Episode 663 - Brian Grazer
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuck sticks?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF, my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:If you're new to it, Brian Grazer is on the show today.
Marc:Brian Grazer.
Marc:is a film producer.
Marc:But not just a producer.
Marc:I mean, you would be astounded and amazed at how many movies and television shows this guy has been involved with.
Marc:I mean, life-defining for you, not him, but maybe for him, movies and TV shows.
Marc:It's insane.
Marc:It's insane.
Marc:All the way back to Night Shift and Splash,
Marc:The first couple of movies that he I think he produced solo all the way through.
Marc:I mean, he did, you know, The Doors, Backdraft, CB4, Apollo 13, The Nutty Professor, Ransom.
Marc:I mean, like I could keep going.
Marc:A Beautiful Mind, Blue Crush.
Marc:Eight Mile, Friday Night Lights, The Missing.
Marc:Jeez, man.
Marc:The Da Vinci Code, American Gangster, great movie, Frost Nixon.
Marc:I mean, it goes on.
Marc:And it's astounding the amount of work that this guy has done.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:And he's only like 12 years older than me.
Marc:He put a book out.
Marc:And sometimes these are... This is how I get into it.
Marc:You know, this is how...
Marc:I get someone over here as they're doing some talking for a thing they got going on.
Marc:So Brian's got this book, A Curious Mind, The Secret to a Bigger Life.
Marc:It sounds like a somewhat inspirational book, but it kind of is.
Marc:I mean, this guy, Brian Grazer, I'll tell you something.
Marc:There's never been a WTF quite like this.
Marc:I've never talked show business before.
Marc:with a producer of his stature in the way that we talked about show business.
Marc:I mean, if you think, like, he's done great films.
Marc:He's done films that were just moneymakers, but also well-made.
Marc:But it's a very diverse filmography and TV.
Marc:He's involved in Empire on TV, 24.
Marc:It's just kind of amazing.
Marc:But he is sort of a...
Marc:It was an interesting it was an interesting conversation in the way that, you know, business and just how business and creativity coexist.
Marc:And in his case, with, you know, in one human being, I mean, it's it's just it's amazing how much he's done.
Marc:And and and it's also like what you hear with Brian Grazer.
Marc:It's just a compulsion almost to to work.
Marc:And to be able to follow through on things and then maintaining good relationships.
Marc:He seems like a decent guy.
Marc:I mean, you hear stuff about producers that, you know, they could be hard asses or whatever.
Marc:But this guy seems like a decent guy, diplomatic guy and very persistent and constantly asking questions.
Marc:You know, obviously he's made some blockbuster movies and he and he's looking to make money.
Marc:But he sort of.
Marc:compulsive about finding things that are interesting to people uh and and and he got he's sort of on the pulse of that he's just a he's just a curious guy like the it's one of those rare things where this book which is a collection of of of basically experiences he's had conversations with um people that inspired him in you know in his search for for uh for things um
Marc:But just some fascinating stories and just that side of the business.
Marc:I don't think I've had as thorough and as an interesting and amazing conversation about show business from a guy who is major show business and a decent dude.
Marc:So look forward to that momentarily.
Marc:Also.
Marc:I want to say hi to all my unique listeners, unique people.
Marc:Because I mentioned I've been reading some emails from people in odd places.
Marc:This was sort of exciting in its own way.
Marc:This is hello and thank you.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:I've been really enjoying your podcast, especially hearing about the interesting and varied places you have listeners writing to you from.
Marc:I'm an archaeologist.
Marc:Working in England, my job mostly involves working in the middle of a field, mostly on my own.
Marc:You're one of my favorite comedians, and listening to your podcast really makes excavating a Roman ditch or an Iron Age pit fly by.
Marc:She sent me some pictures, and thanks, Rebecca.
Marc:Thank you, Rebecca.
Marc:If you find anything cool...
Marc:Take a picture or send me the actual thing, Rebecca, from the pit.
Marc:I won't tell anybody, but I'd like something from a Roman pit.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Okay, deal.
Marc:So, creative people, just keep being creative.
Marc:I mean, that's something this Brian Grazer episode will sort of push through.
Marc:So many of us work towards and I don't even want to include myself in it.
Marc:There's this idea that's sort of like, you know, I just want to be positive.
Marc:I just want to be happy.
Marc:I just want to be grounded.
Marc:I want these things.
Marc:You can be those things.
Marc:But like, for Christ's sake, don't be them before you fucking found your passion.
Marc:before you fucking cut loose and follow that goddamn weird compulsive energy, that chaotic creative energy or compulsive sort of I got to get things done energy.
Marc:The goal is not to be positive and happy.
Marc:All right, if everyone was positive and happy and well-grounded, there'd be no art.
Marc:There'd be no amazing.
Marc:There'd be no great art.
Marc:That stuff comes from a different place.
Marc:I mean, you can have those other things once you've sort of, you know, once you harness your creativity, your passion, your drive.
Marc:But don't let that be the means to an end at the price of the passion and drive and creativity.
Marc:Don't do that.
Marc:Or else it all goes away.
Marc:All the greatness, the art.
Marc:goes away you can create a good environment for that stuff to move through you maybe i don't know maybe i'm talking out my ass but i just don't i don't want to live in the world where you go up to somebody hey hey dude did you see that thing that everyone's seeing yeah i did see it how was it it's okay really just okay yeah it's just okay wasn't great uh there's no great anymore what
Marc:I'm going to be in Chicago for a few days.
Marc:I'm doing a thing.
Marc:Maybe I'll do an intro from Chicago and tell you what I'm doing in Chicago.
Marc:No live shows.
Marc:I'm not even going to be specific about when I'm going to be in Chicago, but I'm going to be in Chicago.
Marc:But yeah, you know what?
Marc:I'm just going to do that.
Marc:I'm just going to tease that like that.
Marc:Right now, I'm going to talk to an amazing...
Marc:uh dude in show business as i said before he's got a book out a curious mind the secret to a bigger life it's available now you can see all of his movies all 900 of them of movies and tv shows he was involved with but it was really a pleasure to talk to him uh so let's uh let's enjoy together my conversation with brian grazer
Marc:Get on the mic.
Marc:We'll do the thing.
Guest:You want to give me an orientation?
Guest:No, there's no orientation.
Guest:An orientation?
Guest:No orientation.
Marc:Is that how your brain works, though?
Marc:You're like, all right, what am I getting into?
Guest:What's going to happen now?
Marc:Let's frame it up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I always need a framing.
Marc:All right, well, I'll give you a frame.
Marc:You can wear the cans.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And then we go.
Marc:It was interesting because I'm looking at this book, A Curious Mind, The Secret to a Bigger Life.
Marc:And this is your book.
Marc:You wrote it with this guy, Charles Fishman, Brian Grazer.
Marc:If I can be blunt, where the fuck do you have time?
Marc:You're producing everything in Hollywood.
Marc:And you're like, no, I'm going to take a little time to write a book.
Marc:Why are you doing that?
Guest:Well, I'm doing it.
Guest:I originally did it because I thought I've done this for 30 years.
Guest:Producing movies and television.
Guest:Yeah, I've been producing movies and television for 30 years.
Guest:But I've also, in alignment with that, I've met a new person every two weeks for 30 years without fail.
Guest:And there are people that are not in the entertainment business, so it's science, medicine, politics, religion, all art forms.
Marc:But you met them on purpose?
Marc:You're like, I'm doing a thing?
Guest:Yeah, on purpose.
Guest:On purpose, I'd write a letter.
Guest:I'd call.
Guest:I'd meet assistants of assistants in parking lots just to meet Jonas Salk.
Marc:But was the intention to write a book or just because you were a weird fan of things?
Marc:I'm a weird fan.
Guest:I was a weird fan of, I grew up in a little tiny neighborhood.
Guest:Where?
Guest:Much tinier than this, by the way.
Guest:Than Highland Park?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was in Van Nuys, but I didn't leave my neighborhood.
Guest:I never left my neighborhood.
Guest:In the valley, right here.
Guest:In the valley, yeah.
Guest:But it was like the radius of three miles, and I didn't go outside that radius.
Guest:As far as I could ride my bike is where I would go.
Guest:But for how long?
Guest:In your 30s?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, until I got out of high school.
Guest:I went to college 17 miles from there, which was USC, on a grant.
Guest:I didn't really have the money to do that, but I went there.
Guest:But basically, I lived a tiny little world.
Marc:Isn't that weird, though?
Marc:I mean, you were right here in Los Angeles.
Guest:I didn't know about that.
Guest:But why?
Guest:What were your parents?
Guest:What do your parents do?
Guest:My dad was never around, a good guy, but never around.
Guest:What did he do?
Guest:He was a criminal attorney.
Guest:In L.A.?
Guest:In L.A., so he kind of lived the life of a criminal while he was defending criminals.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, kind of.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Well, he'd always, more often got paid, not money, it was like IBM's electric typewriters.
Guest:He did a thing for the apple pan, got like a thousand sandwiches.
Guest:He threw them in a freezer.
Guest:We had to eat these sandwiches.
Guest:So thanks for getting me off, buddy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to set you up.
Guest:Yeah, I have no money, but it is what we are getting.
Guest:I thought I had money, but I don't have money.
Guest:But I got these things in the trunk.
