The Most Curious Man in Hollywood — Brian Grazer

Brian Grazer (@BrianGrazer https://twitter.com/BrianGrazer) is an Academy Award-winning producer and New York Times bestselling author (A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1476730776/offsitoftimfe-20, with Charles Fishman) who has been making movies and television programs for more than 25 years. Grazer and his longtime friend and business partner Ron Howard began their collaboration in 1985 on the hit comedies Nightshift and Splash, and in 1986 they founded Imagine Entertainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_Entertainment. In 2002, Grazer won an Oscar for Best Picture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture for A Beautiful Mind (shared with Ron Howard). In 2007, he was named one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World." His films and TV series have been nominated for 43 Academy Awards and 131 Emmys. In this episode, we discuss: Brian's "supertool" that helped him get ahead in business. How to pitch people to create opportunity. Favorite failures and lessons learned. Brian's criteria for choosing what movies to make. How to develop better decision-making abilities. And much, much more. This episode was recorded in front of a live, sold-out audience of about 2,000 people at Summit LA17 https://2017.summit.co/ in Los Angeles. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by MeUndies http://meundies.com/tim. I've spent the last year wearing underwear from these guys http://meundies.com/tim 24/7, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I've ever owned. MeUndies are designed in L. A. and made from sustainably sourced MicroModal — a fabric three times softer than cotton. Even better, it includes free shipping. If you don't love your first pair of MeUndies, they'll hook you up with a new pair or a refund. If you love the product, they have three different subscription plans — so you'll never be bored with the ever-changing selection. Check out MeUndies.com/Tim http://meundies.com/tim to see my current faves and get 20 percent off your first pair. That's MeUndies.com/Tim http://meundies.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients. FreshBooks https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=emailtells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more. Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new Freshbooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=emailand enter "Tim https://www.freshbooks.com/pages/tim?ref=11864&utm_source=tim-ferriss&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2016&utm_content=email" in the "how did you hear about us" section.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, this is inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, my sexy little munchkins. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. I'm sitting in a freezing cold house with an overdose of oolong tea and the unnamed crazy Bulgarian who's back to his antics to help me with book launch. Samolovski. I have no idea what that means, but he's fun to have around, like mini me. All right, the next episode that you are going to listen to was recorded live in the City of Angels, Los Angeles, in front of a sold-out audience of around 2,000 people at Summit LA 17. You can check out what Summit's all about at summit.co. And you can find links to everything, all the show notes, all the good stuff from this conversation, which

• 2:09Tim Ferriss?

  is freaking. Hilarious. It's quite a roller coaster with Brian Grazer. At tim.blog/podcast, so you can find all the links, all the goodies, favorite books, all this stuff from every episode at tim.blog/podcast. And if you haven't checked it out, take a look at the latest crazy project that is launching right now. TribeOfMentors.com. That is my new tome, TribeOfMentors.com. And you can see sample chapters, the full list of mentors from every possible discipline you can imagine. You're always asking, "How do I find a mentor? If I'm the average of the five people I associate with most, how do I learn from them?" This is how. TribeOfMentors.com. Take a

• 2:53Tim Ferriss?

  look. So, without further ado, as I like to say before I talk even more, please enjoy this conversation with the incredible, the entertaining, and ever so effective Brian Grazer.

• 3:11Tim Ferriss?

  How's everybody doing today?

• 3:15Tim Ferriss?

  It's all downhill after that intro, I'm afraid. Yeah, the secret to happiness is low expectations, at least for me. And our guest today is the real draw, and I'm so excited to be speaking with them. But before we get to that, let's just roll a little sizzle reel that we have to whet your appetite. So AV guys, if you could roll the reel.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Houston, we have a problem.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  Find Professor London. Give you somebody? You're nobody.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  I'm gonna turn around with a great smile and walk my white ass back across it.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Triggering alarm and I'll blow your head off.

• 3:59Speaker 06

  Stop screwing with me!

• 4:02Speaker 06

  Might make your head blow off. Was it good for you?

• 4:07Tim Ferriss?

  I've had better.

• 4:13Speaker 07

  Mission Control. We're looking at a red planet.

• 4:16Speaker 08

  I mean, this stuff has been really wild.

• 4:21Speaker 09

  May I have your autographs, sir? I want to be a scientist just like you.

• 4:26Speaker 10

  Move it, move it! If you decide to accept that, you are seriously fly, son.

• 4:32Speaker 11

  Don't forget to thank me, baby. Don't forget to thank your cookie.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  What power? This power! All power! Our power!

• 4:43Speaker 07

  You are in the middle of a war, one that's been going on forever. What are you talking about? You asked what it would be worth killing for. Witness the biggest cover-up in human history.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  You can't get involved in these people's problems.

• 4:59Speaker 12

  I don't think they're gonna make it if they're not together.

• 5:02Speaker 13

  To help arm our agents, so that they have a fighting chance against the submachine guns of some of the most dangerous characters in the history of American criminality.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Don't say that! You're not my son!

• 5:23Speaker 14

  It's a bigger idea than just the concert. We all have the same struggles.

• 5:29Speaker 13

  Ladies and gentlemen, here are the beaters.

• 5:33Speaker 13

  Thank you so much for believing in my weirdness.

• 5:40Speaker 10

  Clear eyes, both of us.

• 5:49Speaker 12

  How big is the universe?

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Infinite.

• 5:51Speaker 12

  How do you know for sure?

• 5:52Speaker 04

  I don't, I just believe it.

• 5:54Speaker 12

  It's the same with love, I guess.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  Gentlemen, it's been a privilege flying with you.

• 5:58Speaker 07

  I'm saying that when the president does it, that means it's not illegal.

• 6:29Tim Ferriss?

  So as some of you know, I'm just a professional dilettante who gets to sometimes interview people who are world-class at what they do, and this is certainly the case. Quick housekeeping question for people backstage. Clock says 55 minutes. I could spend that much on one movie. I assume I have 90 minutes. Head nod or no? Do we have clarity? Yes? Okay, great. So let me do a little read. This is a rare, rarely cited, live edition of The Tim Ferriss Show, so thank you for coming. So who is our guest today? Brian Grazer, as you know, is an Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning producer whose films and television shows have been nominated for 43 Oscars and 187 Emmys.

• 7:12Tim Ferriss?

  Just let that sink in for a second. There are people whose careers are defined by being Emmy-nominated one time. All right. 187. His movies include Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, American Gangster, Eight Mile, Friday Night Lights, Parenthood, and Splash. His television shows include, most recently, Genius, about Albert Einstein, Empire 24, and Arrested Development. Grazer's been named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World, and his book, A Curious Mind, subtitle "The Secret to a Bigger Life," is a New York Times bestseller. Please welcome to the stage Brian Grazer.

• 7:58Speaker 15

  Okay.

• 7:59Tim Ferriss?

  Here we are. And here we are. And we're using two sets of mics, because, as some of you may know, two is one and one is none. Always have a backup. So I thought, there's so many hundreds of ways we could start this, but I'm gonna go and use a tried and true playbook. The way that I think all good interviews start is by talking about four-foot-ten Jewish women. So could you, could you please tell us about your grandmother?

• 8:27Speaker 15

  Okay. Grandmother. I had a pretty normal family, or it felt, actually, it looked like it was normal.

• 8:37Speaker 15

  But I did have, in the entire family, I had one person that was a champion of me, that was a believer, and that was my grandma, Grandma Sonia, who I dedicated my book to, and should be dedicating everything to. And you really just need one believer. She was a tiny, little, feisty renegade named Sonia. She was about 4'10". And she would watch me, I'd see her every week, and as an elementary school student, she'd tell me I was gonna be special, I am special, and she meant it in the best sense. And I would be looking at my report card, and it was all Fs. Everything was an F.

• 9:20Speaker 15

  And there was a point where I kinda thought, there is really no empirical data that supports that I'm gonna be special. But nothing defied her, nothing could wear her down. And so, and she was there also an early supporter of me asking questions and using curiosity as a force or an engine to understand things, because, and we spoke for only a minute, because I was struck with dyslexia, but it wasn't thought of as dyslexia then, I was just embarrassed, too, that I couldn't answer questions and read books, and you sort of duck and hide.

• 9:57Tim Ferriss?

  So the dyslexia, I mean, you're clearly very smart and very curious, and we're gonna spend a lot of time on curiosity, but I'd like to, before we get to Brian Grazer in quotation marks, to talk about Brian Grazer the younger, not to be confused with the Roman of the same name, but it's easy to look at people, say, on one of these stages, and assume that they're superheroes who have just been hitting home runs with every at-bat. I wanna talk about specifically, and I actually don't know the full story, but could you tell us about your experience...

• 10:34Tim Ferriss?

  Being cut from the football team.

• 10:36Speaker 15

  Oh, okay. So, first of all, I'm from Los Angeles. I'm from the San Fernando Valley, the flat part, the... (laughing) Really? Okay. So, good, yeah. So, I went to Chatsworth High School, Nobel Junior High. Come on, really? All right, so, all right. So, I'm at Chats... So, first of all, I was a very feisty kid, and I was very resourceful, had a lot of energy, and could keep up in sports with all of my friends in elementary school and junior high. When we transitioned into high school, all my friends became 6'3" or 6'4".

• 11:19Speaker 15

  And as you saw, I'm... My license says 5'8", I'm not sure. So, in any event, but I thought I could play football, and so I went out, I went out for football, did Hell Week, which is like what it sounds like, Hell Week. And I got through it, and the coaches said, "Okay, everybody in an auditorium." So, there was about 300 kids, all in an auditorium, and they were to state, the job was your status, your name and your status. So, it would be Steve Perry Schellmeyer, tailback, Richard Cox, I'm giving you the real names, quarterback, Brian Grazer, tailback.

