Curiosity may have killed the cat, but a strong desire to learn and discover has been the cornerstone of Brian Grazer's career, one of the most successful producers in Hollywood history.
Grazer participated in a conversation titled The Secret of Making Hits with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner on Friday at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival.
Grazer is an Oscar-winning producer and New York Times bestselling author. His films and television shows have been nominated for 47 Academy Awards and 242 Emmy Awards. In 2002, he won the Academy Award for Best Picture with An Exceptional Man starring Russell Crowe.
Since getting into the business in the early 1980s, Grazer has had frequent curiosity conversations in which he would seek out people he had never met and engage in dialogue with them in hope to deepen his understanding of business, relationships, family and all issues related to the human condition. .
Friday’s conversation began with Eisner providing some sobering statistics on the current state of the entertainment industry. Shares of traditional media companies Disney, Paramount, Fox, Warner Brothers, NBCUniversal are all down; layoffs are happening in alarming numbers; and streaming services are demanding unsustainable subscriber numbers, with several at risk of going under in the coming years.
Moreover, the movie business is in a creative crisis. Studios are focusing on sequels and superheroes rather than on engaging, compelling content. Movies are being approved by committees and analysts rather than instinct.
It was with this current media malaise in mind that Aspen Ideas turned to Grazer for insight into his creative process.
After attending USC Law School for a year, Grazer overheard a conversation among law students that the easiest job one could get was an internship in the legal department of Warner Brothers. Grazer followed suit and got the job.
He was tasked with delivering legal documents to Warren Beatty, once one of the world's biggest movie stars. He went to Beatty's home and was greeted by an aide who asked Grazer to deliver the papers. Grazer insisted he had to deliver them personally. The assistant refused to let Grazer in. Grazer started to leave and the assistant relented and let him in.
“I ended up spending an hour with Beatty, talking and talking,” Grazer told the crowd. “After that, I figured if I could do this with Warren Beatty, I could do this with anybody, and I started calling everybody I wanted to meet in Hollywood to figure out how to get in front of them.”
Grazer said he managed to get into places that seemed inaccessible. His big secret: making friends with the assistants.
The big secret is that assistants run Hollywood, Eisner told the crowd.
Grazer thought the coup de gras would be meeting Lew Wasserman, the most powerful person in Hollywood, known as the last of the legendary Hollywood moguls. He managed to get in to meet him and Wasserman said to him: What do you have for me (i.e. script, pitch, etc.)? When Grazer said he had nothing, Wasserman kicked him out of his office. I realized I had to start writing to have something to give to people.
At this point, Grazer had three screenplay ideas: Splash, Night Shift, and a film called Xanadu. All three were made, and Grazer's career in Hollywood was launched.
At this point, Grazer set a goal of meeting someone new every two weeks, which then became every week. He met people all over Hollywood but he also met people outside the business: Fidel Castro, Edward Teller, Isaac Asimov, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana. He was set to meet Vladimir Putin but had to cancel when he discovered that Putin expected Grazer to make a film about him.
Grazer was on the Paramount lot when he saw Ron Howard. He thought meeting Opie would be cool, and when he sat down with Howard, the two men realized they complemented each other in skills and personalities and decided to form Imagine Entertainment, a partnership that lasted more than 40 years, which Eisner says is almost unheard of in Hollywood.
Eisner asked Grazer to outline his rules for Hollywood behavior. Grazer responded: “Never take things personally in an argument, dress professionally, be prepared, be on time, and don't drink at business events.”
When asked how to deal with stars, Grazer replied: “Be very patient, focused and honest. »
Even today, Grazer continues to have conversations full of curiosity. When asked if anyone had an unexpected influence on him, he mentioned a woman who was tortured for a year.
What I learned from this woman was that she had to create an alternate world in her mind to survive the horrible torture she was enduring in her real life, and I was able to use this idea to creating a fantasy world as a survival tool for Russell Crowe's character in A Beautiful Mind, Grazer said.