Guest:Fish, albacore, frozen albacore.
Guest:That's what you remember.
Marc:Isn't that funny, the things you remember?
Guest:So you had like a freezer full of frozen albacore.
Guest:Oh, it was gross.
Guest:and you're eating tuna for a month it's stuff exactly stuff like that and the worst thing of course was venison he made me we'd go he said bri let's go this is our way of bonding yeah so i didn't want to go shoot deer oh he was a hunter he'd shoot deer you know he's in the nra he did a few things like that not a big right-wing guy but in the like to shoot guns was he a jewish guy no no catholic guy oh
Guest:so your mom's Jewish yeah my mom is a Jewish mom my dad was a Catholic and so we'd say let's go shoot deer I didn't want to do that then he'd shoot a deer and he'd strap it on the front of the car like just literally like Minnesota like Fargo or something you'd drive up north and do it like what is it Angus National Park something like that that must have been sort of devastating it was and then we'd have to eat it and I remember the first taste of this smoked venison grossed me out threw up
Guest:Really?
Guest:And if I can't even look at venison to this day... How about deers?
Guest:I can look at a living deer, but as soon as they're dead, I can't look at them.
Guest:So I did live in this tiny little quirky world, and I never went to Beverly Hills ever.
Guest:I didn't know Westwood.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Were you afraid?
Guest:Were you...
Guest:i i wasn't afraid it's just how we grew up we just grew up in a little in a cul-de-sac and we right i get it yeah but you had a car at some point i eventually i had a car but i you know broke a few rules with cars i was a mischievous kid not afraid of things no but just never went to la just never drove yeah over the hill so if you if you saw menace to society yeah they didn't leave the
Guest:okay all right south central I didn't leave Van Nuys is that the situation you're in is a territorial gang situation so but I vowed to myself to enlarge in my world okay once and so that's what why I created this discipline of meeting a new person every two weeks and I would fly I'd go there you started this in high school though or no I started it just out of college and
Marc:Now, let's go through this because you're really the first major producer.
Marc:I think probably the first producer I've talked to.
Guest:Really?
Marc:And to talk to somebody at your level, which is a very high level, I have no idea.
Marc:I have a vague idea of what you guys do.
Marc:And there is sort of a romantic idea of what the Hollywood producer is.
Marc:I mean, you guys are the top of the food chain.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:So I'd like to know how you come to show business.
Marc:What did you set out to do, you know, like in college when you went to college?
Guest:My generalized goal of just getting out of college, graduating and be respected.
Marc:You just wanted to be respected for something.
Guest:I wanted to be special.
Guest:My grandmother, Sonia Schwartz, who I dedicate the book to, always used to say to me, you're special, think big, be big.
Guest:Your curiosity is going to take you all the way.
Guest:Use that.
Guest:It's a superpower.
Guest:She really said that?
Guest:She really said stuff like that.
Guest:She was Jewish, a very Jewish little- Yeah, I had one.
Guest:But while she was telling me literally every week that I'm going to be special, I'm going to be an outstanding human being, she was looking at a straight F report card.
Guest:So there was literally no empirical evidence that I was going to be special the way she thought I was going to be special.
Marc:Did they tell you you had motivational problems?
Guest:No, I had dyslexia, but they didn't classify it as such.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I struggle with reading, but I can definitely read, and I've improved it, and I was able to get through college with actually good grades.
Guest:And you wrote a book.
Guest:And I wrote a book with Charles Fishman, who I love and is your biggest fan, by the way.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, and it took a little longer.
Guest:Charles and I, he loves you.
Guest:Oh, he's listening to this.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's not a needy guy at all, honestly.
Guest:But he said on this particular interview, he didn't even say, say my name, but I'm doing it.
Marc:Well, I'm glad I have a fan of Charles Fishman.
Marc:Now I have to go look at his stuff.
Marc:Outside of this book he wrote with you.
Guest:Well, yeah, and I actually picked Charles Fishman because he had no knowledge of this world, this culture at all.
Guest:Of Hollywood?
Guest:Of Hollywood, no knowledge.
Guest:Because I wanted a business guy.
Guest:I wanted somebody that came into this world...
Guest:I was able to introduce him to this world from like a beginner's mind where he was like an archaeologist just going in for a dig.
Guest:Not cynical or jaded.
Marc:You can hide this stuff from him, Brian.
Marc:You can paint a good picture of our business.
Marc:Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Marc:But all right, so you want to be special.
Marc:You want to be relevant.
Marc:You want to be respected, but you got no clue what it is you want to do.
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:I have no... I think I'm going to go to law school because my father... We all think that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I'll be a doctor because my dad's a doctor, whatever it is.
Guest:So I went to USC and I got accepted into USC law school.
Guest:But in that summer...
Guest:The preceded law school, I overheard these two guys outside my little apartment complex talk about the easiest, cushiest job imaginable.
Guest:And I just closed the drapes and opened the window so I could really listen in.
Guest:Like I put my head against the screen.
Guest:I love doing that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:I'm voyeuristic.
Guest:Yeah, what's going on?
Guest:So I overhear this guy saying, it's the easiest job, 40-hour-a-week pay.
Guest:It's one hour a day work.
Guest:You don't have to do anything.
Guest:You get free corporate cards, Warner Brothers pictures.
Guest:I knew nothing about Warner Brothers, so I just dial information, Warner Brothers.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:And the man that was head of the legal department was named Peter Konek.
Guest:because then I overheard that so I can I please have legal department Peter Connect got him on the phone I said I'm a young guy going to USC love to be a law clerk he says come in and that day I got the job because the guy just quit the day before you just lucked out I just totally lucked out and you really did that I really oh I swear to you yes
Marc:And so you go into Warner Brothers, which is probably the biggest studio at the time, I would imagine.
Marc:That and Universal, yeah.
Marc:The two, yeah.
Marc:And you have no idea what show business is, really.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:Are you a movie fan?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:I mean, no.
Guest:No.
Marc:i went to a lot of the james bond movies but no i wasn't a movie fan because you're too busy not leaving the cul-de-sac no way to get out to the movies yeah exactly it's hard all right so you're there you're doing the legal clerk work what and what is that job essentially that job is a tiny little office with no windows a third of the size of your of this garage we're in right now and what do you do in there
Guest:Basically, you sit there until somebody says you have to deliver these papers to somebody.
Guest:So one of the first people I was to deliver Warner Brothers documents to was to Warren Beatty at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel where he lived.
Guest:You had to do that.
Guest:I had to do it.
Guest:And this guy's never been to L.A.
Guest:?
Guest:Yeah, I've never really been across the hill.
Guest:So now I'm in this Pontiac, I'm in a Pontiac, a red Pontiac that they gave me.
Guest:They gave you a car then?
Guest:They let me use a car.
Guest:You get a car and mileage and the 40.
Marc:And what year is it?
Marc:1972.
Marc:So it's a big car.
Guest:It was a big car.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was a big car.
Marc:You're in your big red Pontiac driving over to see Warren Beatty.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And did you see Warren Beatty?
Guest:Yes, I did.
Guest:Where was he?
Guest:At the hotel?
Guest:He was living at the hotel.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Beverly, yeah.
Guest:Beverly Wilshire.
Guest:And so what happened is, assistant came down and said, I'll take these papers for Mr. Beatty.
Guest:And I said...
Guest:I have to hand it to him directly.
Guest:They said, oh, no, that's not possible.
Guest:I said, they're only binding if they're directly handed by me to Mr. Beatty.
Guest:So somehow I pushed that through and all of a sudden I was in Warren Beatty's hotel suite where he lived.
Guest:and i'm having a conversation with warren beaty what'd you talk about talk about a lot of a lot of things well movies i was because i knew he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world sure i was aware of that oh good i mean just because i didn't i mean i i mean when you said was i a fan i wasn't a cinephile like some kids are you knew you knew hollywood culture yeah yeah yeah i knew how and how did he strike you
Guest:Really nice.
Guest:He elected him not to be intimidating.
Guest:He does that.
Guest:He's warm and somehow is able to engage and he just locks in with this tremendous conversation.
Guest:Do you remember about what?
Guest:I don't really remember about what.
Guest:It was probably like, well, what do you do?
Guest:What do you want to do?
Guest:He probably asked you that.
Guest:Well, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He'd ask questions like that.
Guest:What do you want to do?
Guest:What are you doing here?
Guest:What was it like living in the valley?
Guest:Are you still going to USC?
Guest:Stuff like that.
Guest:He's a very inquisitive guy.
Guest:He's remained a friend of mine.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And in 1972, he's the biggest he's ever been, right, about then?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:He's a huge movie star.
Marc:He was a huge movie star.
Marc:So, all right, so here you are.
Guest:So now I've done that.
Guest:So now I've had this conversation with Warren Beatty, and he says, Bob, thank you very much.
Guest:I'll see you later.
Guest:Because he ultimately becomes businesslike.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, they got to know what they're doing after a certain point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a smart guy.
Guest:So I'm done with that.
Guest:And then I feel like the next one was William Peter Blatty, who wrote the book, the novel, The Exorcist.
Guest:Oh, The Exorcist.
Guest:The Exorcist.
Guest:And I tried the same thing.
Guest:And I had to drive out to Malibu.
Marc:So you're seeing this as part of your experiment.
Guest:This is part of my experiment.
