Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed by Michael D. Eisner & Aaron R. Cohen

Author:Michael D. Eisner & Aaron R. Cohen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-09-13T14:00:00+00:00

Two guys from Brooklyn

It is an unusually cool spring night in May of 1977. A few months before the Son of Sam serial killer wreaks havoc all across New York City. About half a year before a film Barry Diller and I will bring forth from Paramount, Saturday Night Fever, cements disco as a worldwide cultural movement of the 1970s. Let’s say it’s a Wednesday—between ten and eleven in the evening, right around the time most working people are starting to get ready for bed. But in the heart of the world’s most exciting city, where there’s always action, seemingly all of it is pointing to one block: West Fifty-fourth Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. All the limos and taxis head that way, if not to stop, then just to cruise by to check out the scene on the sidewalk. There they’ll view seemingly every piece of what makes New York the most diverse place on the planet all coming together. Wealthy partiers in mink coats and not…next to blue-collar kids from the Bronx and Queens…next to professional socialites whose days are about getting ready for nights…next to anyone else who just wandered up because they were curious. All converging on 254 West Fifty-fourth Street, and forming a half line, half amorphous mass of people outside the front door. There are literally hundreds of people cramming toward the entrance, as one man—who would never be confused with any of the well-built, good-looking types making up most of the crowd—ushers them in, or more likely sends them away, one by one.

“You—you’re in. You—go home. You too—no way. Maybe I’ll let you back when you wear something nicer. You two, come here. No, no, not you. I don’t care if the three of you are together—I’m only letting these two in.”

Those accepted saunter in; those rejected slump backward. It is, to the uninitiated, a very curious scene.

It is also the signature snapshot of perhaps the biggest social phenomenon in New York City, or even elsewhere, ever: Studio 54. That may sound like an exaggeration, but think about it: exaggeration is what Studio 54 was about. When else has there been one setting—one place, one club, one disco—known by so many people all over the world? Studio 54 was, above all, a destination, for people from London and Los Angeles and Jackson Heights and the Grand Concourse and Bruckner Boulevard to Paris and Rome. It was a phenomenon that raked in thousands of dollars a night, and millions of dollars a month. It may have lasted only a little over a year, but for those who were there orchestrating the mania, it was the ride of a lifetime. And at the core of it all was a partnership between two men who at once shared so much and differed so dramatically.

Eventually, of course, the ride got too intoxicating, and Studio 54 became a victim of its own wild success. But despite the ensuing disaster, as the ethical compass went awry, the partnership

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