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Brian Grazer Discusses Imagine Entertainment · Masters in Business

0:02
Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Riddholts on Bloomberg Radio.
0:07
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast What Can I Say? I
0:09
Speaker 1: have an extra special guest. His name is Brian Grazer.
0:12
Speaker 1: If you have any interest in the entertainment industry, if
0:16
Speaker 1: you're a film buff, if you watch any of the
0:19
Speaker 1: best television and films produced over the past thirty years,
0:23
Speaker 1: well then you're definitely familiar with his work and you
0:27
Speaker 1: will find this to be an absolutely fantastic conversation, fascinating
0:32
Speaker 1: and informative. With no further ado, my interview of Brian Grazer.
0:38
Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
0:43
Speaker 1: My extra special guest this week is Brian Grazer. He
0:47
Speaker 1: is the co founder of Imagine Entertainment with his partner
0:51
Speaker 1: Ron Howard. He is the producer of such seminal films
0:54
Speaker 1: as Splash, Backdraft, Apollo thirteen, Liar, Liar eight Mile. His
1:00
Speaker 1: television offerings include such things as Sports Night twenty four
1:05
Speaker 1: and The cult Can I call it a cult favorite?
1:07
Speaker 1: Arrested Development it is. His films have generated more than
1:12
Speaker 1: thirteen and a half billion dollars in revenue, and his
1:15
Speaker 1: television work has done probably twice as much as that.
1:18
Speaker 1: The Producers Guild of America awarded him the David ol
1:22
Speaker 1: Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award in two thousand and one. He
1:25
Speaker 1: is the author of A Curious Mind and most recently,
1:29
Speaker 1: Face to Face The Art of Human Connection. Brian Grazer,
1:33
Speaker 1: Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you glad to be here Bloomberg.
1:37
Speaker 1: Rather and with Barry and I helped me get all
1:39
Speaker 1: my food items for the morning. We we got you
1:43
Speaker 1: ready to go. So I'm looking deeply into your eyes.
1:46
Speaker 1: And in the book you explain how as a kid
1:50
Speaker 1: that was a problem. Looking people directly face to face
1:54
Speaker 1: was a challenge. How did that manifest itself and how
1:57
Speaker 1: did you overcome that? Okay, so, um and thank you
2:01
Speaker 1: for reading the book and having me my pleasure. By
2:03
Speaker 1: the way, the book was very enjoyable. It's very you're
2:05
Speaker 1: you're a spiritual, philosophical cat and I found that really
2:09
Speaker 1: I am actually but thank you. Um. So, as a kid,
2:14
Speaker 1: I had acute dyslexia, but it wasn't called that then,
2:18
Speaker 1: it wasn't labeled as such. It was just like that
2:21
Speaker 1: learning disability. Yeah, learning disability. Let's put him back. I
2:24
Speaker 1: was the kid that would let the parents were talking
2:27
Speaker 1: about every night, let's put him back, kid um. But
2:32
Speaker 1: it was but it was really just you know, the
2:35
Speaker 1: root of that was that I had no ability to read.
2:38
Speaker 1: I couldn't read one word. I couldn't even sequence a sentence.
2:43
Speaker 1: I mean I would be out way out of sequence
2:46
Speaker 1: and I'd often start from the wrong side and left
2:49
Speaker 1: to right issues. Also, I do I still have that.
2:53
Speaker 1: So I'll share some secrets with you. Discipline you can
2:57
Speaker 1: you can figure well once you're married, you know the Yeah,
3:01
Speaker 1: that was a big deal. But I remember taking my
3:03
Speaker 1: learners Permit test and left is the hand to make
3:07
Speaker 1: the l. Every time the instructor would say make a
3:09
Speaker 1: right or left, I would go this, and he would say,
3:11
Speaker 1: what are you doing? I'm like, that's how the only
3:13
Speaker 1: way I know left from right? So so what did
3:16
Speaker 1: you do to overcome the reading issue? Well, I what
3:19
Speaker 1: I did was I avoided eye contact with all teachers
3:24
Speaker 1: all the time. They love that, No, they don't like
3:28
Speaker 1: avoided eye contact. It just became I did that because
3:33
Speaker 1: if you look at the teacher or or if your
3:36
Speaker 1: eyes are available in fact, then you'd get picked to
3:39
Speaker 1: answer the question or Brian, come to the come to
3:43
Speaker 1: the board, you know, the chalkboard. So I just didn't
3:46
Speaker 1: want any of those requests because I never had the answer,
3:50
Speaker 1: because it was always based on the material you were
3:53
Speaker 1: to have read. And I was incapable of reading. And
3:56
Speaker 1: I had him Mr. Paula boy who was teaching me
3:58
Speaker 1: how to read theoretically, but it was possible for impossible
4:01
Speaker 1: for him. Um just because the way the symptoms and
4:06
Speaker 1: root of dyslexi itself. So anyway, nonetheless, I couldn't read
4:10
Speaker 1: about fourth I guess around fifth grade I started to
4:15
Speaker 1: be able to read a little. And but by the way,
4:18
Speaker 1: my grandmother had had one mentor in my life at
4:22
Speaker 1: the time. They're really believed in Brian. And she'd say,
4:26
Speaker 1: you have the gift of gab, you have curiosity, and
4:30
Speaker 1: you can talk about it. And and she'd be looking
4:33
Speaker 1: at my report cards over my shoulder that were straight f's,
4:37
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, Wow, she believes in me. And she says,
4:41
Speaker 1: you're going all the way. She had all those isms,
4:43
Speaker 1: You're going all the way, think big b big, But
4:46
Speaker 1: there was no empirical evidence whatsoever that I was going
4:50
Speaker 1: to be the thing, big b big person. She saw
4:52
Speaker 1: something in you admother's love. This is she she saw
4:58
Speaker 1: the hints of this super for power called curiosity, and
5:03
Speaker 1: that that is valuable. And if you can use it
5:06
Speaker 1: exhaustively with human beings, you can learn a lot, gain
5:09
Speaker 1: insights and gain hearts. And if I said that right
5:14
Speaker 1: now to her, if she were alive, she would say, yes,
5:16
Speaker 1: that's that's right. She's probably very very strong on the hearts.
5:20
Speaker 1: In any event, fifth grade, I could read, and now
5:24
Speaker 1: I realize if I can read, I can now look
5:28
Speaker 1: at people. So I started looking at people and and
5:32
Speaker 1: and using them also as as a secondary or primary
5:36
Speaker 1: textbook unto themselves. So I would look at you today,
5:39
Speaker 1: for example, I noticed so much about you, Barry, so much. Um, well,
5:45
Speaker 1: you move quickly, you think quickly, You're very helpful, you
5:49
Speaker 1: um incredibly smart. Well sound okay, So I don't want to,
5:54
Speaker 1: but I did, but I did notice quite a bit.
5:59
Speaker 1: So um you're you're you are a judge, not with me,
6:03
Speaker 1: but you you tend to be a judge of human
6:06
Speaker 1: nature and human character. You do this in the in
6:10
Speaker 1: the way, this is my pop observation, in the in
6:14
Speaker 1: the material you select to make films, in the casting,
6:17
Speaker 1: I know everybody works with casting director uh and others,
6:21
Speaker 1: but it looks like that's a big part of of
6:24
Speaker 1: what you do. Well. I'm really I'm very good at
6:27
Speaker 1: prospecting for ideas that have that haven't been done, that
6:32
Speaker 1: have an authentic voice, and or there'll be an idea
6:39
Speaker 1: that's as simple as face to face. But I'm able
6:43
Speaker 1: to granulate the techniques of what face to face means
6:48
Speaker 1: in a way that's interesting and with stories, and that
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Speaker 1: empowers people too, you know, get the promotion they're looking
6:57
Speaker 1: to get so that they can communicate it and they understand.
7:00
Speaker 1: And the energy someone's energy, the energy you bring into
7:02
Speaker 1: a room that millisecond is the beginning of the very
7:07
Speaker 1: story or the Bryan story. And you don't want anything
7:11
Speaker 1: to deflect that present state of mind. And then you
7:14
Speaker 1: want to be You want to use your eye contact
7:17
Speaker 1: and I'm using this in a simple way. You want
7:19
Speaker 1: to use your eye contact as a as a tool
7:23
Speaker 1: abridge the WiFi into human connection itself. And if you're
7:29
Speaker 1: really present with somebody like just you know, genuine interest,
7:34
Speaker 1: not transactional interest, but genuine interest, you gain so much.
