yourself by trying to save yourself.

1:14:45Michael Eisner:Take home video as an example. I mean, people forget that home video was a tough decision to make in the first place, and you, to your credit, okay that...

1:14:55Graham Bensinger:Nobody wanted to do home video. When we sold in a shrink wrap Fantasia and made$100 million in a week, and I questioned how many of those shrink wraps were really opened, I called Lillian Disney, Walt's widow, and say, it's now 52 years later, we just broke even on Fantasia. And she said, I always hated that film. Walt loved it. She's hysterical. Yeah, I had to talk the Disney family into doing Fantasia. We started off with Pinocchio. Nobody wanted... We were putting out films, one animated film, making$3 or$4 million a year. All of a sudden, we were putting out Pinocchio making$80 million in two weeks.

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1:17:30Graham Bensinger:I don't know, I could have bought the Mighty Ducks. Disney wanted me to buy the Mighty Ducks when I left, and I thought that was a conflict. And it was$50 million, and it's now$3 billion or$4 billion, whatever it is. So I didn't see that coming. Some people see better than I do.

1:17:50Michael Eisner:The theater business. There were reports that for moviegoers, 25 % of moviegoers go to the theater every other month. pre-pandemic that was 40%. What do you seize the state of that business?

1:18:07Graham Bensinger:Pre-television it was every week. There were only 120 million people in the country. 80 million people went every week to a movie. So there's a definition of the change. The only thing I don't like about it is that the movies that do well in the theaters are the big technical extravaganzas. and the small independent films from Europe or from the U.S., Miramax-type films, they really only survive on Amazon or Apple or Netflix. So it's hard. It's not a business that I would go into today.

1:18:46Michael Eisner:You think it survives?

1:18:50Graham Bensinger:I don't know. No, probably not. I mean, it'll survive for another 20 years, but at some point, the home is more convenient. How do you see AI impacting media? I understand it, for instance, in our development from 2D animation to computer generation. I understand it in the ways that it's been written about. I certainly understand it in healthcare, how it's now being used. Do I think it's ever going to write an Academy Award-winning movie? no because I think the movies and the television shows that really succeed are where the grass is greener on the other side of the fence something that's totally original that hasn't been done before and I just don't know

1:19:47I mean I probably

1:19:49Graham Bensinger:will live to regret this I just don't know whether a computer can match the creative brain for the future. I know that the writers and producers are very nervous about that.

1:20:06Graham Bensinger:Look, let's say you have a pilot of a show, Happy Days or All in the Family or whatever, and you say to AI, give me 10 episodes in the same mold and the same characters as this pilot, and they'll spit out 10 episodes. in a row. I don't know.

1:20:29Michael Eisner:Maybe that works. I emailed with Henry Winkler about you the other night, actually. I mentioned the hitchhiking story that you told in your book. Last question about the state of the media industry before moving on. You were one of the early investors in Netflix. I imagine you did quite well there. But how do you see kind of what's the conclusion to the streaming wars and future consolidation that still needs to take place in your mind?

1:21:02Graham Bensinger:I think I invested in Netflix because I had so much respect for Ted Sarandos. Here's a guy that went to Netflix and his job was buying existing motion pictures from us and others to be on Netflix. Fine, that's a commodity. you know the box office you know who's in it it's all about whatever you pay all that but what he did again another surprise creative executive he actually made films approved films to be made television shows which changed the whole world of Netflix and I saw that and Andy Redman and I, people who are here, said we should invest in Netflix early. Now everybody has kind of copied the Netflix thing and they're hiring executives that were used to work in other branches.

1:22:07Graham Bensinger:But he's impressive, I think.

1:22:12Michael Eisner:What do you think in terms of how this all plays out and remaining consolidation that has to take place?

1:22:21Graham Bensinger:You mean like Paramount buying Warner Brothers, that kind of thing? Sure. You know what it is? It's a merry-go-round. If they buy Warner Brothers three years, they'll spin off this one, and they'll buy that one. It's been a merry-go-round since 1948. You know, when they broke up the Paramount decree, when they broke up Paramount Pictures with the Paramount Theaters, and then Paramount Theaters merged with ABC. And I mean, every company has gone through this. When we did a 100-year bond at Disney, there were only three companies in the world, or maybe in the U.S., that had been around for 100 years.

1:23:01So, yes, there'll be a lot of change.

1:23:05Graham Bensinger:It'll still be who was the best ideas. The technology, however, I suspect the idea of home entertainment in some form is here forever.

1:23:16Michael Eisner:When you became CEO of the Walt Disney Company, stock price was$1.24, and it was$23.80 when you left 21 years later. So you can make the strong argument that outside of Walt himself, no single person had a more consequential impact on the company than you. But how do you look back on those last couple years, that last period now?

