Eisner’s Son Makes Hollywood Debut, but Not on Prime Time
It’s probably no surprise that a son of Walt Disney Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Eisner would pursue a career in entertainment. But Eric Eisner’s Web site would make Snow White blush.
Eisner, 26, is co-founder of Romp.com, a Web site--as young Eisner put it--”for people who watch ‘South Park,’ listen to Howard Stern and read Maxim.” In other words, he added, people like himself.
A sampling of programs found on Romp:
* Mail-A-Ho: An animated game that allows users to assemble a semi-nude woman and e-mail it to a friend.
* Celebrity Pinata: Users toss objects at a four-legged creature with Woody Allen’s head, leaving it cut and bleeding.
* Tardz: An animated show that evidently mocks the mentally disabled. In one segment, a man slashes his pregnant girlfriend, a student at Jail Bait High.
* Won & Twoo: A cartoon about male, Asian, conjoined twins, one straight and the other gay.
Bathroom humor and innuendo permeate the site. A man defecates on a lawn and burns a cross on it to force a homeowner to sell the house, in one animated short.
Eric Eisner and his partner, Bruce Forman, 28, say their humor isn’t meant to be racist or sexist.
“We laugh with everybody and at everybody,” Forman said.
Eisner added: “It is not meant in any way to put somebody down or hurt anybody.”
Based in Hollywood, Romp has 30 employees and is backed by $15 million from private investors, Eisner and Forman said. Eisner said his father is not an investor, but he has seen the site and is supportive.
“We go to him for advice all the time,” Eisner said.
Asked for comment, Michael Eisner said in a statement: “Other than to confirm that Eric has red hair and great personality, I have no other comment. Well, just one. He is also very smart.”
Eric Eisner and Forman met at UCLA’s Anderson School of Business, where they earned their MBA degrees last June. Eisner, a graduate of Dartmouth College, previously worked in the business office of Disney-owned Mighty Ducks. Forman put in stints at Goldman Sachs in New York and Los Angeles-based Brentwood Associates after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania.
The two wouldn’t discuss plans for making money from the site, which is free and as yet has no advertising. It launched April 1.
They said they got the idea for the site aimed at young men during their final months at UCLA.
Decisions about content are intuitive. “We are of that age,” Eisner said. “We know that demographic pretty well.”
