Speaking of the whole Eisner-Jobs mutual resentment and personal dislike for one another (and you can't buy segues that cool), did you happen to notice that Steve apparently really does ascribe to the notion that the best revenge is living well? As you all know, in addition to being the CEO of Apple, Steve also just happens to be CEO of some company called Pixar, which has apparently had some moderate success with a string of computer-animated movies distributed under the Disney name-- and by "moderate success," we mean, of course, "enough box office cash to form a small planet." But animosity between Steve and Mr. Eisner has left the contract between the companies set to expire at the end of this year, at which point Disney will no longer be able to sponge off of the vast sums of filthy lucre that Pixar's new movies will continue to bring in-- which is just one more reason why some shareholders have been screaming for Eisner's head on a pike for years, now.

Well, the contract is still in effect until January, but Disney must be taking a long, painful look at the cash it'll be giving up starting next year, because Pixar recently announced its quarterly earnings, and according to an official press release, the company's annual results for 2004 were its best ever. (Gee, sound familiar? Must be a Steve thing.)

What's interesting is that Steve attributes Pixar's record earnings in part to "the continuing success of Finding Nemo on home video"-- a movie that Eisner reportedly slammed to Disney's board of directors before it was released in 2003 as he predicted that it would be a relative flop. The New York Post reports that in DisneyWar, James B. Stewart reveals that Eisner penned a memo shortly after seeing Nemo that read, "this will be a reality check for those guys. It's OK, but nowhere near as good as their previous films. Of course, they think it's great. Trust me, it's not, but it will open."

Wow. Now that shows a man with a discerning eye, right? Nemo, of course, went on to net well over half a billion dollars at the box office alone and accounted for almost a quarter of Disney's entire 2003 revenue-- not even counting Nemo DVD sales, which were astronomical in their own right, what with 8 million copies having been sold on the very first day of availability. Now, Disney claims that Eisner "wrote the memo based on an earlier version of the film before it was completed," and sure, we've got the benefit of hindsight, here, but it really just seems unfathomable to us that anyone could see even a rough cut of Nemo and conclude that it'd wind up being Pixar's slice of humble pie. The fact that the guy in charge of Disney could make that mistake, well, that explains a lot about the quality of Disney's non-Pixar animated releases in recent years. No wonder Steve has no desire to work with this guy; having the personality of a grizzly bear with raging hemorrhoids can be overlooked, but not knowing what's good? That's unforgivable.