Nancy Griffin

Kim Masters

Interviews and details of high-level meetings and manipulation inform an account of how two Hollywood operators managed the richest deal in Hollywood history. Reprint. 60,000 first printing.

Hit and Run

A riveting account of Michael Eisner's outrageous, thrilling, and often self-destructive tenure as head of the Walt Disney Company Kim Masters, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Hit & Run, has written a page-turning account of Michael Eisner's ascent at The Magic Kingdom. Based on hundreds of interviews with Hollywood's power players, she weaves Eisner's story together with those who have crossed his path: Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Ovitz. Masters traces Eisner's rivalry with Diller at ABC and Paramount and shows how at Disney, Eisner and Frank Wells rejuvenated the company. Masters also details the fallout between Eisner and Katzenberg (who was responsible for hits like Aladdin and The Lion King) after Wells's untimely death, and traces the move of uber-agent Michael Ovitz from CAA to an executive position at Disney, one of Hollywood's most spectacular failures.Kim Masters, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Hit & Run, has written a page-turning account of Michael Eisner's ascent at The Magic Kingdom. Based on hundreds of interviews with Hollywood's power players, she weaves Eisner's story together with those who have crossed his path: Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Ovitz. Masters traces Eisner's rivalry with Diller at ABC and Paramount and shows how at Disney, Eisner and Frank Wells rejuvenated the company. Masters also details the fallout between Eisner and Katzenberg (who was responsible for hits like Aladdin and The Lion King) after Wells's untimely death, and traces the move of uber-agent Michael Ovitz from CAA to an executive position at Disney, one of Hollywood's most spectacular failures. The Keys to the Kingdom climaxes with the shocking and incredibly personal court battle between Eisner and Katzenberg, involving hundreds of millions of dollars.Kim Masters, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Hit & Run, has written a page-turning account of Michael Eisner's ascent at The Magic Kingdom. Based on hundreds of interviews with Hollywood's power players, she weaves Eisner's story together with those who have crossed his path: Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Michael Ovitz. Masters traces Eisner's rivalry with Diller at ABC and Paramount and shows how at Disney, Eisner and Frank Wells rejuvenated the company. Masters also details the fallout between Eisner and Katzenberg (who was responsible for hits like Aladdin and The Lion King) after Wells's untimely death, and traces the move of uber-agent Michael Ovitz from CAA to an executive position at Disney, one of Hollywood's most spectacular failures. The Keys to the Kingdom climaxes with the shocking and incredibly personal court battle between Eisner and Katzenberg, involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip

The Keys to the Kingdom

Like one of the movie moguls of old, Michael Eisner is a titan -- feared, powerful, and almost magically successful. After rising through ABC television and Paramount Pictures, he awoke the sleeping giant of Disney and sent it stomping across the entertainment landscape. But since the tragic death of Frank Wells in a helicopter crash in 1994, he has lacked -- for the first time in his career -- a colleague who could temper his personality. The result, writes Kim Masters, has been a slide into a Nixonian paranoia and isolation. In The Keys to the Kingdom, Masters crafts a gripping account of this larger-than-life story of larger-than-life hubris, combining an insightful analysis of power in Hollywood with a vivid, deeply researched narrative that brings the personalities, the enmities, and the corporate mayhem to life.

The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else

Keys to the Kingdom

How Jon Peters and Peter Gruber took Sony for a ride in Hollywood.

How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood

The Keys To The Kingdom

Hit and Run tells the improbable and often hilarious story of how two Hollywood film packagers went on a campaign to reinvent themselves as studio executives -- at Sony's expense. Veteran reporters Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters chronicle the rise of Jon Peters, a former hairdresser, seventh-grade dropout, and juvenile delinquent, and his soulless soul mate, Peter Guber -- and all the sex, drugs, and fistfights along the way. It is the story of the ultimate Hollywood con job and the standard by which every subsequent business blunder has been measured. Hit and Run delivers rock-solid business reporting liberally laced with inside gossip and outrageous scandal -- plus a new afterword bringing us up to date on the latest fallout from the Guber-Peters legacy.

Kim Masters

About

Books

Join the club