A Bit of Optimism - A Curious Mind with movie producer Brian Grazer

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Authenticity is exceedingly rare.Yet Brian Grazer embodies it with an unparalleled zest and refreshing innocence. Though Grazer might not be a household name, his tv shows and movies (like "A Beautiful Mind" and “Apollo 13”) have earned him 242 Emmy nominations and 47 Oscar nominations. He believes in the power of asking endless amounts of questions to shape stories that resonate on a deeply human level.Grazer is an unparalleled storyteller and offers a unique perspective on how to engage, question, and understand the world around us.This is…A Bit of Optimism. For more on Brian and his work check out: His new book: https://www.amazon.com/Curious-Mind-Expanded-Secret-Bigger/dp/1668025507https://imagine-entertainment.com/https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Brian-Grazer/410161296 

The word authentic is bandied about a little too loosely sometimes. There are a precious few people in the world that I would describe as truly authentic. But Brian Grazer is one of them. The film and TV producer who co-founded Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard in 1986, who co-founded Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard in 1986, they've been nominated for 242 Emmys and 47 Academy Awards, including for movies like Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, which won Best Picture, Frost, Nixon, and Splash, which Brian actually wrote.

And he has a new book out called A Curious Mind Expanded, which builds upon his previous New York Times bestselling books. I wanted to sit down with Brian to understand the great hero's journey that we are all on and how life seems to imitate art a little more than art imitates life. This is a bit of optimism I don't know if I've ever told you this but you are one of my favorite people in the world you never told me that I love you, that's fantastic you're one of my favorite people in the world

and the reason is every time I get to talk to you you have this quality and I think I've told you this before which is children have this quality and i think i've told you this before which is children have this quality where they ask any question like it just pops into their head and they say what are sometimes inappropriate things but we let them get away with it because they're kids and they ask funny questions that are wonderful and you never lost that quality like the rest of

us as we got older the childlike qualities inside us that made us insatiably curious, but also willing to ask the weird questions goes away. Maybe out of fear, maybe out of who knows what it is, but for you, it never went away. No, it never went away. No, you just say shit. Yeah. I've had success being relatively unedited. Yes. And you get away with it, I think, because there's a real innocence. Yeah. Innocence. And they and people know I'm not I'm not trying to hurt them in any way. I'm not trying to manipulate them or hurt them. I know I'm just speaking from, you know, my the core of myself or my soul. Because you've asked me questions like about my personality, about the way I see

myself or about the way I see the world. And I'm like, huh, he just asked me that. But then it occurs to me that other people have probably thought it. Yeah, I'm sure. Just never asked it. I have something similar. I've always believed it's a superpower of mine to embrace being the idiot.

I'll sit in a room full of much smarter people, people who understand film, in your case, or finance or science, and I really don't understand what's going on. And a lot of people also don't understand what's going on, but they will sit in the room and act and nod yes. And I will say, I don't understand. And what I've made a career out of is being so comfortable saying,

I don't understand. Can you explain that to me? So I can get them to explain it in simple terms that I can understand. And then my ability to recite back to them in simple terms means that other people can understand too. So I'm like a translator. And the only reason I'm a translator is because I'm okay being the idiot. And I think in some way, shape or form, your curiosity allows us to go down paths and ask ourselves questions that even sometimes we're afraid to ask. Possibly, yeah.

I mean, I am innocent and kind of naive and sometimes not even, you know, well-steeped in a subject that I should be well-steeped in. You're curious about people more than scientific discoveries, for example. Right. I'm interested in a scientific discovery, and then I find myself more interested in the person and their process as to where or how or when they got to the moment of that scientific discovery. Where did that come from? What was your childhood like? Did you have a

happy childhood or a difficult childhood? Well, I was very happy with my grandmother, It was like a difficult childhood. Well, I was very happy with my grandmother, who I dedicate my books to, Grandma Sonia. Grandma Sonia. And Grandma Sonia was probably barely five feet tall. She was the greatest grandmother, loved every bit of my curiosity, always said, you have a gift for Gab. I didn't really even know what that meant, actually. But she just said, keep talking and asking questions. So she reinforced that no questions too dumb since I was five years old.