7:39
Speaker 1: Every one of my movies A Beautiful Mind, Friday Night lights,
7:43
Speaker 1: empires television of course, um, any of the successful things
7:48
Speaker 1: I ever did Splash, which you referenced, it's all birth
7:51
Speaker 1: out of human interaction, human connection, and which came into
7:58
Speaker 1: play because of eye contact. Then let's say I have
8:03
Speaker 1: those insights as I did on Let's use a beautiful mind.
8:07
Speaker 1: Then I need someone to pay for a beautiful mind,
8:11
Speaker 1: you know, because then they could box it up and say, oh,
8:13
Speaker 1: it's a movie about schizophrenia. That's not going to be
8:16
Speaker 1: a popular or sexy subject, which of course I heard
8:19
Speaker 1: to some degree. Then what I have to do is
8:22
Speaker 1: use the powers of my observational skills that I've had
8:26
Speaker 1: in the past, and okay, which one? Which? How do
8:31
Speaker 1: I approach this so that I can make it not, um,
8:35
Speaker 1: a study of schizophrenia, but a how do I make
8:40
Speaker 1: it a story that's engaging to people? How do I
8:43
Speaker 1: make it cinematic? What perspective on this subject makes it
8:49
Speaker 1: worthy of somebody going out of their house, getting a babysitter,
8:53
Speaker 1: whatever they have to do, find the parking spot, pay
8:56
Speaker 1: for the seat, and then I feel like they've had
8:58
Speaker 1: a great time. I'd rather had a great time. So
9:01
Speaker 1: I have to invent all of that stuff. Or I
9:04
Speaker 1: have to lead the invention of all of that stuff.
9:06
Speaker 1: The invention and and those things, in the case of
9:09
Speaker 1: a Beautiful Mind, came from the just simple observational power
9:15
Speaker 1: of meeting new and interesting people. So the story of
9:20
Speaker 1: a Beautiful Mind, what made it cinematic, was twenty years
9:24
Speaker 1: before Beautiful Mind ever existed. I met a woman named
9:29
Speaker 1: Veronica de Negre who was tortured in Chile. She was
9:37
Speaker 1: during the Pinochet regime, the dictatorship of Pinoget, and so
9:42
Speaker 1: she was sentenced to eighteen months of constant torture. And
9:47
Speaker 1: I had the opportunity to meet her through Sting, actually
9:51
Speaker 1: because I met him a year before that. Because I
9:53
Speaker 1: was so fascinating, like I thought, how does a teacher
9:56
Speaker 1: become a rock star? And so I constantly asked myself
9:59
Speaker 1: these questions. So I got to meet Sting a year later.
10:02
Speaker 1: Stings has come over the barbecue. I meet Veronica Danegre.
10:05
Speaker 1: I say, how do you say? How did you survive it?
10:08
Speaker 1: She said, I created an alternate narrative that I would
10:11
Speaker 1: live in, another story I would live in all of
10:14
Speaker 1: the time. So I live and fully engaged in this
10:18
Speaker 1: other story that's not actually reality, because reality was torture,
10:22
Speaker 1: so that enables her to survive this eighteen months. And
10:26
Speaker 1: I thought, well, then I'm thinking, wow, that's very interesting.
10:30
Speaker 1: Twenty years later, I transport that insight that I gained
10:34
Speaker 1: from this non transactional conversation, and I thought, that insight
10:39
Speaker 1: completely applies to a schizophrenic mind. So if we start
10:44
Speaker 1: the movie through an alternate, alternate universe and alternate narrative
10:49
Speaker 1: like another story, which we did, it's gonna be mind
10:53
Speaker 1: blowing to people. Now could disengage them, but it can
10:56
Speaker 1: also really engage them because it then it becomes kind
10:59
Speaker 1: of a three thriller, so it changes the entire genre
11:03
Speaker 1: of the experience. So therefore, instead of being a drama,
11:06
Speaker 1: it became a thriller and then a love story. And
11:09
Speaker 1: that's how he's John Nash survived the and coped with
11:13
Speaker 1: his schizophrenia. I was gonna say, it's not about schizophrenia.
11:17
Speaker 1: It's a love story with one of the parties sort
11:19
Speaker 1: of descending into a bit of madness, and that's the
11:22
Speaker 1: driver of the plot. I have to talk about Beautiful
11:26
Speaker 1: Mind for a minute because I just watched a couple
11:29
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, the loudest voice in the room not
11:32
Speaker 1: only is Russell Crowe so fabulous in in A Beautiful Mind, spectacular, like,
11:40
Speaker 1: you can't believe this is the same guy. It's such
11:42
Speaker 1: a And then Jennifer Connelly, I fell in love with
11:45
Speaker 1: our in um career Opportunities, and she's just so amazing
11:50
Speaker 1: Beautiful Mind. She's just spectacular in it. She won an
11:53
Speaker 1: Oscar for that. She want an Oscar, as did you,
11:56
Speaker 1: And I said, I yes, yeah, UM, quite quite interesting.
12:00
Speaker 1: It was great, great experience. And you've said this is
12:02
Speaker 1: your this is your favorite film, it's certainly, yeah, probably
12:07
Speaker 1: my favorite film. I may I have several that I
12:09
Speaker 1: really like a lot, but A Beautiful Mind is probably
12:11
Speaker 1: my favorite film because it triumphed in so many categories.
12:15
Speaker 1: I mean it, it became a vehicle of a message
12:19
Speaker 1: that mattered to me, which was, let's look at people
12:22
Speaker 1: directly and and treat people as human beings and try
12:26
Speaker 1: to understand them and not not apply an immediate bias.
12:29
Speaker 1: And I was one of those people. There's no caricatures
12:31
Speaker 1: in that film at all. Yeah, And I wanted to
12:34
Speaker 1: help destigmatize mental disability so that when you were here
12:39
Speaker 1: in New York you see people in the street, they're
12:41
Speaker 1: yelling in the middle of the street, or they're screaming
12:43
Speaker 1: at a store window. And let's not just disregard them immediately.
12:48
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, let's try to understand that they
12:51
Speaker 1: may be bipolar, they may be schizophrenic, they have issues,
12:55
Speaker 1: and and basically compassion is so powerful, so portant to success. Really,
13:01
Speaker 1: empathy is really important to success. I've been able to
13:05
Speaker 1: sell and raise lots of money for lots of movies,
13:08
Speaker 1: billions of dollars for movie, for movies which are really ideas.
13:13
Speaker 1: But similar to a startup, like say, okay, let's do Airbnb.
13:17
Speaker 1: You know they're not that different. You know, they don't
13:19
Speaker 1: make a startup. It's entrepreneurial. You have to bring in investors,
13:23
Speaker 1: you have to bring in managers. It's it's very parallel
13:26
Speaker 1: to running a new tech startup exactly. And it it
13:31
Speaker 1: can fail in an evening, or it can succeed or
13:35
Speaker 1: have life, and you pump more life into it. And
13:38
Speaker 1: it could be a beautiful mind for example, quite quite fascinating.
13:41
Speaker 1: But you really have to be in order to do
13:44
Speaker 1: anything well. You like, get the raise, raise the hundred
13:48
Speaker 1: million dollars, find your wife, my me, finding my wife.
13:53
Speaker 1: You have to be president open minded. So you do
13:57
Speaker 1: a lot of work that's been recognized and and awarded
14:00
Speaker 1: and rewarded. Tell us a little bit about your process.
14:05
Speaker 1: How do you decide what films you want to produce?
14:08
Speaker 1: Is it the business side? Is it things you want
14:10
Speaker 1: to see? What? What is your process? Like? Okay, because
14:15
Speaker 1: my first success was in nineteen four about a mermaid
14:21
Speaker 1: Splash Splash, and it's it's really that became that became
14:26
Speaker 1: very helpful in the way I would start this journey.
14:29
Speaker 1: So basically, both the people and the process, or that
14:35
Speaker 1: the hundreds of people that turned down a mermaid movie
14:38
Speaker 1: because it sounded so stupid to them, because that's the
14:40
Speaker 1: stupidest idea. It's like there's no such thing as a
14:43
Speaker 1: mermaid or it's just that the dumb idea. What you
14:47
Speaker 1: what you learn is that first of all, nobody really
14:50
Speaker 1: knows and nobody really knows the internal heartbeat of something,
14:55
Speaker 1: particularly when it's got a you know, a big premise
14:58
Speaker 1: at the beginning of it. So the fact that I
15:02
Speaker 1: could do a dumb idea and have it be really
15:05
Speaker 1: successful meant that I should just do things that I
15:09
Speaker 1: believe in. That's that's the William Goldman quote about Hollywood,
15:12
Speaker 1: nobody knows anything. Who's a friend of mine? Who? Really?
