The Mild-Mannered Superman of Disney

There’s a nice big office waiting for Dick Cook.

It has high ceilings with recessed lighting, terra-cotta floors and a private white-tiled bathroom with a shower. The boss is right down the hall.

But Dick Cook won’t be moving onto the top floor of the Team Disney building with CEO Michael Eisner. The newly named chairman of Walt Disney Studios thinks his office four levels down is just fine. He doesn’t even mind the view--a parking lot.

“This is so much more convenient,” says the 51-year-old movie chief, who wants to stay near the folks he knows can help him get the new job done.

Overnight, Cook has become one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. But you wouldn’t know it. He looks square, the kind of guy who still thinks suspenders are cool. He isn’t known for schmoozing at the Grill with Hollywood’s top agents, hot stars and famous filmmakers. He lives with his family in La Canada Flintridge, not Brentwood or the Pacific Palisades. He says “gosh” a lot.

In other words, he’s perfectly cast for a company seeking less flash and more stability as it tries to regain its dominance in family entertainment. In an industry notorious for its hopscotching studio executives, Cook’s resume includes many jobs but just one employer: Disney. He began 31 years ago as a ride operator at Disneyland.

“Would I be the right guy for any studio? Probably not,” said Cook, whose expertise is in distributing and marketing films, not in choosing which ones get made.

“But growing up in this culture, I think this is where I am best suited, because I understand what makes Disney the unique company and product it is. More than understand it, I embrace it and believe it--the whole Disney culture.”

Eisner is hoping that Cook’s ascension, announced Feb. 15, will bring an end to the recent upheaval in the movie studio’s leadership ranks and cool simmering criticisms of his stewardship at the company. Cook’s predecessor, Peter Schneider, abruptly resigned last summer after a difficult 18-month run. He admittedly never felt comfortable in the Hollywood culture and now is a Broadway producer.

Eisner has been under increasing pressure from Wall Street and Disney shareholders to improve the company’s earnings and bump up a sagging stock price. Over the last year, Disney has slashed 4,000 jobs companywide, laid off hundreds more in its bedrock animation division and struggled in many of its key business units, including ABC television.

Although Disney’s movie operation represents less than 20% of the company’s overall revenues, it is the engine that powers almost everything else in the empire, from theme parks to retail sales.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is now working for his fourth studio head at Disney, where he made such big-budget films as “Armageddon,” “The Rock” and “Pearl Harbor.” He applauds the conservative selection of Cook.

“It’s great for Disney because there’s continuity,” Bruckheimer said. “Dick will be there after Eisner leaves.”

As for Eisner, Cook must seem like a soothing cup of warm milk after the caffeinated personalities of his last three studio chairmen: Schneider, Joe Roth and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

“Dick and I have never had a fight,” Eisner said. “People dismiss him because he’s not in ‘the club.’ He is the new club.”

Unlike in past years, Eisner will be more directly involved in creative decisions at the movie studio. Since Schneider’s departure eight months ago, Eisner--enhancing his reputation as a micro-manager--has been attending story meetings and giving advice on scripts. Under Cook’s leadership, he will continue to do so.

“Dick welcomes it. There’s no such thing as autonomy,” Eisner said, when it comes to green-lighting productions on which studios have hundreds of millions of dollars riding.

There are those who privately question whether Cook can lift the studio to new heights without the breadth of relationships other studio chiefs have in the creative community. Of course, all the Hollywood power brokers who sent him lavish flower arrangements and expensive wines just hours after his promotion hope that’s about to change.

Traditionally, studio heads do not come from the nuts-and-bolts marketing and distribution side of the business, as Cook does. For the most part, they have backgrounds in content and production. As a result, they theoretically can spot a great movie in a script, book or writer’s pitch. Somehow, they supposedly can divine whether a fledgling actor or first-time director shows promise.

But the reality is that those traits don’t always translate into box office gems.

“The success quotient of those who have more creative qualities and skills isn’t necessarily better than someone who doesn’t,” says Jeffrey Logsdon, an entertainment analyst with Gerard Klauer. “It’s not like these guys are batting .700 or .800.”

Logsdon also noted that Disney may not need a conventional studio boss. “Disney’s culture is much more traditional and corporate. Create a plan, stick with the plan. Create a budget, stick to the budget.”

What’s more, Cook is not the first to rise from the distribution ranks. Former Paramount Pictures veteran Frank Mancuso, for example, headed the studio when it produced the blockbusters “Top Gun” and “Beverly Hills Cop.” Ex-Warner Bros. co-chairman Terry Semel oversaw scores of hits, including the “Lethal Weapon” and “Batman” movies.

Cook’s mild manner and perpetually jolly demeanor have led some Hollywood insiders to wonder how he’ll handle the often cutthroat dealings of the movie business.

But Cook, a major sports fan who played second base for USC, said he knows how to compete. “Whether it’s on the golf course or in business, I love to win.”

For doubters, a history lesson:

In 1989, Cook took on two of the country’s most powerful theater chains: United Artists and Cineplex Odeon.

