Michael

"One night, when he was about eighteen, Michael was ripping around Chester with friends in a sports car when he blew by an RCMP cruiser, which then gave chase. Michael outran the cruiser by speeding home and quickly pulling into their barn and closing the door. Then, in the night silence, his father appeared out of the treeline. “Did you turn off the car?” Risley asked his son. “Did you get the lights off?” “He was totally game... It certainly infected my enthusiasm for life,” Michael said. “I realized when people would come over, they just were not used to his energy. It was exciting. And frankly, I don’t know if we realized how charmed our life was.”"

"Michael proceeded to train with several acting teachers. He landed new roles and eventually secured the lead in Revolution #9. At the film’s Toronto premiere, he was watching from near the back of the theatre when, toward the end of the movie, as his character is mentally spiralling, an entire row of his family rose from their seats and left the theatre. He was stunned and confused. However there was good reason for their sudden departure. They’d followed Risley, who’d hurried from the theatre struggling to breathe before collapsing in the lobby. After the movie ended, Michael found his father on a stretcher, being attended to by paramedics and hooked to an IV. Initially the family thought he’d had a heart attack. Later that night, back at their hotel, Risley explained—in Michael’s telling of the story—why he’d struggled: “I couldn’t stand watching Michael go through that. It was just too powerful.”"

"“We felt like we could do anything,” Michael explained. “No challenge was insurmountable. You could go to him with anything, and it would be all about finding a solution... If you came to him with two different ideas and one was really just a small idea and the other one was a gigantic, improbable idea, he will absolutely be way more excited about the improbable idea.”"

"“You stopped relating to people,” Michael explained—and vice versa. “The problem with increasing wealth is it starts to distance you from being accepted for who you are.”"

"HPS, our long term lender, an offshoot of JP Morgan has a security interest in all our assets. We owe them [$ 150 million]. The relationship is a very good one and they allow us to move our assets around.... They also allow us to take enough money out of CFFI to pay all our obligations, dividends to me so I can pay Mum [Judi], Sarah and Michael their salaries/ allowances etc. Moving [$ 10 million] out from under their security blanket would be a problem and not something they would agree to absent some event [such as selling part of ClearBank to John Malone]. There is speculation I am using money to build a new yacht and my new house, money that could be directed to Mum. In fact that is not the case. I am financing the house with a mortgage and my deal with the shipyard allows me to pay in 3 years time, on delivery. So I hope this description of circumstances is helpful to you in appreciating why it is not possible for me to say on June 30th I will pay x. I am more than willing to transfer the Montana house or anything else which might give Mum better comfort that I intend to honour my obligations."

"PEOPLE SOMETIMES SHY AWAY from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case against trying something before they even take the first step. One of the things I’ve always instinctively felt—and something that was greatly reinforced working for people like Roone and Michael—is that long shots aren’t usually as long as they seem."

"Michael and I negotiated with each other tortuously on every detail before we engaged with Lucas’s representatives. Michael was right to win the risk argument and take on the movie, but I did make certain that if it was successful, we wouldn’t be in the position of Fox, which had only a one-picture license from *Star Wars.* I insisted we had the right to make sequels on the same terms as the original, given that the terms on the original were so much higher than anyone else had ever received. I wanted to retch once, and then not have to regurgitate in a new negotiation if the film was a success. And I wanted it in the clearest, most unambiguous language that all the parties agreed to and understood; there would be no new negotiating if George Lucas wanted to do a sequel. After the squabbling, all was settled and off they went to make the movie, and miracle of miracles, they made it on budget and on schedule."

"Ultimately, Wells graciously agreed to be president, but those complications were what had kept it all up in the air—and kept Michael unreachable. He didn’t want to risk his one firm job offer by telling me he was after the Disney job. I was at home on a Sunday morning when Warren Beatty called to say that Michael was going to Disney. The pieces in the disappearing puzzle of Michael now fit. Shortly thereafter Michael called me from his car to say that he’d just left the Disney board meeting and it was going to be announced that he was its new CEO. I was angry that he hadn’t told me the truth about his maneuverings, and I was terribly disappointed that he wasn’t coming with me to Fox, but of course he was right to take the Disney job. Even though Disney was a much smaller operation at that time and had been moribund in the last few years, it was also an extraordinary opportunity and Michael was right to do it. And what a beyond-spectacular success he was to make of it."

"Michael was now a senior executive at ABC, a big part of making it the top network. But he was still a mid-level vice president and didn’t have much of a chance to get promoted. I asked him to become the president of Paramount; that got his attention and he agreed to join me. He was just so smart—ideas simply bounced out of him. He was capable of saying things that were so ridiculous, and then, in the same breath, out would come something absolutely brilliant. Individually, we were complete opposites; together we were an indomitable combination. He was brash and somewhat reckless with his ideas and enthusiasm. I was measured and endlessly logical and always wanted to be sure any risk was covered. And yet, while he would reference relatively obscure literary properties to emphasize the distinction between an educated, cultured person (him) and an uneducated barbarian (me), he actually was much more basely commercial than I was. He was also funny and we could laugh together, which is almost mandatory for me in any working relationship—even in the most dire discussions or ones of the highest frenzy, something much worse is wrong if you can’t find a laugh somewhere."

"I arranged for Michael and his wife, Jane, to come to Marvin’s house for get-to-know-each-other drinks. It was an awful meeting. Marvin didn’t exactly jibe with the Eisners. First, there was Marvin’s *Beverly Hillbillies*–ridiculous house—an eleven-acre, forty-five-thousand-square-foot mansion with eleven bedrooms and seventeen bathrooms, a huge granite pile that had originally been built for Lucy Doheny Battson and was as formal and proper as the dumpy Davis was ill-suited to be inside it. As drinks were served, out came about three pounds of caviar, two pounds of which Marvin gorged on in the thirty-minute interview."

"Michael brings thoughtful balance to this group, being somewhat risk-averse and highly analytical. Richard Coraine is the ultimate realist. He knows what it takes to launch a new business, and he doesn’t mince words. He also knows food and wine and lives for the tireless discovery of the best. He’s actively involved in the selection of chefs and general managers. He’ll most often stick to his guns whenever our growth seems to outpace our ability to execute at the highest levels of quality. After all, when something goes awry, he and his operations team will be the ones most responsible for fixing it. Paul keeps us focused on the quality and capacities of the people who work in our organization, knowing that they are our core strength. He’s the adviser who best knows how…"