Guest:How can I turn a delivery into a full meeting with somebody that is getting something done in Hollywood?
Guest:Because you wanted to figure out what the hell you wanted to do.
Guest:I was trying to figure.
Guest:Here's what I knew that I could never get through law school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just felt there's literally no chance I'm going to get through the first year of law school.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's literally no chance if that were to happen by some fluke that I'll ever pass the bar.
Guest:I wasn't a great tester.
Guest:I just thought it's just not going to be possible.
Marc:Were you not interested in the law per se?
Guest:Yeah, not really.
Guest:You didn't know what the hell you wanted to do.
Guest:I watched television, I didn't know what to do.
Marc:You're trying to placate your dad.
Marc:Yeah, some version of that.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, and my grandma, yeah.
Guest:I really just wanted to make my grandmother proud.
Guest:So I was driven by wanting this bond that I had with my grandmother and trying to be special.
Marc:At that time, that generation respected the idea of a lawyer or a doctor.
Marc:It meant something.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I was more of a television kid, and that's what was on television, doctor, lawyers, and cops.
Guest:So those were goals for people.
Guest:Those were role models for myself as well, even though I didn't know the complete details of what it would be.
Guest:Anyway, so I just thought it wasn't possible, so I'm scrambling like crazy to invent something for myself to do in my career.
Guest:So now you're going out to see William Blatty.
Guest:What are you bringing to him?
Guest:Well, I was bringing him documents because they were the company that also made The Exorcist.
Guest:This was such a great time in movie making.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was very romantic.
Guest:Look, I did go to people's houses, which I can't stars.
Guest:Very kinky stuff was going on.
Guest:It was a very... Well, you can't just drop that bomb and not give us some details, can you?
Marc:I don't know if I don't think I can.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, let's not mention names.
Marc:What did you walk in on in a situation that you were like, oh, I'm a little too young or I may never want to see this.
Guest:I did go to a star's house, action star, where there was a pretty grand level orgy going on.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:In the daytime.
Guest:Literally in the daytime, out in Calabasas.
Guest:As much as I can tell you.
Guest:But there was like 100 people.
Marc:100 people?
Marc:And you're like 20 years old?
Guest:Standing there with some legal documents?
Guest:Yeah, it was pretty weird.
Guest:I think it was my boss had a boss that asked if I would do this thing because he knew I was like a frisky kid trying to learn a lot.
Guest:He knew what you were going to walk into?
Guest:So I was co-opting everybody in Warner Brothers to learn something, and he felt like he'd co-opt me some.
Guest:I'm going to tell you the truth.
Guest:I've never done this on television, I mean on radio ever.
Guest:He did ask if I could stop at the corner of Topanga Boulevard and the 101.
Guest:I stopped the corner and picked up a girl.
Guest:Her name was Kim.
Guest:And I took her to this place and I talked to her.
Guest:She wasn't interested in me.
Guest:I was just a goofy clerk.
Guest:And you were driving her to
Guest:I'm driving her to this place, which I didn't know what was going on.
Guest:Paper is plus the girl.
Guest:I get there.
Guest:It was a very easy rider kind of people, stars, that kind of thing.
Guest:And she soon enough had her clothes off and having sex with somebody.
Guest:And I just stood up like I was...
Guest:I was in shock.
Guest:I didn't know what was going on.
Marc:No one said, come on, kid.
Guest:Put the papers down.
Guest:I did have some... Yes, someone... The girlfriend of one of the stars said, come on, kid, put the papers down.
Guest:But I was like... I didn't know what to do.
Guest:I was frozen.
Guest:I was literally...
Guest:And when you got back to Warner's, did your boss, did the guy who sent you go, how you doing?
Guest:Did you know what you were walking into?
Guest:I have a feeling that guy later showed up there.
Guest:I think it was all, I was just an innocent kid.
Guest:Welcome to Hollywood, Brian.
Guest:Yeah, welcome to Hollywood, Brian.
Guest:So, okay.
Guest:So I don't know how long this show is, but there's a lot to say about all that.
Guest:I was a very, very naive kid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I was ambitious and really hoped to make something of myself and accomplish this dream that I had with my grandmother.
Guest:So in this pursuit, during that period, I said to my boss, I think I'm going to push the law school back one year.
Guest:So I was able to stay doing this job.
Guest:the Brian Grazer job for an entire year after that.
Guest:Delivering stuff.
Guest:Delivering stuff.
Guest:And I started to take on this extra thing of saying, hi, I'm Brian Grazer, and I would introduce myself to, in fact, Lou Wasserman.
Guest:And Lou Wasserman- MCA?
Guest:MCA, he was chairman of MCA, the biggest movie company in entertainment.
Guest:He was the most- He was the guy.
Guest:He was the most powerful guy in show business.
Guest:And he basically said, kid, I love the questions, but you have no value to me.
Guest:I don't know what you're trying to do.
Guest:And he said, hold this.
Guest:And he handed me a number two pencil and a legal tablet and said, put the pencil to the paper and it's worth more than it did as separate parts.
Guest:It has greater value than it did as separate parts.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Get out of here.
Guest:And it was just the greatest advice.
Guest:It was a little scary, but it was like start manufacturing ideas.
Guest:Do something.
Guest:Start writing ideas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you don't have a lot of money.
Guest:You can't buy scripts.
Guest:You can't do things like that.
Guest:It's clear you're not going to finish, go to law school.
Guest:He could see right through me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he made the conversation.
Guest:Was he intimidating?
Very.
Guest:Very intimidating, but he wasn't trying to hurt me.
Guest:He didn't try to degrade me, but he was intimidating in his presence.
Marc:I think also that generation, I imagine you as well, in your mind is that if someone's doing even a small job in show business, there's an element where it's sort of like, well, what are you gunning for?
Marc:What do you want to do?
Marc:Why are you in this?
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And he saw that.
Guest:He saw that.
Guest:And you didn't really know.
Guest:And I didn't really know.
Guest:I would say, you know, I would have, he didn't ask.
Guest:I mean, in other words, I didn't get to say producer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that's sort of the catch-all job.
Guest:But did you know that at that time that you were like... I just wanted to be in it because what happened is...
Guest:I got in this year and a half journey of staying there as a law clerk, but at the same time trying to meet all of the great master filmmakers, which everyone said yes.
Guest:Coppola?
Guest:Coppola.
Guest:Everyone said yes.
Guest:The only one that I said yes, but I never met was Robert Evans.
Guest:But just because I don't think he made it to his office.
Guest:Do you know him now?
Guest:I know him now, yeah.
Guest:I know him now.
Marc:It's so funny that now you know all these guys.
Marc:But when you say yes or no, were they still business meetings or were you reaching out just to go talk to them?
Guest:I was just going to talk to them.
Guest:But I just said, I'm Brian Grazer.
Guest:I work at Warner Brothers Pictures in business affairs.
Guest:This is not associated with studio business.
Guest:I do not want a job.
Guest:I just would like... And I would say something I know about them.
Guest:Can I have five minutes, please?
Guest:And what'd you get out of these things?
Guest:Oh, first of all, five minutes always became an hour.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was able to demystify how this vague operational business worked.
Guest:Of show business.
Guest:Of show business.
Guest:Because literally, show business...
Guest:is like flying a Cessna into a storm.
Guest:It's hard to understand it or see it.
Guest:And mostly what defines or differentiates business is language.
Guest:And so the language in which
Guest:Movies and television are made and those mechanics of those transactions, creative or business, is a language that's different than any other business.
Guest:And it's very, very hard to learn because you cannot go to business school.
Guest:There's no school that really teaches it.
Guest:So what was the first breakthrough you had and with who were you like, oh, that's how you make a movie?
Guest:I think it was Lou Wasserman because it forced me to manufacture ideas.
Guest:And I always had a pretty tremendous.
Guest:Ideas for movies?
Guest:Ideas for movies and television shows.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And since I wasn't in the writer's guild, what I would do is I'd write an idea like a man falling in love with a mermaid.
Guest:And I would write that as a letter to myself, registered mail letter to myself.
Guest:That old trick.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That old trick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that if someone stole it, I could go to court and say, you know, feel protected.
Guest:But you could have registered it with the guild.
Guest:You just didn't know.
Guest:I just didn't know.
Guest:And I don't know if I could have because I wasn't in the guild.
Guest:I don't think you have to be in the guild to register an idea with the guild.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I'm counting on yours.
Guest:You're probably more.
Guest:I'm sure you're more right than me.
Guest:Ask a writer.
Guest:You know writers?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I did.
Guest:I started writing movies for television ideas.
Guest:Basically, what I would do is I'm a title junkie.
Guest:And so I believe titles are really important.
Guest:So I come up with a word.
Guest:Or I would enjoin one word with another and become a title.
Guest:And then I'd build a story underneath the title.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I'd retrofit.
Guest:I'd just do it that way.
Guest:And then I was able to, I got fired from Warner Brothers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I had this, like a bin of hundreds of little envelopes.
Guest:And I sold, I would pitch them and I sold two of them as TV pilots to NBC.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who was the executive?
Guest:Very good question.
Guest:Her name was Deanne Barkley.
Guest:She was head of all West Coast programming.
Guest:And she's awesome.
Guest:I don't know if she's still alive or not.
Guest:She was awesome.
