Curiosity made the cat

Even if you don’t know who Brian Grazer is, you certainly know his work. Across his decades-long career as a writer and producer of film and television, Grazer’s fingerprints can be found on an almost unbelievable string of successes: 24, Friday Night Lights, Splash, and Apollo 13–and recently, Empire–are just a few highlights of a very long list of accomplishments that also includes 2001’s Academy Award for Best Picture, A Beautiful Mind.

Now, in his first book, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life, Grazer opens up on one of the core techniques he’s used since he started out as a five-dollar-an-hour law clerk. And he means it: Taking the time to talk with us on the phone, Grazer spoke with enthusiasm and candor on the hard work, dedication, and rewards of living a truly curious life, and his desire for everyone to reap the rewards of his experience is genuinely inspiring.

The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Your book, A Curious Mind, is about a series of interviews that you’ve done over the course of your life, your career. Could you describe why you wanted to write this book at this particular time?

I didn’t want to do a memoir, at all, because that indicates or suggests that you’ve figured out life in some way, and I haven’t figured it out yet. I like the process of curiosity as a tool to build a bigger life for myself. The mission statement is the title of the book, really. We all have curiosity. It’s democratized, you don’t need to have any money to have curiosity, you don’t need social status. Curiosity is something that we all have. But, if you really want to work at it–use it as a superpower–you can actually build a much bigger life for yourself. A bigger life of relationships, a bigger life professionally, a bigger life personally in terms of traveling and finding places to go that you wouldn’t have ordinarily thought of or been able to go. And I did it with nothing. I’m now known as a relatively successful movie producer and television producer, but I did it long before that, because I could see that it could be a really valuable tool to build a bigger life.

The framework from which you pursued this sense of curiosity is a series of what you call “curiosity conversations.” How long have you been conducting those conversations, and how did you start?

I started as a law clerk … in the area of movies and television. I did a “curiosity conversation” every single day, until I eventually got fired from Warner Bros. [laughs] Once I found my way into being a movie producer, [and] for 30 years I’ve done it every two weeks. I meet someone that’s expert in anything other than entertainment: science, medicine, aspects of business, technology, politics, all art forms from fashion to architecture. So it’s just an endless amount of subjects in the world, and I try to find my way into them.

That’s quite a commitment.

At this point it’s almost a kind of religion. I just do it every two weeks without fail.

What are some of the more memorable conversations that you’ve had?

The most memorable are the ones where you’re really kind of scared, you’re really so far out of your comfort zone that the philosophy of the person is completely opposite of your life philosophy, so therefore they kind of invalidate you. Like Edward Teller. He was in a way kind of a technocrat–a physicist and a technocrat–but he in some way invalidated what I did for a living, which was the liberal arts. I was a movie producer then, and he didn’t believe in that at all.

Obama, when he was a senator. I think he was in Office 99 in the Senate—the second worst office. Princess Di, of course, was memorable. Michael Jackson was really memorable. People surprise you. The ones that really, really surprise you are because they fully demystify the power that you seek them out for in the beginning, or [because] their belief system couldn’t be more different than your belief system. Those are the ones that really shock you.

You recommend “curiosity conversations” for everyone. For someone who doesn’t have access to someone like Barack Obama or someone like Princess Diana, who would you recommend that the Regular Joe talks to?

Well, I was the Regular Joe, and I didn’t get to start with Barack Obama. You might not get to meet Barack Obama, but you you can meet an assemblyman, you can meet a congressman, you can [meet] the assistant to Barack Obama. And often those assistants will have the key learning points that their boss will have. Before I got to meet Carl Sagan, I met several of his MacArthur Grant assistants, and I learned a lot about his world. Often those meetings will turn into getting to meet their boss. It’s a journey.

You do have to do homework; you can’t just causally reach out to people and feel like they should meet you, or [that] they’re obligated to. You have to do creative methodology that includes homework. And then, more often than not, you’ll get to meet the person that you’re hoping to meet.

The most interesting professor at my school–the professor of abnormal psychology–had a class of about 300. I was in his class, but I never got to meet him, because I was just one of 300 people, like everybody else. When I graduated, I thought I think I really want to meet this professor. The guy was so cool, and so smart. I eventually just went to the school and waited for him to leave the class so I could introduce myself. He said, “Didn’t you graduate already?” I said, “Yes, I did. I just really wanted to spend five minutes and [have] a cup of coffee.” Because I was really earnest and focused—and curious—he said “yes,” and I turned that five minutes into an hour-and-a-half. I probably learned more in that hour-and-a-half than I did in a year of that class. That just became a validator for me, you know, that it could be done.

What do you think is the most unheralded aspect of curiosity?

I think curiosity is the basis of all breakthroughs. It’s not thought of that. Normally, if you’re one of 40 kids in a class, you don’t get to ask all those kinds of interactive questions. You have to find your way outside of that system to do it. You have to have confidence and a little courage, because you’re going to get shot down along the way. When you exercise this gift that we have, and when you do it in an exhaustive and intelligent way, it creates inspiration. With inspiration, you create breakthroughs. Personal breakthroughs in relationships, professional breakthroughs in business, or breakthroughs in innovation.

As a writer and a producer, you’ve done movies like Splash and Apollo 13, and on TV you’ve done 24 and Arrested Development. Did your series of conversations about curiosity influence your career choice?

Curiosity did influence that. I ended up meeting Lou Wasserman—it took him about seven months to eventually relent—and he said, “Here’s a pencil, here’s paper. Put the pencil on the paper. It has greater value than it did before. Now get out of here.”

It was like a two minute meeting. I realized you had to write and own your own intellectual property. I didn’t have any money, so in order to do that was the way he told me: start writing, and that would bring value to yourself. But I did have to ask questions all the time. Writing involves curiosity. You start off with a premise, and then you have to keep assaulting that premise: What if I did meet a mermaid? What would the mermaid be like? Why would she like me? Why would I like her? Would she be ultimately unattainable? Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t.

It’s through that curiosity and the assault of the questions that you actually create a story, and everything is rooted in a story. The Apple Corporation—the biggest corporation in the world—is built on a story. Whether it’s a car company or an airline, they all are built on stories … Anything that has any product that is desirable has a story. Or even undesirable, for that matter. [laughs]

How would one go about developing a sense of curiosity? Whether it’s overcoming fear, or any other kind of societal obstacle that might get in the way….

I guess I kind of feel like if you’re not curious, you’re living a little bit of a lazy life. This is a lot of work for me, [but] I gain a lot: I feel like I’m alive, I feel like I’m so engaged in life and the ups and downs of life, and I continue to live a really interesting life because of curiosity. But it takes work. We all have it in us, but it takes work and homework and effort. Curiosity is ultimately a pretty generous act. I actually try to teach that to my kids without actually saying those words. If you don’t ask questions of other people, it’s ultimately not very considerate.

Do you hope this book will inspire people?

Definitely. That’s the mission statement of the book. It’s really kind of a how-to book: How to employ curiosity to build a bigger life. It not only tells the stories of how I used it, but a methodology that one could follow to do it on any level. When you get lazy with your boyfriend or girlfriend, or when you get lazy with your kids and just ask generic questions, they just shut you down. But when you really work hard to get inside the psyche of your boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife or friend that you want to have—when you get inside of their psyche, and that’s active curiosity—then you really enrich your life and the lives of others.

I hope it’s engaging, and I think it will be helpful to people, and they’ll have more meaningful lives. I know I did.