A Curious Mind (13 page)

What kind of movie is
Grinch
?

What story are we telling?

What feeling are we trying to convey, especially when the audience is going to arrive with their own set of feelings about the story?

That too is at the heart of what good movie producers do.
You always want to create a movie that is original, that has passion. With a story as iconic as
Grinch
, you also need to keep the audience's expectations in mind. Everyone walking into a movie theater to see
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
would already have a feeling about what they thought the story was.

And no one more vividly or more firmly than Audrey Geisel. She was our most challenging audience—our audience of one. We showed her the movie in the Hitchcock Theater on the Universal Studios lot. There were just five people in the room. Audrey sat very near the front. I sat thirty rows back from her, near the back, because I was so nervous about her reaction. A couple of editors and sound guys sat in the rows between us.

As the credits rolled, Audrey started clapping. She was beaming. She loved it. Sitting there in the screening room, I was so happy to have made her happy that I had tears streaming down my face.

Even a classic story, one that is totally familiar, can't succeed without the kind of elemental curiosity we brought to
Grinch
, so everyone agrees on the story you're trying to tell and the way you're trying to tell it.
⁷

It seems so obvious. But how often have you been involved in a project where you get halfway along and discover that the people involved had slightly different understandings of what you were up to—differences that turned out to make it impossible to work effectively together, because everyone didn't actually agree on the goal?

It happens every day—in movies, in marketing, in
architecture and advertising, in journalism and politics, and in the whole rest of the world. It even happens in sports. Nothing says miscommunication like a busted pass play in an NFL game.

It's a little counterintuitive, but rather than derailing or distracting you, questions can keep you on course.

Being determined in the face of obstacles is vital. Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss, is a great example of that himself. Many of his forty-four books remain wild bestsellers. In 2013,
Green Eggs and Ham
sold more than 700,000 copies in the United States (more than
Goodnight Moon
);
The Cat in the Hat
sold more than 500,000 copies, as did
Oh, the Places You'll Go!
and
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
. And five more Dr. Seuss books each sold more than 250,000 copies. That's eight books, with total sales of more than 3.5 million copies, in one year (another eight Seuss titles sold 100,000 copies or more). Theodor Geisel is selling 11,000 Dr. Seuss books every day of the year, in the United States alone, twenty-four years after he died. He has sold 600 million books worldwide since his first book,
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
, was published in 1937. And as inevitable as Dr. Seuss's appeal seems now,
Mulberry Street
was rejected by twenty-seven publishers before being accepted by Vanguard Press. What if Geisel had decided that twenty rejections were enough for him? Or twenty-five?

Imagine childhood, and reading, without Dr. Seuss.
⁸

I feel like we enter the world, newborn, and at that moment, the answer is “yes.” And it's “yes” for a little while after
that. The world is openhearted to us. But at some point, the world starts saying “no,” and the sooner you start practicing ways of getting around “no,” the better. I now think of myself as impervious to rejection.

We've been talking about using curiosity when the world says “no.” But just as often, the “no” can come from inside your head, and curiosity can be the cure to that kind of “no” too.

As I mentioned earlier, when I have a fear of something, I try to get curious about it—I try to set the fear aside long enough to start asking questions. The questions do two things: they distract me from the queasy feeling, and I learn something about what I'm worried about. Instinctively, I think, we all know that. But sometimes you need to remind yourself that the best way to dispel the fear is to face it, to be curious.

I am a nervous public speaker. I give a good speech, but I don't enjoy getting ready to give a speech, I don't even necessarily enjoy giving the speech—what I enjoy is having given it. The fun part is talking to people about the speech after it's done.

For me, every time I do it is a test. Here's how I keep the nervousness at bay:

First, I don't start preparing too far in advance, because for me, that just opens up the box of worry. If I start writing the speech two weeks in advance, then I just worry every day for two weeks.

So I make sure I have enough time to prepare, and I start working on the talk a few days before I have to give it.

I do the same thing I did with
Grinch
. I ask questions:

What's the talk supposed to be about?

What's the best possible version of the talk?

What do the people coming to this event expect to hear?

What do they want to hear, in general?

What do they want to hear from me, specifically?

And who is the audience?

