A CURIOUS MIND

Összefoglaló

For the past 30 years, the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer has been holding what he calls “curiosity conversations.” Twice a month (on average), he meets with scientists, politicians, writers, athletes and all sorts of other people to pick their brains, sometimes to inform a particular project but usually just to fill up the reserves of information, stories and relationships that any great producer needs. The partial list of those he has spoken to takes up 28 pages at the end of “A Curious Mind.” It begins with the musician 50 Cent and ends with the historian Howard Zinn.

Curiosity, Mr. Grazer writes, has been more to him than just a professional technique. As a child, he was dyslexic. His difficulties at elementary school in Los Angeles perturbed everyone in his family, except his grandmother Sonia, “a classic 4-foot-10 Jewish grandmother. She was always telling me I was something special.... She just kept telling me, ‘You’re curious. Your curiosity is good. Think big!’ ” And so he did. Mr. Grazer’s films and television shows, from “Splash” and “Apollo 13” to “A Beautiful Mind” and “Arrested Development,” have earned billions of dollars and bushels of Oscars and Emmys. His long producing partnership with the director Ron Howard has been one of the steadiest and most admired in Hollywood.

“A Curious Mind” is not a classic autobiography but a rumination on how one trait, curiosity, reinforced by a readiness to pay attention and then to act, has forged such a remarkable career. Mr. Grazer opens the book with the story of his entry into the movie business. It was the summer before he was due to go to law school. He was sitting in his apartment in Santa Monica, Calif., when he overheard a man saying that he had just quit a wonderful job working as a legal clerk to an executive at Warner Bros. Mr. Grazer caught the name of the executive, called him up and, by the following afternoon, was hired. His job was to deliver paperwork all over Hollywood, and he used the chance to meet the town’s luminaries. He even talked his way into a 10-minute meeting with Lew Wasserman —the head of MCA films studios, and then considered the most powerful man in entertainment.

After the young Mr. Grazer had explained why he wanted to be a producer, Mr. Wasserman shot back, listing all the ways in which he was ill-equipped. “You really have nothing,” he concluded. “But the only way you can be anything in this business is if you own the material. You have to own it.” And with that, he slapped a legal pad and pencil down in front of Mr. Grazer and suggested he go off and write. The first films he made with Ron Howard (“Night Shift” and “Splash”) were developed from Mr. Grazer’s initial ideas.