• 12:03Speaker 15

  Incorrect! Everything stopped. And he said, after he said incorrect, Coach Ogawa said, "Cut!" So, I got cut from high school football in front of about 300 kids, and it was pretty, it was, look, it was just, it was momentarily, or maybe a little longer than that, traumatizing. Because before I had to give my stat, name and status, I was a human being, and once I did that, I was no longer a human being. And certainly in that room. And it stuck with me. And that's, that, but it stuck with me, and I retained the memory of those 10 seconds.

• 12:45Speaker 15

  And if you want me to go, it gave life to, when I read a book, it was called Friday Night Lights. And...

• 12:53Speaker 15

  There's a lot of way, everything is about, all content I think involves a unique perspective. And so my perspective on this book was, sure it's about small town, a small town in Odessa, Texas, and sure it's about what small town living is like, and it is about high school football, but it's also about the fragility of what it's like to grow up as a young boy, 15, 16, 17 years old, and that a single moment, like the one I just had, can be absolutely seismic in somebody's life and can completely redirect where you thought you were going. So I was, so that was my connective tissue to this book called Friday Night Lights.

• 13:37Speaker 15

  And then I grabbed a hold of it and I eventually, I mean, the, I have a short story, I ended up making it into a movie, but wasn't that simple, of course, and then I ended up turning it into the TV series that you guys probably know, Friday Night Lights.

• 13:54Tim Ferriss?

  Did you share that story of getting cut with people in your family or your close friends? Did any of them, was, was any person in your life able to help you repair that? Or was that something that you did on your own?

• 14:07Speaker 15

  Uh, well, that's a, that's a shame issue. So I probably didn't share it, no one's actually asked me that question on stage, I didn't really share that. I shared it once I made this movie and I was proud of the movie, but I didn't share it at the time, no.

• 14:24Tim Ferriss?

  Were there any role models or coaches or teachers who acted as a counterweight to that, who perhaps helped you or particularly inspired you?

• 14:36Speaker 15

  Oh, I had a coach, Wiley. Coach Wiley was a football coach and kinda tough, but he was also the swim coach. And I had this accident experience of being incredibly good as a 100 butterfly swimmer. And it was the oddest thing because I felt so badly about myself because of the, the football, that I went into, I went into track and I did gymnastics, but that wasn't very satisfying. I thought, well, I'll try something else. It's also a way to duck out of first period. So I went to swimming, I went out for swimming. And the worst, absolutely, so we had a pre meet. Uh, Los Angeles City meet.

• 15:19Speaker 15

  There's about sixty schools in Los Angeles City. And they go, he goes, "Grazer, lane eight." But I've never really swam the butterfly. I just kinda held the side of the thing and I swam a little bit like that, uh, freestyle. And he goes, "Lane eight, butterfly." You're like, "Okay." I kind of become alert and I get in lane eight. And lane eight, by the way, let me tell you, is the worst lane. Cause you're getting all the flow over and everything else and you're kinda bobbing as you're swimming. And, uh, I, I'm swimming this butterfly that I hadn't really swam. And I hit the, the side of the, the end of the pool and I thought everybody was out of the pool.

• 16:03Speaker 15

  And Wiley's there with a clock and he goes, "You just broke the city record." And I'm going, "Oh, that's amazing." And I looked and everyone was behind me and he became my hero. Because he then championed me. My grandfather could relay it off to Coach Wiley.

• 16:20Tim Ferriss?

  Now, if, if... I'm just imagining like the mutant-like shoulder mobility that somehow granted you this gift, uh, but I'm not gonna dwell on that. So my understanding, based on my homework, is that you dropped out of college or that you dropped out of school and that a teacher recommended that you do that. Is that, is that accurate or am I reading the wrong vandalized page on the internet somewhere?

• 16:50Speaker 15

  Well, it's in there somewhere, but it's, it's more that, um, as a freshman in college, there was a speech, oh boy, this really actually parallels what's going on right now. There's a metric involved. Actually, I was in speech class and, uh, there was about a hundred and twenty-five kids in this freshman speech class.

• 17:08Tim Ferriss?

  Is this speech meaning public speaking class?

• 17:10Speaker 15

  Public speaking. It's public speaking class. And it was a Mr. French. Sounds like a television name. And then he went, so Mr. French says, "Why don't you stay behind?" So I stay behind, he puts his arm around me. I remember exactly what he looked like. And he said, "I wanna make a recommendation. My recommendation is that you discontinue going to college."

• 17:32Speaker 15

  I've been watching you, you've been in the class. I really think that this is kind of a, you know, like, not futile, but a little bit of a waste of time for everybody. And I thought about it, I thought, wow, what is this guy, this is horrible. So I didn't quit college, I did stay in college, but he was really pretty emphatic about going to an occupational school, which he recommended.

• 17:59Tim Ferriss?

  What was the, what was the occupational school?

• 18:02Speaker 15

  Oh, it was, um, it's on Woodman Avenue, but it was like you're working with your, anything to do with, like, working with your hands.

• 18:09Tim Ferriss?

  What effect?

• 18:10Speaker 15

  Like he would know.

• 18:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, what, what?

• 18:15Tim Ferriss?

  What effect, what effect did that have on you? That, that transition to an occupational school?

• 18:20Speaker 15

  Well, I powered through, uh, somehow got through that class. I got like a C or something. And I, I did stay in college, I graduated USC. I did pretty well, actually, because I somehow found a system in the last two years, had a test. You know, just a system of being able to synthesize and then literally, um, integrate it into my system right before I went to sleep at night. So I was able to assimilate it and actually perform. So it wasn't fully just memorized, it was assimilated.

• 18:48Tim Ferriss?

  What was your system?

• 18:50Speaker 15

  Well, the system was really, I, I just, I would just continue to, well, I'd aggregate what was going on in the class and...

• 18:58Tim Ferriss?

  By writing it down?

• 19:00Speaker 15

  Sorry?

• 19:00Tim Ferriss?

  By writing it down?

• 19:00Speaker 15

  By writing it down and reading books and yellow penning stuff and, and, um, and then I would just continue, I was always editing the system, almost like a movie, as I was propelling myself through the class. And when it came to any big test, I was, I was at a point where I'd synthesized it to something I could really look at in, in, less than an hour before I went to bed. And I, I wasn't really, I mean, now I would say it was a way, it did enter your subconsciousness and, uh, and I was able to, really, I really did well. But then I did discontinue going to law school, I think that's what you...

• 19:39Tim Ferriss?

  Right, got it.

• 19:41Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 19:41Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you discontinue going to law school?

• 19:43Speaker 15

  I thought there'd be no way I'd pass those tests.

• 19:47Speaker 15

  Why didn't you go to law school? Well, I didn't really know what to do. So when you graduate college, you kinda don't know what to do. I mean, well, you guys probably... I still don't know what to do. You guys clearly know what to do. You're here. But I didn't know what to do. So I thought, well, you know, one of these... I'll go to law school. And so, uh... But, okay. So what happened is, I thought I'll go... Okay, I thought, okay. I get into law school. And then, I over... I'm living in an apartment complex in Santa Monica. And I overhear these three guys that are all grad... just had graduated law school. And one of them says, "Yeah, man, I just left the cushiest job." And I'm thinking, "Wow, what an interesting word, cushy job. It must mean really easy." So I...

• 20:33Speaker 15

  So I literally opened up the screen, the window, and closed the drapes so I could really listen in. And he says, "Yeah, it was so easy, man. We got... It was a $5-an-hour job. And they gave us a company car. I got a company car. And it was at Warner Brothers in the legal department. And they said... He said his name, Peter Connect. But I literally, when they walked away, I just... I got the number, 843-6000, just called 411, got saved. And I called and said, "I understand you might be looking for a law clerk, and I'm preparing myself to go to law school. And I'd love to come in and meet." And I got the job that day. So...

• 21:14Speaker 15

  So then, that leads to a lot of other stuff. So basically, then, I now have the job as the law clerk. And literally, it is the crappiest little job. It's the crappiest little job in the tiniest little office with no windows. I mean, it's literally had to... It was like a prison cell. But I was in there. And every once in a while, they'd say, "You gotta deliver papers to..." They'd name famous people or powerful people. The woman named Sue Mingres, who was the head of ICM, that International Creative Management, and the most important agent in the world. "You gotta deliver these papers." And so, pretty early on, I had to deliver some papers to Warren Beatty. And Warren Beatty was a giant movie star.

• 21:59Speaker 15

  And he's living at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and had like a penthouse, a giant penthouse area. And an assistant to an assistant comes downstairs to say, "You know, like, hand me the papers, kid." You know, like, that kind of a thing. And I say...

• 22:16Speaker 15

  I think, why don't I say they're not valid unless I get them to Mr. Beatty, my hand to his hand.

• 22:27Speaker 15

  So, I try that out and it kinda works. And another assistant comes down, like, "We're having trouble with this kid down here." You know, like, he says you have to hand it, and so his number-one personal assistant comes down, and I said, "Look, I'm just telling you straight up, these papers are invalid unless I hand them directly to Mr. Beatty." So, they go, "Okay." And so I go upstairs, and I, now, it's like, I see this Adonis, you know, Warren Beatty, and I literally, I go, "Hand him the papers," and I create a conversation right away, and I just by accident did into, like, expanding that conversation into like an hour of talking. And the guy really dug me, and I'm thinking, "This is amazing, I can do this every time."