Guest:Very creative.
Guest:Very pioneer.
Guest:And these are one pagers?
Guest:These are one pagers.
Guest:And I pitched her.
Guest:What happened is I pitched her these two ideas.
Guest:I got in there and she was from New Orleans and she had this very New Orleans style office with a birdcage with a bird in it.
Guest:As I was pitching, we heard a thud.
Guest:The bird died in the room.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:And she goes, oh my God.
Guest:And she started laughing.
Guest:Instead of...
Guest:it made her laugh for some well first of all she smoked a lot of pot yeah which but she was very effective but she's a lot of pot yeah and it made her laugh and she said we're bonded for life yeah and so you and her she and her she said you and i are now bonded for life and she bought the two projects which enabled me to barter them back you oddly enough to warner brothers warner brothers television just happened to be warner brothers
Marc:So they own the idea, but they didn't have a studio.
Guest:Yeah, very good, yes.
Guest:NBC bought the idea, but of course, that would be very valuable to a studio.
Guest:One of her close friends was chairman of Warner Brothers Television, who I'd never met, named Alan Shane.
Guest:And all of a sudden, I was able to turn my little $5,000 commitment into something much more.
Guest:And so at 23, four years old, I was then...
Marc:You were making... I was making deals.
Guest:And at 25, I produced my first movie for television.
Guest:Which was?
Guest:It was called Zuma Beach.
Guest:It was Suzanne Somers, Roseanne Arquette, Michael Biehn.
Marc:Roseanne Arquette must have been 10.
Guest:Timothy Hutton.
Guest:Roseanne Arquette was just turning 18.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And Timothy Hutton was like... And Roseanne Arquette still... And I know each other and we tease each other because I made out with her all the time.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:I had a trailer.
Guest:I was a producer.
Marc:Inside three years, you're already a pro.
Marc:You're going back to the house in Calabasas.
Marc:Because that orgy was probably still going three years later.
Guest:Well, it certainly was in my mind.
Guest:That's very funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's very funny.
Marc:I'm in.
Marc:I'm a made guy.
Guest:I'm a made guy.
Guest:That's very good.
Marc:But let me ask you quickly.
Marc:Yes, go.
Marc:So this is your first sort of experience of making a deal.
Marc:So you sell the ideas to NBC.
Marc:You go to Warner Brothers, and you get them involved as a studio.
Marc:So now you're sort of seeing how the nuts and bolts of those two things work.
Marc:So then you get this movie.
Marc:You're producing a movie...
Marc:of the week for TV.
Marc:Was this your idea also, Zuma Beach?
Marc:Yeah, Zuma Beach.
Guest:It was for NBC.
Marc:So now at the helm of a producer this first time, what do you know your responsibilities are?
Marc:I mean, what are your responsibilities?
Guest:Well, ultimately what you learn is, I can synthesize it.
Guest:What you learn is the best way to be a producer is to either have the idea or incubate the idea and
Marc:Which means align yourself with the writer or whoever.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So build it into a script.
Guest:Whether you write it or you help do it with somebody else.
Guest:And then that therefore which you are is the umbrella of all, the idea is the umbrella of all
Marc:So there's paperwork involved in all of this.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And you have to be the one that's fiscally and creatively responsible.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, I'm going to give you this amount of money.
Marc:You and I are going to develop this idea, this script.
Marc:You'll get a guild minimum or whatever.
Marc:And then, you know, we'll see how that goes.
Marc:We can see if we get an actor attached or a director attached or a studio attached.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:So that, and that's how it plays out.
Marc:So you're the ringmaster in a way.
Guest:Yeah, you're the ringmaster, the contractor.
Guest:You're the architect and the contractor.
Marc:So you're the guy, if the money falls out, you're like, I know another guy, we can get money.
Marc:Maybe this studio wants to kick in a little bit.
Marc:We can produce it with these two people.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:We'll weld together some financing.
Marc:Right, and ultimately, what you're doing when you're approaching... I mean, writers are writers, actors are actors, directors are directors.
Marc:These are guys that want a gig, and depending on their reputation, they'll get paid appropriately or ask for more money, and you say no.
Marc:But really, the way to get the money is you've got to go to guys saying that, I'm going to make you money on your money.
Marc:I mean, that's the way shit gets done.
Guest:Yeah, you have to say, yeah.
Guest:I mean, look, basically...
Guest:Always having a sexy hook is a good starting point.
Guest:And a sexy hook begins with a good title and then a singular sentence that defines what you're trying to achieve.
Guest:And then an emotional destination.
Guest:So this is the sales pitch.
Guest:Well, no, that's really what you want to do.
Guest:Well, right, but I mean, that's how you get a dummy with money.
Guest:Yeah, so you basically, you have to tell a story, and like I had a story for Splash.
Guest:It was basically a guy, it was basically, I was in Los Angeles, just after I produced my first movie for television.
Guest:Zuma Beach.
Guest:Zuma Beach, and then I produced the 20-hour miniseries on the Ten Commandments.
Guest:I became a 25-year-old, like,
Guest:You're a whiz kid.
Guest:And so every girl that would never talk to me in college was wanting to have sex with me.
Guest:So that was a busy year.
Guest:That was a busy year.
Guest:Well, it happened on Zuma Beach because the most sought after girl at USC...
Guest:by crazy coincidence, was sitting at this campfire scene where we were shooting Zuma Beach.
Guest:And she wasn't hired.
Guest:She was just talking to- You knew her from school.
Guest:I knew her from school, but I didn't invite her there.
Guest:She was just there.
Guest:Coincidence.
Guest:And I was sitting in my little director's chair with my short T-shirt on, thinking I'm really a tough, cool guy.
Guest:But I didn't know how to even use power.
Guest:I had a lot of power, but I didn't know how to use it.
Guest:But literally-
Guest:the two girls that were stars of the movie, like Suzanne Somers and Rosanna, waved to me.
Guest:I waved, I see her name was Margie, this five foot ten shiksa goddess.
Guest:I mean, I waved to Margie, like very excited, and she shushes me, like puts her finger over her mouth, like quiet down.
Guest:And then they whisper to her, clearly, that guy is the producer.
Guest:She gets up and she comes over to me and she goes, Brian, I didn't know you're the producer.
Guest:She becomes more enthusiastic than I've ever seen Margie in her life.
Guest:And she says, want to go out tonight?
Guest:And I think, should I have some integrity because she shushed me or should I go out and really have a good time?
Guest:Of course, I took the latter.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I went in and had a good time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so did Margie, I hope.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but I did kind of learn quickly that that is a type of girl in Los Angeles and I don't really want, that's not a future for me.
Guest:So I thought, what is my perfect girl?
Guest:It's not Margie.
Marc:But you knew that at that moment it took a couple years.
Guest:Oh, it took a couple years.
Marc:So Margie's a metaphor.
Guest:Margie's a metaphor.
Marc:That's why you have the number one podcast.
Marc:So two years, a few years of Margie's, you're like, I'm ready to get married to a woman that has some integrity.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:They're very good.
Guest:A hundred Margie's later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A hundred Margie's later.
Guest:This is like forensic file.
Guest:I'm curious.
Guest:I'm just using your system, Brian.
Guest:Yeah, you're doing it well.
Guest:So, yeah, a few years of Margie's, and I thought, this is tiring.
Guest:It's repetitive.
Guest:How do I find the perfect girl?
Guest:What is the perfect girl?
Guest:I start defining the perfect girl.
Marc:And what was that definition?
Marc:Please help me.
Guest:Beautiful, simple, honest, not calculated.
Guest:You ask a question, you get a real answer.
Guest:Authentic.
Marc:Not using you necessarily.
Guest:Yeah, certainly.
Guest:At least initially.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, I wrote all that down and it became Splash.
Guest:But I superimposed.
Guest:I wanted to heighten it.
Guest:So I superimposed this mythological symbol.
Marc:So that was what it was about.
Guest:I get what you're getting at.
Guest:So it was about meeting the perfect woman.
Guest:Yeah, it was about meeting the perfect woman.
Marc:And it's a mermaid.
Marc:So you're saying it's impossible.
Guest:Well, I wanted to make it somewhat unattainable because that gave it more conflict.
Guest:The more conflict a movie has, the better it usually is.
Guest:But you had done Night Shift, but Splash was your idea.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I had written Splash before Night Shift.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I started Splash not long after Margie, quite honestly.
Marc:And what was your relationship with Bruce J. Friedman?
Marc:He wrote the script?
Guest:He wrote the script.
Guest:I wrote two drafts of the script that were terrible.
Guest:But Lou Wasserman says it doesn't have to be good.
Guest:It just has to exist.
Guest:So, I mean, I'm telling you.
Guest:How much time did you spend with Lou Wasserman?
Marc:More than one meeting, I'm guessing.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:One minute.
Marc:Like a minute.
Marc:It doesn't have to be good.
Marc:It just has to exist.
Guest:Just write.
Guest:He just says, like, write it, kid.
Marc:That's what you extrapolated from him.
Marc:Very good.
Guest:I have to be able to say it.
Guest:I have to be able to say it so that it has a currency.
Guest:And then if it can exist in the form of a script, then that's going to be more valuable to me because it will exist.
Guest:So the fact that it exists, I can say, okay, you love this.
Guest:This is what I did with this.
Guest:You love the idea.