15:16
Speaker 1: I love the book um Confessions of a Screenwriter or
15:21
Speaker 1: something like that. That's right. So he describes how everybody
15:25
Speaker 1: passed on Star Wars, everybody passed on Raiders e T.
15:29
Speaker 1: So how do you are you relying on your gut?
15:31
Speaker 1: What are you doing to I was something by the way,
15:34
Speaker 1: like Splash, where you're working with Ron Howard, who you
15:37
Speaker 1: obviously have a partnership with. You work with Tom Hanks,
15:40
Speaker 1: who you've done multiple things. That was his first movie,
15:43
Speaker 1: of course. Oh well, he had come off of the television,
15:45
Speaker 1: did his TV series called Buddies. But we, frankly we
15:49
Speaker 1: discovered him and put him in his first movie and
15:51
Speaker 1: that worked up pretty well. Everybody, Well, we're all, we've
15:54
Speaker 1: we've I think I've made seven movies with ks. Now,
15:57
Speaker 1: he's quite delightful. He he's brilliant, brilliant guy, brilliant actor,
16:03
Speaker 1: a brilliant A selection process for for movies or television
16:09
Speaker 1: is unbelievably great. So what is your process? What is
16:13
Speaker 1: your selection process? How do you figure out what you're
16:16
Speaker 1: interested in making? I bomb You'll relate to this, I
16:20
Speaker 1: Bombard myself with information all the time. I make a
16:26
Speaker 1: point to go out of my way and out of
16:28
Speaker 1: my comfort zone to meet new people every day, from
16:33
Speaker 1: Uber drivers to Barista's until you saw me over there
16:36
Speaker 1: with the water getting your water, waiting to talk to
16:39
Speaker 1: someone who's just some some stranger, and I just I
16:43
Speaker 1: operate on I trust that I will constantly disrupt my
16:50
Speaker 1: comfort zone by trying to conduct a conversation with some
16:55
Speaker 1: someone that's an expert in something that I'm not. So
16:58
Speaker 1: then I have to get through that cha lounge, you know,
17:01
Speaker 1: the challenge of the language of physics. You describe that
17:04
Speaker 1: in the book that you made a conscious decision to say,
17:07
Speaker 1: let me find someone from outside of my fields and
17:10
Speaker 1: have a conversation with them. What what motivated that? That's
17:14
Speaker 1: really not a very common approach. No, it's it's not
17:19
Speaker 1: um what motivated is? I asked myself what seemed to
17:23
Speaker 1: be a rhetorical question when I graduated college USC and
17:27
Speaker 1: it was a very good school. But I said to myself,
17:29
Speaker 1: like the day I graduated, what did I learn? Did
17:33
Speaker 1: I learn anything? And I thought, I'm not sure I
17:36
Speaker 1: really learned anything. And then I thought, what, well, what
17:40
Speaker 1: did I learn? I continue to assault these primary universal questions,
17:46
Speaker 1: the simple questions, and you just keep assaulting. I thought, well,
17:51
Speaker 1: I think I what I really learned for sure is
17:53
Speaker 1: how to is I learned how to cope, survive, and
17:58
Speaker 1: collaborate in a bigger population of people, because that was
18:02
Speaker 1: a certainty I went. I grew up in I was
18:04
Speaker 1: a middle class kid, went to a small schools prior
18:07
Speaker 1: to that. This was a bigger school. And I succeeded
18:10
Speaker 1: in this bigger school academically and socially and culturally. But
18:15
Speaker 1: I found the whole thing an interesting kind of challenge.
18:17
Speaker 1: So I succeeded at that part, and then I thought
18:20
Speaker 1: to myself, there's got to be a professor or a
18:22
Speaker 1: class a really really you know, grabbed me. There was.
18:26
Speaker 1: There was a doctor Milton Walpen, who taught this very
18:31
Speaker 1: popular class, a four hundred class um on abnormal psychology,
18:38
Speaker 1: which was very interesting to people because okay, so it's
18:42
Speaker 1: a very big class. I never met the teacher, professor,
18:45
Speaker 1: because it's a class of three kids. And I thought,
18:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to go meet Wilton, Milton Walpen, and
18:51
Speaker 1: so I was very persistent in trying to meet a
18:53
Speaker 1: professor at USC that and I'd already graduated. He didn't acknowledge,
18:59
Speaker 1: you know, didn't respond any of my UM letters. So
19:02
Speaker 1: I decided I'm gonna go wait for him outside of
19:05
Speaker 1: a summer school class. I waited. He says me, didn't
19:08
Speaker 1: you graduate? I said, I did, But I was really
19:11
Speaker 1: impressed with your of the class and you're conducting of
19:14
Speaker 1: the class. I really wanted to just have a five
19:16
Speaker 1: minute coffee conversation. I turned that into an hour conversation,
19:22
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot. I learned a lot more
19:24
Speaker 1: even in the hour. I thought, Wow, I learned more
19:26
Speaker 1: in the hour than I did in the whole class.
19:29
Speaker 1: And I like that class so that I can do
19:31
Speaker 1: this with other people. It just made me feel like, well,
19:35
Speaker 1: this is possible. And I was just a little nobody.
19:37
Speaker 1: I didn't even have a job. I was just you know.
19:40
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks later, I finally got a law
19:41
Speaker 1: clerk luck er job. Sorry, which, by the way, I love.
19:45
Speaker 1: I love the story how you got that job at
19:47
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers. Tell the story. So basically, I met with will.
19:53
Speaker 1: I had the meeting that I just referred to a
19:55
Speaker 1: Dr Milton Walpen, and then I'm in my little apartment
19:59
Speaker 1: complex and Ocean Avenue, and in the apartment complex, I
20:03
Speaker 1: overhear these three uh law school grads because I was
20:06
Speaker 1: scheduled to go to law school USC. I hear them
20:10
Speaker 1: talking about, Wow, you know what a summer. The one
20:13
Speaker 1: guy says, oh, I had the quishiest, easiest job. So
20:16
Speaker 1: it immediately got my interest because I needed a job.
20:19
Speaker 1: And if it's gonna be quishy and easy, fantastic, even better,
20:23
Speaker 1: let's go. So I thought, okay, So I pulled the
20:26
Speaker 1: window back so I could really here through the screen
20:29
Speaker 1: and drew the drapes so they couldn't see me with
20:33
Speaker 1: my ear to the window to the screen. And so
20:36
Speaker 1: the guy starts talking about the job. It's the legal
20:38
Speaker 1: department of Warner Brothers. Blah blah. I get the band's name. Doctor.
20:42
Speaker 1: His name was Peter Connect, who ran the legal department.
20:45
Speaker 1: He started with Jack Warner. He's he's probably a d
20:49
Speaker 1: And I called and got a meeting that afternoon with
20:52
Speaker 1: Peter Connect and got the job at three fifteen, saying,
20:55
Speaker 1: I hear you have an opening for an intern. Yeah,
20:58
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I'm scheduled to go to USC law school.
21:01
Speaker 1: I'm a graduate. I hear you need a law clerk
21:03
Speaker 1: love to be that person right now, and he said,
21:05
Speaker 1: you're hired, just like that, just like that. Unbelievable. Let's
21:10
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how human connections have helped
21:14
Speaker 1: you in your career. In your early life, you weren't
21:18
Speaker 1: much of a reader, but you learned that conversations with
21:22
Speaker 1: people became crucial to your intellectual growth and professional growth.
21:29
Speaker 1: How did you reach this insight and how has it
21:32
Speaker 1: um come come out even even to this day. How
21:35
Speaker 1: does it matter? Well, I mean the techniques of which
21:38
Speaker 1: are are embedded in these stories in this book that
21:42
Speaker 1: we're talking about, called Face to Face the Art of
21:44
Speaker 1: Human Connection. Because you can't really have, you can't get
21:49
Speaker 1: you can't get promoted without looking at somebody connecting. You're
21:53
Speaker 1: never gonna be able to raise a hundred million dollars,
21:55
Speaker 1: which I would do often to make a movie. Is
21:58
Speaker 1: that what it takes now to make a film that
21:59
Speaker 1: much money? Well, because movies are now sort of event
22:02
Speaker 1: oriented there, the hundred million dollar movie, or a hundred
22:08
Speaker 1: plus hundred to two hundred million dollar movie is actually
22:11
Speaker 1: easier to accomplish than the forty million dollar movie. Overseas
22:15
Speaker 1: rights and a broader audience yeah, you have to go
22:18
Speaker 1: for a broader audience. So but but I have always
22:22
Speaker 1: tried to have stories that had universal themes. So we
22:26
Speaker 1: were talking about a Beautiful Mind, which which we won
22:30
Speaker 1: an Oscar for or I did end it um. And
22:33
Speaker 1: the thing about that is that the universal theme wasn't
22:37
Speaker 1: really about schizophrenia, and it wasn't about winning a Nobel prize.
