Too Many Walts and not enough Roys

Summary

I just got through reading “Building a Company: Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire” by Bob Thomas. Reading nonfiction usually takes me a long time (I’m a daydreamer) but I absolutely sailed through this book. It’s all about Roy Disney, Walt Disney’s older brother and business partner. It’s a touching book. Though Roy became quite rich as a result of his association with Walt, he was also very self-sacrificing. When Walt decided to start a new animation studio, Roy was in a hospital bed undergoing long-term treatment for tuberculosis. Walt said “I need your help” and Roy got out of bed and checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice. I almost cried at one point, reading about an incident much later, years after Walt had passed away. Roy was close to death himself, but had been working on the founding of CalArts, which had been a very frustrating process. A close associate asked “Why don’t you give it up?” “Godammit(sic), Donn” Roy replied, vehemently, “Walt wanted this school, and I’m going to get it for him.”p326 Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is how creative businesses don’t seem to be able to flourish in the 21st century. The simple explanation might be that the democratization of tools has made creating something truly original is tougher. The landscapes of the arts are fractured. Also, they don’t make creative people like Walt Disney anymore. There’s some truth to each of these explanations, but not fully true. Nothing is really original, all creative work stands in reference to prior work. The audience is fractured, but it always has been — in the past it was fractured by geography, language, economics, and politics. All of these are still factors, but for anything consumed through the internet they are decreasingly relevant. And, though there might not be anyone quite like Walt Disney, there are lots and lots of wildly creative and driven people. Especially in the wake of Walt himself, there was a generati...