Guest:The script exists.
Guest:You don't have to read it, but I want to charge you $100,000, not $5,000 because I did write a script.
Guest:So that's what happened.
Guest:Then I got Bruce J. Friedman.
Guest:He turned it into a much better script.
Guest:It's sort of lighthearted for him.
Marc:I mean, he's a pretty dark dude.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But didn't he write, I thought he wrote the story of the Heartbreak Kid, or am I wrong?
Guest:No, that's probably right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I mean, he had it in him.
Guest:So, he did a draft, and then it was still not a very good script, and nobody wanted to do a mermaid movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I was able to, so I got the movie Night Shift made before Splash, even though Splash existed before Night Shift.
Marc:And now, when you, okay, so you did Night Shift.
Marc:and that was your that was your first movie with ron howard with that's my first movie with ron howard who becomes your partner in production company yes and by the way i saw michael keaton last night who i still love and love hanging out with i saw him at uh toscana bar yeah he was right he was in here one of the greatest interviews ever did i bet with michael because it was so spontaneous and bizarre dude's the funniest guy he's great and when at that time you probably did you see him cast him as when he was doing stand-up
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He just came in and did... Look, we tried to get a lot of stars in Night Shift prior to that.
Guest:In fact, we had John Belushi, but then we got cock-blocked by an agent.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, because we were too little.
Guest:We were just little punks.
Guest:Ron was just an actor on Happy Days, and I was just a guy, like, sort of...
Guest:I did these movies for television, but now I'm trying to enter the feature world.
Guest:So in any event, Michael Keaton just came in and he did exactly that scene of shooting the basket scene.
Guest:Three points.
Guest:It's in the crowd goes wild.
Guest:He did it exactly that way.
Guest:We go, this is this guy's amazing.
Guest:We have to hire him.
Guest:He's got a truly unique energy.
Guest:He does.
Guest:And he's just on fire, that guy.
Guest:Yeah, he's just on fire.
Guest:And because we hired Henry Winkler, we had the luxury of hiring- He's been here too, by the way.
Guest:Wow, he's great.
Guest:Great sweetheart.
Guest:Sweetheart.
Guest:But we had him, and that would enable- The fact that we had Henry was enough leverage to hire an unknown.
Guest:Because with Henry, they could already get their money back.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:And that's a real thing, that thing.
Marc:That's the big difference in-
Marc:In getting a movie made, not getting a movie made is the profile of your talent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You have to have enough elements, either a star director, star actors.
Guest:You have to have star elements.
Marc:Now, like you seem like a very energetic, almost excitable.
Marc:You seem very open.
Marc:But in order to be in the business as long as you have and to have the types of hits that you've had.
Marc:you know you know night shift splashed uh parenthood i mean you've done a lot of movies that were a little off the beaten track like you know cry baby you produced as well for john waters the doors you did backdraft i mean it keeps going you know what beautiful mind i mean you know apollo 13 which i love that movie thank you thank you yeah and did you do uh what was the one with the old people and the eggs in the pool was that oh i didn't do that yeah that was ron he did cocoon oh you didn't do cocoon
Guest:Well, what happened is Ron and I did two movies with Ron, Night Shift and Splash.
Guest:He said, let's be partners.
Guest:I felt he was too famous for me.
Guest:I mean, because as kind as he was, say, Brian, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Take, you know, you get credit.
Guest:You take it was all the credit went to Ron Howard because he was one of the most famous American icons.
Guest:Mm hmm.
Guest:So I just thought, I'm going to work my ass off and be an unknown forever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that wasn't what Grandma Sonja said to be.
Guest:No, you need to be special.
Guest:Respected.
Guest:You got to be special.
Guest:So I said, Ron, I love you, but I can't do this.
Guest:So he did Cocoon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I produced a hit comedy called Spies Like Us.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, who was in that movie?
Guest:And I did Real Genius at the same time, which is about genius kids that go to Caltech with Val Kilmer.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Wow, that's right.
Guest:Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd.
Guest:Oh my gosh, that's right.
Guest:And John Landis directed.
Guest:So I did those two movies.
Guest:Ron did that one.
Guest:I felt like I'm now a guy that has enough confidence to partner with Ron and not feel like I'm going to be overshadowed.
Guest:So we then partnered.
Marc:I just can't believe the number of motherfucking movies you did, Brian.
Marc:I mean, like the Nutty Professor, Ransom, was that the Mel Gibson movie?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And Liar, Liar, that was Jim Carrey.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:The Grinch.
Marc:You did the remake of Psycho, the Van Zandt remake?
Marc:Yeah, I did.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:I just believed in him and I wanted to try it.
Marc:And John Waters, you take chances.
Marc:I definitely do, yes.
Marc:And you did CB4 with a young Chris Rock?
Marc:His first movie, I paid for it, in fact.
Marc:But like, it just, like, I don't...
Marc:Okay, because here's me, me compared to you, and even in relation to this book.
Marc:I may have a curious mind.
Marc:I mean, you know that.
Marc:By the way, I'm talking to you.
Marc:I like learning about this stuff, but I'm an extremely anxiety-ridden type.
Marc:I get overwhelmed very easily.
Marc:I don't really know how to deliberate power.
Marc:When I do collaborate, it's not necessarily reluctantly.
Marc:I'm happy to do it once a minute, but I don't know how to unify things.
Marc:In other words, I have to be me in every situation in order to... I actively have to be present to make money.
Marc:Yes, I understand, yes.
Marc:But you are able, and people like another friend of mine, like Judd Apatow.
Marc:I love him.
Marc:Yeah, who have this sensibility and this comfort and this ease around deliberating power and not losing your mind when things aren't going your way, but have a way to keep cutting through to get what you want or to at least negotiate something that you can accept.
Marc:Correct, yes.
Marc:And that's sort of a weird gift.
Marc:It's not a businessman thing necessarily.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because you're a very creative guy, obviously.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, a lot of... Thank you.
Guest:I mean, it kind of goes like this.
Guest:The heartbeat of what I think... I think I have a sense of what the heartbeat of what I do.
Guest:First of all, I would characterize that I'm in the feelings business.
Guest:That movies and television, anything that's cinematic, it's cinematic and...
Guest:The destination of that is to ignite emotion.
Guest:When it fails to ignite emotion, then it's failing to communicate in that particular art form.
Guest:And I feel like I'm a very empathetic and sensitive person.
Guest:And I'm constantly importing new people, new experts, new ideas into my brain.
Guest:And so as a consequence, I'm learning a lot so that I can be disruptive.
Guest:I'm learning a lot by meeting people in this curiosity journey so that I don't replicate what other people are doing.
Guest:So I have a chance of having an original idea.
Guest:I'm learning a lot so that it creates a curation system.
Guest:That might be better than other people.
Guest:Really just simply informed instinct.
Guest:I'm meeting Edward Teller.
Guest:I'm meeting Carl Sagan.
Guest:I'm meeting all those people and I'm learning about their subject.
Guest:I'm learning about them and I'm able to marry that with my own curiosity and then I get a spark.
Guest:So that curiosity gives life to an inspiration.
Guest:And then I can hire people and I just build it like a house.
Guest:I build all these movies, Empire, whatever the thing is.
Guest:I build these houses and I don't do them alone.
Guest:And I'm very good at working with other people and remembering what the outcome we were trying to have.
Marc:And also maintaining relationships.
Marc:Yeah, yes.
Marc:Yeah, I am good at that.
Marc:I'm very good, yeah.
Marc:The variety of the types of movies and television shows you do implies to me that, generally speaking, maybe there's maybe one person out there in the world, one, if I mention your name, who would go like, ah, fuck that guy.
Marc:But I would imagine most people are like, I love that guy.
Marc:Yeah, thank you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:What, you think there's more than one?
Marc:No, I think there's more than one.
Guest:There's more than one.
Guest:Well, I make a point.
Guest:I've never heard of anyone saying that Brian Grazer screwed me.
Guest:I think I have strong character.
Guest:And a lot of that character has been influenced by my partnership with Ron Howard because he is extraordinary character.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you picked the right guy.
Guest:I picked the right guy.
Marc:No one's going to impugn Ron Harrow's character.
Marc:No.
Marc:No one's going to shit talk Opie.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:No, they're not.
Guest:I mean, we're very, very different guys.
Guest:We have similar taste.
Guest:We have a similar work ethic.
Guest:So, like, he doesn't think...
Guest:eight-hour day is like a long, hard, grueling day, and I don't think six hours is.
Guest:In other words, we both think we both have the same work ethic, and we have similar tastes, qualitative tastes.
Marc:And what are the emotional dynamics?
Marc:Like, you know, what is a common... Like, if you're discussing a property, a script...
Marc:Where you and Ron are trying to decide whether you're going to make the movie and who's going to be in it or who's going to direct it.
Marc:What are some of the things that you bring to an idea that are different from each other?
Marc:How does a symbiotic relationship work?
Guest:Ron is more of a cinephile.
Guest:Was and is.
Guest:And I'm not.
Guest:I understand the emotionality of movies or television or literature.
Guest:So sometimes he has to sell you on something.
Guest:So he does have to sell me on something, but I have to sell him too.
Guest:So basically, to simplify it is that he has really good film wisdom.
Guest:And I have an incredible amount of curiosity.