22:42
Speaker 1: It was much more about love that loved. The power
22:45
Speaker 1: of love is which is a universal force gets you
22:51
Speaker 1: can can get you through a locked In this case,
22:54
Speaker 1: there was schizophrenia and then his ability to win a
22:58
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize in economic So basically, I found that by
23:02
Speaker 1: taking the opportunity to look at people when I walked
23:05
Speaker 1: through the street in New York as opposed to my phone.
23:08
Speaker 1: Because I can look at my phone all the time,
23:11
Speaker 1: that's always gonna be there, and I love my phone, uh,
23:14
Speaker 1: and it provided me with so much information. But if
23:16
Speaker 1: I'm walking through the street in New York, I'm looking
23:19
Speaker 1: at people and I'm trying to but feel or into it,
23:23
Speaker 1: like what's going on in the world right now. So
23:26
Speaker 1: I bombard myself with information that I could read on
23:31
Speaker 1: my iPhone when I'm at home. Or you know or
23:35
Speaker 1: in my office or iPad. But nonetheless I I thrive
23:38
Speaker 1: on human connection because human connection is you feel people's hearts,
23:42
Speaker 1: and you don't feel their heart on an iPhone and
23:45
Speaker 1: they don't feel your heart. And the only way to
23:48
Speaker 1: move people enough to promote you or to move or
23:53
Speaker 1: in the case of romance, move the girl to want
23:56
Speaker 1: to like you or be with you or see something
23:59
Speaker 1: in try particply valuable is through their heart, through a spirit.
24:03
Speaker 1: It's just that's just really the way it works. And
24:06
Speaker 1: so whether you're in technology or whatever the thing you're doing,
24:09
Speaker 1: you have to have face to face connection otherwise you're
24:12
Speaker 1: just not going to advance your cause. So in the
24:15
Speaker 1: book you describe and pardon me if I'm confusing the
24:18
Speaker 1: two books books, because it's a bit of a blar.
24:21
Speaker 1: I've gone through a lot of your over and definitely
24:24
Speaker 1: so one is about curiosity. But then I realized unless
24:28
Speaker 1: you look at somebody and and and and use face
24:33
Speaker 1: to face connection, there's no bridge into the possibility of
24:38
Speaker 1: exercising curiosity. So you can't really ask people questions and
24:44
Speaker 1: have them share with you anything valuable unless you've looked.
24:49
Speaker 1: You're looking at them because they have to be seen,
24:52
Speaker 1: they have to feel like they're seen and what they're
24:54
Speaker 1: and that what they have to say is valuable. So
24:57
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about some of the communicate you discussed
25:01
Speaker 1: in the books. Um, some people that you've engaged in
25:05
Speaker 1: conversation and it's changed, um, the course of at least
25:10
Speaker 1: entertainment and probably some people's lives. You said Oprah could
25:14
Speaker 1: be the most successful communicator you've you've ever experienced. Explain why, Well,
25:20
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much evidence that supports that she's
25:23
Speaker 1: probably the most successful communicator in the world right now.
25:27
Speaker 1: But but it's experiencing it that really, you know, experiencing
25:32
Speaker 1: that really makes a difference, and you see it, you
25:34
Speaker 1: really so, Um, Spike Lee, I was making a movie
25:38
Speaker 1: with Spike Lee, which film was that It was called
25:41
Speaker 1: Inside Man. Of course, got right here in Washington. It's
25:45
Speaker 1: shot in Wall Street and with Denzel Washington. I have
25:49
Speaker 1: a great story about eye contact that made that movie happen. Actually,
25:54
Speaker 1: but explain then, well, we don't tease this, we won't
25:58
Speaker 1: forget Okay, Okay, So basically I had known Spike Leave
26:01
Speaker 1: for a while. We both were nominated for Oscars, he
26:03
Speaker 1: for Do the Right Thing, and I was for another
26:05
Speaker 1: movie and and you know, so we met each other
26:09
Speaker 1: under a very privileged situation, and I love do the
26:13
Speaker 1: right thing. It was just so inventive in so many
26:15
Speaker 1: ways cinematically. He handled a pretty heavy subject in a
26:21
Speaker 1: in the most evolved way cinematically. No one has ever
26:25
Speaker 1: done that. And U and I always wanted to work
26:28
Speaker 1: with them. So many years have gone by and we
26:31
Speaker 1: just never could figure it out, and I put a
26:33
Speaker 1: lot of effort into trying to figure it out. Now
26:35
Speaker 1: it's about eight or nine years later, and I have
26:38
Speaker 1: a movie that that uh that that I'm going to make,
26:43
Speaker 1: and he came in to talk about it. But we
26:45
Speaker 1: saw it a little bit differently. And I walked him
26:46
Speaker 1: to the elevator and as I pressed, I pressed the
26:50
Speaker 1: button and it's only had to go seven floors. And
26:53
Speaker 1: in those singular moments, he looked up at me. He's
27:00
Speaker 1: never looked at me before. I felt it differently, and
27:03
Speaker 1: he looked me in the eyes and he said, I'm
27:07
Speaker 1: this is the movie I want to make, and he
27:09
Speaker 1: pulled it from behind his back. It's called Inside Man.
27:11
Speaker 1: I already had another director on it. But he looked
27:14
Speaker 1: me in the eyes and I want to make this movie.
27:17
Speaker 1: It's going to be successful, and more importantly, it's going
27:20
Speaker 1: to be a successful work relationship for you and me.
27:23
Speaker 1: I promise you it'll be a great experience. Literally an
27:26
Speaker 1: elevator pitch seven floors, that's what it was. And I
27:31
Speaker 1: felt him and I and he really probably did exactly
27:36
Speaker 1: you know, he you know, he did one of the
27:39
Speaker 1: techniques that I would describe in the book. Actually, but
27:42
Speaker 1: he did it, and I felt the power of it,
27:45
Speaker 1: the authenticity of it. I felt. I felt that, I
27:48
Speaker 1: felt his soul and honestly, and so I said yes,
27:53
Speaker 1: and I let the other director go, which wasn't easy,
27:57
Speaker 1: and BENSI uh, he was a little It's a bit
28:00
Speaker 1: worth it because this became like one of the most profitable,
28:03
Speaker 1: maybe the most profitable movie for Universal that year. Wow,
28:06
Speaker 1: that's that's amazing, And I know, the most profitable movie
28:11
Speaker 1: for Spike in his career, and huge for Denzel and
28:15
Speaker 1: and me and a fantast So it was a real,
28:18
Speaker 1: real big win and probably as as importantly we it
28:22
Speaker 1: ended well. He did provide me a great work experience.
28:26
Speaker 1: He collaborated, He's awesome, he's talented and collaborative. You can't
28:31
Speaker 1: beat that. The other um, the other two stories that
28:34
Speaker 1: stand down in the book that involved that contact eminem
28:39
Speaker 1: with before eight Miles was kind of known but not
28:44
Speaker 1: exactly a superstar. No, he wasn't a superstar. Well I
28:47
Speaker 1: had this, so this, this is, this is actually an
28:50
Speaker 1: example of of what being alert and what I contact
28:55
Speaker 1: will do. So, uh, fifteen years before eight Mile came
29:00
Speaker 1: to life, I overheard in New York in a taxi
29:03
Speaker 1: cab while I was going from from going from Soho
29:06
Speaker 1: to Midtown like right about here, and uh, a shock
29:11
Speaker 1: jock radio guy talking to Howard or someone else. It
29:16
Speaker 1: could have been yeah, um so uh talking talking talking
29:23
Speaker 1: to a guest, and the guest was named Old Dirty Bastard. Yeah,
29:27
Speaker 1: for the wood Tank Clan. But I didn't know much
29:29
Speaker 1: about This is twenty five years ago today, so I
29:32
Speaker 1: didn't know much about the Wood Tank Clan, or even
29:35
Speaker 1: about East Coast hip hop for that matter. I didn't
29:38
Speaker 1: know about that culture. So I hear Old Dirty a
29:42
Speaker 1: guy that insists, Yeah, but he insists on being called
29:45
Speaker 1: old Dirty Bastard and that that's a really unusual thing
29:49
Speaker 1: that's normally guys, that's an insult. He insisted that you don't.
