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February 22, 2006
Mr. Eisner Builds Dream TV Backdrop
Frank Gehry Designs a Set For the Disney Ex-Chief; Warming the Titanium
The Wall Street Journal*
February 11, 2006; Page A1
By Joe Hagan
In his 21 years as Walt Disney Co.'s chief executive, Michael Eisner was known for attending to the smallest details of the sprawling entertainment empire. Four months after stepping down, he's working on a much smaller stage: the set of his new CNBC talk show, "Conversations with Michael Eisner."
A table, a couple of chairs, a bookcase, a potted plant? No. For his show, slated to run once every other month, Mr. Eisner says he wanted a backdrop that spoke to "high quality and sophistication and simplicity and elegance." And he wanted it designed by Frank Gehry, the world-famous architect known for his wavy, metallic buildings.
"I felt he would have an aesthetic eye that would be sympathetic to the kind of show I'm doing," Mr. Eisner, long a patron of architecture, says of Mr. Gehry.
The architect agreed to do it -- gratis. "I told him I'd do the set if he promised not to wear a tie," says Mr. Gehry (a promise Mr. Eisner hasn't kept). The result was a set of silvery, titanium panels that echo many of Mr. Gehry's most famous buildings, along with a custom-made wooden table and a set of luxurious red leather chairs designed in Italy.
When CNBC executives reached an agreement for Mr. Eisner to host a talk show, which is scheduled to launch in March, they didn't appreciate how accustomed he was to what is known in Hollywood as "creative control."
Mr. Eisner's hands-on reputation is part of the lore he earned during Disney's dizzying expansion. He picked curtains for the company's hotels and changed the gender of an animated movie character, Chicken Little.
A common refrain -- made behind the CEO's back -- was: "If left to his own devices, Michael Eisner would pick the color of the toilet paper in every Disney venue," says top architect Robert A.M. Stern. Mr. Stern designed Disney hotels, homes for Mr. Eisner and also served on the company's board.
The day after Christmas, before the CNBC show was even announced, Mr. Eisner phoned Mr. Gehry. "I said to him, 'What would you do?' " recalls Mr. Eisner.
"He immediately said: 'Titanium.' "
Mr. Gehry's best-known works make liberal use of this lightweight metal. Mr. Eisner's only cautionary note was that he "didn't want to look like I was in the [starship] Enterprise."
The practical-minded operations department at CNBC, a unit of General Electric Co.'s NBC, was skeptical. (Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, provides news content to, and derives revenue from, CNBC in the U.S.) For one, NBC worried that the metal would make the set difficult to light and would be distracting to viewers.
"Ideally, the interesting part of the show is going to be the interview," says Josh Howard, the executive in charge of production. Steve Fastook, vice president of technical and commercial operations -- the man responsible for set construction -- recalls: "I was uneasy."
Within a few days, however, the project was set in motion. CNBC President Mark Hoffman says it was a "slam dunk" to approve Mr. Gehry's design. The cable channel paid for the materials, which cost just under $25,000. "It's not the most expensive set I've ever been associated with," Mr. Hoffman says.
For Mr. Eisner, Mr. Gehry immediately rejected the living-room setting preferred by many late-night programs. "To bury him in couches and stuff didn't seem right," the architect says. Mr. Eisner agreed. He had picked up the talk-show bug while guest-hosting PBS's "Charlie Rose Show." It has a stark, black backdrop.
One prototype featured large, overlapping squares of titanium, a design element drawn from Mr. Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. NBC gently batted away that idea; on the screen, the squares' edges looked as if they were running into Mr. Eisner's head. Mr. Gehry says he didn't like it either, because he didn't want to repeat the Bilbao concept.
For another idea, Mr. Gehry says he drew inspiration from the vertical lines of a Brooks Brothers' pinstripe suit. His team then produced tall, interlocking strips of titanium that curved like Mr. Gehry's buildings and resembled a drunk, metallic garden fence.
This, the final version, "certainly doesn't look like other TV sets you've seen," says Mr. Howard, the producer. "I'd leave it to architectural critics to determine the rest of it."
In late January, three 10-foot walls containing a total of 44 panels were shipped to Rockefeller Center in New York. They were temporarily set up in Studio 8-H, directly in front of the main stage of NBC's "Saturday Night Live."
Every item in the 450-pound pallet was labeled, including the individual panels, which were made with metal provided by Titanium Metals Corp., the Denver-based company Mr. Gehry uses for his buildings. "If I break one, the laser cutter will make an exact duplicate," says Mr. Fastook.
Mr. Eisner didn't get just one Gehry set, but two. CNBC plans to build a smaller version in NBC's Burbank, Calif., studios allowing Mr. Eisner to conduct interviews in Los Angeles.
When he began conceiving the set, Mr. Gehry said he wanted a long wooden table as a centerpiece. Mr. Eisner replied, "Oh, I have such a table." It was Mr. Eisner's grandmother's table, which family lore says is a 1911 copy of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit. Mr. Eisner's wife took a photo of the executive sitting behind it and sent it to the architect.
Using the table's proportions, Mr. Gehry drew up a design that was realized by John Langenbacher Co., a luxury furniture maker in Brooklyn, N.Y. He ordered four adjustable, red-leather chairs designed in Italy by Enrico Pellizzoni Leather Furniture.
Mr. Eisner first worked with Mr. Gehry in the late 1980s, when Disney commissioned his firm to create a shopping and dining district at the Disneyland Resort in Paris. Mr. Gehry also built the training facility for the Disney-owned Mighty Ducks ice-hockey team, which Mr. Eisner considers "among [Mr. Gehry's] most beautiful buildings in the world."
When the set was finally assembled, Mr. Fastook "kind of gulped," he recalls. "It's very harsh." He started thinking about how to warm up the metallic backdrop.
Mr. Gehry was bothered by the same thought. He added a wooden hand rail along the back wall that was made of the same blond, Douglas fir used for the table. Mr. Fastook approved; he felt it brought out people's skin tones on camera. In addition, the NBC technician experimented with blue lighting filters to soften the look of the titanium.
Mr. Gehry has yet to see the actual set. But this week it was already in use. As Mr. Eisner was preparing to interview actress Goldie Hawn on Tuesday, having taped Regis Philbin a few hours before, he voiced his approval. "It felt original, which is what I wanted. And it felt warm," he said.
The titanium, however, is proving delicate to handle. As Mr. Eisner recorded his introduction, Mr. Fastook noticed a dent in one of the labeled panels. "Looks like I better get ready to order A-5," he said.
Write to Joe Hagan at joe.hagan@wsj.com
URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113962209436471482.html
Posted by lumi at February 22, 2006 07:38 AM