Today’s screenplay is a cult classic in the spec world. Only true insiders know about it. But that’s about to change.
Genre: Biopic
Premise: Between 1996 and 2005, three enormous personalities dominated the trade headlines with their petty antics. No, this story is not about Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Russel Crowe. It’s about Disney Head Michael Eisner, Co-Head Michael Ovitz, and Disney #3 Jeffrey Katzenberg.
About: So here’s the deal with this script. It’s written anonymously, supposedly because the writer didn’t want to get in trouble for laying out an expose on what went on behind-the-scenes in one of the most f*cked-up marriages to ever drive a Hollywood studio. These were powerful men who made big decisions. If you’re detailing their secret meetings, you probably want to keep your identity out of it. What I don’t understand is if this script was sent out to sell, or just something Hollywood insiders passed around for fun. Either way, it’s one of those well-known cult-scripts, which means it’s high time I reviewed it.
Writer: ?????
Details: 133 pages (labeled as 1st Draft)
Let’s just get something out of the way right now. This is not a good script. It’s unfocused. It rambles. I’m not sure who the main character is. Characters always say exactly what they’re thinking (“on the nose” dialogue). It’s kind of like what would happen if an Amateur Friday writer was told to write an expose on the Michael Eisner Disney years using the same format that Aaron Sorkin did for The Social Network.
With that said, it’s a good STORY. Why is it a good story? Because you have big boys acting like big babies and people love to watch big babies pretending to be big boys. After we get past the first three-quarters of the script – which is all setup – things really start to get juicy. And confounding. And bizarre. I read the script pretty fast so I may get some of the facts wrong, but here’s how I remember it going down.
We start out, like The Social Network, at a courtroom, where Disney is being sued by its shareholders because Michael Eisner, the studio head, fired his best friend (Michael Ovitz) after hiring him just 16 months earlier, and giving him a 200 million dollar severance payout. Shareholders don’t like when you hand out 200 million of their dollars for f*cking up, so naturally they’re pissed. But before Judge Judy makes her entrance, we cut back to 8 years ago, to the year 1996.
At the time, Disney’s feature department was stumbling. The company just didn’t seem to know how to make movies anymore. So they hire Michael Eisner, who was running ABC television programming at the time, and things started to turn around. A huge reason for this was Eisner’s number 3, a smart hard-working wizard of a man named Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg was credited for making groundbreaking decisions like making Disney’s movie library available on video for the first time. He also had an acute understanding of what audiences wanted, and helped produce some huge hits for the Mouse House.
Across town, Eisner’s best friend, Michael Ovitz, was doing quite well for himself as well, starting up and running super-agency CAA. Ovitz got so many big clients and controlled so many of the elements that got movies made that he was quickly tabbed the most powerful man in Hollywood. Ovitz could pretty much do anything he wanted. He was Superman.
Back at Disney, Eisner began to get jealous of Katzenberg’s success. The man was getting a lot of credit for doing a lot of things, mainly because someone kept leaking stories about his amazing achievements to the press. Eisner suspected the culprit was Katzenberg himself. Increasingly suspicious, Eisner distanced himself from Katzenberg, a decision that would prove costly, since he had promised Katzenberg the number 2 position in the company if anything were to ever happen to Frank Wells, the current number 2. Well, Frank Wells ended up dying in a helicopter crash. Which put Eisner on the spot. Would he hold true to his word?
Apparently not. In fact, Eisner became famous for promising things to people then claiming he never said them in the first place. And according to him, he never promised Katzenberg the position. So Katzenberg fled to create Dreamworks with Spielberg, but not without leaving a hefty bill. In his contract, Katzenberg was promised more than 200 million dollars in royalties from the movies he helped make. Despite it being there in plain print, Eisner refused to give him this money. Out of pettiness? Out of defiance? It’s unclear. But he just couldn’t fathom the idea of giving Katzenberg what he was due.
Meanwhile, the hunt for a new number 2 was heating up. Eisner had to pick someone soon. But the pool of players was tiny. Eisner considered mega-friend Ovitz, but it looked like Ovitz was going to get hired to run Universal. However, in a twist of fate, Ovitz was passed over for the job by Ron Meyer, a huge blow to Ovitz’s bulletproof image. This allowed Eisner to make a play for his best friend. He knew Ovitz wouldn’t take a number 2 position. He wasn’t a number 2 kind of guy. So Eisner said, “How bout we be co-heads?” Ovitz agreed and into Disney he went.
But things started going wrong immediately. On his very first day, all of the Disney executives told Ovitz they refused to report to him. Sandy Litvack, who thought HE was getting the number 2 position at Disney, also took Frank Wells’ giant old office, putting Eisner’s “co-head” down a floor and in a small office, which didn’t make any sense. But Eisner didn’t seem bothered by the issue. Nor did he seem bothered by the fact that nobody planned to report to Ovitz, essentially ostracizing him on the first day of the job.