29:53
Speaker 1: That's that's what I am. I'm this guy. So I thought,
29:56
Speaker 1: whoever is that person? I have to meet him. So
29:59
Speaker 1: I go out of my way and I make a
30:02
Speaker 1: lot of calls, and I eventually I am able to
30:04
Speaker 1: meet O. D. B. Your guy here, and we have
30:08
Speaker 1: this interesting conversation. He's really incredibly wild, very free form character,
30:13
Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, this is what East the voice
30:16
Speaker 1: of East Coast Wrap is. This is now, as you said,
30:19
Speaker 1: the wood Tang Clan. And so I started to learn
30:21
Speaker 1: about the wood Tang Clan that I sort of that.
30:23
Speaker 1: I went and met Chug d of Public Enemy and
30:25
Speaker 1: then Slick Rick, and I realized there's sort of a
30:27
Speaker 1: comical way of all this, all this stuff, and that
30:34
Speaker 1: got me on the path of realizing that, um, you know,
30:39
Speaker 1: this music art form was gonna be the culture. It's not,
30:44
Speaker 1: you know, a subculture. It is in fact going to
30:47
Speaker 1: be the culture, which of course it is as we
30:49
Speaker 1: now know. And so I then thought, I'm gonna try
30:52
Speaker 1: to proof this out cinematically. And American Gangster, Yeah, well,
30:57
Speaker 1: American Gangster was part of that because I was able
30:59
Speaker 1: to hire the Rizza and put him in American Gangster.
31:03
Speaker 1: But I. But I then, of course, with eight mile,
31:07
Speaker 1: I thought this is worthy of an entire movie. But
31:10
Speaker 1: studios said, oh, but there's been rap movies. Maria carry
31:13
Speaker 1: did one, but all Ice didn't one. And I said, well,
31:16
Speaker 1: this is a different type. And there's the Belly. There's
31:18
Speaker 1: a bunch of other movies. But I said, well this
31:20
Speaker 1: is different, and and I I really relied upon all
31:26
Speaker 1: the information I got about human beings and self actualization.
31:29
Speaker 1: And it's a Joseph Campbell plot line. It's absolutely the
31:35
Speaker 1: whole Rap happens to be involved in it, but it's
31:38
Speaker 1: not about rap. Rap just is a flavoring in that
31:42
Speaker 1: broader Well that's incredibly smart, you're you're no one's ever
31:46
Speaker 1: said that to me, But you're right. It is a
31:48
Speaker 1: myth that there's been dozens of versions of that story, yeah,
31:54
Speaker 1: wrapped up different. Only this is a unique kid in
31:58
Speaker 1: a unique location and in the whole different dimension of
32:02
Speaker 1: of hip hop on top of it. But the internal
32:04
Speaker 1: heartbeat that creates the story architecture is you're right, it's
32:09
Speaker 1: Joseph Campbell here with a thousand faces. It's it lives
32:12
Speaker 1: in that space. And um so I kind of I
32:16
Speaker 1: probably actually gravitated towards that paradigm because it gives you comfort.
32:20
Speaker 1: It's a great it's a great plot. You know that.
32:24
Speaker 1: Thank you. And then I had a chance to meet Eminem.
32:27
Speaker 1: I saw it was so talk about the meeting. That's all.
32:30
Speaker 1: By the way, this whole digression is because the meeting
32:33
Speaker 1: that you described. He's like, yeah, who the hell are you?
32:36
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. Yeah he he did say that, Yeah, exactly.
32:38
Speaker 1: He he said it in multiple different ways. But basically
32:43
Speaker 1: I thought, it's now many years later since I met
32:46
Speaker 1: O D. B. And the Rizza and rizzzs is a
32:49
Speaker 1: big person in my life too. But I thought, I
32:51
Speaker 1: am gonna try to make a movie about this. But
32:53
Speaker 1: then I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't figure out
32:55
Speaker 1: this puzzle. Eventually, I I see this guy Eminem. You know,
33:00
Speaker 1: he's being filmed on of the v M as. He
33:04
Speaker 1: wasn't winning an award. He was just in a seat,
33:05
Speaker 1: and I thought, Wow, I gotta meet this guy. So
33:07
Speaker 1: Jimmy Ivan was a very long time friend, created a
33:11
Speaker 1: music of music label called Interscope Records. Giant. He yeah,
33:15
Speaker 1: and he is a visionary. He was able. He had Eminem,
33:20
Speaker 1: So I said kind of, let's meet him. We meet him,
33:23
Speaker 1: and out of I'm trying so hard to connect with
33:27
Speaker 1: Eminem and he won't look at me. He just wasn't happen. Guy.
33:31
Speaker 1: He's definitely not an eye contact guy. He's a brilliant poet, slight,
33:36
Speaker 1: somewhat recluse, and so he did not wanna really look at,
33:41
Speaker 1: you know, connect And so he said I'm out after
33:43
Speaker 1: about fifteen or twenty minutes, and I thought, yeah, I
33:47
Speaker 1: hear him enough. Yeah, I'm not connecting with you, man,
33:50
Speaker 1: I'm out. And so I as his hand was on
33:52
Speaker 1: the door to leave, I just desperately said, come on,
33:55
Speaker 1: you can animate. I just that's I mean, I I
33:58
Speaker 1: have no logic for the sen tinse. I just said it.
34:01
Speaker 1: And uh. He was hesitant, but then came back and
34:05
Speaker 1: then he told his story how he grew up, and
34:09
Speaker 1: and that became the basis of the entire movie and
34:12
Speaker 1: really the story architecture for the whole movie. And he
34:14
Speaker 1: ended up winning an Oscar. Never before as a rapper
34:17
Speaker 1: one an Oscar, and he did so he's really really gifted.
34:22
Speaker 1: And he wrote the music, wrote the the he played
34:25
Speaker 1: every he did everything. Guy did everything. The rap contest.
34:28
Speaker 1: Did he write all of that on both sides? He
34:30
Speaker 1: did everything. That's amazing. So what was it about the word,
34:34
Speaker 1: the animate word? What is it that caught his attention? Well,
34:38
Speaker 1: I don't really know, but animate means come to life,
34:42
Speaker 1: and uh, he is a scrabble he might have he
34:46
Speaker 1: might have known the full meaning of it. Was intrigued.
34:49
Speaker 1: I never have asked him. I should probably someday do that.
34:54
Speaker 1: You definitely should. Let's talk about some of the work
34:57
Speaker 1: you've liked and helped motive eight or animate your career
35:02
Speaker 1: as a kid. You are giant James Bond fan with
35:04
Speaker 1: Sean conn Who isn't Those were just the greatest films.
35:09
Speaker 1: So those were fantastic. They took you into uh an
35:13
Speaker 1: escapism universe fantasy of like, wow, I can do anything,
35:17
Speaker 1: I can get the I can get the hot girl,
35:20
Speaker 1: I can kick guys asses and kill the bag the
35:23
Speaker 1: little bad guys, save the world and drinking Martini all
35:26
Speaker 1: at the same time. So you don't really do action
35:29
Speaker 1: films though, you really do films with the big dramatic content. Yeah,
35:34
Speaker 1: with real emotion film. Right, if there's emotion as the
35:39
Speaker 1: destination for films, if there's action, it sets up the
35:43
Speaker 1: emotional tension like Apollo thirteen or Backdraft. Stuff happens, but
35:48
Speaker 1: it teases even the Da Vinci Code, we had him
35:51
Speaker 1: running and doing things, and it wasn't even in the
35:54
Speaker 1: book where they it was that active. But but we
35:57
Speaker 1: we we found a way to manufacture that. So have
36:00
Speaker 1: you ever watched a movie and said, God, I could
36:03
Speaker 1: never have I never would have seen that idea, what
36:07
Speaker 1: a what a great concept. It's just so outside of
36:10
Speaker 1: my uh comfort zone. I wouldn't have done that. Or conversely,
36:14
Speaker 1: have you ever seen something and said, oh, that was
36:17
Speaker 1: a great opportunity here and these guys blew it? Oh
36:20
Speaker 1: my god, all those answers. Yes, Okay, I've seen concepts
36:28
Speaker 1: not correctly executed where I think they blew it. But
36:31
Speaker 1: I've blown it too, So I I have movies that
36:33
Speaker 1: I could site, which I won't do now that where
36:35
Speaker 1: I've where I've kind of blown it, where I've rationalized
36:38
Speaker 1: it's one of my rules where I thought, well, this
36:40
Speaker 1: is good enough. This one decision is good enough, and
36:43
Speaker 1: one decision that is good enough is always it just is.
36:47
Speaker 1: And you're the best judge of quality. You just have
36:51
Speaker 1: to don't yourself so and I do sometimes because you're
36:56
Speaker 1: just the endless assault of decisions you have to make
37:00
Speaker 1: to make a movie, raise the money, make a movie,
37:02
Speaker 1: turn it into some cinematic masterpiece hopefully um so um.