• 23:16Speaker 15

  So, I start doing it every time, and I get, every person I get to go see, the author of The Exorcist, I literally, I had to drive it out to Malibu, and before you knew it, I got through the butler, and I'm sipping espressos on the porch over the ocean. I'm only 22, but I'm really learning a lot, I'm feeling like, "Wow, this is a great sort of learning tool also." I mean, I'm also using the Warner Brothers assets to advantage me, but I wasn't really hurting anybody, I wasn't stealing, and so, so that's sort of the beginning of it. And then I just continued going to law school, and I convinced my boss, "Can I stay there for one more year?"

• 24:00Speaker 15

  I'm pushing law school a year, right. But, so, just, I'll end this very quickly, so then what happened is- No, you don't have to end quickly, I think this is fine. So I realized that I could actually use my, oh, so then, what happens is- Sorry.

• 24:16Speaker 15

  So then I see that somebody, a senior vice president of business affairs, got fired. And he had this giant office and it was vacant. And I say to my boss, Peter Connect, who started with Jack Warner in the day, who leaves like at lunch, I say, "Do you think I could have that office?" You know, then he goes, "Sure, no problem." So I now have an office bigger than my boss's. And it's so far away from my boss, he doesn't even notice me, really.

• 24:47Speaker 15

  And then, but I'm right outside the cadre of decision makers. The chairman of the board, Ted Ashley, the vice chairman of the board, was John Kelly, and then Frank Wells. Okay, so then they would go, "Hey, you know, like, you seem like a good kid. Why don't you sit on my couch and watch me work?" And I thought, "Wow, this is great. I'm really learning a lot watching them work."

• 25:09Tim Ferriss?

  Hold on, hold on. I wasn't gonna interrupt, but I have to hit pause. I've never had that happen to me. How? How did it come to pass that they said, "Hey, kid, you seem like I would enjoy having you sit on my couch watching me work?"

• 25:29Speaker 15

  Well, I was a very-

• 25:30Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe I'm the only one wondering that, but just in case.

• 25:32Speaker 15

  Well, I did have this tool that I didn't really imagine could be the superpower of curiosity, but I had this sort of bridge where I could ask questions. There was a huge circular driveway that where the big shots could park. And I would find my way to sort of be down there when they're parking their car. And I'd say, "Hey," and they'd say, "Walk on them up with, come on up with me." And one of them took a real liking to me. And his office had no desk. It was just, I was so admired of the office. It had no desk. It had like a big, like swordfish that he caught, boats and stuff. And I'm thinking, "Wow, this is the life." This seems like the right business.

• 26:12Speaker 15

  But then what I did, I had two union secretaries, and I can do this quickly. I had two union secretaries-

• 26:17Tim Ferriss?

  You don't have to do it quickly.

• 26:18Speaker 15

  I had two union secretaries that they wouldn't fire. And they were really strict, because they didn't like that I was using the office to, for me, to benefit of me. And so they were like getting really mad at me. And they got my parking revoked and stuff like that. And, and-

• 26:39Speaker 15

  There got to be a point, well, I was starting to use the office. Every single day for a year, I met a new person that was getting something done in the entertainment business. From every chairman of every studio, from Mel Brooks to Richard Brooks. I mean, stars. And I would just, I would call up, I know this speech so well. "Hi, my name is Brian Grazer. I work at Warner Brothers Pictures. This is not associated with studio business, but I'd like to meet your boss for the following reasons." And I'd be like, three or four tiers down. I'm saying this to, you know, like, you know, to one assistant, to another assistant, and I could wear everybody down eventually. And then, my assistant said, "We're sort of sick of you. We're getting you fired." I said, "Okay, hold on.

• 27:24Speaker 15

  Before you fire me, I will give you half of my salary if you don't get me fired." So, so they took half my salary.

• 27:32Tim Ferriss?

  Hold on, hold on, hold on. So, just a few details, so I can fill in the gaps. Apologize to the audience, I'm from Long Island, my brain doesn't move very quickly. So, all right, where to begin?

• 27:48Tim Ferriss?

  First, what would some example reasons be? "I want to meet your boss for the following reasons." Do you, what types of reasons would you cite?

• 27:55Speaker 15

  Uh, okay, okay, that's a real question. Okay, oh, sorry.

• 27:59Tim Ferriss?

  I like to lead with my terrible fake questions, to warm you up for the real questions.

• 28:03Speaker 15

  No, that's a real, like, okay. Well, what I did learn to do, on the seri, I did learn to prepare. So, it wasn't just like fly by the seat of my pants. I really, really prepared. So, first of all, by being in that office, I would read the trades and I decoded the language of entertainment. Because the language of show business is like, it looks like, "Hey, let's go to a party and hang out." There's a lot more than "let's go to a party and hang out." And so, I was able to like, fly my little Cessna through this... Fog and find my way to understand beneath the language. I started to understand the mechanics of how it worked and how to actually where the leverage, where the leverage was.

• 28:47Speaker 15

  So the leverage could be the studio because they have money or it could be creative leverage because a director was expert at something or it could be that you just had IP or it could be that you create IP. So I was able to understand all the system of leverage. And so, so I was able to, I was able to say to somebody, I've, I've researched your boss. I'd love to meet him for the following reason and the following reason like Robert Evans. It would be real reasons like I saw The Godfather and I can't believe that he could be, was involved in the creation of that plus Love Story. They were so diverse. I mean, I mean, literally stuff like that. So I, I was good at it and, but it was a little bullshit in it too, but I was good at it. And, and then I had this moment with, with Lou Wasserman. Yes.

• 29:31Speaker 15

  So basically Lou Wasserman was the king of the entire movie business. He was the patriarch of it all and he ran Universal, the Universal Movie and Television Company. And I'm thinking, wow, would I like to meet Lou Wasserman? He is the man. I'm going to meet him and he was sort of like the elderly statesman. He was friends with Henry Kissinger. I mean, he had it all. He was a man for all seasons. And so I, I, I target a lot of his assistants and I eventually met Melody, his number one assistant in the parking lot way out on the lot. And I said, oh, come on, please. I begged her anyway. And she said, okay.

• 30:11Speaker 15

  So, oh, so then what happens is I'm in the elevator going up to now meet Lou Wasserman. Press it up. I get into the elevator. Now I'm on the 14th floor. I get out. He's got his hands in the air like this, like, don't go any further. So he wasn't like any other normal guy I was meeting. He stopped me before I could get into his office, kind of like that look of like, you're just bullshitting me. And I started sort of, it was a look like I didn't, I couldn't say much. I was sort of frozen and he said, wait one minute. And he goes into his office and he comes back with a pencil and a legal tablet. And he said, you put the pencil to the paper and it has greater value than it did as separate

• 30:55Speaker 15

  parts. Get out of here. So. So I take the pencil and the paper and I'm now escorted to the elevator. And I thought, what is he saying? What's going on here? And I realized what he's saying is like, you've gotta do better than this. You better start writing ideas, even if they're little ideas, that you can breathe life into or that have some, have value.

• 31:19Tim Ferriss?

  And did he say that?

• 31:20Speaker 15

  So that was the beginning of like being substantial.

• 31:23Tim Ferriss?

  Did he? Did he say that because he saw in a letter some inkling of wanting to create your own movies? Or was there something else that led him to make that recommendation? Or was it just a general lack of substance that he saw and therefore he said, hey kid, I love the bluster?

• 31:43Speaker 15

  I think he kind of, he might have liked me a little bit, a little tiny bit, but mostly he just felt like, let me give him some advice and get him out of here. Some real advice.

• 31:51Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm gonna back up just a second to the half a salary thing.

• 31:55Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 31:56Tim Ferriss?

  So in that case, you're, you're offering half your salary to an assistant who helped X, Y, or Z powerful or well-known person to prevent you from getting fired?

• 32:05Speaker 15

  Yeah, there were two, a union, one's a paralegal and one was a secretary, that were there from the previous boss and I was just...

• 32:13Tim Ferriss?

  This is on your lot or near your office?

• 32:15Speaker 15

  On the Warner Brothers lot.

• 32:16Tim Ferriss?

  I see, got it, got it.

• 32:17Speaker 15

  Yeah, sorry. On the Warner Brothers lot. And that, those two secretaries were there in the office of the executive that I then inhabited his office.

• 32:27Tim Ferriss?

  I see, got it.

• 32:28Speaker 15

  Sorry.

• 32:29Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, that makes, that makes more sense.

• 32:30Speaker 15

  And so they were kinda going, hey, you're like a scammer, cut it out. And they, they got my parking stripped away, so I had to park the copper penny across the street and just a bunch of stuff like that.

• 32:41Tim Ferriss?

  So the, the, the art and craft of getting these meetings is something I wanna talk about. And you're very well-known for these curiosity conversations, but do you recall how you struck up a conversation with Warren Beatty? Because...

• 32:56Speaker 15

  With who?

• 32:57Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, with Warren, early on.

• 32:58Speaker 15

  With Warren Beatty?

• 32:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Because early on, uh, everyone, I would imagine during that period of time is trying to do exactly the same thing. So do you recall at all the approach or what you said that opened the door?

• 33:10Speaker 15

  Okay. Well, I have a system now that's much more refined, cause it, it, than it was then. But at the time... Heaven Can Wait was built on a movie, uh, on a, on a material called, um, Mr. Deeds Comes to Town, I believe. And I should know this. But you ask good questions. That's why you've got a lot of followers.

• 33:33Tim Ferriss?

  I do. I think, I think you've checked the good factual recall box. We're not even gonna go there.

• 33:38Speaker 15

  So I said, will you explain to me, like, how Mr. Deeds Comes to Town is gonna become Heaven Can Wait and kind of a fantasy? Like, what is that gonna be? Because that's where the papers were, Mr. Deeds. It was a, it was being, it was, it was, they were all interlinked. And so I started off like that. So I had a prop. Props are very, very, very important.