1:23:44Graham Bensinger:Well, there was change going on. I was stubborn. I did not want to buy Pixar for a price that I thought was crazy. It wasn't as depressing as the media made it. We were still doing very well. We were still a great company. I had decided that we couldn't lose any more money with Roy Disney making movies so I stopped that probably a bad political decision but the right decision I tried and succeeded in getting rid of Harvey Weinstein

1:24:24Michael Eisner:which was unpopular with the board at that time

1:24:27Graham Bensinger:no they went wild about Harvey and he was losing money no that wasn't The only thing unpopular, well, Harvey and Steve and Roy become adversaries to the CEO. Well, one had the name of Disney. I didn't. One was Steve Jobs, an American one of a kind. and the other was a despicable man who was loved by the media for a long time because of the movies he made. And I made the judgment call, probably right, but not politically smart, that I was not going to put up with it. So that was unpleasant. But I was ready. I had 21 years at Disney, having every weekend 20 scripts by my bed that I hadn't read, and thousands of emails, and international, you know, building a park in Shanghai, and having just built a park in Hong Kong, and doing the Animal Kingdom, doing a second park in Paris.

1:25:43I was ready to move here. to move.

1:25:48Graham Bensinger:I was ready to move to the one street in Los Angeles that felt like New York. I was ready to not have 20 unreaded scripts. I was ready to actually own myself content. We had, I don't want to go through it, but we started we were the first ones to start short form with a company called Vougaroo. When the brand with expanded. We then went into longer form like Bojack Horseman, bought a soccer team that I owned. My kids were now adults. And I certainly didn't leave to spend more time with my family because I already spent all my time with my family. So that's all that people say.

1:26:37Michael Eisner:Regardless how talented an executive might be, does it almost not matter who it is at some point when one person's running it for that long, it's time for a change?

1:26:51Graham Bensinger:I think change is good in management because it also creates opportunity to go in new directions. You can't just stay in the old directions. I'm not wild about the fact that it is so expensive now to go to Disneyland or Walt Disney World. I'm not wild about the fact that it's harder than ever to have everybody be a VIP at a Disney park because they're selling certain things. The things that I would do differently, but I don't think I would run it as well as Bob is running it.

1:27:24Michael Eisner:An interview with Mike Ovitz literally came out yesterday where he said he still thinks about that period and what happened. Do you think you and him or you and Katzenberg ever reconnect?

1:27:40Graham Bensinger:Well, you're asking a question that it's a completely different situation.

1:27:48Graham Bensinger:Michael Ovitz was the wrong person for that job from day one. It just was a mistake. He was a great agent. He had aspirations, and it was just an elephant in a china shop from day one. And Jeffrey was a different situation in that Frank had made a deal that he never told me about. I had made a deal that I thought was, and I was stubborn, and I said, Jeffrey, you have to live with this deal. His conversations with Jeffrey were very different than my conversations with Jeffrey, and I did not quite know that.

1:28:32Michael Eisner:Meaning he could have told Jeffrey that the job's his when he leaves?

1:28:36Graham Bensinger:never that it was all about financials oh no it was never that okay and roy disney never would have had that the life of a movie was like a decade so when you made a deal with an executive that got a continuing interest you ended it at a decade well that all changed with streaming and international and all the rest of it i thought that was still the deal and i was advised not to let the lawsuit happen and it settled and I was stubborn. But Jeffrey was both, Michael O was excellent executive as an agent. And Jeffrey, excellent corporate executive. And they both served their companies and me. Great.

1:29:26Graham Bensinger:What would you say

1:29:30Michael Eisner:for you personally was the kind of single hardest moment and what you learned about yourself in getting through it? I don't know.

1:29:38Graham Bensinger:Every week there was a hard moment. I can't think of any one single hardest moment. You know, every weekend we're getting the grosses, opening up a theme park, our CFO left two weeks before our annual meeting, all those kinds of things. I think the hardest moment was dealing with Harvey Weinstein. Really? Yeah, because he lied about everything. How do you deal with somebody who never tells the truth? And you learned what getting to the other side of that? Well, I never thought about what I learned, but I think I would not make a deal because I got a good cheap deal, $70 million to buy Miramax, if I thought that I'm bringing a wolf into the hen house.

1:30:31Michael Eisner:Health. Your dad had, I think, quadruple bypass surgery at 65. How did that impact you? Well, it was another deal to deal with.

1:30:42Graham Bensinger:It was another, you know, he was in Palm Springs. He had chest pains. We had to get to Cedars. there was no room in the ICU. I had to call a board member of Cedars and see if they could help me get him in. He insisted on stopping two miles from Cedars because he didn't want to get it out of the bathroom. Like I'm saying, they've got a lot of bathrooms at Cedars. No, I'm going to stop. I met the doctor who was heavy, big fat fingers. I thought, how is this guy, Dr. Matt Luffy, was fantastic. How is he going to operate? What are those fingers going to do like? I think he went in for the operation, and the power went off, and he woke up, and all that happened is he had a haircut.