I would see her every single Saturday. And every Saturday, she introduced another world to me. We'd go to different restaurants. And she took me to the Dodger games all the time. Like at 11 years old, I went to Hollywood Park Raceway, the horse races, and taught me how to gamble. And she took me to Las Vegas. I saw Elvis on stage when he was overweight. Every week, something new she would take me to.

So she was exposing you to this world outside your own. Always. All the time. And I could ask endless amounts of questions. Did you have a good relationship with your folks? Or was Grandma Sonia an escape from home? Yeah, Grandma Sonia was a little escape from home. My dad was a criminal lawyer.

And unfortunately, look, he was a well-intentioned guy and a very popular guy, you know, man, where people really loved him. But I don't know if he was ready to be a father, you know, particularly of a father that turned out to be of a son that was acutely dyslexic and was asking endless amounts of questions. Yeah. So you are a product of your grandmother. I mean, she showed you a world that was different and every weekend you did something new. I can imagine how that when, you know, you get older and you move away from

grandma Sonia wanting to recapture that that to go explore all the time. I say yes to everything, not just social things, really. I don't say yes to every social thing. But anything that is new and causes me a little that's uncomfortable. I'm the most comfortable in an uncomfortable environment where I have to adapt. I see this in successful people, right? You see this in entrepreneurs. You see it in successful people, right? You see this in entrepreneurs. You see it in movie stars, which is the things that they did,

the risks that they took to build their businesses. As soon as they have commercial success, it seems that the risk tolerance plummets. Oh, for sure. Where they're now afraid to take the big bets. They're now afraid to reinvent themselves. They're now afraid to put themselves out there. And they become very different.

I've seen it so many times was there something that you did that helped you keep the curiosity that helped you enjoy being uncomfortable you know because you know how to make a movie yeah you there's a formula somewhere in your head and your gut that you know what works and what doesn't work what's something that you've done recently that you were like literally walked into it like i have no clue this is going to work so i'm going to make a modern army movie okay and i'm only going to make a modern army movie because my kid my youngest son decided he was going to go to west point and got in and loves mental and physical challenges right his name is patrick and so they said to me the chief of staff from the pentagon was there at single event. And he said in the audience today in front of all this military brass and senators and congressmen and, you know, politicians, because it was this unique moment where the passing of the baton from one superintendent to a new superintendent of what is West Point.

And he said, we have in our audience today an Oscar winning producer who's going to make the Army's version of its own West Point. Yeah. And he said, we have in our audience today an Oscar-winning producer who's going to make the Army's version of its own Top Gun. He screamed it out. And I thought, oh, my God, I just came here just to drop my kid off. I don't know what I'm doing with this. And I just dismissed the idea. And then about five hours later, I think, well, why wouldn't I do it? Yeah.

And so then I went on this very steep learning curve. I told him I'm going to do this. Yeah. And I've been to Fort Irwin. I've been to Fort Campbell. I've met with all these generals. But it was a little bit like your grandmother, right? Yeah. Which is it was kind of somebody else sort of dragged you into it. Yeah. He woke me up and said. And you're kind of like, OK. Exactly. It's funny, the world we live in, which is if you go back to the Cold War, the Second World War, movies played a big role in helping us define the threats in the world. The Soviet Union, Hitler. I'm hesitant to call it propaganda, but they played a role in helping a nation set a narrative and understand what our collective responsibility was in facing the dangers in the world.

And it seems that that isn't the case anymore. Probably since the end of the Cold War. Right. There isn't an archenemy in the movies anymore. It was always the Russians. No, you're not even allowed to really have an archenemy, unfortunately. Unless it's all fictional. And I'm fascinated by this, which is the need for,

and I'm very uncomfortable with this point of view, by the way. I don't like that I have this point of view, but I've been testing it for over a decade. And I think we need an existential threat. We do. And when that threat isn't outside our borders, we look for that threat inside our borders. And I think one of the reasons that we have so much division in our nation today, I mean, yes, we can blame social media, but I think that puts it on steroids. But I think the real reason is that there's nothing to unify us.