Guest:So I'm off the blocks very fast.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:But then I need to hand the baton to somebody that has more stamina and also more kind of cinema, has more of the classic understanding of cinematic roots.
Guest:So... So you've got to find the director or the... So basically simply, like I might say to Ron, hey...
Guest:I'll have an idea that is definitely, that could, that is very likely to be an original pop culture idea.
Guest:That is, he'll go, really?
Guest:Is that what's going on in pop culture day?
Guest:Or like with you, I said, I got to get these Yeezys.
Guest:And you said, what are Yeezys?
Guest:Well, I know what all that shit is.
Guest:Why?
Guest:You're a little older than me.
Guest:Because I have kids.
Guest:And I like to also, in these curiosity conversations, I'm with young kids all the time.
Guest:I'm with young people other than my own kids.
Guest:Because I'm going to young demographics.
Guest:I'm going to skateboard shops.
Guest:I'm standing in line for a drop at Supreme, even though I know the owner.
Guest:So I like to...
Guest:bombard myself with pop culture things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or just, or subculture things.
Guest:He doesn't, Ron Howard doesn't do that.
Guest:That's interesting though.
Guest:So he might go, Brian, is this corny?
Guest:And I'll go, yeah, that's corny.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then I'll say to Ron, do you think this holds up?
Guest:And he'll go, no, I don't think it does.
Guest:As a movie.
Guest:As a movie.
Marc:Well, but it's interesting because you make a lot of grown-up movies and not a lot of people make grown-up movies.
Marc:I mean, you know, Frost and Nixon is not a kid's movie.
Marc:American Gangster, not really a kid's movie.
Marc:The Da Vinci Code, that was a huge movie.
Marc:Everyone seemed to like that, but it's still not kids.
Marc:I mean, you're one of the rare guys.
Marc:Cinderella Man, you know, well, Eight Mile, that was a crossover.
Marc:A Beautiful Mind, not a kid's movie, but a beautiful movie.
Marc:In an era where people are afraid to make adult movies, you seem to do it.
Marc:Yeah, I do do it.
Marc:And, but you, you know, you make a few kids movies here and there and I imagine you take some shots that don't really go over that well.
Marc:I mean, I can see the, the, like, like with the nutty professor, that was huge across the board.
Guest:That was huge across the board and liar, liar.
Guest:All my comedies.
Guest:I'm not, I don't say my, all the, are you supposed to say my, yeah, all the comedies that I did for 15 years, they connected to kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I did six movies with Eddie Murphy.
Guest:They did The Nutty Professors, as you said, Liar Liar with Jim, Grinch with Jim.
Guest:So I missed, I missed though for sure.
Guest:But House Sitter worked, Parenthood worked.
Guest:What are your biggest misses?
Guest:I talked to Favreau about Cowboys and Aliens.
Guest:Well, I just, Cowboys and Aliens, I just wasn't the right person to be involved in anyway because I don't like Cowboys or Aliens.
Guest:And I even said that to everybody.
Guest:I go, you guys got to be kidding.
Guest:We can't call this Cowboys and Aliens.
Guest:They go, yeah, we love it.
Guest:And when the we I'm talking about, there's a very powerful people.
Guest:There's Favreau.
Guest:There's a lot of people there.
Guest:But I, you know.
Guest:So they came to you with that.
Guest:No, it was Ron's thing that I participated in.
Marc:The weird thing is it's not a bad movie.
Marc:It's an interesting movie.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:It just didn't find its place.
Guest:Yeah, and I'm just like not the right guy.
Guest:I mean, look, but I don't see a lot of the Marvel movies, although then they're giant.
Marc:Yeah, but it's beautiful that you make like, you know, Frost Nixon's an amazing movie.
Marc:So how does something like that happen?
Guest:I like to do, if I can do it, I like to try to do something that is different than other people.
Guest:So it has a disruptive quality.
Guest:Or in the case of television, like Empire 24.
Marc:Empire, you did the first couple?
Guest:Well, I did the whole show.
Guest:Lee Daniels, Danny Strong, and I are executive producers.
Guest:And Eileen Chaikin.
Guest:She's like the showrunner.
Guest:So I'm still involved, of course.
Guest:We're all still involved.
Marc:And there's no tension?
Guest:Well...
Guest:Anyway, so I try to do things that have a chance of trend creation.
Guest:So I like taking the big swing.
Guest:Yeah, when I did Cry Baby, I thought this is going to be grease or it's going to be a flop.
Guest:It was a flop.
Marc:But it was interesting.
Marc:Those John Waters movies where he's got some money are very interesting to watch.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I like the movie.
Marc:And I think it probably has an audience.
Marc:Maybe it didn't make the bread, you might have thought.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think it's kind of interesting that you're slightly perverse enough to think that might take off like Grease, but good for you.
Guest:I thought we had Johnny Depp, sexy guy.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:I talked myself into it.
Guest:But anyway, I do like to make adult movies, as you said.
Guest:And, you know, sometimes there's little subculture movies.
Guest:Like, Eight Mile was a subculture movie that crossed over.
Guest:Blue Crush was a girl empowerment movie that crossed over about surf girls and stuff like that.
Guest:I just did one called Low Riders for Universal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:About the culture of lowriders?
Guest:About the culture of lowriders.
Guest:Going back how far or new?
Guest:It's brand new.
Guest:But I mean like the current lowrider culture.
Guest:Yeah, because when I was in high school, I went to Chatsworth High School.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And there were a bunch of lowriders and it's a world.
Guest:So the lowrider Hispanic culture exists.
Guest:throughout all of America.
Guest:I grew up in New Mexico.
Guest:Espanola is like the capital.
Guest:There's hundreds of these cultures.
Guest:And they're kind of like, if you think of Saturday Night Fever, where he's in that little Italian house and all that.
Guest:So it's like using a closed world, like Travolta and Saturday Night Fever.
Guest:To do Romeo and Juliet?
Guest:A version of that, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It celebrates, it actually celebrates the Hispanic culture.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I've kind of pledged to myself after doing 8 Mile that the Hispanic culture is a culture that is kind of denied and I want to try to do something about it.
Marc:So let's go through some things.
Marc:Okay, yes.
Marc:I don't know why I'm hung up on Apollo 13, but I watch that movie every time it's on.
Marc:Now, something like that, how does that... Because Tom Hanks was heavily involved in that, right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And who wrote that script?
Marc:Bill Broyles.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And how does it... How did that come about?
Guest:How has a project like that come about?
Guest:It comes about like this.
Guest:I'll tell you, it was the intersection of...
Guest:Hollywood and a 12 page treatment and me and my curiosity conversations.
Guest:So what happened is I met a woman 15 years before Apollo 13 named Veronica Denegre that was tortured in Chile, but survived under the Pino Jake regime.
Guest:And she survived with so much hope and power and still lives in Washington, D.C.
Guest:now.
Guest:So I became obsessed with her.
Guest:I became obsessed with how torture works as an operational thing.
Guest:And more importantly, I became obsessed with how people survive situations like that.
Guest:And just the human resources that we can rally to survive things that are unimaginable.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:So now it's 15, 17 years later, there's a 12-page treatment written by Jim Lovell on Apollo 13.
Guest:And I know nothing about- The guy who was on the- That's Tom Hanks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he writes a 12-page, the astronaut, Jim Lovell, writes a 12-page treatment on Apollo 13.
Guest:And that involves like aviation and aerodynamics and all that, which I know nothing about.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:But the one thing I knew a lot about because of my earlier conversations about survival, I knew a lot about survival and what people can do far beyond what they could imagine.
Guest:And I thought, this is what this is about to me.
Guest:So I...
Guest:chased after it and i got ron excited and we bid against other studios and like literally my only bridge or access point was the survival dimension which i thought was so humanistic and important putting a square peg in a round hole and so that's what got literally in the process of trying to save the ship you know the two amazing scenes where the engineers and
Marc:Right.
Marc:Mission control.
Marc:Mission control, trying to figure out how to keep them alive.
Guest:How to keep them alive.
Marc:To reconfigure things.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How they can have oxygen, how they can have electricity, all those things.
Marc:And that they were all these sort of like, they had the determination and the focus of test pilots.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Or at least pilots, you know, of a craft.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So that's how it came about.
Guest:That was what it was about.
Guest:And then I was able to champion this little 12 pages into something that we could own and then partner with Tom Hanks and the three of us.
Guest:And look, Tom is a superstar in every way.
Guest:He knew a lot about aerodynamics.
Guest:And Ron learned it.
Guest:We created an astronaut training school on the lot, which real astronauts came so we could learn it all.
Guest:And then, of course, we co-opted NASA so that we could shoot real zero gravity because no movie had ever shot and shot zero gravity.
Guest:It's always been wires and then digitally removing them.
Guest:So we thought this was the perfect blend of science and cinema.
Marc:So you reached out to NASA and said, look, we're going to tell this story.
Marc:We're going to tell it real.
Marc:We need you.
Marc:We need you.
Guest:And they said no originally.
Guest:And the only ones that said yes was the Russians who said, you can use our jet.
Guest:But it seemed like that had gone down a few times.
Marc:So did you have to go back to NASA and go- We had to go back, yes.
Guest:You know, Russians are in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if we used that as a negotiating tool, but we probably did.
Guest:We probably did.
