Brian Grazer: Academy Award Winner Brian Grazer on Success, Creativity, and Greatness | E186

0:00Welcome to In Search of Excellence. You're going to be watching a spectacular show.

0:06Brian Grazer:Stay tuned. What's the lesson to everybody out there who you rejected hundreds of times and you kept going? It took seven years to make that movie. The lesson is the word no is only a temporary point of view. The other lesson is what people are hearing is probably not what you care about the most. Relationships are secondary. They should always be secondary. The primary thing is you have to own an idea, a script, IP. You need to have intellectual property. It can be a book. It can be an outline. It can be anything, an original idea that is represented in word form that you can evangelize and has value.

1:03Brian Grazer:Welcome to In Search of Excellence. My guest today is Brian Grazer. Brian is an Academy Award-winning producer who has produced 130 feature films, including 8 Mile, The Da Vinci Code, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Apollo 13, and A Beautiful Mind, for which he won the Oscar for Best Picture. Brian has also produced 45 TV shows, including Empire 24, Arrested Development, Friday Night Lights, and Parenthood. His productions have been nominated for 47 Oscars. He has nine wins, 296 Emmy nominations with 63 wins, 71 Golden Globe nominations with 11 wins, and he's also won two Grammys. Collectively, his films and TV series have grossed over$15 billion worldwide.

1:46Brian Grazer:Brian is also the author of the awesome number one New York Times bestselling book, A Curious Mind. Brian, thanks for being here. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Wow, thanks for the introduction. We talk about mentorship and how important mentors are in our lives. Yes, yes. And you wrote a letter to Lou Wasserman. Yeah. Who at the time was basically the king of Hollywood. Probably the most important person in the city. Unequivocally. For decades. Decades. And with government. And with government. Right. I mean, when President Clinton would come to town, they'd play golf at Hillcrest with Casey.

2:22Brian Grazer:And, you know, he was just, he knew everybody. I was his closest friend. Yeah. And so tell us about that meeting, which was life-changing for you, and about the notepad and then the legal tablet. Okay, of course. Okay. So basically, with these letters I'd send out to assistants to meet their bosses, every single person said yes. Every one. Anytime I, I mean, all these five-minute meetings that I asked for, they all said yes. Then it came to Lou Wasserman, who was literally, as you said, the king of the industry, was the patriarch of all of media business. And he eventually said yes, because I really was very persistent.

3:04And I met his assistant out in the parking lot and said, come on, I was just meeting. Anyway, I meet him. So I go up to the tower at Universal. The top floor where the penthouse is, where Lou Wasserman's office would be, is in the tower on the 15th floor. So I get off the elevator to the 15th floor. Of course, the first time in my life was the 15th floor. And I'm standing there and I'm waiting to meet with Mr. Wasserman. People are staring at me because they know I'm like, you know, kind of a punk. And he comes out. He's a tall man. Comes out and I walk towards him, towards him, towards his office to go in.

3:42And he threw his hands up in the air like, don't go any further. He basically said, you're not going in. And I said, okay. And I stood there kind of frozen. And now all the assistants are looking at me like, what's going on? And I'm very hypersensitive to what is happening around me as well. And he comes out and he has a legal tablet and a pen, actually a pencil, 2H pencil. He said, put these items in your hand. And he said, I do. I put the pencil and the pad in my hand. And he says, put the pencil to the paper and it will have greater value than it did as separate parts. Now get out of here. And I head to the elevator.

4:28You know, I'm pretty embarrassed that I've thrown out, but I do have the pencil and the paper, the pad. And in the elevator, I thought, oh, he was actually saying something to me. He was actually saying, don't go see people like me unless you have something of value. Come to me when you got something of value. And so I started, I became a writer because I couldn't buy books. I didn't have the money to buy a book or treatments or scripts or anything like that. So I started writing them myself. I started manufacturing ideas out of my own imagination and writing at least a page on them. And I do at the time, because I wasn't in the Writers Guild, I do a registered mail to myself, which means it was kind of protected by the postal seal, okay, if you don't open it.

5:13So I had a whole chest full of these that I wrote. And then I sold two of them to the most powerful woman in show business. Her name was Deanne Barkley. And Deanne Barkley ran all of NBC. And I had a meeting with this Deanne Barkley in her New Orleans-style office. It was very, very cool. It was in the time where people didn't really have custom offices other than John Calley. And her office was a white wooden plank floor, I remember really well. And she lived on Tigertail, your street. And I was pitching these two projects to her. Behind her was also a New Orleans-style birdcage, a white wicker birdcage with a bird in it.

