15 May 2000

THE UGLY: There isn't really a journalist in this town that I can remember having a more public rollercoaster relationship with Disney than the Los Angeles Times' Claudia Eller. I don't want to relive the history, but the switch from friend-of-the-family to enemy-of-the-state has taken place a few times over the years in a matter of hours. If anybody had any doubts about where the relationship now sits, they must have found Ms. Eller's Friday story to be a jolt. In one of the great bridge burning stories I've ever read, Eller leads a piece on Dinosaur not with the information she got in a lunch interview with studio chairman Peter Schneider and animation chief Tom Schumacher, but with a detailed and mocking account of the lunch itself. She wants to know why the studio is spending $200 million on a "kids' flick about dinosaurs." Schneider "bound(s)" up to the table. Schneider and Schumacher respond to her question about the budget in unison. Schneider snaps at Claudia and gets tagged with a rep for "a Peter Schneider three-veiner" for his trouble. He is "frazzled and flushed." Schumacher is "mortified by (Schneider's) behavior." When Schneider finally goes on the record, spinning Dinosaur as more important than its cost, Eller has already cut him off at the knees by earlier poo-pooing an earlier attempt at a similar argument, leaving a lingering doubt in the air even before the meat of the argument. Eller pegs the cost of the movie between $245 and $275 million before P&A, about $75 million of either figure attributable to the new animation studio that Disney built around this project. After lightening up and saying that Disney rivals think the film will be a hit, she can't resist a closing jab: "The unflappable Schumacher gave me a kiss on the cheek goodbye. Schneider shook my hand." Killer. And such is the glory of a big name journalism gig. Peter Schneider probably has hired a hitman for Claudia, but can't afford to blackout the L.A. Times completely, while I could face a feces storm just for mentioning the article in this column. Nonetheless, this one is destined for the "keeper" file.