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    Documentary Critical of Disney, From the Disney Family

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    A harsh portrait of pay inequality at the company, premiering at Sundance on Monday, was directed by the granddaughter of one of the founders.Three years ago, Abigail E. Disney began to publicly excoriate the Walt Disney Company for its “obscene” pay inequality, with Robert A. Iger, who was then chief executive, at one end of the scale and hourly theme park workers at the other. The company founded by her grandfather and great-uncle repeatedly returned fire, at one point calling her assertions a “gross and unfair exaggeration of the facts.”But Ms. Disney has refused to back down, even though the company recently agreed to a 16 percent raise for certain theme park workers. In fact, she is escalating her campaign — and, for the first time, bringing along two of her three siblings.“The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” an activist-minded documentary about the pay gap between corporate haves and have-nots, will premiere on Monday as part of the Sundance Film Festival, which is being held digitally because of the pandemic. Ms. Disney and Kathleen Hughes directed the film; Ms. Disney’s sister, Susan Disney Lord, and a brother, Tim, are among the executive producers. The movie positions the entertainment company that bears their name as “ground zero of the widening inequality in America.”To paint that harsh picture, Ms. Disney and Ms. Hughes profile four Disneyland custodians, who, at the time of filming (prepandemic), earned $15 an hour. They all struggle mightily with soaring housing costs in Southern California. One says he knows Disneyland workers who have had to “make a decision between medication or food.”Intermittently, the filmmakers cut to photographs of Mr. Iger, who was Disney’s chief executive from 2005 to 2020, a period of stunning gains for stockholders (including Ms. Disney and other members of her family). Viewers are reminded that Disney awarded him a pay package in 2018 worth $65.6 million. Stock awards tied to the acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets made up 40 percent.Ms. Disney and her sister are then shown reminiscing about their grandfather, Roy O. Disney, who founded the company in 1923 with his brother, Walt. “I cannot see him taking $66 million home for a year’s work in the same year when, at the same company, people can’t afford food,” an indignant Ms. Disney says. Her sister responds, “That would never have happened — that would never have happened.”The Disney family has not been involved in managing Disney since their father, Roy E. Disney, stepped down from the board in 2003 and led a shareholder revolt that resulted in Mr. Iger’s ascension. Roy E. Disney died in 2009.The New York Times was allowed to view the film ahead of its premiere. Disney, which was not given early access, responded to queries about the film’s content and tone with the following statement:“The well-being and aspirations of our employees and cast will always be our top priority. We provide a leading and holistic employment package that includes competitive pay and comprehensive benefits for our cast members to grow their careers and care for their families. That starts with fair pay and leading entry wages, but also includes affordable medical coverage, access to tuition-free higher education, subsidized child care for eligible employees, as well as pathways for personal and professional development.”The statement added, “We are committed to building on our significant efforts to date.”Recent developments at Disneyland cut against the film’s narrative. In December, unions representing 9,500 custodians, ride operators and parking attendants ratified a new contract that lifts minimum starting pay to $18 an hour by 2023 — up from $15.45 last year, a 16 percent increase — and includes seniority-based bonuses. Disneyland has almost returned to full staffing after being closed for more than a year because of the pandemic, a spokeswoman said. The Anaheim resort employs roughly 30,000 people.Mr. Iger has also left the company. Ms. Disney tells viewers that she decided to make the film because she was frustrated and angry at his “curt” response to an email she sent him in 2018 about theme park employee pay. He declined to comment for this article.Ms. Disney has faced claims of discrimination and unfair treatment from former employees at one of her companies, Level Forward, which helps finance and produce entertainment projects with a social justice focus. (“There’s fair criticism in there,” Ms. Disney told The Hollywood Reporter last year.)In an interview via Zoom, Ms. Disney and Ms. Hughes, an Emmy-winning television newsmagazine producer, said they were “encouraged” by the Disneyland pay increase but said it wasn’t enough — that around $24 an hour was the needed “living wage.”“If everything’s different, then why did the new C.E.O. walk away with $32.5 million for a not very profitable year?” Ms. Disney said. She was referring to Bob Chapek. Disney reported $2 billion in profit for 2021, compared to a loss of $2.8 billion in 2020. Before the pandemic, Disney was generating $10 billion annually in profit.The filmmakers are still looking for a distributor. They hope to use Sundance to generate interest from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ or another Disney competitor. In addition to its condemnation of Disney, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales” takes on a host of complicated subjects, including the evolution of capitalism, shifting government economic policies and racial injustice.“I want changes to the entire system — from C.E.O.s generally and from Wall Street especially — that result in the recognition of the dignity and humanity of every single worker,” Ms. Disney said.Ms. Disney is a prominent member of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group that pushes for higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals like themselves. As she has said over the years, it is a position that some of her own family members have a difficult time understanding. (That appears to include a brother, Roy P. Disney, who has supported Mr. Iger and is not involved with “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales.”)Lest anyone think the film is her final word on the subject of pay inequality at Disney and other companies, she ends her documentary with these words: “To be continued.” More