5:59And the bird's chirping away on this little perch on a little stick, a little hanging on them. and I pitch it and she's laughing. She loves these projects so much. She loves them. She goes, I'll do them. They're great. Like that. She had a face that would light up. Could get very animated. She's all lit up and there's a thump behind her and the thump was the bird. It died. It just like had a heart attack or something and just died. And I said, I think your bird might have died. And she turned around. She was like that. And I thought, oh shit, she's gonna start crying. and if she cries, she'll forget that she bought my projects.

6:39So I'm staring at her while she's, and all of a sudden she turned it into laughter. She started laughing hysterically. She did smoke pot all day long too. I mean, she was a very smart person, but she didn't smoke pot. I didn't know that. And she starts laughing and she said, this is a good omen. And I said, great. And she said, I'm going to be your mentor. I'm buying the projects. I'm your mentor. I'm going to help you place the projects at one of the major studios. And she picked someone named Alan Shane, who was president of Warner Brothers Television. And I made a deal at Warner Brothers Television for my two projects.

7:17And so then I had a little office and my two projects and some money. And it was a very, it was a break in my career. Huge.

7:24Brian Grazer:I hope you're enjoying this video so far. But before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach the next level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google Lift and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than$15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals.

7:56Brian Grazer:I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs who are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions. And if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. You're one of the most successful producers of all time. I think people want to know, what does a producer actually do? Number one.

8:24Brian Grazer:And number two, how important relationships are to being a successful producer? Okay. Relationships are secondary. They should always be secondary. The primary thing is you have to own something, as Lou Wasserman said. You have to own an idea, a script, IP. You need to have intellectual property. It can be a book. It can be an outline. It can be anything, an original idea, an idea that is represented in word form that you can evangelize and has value through your ability to evangelize. Now, if it's so well written and people read it and they go, it's so well written, you don't need to evangelize it.

9:04It generates its own momentum without evangelizing, then that can happen too. But you have to have that thing. You have to. You can't rely upon trying to get, having a friend, a relationship, like, you know, kind of to lock you in for a free ride. It's happened, but it doesn't have any integrity. You want to believe in what you're doing. So therefore, if you believe what you're doing, you can evangelize it. And to the best extent, my projects that worked were all built out of my soul, out of my experiences, out of my trauma or my success or my ability to experience someone else's success or a moment in someone else's life that becomes volcanic in some way.

10:03Brian Grazer:I hope you're enjoying this video so far. But before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google, Lyft, and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than$15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage of my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals.

10:35Brian Grazer:I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs who are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions. And if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video.

10:59Brian Grazer:Another big break is you now have a deal at Paramount. You're making$100 ,000 a year, by the way, which is$500 ,000 a year for those people who don't know. And then you see Ron Howard walking on a cast walkway. Yeah. What happened next? Then I continue the practice of meeting new people. I look out and I see Ron Howard out of my window. And I yell, Ron, Ron. And he got scared because he's shy. And he ran around a corner and eluded me. And then I called his assistant. I'm the guy that yelled out the window. I'm a real producer. Then Ron Howard said he'd meet with me. And he came to my office. and he was just the actor in Happy Days and he had this aura of goodness about him, just something great and I thought, I am going to believe in this guy.

11:47So without a lot of evidence, I believed in this guy would be an Oscar winning director someday and he became it.

11:54Brian Grazer:Another big break was Night Shift. Yes. So you wrote this movie Night Shift. It was a comedy. It did well. And then your next big hit came from an idea you had when you were 25 years old, driving down PCH. Yeah. And there was a woman, a very interesting woman that was very pretty, the prettiest woman at USC named Maggie Bailey, who, and you were doing something called Zuma Beach at the time. And somehow seven years later, splash happens. Right. Which was huge. Which was huge. Which was turned down 500 times. Yeah. And everyone thought you were absolutely nuts to be shopping that movie. They would avoid me.

12:35Brian Grazer:They would go, here comes that guy with the mermaid idea. And so no one wanted to make it, but what's the lesson to everybody out there who you're rejected hundreds of times? Yeah. And you kept going. It took seven years to make that movie. The lesson is no, the word no is only a temporary point of view. The other lesson is what you're saying, what people are hearing is probably not what you care about the most. So people were hearing A Mermaid, but I was really making a love story about a person, played by Tom Hanks, that had everything really but love. So it's a person that has this one disability, and the disability is his inability to have love.

13:27That's all I wanted to do. And that's what the nutty professor was. I mean, in a weird way. That's why he was funny. The nutty professor with Eddie Murphy, when he's fat, I made sure that he was a winner. He was really good at what he does. He was charming. He was funny. He made Jada Pinkett laugh. Everything was good except he was obese. And so all he had to do was conquer that one thing that was, you know, destroying his opportunities. Yeah. So people are not hearing what you are believing. And so you have to be able to communicate that. I'm doing my answers quickly now.