37:08
Speaker 1: But I have had there. The movie that a couple
37:11
Speaker 1: of movies changed my life. Really, the one movie that
37:14
Speaker 1: got me into show business, really that made me think
37:18
Speaker 1: that everything is possible was mel Brooks's Blazing Saddle because
37:25
Speaker 1: he violated every single rule of ethics, morality and language
37:30
Speaker 1: and and uh and the fourth wall and the fourth
37:33
Speaker 1: wall and it worked. So I thought, wow, this was
37:37
Speaker 1: like the first shot comedy. And I just called it
37:40
Speaker 1: that to myself, like a shot comedy, and I thought
37:43
Speaker 1: that means you can really do anything. This is so exciting.
37:47
Speaker 1: So the first seventeen years of my life, it's all
37:48
Speaker 1: I wrote or produced was were comedies. You know, nuttie, Professor, Liar, Liar, Parenthood.
37:54
Speaker 1: I could go on, but the point is as I
37:55
Speaker 1: just did that Boomerang with Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin. Anyway,
38:00
Speaker 1: but the movie that really changed my life with Steven
38:03
Speaker 1: Spielberg's Et because I realized when I experienced that movie
38:09
Speaker 1: at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Everybody when the movie ended,
38:14
Speaker 1: everybody was at peace, everybody felt good. It he that
38:19
Speaker 1: movie elevated people's moods to a really positive place. It
38:24
Speaker 1: created a transcendental moment for human beings where they didn't
38:28
Speaker 1: have to rush to get their car and they weren't aggressive,
38:31
Speaker 1: and it was it empowered you, It empowered possibilities. And
38:35
Speaker 1: I thought, I want to try to make that be
38:38
Speaker 1: my goal, like to aspire. I never reached that, and honestly,
38:42
Speaker 1: I've done really good work, but that was at a
38:44
Speaker 1: very very very high level, and uh, I deeply admire
38:48
Speaker 1: it and became an aspirational uh professional asport. That's a
38:53
Speaker 1: touchdowne in your career. Film. Yeah, well, well to knowing
38:56
Speaker 1: the power of film. Like the power of film, great
39:00
Speaker 1: stories that have redemption, can move people, can create good
39:04
Speaker 1: vibes in the world. And that's actually my goal with
39:08
Speaker 1: even with my television shows or my movies. I just
39:11
Speaker 1: I really want to entertain people, engage them so they
39:15
Speaker 1: have a great time, but make them but put out
39:17
Speaker 1: good vibes. So, so let's talk about a touchstone and
39:20
Speaker 1: moving people. I'm a giant arrested development fan. The voiceover
39:25
Speaker 1: narration it's beyond a meme now that has become a
39:30
Speaker 1: cultural touchstone, especially in the current era. You see it
39:35
Speaker 1: all the time. Someone says something on TV that turns
39:38
Speaker 1: out to be nonsense and in parentheses you get narrator.
39:42
Speaker 1: It wasn't the line straight from from Ron Howard's voice
39:47
Speaker 1: when you guys were first putting that together. How did
39:50
Speaker 1: the narrator come about? And did you have any idea
39:54
Speaker 1: this was going to become as giants a little cultural
39:58
Speaker 1: touch known as it's become no No, No to all. Basically,
40:04
Speaker 1: this was a project that was primarily cooked up with
40:07
Speaker 1: the I was part of it, of course, but the
40:11
Speaker 1: collaboration of Mitch her was who created and Ron Howard,
40:15
Speaker 1: who collaborated on its birth, and of course does this
40:19
Speaker 1: voice over narration, and which is, by the way, is
40:22
Speaker 1: just pitch perfect. Like you recognize his voice, but if
40:25
Speaker 1: you're not paying attention, you don't know who it is
40:27
Speaker 1: right away. And and his he's smart, his dead pen
40:32
Speaker 1: is perfect. And I know throughout the show there have
40:36
Speaker 1: been little hints that it's him. You see the hands
40:40
Speaker 1: of the narrator with the ring that's r H on it.
40:43
Speaker 1: How did how did that come about? Um? I think
40:48
Speaker 1: it was probably Mitch's idea, and Ron was excited to
40:51
Speaker 1: do it and knew he could do it because he
40:54
Speaker 1: understood the tone really well and he has a great voice.
40:58
Speaker 1: He's incredibly is a really good actor, and his style
41:04
Speaker 1: of communication in real life is not that dissimilar. He's
41:07
Speaker 1: he's a very unaffected person. He's completely unpretentious. Uh, he's
41:14
Speaker 1: incredibly He's confident, but unpretentious. How did how did you
41:19
Speaker 1: guys meet and become partners? We met because I had
41:23
Speaker 1: this discipline of curiosity conversations, and I looked out my
41:26
Speaker 1: window while I was a television producer at Paramount, and
41:29
Speaker 1: I yelled out the window to Richie Cunningham. I said Ron,
41:35
Speaker 1: Ron Howard and and then he sort of scurried away.
41:40
Speaker 1: And then I called his office and said would he
41:42
Speaker 1: considered meeting me? And then we had our first Hollywood lunch,
41:46
Speaker 1: which it was his first Hollywood lunch and because he
41:48
Speaker 1: never did Hollywood lunches, he was just working. Again, he's
41:51
Speaker 1: just a he's a guy that just works and gets
41:54
Speaker 1: on it. But so he never did a Hollywood lunch.
41:57
Speaker 1: He did one of the Brian Grazer that worked, and
41:59
Speaker 1: then we pitched some ideas together. I pitched two ideas.
42:02
Speaker 1: One was night Shift, one was Splash Michael Keaton right
42:05
Speaker 1: and Henry Winkler. And that was the first movie we did.
42:09
Speaker 1: Even though I wanted him to do the love story Mermaid,
42:12
Speaker 1: he wanted to do an R rated film. Um, And
42:15
Speaker 1: so he did it, and he did it really really
42:17
Speaker 1: well and relatively small budget, and it was very successful.
42:20
Speaker 1: It was immediately successful because the chairman of Warner Brothers
42:23
Speaker 1: at the time, his named Bob Dailey, who was he
42:26
Speaker 1: had just left CBS. He sold it immediately to CBS
42:29
Speaker 1: for the entire cost of the movie. So we're in
42:31
Speaker 1: profit right exactly. And then, um, where did the script
42:36
Speaker 1: from for Splash come from? Splash came because I had this.
42:44
Speaker 1: I started this, this idea of what if I could
42:48
Speaker 1: meet my perfect girl? And what would that girl be like?
42:52
Speaker 1: What would those characteristics be, how would she communicate? Um,
42:57
Speaker 1: the purity of all of the those things. And I
43:00
Speaker 1: just kept defining it and redefining and redefining. Where would
43:03
Speaker 1: I live? I thought, well, whenever happened in l A. No,
43:09
Speaker 1: I would never meet the perfect girl in l A. Okay,
43:12
Speaker 1: where would it be? But you have which I did.
43:15
Speaker 1: But Veronica actually was from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and she was
43:20
Speaker 1: only in l A for a day. But you're right,
43:23
Speaker 1: very wow, you're a good reader, thoughtful. Um So, in
43:26
Speaker 1: any event, um So, I just kept assaulting the simplicity
43:31
Speaker 1: again of a question that I postulated to myself. Is
43:35
Speaker 1: it possible to meet a perfect girl? Is possible? What
43:37
Speaker 1: does a perfect girl look like? What would that be?
43:40
Speaker 1: Then I've defined it, then I wrote it. Then I
43:43
Speaker 1: superimposed this whole mythological image of imagery of mermaid because
43:48
Speaker 1: mermaids have power, they have beauty and sex appeal, they
43:53
Speaker 1: have simplicity, and they're unattainable and that makes the love
43:58
Speaker 1: story harder and gives you a third act that's interesting
44:02
Speaker 1: and and it's phil the film I've always adored. It's
44:05
Speaker 1: filled filled with great characters. John the little cameos from
44:09
Speaker 1: John Candy are just hilarious. Well, John Candy was hilarious,
44:12
Speaker 1: was so funny. Um But we talked earlier today on
44:15
Speaker 1: the show about my grandmother who supported me. Was a
44:18
Speaker 1: Jewish grandmother, was a little, tiny Jewish grandmother, and she
44:22
Speaker 1: had all these isms. The isms were like think big
44:25
Speaker 1: b big uh, it's just as easy to have a
44:28
Speaker 1: good rich girl as as a poor girl. Um, you
44:31
Speaker 1: have problems. Wash it down with Chris with chicken soup.