• 33:59Tim Ferriss?

  And you've refined it since.

• 34:01Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 34:02Tim Ferriss?

  But I do wanna talk about the early days, and then we're gonna get to the current, like, model of Lamborghini version of this. But my, my understanding, and it could be also a misunderstanding, is that there was one line in particular that you used quite a bit that caught my attention at least. And it was along the lines of, "I absolutely don't want a job, but could I please meet your boss?" So the, the "I absolutely don't want a job." Were there any other keys, if that is actually accurate?

• 34:34Speaker 15

  That's, yes. It's, it's accurate. I would say to, and I still say, there's not gonna be an ask. I just wanna have a one-on-one conversation. It can be a very short conversation. It's up to you. It's up to your boss, whoever I'm speaking to. But there'll be, you know, essentially, there's, you're never, your boss is not gonna be uncomfortable. I'm not gonna ask for anything. I'm not gonna position him. I'm not gonna ask him one of those really hard questions, Barbara Walters questions, you know? I'm not gonna do any of that. So, basically, you're, everybody's gonna be safe here.

• 35:09Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 35:10Speaker 15

  That was the, that was the premise.

• 35:13Tim Ferriss?

  And how did you select, because it seems like your, your curiosity conversations began with industry insiders, but expanded, when did it start expanding to people in the sciences and in all different fields?

• 35:29Speaker 15

  Yes. So for the year and a half... It was just completely in the population of entertainment. So, you know, people were getting something done, principals that were getting something done in movies or television. Then I got fired, clearly, I'm gonna get fired from that job, right? From the Warner Brothers job. They finally fired me. Sam Pasquin finally fired me.

• 35:55Tim Ferriss?

  What was the grievous effect?

• 35:57Speaker 15

  Who's the HR? What?

• 35:58Tim Ferriss?

  What was the camel that broke the camel's back? Did I say the camel that broke the camel's back?

• 36:02Speaker 15

  Yeah, yeah, no, I know what you mean.

• 36:03Tim Ferriss?

  That's actually very easy to do. The straw that broke the camel's back.

• 36:07Speaker 15

  Well, I was doing these curiosity conversations and I was demanding to meet all those famous people and, but the straw was, I started to have, I started, I created tremendous access with myself and their story department. The story department had all the early submissions of any script or manuscript that was, that could possibly be sold or bid it upon or was owned by Warner Brothers. And so I was like crawling under the tent and getting all that information. And to be really honest, I think I actually might have tried to kind of create a fake

• 36:50Speaker 15

  bid on something. And they just got so annoyed with it all. You know, it was like that lecture of, you know, we could, you know, file a lawsuit against you, but you're too young, so just get out of here, a version of that.

• 37:09Tim Ferriss?

  So you were fired and I was asking?

• 37:10Speaker 15

  So I got fired. But I wasn't broken down because I was fired, but I thought, wow, I am really smart though. I thought I was so smart. I thought I was really cunning, really resourceful, and I had researched a lot now, and I've met a lot of people and I'd started to understand their process, their system of how they would accomplish something, or, just to keep it simple. And I thought, wow, I'm so smart. I should go from that fired law clerk to being like running a movie company, you know? It's absurd. But I did think, so I thought, I'm gonna just jump from that guy that's 23 to like I should run somebody's movie company.

• 37:54Speaker 15

  Well, I found that that didn't work at all. So I then started getting unemployment checks. And that really seals the deal where you know it's not working. Because you're getting an unemployment check. And then I thought, you know what, I'll give myself a little more time and try to pull this thing off, just jump the ship, you know, like. And so I couldn't, it didn't work, it didn't work. So I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna take a really crummy job. I'm gonna take a job like as the lowest assistant and be happy with it, like be present in the process of the lowest job.

• 38:34Speaker 15

  Which was kind of an epiphany, but I, well, it was an epiphany, but it was also reality. So now I'm in the very lowest job, working for somebody, his name was Edgar J. Sherrick. Edgar J. Sherrick was Harvard, and he was really smart, and he created The Wild World of Sports and ran ABC programming, and now has left and had this giant deal at Warner, coincidentally, at Warner Brothers Television. But he also had money to bring to it and everything else. I take a job working for Edgar J. Sherrick, as did another, a very esteemed producer, exactly at my level, named Scott Rudin, who I really respect, he's a tremendous taste.

• 39:18Speaker 15

  We both were baby assistants that called ourselves lieutenants. And then, he was on the East Coast, I was on the West Coast, this boss, and he, may rest in peace, it's totally cool, he was either yelling his lungs out at you, or giving you opportunity. So literally, he was very happy to scream at you and yell at you, and he could only be happier if other people were there to watch it. So, and he did that to Rudin and I, but he would give you opportunity. So all those little stories I wrote, a few of them, I was able to like sell, working for this bigger guy.

• 40:01Speaker 15

  And so I sold two of them, and they became movies for television when I was about 25. One was called Zuma Beach, it was just super attractive people, day in the life of the beach. But, but I would sort of say, it's like American graffiti at the beach, you know, like give it a little dignity.

• 40:19Speaker 15

  And then I thought, I can really be highbrow and I think I'll do, and I did, I sold a 20-hour mini-series on the 10 commandments, where each commandment was used as an underlying theme in a contemporary moral dilemma. And so I produced the Zuma Beach one, my boss was really embarrassed because he was Edgar J. Sherrick, but then when I got good ratings, it was like, everything's fine, you know, like, it was good. And then I started doing the 10 commandments, and that was good, but he kept yelling at me and it was really abusive, and I started getting a lot of job offers, like, amazing opportunities, and so I say to him, "Hey, you think you'd give me a raise? No chance." So then I took a job, another, I mean, a better, much better thing.

• 41:05Speaker 15

  Were we on that subject? I think we're on all the subjects. Okay, okay.

• 41:11Speaker 15

  Oh, and so from that point, sorry.

• 41:14Speaker 15

  I know what we're talking about. We're talking about transitioning into more... Broader, curious... Yeah, so once things started to gel, and I wrote this, I wrote Splash, which became a movie, you know, a real-life movie that starred Tom Hanks and a mermaid and all that, then I started to say, I said to myself, there will be, there'll never be two weeks that I don't, that I'm gonna pledge myself, I'm gonna create a discipline, that every two weeks, I will meet someone that is expert or renowned or committed to something that is unrelated to entertainment, so science, medicine, politics, religion, technology,

• 41:54Speaker 15

  all art forms, and that's what I've done, still to this day, and, and without fail, ever. And sometimes more than one person every two weeks, but always, once every two weeks. How old were you roughly when you made that commitment to yourself? Well, that exact commitment came at about 27. 27. Yeah.

• 42:17Tim Ferriss?

  When did Ron Howard enter the picture? How did Ron Howard come into the picture?

• 42:22Speaker 15

  Ron Howard, okay. So Ron Howard came before Night Shift and Splash, although I'd written the story for Night Shift and the script for Splash, but I couldn't get them to, I couldn't get them made. But I still had this very big, I had this big deal at Paramount because Michael Eisner and Barry Diller spotted me and they said, "That guy, that this guy won't give a raise to, we'll totally pay this guy. He's like an idea machine." And so, and so then I got this job and then that was a time where I wanted to meet people, still in the business a little bit, and I looked at Ron Howard, he was walking, he was still on Happy Days. I actually yelled out the window, because I had a window

• 43:06Speaker 15

  in this really good building, "Ron, Ron Howard." And like, I scared him, because he's shy. And now he's scared, but I called his office and I speak to his still-now assistant, Louisa, and I go, "Come on, like, da-da-da-da," and I tell the whole story. "Now I'm on the lot, he's on the lot, blah blah blah." And so then I get to meet Ron Howard. Ron Howard, literally, it was the craziest thing. He hadn't directed, of course, a big mainstream movie, but he comes into my office and I felt like it was, it was like he had an aura of goodness about him. And I thought, "Wow, do I need goodness."

• 43:46Speaker 15

  And so, this will really be something I need to ground myself as goodness. And I don't care if he hasn't directed, I'll get him to direct, you know, like, I'll figure it out. And I also wanted to be a mainstream movie producer, because I was produced, I'd produced television, but not, you know, a theatrical film. And then he, I go, "I'll back you, man, da-da-da." I mean, I didn't say "man," that would have scared him too, but, but... Anyway, so that's how that happened. And then the first movie he wanted to make was Night Shift, because Night Shift was an R-rated comedy that involved nudity and kinda, you know, was irreverent. And he was just coming off Happy Days, and of course Andy and Mayberry, and he wanted to go, "I don't want to be that clean-cut guy anymore.

• 44:29Speaker 15

  I still might be that guy, but I don't want to be looked at as that guy. I'm doing the irreverent nude one with nude girls, and I'm not gonna do that one." And so, uh, so we got Night Shift made. It wasn't a hit, but it was really solid. And then I was able to convince him to do Splash, and that became a really big success for us.

• 44:48Tim Ferriss?

  Man!

• 44:49Speaker 15

  Okay.

• 44:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah! Let's take an applause break.

• 44:55Tim Ferriss?

  This is my game to lose here. At this point. No, I was like, "Don't fuck it up, Ferris." All right. Pause, breathe, one with Yoda.

• 45:05Speaker 15

  You're doing great.

• 45:06Tim Ferriss?

  All right, thank you. What advice would you give to people? Would you recommend that everyone in this room try to have their own versions of curiosity conversations? And if so, what advice would you give them? How can they cultivate that curiosity and broader awareness and knowledge of the world?