14:01Brian Grazer:So, yeah. I'm from Detroit. Yeah. When I was younger, we had fake IDs. You know, today you have fake IDs and kids go to, they put in, you know, there's 50 people. They get them from China. The barcodes work everywhere except Las Vegas. Yeah. They get in the clubs. So we were uncool kids. We drive to Detroit. We go to eight miles. to get liquor. 8 Mile is one of my famous, most favorite movies of all time. I mean, I'm from Detroit, and when I go there, I drive by, you know, big sign, and I always put it on my Instagram account. So talk to us briefly, because we're getting toward the end of the show, about Old Dirty Bastard and, you know, how that movie came about.

14:38I knew nothing about hip-hop, but I still have the discipline of meeting one new person every week. I overhear this crazy motherfucker named Old Dirty Bastard. This is like 25 years ago. He's talking to Howard Stern on the radio. I'm in a car. I listen, and I think he's insane, but he's saying something. I thought, I'm going to meet that guy. I meet him the next day in front of his studio, which he wouldn't let me into. I had to stay on the sidewalk because everything was a la carte. If I wanted to go in the studio, that was something. It was always some kind of trade. I realize when I'm talking to this guy, old dirty bastard, that he is the voice of the street.

15:16He is the voice that all kids are listening to right now. Adults didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't know what he was talking about. But 18-year-olds to 18 to 25 knew it. They knew. They knew what he was talking about. And I thought, I have to learn what this language means. So there's Old Dirty Bastard and the Wu-Tang. Then I met this guy, Slick Rick, with a patch on his eye. Then I met Chuck D from Public Enemy. I met them all. I met a lot. And I thought, I'm going to make a movie that speaks to the culture of hip-hop. Two weeks later, I have one of those curiosity things with Frank Rich, the editor of the New York Times.

15:53What are you doing, Brian? I said, I just met this guy named Old Dirty Bastard, and I met a few others. I think this movement is the real thing. It's going to be the culture. He said, I'm sorry, Brian. It's an inferior subculture that will fade and go away. So I left him, and I thought, he's wrong, and I'm going to prove him wrong. I met Eminem and we turned this into a movie that gave it much more dignity. And the truth is, is hip hop is still here today.

16:17Brian Grazer:You've made people's careers. Tom Hanks, essentially Meg Ryan. Yeah. Eminem. Are these people still appreciative of what you've done for them? I mean, can you call Marshall Mather and said, hey, Marshall, I was on this fucking great podcast. You should do a show. Would he do it? I don't know. Would he do it? No, he wouldn't. He's my boy from Detroit. I know, but he's a... I want Marshall on my show. No, he's kind of a to-his-self guy. I mean, he'd be always in the trailer. I mean, he's worked really hard. I will say this. He worked as hard as any professional I've ever worked with in my life. And he was trying, he was being a good dad, great dad, this guy.

17:01On time all the time. He wrote all the songs. He's a master. He act with honesty. his music was in so time he's so talented he won an oscar the first hip-hop artist to win an oscar yeah i mean i've i don't get to talk to him but much because he doesn't talk to a lot of people but um i have tremendous admiration for this guy i have to tell people how we met i mean how we met you know but i have been i have helped a lot of artists i gave johnny depp his first job i helped marky mark become mark walbert and they do remember they're really nice to me yeah mark's a great guy yeah they're all decades later like very kind and tom hanks he shouldn't he doesn't need to owe me anything because he's just um he has earned every bit of it i'm lucky enough to have made six movies with him honestly yeah i mean we met again in aspen we were zabi

17:53Brian Grazer:kimo zabi store there's this cool place on top it's kind of members only but if you're a good customer you're cool whatever yeah so i walk up there and you get margs up there and i always you know stop there at the end of the day you get two marks then you go back to the hotel and then you go dinner and there's brian grazer sitting there i'm like all right well i've wanted brian on my show for a while i've admired you for a long time i went right right up to you you know today is february 5th oh boy here we go okay yeah and so you wrote letters and i heard you were doing these curiosity conversations a long time ago i'm curious too so i wrote you this letter which I texted you when I ran into you again this year because it was hard to you were kind enough to say I was elusive yeah I mean you were but and you know what are you going to do I said hey I want you to do my show I mean you could have said no I'm not doing it but you were very gracious I guess you gave me your cell number you responded right away yeah and then I see you again this year yeah over Christmas we're at the same restaurant I said hey Bri you know do you remember me you know not really I said I got the podcast and then I went back and I had been cleaning out my computer files maybe two months ago and I saw this letter that I'd written you on February 5th 2003 26 years ago to the day that we're doing this show oh my god and here's the letter wow I didn't know nice yeah I'm 34 years old that would be you that was me back in the day north resident wow really nice and nice very nice uh stationary well i put on nice stationery and oh yeah that's nice so so let me just ask you that's crazy put put you on the spot okay so um you asked for meetings but you didn't take my meeting right so um why would i be so duplicitous i'm just wondering you know there's symmetry like i never forgot where i came from and i'm not saying that you do either but but but but like you i mean i I can't take all I mean, I mean, LinkedIn, I get 10 messages a day.

