Brian Grazer Quotes
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Artists, whether they're Tom Cruise or John Waters or Ron Howard or Oliver Stone, you can empower them to become a better version of themselves, but you cannot change them 180 degrees to be someone they are not.
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Now, I'm a pretty fast and avid reader. But you can't learn the same things in a book or on the Internet that you can in a personal talk with somebody.
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I thought law school was more like the guillotine. I didn't really think I would make it; I just thought this is one of the few ways to potentially get respect, to go to law school.
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It's a simple quality of human nature that people prefer to choose to do things rather than be ordered to do them. In fact, as soon as you tell me I have to do something - give a speech, attend a banquet, go to Cannes - I immediately start looking for ways to avoid doing it.
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My world was small growing up. I never really left the three-mile radius of my tiny neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.
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I went to USC. I wasn't a rich kid or anything like that, so I had to get a scholarship. Went to USC; my first year, I took 26 units, so I got to have a nickname. Everyone goes, 'There's 26.' So I had a nickname. Having a nickname is a good thing because then you start to get popular, and you keep that going.
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I like challenges; I like excitement. I like entering different worlds and trying to succeed - not excel, but succeed.
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Hollywood is a land of style, a world where how you present yourself matters. Many of the people working here are so dramatically good-looking - that is their style. That's not me, and I know that.
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The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people's perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of that world - to be accepted.
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I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf.
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Curiosity at work isn't a matter of style. It's much more powerful than that. If you're the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you're laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group. You're letting people know that the boss is willing to listen.
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I've been in, like, kids' clubs... I've been in the Boom Boom Room in New York, and the kids are going, 'Oh my God, you produced 'Arrested Development?'' They aren't talking about 'A Beautiful Mind' or '24.' It's like the only thing in my whole career was 'Arrested Development,' literally.
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I started in TV movies and then had success in my move to features with 'Night Shift' and 'Splash'.
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Asking for people's help - rather than directing it - is almost always the smart way of doing things, regardless of the stakes.
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You should not do everything in your power to make reviewers cranky before - right before they see your movie.
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Almost every person that I had a preconception of, I was wrong. With Edward Teller, I was right. He was an autocrat and a technocrat, with no feeling for humanity.
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I find rejection or failure to be a really interesting and valuable experience.
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I try to be thoughtful when I speak but not edited. I make mistakes, but people like vulnerability.
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They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That's because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone.
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A producer is supposed to generate an idea for a movie. And then they're supposed to create the team, the group of people that are gonna make this movie. And within that team, the producer has to have a creative vision and a fiscal vision, and they have to adhere to both things.
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I worked for a couple of screamers in my early days in Hollywood. I don't like being screamed at, and I am not myself a screamer.
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You have to trust yourself, not research. Not testing. Testing helps, but you have to trust your own taste. If your taste says something isn't any good, don't let research rationalize that out of its own truth.
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I think the global mass culture is either consciously or unconsciously sensitized to how vulnerable we are here on the planet.
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I probably should have a brand, but I think you can't get the best artists to work for you if you're branded. I get the trade-off, and I really would like to be more famous for my work, get more credit for my achievements.