1:31:30Graham Bensinger:So I remember that. So it was just getting, it was process, dealing with it. And then he was fine.

1:31:39Michael Eisner:What changes did you make after you had it yourself?

1:31:42Graham Bensinger:None. I was in Sun Valley.

1:31:48I thought I was having a heart attack the night before.

1:31:53Graham Bensinger:I went to the, they didn't have a hospital, I went to whatever it was, a little infirmary. The guy did an EKG, said I recognize who you are and I'm telling you, you have no problem. The next morning I called my secretary and said, do not, when you get the bill, pay it. I don't want it to go through personnel department. She rightly so called my doctor. He called me and said, you got to go to Cedars and do a stress test. I know I'm fine. I flew back from Sun Valley a day early. I watched the pilot of each.

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1:33:20Graham Bensinger:VR on the plane wishing it was ABC not NBC's pilot I drove myself my wife drove home it was no issue I got on the treadmill they stopped it after a minute. The next thing I knew, I was on morphine. It was Friday night before the finals of the World Cup. As I'm being wheeled in, I said to my wife, to Jane, who was the doctor? She said, Dr. Trento. I said, where's he from? She said, Tijuana. I thought, well, if she can make a joke about that, I guess I'm all right. I made an arrangement with him, and I can't remember how I did it, but if I lived, he's Italian, Italy was playing somebody at the Rose Bowl.

1:34:07Graham Bensinger:I said, if I live, you have my tickets. If I die, you don't have them. And I woke up the next morning, and that was that. I felt, you know, I stopped eating a lot of beef. You know, I changed my diet, and I exercised every day, but I never thought I was sick.

1:34:29Michael Eisner:How did viral meningitis nearly kill you?

1:34:33Graham Bensinger:Well, that's when I was in high school. I don't know. I got followed by meningitis my senior year. I was supposed to be in the K-mutiny as an actor. I couldn't do it.

1:34:55Michael Eisner:And recovered and that's that. Yeah. And the health today is good?

1:34:58Graham Bensinger:Yeah.

1:35:00Michael Eisner:An average day today for you entails what?

1:35:04Graham Bensinger:Every day is different. Every day is definitely conversations about television series. We have a very good group here. We have a lot of animation. We really, I think, are leading in animation for the Netflix and others. I mean, good animation. I don't know, maybe 20 different I have an idea a minute very hard it's not so easy to sell anymore really? why? well I think I don't walk in the room because I remind them of somebody who's their great grandfather so I don't do that because when I was a buyer at 50 and a 75 year old person would come in I know I was biased I just know it so I don't want to remind them so I have and I don't know my granddaughter is a equestrian in a place called Wellington Florida it's an unbelievable environment it's upstairs, downstairs it's mothers having affairs with trainers it's nubile girls running all over the place it's everything And I've been trying to sell that television series now for three years.

1:36:24Graham Bensinger:I'm going to sell it, but it's not easy. So every day is trying to do something. It's a lot of conversations about football, soccer. I don't know, arranging Thanksgiving, going family. Every day is different. What it isn't is every day having somebody broken their ankle at Walt Disney World or some crisis.

1:36:52Michael Eisner:Last one for you. If you were writing your memoir today, what would you add to it?

1:36:59Graham Bensinger:Well, I don't know if I'd even write a memoir. I did write one with Tony Schwartz, which I hate. In hindsight. I don't know. I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have done it that early.

1:37:10Michael Eisner:Jane told you not to. That I don't remember, probably, but I don't remember that.

1:37:16Graham Bensinger:But I probably wouldn't do that. I think Barry's memoir was fantastic. I don't have that kind of a story. I just think it would be boring. I mean, I'm sick of all these memoirs. Everybody has a memoir, so I don't think I'd do a memoir. I do have two novels that I'm trying to get published, so we'll see what happens.

1:37:41Michael Eisner:And you've written a slew of books.

1:37:44Graham Bensinger:I've written not fiction. These are two fiction books, which I have no idea.

1:37:51Michael Eisner:But you enjoy it.

1:37:52Graham Bensinger:I do enjoy it. I said to Matt, who runs Public Relations, that you better read this because I think I'm in trouble.

1:38:01Michael Eisner:Well, I know this has been a long time coming. We chatted on stage for Toyota in Vancouver back in 2019. Is that what it was? I've been after you ever since. Really a treat. Thank you for making the time. Very much appreciate it.

1:38:18Graham Bensinger:This was fun and interesting.

1:38:21Michael Eisner:Thanks for listening to this week's podcast. Don't forget to leave a rating and review. And for more in-depth interviews, visit GrahamBenzinger.com.

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