• 45:25Speaker 15

  Okay, a couple thoughts. One is, I bet everybody in this audience is curious. So I, I, because I know the Summit Group, and I, you guys have gone out of your way to come here for the weekend, and so I'm assuming that they, they're, you guys are curious. I mean, the way to maybe further refine it, or to use it the way I did, I, of course, I'd recommend it, because you gain, um, you, you get the value of a different perspective that is outside of the definition of what you thought you were going to experience. So whatever, whether it's an architect, you think you know what an architect is, or I thought I knew what an architect was, I was wrong. I met Rem Coolhouse, and the first thing he said is, "It's like a live, architecture is like a living organism."

• 46:10Speaker 15

  I would have never guessed that he'd think of architecture on its base level as a living organism. Um, and I can go through every one of my conversations where I was completely distra, uh, uh, surprised, and it either shattered a prejudice or expanded a preconception. And so, absolutely do it. And I- And what it does, it sort of reaches right into the soul of humanity, which I think is something, an access point for all of us, I'm sure. Because at the very minimally, you're being really polite. You know, you're asking somebody genuinely, with eye contact and caring. You're asking them, "What are you doing?" Or, "How do you feel?" You're getting into something that's kind of real.

• 46:55Speaker 15

  And the minute you're into some real place, it becomes a really powerful self-perpetuating force that leads to many other questions that are really edifying. So, I definitely think that you should do it. And the other thing I would, I mean, I'd add to support it is you do have to do homework. It takes a lot of case building and preparation so that you're a good date. My pledge was always, "I'm gonna be a great date." You know, like, you know, the best date you ever had with a guy or a girl, whatever it is, "I'm gonna be better than that with this one-on-one conversation." "I'm gonna keep it so they leave feeling like, wow, I got something out of it too." It has to be win-win, and it can always be win-win.

• 47:37Speaker 15

  And these conversations, oddly enough, each conversation was like, each individual lived inside of a, was like a dot living inside of a greater constellation of dots. And I just always had faith that they may connect someday. And I found that many of them do connect and form perspectives that are additive in storytelling. And then storytelling is like a startup. Every one of these movies I've made was nurtured out of, from zero, and is kind of a startup. So, it all kind of works together.

• 48:11Tim Ferriss?

  For people who

• 48:17Tim Ferriss?

  for people who are excited to actually give this a shot, and they sit down, they find an assistant's or publicist's contact information on IMDb Pro or wherever they happen to be searching, just in the case of entertainment, do you have any advice for crafting, say, the email? What are some do's or do nots, or specific lines that you've found very helpful?

• 48:46Speaker 15

  Well, you have to start with an insight about the person. That's doesn't, that's not dull, not generic. If you're generic, I'm also teach, I teach the graduating class at USC. So after six years, there's one final class and it's now called "Starting at Zero." And I'm gonna do one session that's if you get the chance to have 30-second contact in a restaurant or a football game, you see that person you want to meet, how to not blow it. And generic questions always blow it. The other thing that always blows it is to ask for information that you could get yourself.

• 49:30Speaker 15

  So anything you can search, you don't want to ask. You never want to ask in a conversation if you see somebody, "How do I reach you?" It's the worst thing because you figure out how to reach them. They don't want to stand there and while you type out their email, they just don't want to do that. Now, so now in the email, I think it's once again, you have to say, you have to connect your interest and their interest and then have an insight that lands in the middle. And you're gonna say, "Give me an example, it's really hard."

• 50:03Tim Ferriss?

  You know me too. All right, what are, what are other ways to blow it then? Are there other, other ways to blow it that you see a lot? Or now that you're in a position where you're getting pitched, people want to have conversations and meetings with you.

• 50:20Speaker 15

  Okay, okay, I'll accept that. So, I will, sometimes I'll give a speech or I'll have a conversation and people go, no, I don't want to say it that way, let me say it. I will say no, I mean, I've learned to say no. I don't like to say no because I'm a pleaser, but I've learned to say no because often people just want to know the shortcut. They might disguise the shortcut question, but it's, they want the shortcut. Like, "Hey, how do you be a producer?" Like, I hate that question. Like, I so, I mean, I don't want to say hate in this crowd, but.

• 51:02Speaker 15

  Or, you know, there are, there are things that, that just are uncomfortable for me like...

• 51:08Speaker 15

  Hey, there's no harm in asking. Well, there is a harm in asking.

• 51:13Speaker 15

  But I think if you have an insight. You see the movie Dunkirk. You get a chance to meet the director for a second. You don't want to say, "How did you make Dunkirk?" You know, you want to say... The best thing is if you saw it. You can't pretend you saw it if you didn't. And then you have to say the unique trait about Dunkirk, like the multiple perspectives of the characters that made it a subjective experience. Or, I mean, I can just invent stuff, but I mean, right now, but I don't want to waste everybody's time. But you have to... The question was what?

• 51:52Tim Ferriss?

  The question was other ways that people blow it, whether they're pitching you or pitching other people.

• 51:57Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 51:57Tim Ferriss?

  But I think in tandem, we can come back to that.

• 52:01Speaker 15

  Well, I have a son who's just turning 18 years old, and I don't want him to blow it. So, the other day, he was thinking, a couple of months ago, to go, he really wanted to go to Tulane. There's a bunch of schools that are on the list, but he's thinking Tulane. So now I'm at Aspen Ideas Festival, and we see Walter Isaacson, who I did the Albert Einstein series with. And I go, "Oh, my God, you're going to meet Walter Isaacson's Thomas, and not only is he this guy, but he is the key to Tulane. He's on the board." So, he meets Walter Isaacson just before we go onstage, and he's talking, he goes, "My name is..." He's a great kid, amazing kid.

• 52:45Speaker 15

  Says, "Hey," and they say hello. And then I look away because I think things are going well.

• 52:51Speaker 15

  He's looking on his iPhone while Walter Isaacson's right there. That's not a good move, I don't think. You're me... You can't be on your iPhone while you're trying to have great connectivity. That just doesn't work. So, I say to him, "You're going to probably meet him again," and sure enough, he did. I said, "You in your pocket have to have three things you could say." I don't care if you talk about Gucci Mane. He's going to go, "Who's Gucci Mane?" You're going to go, like, "He's Trap." And he's going to go, "What's Trap?" And then you're going to say it. It's mumble. What's mumble? It's Trap. You know, like, so you have to have something to say.

• 53:31Speaker 15

  Or sporting, you know, like, you know, of LeBron. LeBron got traded. Oh, did he? Really? You have to say something.

• 53:42Tim Ferriss?

  How did the second conversation go?

• 53:44Speaker 15

  Oh. The second conversation went, yes, better than the first, but there's still room for improvement.

• 53:57Tim Ferriss?

  How, whether in the early stages or now, anywhere in between, do you choose the people to have lunch with? Because you have nearly infinite choice, finite time. How do you find the people or filter the people to select those you want to spend time with?

• 54:15Speaker 15

  Okay. Well, now it's almost a self-perpetuating system, but,

• 54:21Speaker 15

  and people know I do this. So I have a trainer that works me out and he goes, "Wow, did you see William McRaven's commencement speech in Texas?" I go, "No." And so he shows it to me while I'm on my elliptical. And I go, "Well, I better meet William McRaven." And then I get to do that, and that was amazing. But how do I do it? I, you have to, you go to blogs, you listen to podcasts, in your case, and you go, "Wow, that'd be hip to meet this person." But I said that so casually. You, you, you've, um, so that is, there are so many ways to stimulate an interest, to create a pool of possibilities.

• 55:04Tim Ferriss?

  I could also ask you about a specific person that I think you've met.

• 55:08Speaker 15

  Okay, you ask me again.

• 55:09Tim Ferriss?

  And I have a related question with Edward Teller.

• 55:14Speaker 15

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:15Tim Ferriss?

  How did you choose Edward Teller?

• 55:18Speaker 15

  Well, okay, so Edward Teller was the, um, thought to be the father of the hydrogen bomb. And also was creating the Star Wars program to protect the North American continent at the time of the Reagan presidency, I believe. And that was like through missiles and webs and everything else. And I'm just wondering like if Jeff Bezos is in the room, because I did have a chance to have a curiosity conversation with him about 16 years ago. He blew my mind then, and I still get to be friends with him, and I know he's speaking, but he knows a lot about Edward Teller, much more than I do. So if you're here for that conversation, you might want to ask him.

• 55:59Speaker 15

  Brian Grazer told me to ask you. No, no, no. No, no, no. But I know that he knows quite a bit. So Edward Teller took about two years to meet, and he said to me, it took about two years, and I met him like with military security around me, right outside the LAX, like outside of LAX private airport, because he had a lot of Army guys, and it was like nearly a cavity search so I could have this conversation. But he really, really had no interest in me. I mean, he had no interest really in storytelling, and I asked him what was the last movie he'd

• 56:42Speaker 15

  seen, and he brought up Walt Disney's animated film Dumbo. And, not that that doesn't qualify as a movie, but it was quite a while ago. So he just wasn't really that interested, but I was, I just kept going, just kept going. And then I remember Ron Howard and Tom Hanks, I had to go back to a meeting with them. They go, "How could you take it? The dude totally insulted you." And I go, "Yeah, it was kind of a bad experience, I guess, but I got a lot out of it." So you get a lot, you can gain a lot from failure, you learn a lot from failure. I learned a lot from the failure of meeting Isaac Asimov, which took a long time too,

• 57:25Speaker 15

  as a preeminent writer, author of science fiction and quite prolific, but I wasn't prepared well enough. I got my little coach ticket to fly like about 35 years ago to meet Isaac Asimov, and it turns out his wife came, who was actually also his psychiatrist.