Guest:But we ended up sort of softening them, and then they became great allies of ours.
Guest:Yeah, okay, yeah.
Guest:You don't want that to happen, you guys.
Guest:It's still a space race.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Oh, that's hilarious.
Guest:So that's how that happened.
Guest:So that's how that happened.
Marc:But again, it was the human component for you.
Guest:It was the human component for me.
Guest:Ron Howard did a quite extraordinary job because...
Guest:Everybody in the world knew these guys survived.
Guest:So how is he going to create tension in a story where the entire planet knew those three astronauts went into space and they didn't die.
Guest:They're alive.
Guest:But he found a way to create tension by creating the architecture of the movie was these three worlds.
Guest:One was the world of being in outer space in that capsule.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:The other world was mission control, which you just referenced.
Guest:And the other world was the personal world of the family, the kids, cutting back and forth, cutting back and forth to those three worlds in an integrated fashion.
Guest:Plus all the launch stuff that was really beautiful and cinematic became what the movie was and created all the tension that any movie ever needed.
Marc:And they acted the hell out of that movie.
Guest:Those guys.
Guest:Yeah, they did.
Guest:Those guys were great.
Guest:And then, by the way, can you imagine how boring it was to do that?
Guest:They're sitting in a little capsule and they're... By the way, in order to... Hours.
Guest:And in order to shoot that stuff floating around zero gravity, there was a jet called the KC-135 jet who would only do like 100 parabolas.
Guest:So if you got sick on the second one, you got 97 more to go.
Guest:So that was it.
Guest:So basically,
Guest:Each parabolas would be 27 seconds of weightlessness, and you have to lose the beginning and the end, so you could only capture about 16 seconds, the meat of it.
Guest:So it's kind of like shooting underwater like Ron and I did in Splash, when people are swimming from tank to tank, because you have to get away from the tank.
Guest:To really feel like you see Daryl Hannah just in the ocean.
Guest:In the case of Tom Hanks floating around, you have to snip the first five, six, seven seconds.
Guest:Of him going up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you capture the middle.
Guest:And so it's a very time-consuming, arduous task.
Marc:They work hard, those guys.
Marc:They worked hard.
Marc:They worked hard for that money.
Marc:And that was a great success.
Marc:Was that one of your biggest?
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:I mean, we all thought, Tom Hanks, Ron and I thought, well, God, we think we're doing something good.
Guest:Maybe it'll make $40 million worldwide so we're not embarrassed.
Guest:And it made like $400 million worldwide.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And then it got nine Oscar nominations.
Guest:How many Oscars have you won?
Guest:I've won one personal one for A Beautiful Mind, but I've been personally nominated, well, I've been nominated personally five times, once as a writer for other movies, and then 43 times, and Emmys, I think, 160 times.
Marc:I love the gangster movie, American Gangster.
Guest:Oh, me too.
Guest:That was one of my favorite movies ever.
Marc:It's a great movie.
Guest:And that got turned down so many times.
Guest:And actually, it was shut down.
Guest:They fired the studio, fired the director two months before, six weeks before we started shooting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they said, don't ever say either American or gangster because there was a big loss.
Guest:But then I...
Guest:uh i couldn't live with that because i love this movie so much because it's about respect it's a gangster movie which i love but it's about respect and movie all of my most successful movies or television or all access around self-worth and of course respect and survival and survival yeah right emotional survival yeah
Marc:Well, that's, I mean, I see.
Guest:Yeah, I make things, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's emotional or real survival.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I see the key to it.
Marc:Like when you describe, because I imagine with the beautiful mind, you did the same thing as you apply a certain sensitivity.
Marc:100%, yes.
Marc:A gifted guy, but also a flawed guy, I think history showed in some ways.
Marc:But that wasn't the story you were telling.
Marc:But it was the emotional survival.
Marc:Perseverance of a very awkward, brilliant person.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And was stricken with schizophrenia.
Guest:So he's trying to survive schizophrenia at the same time he's winning a Nobel Prize.
Guest:That's pretty profound.
Guest:But literally, he was ready to stab people.
Guest:When you go off your meds for a second, yeah, it's a problem.
Marc:How do you deal with someone?
Marc:Like when you work with directors, notoriously producers and directors, that can get dicey.
Marc:Yes, definitely.
Marc:With the budgets.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And tell me a story of an almost irreconcilable situation.
Marc:Where you were like, this guy's killing me.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Well, the way I deal with people, I mean, I have what looks to be like ADD or I'm very, I don't know why I said that.
Guest:The point is, is you have to be extremely patient and words have meaning.
Guest:So you try not to say, you try not to ever lose control.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You try not to ever be impetuous.
Guest:So you have to work a lot.
Guest:You have to be vigilant around your personality.
Guest:So the negotiation is all in the conversation and it's about depriving, it's giving love and depriving love and doing it gently.
Guest:And that's how you work with actors, stars, and that's how you work with star directors.
Guest:What do you mean depriving?
Depriving.
Guest:Well, for example, if there's a director that says, we're now in it and I'm doing it, but it's now $125 million.
Guest:And I said, but our deal was $100 million.
Guest:And we told them $100.
Guest:And they go crazy and they're screaming.
Guest:You have to just, I would just basically, I would not talk to them for a day.
Guest:I wouldn't yell.
Guest:I would just.
Guest:You just described like a child.
Guest:Yeah, that's how you do it.
Guest:Exactly, it's true.
Guest:You don't ever want to throw the final card.
Guest:If you're going to do it, you're going to fire someone, which I've done.
Guest:I've fired somebody once.
Guest:But that cost a lot of money.
Guest:Yeah, it would have cost more money had I not fired them.
Guest:Who was that?
Guest:I don't want to say.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I did have one movie.
Guest:I was thinking about this other day.
Guest:There was a movie that I produced.
Guest:I co-wrote it.
Guest:Harold Ramis and I wrote it.
Guest:It was a flop.
Guest:It was with John Candy and Meg Ryan.
Guest:And the director, who was the wrong director, I said, you know, you can't have the actor.
Guest:You can't have the protagonist say to the girl, you're a bitch.
Guest:We're going to hate him for that.
Guest:He says, what are you saying to me?
Guest:I said, I think we shouldn't say that.
Guest:I think they should say different things.
Guest:And John Candy's shaking his head, yes, Brian, you're right.
Guest:The guy goes, you know what?
Guest:You direct it.
Guest:And I had to direct the day.
Guest:He left.
Guest:You directed the day?
Guest:I had to do the day and hope that he would come back because I thought, I don't want to direct this movie.
Guest:I don't want to direct it and go to the editing room now for 20 weeks or something.
Guest:That's not my personality.
Guest:It's not your job, really.
Guest:It's not my skill set.
Guest:But he did get- Could you have?
Guest:But he did.
Guest:I would have.
Guest:I finished it.
Guest:Yeah, I would have.
Guest:I would have.
Guest:He said, I'm not coming back.
Guest:Because when you have smart actors, they help you a lot.
Guest:And Meg Ryan and John Candy were very, very smart actors.
Guest:And have you directed movies?
Guest:No.
Guest:No desire.
Guest:I don't want to.
Guest:No desire.
Guest:No desire.
Guest:Because you can kind of, I can get as much, I can do as much creatively as I'd like to do by exerting my creative vision early on.
Guest:Because I do get respected by filmmakers that I'm working with, or in this case of television.
Guest:In television, the executive producer is kind of like the director.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Guest:In movies, of course, it's not.
Marc:But in stuff like you've done, like the television you've done, some of it's been pretty astounding.
Marc:Felicity was huge.
Marc:Sports Night should have been more, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I remember that.
Guest:That was Aaron Sorkin, and the first one, of course, was J.J.
Guest:Abrams' first show.
Marc:Yeah, and 24, obviously.
Marc:But Friday Night Lights, the vision of that.
Marc:Was that Pete Berg?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I knew Pete Berg.
Marc:I briefly lived with Pete Berg years ago in Culver City.
Marc:He's a great guy, wild guy.
Marc:He's a wild guy, yeah, and I haven't seen him in years.
Marc:And I've tried to get him on, but I think he's nervous because I knew him when we were sharing an apartment with Steve Brill in Culver City, and he was trying to make a Prince movie.
Marc:Yeah, you should do with him.
Marc:He's a first class, very first class guy.
Marc:But he's also like, it's interesting for me to, I haven't talked to him in decades.
Marc:But he has a vision, doesn't he, as a director?
Guest:He has a vision.
Guest:He's very creative and he can act out things because he's an actor first.
Guest:I mean, I think he's a person that does well with collaboration.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:but I but I that's a Hal Ashby did really well with collaboration he did his worst movies without collaboration without a strong producer and he did his best movies with you know a strong producer or a visionary like Warren Beatty so Pete I think is one of those guys I think he's
Guest:Got an abundance of ideas and an immeasurable amount of energy and creative energy.
Guest:But I think he's always good where he's got someone that's sort of partnering with him on structure.
Marc:Reeling him in.
Marc:Reeling him in a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you did Arrested Development, which people love.
Marc:My world of comedy people.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Marc:Highly respected.
Marc:Now, did you get that out of the gate or was that something Ron had to sell you on?
Marc:I didn't get it out of the gate.
Guest:I figured.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:You figured.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a little too complex for me.
Guest:It was a little subtle and complex.