19:53Brian Grazer:You meet with me. I'll meet with everyone who does the work, you know, kind of like what you said with Lou. And if you're doing all the research, you write me the kind of letter that I wrote people. I will meet with you. But hey, you know, have a cup of coffee. Not going to happen. Right. So what happened with my letter there? On the letter? Well, just, yeah. Or in general. Yeah, yeah. Just general. Like, why wouldn't you respond to this letter? Because it's the same thing. I'm not looking for a job. I should have definitely responded. That I should have done. Okay. Maybe I, do you think I read it?

20:22Well, I don't know if you're right, because I never heard back from you.

20:24Brian Grazer:Was it an email? No, I said, this is on my letterhead. I mailed it. Oh, I don't know. Okay. That could just be rude. Oh, I don't want to be rude, but there's at least 50-50 chance I never read it, at least. I don't read any emails, by the way. That was a letter, but, so I don't know. There's no excuse for that one. I mean, other than I might not have read it. Yeah. That's a chance. That's literally 50-50. And then as far as the podcast part of it was, I really wanted to do it because I really liked you. I was very magnetized to you. But then it came around to my publicity people. There was a period where I didn't want to.

21:04No, not about you. There was a period of time where I did not want to go on. There were subjects I didn't want to talk about. And so whether it was your podcast or a lesser podcast or bigger, whatever, I just didn't want to talk about certain subjects.

21:20Brian Grazer:We have so much more to talk about. I want to talk about Academy Awards because that's the holy grail of your business. Yeah. Right. It's something everyone dreams about. Yes. And we'll talk about the 68th Academy Award where you have produced Apollo 13. It had nine nominations. Right. And you had this embarrassing moment where you heard the B word. Sidney Poitier was telling him, you get up out of your chair. And then in front of 35 million people, you got to sit back down. Yeah. Well, what happened there? What happened there? We did get a lot of Oscar nominations, a lot, and we won some. And basically, we had a lot of momentum.

21:57And prior to that, every person said, you're going to win an Oscar. Every person. And Mike Milken came to me, and I didn't know him. and he said, you're going to win, and just please say these eight words. I go, I don't know, you know. But I had every oddsmakers in Vegas. Everything was where you're winning. So I wrote up a card that I was going to say and put it in my tuxedo. I was pretty convinced I was going to win, you know, because the 20th anniversary of NASA. There was a lot of things in alignment. And Sidney Poitier, I just somehow thought what was coming out of his mouth was Brian. so I got up to go on stage and then I had to sit down and I looked behind me so I didn't fall down and miss my chair and one studio chairman goes loser, like that and so that was kind of uncomfortable then I sit down and there's Tom Hanks and Ron Howard and Jim Lovell and Jim Lovell reaches way over these guys and grabs my wrist and said I never made it to the moon either And I thought, wow, that puts it in perspective.

23:01I mean, that guy actually went up in the rocket and didn't make it to the moon. I just didn't win an Oscar. So I thought, well, I can't feel that bad about myself. So the studio chairman was Harvey Weinstein. No. Oh, he was very happy that he didn't win. But it was a different one. It was a different one.

23:16Brian Grazer:Yeah, because I didn't look at him. Okay. That dude's gross. Okay. I just have to ask this question because Harvey was known by everyone in Hollywood to be doing inappropriate things. Yes. I mean, you must have heard it too. I mean, you... No. You never heard it? No. I mean, it's... I was shocked. Oh, you were shocked. I knew not to like him. Okay. I didn't... I thought he was disgusting. Yeah. I've been on airplanes, private jets with him that weren't his or mine. Yeah. And sit right across him, I won't look at him. Okay. He's just a guy that I don't want to talk to. Yeah. There's people you know have bad karma.

23:49Yeah. And there's nothing... He'd always go, I'm going to get you an Oscar. You know, when I did win an Oscar, he said, I'm going to get you more if you do something with me. You know, he's just like a pig. I didn't want to just, there are a few people I don't hate them. I just don't want to be around them. I just know bad shit's going to come.

24:06Brian Grazer:Six years later, 74th Academy Award comes up. Yeah. And you win for A Beautiful Mind. I win. And I watched you get up on stage. That was terrible. Right? And it was, you were nervous, you were emotional when you were thanking everybody, you know, Ron in particular. And you said, this is a miracle. Oh. But it wasn't. I mean. I don't remember because I never watched it. I mean, you hear your name. It's the biggest award of the night. You're getting up. Are you just kind of losing all thought? Yeah. And you know, your legs are moving, but you can't really think about what's happening. Yeah, and the first thing I said was, I know my, I think I remember what I said.