You know, there's nothing to bring us together. I know. Like a microcosm of this, basically. Two of my closest friends were um really really liked each other they were running two divisions of a major entertainment company right there was a third person yeah that ran business affairs that worked with both of those two companies right when they finally eliminated the bad guy they started hating each other. Right. Which was weird. When that bad guy was there, they were so unified. And this company, the parent company was hugely successful. Yeah.

The minute they didn't have a bad guy. Yeah. The company started a bad guy at a higher level, at a higher level. You know, I've always believed like sort of when people go home from work, that fetching and moaning about your boss is actually very healthy. It is healthy. I agree with you. No, I don't believe in toxic leadership and creating artificial tension. But to go and vent about your boss, it creates camaraderie amongst the people. It does.

And not to say common bad guy, but at least it's, and I hate to say us against them, but at least sort of like common understanding that we're all in it together. Yeah, and it causes you to become more grateful, weirdly. When you have a common enemy, you're also joyous about these other things that are in your life because of the common enemy. Yeah. Once the common enemy is gone, then all of the things that are causing you to be joyous or more creative or better as an entrepreneur within your business. All those things that focus on that flatlines. Let's go back to Soviet Union, which is when we look at the Soviet Union as this external existential threat to us, we become more grateful for our ability for freedom of suppress and freedom of expression, freedom of religion. We get to say,

look at America, we get to do the following things and you're more grateful. Yeah. But then when that goes away, all of a sudden we don't view those things as with gratitude anymore. We turn on ourselves. We turn on ourselves. That's so interesting. COVID, which was an enemy, caused people to really appreciate nature, which is right in

front of you. It caused you to go out in your backyard and touch a flower or meditate on a blade of grass or something or a tree or your children. I remember doing COVID, like I went through such a long period of time where I didn't really hug anybody. I wasn't dating anybody at the time. And like I had my niece and my nephew who I would hug, but I hadn't hugged another adult in months. Wow. And when we started to open up and start getting tested,

I remember the first time I hugged a friend, I was like, this is amazing. Exactly. You know? It really magnified. It really magnified the value. Yeah. I heard George Lucas say once,

because his enemy was the incumbent studio system when he started Lucasfilm. Oh, for sure. And he was this upstart filmmaker and he was going to do it differently. He was going to do it his way. And he was a super rebel. And he once philosophized that he said,

what do you do when you become the thing you hate? So when you were a young filmmaker, when you were a young producer, was there an enemy that helped you and Ron Howard, your longtime business partner, and all your team sort of rally together? Was there a common enemy that you guys were standing up against as young upstarts in the business when Imagine first started?

Yeah, pretty much. It was always the studio, the man. The studio. It was the man. The man. The man was going to fire us. The man's not going to give us a chance. It was always the effing man. Right.

Yeah. And so now you are the man. Yeah. Well, a little. The Brian Grazer is now the man. Yeah. Well, a little. The Brian Grazer is now the man. How do you rally the troops against the man when you're now one of the players? Well, that you can't really do honestly because I mostly work with all those CEOs. Yeah.

And they're not enemies today. I can't really rag on the man. I can now, because of all the strikes, rag on the system. Right. It's more than the man now. It's not just one man, one studio, one stream. It's the system. Right.

Yeah. I have my the man, and I use Jack Welch. I want to undo everything he did. I think he fundamentally contributed to the breaking of American business, and so he is my Soviet Union. He helps me understand what I stand for because I can see what I stand against. He popularized using mass layoffs. He popularized short-termism and

quarterly results and all of this stuff. Wow. And I'd like to undo everything he did. So even though he has passed away, what he stood for... You're still mad at him. I'm still mad at him. Want to undo everything he did. Exactly. Was there someone that you could look back on your career and say, he personifies more than anyone else what I was trying to break in the movie business? Well, there was one enemy who ran the biggest agency, and he banned me for two years, and then he found a way to ban me for a second two years. When I did the first movie, Night Shift, with Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler, and then my