Guest:Not enough heart.
Guest:It didn't.
Guest:It was antithetical in a way.
Guest:It's ironic.
Guest:You're very intuitive.
Guest:It's right.
Guest:It didn't have heart.
Guest:It was really funny and kids love it.
Marc:It's one of the reasons I don't like it.
Marc:It's not that I don't like it.
Marc:I respect it, but I can't lock in.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I respect it too, but I can't lock in either.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We're sensitive guys.
Guest:We're sensitive guys.
Marc:Our grandmothers wanted the best for us.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:They were touchy-feely grandmothers, right?
Guest:Yeah, we meant the world to them.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So I respected it, but I didn't get it, really.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I root for it now.
Guest:We're going to do another round of it.
Guest:I mean, kids, people love the show, but you're right.
Guest:Yeah, it's definitely got a following.
Guest:Less art than more of my...
Marc:Yeah, I love, you know, Dave Cross is another friend of mine.
Marc:He was just in here.
Guest:Yeah, he's a cool guy for sure.
Marc:He's a very funny guy.
Marc:I mean, it's very funny.
Marc:He actually has heart.
Marc:No, he does.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's a cranky heart, but he does.
Marc:He definitely has it.
Marc:Well, Bateman, too, is a very heartful guy.
Marc:Yes, yeah.
Marc:So, you know, out of like in this amazing career where, you know, you you are the the guy at the top of everything.
Marc:I mean, you know, I know the book Curious Mind is about you having conversations with people.
Marc:But but in terms of all these guys you got to work with, what was for you, you know, like like an honor where you were like, oh, my God.
Marc:I mean, because like, you know, as a producer, you know, they're all coming to you.
Marc:But there's gotta be some party, like you say, you liked Gus Van Zandt because you respect his vision.
Marc:That was a ballsy thing to do, to do psycho shot for shot.
Guest:Shot for shot.
Marc:Didn't do that well, right?
Marc:No, it didn't.
Marc:It didn't.
Guest:Because it was a weird experiment.
Guest:It was a weird experiment, but I just thought, wow, I thought he was such a brilliant artist.
Guest:And he's sort of Andy Warhol-like.
Guest:And by the way, I knew Andy Warhol.
Guest:And I just felt like it's not gonna be too expensive.
Guest:I, we should try it.
Guest:Like, no one has ever done it.
Guest:Let's just try doing this.
Guest:And I convinced the studio to do it, and they did it.
Guest:And it exists.
Guest:And it exists, yeah.
Marc:But like, it's interesting, in the book, you know, you have these weird moments where, you know, Condoleezza Rice talks you about a shooting in Mexico because she didn't want you to die.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And then, well, the Jonas Salk thing, I mean, that must have been some sort of weird childhood fantasy.
Marc:That was.
Marc:For you to meet the guy, because he got so much press for curing polio.
Marc:He's a big guy, Jonas Salk.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:So he was probably, you know, in the world, because I didn't know where...
Guest:So with people I've met versus movie people, I would say Jonas Salk was top of the list because I had this unique, it took about two and a half, two years to meet with him.
Guest:I did.
Guest:He was old at that time?
Guest:I mean, how old were you?
Guest:I was right after Splash.
Guest:I was probably like 38 or something.
Guest:So he must have been pretty old already, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but he was really vital.
Guest:And basically, we had one meeting, just the two of us.
Guest:And then he said, let's have a meeting where you bring three people and I bring three people.
Guest:And we'll do it at your house with no agenda.
Guest:And it was fantastic.
Guest:I brought Sidney Pollack, George Lucas, who brought Linda Ronstadt.
Guest:And he brought a woman that figured out the left and the right brain hemispheres and how they work operationally.
Guest:And someone that was expert on robotics, a Nobel Prize winner.
Guest:And I would have these meetings like that with him.
Guest:Like a salon.
Guest:Yeah, salon.
Guest:But I mean, so I say Jonas Salk.
Guest:I met some just the greatest people.
Guest:Princess Di, I mean, that was a tear jerking.
Guest:First, it was really fun and funny.
Guest:I talked her into sharing a bowl of ice cream with me at an event.
Guest:If you weren't in the position you were in, you'd be this annoying guy.
Guest:I would, exactly.
Guest:So I sort of seduced her into helping me get a bowl of ice cream at this dinner because it didn't provide it.
Guest:And when I got it, I took a scoop.
Guest:I said, you try a scoop.
Guest:And I handed her a spoon.
Guest:And we went back and forth.
Guest:And I thought, I'm like having a date right now.
Guest:I'm going to be having sex with Princess Di any moment.
Marc:It was a big day for you.
Guest:So it was a big day.
Guest:So I had a lot of things.
Guest:So I've met a lot of very interesting.
Guest:Michael Jackson was amazing.
Guest:I mean, he was like Mozart.
Guest:He was brilliant.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that's all in the book.
Marc:And then there's also like it was interesting because, you know, meeting with Condoleezza Rice, you know, negotiating with NASA.
Marc:And there's sort of this suggestion or the reality that you met with several CIA directors that, you know, you will not you can't divulge what was talked about.
Marc:But is there a relationship with with the high level of motion pictures and the U.S.
Marc:government in terms of of anything?
Guest:No, I don't know about that.
Guest:I mean, look, I've met with William Casey and William Colby also.
Guest:And those were CIA directors.
Guest:And I also it informed a point of view that enabled me to champion 24 into life because it's just like there's so much red tape.
Guest:Basically, why I wanted to meet with CIA directors is they have access to all the information in the world and all the secrets.
Guest:And I just wanted to understand because I'm so fascinated with human capacity.
Guest:Like if you have access to all of that, are you able to assimilate that information?
Guest:How do you really use it?
Guest:Do you use it singularly or do you have many lieutenants under you that are using that information?
Guest:How much are you able to really, how much is one man or one woman able to comprehend just data itself?
Guest:Less than we think.
Guest:And probably.
Guest:And, but using it in all the time in world challenging life or death situations.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And that's what heightens my interest in that.
Guest:And I said that sort of bled over into what 24 was.
Marc:So getting back to the other question, because what I'm sensing and what I appreciate about you is that you know exactly your place.
Marc:And you obviously have had tremendous success with it, so there's a confidence to it, and you know you can get things done.
Marc:But you also know your limitations, which is important as a person.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So that means you know that you can't do what a director does.
Marc:You can't do what an actor does, but you know what they do and who the best is and what's right for a particular project.
Marc:And I imagine you know that on the money end, too.
Marc:So, you know, in all this work you've done, I imagine it's easy to take people for granted on some level that like, well, of course he's going to do that.
Marc:That's what he does.
Marc:that director or that actor or whatever.
Marc:Now, have there been moments where you were like, holy shit, this guy is a genius beyond what I even imagined?
Guest:Wow, great question.
Marc:Mostly no.
LAUGHTER
Marc:A lifetime of curiosity, nah.
Guest:Well, as far, no, you're saying- They meet your expectations.
Guest:Yeah, they meet expectations.
Guest:I can rely upon my analysis of them.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And there's some consistency.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I have really fun times and profound experiences with some master directors.
Guest:I was surprised with Ridley Scott.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's so brilliant.
Guest:Un-American Gangster?
Guest:Un-American Gangster because he's a world creator.
Guest:He creates worlds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wanted to go there every day on this movie so I could see how he does that.
Guest:And while he's... By the way, when he does second unit, all that action stuff, he's actually writing that action stuff and he, like an architect, draws upside down.
Guest:And it's just a profound...
Guest:I was very, I mean, he's to this day, like, I love him.
Guest:He's at my house making martinis together.
Guest:And he just made The Martian, another giant success.
Guest:So I was surprised with him.
Guest:Well, that's good.
Guest:I've worked with Clint Eastwood twice, loved working with him.
Guest:Changeling was sort of a haunting movie.
Guest:It was a really haunting movie.
Guest:And Angelina Jolie did an amazing job.
Guest:And she was really fun to work with and remains a friend, actually.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Well, it seems like you've got a lot of friends still.
Marc:I do.
Marc:I still have a lot of friends.
Marc:And you seem like you're in good shape.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:And I appreciate you talking to me.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Did I tell you?
Marc:Did I tell you?
Marc:Great talk.
Marc:That was Brian Grazer.
Marc:Again, his book is A Curious Mind, The Secret to a Bigger Life.
Marc:And I think he put the book out because he wants to share.
Marc:God knows he doesn't need the bread.
Marc:But it was a great talk.
Marc:I enjoyed it.
Marc:By the way, the music remix on the show was done by DJ Copley.
Marc:Check him out at WebPuppy45 on Twitter.
Marc:Our theme music is by John Montagna.
Marc:You can go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Look at the merch.
Marc:Get those poster orders in.
Marc:You can do it today.
Marc:It's getting tight.
Marc:And my poster packer guy, Frankie, you know, he's got to go away for Christmas too.
Marc:So if you want to order merch or Brian Jones mugs or whatever you're going to order, do it.
Marc:What else, man?
Marc:What else?
Marc:Holidays are upon us.
Marc:Yeah, I could play some guitar.
Marc:For those of you who are like, wait, wait, is Mark going to play guitar?
Marc:Because we've gotten used to that.
Guest:Thank you.
.
.
.
Marc:Boomer lives!