Ovitz had a feeling something wasn’t right, but knew jumping ship right after losing out on the Universal job would cause irreparable damage to his status and reputation. So he stayed. And it only got worse. Eisner seemed to ignore Ovitz. Whenever Ovitz did put a deal together or come up with a big idea, Eisner nixed it. Eisner seemed so set on blocking or disregarding anything Ovitz did, that Ovitz became convinced it was a setup- that he was brought in to fail. Except he couldn’t figure out why his best friend of 30 years would do something like that to him.
16 months after being hired, Ovitz was fired, given 200 million to basically go away. And that’s what he would’ve done had the shareholders not sued. But they did, which is why we get to read about this story today.
Like I said, this script is a mess. It doesn’t get good until Ovitz is hired at Disney. THAT’S where the story begins so THAT’S where the bulk of the screenplay should’ve been focused. But that doesn’t happen until page 80! Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg didn’t start Facebook until page 80 in The Social Network? And everything before that was backstory. We would see Zuckerberg in high school. How he suffered to find friends. How he barely got into Harvard. How his parents struggled to pay tuition.
Yeah, all of that would be nice to know. But it’s ALL BACKSTORY. And you can only squeeze so much backstory into a script. Audiences are much more interested in what’s happening NOW than what was happening before. The best writers figure out a way to squeeze in all that backstory yet still keep the story moving. In Two Blind Mice, I don’t need to know about Jeffrey Katzenberg’s time at Paramount. I don’t need 50 pages of what happened at subsequent studios and agencies BEFORE Ovitz showed up at Disney. I need to see Ovitz SHOW UP at Disney. Because that’s where this gets interesting.
Imagine you’re the top dog in your field. You’re heavily recruited to your best friend’s company. It’s one of the biggest splashiest marriages in your line of work. You then show up on the first day…AND NOBODY GIVES A SHIT. In fact, they SHUN YOU. Even your secretary gives you a hard time. What do you do? THAT’S a compelling character to me. What does Ovitz do in that situation? How does he survive? How does he find a way out of this? Why not follow Ovitz from page 1 and make this a tragedy? A fall from grace?
That was another problem for me, was that we weren’t following one character. We were following a group of characters. And because of that, we didn’t know who we were supposed to identify with. It’s not that that can’t be done, but often the strategy leaves the reader stranded or torn, like a dog whose owners are standing on both sides of him, both calling for him to “come here boy!” Which way do you go?
You also saw wasted scenes, such as numerous cuts to Eisner and Ovitz’s wives, who were also best friends. I don’t have any idea what these scenes or these characters brought to the table outside of maybe making it clearer that Ovitz and Eisner were close. But this is why this is a first draft. You explore these things. You go off on tangents and see what you can find. Then in the next draft, your job is to go through your script and tell yourself, “Cut everything that isn’t absolutely necessary to tell the story.” These two are not necessary, so I’m betting they would’ve become one of the first cuts.
What’s also interesting about Two Blind Mice is that it’s kind of a dual-protagonist script where we don’t like either of the characters. They’re both annoying, with Eisner being the more annoying of the two. It’s awfully hard to write a story without anyone to sympathize with (even The Social Network had the idealistic Eduardo to latch onto), and if this story wasn’t so crazy and true, this would’ve been a death knell for the script. However it is interesting that at a certain point, the writer decides to side with Ovitz, and make him the screwed-over hero in this whole ordeal. It’s almost like he realized this very criticism midway through the script and went, “Oh yeah, I have to make them like someone.” Indeed, when Eisner starts being a complete dick to Ovitz, it’s the first time we develop a rooting interest for someone.
I can see why this got passed around. It’s detailing the secret power struggle of two of the biggest titans in town. Hollywood loves themselves some gossip so passing this to a friend was a no-brainer. As a script, though, it’s messy, and would need numerous rewrites to get it where it needs to be. Still, it’s a fascinating enough story that it’s worth reading.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You have a choice with your first draft. You can either write a “vomit” draft, where you just let it all out at once. Or you can carefully outline your script so that it’s more focused and structured. A vomit draft is generally referred to as a “lazy man’s draft” because you don’t have to prep. You just write. As a result, it’s often embarrassingly sloppy, and will require 3 to 4 drafts just to get it on par with an outlined first draft. To me, Two Blind Mice (great title by the way) feels sloppy, like a vomit draft, which means way more work going forward. I’m not saying either way is right or wrong. But I will promise you that a vomit draft is going to take a ton more work to get in shape.