• 57:44Speaker 15

  And I was talking at the Ritz-Carlton Bar with them. And we were all drinking non-alcoholic beverages. And she just looked at me and said, "Let's go." And so they left after five minutes after I flew. It was literally. But I did think, didn't feel good, felt like a big waste of time.

• 58:09Speaker 15

  But it taught me to prepare. Hope I'm prepared for this.

• 58:13Tim Ferriss?

  I think you're more than prepared.

• 58:18Tim Ferriss?

  Do you ever purposefully meet with people you know you will disagree with fundamentally?

• 58:25Speaker 15

  Yes, I purposely do, yes.

• 58:27Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you do that?

• 58:28Speaker 15

  Because it shakes me up. It wakes, shakes me up, wakes me up. Also, if you've ever seen, like, just quickly snap, I just, "The Fog of War," by MacGyver. I mean, like, that's the point of that. You, you, you don't have to like him, but it humanizes him through ultimately entering his perspective as to how and why he be, uh, expressed, why he was what he was. So, I met, uh, Daryl Gates, who I knew I wasn't gonna like. He was the, he was one of the, uh, the founders, creators of SWAT, SWAT Team, police, uh,

• 59:09Speaker 15

  you know, and forensics, and became the police chief of Los Angeles, and was right at the center of the Rodney King riot, and, uh, eventually got, was, was quickly, uh, removed from office. So, you know, I do do that, yes. I've met many cult leaders, leaders of, of really very, I'm not gonna say their names, very intense cults.

• 59:33Tim Ferriss?

  What did you take away from those conversations?

• 59:35Speaker 15

  Um, how, it's, well, cult leaders are kind of like, in a way, they sort of, um, operate the same way a dictator does. They, they're very, you know, they're seductive, they're charming, they're cunning, they're intelligent, um, but they have a belief system that they are going to impregnate you with. And, um, it's a, it's an interesting study to inhabit.

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned very briefly, and we don't have to spend a ton of time on it, but I wanted to open the door at least, eye contact.

• 1:00:07Speaker 15

  Yes.

• 1:00:10Tim Ferriss?

  Could you please share some of your thoughts or beliefs related to eye contact?

• 1:00:17Speaker 15

  Yes, okay, so I just finished writing a book called Eye Contact. But it's born out of the world of curiosity.

• 1:00:27Speaker 15

  And I didn't even really, I mean, my appreciation for eye contact became kind of retrospectively, came alive. The use of eye contact, the importance of eye contact, it's a tool that can't really be replicated through anything, and I don't think through AI. And it's a way to create intimacy and trust, and you learn so much through eye contact. And I didn't realize that it was so fundamental to all of my curiosity conversations. But it was only about a year ago, I had, it was, I had a waiter, that I go to a restaurant

• 1:01:10Speaker 15

  all the time, and the waiter said to my wife, "Wow, I really like Brian, but I didn't really know that, I didn't really think that he could know me well enough to like me, because I didn't think he knew me or anything." And he just said, "I like him, I like him because every time he speaks to me, he looks at me directly in the eyes, and it makes me feel like a human being." And I just thought about that, and I thought, "Wow, it's really true." I know that's not deeply profound, but it was sort of deeply profound to me, and I just kept thinking about that, and I thought about how that worked in every one of these, none of these curiosity conversations would have happened, they would have vaporized or melt

• 1:01:52Speaker 15

  down on the launchpad if I didn't really have eye contact.

• 1:01:59Speaker 15

  Because when you really have eye contact and it's happening, coming to life, it is again like a great date and it's the best date. And it's, and eye contact, through eye contact, it becomes, you know, deeply neurological and it's, it's, it's very powerful. And I realized, and then I thought back to myself, I thought, well, my partner, Ron Howard, when I was really amped up and everything, like, super amped up, when writers would come in and meet with us, just before our first movie in 1982, Night Shift, he'd say, "You don't really look at them in the eyes." And I go, "Well, I heard everything they said and I can repeat it back." But he goes, "Yeah, but it's not respectful."

• 1:02:44Speaker 15

  And so I changed it sort of temporarily, but then I kind of lost touch and then I realized that, you know, then I, then I animated it once, once again. But remember, he said it to me and it had a lot of impact and it, you know, once again resonated. But there are times when you shouldn't have eye contact, by the way. Because I had a, in tribal cultures, you should look, because I've had houses that I've owned in tribal cultures and...

• 1:03:12Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, hold on. You've had houses you've owned in tribal cultures?

• 1:03:16Speaker 15

  Well, I don't know, let's go to another question.

• 1:03:18Tim Ferriss?

  No. I actually just did not interrupt you, please continue.

• 1:03:24Speaker 15

  Well, no, the only thing, I've been to, basically, I had a house on the North Shore of Waukoo, because I like to surf. And it's a little tribal there, it's, it's very, it's hierarchical in that sort of tribal sense. And you don't, the word, you don't look, you're not supposed to look people right in the eyes, you look at them in the face to give them respect and just divert your eyes just a bit, because that could produce a negative consequence.

• 1:03:51Tim Ferriss?

  Pick your time and place. So you mentioned back when you were amped up.

• 1:03:56Speaker 15

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I wanted to ask the question, how did your hairstyle come to be? As someone who no longer has hair, I'm very curious.

• 1:04:07Speaker 15

  Well, it converges upon a couple of things. One was...

• 1:04:14Speaker 15

  One was, I was a pretty successful movie producer, and I wanted to have an identity beyond just, um... Because I saw that the other, there were other successful movie producers, like four or five of them, and they all had facial hair, and I couldn't really grow facial hair. And so their beards were helping to find them a little bit, and I sort of thought I couldn't do that. And then there was one producer that liked to throw stuff at people, and I didn't really want to do that. And so, I kinda was at a loss at trying to, you know, trying to create an impression beyond just being a producer. And then I was swimming in my swimming pool with my daughter at the time, she was like six, and I just popped my hair up,

• 1:04:59Speaker 15

  and she like, "I love that!" So I thought, "Really?" So, so we get out of the pool, and we go, you know, and I put some gel in my hair. It wasn't my gel, it was someone else's gel. Put it in the hair, and she goes, "That's awesome!" And then that's how it began.

• 1:05:21Speaker 15

  And then, and then just to further that a little bit, so then I did it, and it was very, very polarizing. Some people thought, a very small percentage, thought, "Hey, that's cool," like maybe 20%, and 80% thought, "What a dick."

• 1:05:44Speaker 15

  And I could see that they thought that. And sometimes they said it.

• 1:05:50Speaker 15

  And I just thought, "Wow, it's very, it's polarizing, but yet it reveals something. It's like a litmus test." So then I just kept it going.

• 1:06:00Tim Ferriss?

  So one of the things, one of many, that has really impressed me when looking back at your career is how persistently you have cultivated certain projects. And one in particular that I'd love to ask you about is Eight Mile. Could you tell us... And I don't know the answer to this, but the How Eight Mile came to be.

• 1:06:22Speaker 15

  Okay, sure. What if I said, "No, I couldn't"? No, I can't, I can't, I can tell the story.

• 1:06:30Speaker 15

  So, the way, well, my, well, I was dedicated to having curiosity conversations. Had to be, I should really know, but it was at least 20 years ago. And I was in New York, and I was in a cab, taxi cab, and the cab driver had on, like, a local radio show, talk radio show, and Old Dirty Bastard is being interviewed by this radio, this, this radio guy, and more than 20 years ago. So, I'm going, "Whoa, this guy's choosing to be called Old Dirty Bastard." That's his choice. He wants to be called that. So, that already was interesting.

• 1:07:11Speaker 15

  So, now I'm listening to ODB talk, and I'm going, "Wow, this dude doesn't even make any sense."

• 1:07:21Speaker 15

  But he was so getting away with it and committed to it, I'm thinking, "I want to meet him."

• 1:07:28Speaker 15

  So, I find a way to meet Old Dirty Bastard, ODB, and it was a trip. Everything costs mon, I mean, I made, I met him, he said, "Meet me at a studio," but he wouldn't let me in the studio. I was on the sidewalk. Everything was like an à la carte thing. Like, if I wanted to go in, that would cost a little. If I wanted to watch him do something, a little extra, it was bang, bang, bang. It was, everything was a, was à la carte. So, I just chose to stay on the sidewalk. It felt, it felt like that's what I should do. And I just thought, "He is really, really interesting. He's kind of funny, but he's also, like, he's speaking some truth about what's going on in the inner city, what's going on

• 1:08:12Speaker 15

  on the East Coast in this, in this..." Music genre that was, you know, early rap. And so I started thinking like, what is early rap? What's going on? So then that led me from ODB, I think, I'm gonna meet Slick Rick. Now, Slick Rick is really funny. So he's a guy, a British dude, wears a patch on his eye and has to be carried in like this, like a king, Slick Rick the Ruler. So I'm thinking, so, so Slick Rick the Ruler is really funny, but also cool. Then that got me from that point, I meet Chuck D of Public Enemy, and that's another thing.

• 1:08:52Speaker 15

  And I'm thinking, wow, this is a really important movement that's going on. And while I'm in New York, because I do these missions, like I'll meet every, in 48 hours, I'll make a point to meet every magazine editor, like literally, of, and sometimes newspaper editors. And so I can say this, I think, I met, well, I met the most, one of the more accomplished newspaper editors, Frank Rich. Frank Rich was really credible, really, really, really smart, and very high quality. And he said, I said something to him, I met these guys, da-da-da, and he sort of dismissed it as an inferior subculture.