second movie called Splash with Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah and John Candy. When Splash was really successful, you know, I was nominated for an Oscar for writing this, and it did really well. The Mermaid movie did really well financially. And so all of a sudden he walked towards me to say hello, which he'd never done. He always walked through me. Right. I was completely invisible. Right. Threw his arm around me and said, Hey, we did this together, didn't we? And I thought thought should i tell him the truth or should i join this club of his yeah you know this managerial elite that's governing hollywood yeah so i thought i'm just young i think i should just say okay yeah we did it and i did i folded you still got to play by the man's rules you still have to play by the man's rules i mean like don't we all have to play by the man's

rules there's two ways to have a revolution, which is you can stand outside the castle walls and scream and yell and throw stones. Yes. And, you know, making noise matters and you get people's attention

or you can go inside and befriend the king. Yeah. And I've always subscribed to going inside and befriending the king. Really? I didn't know that about you.

Yeah. And so I'm a great believer in being myself and being different, but playing by the rules to some degree so that i can earn the trust of inside the palace yes because it takes a little longer yeah and i think both systems are important i think you need to have the rabble rousers as well but once the king trusts you and he gives you keys to the kingdom then you go do

the things that need to be done yeah i think that's the best way to do it yeah like i go because then your voice gets heard your voice gets heard. Your voice gets heard. Yeah. You know, it's almost like on a minor level, like if I find an actor to be a superstar, to be really hard to work with, but if I give him power as a leader,

he will lead us to success. There's a story there. Yeah. No, it's really true. Okay, so let's, obviously we're going to leave out names to protect people in this. So let's just call him Dave.

Okay, we'll call him Dave. Okay, and I'm genuinely guessing. I don't know anything. Okay. Okay, so tell us what happened here. The movie cost too much money and I thought to myself, Dave's not going to want to hear

that we have to cut money out of the film, more money. Dave will have a tantrum. And they'll be very unproductive. But if I say, Dave, can you lead us to success? The way to do that is by doing the following things as a leader. He said, yes, I'll lead us. And he did. And we became successful. I think it's such a sophisticated thought and it's how progress happens, right? Because when you talk about the system and the man, I think when we talk about those things, what we, what we really mean is someone else is making decisions for us, that someone else is taking away our agency. But if you can give the agency back, but if you give the agency back, then they feel I'm an adventurer, I'm discovering, I'm in charge, and I'll discover within the boundaries of what

we're doing here. And I think a lot of people in leadership positions fear giving away power, they fear giving away agency, they fear giving away responsibility, thinking that somebody's not smart enough, good enough, or willing to accept or wield that responsibility responsibly. But the reality is the total opposite, which is when you give people responsibility, they tend to rise to the occasion. I think it's accountability, right? It's accountability. Great tech companies that are hugely successful, a few of them, they do do that. They give middle management the responsibility of making big decisions.

You didn't have a lot of familiarity with the military prior to Patrick going to West Point, right? None. Little to none. Yeah. And now you have a new appreciation for them, which I think is magical. Yes.

And one of the things that you'll find in the military, which is completely unlike private sector, is the amount of incredible responsibility they give to very young people. So if you go to an aircraft carrier, which is 5,000 or 6,000 people, the average age, average on an aircraft carrier is like 21. Oh, my God.

Right? You'll find if you go on the deck where they are responsible for $100 million aircraft, moving it around, getting it ready, you'll find 18, 19, and 20-year-olds driving the ship. Like the person who's actually on the steering wheel of the aircraft carrier worth billions of dollars is probably 19 years old. In private sector, the recent college grad or the recent high school grad who just got their first job, we let them do the filing and we let them do the photocopying. And we don't give massive responsibility to very young people in private sector. The military is the total opposite. Right. And it's an amazing thing to watch these kids rise up. That helps me a lot, actually. When veterans leave the military, when people leave the military and join private sector,

even when they leave as generals, you know, with 30 years experience, I find that they all have this incredible inferiority complex with this incredibly insecurity. They're like, I've been doing this military thing for 30 years. What the hell do I offer private sector? And I don't think any of them recognize just how much they're capable of more than in the private sector. And you'll see it with Patrick, like the amount of responsibility they're going to give a kid. Well, he's already got a lot of responsibility. He's already been promoted. And it's like, now he's in charge of like 50 kids. I mean,

there's not an, it's an amazing thing. Or 50 plebs, whatever. Yeah. There's no one in college that I went to that the school said, you're in charge of 50 other students. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, whatever, yeah. There's no one in college that I went to that the school said, you're in charge of 50 other students. Yeah, exactly. Like, can you imagine? That's the stupidest decision in the world. Yeah, exactly. But they take that super responsibly.

