MICHAEL EISNERS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR THE NEW VICTORY ARTS AWARD ON NOV 18, 2013 IN RECOGNITION OF HIS

ENTERTAINMENT LEADERSHIP BUT ESPECIALLY HIS DRIVE IN SAVING AND REHABILITATING 42nd STREET I grew up not far from this Northeast corner of Times Square, the Eastern terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first roadway designed to go all the way across America. For me, this area was where the IRT 42nd Shuttle, the BMT Broadway Line, the IRT Broadway/Seventh Avenue Line, the IRT Flushing Line and the IND Eighth Avenue Line came together as I navigated this city as a kid. And above ground, 42ND street was simply the road from the Lincoln Tunnel to places in Manhattan. For me, Broadway was a mixture between going with my parents to SOUTH PACIFIC and DEATH OF A SALESMAN, and WHERES CHARLIE, and THE KING AND I; to playing with my friends an in-store carnival-type game called FASINATION. For others, he said with a smile, Times Square later was where you could see double features, like HE SCORED starring Adam Appletart or SATAN WAS NO LADY starring Sandra Sparkles. In an era way way before me, billboards here on this street trumpeted slogans like The Ziegfield Follies "Glorifying the American Girl." In an era way after me, posters here blared things like Best Porn in NYC. Most memorably, for me this area was the Dixie Hotel, where, before being renamed Hotel Carter and being crowned by Tripadvisor as dirtiest hotel in America, I stayed one night as a 16-year-old, following a fight with my mother, an aged runaway with a new drivers license , if you will. I might add that I never left the room nor took off my clothes. Two days later, a corpse was found stuffed under a bed. Fortunately, neither the bed nor the corpse was mine.

I grew up thinking of 42nd Street as an appealing/repulsive complexity of light and dark, of good and evil, of great architecture and dumps, of Hawthorns puritans and his maypolers. My views were so fixed and disjointed and blas that, when I sat next to Marian Haskell, matron saint of the New York Times, at a dinner party; I was able to ignore her pleas to help rescue this block. A while later, I was even able to ignore Disney board member and Yale Dean of Architecture Bob Stern and his rants about how we all owed this to NYC. I was also able to ignore his subtle and humorous analysis of me as a troglodyte, and ignore his not subtle castigation of me for not recognizing great architecture represented by the New Amsterdam theater. He insisted Id become a hard-hearted Hollywood movie guy? Where was the New Yorker in me, the theater, he so politely asked! But then, on a rainy drive to my sons hockey game in New Jersey heading for the Lincoln

2 Tunnel, I spotted the New Amsterdam and we stopped off to peek, why I dont know, but obviously so we could see for ourselves what all the fuss was about. As it was raining outside, it was raining inside. As the birds flew outside, so they also flew inside. It was a mess. But it was a magical mess. Im pretty sure we didnt actually see any ghosts. But we heard them. They spoke to us, saying that what once was could be again. And so, the pleas for restoration started to resonate with me. It became clear that a California company, The Walt Disney Company had a role to play so that artists and artisans and architects and their admirers could join together in a rebirth of this iconic section of this iconic city. But could it really be done? I met with the Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani and told him I believed there would be too many roadblocks to cleaning up the streets. The ACLU and others would take the city to court, and ladies of the night and the dealers of the day would continue to rule the local real estate. He simply replied, They will be gone. And I said, I think you are nave. Just last week, Frank Wells, Disneys president, got propositioned as I showed him the theater. Again he said, They will be gone. Oh sure, I replied. And he got very quiet and then he said, Look me in the eyes. I did. With those piercing eyes burning into me, he said, They will be gone. As you can see, this really did not happen because of me. It was the bombardment of others. For me, it was thinking of shows Disney could do, of panglossian thoughts about opening nights without ever having a closing night. But maybe the biggest impression for me was that look in the Mayors eyes. In the end , it was other committed New Yorkers that made it happen. So I thank you New York for this honor that belongs to you. New Yorkers stood up for the light. New Yorkers knew this street belonged to the dancers and designers, the writers and workers, the directors and the doers. And New Yorkers knew it belonged to the whole American audience, to the world audience, all who came and would come to see this creativity. Thank you all for proving that private individuals and public corporations and city government and state government, on occasion can productively mesh, can make magic, and can even make profits; profits for singers and songwriters, for everybody; but mostly for this great city. Thank you very much.