• 1:09:34Speaker 15

  And I said, I don't think it's a subculture, I think it's the culture. And he sort of, kind of, you know, blew that off. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna try to, like, look at this kind of as like an equation that I'm gonna prove in a story form, like try to bring some cinematic form to this equation and prove that hip-hop is the culture, the pervasive culture, not a subculture, and much less an inferior subculture. So I went on this journey to try to do that, this learning journey, that was more, more artists, more people, blah, blah, blah. And I wanted to capture the humor and the truth. And now I'm about eight years into just doing this, and I keep it alive, and I'm watching

• 1:10:18Speaker 15

  the VMAs that they're doing in New York, when the VMAs were super cool, and the camera pans, and I see this kid, Eminem. And the camera sort of sits on him, and he's got this icy, icy urban glare, like, I'm killing somebody. And then, all of a sudden, he becomes this sort of fluid, self-effacing...

• 1:10:42Speaker 15

  Guy that smiles and laughs and is really elastic. And I'm going, wow, what a range. So I'm thinking, this is really interesting. I want to meet that guy. So then I know, I go to my friend, longtime friend Jimmy Iovine, who's like one of the more, most important music producers ever, really, I think. And he's such a superstar for picking. And he goes, yeah, I can make it happen. But it wasn't easy to meet Eminem. But he said, I can arrange it. You know, he's kind of a recluse by make it happen. This is before he really blew up and became a star. So he comes into my office in Beverly Hills and he sits there like this. And he won't look at me.

• 1:11:23Speaker 15

  I'm over here and I'm like talking and I'm talking and he won't talk back. And I'm trying every little trick and nothing's working. It's gotta be 30 or 40 minutes into this. It felt like three hours. And he goes, I'm out. I'm thinking, you're out? We didn't get to talk. We didn't talk. So I'm thinking, I'm gonna, I have to beg him somehow. I have to find some way. So I used the word, like he's at the door. And I used something like, I don't want to say it, but it was like, come on, you can animate or you can, something. And then he turned at me and looked at me like, again, like this is not a good thing to happen to Brian Grazer right now. And, but then he sat down and some, one thing led to the next.

• 1:12:07Speaker 15

  And he told his story, which was amazing story, which became the basis of Eight Mile. And so he was able to fully encapsulate what it was. And it was just a flashpoint moment where he was able to grab this. And he wasn't like saying, I want to start it or anything. But I could tell it was it because it introduced what rap battles are, which is very cinematic. And it was some, it was about, it had a theme that I cared about. All of my movies that I care about begin with a theme, not a story. Because themes are, they're not challengeable. Love, if I may, if love is a theme, it's hard to challenge that and say, oh, I, I don't believe in love, you know?

• 1:12:52Speaker 15

  Or in his case, You know, that story was literally like, how is he gonna get through these emotional injuries to become self-actualized enough to actually perform and to be liberated from all of his emotional injuries so that he could look at the audience and say what he said at the end of the movie, which I won't say in this audience. But, you know, so I thought, this is amazing. And then we were able to get him to do the movie, and he ended up, of course, being the only rapper ever to win an Academy Award. And it was a great thing. He's so talented.

• 1:13:32Tim Ferriss?

  So you, just to follow up on a bookmark from that, so what you said to him to get him to not leave was, "Come on, you can animate," or something along those lines?

• 1:13:42Speaker 15

  Yeah, I don't really wanna say. I mean, it was something, it was a little-

• 1:13:46Tim Ferriss?

  You don't have to say-

• 1:13:47Speaker 15

  -desperate like that, and, but I had to take my last shot, you know? He was at the door.

• 1:13:52Tim Ferriss?

  Seems to have worked out.

• 1:13:53Speaker 15

  Sorry?

• 1:13:54Tim Ferriss?

  I said, "It seemed to have worked out."

• 1:13:55Speaker 15

  It seemed, it worked, it worked. I couldn't, it was like, partially antagonizing, maybe? I don't know where, I don't know what happened, but he talked. He came back. I mean, I have the utmost respect, because I've worked with so many actors, having produced a, you know, somewhere around a hundred movies, and he was the most professional. I mean, he actually acted in every frame of the movie, wrote all of the music, one and a, I mean, wrote all the music and composed the music, and was a father. And he, he's just, I don't get to see him much, but have the most respect for him.

• 1:14:29Tim Ferriss?

  So we saw the sizzle reel earlier-

• 1:14:32Speaker 15

  Oh.

• 1:14:33Tim Ferriss?

  And, that was a pregnant, little comment, but I, I think that we could talk about, and we should, and we have, talked about some of the successes. Do you have a favorite failure, meaning, a failure that set you up for later success, or something that was particularly helpful from the standpoint of learning?

• 1:14:57Speaker 15

  I have a lot of failures. I mean, fortunately, I've had enough good successes that it sticks out. But I do have a lot of failures, and I fail different types of failures. Sometimes when I violate my own rules, and I get lazy with my own rules about choice of a movie, or I get sloppy, lazy in the choices of building the foundation. Anytime you say, okay, so sometimes I've picked a director where I go, "He's good enough." Because you're making hundreds of decisions. Good enough equals shitty. So, that never...good enough doesn't ever work. I do have one failure.

• 1:15:38Speaker 15

  I mean, I have one failure of...I produced Apollo 13, and Ron, Tom, and I sort of became kind of friends. We're friends and partners, and we all go, "Well, if we can just make this good, that's a win." And we're feeling so good about ourselves, because we're feeling like we're making something good that's not going to make very much money, but at least it'll be good. Why want to make a lot of money? Because everybody knew the end of the movie. They all lived. I mean, like, so then, all of a sudden, we make the movie, and the movie does really well, and we're all really happy. But then the studio goes, like a version of, "Don't be too happy. Let's see how it does overseas." So I'm realizing, okay, now I'm on this journey. I thought I was happy, but now I'm not happy.

• 1:16:22Speaker 15

  And no one's happy, because it didn't get released overseas yet. So then it gets released overseas, does really well. We have a few more of these things. Wait till it gets to home video. Okay. So then, all of a sudden, all the financial corridors are satisfied, and it does well. Then, I don't even think like this. Now, the Oscars are coming about. And the Oscars, they nominate, there's like five movies that get nominated, and Apollo 13 gets nominated for Best Picture. Gets nine Oscar nominations. It excludes Ron Howard, which was a super bummer for him. And a bummer. No nuance there, just it was a bummer, it was a bummer.

• 1:17:04Speaker 15

  And then, so that was, for him, it was super, it was really terrible. But now, we're in the Oscar race, and everyone is saying Apollo 13's 100% gonna win. Las Vegas oddmakers, everybody's going, "Hey, you're gonna win, what are you gonna say?" Da-da-da-da. I go, "I don't know what I'm gonna say, I can't, I don't know if I'm gonna win, I don't know anything. I've already had like, up and down like this the entire time." So now, what happens is, it's the day of the Oscars, and I've got my speech in my pocket, right in my pocket, I know I'm gonna be saying this speech, I know it, cuz everybody said it. In fact, some very, very famous investment bankers, one of them came to my office, I didn't know, and he said, "I just want you to say a few words about my pancreatic cancer company."

• 1:17:47Speaker 15

  And I go, "I can't, I don't even, can't think like this, you're jinxing me, this is too much for me, too much pressure." Um, and so now, it's the day of the Oscars, I got my tuxedo on, I got the thing, and we're at the last award, and Sidney Poitier is gonna open the envelope, and he's a very dignified, and he's a very deliberate communicator. He speaks slowly.

• 1:18:14Speaker 15

  And the winner is, and he's got the envelope in his hand, he's ripping it open, and it looks like he's gonna say Brian, I mean, cuz I'm, I'm hypnotized. I feel like a bee is coming off his lip. So I get up, I won't walk, I get up and I walk all, well, very close to him. I'm up out of my seat, and he said, "Braveheart."

• 1:18:42Speaker 15

  That's not Brian, that's another movie, that's a whole other movie. So I have to turn around and walk back to my seat, kinda, and I, I walk backwards because I'm so embarrassed, and I walk backwards, and, and this is so, it's so vivid. I mean, this got me on like, taking, uh, sleeping pills, because it was so... So when I turned around, one chairman of one studio goes like this. Loser, to me.

• 1:19:18Speaker 15

  So I'm going, "Oh, this is such a bad thing for me." And, and so I sit down in a sweat, and the real astronaut that Tom Hanks played, Jim Lovell, is like two seats down. He reaches way over Tom Hanks and Ron Howard, grabs my wrist, and he said, "I never made it to the moon either."

• 1:19:59Tim Ferriss?

  That's a hell of a story.

• 1:20:01Speaker 15

  It's a long story?

• 1:20:02Tim Ferriss?

  It is a... Oh, no, one hell of a story.

• 1:20:04Speaker 15

  Oh, hell of a story, yeah.

• 1:20:05Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good story. That's good hell. Not bad hell.

• 1:20:09Tim Ferriss?

  Did that have... Well, actually, did it have a lasting impact? Or were you able to brush it off?

• 1:20:15Speaker 15

  Oh, so, well, I mean, it le... Okay, what did I learn? My learn... What I learned was to, certainly not to treat anything as a reality until it becomes a reality, and that reality is a fluid experience, and that reality is always changing. So whatever data that they were supporting that I was gonna win... So basically, you know, always stay down the middle lane. I was pretty good at that, but I did fall out of the lane. I thought, "Well, I could win, and I'm gonna win, I'm gonna go up." But, and then eventually I did win for A Beautiful Mind. But, so that was good. But because I was in the column of feeling like, "Wow, anything could happen,

• 1:21:00Speaker 15

  it could all go wrong," I like, I couldn't, almost couldn't talk on that award. I was like, I went up, I was so nervous, and I had this piece of paper, and I'm shaking with the paper, and I look at Russell Crowe, and I say to the audience, "I know that my nervousness seems imperceptible." And they thought that was kind of funny. But then I noticed, like, all of the most... The biggest female stars in the world were in the front rows, like Sandy Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and every one of them. And I'd known a lot of them from meetings or working with them, and they were all looking at me like, "You can do this, you can do it."