44:34
Speaker 1: She had a crazy every one of these is ms.
44:37
Speaker 1: I took all of those is ms the grandma, Sonja said,
44:41
Speaker 1: and I gave him to the character of John Candy.
44:45
Speaker 1: And that's how they all kind of happened like that,
44:47
Speaker 1: he said, my friend. And then my grandmother had kind
44:51
Speaker 1: of a decadence weirdly, and I extrapolated further on the decadence.
44:56
Speaker 1: You know, like my grandmother smoked, she got divorced early
44:59
Speaker 1: in life when she was like in nineteen forty no
45:02
Speaker 1: one got divorced. She did all these kind of things
45:05
Speaker 1: that were that were unconventional. So I put a lot
45:08
Speaker 1: of those those things into the character that John Candy played.
45:12
Speaker 1: And then real writers came in to rewrite me because
45:15
Speaker 1: my script was terrible embodied the idea. But but it
45:19
Speaker 1: was the first is the first draft. Um, but it
45:22
Speaker 1: was low Against and Bob Blue Mandel that were really
45:25
Speaker 1: gifted and incredibly funny. Like so you you mentioned the
45:29
Speaker 1: beautiful girl. You mentioned this, which sort of makes me
45:33
Speaker 1: think of the current environment. I don't think you can
45:37
Speaker 1: make blazing Saddles today, you can't do that. You probably
45:41
Speaker 1: could make splash today, but it would be it would
45:44
Speaker 1: some of the more interesting aspects would be sanded down. So,
45:49
Speaker 1: given the current environment, given the me too movement, everything else,
45:53
Speaker 1: how has that affected the options you have for for
45:57
Speaker 1: making films today. It's not. It's it's not too confining
46:04
Speaker 1: for Ron and and and Brian Grazer and imagine because
46:09
Speaker 1: we operate the movies and television we make, they they
46:13
Speaker 1: just naturally operate within a value system that doesn't violate,
46:18
Speaker 1: so it doesn't face impact. No, I mean, if you're
46:22
Speaker 1: doing I don't make those hard. Those are comedies, but
46:26
Speaker 1: it would definitely affect be constrictive that way if we
46:29
Speaker 1: if we did not gen Really, yeah, it's not really
46:33
Speaker 1: my genre. The R rated comedies and doing comedies itself
46:36
Speaker 1: is kind of hard right now in in movies and TV.
46:40
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to do a comedy. I may. I like
46:43
Speaker 1: television and I like uh so, so I'm sensitized to it.
46:49
Speaker 1: But I I think Ron and I just by nature
46:52
Speaker 1: are not human rights violators. Right, So you describe him
46:56
Speaker 1: as like the nicest human soul you'll ever want to eat.
47:00
Speaker 1: He is. Before I get to my speed round questions,
47:03
Speaker 1: I just have to talk to you a little bit
47:05
Speaker 1: um about the dyslexia. UM. I told you I love
47:11
Speaker 1: the left is the hand that makes the l You
47:14
Speaker 1: do this, Um, I don't know how else it manifests itself. You.
47:19
Speaker 1: I always found that if I would go out to
47:21
Speaker 1: eat with a group of people, I was always eating
47:24
Speaker 1: other people's bread and water. But I'll tell you a
47:30
Speaker 1: neurologist at Stony Brook University Medical Center who works with
47:35
Speaker 1: a d h D kids and dyslexic kids told me
47:38
Speaker 1: another little shortcut you make the okay, and this is
47:44
Speaker 1: B is bread and D is drink. And that's how.
47:47
Speaker 1: And ever since she showed me that shortcut, I have
47:50
Speaker 1: stopped eating other people's dinner rolls. It's um what I
47:54
Speaker 1: want to ask, how did you learn to manage the dyslexia?
47:58
Speaker 1: How did you overcome that? Because that's a really especially
48:02
Speaker 1: for someone who reads screenplays. Getting past that that reading
48:08
Speaker 1: issue had to be a big challenge. Well. Yes, in
48:10
Speaker 1: my early education zero through fifth grade, I couldn't read
48:15
Speaker 1: a word, read one word, and so it became pretty
48:20
Speaker 1: traumatizing and it caused behaviors of like not looking at
48:25
Speaker 1: people because they might pick me to come to the
48:27
Speaker 1: front of the class, and I would never have the
48:30
Speaker 1: answer because I couldn't read. So therefore, any of those
48:33
Speaker 1: kind of exchange exchanges that involved having to read to
48:37
Speaker 1: get the answer didn't work. So so how did you
48:39
Speaker 1: overcome that? It just happened. I got I got lucky.
48:43
Speaker 1: There's you know, these sort of moments of epiphany where
48:46
Speaker 1: some flash breakthrough occurred and I could then spell. I
48:50
Speaker 1: was able to spell almost really, I remember being able
48:54
Speaker 1: to spell before I could read, and then I was
48:56
Speaker 1: able to read in sixth grade, not not well because
48:59
Speaker 1: I would always start on the right and go to
49:02
Speaker 1: the left, and so that was problematic. But it just
49:06
Speaker 1: took discipline, and it still takes a lot of discipline.
49:08
Speaker 1: I invert words. I gets upset and I say to Ironica,
49:11
Speaker 1: I'm so upset. I press send and doesn't make any sense,
49:15
Speaker 1: and she said, well, people expect stuff like that. You
49:17
Speaker 1: don't have to be so hard on yourself. And you
49:20
Speaker 1: have trouble dialing phones. You have trouble. I don't transpose numbers.
49:23
Speaker 1: I don't dial phones. You don't know. I mean, I
49:27
Speaker 1: do transport I do transpose numbers. I seldom dial phones.
49:33
Speaker 1: I use my smartphone, just my serie. Or early in
49:38
Speaker 1: my career worked in an investment bank and they rotate
49:41
Speaker 1: you through every department. You're on the trading desk, you
49:43
Speaker 1: and the bond was so when they rotated me through
49:46
Speaker 1: the sales department, they give you a list of clients
49:49
Speaker 1: and call all these people that lasted a day when
49:53
Speaker 1: its constantly get numbers like well, unfortunately. I mean, technology
49:57
Speaker 1: is so great right now, and I mean I I
50:00
Speaker 1: of technology, and I love the power of smartphones. I
50:02
Speaker 1: just think they should be done independently. I think you
50:05
Speaker 1: should use all your smartphones and smart equipment to get smarter.
50:09
Speaker 1: And then when you meet somebody, be completely protatal and
50:12
Speaker 1: look at them face to face. And in the book
50:14
Speaker 1: there's so many techniques that bridge into success variable success situations.
50:19
Speaker 1: All right, so I only have you for a few
50:22
Speaker 1: more moments. Let me run through our speed round. Yes,
50:27
Speaker 1: ten questions, bang through these as fast as you can.
50:30
Speaker 1: First car, you have her own. You're making Model A
50:32
Speaker 1: two thousand two BMW Burgundy, and uh that's what it
50:39
Speaker 1: was too, doesn't too Burgundy? BMW? I drove it on
50:42
Speaker 1: the Warner Brothers a lot and I I've met two
50:47
Speaker 1: girls very independent of one another, looking through my rear
50:50
Speaker 1: view mirror with my little BMW. One was Diane Keaton
50:53
Speaker 1: and I stopped and talked to her for a minute
50:55
Speaker 1: and I said, what are you working on? She said,
50:57
Speaker 1: The Godfather. I had no idea, I like I I
51:00
Speaker 1: was just like I was a kid that just from
51:02
Speaker 1: the valley. I didn't even know why I was on
51:04
Speaker 1: the lot. And Tom Hanks's wife for Rita Wilson Hanks,
51:08
Speaker 1: Now like at at you know, at our she's a
51:11
Speaker 1: rock star. I mean, but she's Tom's wife. And I
51:15
Speaker 1: met her and drove her home in the daytime to
51:20
Speaker 1: Wilson Woodward Wilson Avenue, and that's what she told me.
51:24
Speaker 1: That's where they got their last name from the street there.
51:27
Speaker 1: That's so funny. What's the most important thing people don't
51:30
Speaker 1: know about? Brian Grazer? Did I cry a lot? Really?
51:34
Speaker 1: Like watching commercials? No? Uh? Well, music, I get emotional.
51:39
Speaker 1: I celebrate the beauty of of genius or hard work
51:47
Speaker 1: or accomplishment, and I can see little bits of accomplishment
51:52
Speaker 1: and things, and I start to get emotional. U interesting.