To increase Disney’s percentage of box office receipts, Cook said he abandoned the customary practice of negotiating “the split” with exhibitors across the country. He told them they had to bid against each other to show Disney films.

UA and Cineplex, feeling squeezed, retaliated. They refused to screen Disney movies in any of their theaters, including those in 20 cities where one or the other had a lock on the market.

But Cook struck back. In those cities where Disney was shut out, he made deals to play the company’s new releases in high school auditoriums, community halls, churches and at Rotary Clubs.

“In a couple of towns, we exhibited films on bedsheets,” Cook said. In Baton Rouge, La., he rented the civic auditorium for an entire summer. “We never did more business in that city, before or since.”

According to Cook, the battle continued for about a year, until UA and Cineplex relented. Two years later, Cook said, Disney returned to direct negotiations with theaters as the studio’s output mushroomed and the bidding became “too cumbersome.”

“Anybody who’s quiet on the outside is not someone you want to mess with,” says Disney’s former international distribution chief Bill Mechanic, who worked alongside Cook for nine years.

By the time of the theater uproar, Cook already was well schooled in Disney’s hardball culture. Although not yet 40, he had been with the company nearly two decades.

Cook, born and raised in Bakersfield, began working at Disneyland in 1970 on weekends and holidays and during summers. He drove the Monorail and the Santa Fe & Disney Railroad. A couple of years later he met another ride operator, Bonnie. They’ve been married 27 years and have two daughters, ages 19 and 11.

Cook had planned to go to law school after graduating from USC in 1972, but his bank account said otherwise.

“I needed to make some money,” Cook said. Besides, he was getting hooked. “I just loved it. The atmosphere, the culture, the people.”

And the feeling was mutual.

Shortly after Disney World’s opening in Orlando, Fla., in the early 1970s, he was sent there for three months to help with the launch. “It was a magical time. It afforded you a lot of opportunities at a relatively young age.”

It was also in those early years that Cook showed the brass that he had management potential. As a junior sales representative making $150 a week, he was given the job of organizing “grad night” for as many as 20,000 high school students at a time. To get them to come, he trekked from one high school to another, selling the idea.

“You learned all the rudiments of marketing,” Cook said. “You had to know and understand the product--Disneyland--better than anyone.”

His people skills and marketing savvy caught the eye of Disney’s then-CEO Card Walker, who invited Cook to lunch and suggested he join the movie studio. In 1977, Cook became the manager of Disney’s pay TV and nontheatrical sales operations.

“He was a bright young man and had a nice presentation,” recalled Walker, now 86 and retired.

Two years later, Cook was promoted again, entering the world of distribution for the first time. In 1988, he was named president of the division. Eventually, he was given responsibility for marketing and, soon after that, a loftier title: chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group.

Among his most visible contributions was the invention of the studio’s grand-style premieres.

He staged the world debut of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” at the Superdome in New Orleans. For the Sean Connery action picture “The Rock,” he took over Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

He talked New York City authorities into shutting down Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street for the “Hercules” electrical light parade. And he convinced NASA to let Disney stage a premiere party and screening of “Armageddon” at Kennedy Space Center.

Last year, he persuaded the head of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet to provide the John C. Stennis aircraft carrier for the worldwide premiere of “Pearl Harbor.”

Former Disney studio head Roth says he’ll never forget arriving in New York at 11 o’clock the night before Disney’s premiere of “Pocahontas.” Cook, wearing a headset and baseball jacket, was standing in Central Park, drilling hundreds of Disney staffers.

“He was like a general conducting the troops,” Roth said. “This is a guy who could organize the Olympics.”

The premiere drew 110,000 people to Central Park.

When Roth left Disney, Cook wanted his job but knew better than to get his hopes up. Twice before he had been disappointed. He once had wanted to run the theme park division but was passed over. And when Disney acquired the Anaheim Angels baseball franchise in 1996, he had dreams of managing the sports division.

Cook saw another opening after Roth’s replacement, Schneider, abruptly left. He didn’t lobby for the job, nor was it offered by Eisner, who said he wanted to take his time in naming a successor. He did not want to make another miscalculation, which would reflect poorly on his judgment.

But Eisner did promise Cook one thing: He wouldn’t bring in an outsider. And he didn’t.

Cook, the consummate insider, now is responsible for the production, marketing and distribution of the 18 or so live-action movies made by Disney’s studio arms. He also has the job of overseeing the promotion and release of movies from Disney’s venerable animation division.

In all this, Cook’s biggest challenge will be to restore Disney’s reputation as the leader in family movies amid heightened competition.

It is not Disney’s name that appears above the titles of such hits as “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”

Cook is determined to win, and he knows the turf.

Three of the studio’s upcoming family movies will be based on Disneyland rides: “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “The Haunted Mansion” and “The Country Bears,” inspired by the attraction Cook’s wife once operated.

Perhaps the most daunting prospect of his new job, Cook said, is “not whether I can get someone on the phone--that will all come with time--but living up to the rich heritage of making great movies that stand the test of time. That’s what keeps me up at night.”