• 1:21:41Speaker 15

  Because they could tell I was crashing, you know?

• 1:21:47Speaker 15

  Maybe it teaches you something about pre-anticipatory anxiety? I don't know.

• 1:21:52Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds like a good answer.

• 1:21:53Speaker 15

  I don't know. Yeah, it does.

• 1:21:58Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned when you violate your rules for choosing films or working on projects, and one of the, I guess, one of the rules being "good enough is shitty." Can you tell us about any of the other criteria that you have for selecting or choosing the movies? I guess selecting and choosing are the same thing? I'm just trying to get fancy.

• 1:22:17Speaker 15

  Well, okay, so I, yeah, I start with a theme, and then I find a story that is compatible to that theme, that actually is a vehicle for that theme. So "A Beautiful Mind," I was just being present, looking around my world, and I would see people, kids, that were stigmatized by even the mildest mental disability, and I felt shitty about it. I didn't, and you'd see, as you can see out in this area, you see guys talking into garbage cans. And they're not just talking into a garbage can, they're mostly living in an alternate reality. And that alternate narrative is the narrative of them talking into that garbage can. And it's not something to, you don't, you want to understand it, so that it doesn't,

• 1:23:01Speaker 15

  it's not cruel or stigmatizing. And it took a very long time to find a story that would be in service of that theme, but I did. But you ultimately, I mean, ultimately, I've always said that I'm in the feelings business, that it's not really, I'm not really, as a storyteller, I'm only in the feelings business. Because if you can ignite a feeling in cinematic form, which is an abbreviated way to connect, right, go right into your bloodstream, then you've created some, an indelible experience for somebody that, and if it's, that if it has hope, because I try to make movies, I don't always win at this, but to make movies that have hope.

• 1:23:42Speaker 15

  I don't like, I don't like to put out negative energy out in the world. They don't, but it doesn't have to be corny, like Eminem's ending wasn't, corny didn't become, you know, it's just, or in Friday Night Lights, they don't even win the game. They just come, they just become more complete young men, and more mature, and more, and stronger. So, so, I think feelings are so central, they're the differentiator, and if you lose track of that, I think you're really lost.

• 1:24:16Speaker 15

  It's very important when you create any kind of story that your protagonist is suited for the population or the audience. So you really don't want to have a story that... I don't want to... I want to end on that. What was that? Well, no, I mean, I think... Well, if you have a story that's designed to have emotional impact as an endpoint, which is my goal, you have to think to yourself, is that... What is your audience? And make sure that the characters that are personifying this idea are the same age or likeness to your audience. Because sometimes you can... You forget that and you go, "Wow, this is a young person's idea, and I have older people as protagonists."

• 1:24:59Speaker 15

  That often is just a calibration that is off. It's a calibration that's off. I made a movie that was... I'll look at our time. I made a movie called Fear. Fear starred Mark Wahlberg, commonly known as Marky Mark at the time, and Reese Witherspoon. And it was based on... A lot of the movies that matter to me are based on an experience like Friday Night Something I experienced, something emotional or real that I'm able to capture in a story. Or something I'm observing. So what happened is, I have a daughter. Her name is Sage, the one with the hair, the one with my hair up. So now she's... Prior to that, she's three and a half years old. We're going skiing. She doesn't really know how to ski. We're in the chairlift. And I go, "Follow me as we dismount."

• 1:25:44Speaker 15

  She goes, "No, you follow me." I thought, "This is gonna be a nightmare." Like, this is what's gonna hap... I'm gonna be... At three and a half, she's saying, "Follow her." At 16, I'll be completely powerless. So I created a movie, this thriller called Fear, starring Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon, where she picks this guy that is really charming and cool and popular, but really a psychopath. But the father is powerless and can't just go, "Hey, your boyfriend's a psychopath." He has to be like, "Hey, you really sure you want to go out with him?" And you have to really be... Think it through, and so that becomes this horrible, this nightmare film. That is a very, very, very effective film.

• 1:26:28Speaker 15

  Unfortunately, I picked, I lived it through the parents' point of view, as opposed to the kid's point of view. So it shows the points of view, but it's balanced through the perspective and the stakes in the man's, the forty-five-year-old man's brain. If it were in the kid's brain, it would have made a hundred and fifty million dollars. But when I put it in the wrong perspective, even though it was an effective story, personified through the parents, it was, it didn't do very well at all. But it was a good movie, but just didn't have commercial results. Because it was a kid's story represented through adults.

• 1:27:12Speaker 15

  So you have to actually line all, you have to calibrate all these things and be very precise about it. But I can actually apply, you know, there's like really, by associative parts in storytelling to any one of your startups, I'm positive. Because I happen to believe that everything is a story. I'm sure it's refutable, but I think that everything is a story. And when you lose track of your story, or whether it's a company or a human being, you, it creates a misdirection.

• 1:27:44Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for that.

• 1:27:51Tim Ferriss?

  You don't have to worry about the time, I'll watch the time. So definitely don't worry about that. You mentioned good enough equaling shitty, which I like a lot. What separates a good enough producer, or even a good producer, from a great producer in, say, feature films?

• 1:28:07Speaker 15

  Taste.

• 1:28:08Tim Ferriss?

  Taste?

• 1:28:09Speaker 15

  Just taste. Having taste to pick.

• 1:28:15Speaker 15

  To pick the right subject, to pick the subject that is also authentic and hasn't been inhabited from either at all or through a fresh perspective. So the taste in picking the right thing, the taste in executing, knowing what is good and not good. It's really completely qualitative, you know, like what some people thinks is a good meal, other person might not think is a good meal. If someone think, there are people that think that's a great car and there are people that don't think it's a great car. So I would just think taste alignment and the ability to execute it. And so when you build the foundational parts of whether it's your business or the business

• 1:28:59Speaker 15

  that I'm in, which is making stories, you have to pick people with similar taste. And I always, in testing that, I always go, well, what does it look like? Because I want the person to say what they think the thing looks like, even if it's just a feeling. So often I do this little, I used to do this little trick of like, I would, I could meet a director that has very good credentials of executing great taste. But he might not see, he might not want to message the same thing that I want to message. So you really have to make sure, like, so I would go like, if I made a comedy, and I

• 1:29:40Speaker 15

  did this many times, produced a comedy and I got this A-plus director and I go, well, God, what would it look like, Ted? And then they start talking and he starts talking about wide shots. Well, I know that's not right because comedy is a close-up medium, you know, there's like all these little giveaways that I'm sure you guys will have within, that you can codify in your own manifesto. So it's a very doable thing to think through. Are there ways to cultivate taste? I still make mistakes, by the way. I'm still very fallible.

• 1:30:16Tim Ferriss?

  As we all are, works in progress. Is taste something that you can cultivate? Are there ways to cultivate it? Or is it more like height or something like that? It's fixed?

• 1:30:26Speaker 15

  I think you can, no, I think you can develop. I think you can develop taste. It's just, you just have to go on a journey to do that. You would, um, I hadn't thought of it, but you would just have to be exposed to the execution of good taste in fashion and in art or in medicine or in technology. Or do some people see the uber picture in the game? And so you want to be exposed to those people. Why are you laughing?

• 1:30:56Tim Ferriss?

  Because I think it's a good answer. It's not a mocking smile. It's more of an I agree, thank you smile.

• 1:31:01Speaker 15

  No, no, I know. Oh, cool. No, I mean, some people do. They, they, they see things in, in an elevated way. And sometimes they're accidents, but you can, you should make it, I tried to make this always part of my journey, but, um, I mean, Harold Ramus, may he rest in peace. I adored him. He wrote Animal House and Stripes. And I met him and he had such an, I thought Animal House was like one of the funniest movies, but he had a really brainy Harvard, brainy, and I guess they don't have to always be aligned, but he had a very brainy way of stating what that movie was about. And I thought, whoa, that's really heavy, you know, like, and, and so you know it when

• 1:31:46Speaker 15

  you hear it, if you're available to hear it. But you can create a discipline where you try to sample stuff. Like, why is Gucci good now? Because if it's new creative director, who picked it? Pino picked them. Why did Pino pick them? How does Pino pick directors? I mean, how does that work? You start going that way.

• 1:32:08Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so interested in your questions, I could just ask questions all day, but last question-

• 1:32:13Speaker 15

  We're winding down, look at this-

• 1:32:14Tim Ferriss?

  We are winding down, the countdown clock. I've read, and there are a lot of things that are inaccurate on the internet, but that's... You've said, "Writing notes of gratitude always strengthens me." I don't know if that's true, but do you write gratitude notes?

• 1:32:29Speaker 15

  Yes, I have a gratitude journal that somebody gave to me, a tech titan. Gave me a... I said, "What are you doing?" And he writes in this gratitude journal. So every day, he tries to address this piece of paper. We, Veronica and I, gave them away at our wedding. Every person got a gratitude journal. And I try to... Because I want to stay in my lane. I don't want to enter someone else's lane in terms of life, you know, their life choices, or their value system, or their economics, or their lack of economics. I want to have compassion, but I want to be in my lane. And being in my lane, I can have gratitude, like, "Thank you for the health that I have right now."

• 1:33:13Speaker 15

  That animates my entire life, my mind, my life, my physicality. So, I want to be in that zone.

• 1:33:21Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think that's the perfect place to wrap up. @BrianGrazer on all social media. Thank you so much for a wonderful time. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Grazer!

• 1:33:37Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my... Close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:34:19Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.