I'm just fascinated about this idea of fighting an enemy. I mean, all of your movies, every single one of them, for a good story to be told, there is no good guy without a bad guy yeah all of my stories that are successful every movie or television show even empire yeah they're all underdog stories i always see myself as an underdog i mean i know that you know i'm on a elevated level but i still feel like i'm an underdog because every story you know that matters

to me that i'm something that I'm actually caring about personally, I know that it can be a hit or it can be a complete flop. It's an art form. And so many moving parts, there's no way to calibrate whether it's going to work or not work. I think of myself as an underdog as well. And for me, I always think of the vision as the thing that I'm fighting for. So, for example, when I was early in my career,

I had this vision, which was like an iceberg beneath the ocean, and nobody else could see it but me, because it lived in my imagination. And I would talk about it, and people would say, you're insane, you're crazy. I'm a pipsqueak nothing, and I'm talking about undoing everything Jack Welch did, for example. I had one little bit of success, like this tiny little piece of iceberg

sticking up above the ocean, and all I needed was one person to go, oh, and I would always say, tip of the iceberg, just you with. And then I had like a TED talk or my first book came out and all of a sudden people can see some tangible manifestation of what I'm trying to promote. And they'd say, Simon, it's amazing what you've accomplished. And I'd say, tip of the iceberg. To this day, like no matter what compliment someone pays me, it's Simon, it's amazing what you've accomplished. And I'd say, tip of the iceberg. To this day, like no matter what compliment someone pays me, it's Simon, it's amazing what you've accomplished. I always say tip of the iceberg because for me, no matter how much that people see that I've done in the outside world, I can't see it. I know that it happened, but to me it's like, well, that was yesterday.

You know, all I can see is what still has yet to be done beneath the ocean that nobody else can see. And I'm just like, I still have so much more to do. You know? Of all the amazing characters of stories you've told, who are you most like? Wow. Okay. Jeez. Probably somewhere in Friday Night Lights.

There's a movie called Friday Night Lights in a series. Okay. That came about because I got cut from high school football in front of 300 kids. And so I remember I'd gotten through Hell Week and I was like a human being, you know, one of 300 people, a human being. And when they said grazer status i said

tailback and coach ogawa said incorrect cut so he cut me in front of just like that and i thought wow i'm no longer a human being any longer to all the the 300 other guys in the room you know it was probably didn't mean that much, you know, it was, it wasn't imperceptible, but close to me, it was the singular biggest thing in my life. It was so humiliating. Then I later in life thought, wow, that moment that I felt was what all kids go through. They all go through a point where they feel like they're somebody, and then all of a sudden the rug gets pulled out from under them. And even though it might not be perceivable by the human eye around them,

it's something that happened that caused them to have a deep injury that will have an effect on their whole life. So when I came across the book Friday Night Lights, what I saw in it were many things. It was about football. It was about small town culture. But what I really saw was it's really about the fragile nature of a young boy's mind.

Yeah. And that most boys between 15 and 18 years old, they experience a moment that is really a version of that. Yeah, yeah. And my version of that, I was able to see in this movie with a character in the movie that was a star and all of a sudden got injured. Yeah.

And how does that change their entire identity? Yeah. How does it change their appeal to women? How does it change their identity and popularity within the school? Yeah. How does it change their appeal to women? How does it change their identity and popularity within the school? Yeah.

Who are they? And then who are they, who do they go on to be? Yeah. It's pretty much captured in that movie. Because that can go one of two directions, right?