51:56
Speaker 1: Early mentors, early mentors. Well, my grandmother first Grandma should
52:02
Speaker 1: and then early in my career, producer named saulve Zance
52:07
Speaker 1: produced Amadeus and he produced. He also produced One Flew
52:11
Speaker 1: Over the Cuckoo's Nest impeccable, well at a third one
52:15
Speaker 1: The English Patient. I think he won two or three
52:17
Speaker 1: Oscars for Best Picture. It impeccable taste. And when I
52:21
Speaker 1: learned from sauls Ants is if you even with nothing written,
52:28
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start scouting locations. Meaning if I like something
52:33
Speaker 1: and it's it's not even written, I'm actualizing it. It's
52:36
Speaker 1: being done. So I just thought, wow, creative visualization. He
52:40
Speaker 1: was doing that early on. And someone Richard Zani Dick
52:43
Speaker 1: Zane also great taste, amazing taste. What are some of
52:47
Speaker 1: your favorite books? Do you do you read much in
52:49
Speaker 1: the way of books. Are you so busy with screenplays
52:52
Speaker 1: you just don't get to books. Um? No, I do read.
52:54
Speaker 1: I read books more than I read screen plays. I
52:56
Speaker 1: try to read, um non fiction. But I've a favorite
53:00
Speaker 1: of many, many favorite books. But one of them that
53:03
Speaker 1: is Grit by Angela just came out last year. Yeah,
53:07
Speaker 1: it's so great, It's it's definitely have to do that.
53:11
Speaker 1: Give it, give us another one. Everybody loves this question.
53:13
Speaker 1: I look, I like uh martial arts, and I like
53:18
Speaker 1: Eastern Thought. So Bruce Lee is an icon and I'm
53:21
Speaker 1: a fan of so. He wrote a book called Jet
53:24
Speaker 1: Want Jet Kwondo, and I like that book. Okay, quite interesting.
53:30
Speaker 1: Tell us about a time you failed and what you
53:32
Speaker 1: learned from the experience. I failed so many times. Um,
53:37
Speaker 1: I learned to keep taking risk and keep failing, keep
53:40
Speaker 1: coming back at it, keep coming back, don't Well, what
53:43
Speaker 1: I really learned is don't let He used to really
53:45
Speaker 1: traumatize me, depressed me. I couldn't go to work. I yeah,
53:50
Speaker 1: I developed physical problems, but that doesn't happen any longer.
53:55
Speaker 1: I still don't like to fail, but I'd rather be fearless.
53:59
Speaker 1: So normally at this point I would ask you what
54:01
Speaker 1: you do for fun? But I know you surf, I
54:03
Speaker 1: know you do uh, taekwondo and other stuff. What what
54:07
Speaker 1: else do you do for fun? Play tennis? I love that.
54:10
Speaker 1: Do food videos, So go to Brian Grazer and watch
54:13
Speaker 1: my food videos. They're kind of funny. I did them
54:16
Speaker 1: originally from my all four of my kids. They thought
54:19
Speaker 1: they were hilarious because I'm always doing something funny with
54:22
Speaker 1: food and funny parts of the world. And my kids
54:26
Speaker 1: encouraged me, and that's why I like doing that. That
54:28
Speaker 1: sounds like a blast. Uh. Within the film and television industry,
54:32
Speaker 1: what do you most optimistic and most pessimistic about today?
54:36
Speaker 1: I'm the most optimistic about the power of stories. That
54:40
Speaker 1: hardware has change, consolidation, movie companies, all those those things
54:45
Speaker 1: have changed. But that I've seen that over over three
54:48
Speaker 1: and a half decades, that all you know, okay, movies,
54:52
Speaker 1: they're terrible now, but they're not terrible. DVD is going
54:55
Speaker 1: to change the movie business. It didn't. Um, Netflix is
54:59
Speaker 1: going to destroy the movie business. It didn't. It was
55:01
Speaker 1: good for the movie. But it's the golden age of it.
55:04
Speaker 1: It's just great stories. I think people, particularly in the
55:09
Speaker 1: tech business who didn't didn't a decade ago, value stories.
55:14
Speaker 1: Everybody values the power of a story. And our final
55:18
Speaker 1: two questions, UH, recent college grad comes to you and
55:22
Speaker 1: said they're interested in pursuing a career in film or
55:25
Speaker 1: television production. What sort of advice would you give them?
55:29
Speaker 1: Always try to understand the language of our business, of
55:33
Speaker 1: the culture. Read the trades, Read Deadline, Hollywood, read these
55:37
Speaker 1: things that seem kind of like, you know, trashy, gossipy,
55:41
Speaker 1: but truthful of what's going on in Hollywood. First, learn
55:45
Speaker 1: the language, That's what I'd say. Learn the language. Then
55:49
Speaker 1: I'd say find somebody that you Then I always say
55:52
Speaker 1: to somebody, do you want to optimally, do you want
55:54
Speaker 1: to work inside or outside? If you want to work inside,
55:59
Speaker 1: then you can be an agent, You can be a producer,
56:01
Speaker 1: you can be a writer. If you want to work outside,
56:04
Speaker 1: you could be an assistant director or a director. You
56:06
Speaker 1: have to think, imagine where do you want to spend
56:10
Speaker 1: your day in or out. It's a simple thing, and
56:13
Speaker 1: then you can find another simple thing that helps you
56:16
Speaker 1: get there. But the language is going to help you
56:19
Speaker 1: because it will decode the internal workings of the business.
56:23
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the
56:26
Speaker 1: world of entertainment today that you wish you knew thirty
56:29
Speaker 1: plus years ago when you were first getting started? Um,
56:34
Speaker 1: that what I wish I say it again, what what
56:38
Speaker 1: do you know to today that you wish you knew
56:40
Speaker 1: thirty years ago? That failing is okay? I wish I
56:44
Speaker 1: knew that failing is okay because it caused me a
56:47
Speaker 1: lot of worry and stress I think if you honestly,
56:51
Speaker 1: what I really think is if you're a good person,
56:54
Speaker 1: you work towards the laws of karma. Like just I
56:59
Speaker 1: do really believe even like smiling at people, I believe in.
57:02
Speaker 1: I believe in all of those little those little butterfly
57:08
Speaker 1: effect moments get you goodwill. Good will allow forgives you.
57:15
Speaker 1: For failure. There are I've seen so many people, superstars
57:22
Speaker 1: to be incredibly rude, and when they fail, they never
57:25
Speaker 1: come back. They can't get back. But if you're mad,
57:30
Speaker 1: they burn a lot of bridges. They make too much noise,
57:32
Speaker 1: they're too rude, they offend too many people, and they
57:35
Speaker 1: don't create good vibes out there. You know, it's a
57:38
Speaker 1: collaborative business, and you're never You're not gonna even bat
57:41
Speaker 1: five hundred. It's sort of if you think of baseball,
57:44
Speaker 1: you're gonna bat about three thirty three fifty. That's pretty amazing.
57:49
Speaker 1: And so basically you have to just know that success
57:52
Speaker 1: is not a straight up trajectory. And a lot of
57:55
Speaker 1: people lose their humility and they think, oh I'm good,
57:58
Speaker 1: you know, and they and they and they lose humility,
58:00
Speaker 1: then they lose manners and human etiquette. They don't look
58:03
Speaker 1: at you. They look past you, they look over you,
58:06
Speaker 1: and everyone catches all that stuff. People feel energy. That's
58:10
Speaker 1: how you make big decisions. And so I think I've
58:13
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of breaks, uh, and I'm really grateful
58:17
Speaker 1: to all the breaks I've gotten and continued to get.
58:21
Speaker 1: Thank you, Brian for being so generous with your time.
58:23
Speaker 1: This has been absolutely fascinating. We have been speaking with
58:27
Speaker 1: Brian Grazer. He is UH television and film producer and
58:31
Speaker 1: co founder of Imagine Entertainment. If you enjoy this conversation,
58:35
Speaker 1: well look up and intro, down and inch on Apple iTunes.
58:38
Speaker 1: You can see any of the previous two hundred and
58:40
Speaker 1: sixty or so conversations we've had over the past five years.
58:44
Speaker 1: You can find that at iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, wherever
58:49
Speaker 1: you're find. Our podcasts are sold. We love your comments,
58:52
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
58:56
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Go give us a lovely review
58:58
Speaker 1: on Apple iTunes. I would be remiss if I did
59:01
Speaker 1: not thank the Cracks staff that helps put together this
59:04
Speaker 1: podcast each week. Attica val Bron is our project director.
59:09
Speaker 1: Michael Boyle is my booker, slash producer, Michael bat Nick
59:13
Speaker 1: is my director of research. I'm Barry Retolts. You've been
59:16
Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.