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      in Movies

      Disney Hires Geoff Morrell to head P.R. and Government Relations

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      The Walt Disney Company has found a new image protector and polisher: Geoff Morrell, 53, who helped the fossil fuel giant BP brighten its reputation after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster and who served as the Pentagon’s press secretary during the Iraq war.Bob Chapek, Disney’s chief executive, announced the hiring of Mr. Morrell as chief corporate affairs officer, a newly created job, on Tuesday. The position will combine several global functions — communications, public policy, government relations, corporate social responsibility and environmental issues — that previously had been distributed between Disney departments.Mr. Morrell faces many challenges. Disney is going through a choppy regime change: Mr. Chapek became chief executive last year, but his well-liked predecessor, Robert A. Iger, has remained as executive chairman. (He leaves for good on Dec. 31.) The company is also trying to transform itself into a streaming titan while dealing with a shift in the country’s culture: Its family-friendly brand is meant to be for everyone, but neutrality in today’s hyperpartisan world is almost impossible.Mr. Morrell’s hiring, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, ends a guessing game about who Mr. Chapek would select to succeed Zenia B. Mucha, who announced her retirement as Disney’s chief communications officer in July. Among other duties, Ms. Mucha, 65, commanded Disney’s 500-person global media relations team for 19 years.Mr. Morrell will relocate to Los Angeles from London, where BP is based. He will start at Disney at the end of January. “Few companies are as beloved as Disney, and I am committed to doing everything I can to make sure it remains that way,” Mr. Morrell said.In a memo to BP employees on Tuesday, Bernard Looney, BP’s chief executive, cited the “modernization” that Mr. Morrell brought to the company’s communication efforts. “He helped me change the tone of the corporate voice so that it is hopefully now much more human,” Mr. Looney wrote. Mr. Morrell most recently served at BP as executive vice president of communications and advocacy.Early in his career, Mr. Morrell was a reporter at ABC News, which is owned by Disney, serving as a White House correspondent from 2004 to 2007. He left journalism in 2007, when he joined the Pentagon during the Bush administration, serving as chief spokesman for Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and the U.S. military.“I trust this guy to do and say what I want,” Mr. Gates wrote of Mr. Morrell in his 2014 memoir, “Duty,” while recounting how he had fought to keep him as Pentagon spokesman when President Barack Obama took over in 2009. Mr. Morrell, he wrote, was “one of the handful of people I could count on to criticize me to my face, to tell me when I had given a poor answer to a question, to question my patience (or impatience) with others in the Pentagon, and to question a decision.” More

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      in Music

      A Race ‘Report Card’ Measures Whether the Music Industry Changed

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      The Black Music Action Coalition issued a 37-page report examining if powerful companies followed through on diversity commitments made last summer.A new “report card” on race in the music business takes many of the industry’s most powerful companies to task, urging them to follow through on diversity commitments made last summer amid nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd.The 37-page “Music Industry Action Report Card,” by the Black Music Action Coalition, was issued over the weekend to coincide with the Juneteenth holiday. The group took its hardest look at the three major record companies, which announced large financial donations last year — Sony and Warner Music each pledged $100 million, and Universal $25 million — and doled out middling-to-poor grades to them.Only a portion of those donation pledges has been paid out so far, and in its report the coalition — a group of artist managers, lawyers and others in the business that was formed a year ago — pressed the companies to hire more people of color in top executive jobs.The report graded the labels in four categories, including their initial commitments and subsequent follow-through, and the companies mostly got B’s and C’s. None earned an A, and one, Warner, even got a D in the category of representation at the executive level.Last week, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California released a detailed report of its own, noting that, among 4,060 executives at 119 music companies of various kinds, 7.5 percent were Black. (At record companies, that number was 14.4 percent.)“Our hope is that the MIA Report Card, especially coming on the heels of the Annenberg study, will spur more conversations and efforts towards, in some cases, disruptive change,” Naima Cochrane, a journalist and former label executive who was the author of the Black Music Action Coalition’s study, wrote.Most companies named in the report, including each of the three major record conglomerates, declined to comment about it. But some within the industry privately complained that the study was inconsistent or incomplete.A total of 18 companies were examined in the report. While record labels were given letter grades, other types of companies, like streaming services, talent agencies and concert promoters, were rated on whether their efforts were “satisfactory.” Whole areas of the business, including radio and artist management, were not addressed. The coalition said the study would be expanded in coming years.“Our data is only as good as the record industry’s willingness to cooperate in providing information,” Binta Niambi Brown, the coalition’s co-chairman, said in a statement.Pandora, the internet radio giant that is owned by SiriusXM, was one of the few whose efforts were deemed “unsatisfactory,” although scant reasons were given for that rating. “Because Pandora has traded on its familiarity with Black and Latinx listeners and their impact on culture,” the report said, “we expected a more significant commitment from them.”In response, Nicole Hughey, the head of diversity and inclusion at SiriusXM, said the company has given money to organizations and pursued specific campaigns against racism in the audio business.“We support BMAC’s mission, but were disappointed and surprised by the Unsatisfactory rating given to Pandora in their recent report card, given our strong passion and commitment to fighting racism and promoting racial equality,” Ms. Hughey said in a statement.“There is always more work to be done, within our company and across the music industry,” she added, “and we will continue that work tirelessly.” More