To: HW, RG

Re: Synergy brainstorm

Okay, I’ve had some ideas since our breakfast meeting. Undoubtedly, we have to think further than just the traditional promotional axis. As an example, let’s take the Mark Ross piece, the one where he’s ambushed by Uganda rebels. I flipped through the Disney and Hearst annual reports, came up with some suggestions:

Obvious:

• Mark recounts story on ABC’s Live With Regis And Kathie Lee.

• Get Abe Verghese, our medical guy, to debut new column on African tribal medicine on GO Network’s DrKoop.com.

• Hearst Magazines’ House Beautiful devotes an entire issue to mud-and-twig yurts.

• A&E debuts "The Bwanika Zone And The Third Reich."

Other possibilities:

• Miramax releases Shakespeare In Love treatment of former Monash University professor George Silberbaur, who lived with in Uganda in the ‘60s. (I think...he may have lived in Australia, have a fact-checker look into it...)

• Lifetime Network debuts "Behind Every TribesMan..." a special series about the women of the Ankole.

• (Disney) Fairchild Publications’ Jane magazine publishes a feature story on ritual scarification and cliterodectomies in Africa, declaring them "out" for the new millennium.

May have to check with legal on these...

• Hearst Magazines’ Esquire runs interview with Ugandan Minister of Parliament Amama Sebaggala, cleverly and subtly revealing him to be gay.

• ESPN introduces Koho as an "extreme" sport. (The traditional Ugandan ball-and-stick game.)

• Let’s get Walt Disney Pictures to greenlight the Stoppard script, Some Pygmy. It’s a comedy about two members of the Federal Witness Protection Program–think Adam Sandler and Dave Chappelle–no, not David Lachapelle–forced to live with Ugandan rebels. Featuring two animated sidekicks–a wise-cracking tsetse fly (think Jackie Mason) and a cynical spitting cobra (Puffy).

• Disney GOALS, that program for underpriviliged youths, organizes an "Outward Bound"-style safari into the heart of Uganda and Kampala, enabling urban youths to learn from the courage and resourcefulness of the truly underprivileged. Each of the rebels gets an Anaheim Angels baseball cap.

I’ll have Stevie call Eisner. Thoughts?

--TB