he didn’t use his leverage to demand a
wildly impossible number. Wherever
we landed was going to be very good
for them, but he knew it needed to be in
the realm of possibility for us, too, and
I think he appreciated my frankness.
Over the course of the next month, we
went over the possible nancial struc-
ture in great detail and arrived at a price:
$7.4 billion. Even if Steve stopped just
short of being greedy, it was still a huge
price, and it was going to be a tough sell
to our board and to investors.
I realized my best shot was for the board
to hear from Steve, John, and Ed directly.
So, on a weekend in January 2006, we all
convened in a Goldman Sachs confer-
ence room in L.A. Several members of the
board were still opposed, but the moment
the Pixar team started talking, everyone
in the room was transxed. They had no
notes, no decks, no visual aids. They just
talked—about Pixar’s philosophy and
how they worked, about what we were
already dreaming of doing together, and
about who they were as people.
As for Steve, it’s hard to imagine a bet-
ter salesman for something this ambi-
tious. He talked about the need for big
companies to take big risks. He talked
about where Disney had been and what it
needed to do to radically change course.
He talked about me and the bond that
we’d formed already—with the iTunes
deal, but also in our ongoing discussions
about preserving Pixar’s culture—and
his desire to work together to make this
crazy idea a success. For the rst time,
watching him speak, I felt optimistic that
it might happen.
The board was scheduled to meet for
a nal vote on January 24, but word of a
possible deal soon leaked. Suddenly I
was receiving calls from people urging
me not to do it. But my condence never
wavered. I was on a mission as I addressed
the board and spoke with as much re as I
could muster. “The future of the company
is right here, right now,” I said. “It’s in your
hands.” I repeated something I’d said back
in October, in my rst board meeting as
CEO. “As Disney Animation goes, so goes
the company. It was true in 1937 with Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs and in 1994
with The Lion King, and it’s no less true
right now. When Animation soars, Disney
soars. We have to do this. Our path to the
future starts right here, tonight.”
When I was done, the room went very
quiet and a vote was taken. After all the
board had been through over the past few
years, it seemed likely that risk aversion
could rule the day. The rst four mem-
bers voted yes, and the fth also voted
yes but added that he was doing so only
out of support for me. Of the remain-
ing ve, two voted against, bringing the
nal tally to nine for and two against. The
deal was approved, and the fortunes of
the company began to improve, almost
right before our eyes.S
teve became a Disney
board member and our
largest shareholder, and
whenever I wanted to do
something big, I talked it
over with him. In 2009, after our very suc-
cessful acquisition of Pixar, we were inter-
ested in acquiring Marvel, so I met with
Steve and walked him through thebusiness. He claimed to have never read
a comic book in his life (“I hate them more
than I hate video games,” he told me), so
I brought an encyclopedia of Marvel char-
acters with me to explain the universe to
him and show him what we would be buy-
ing. He spent about 10 seconds looking at
it, then pushed it aside and said, “Is this
one important to you? Do you really want
it? Is it another Pixar?”
Steve and I had become good friends
since we’d made the Pixar deal. We
socialized on occasion and talked a few
times a week. We vacationed at adjacent
Hawaiian hotels a few times and would
meet and take long walks on the beach,
talking about our wives and kids, about
music, about Apple and Disney and
the things we might still do together.
Our connection was much more than a
business relationship. We enjoyed each
other’s company immensely, and we
felt we could say anything to each other,
that our friendship was strong enough
that it was never threatened by candor.
You don’t expect to develop such close
friendships late in life, but when I think
back on my time as CEO—at the things
I’m most grateful for and surprised
by—my relationship with Steve is one
of them. He could criticize me, and I
could disagree, and neither of us took
it too personally.
Plenty of people warned me that the
worst thing I could do was let Steve into
the company, that he would bully me and
everyone else. I always said the same
thing: “How can Steve Jobs coming into
our company not be a good thing? Even
if it comes at my expense? Who wouldn’t
want Steve Jobs to have in¡uence over
how a company is run?” I wasn’t worried
about how he would act, and I was con-
dent that if he did do something that was
out of line, I could call him out on it. He
was quick to judge people, and when he
criticized, it was often quite harsh. That
said, he came to all the board meetings
and actively participated, giving the kind
of objective criticism you’d expect from
any board member. He rarely created
trouble for me. Not never but rarely.
When it came to the Marvel ques-
tion, I told him that I wasn’t sure if it was
another Pixar, but they had great talent
at the company, and the content was so
rich that if we held the IP, it would put
some real distance between us and every-
one else. I asked him if he’d be willing
to reach out toWe felt we
could
SAY
ANYTHING
TO EACH
OTHER.
Our friendship
was never
threatened
BY
CANDOR. CONTINUED ON PAGE
NOVEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR 135