Which is as a young kid, it can destroy your future. Yes. You're humiliated and think you're incapable of anything again. Or you go on the journey of rebuilding yourself

and proving the coach wrong. I did do that, which was amazing. I got really lucky, incredibly lucky. So what happened is I get cut, I feel all those feelings, and then I think, oh, no, what am I going to do with first period now? And so I think I'll go into swimming. I didn't really even know how to swim. And so I go into swimming, and didn't really even know how to swim. And so I go into swimming and I'm swimming

and, um, there's all of a sudden a city meet, you know, there's 65 schools in the city of Los Angeles. And the coach, his name was coach Wiley. Coach Wiley goes, Grazer lane eight and lane eight. Coach Wiley goes, Grazer, lane eight. And lane eight, if you're a swimmer, is the worst lane because the outside lanes are the worst. Anyway, I'm now in lane eight swimming a hundred yard butterfly, which I don't think I even knew how to do. But I jumped in the pool and my body just reflexed that way. It just contorted in the way that I was able to do this particular stroke. Now, I don't quite know what's going on other than I'm swimming this and my little arms are going really fast.

And so now I make a turn and as I'm entering the home stretch here, I look behind me and I don't feel like I see anybody. I just glance back. I'm like, this is really strange for me. I look back and I don't see anyone. I'm thinking, shit, they're all out of the pool. And then when I touch down, my coach, Wiley, is with a stopwatch. He goes, oh, my God, you just broke this L.A. city record.

And so that was chilling. Yeah. And I looked in there. All those people were way behind me. They were so far behind me, I didn't even see them. Wow. And so that was a great moment. Now, smash cut, I became like one of the state's best swimmers.

And in order to try to win the state meet, I would have to shave my body again, which I didn't want to do. Coach Ogawa, the guy that cut me, was told by the principal, you know, Grazer, go get him to shave his body and shave his head again, which was so humiliating. And so Ogawa had, the same coach that cut me, had to lobby me, beg me to shave my body and cut my hair. And out of sheer defiance, I just said no. You humiliated me once. I will not be humiliated again. Yeah, I don't want any more dealings with you. There's so much that's all coming around to roost. It's your grandmother taking you to try new things, try new things, try new things, made you unafraid to be uncomfortable, to be unafraid to be the beginner, to be unafraid to do the unfamiliar. Yeah.

You have this humiliating experience, which should have ended everything. Yeah. But instead, you followed Grandma Sonia. You just tried a new thing. By sheer luck, you excelled at that thing. And that set you on a new path of defiance, where you're now standing. You have a little bit of success which gives you the cojones

to stand up to the man. Yeah, and then I was like, at that point, like I was super popular at school. Kids and teachers would go, there goes the great grazer.

I'm thinking, who are you talking about? But I didn't say it. I thought, wow, I'm being talked about like that? So the Brian Grazer is actually the great grazer?

That's what they call it. It just gave me tremendous confidence with confident. That's everybody needs someone or something to help you have confidence with confidence. You will try other. Oh, the lessons are beautiful here, which is for all of us to learn, to get comfortable with the uncomfortable, which comes with constant, constant, constant exposure, whether it matters or not. It could be silly things like restaurants or performances, a trip somewhere. It doesn't have to be anything big. It doesn't have to be very uncomfortable or shake the foundations.

But to get in the habit of discomfort and to have someone in your life who says, come on, try again. Come on, do another one. That you know that you're not alone in the trial. Right. And ultimately those lessons gave you the confidence to stand up to the bully, to stand up to the system, to stand up to the man and do it your way. Yes. And this is why I love you. Thank you. This is why I love you because you are still the best example of you as you were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, or even that kid in the pool. Yes. And a lot of people that you and I get to know and meet, they're amazing, they're wonderful, they're special, they're smart.

But I don't know if they're the best examples of them. They're now the executive version of them or the celebrity version of them or the wealthy version of them. But they're not them. Yes. And no matter what you achieve in the world, you are that curious kid who's willing to try new things. And the thing that I love about you is not only that you're willing to do that,

but you are that friend to a lot of the people in your life. You are the one who gives them the confidence to try new things. Thank you. I can do it and I can always be better at it. And including the actors that you're willing to give away power to. Which is you're putting them in an uncomfortable situation and you're saying, don't worry, I got your back. I'm here. Because there's that little

detail that was missing. Can you just stay here for another three days and we just keep talking? Let's keep going. I love it. I love you. Love you too. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsenic.com for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.