Brian Grazer Quotes
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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 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.
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You can get good at finding access in the entertainment business. But the ideas, the narratives themselves, they are the only things that are going to be of any value.
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I don't like to boss people around. I don't get motivated by telling people what to do, I don't take any pleasure in it. So I manage with curiosity, by asking questions.
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Being interested in other fields and meeting experts outside entertainment - whether it's a two-hour conversation with John Nash that turns into 'A Beautiful Mind' or talking to people in architecture or fashion, CIA directors or Nobel laureates - has given me a better sense of which ideas feel authentic and new.
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No one in Hollywood really knows what a good idea is before a movie hits the screens. We only know if it's a good idea after it's done.
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Under no condition can you teach curiosity.
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Where do I get the confidence to be different? A lot of it comes from curiosity. I spent years as a young man trying to understand the business I'm in. I have spent decades staying connected to how the rest of the world works.
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When I first started out in the entertainment business, I made a list of people I thought it would be good to meet. Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world.
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By having a little bit of knowledge about many different things, it enables me to talk to people about a subject that they would not ordinarily think I could talk about. It's a lever for me, I suppose.
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I met Edward Teller. Everything he believed in and stood for was antithetical to what I believed in and stood for. I like running into that in life. I like extreme points of view, a level of commitment - and I certainly love mastery.
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The physical effort of reading drains some of the pleasure I might take from whatever I'm reading.
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Nothing to me is unexpected. No disappointment is unexpected - whether it's movies or people or relationships. I'm always ready for the punch directly between the eyes. So I get hurt, but I never get hurt. Happens all the time.
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You have to know the weeds - to have lived in them - to delegate. I wouldn't want to be a leader who had never lived in the weeds.
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In Hollywood, people tend to have the same sensibilities, the same taste and values, and I didn't want to spend my life that way. I wanted to have a bigger, more interesting life.
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Technology has brought us further than man could ever imagine, and it makes all information available. But it might not do the same exact thing that one human being asking another human being might do.
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I like learning stuff. The more information you can get about a person or a subject, the more you can pour into a potential project. I made a decision to do different things. I want to do things that have a better chance of being thought of as original. I do everything I can to disrupt my comfort zone.
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I like BBC news; I like some London news because you can get it earlier then anywhere else. I like Charlie Rose a lot.
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I only make movies that are interesting to me.
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Curiosity is the process of asking questions, genuine questions, that are not leading to an ask for something in return.
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A movie has to get good reviews, high grosses - it has to beat expectations. The same thing with television and the ratings. But being curious isn't like that. It's not a public thing. It's private, and the test is a private one. You have to be on your toes.
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I think that we all absolutely have curiosity. It brings about knowledge. It's energizing. It's spiritually empowering. It makes us more interesting as people.
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There is evidence that people do want to watch shows back to back - that's why DVR use is so high. When you're able to DVR something, people will watch more than one episode.
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When I am talking to someone, I can constantly see whether I am failing or succeeding. I am regulating what I am saying in terms of how I think I'm doing. I'm always searching for the truth of a subject or person, and I look at every meeting as a grand experiment.