My car phone rang. It was August 30th, and I was on my way to Kennedy Airport to fly to Los Angeles for a dinner with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios. He had told me earlier by phone that he would give me the real story of why, just six days before, he and Michael Eisner, the chairman of the Walt Disney Company, had announced their divorce. In the phone call I got when I was halfway to Kennedy, Katzenberg cancelled dinner. He explained that Eisner, for whom he had worked a total of eighteen years, both at Disney and, before that, at Paramount Pictures, was furious over comments that Katzenberg's friends had made to the press.
In particular, Eisner was furious over what the director Steven Spielberg had said to the Los Angeles Times: "Jeffrey Katzenberg's exit will be Michael Eisner's Machiavellian loss--and Corporation X's El Dorado." […]