The answer to each of those questions helps me create a framework for what I'm supposed to talk about. And the answers immediately spark ideas, anecdotes, and points I want to make—which I keep track of.

I'm always looking for stories to tell—stories that make the points I want to make. In terms of giving a speech, I'm looking for stories for two reasons. People like stories—they don't want to be lectured, they want to be entertained. And I know the stories I'm telling—so even if I stumble or lose my way, well, it's my story. I can't actually forget what I'm trying to say. I won't be thrown off stride.

In the end, I write out the whole speech a day or two in advance. And I practice several times.

Writing the speech gets it into my brain.

Practicing also gets it into my brain—and practicing shows me the rough spots, or the spots where the point and the story don't fit perfectly, or where I'm not sure I'm telling the joke exactly right. Practicing gives me a chance to edit—just like you edit a movie, or a magazine story, or a business presentation, or a book.

I bring the full text of the speech with me, I set it on the podium, and then I stand next to the podium and talk. I don't read the speech from the pages. I have the text in case I need it. But I don't usually need it.

Does curiosity require work?

Of course it does.

Even if you're “naturally curious”—whatever that phrase means to you—asking questions, absorbing the answers, figuring out in what direction the answers point you, figuring out what other questions you need to ask, that's all work.

I do think of myself as naturally curious, but I've also exercised my curiosity in all kinds of situations, all day long, for almost sixty years. Sometimes you have to remember to use curiosity—you have to remind yourself to use it. If someone's telling you “no,” that can easily throw you off stride. You can get so caught up in being rejected, in not getting something you're working toward, that you forget to ask questions about what's happening. Why am I being told no?

If you have a fear of giving a speech, you can become so distracted or put off that you avoid it instead of plunging in. That prolongs the anxiety, and it doesn't help the speech, it hurts it. The speech doesn't write itself, and the way to manage being nervous about the speech is to work on it.

I have found that using curiosity to get around the “no,” whether “no” is coming from someone else or from my own brain, has taught me some other valuable ways of confronting resistance, of getting things done.

A great piece of advice came to me from my longtime friend Herbert A. Allen, the investment banker and creator of the remarkable media and technology conference he hosts every year in Sun Valley, Idaho (called simply the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference).

Many years ago, he told me: make the hardest call of the day first.

The hardest call of the day might be someone you fear is going to give you bad news. The hardest call might be someone to whom you have to deliver bad news. The hardest call might be someone you want to see in person who might be avoiding you.

And Allen was being metaphoric. The “hardest call” might be an email you have to send, it might be a conversation you need to have in person with someone in your own office.

Whatever it is, the reason you think of it as the “hardest call of the day” is because there's something scary about it. It's going to be uncomfortable in some way—either in the encounter itself, or in the outcome of the encounter. But Allen's point is that a task like that isn't going to be less scary at noon or at 4:30 in the afternoon. Just the opposite, the low-grade anxiety from “the hardest call” is going to cast a shadow over the whole day. It's going to distract you, maybe even make you less effective. It will certainly make you less openhearted.

“Make the hardest call first.” That's not quite about curiosity, and it's not quite about determination—it's a little bit of both. It's grit. It's character. Grab hold of the one task that
really must be done—however much you're not looking forward to it—and tackle it.

That clears the air. It brightens the rest of the day. It may, in fact, reset the agenda for part of the day. It gives you confidence to tackle whatever else is coming—because you've done the hardest thing first. And while the outcome of “the hardest call” usually goes just like you imagine, sometimes there's a surprise there too.

Asking questions always seems, superficially, like an admission of ignorance. How can admitting your ignorance be the path to confidence?

That's one of the many wonderful dualities of curiosity.

Curiosity helps you dispel ignorance and confusion, curiosity evaporates fogginess and uncertainty, it clears up disagreement.

Curiosity can give you confidence. And the confidence can give you determination. And the confidence and determination can give you ambition. That's how you get beyond the “no,” whether it's coming from other people, or from inside your own mind.

If you harness curiosity to your dreams, it can help power them along to reality.

•  •  •

ABOUT A DECADE AGO,
the New York style magazine
W
did a profile of me with the headline:

Brian Grazer, whose movies have grossed $10.5 billion, is arguably the most successful producer in town—and surely the most recognizable.

Is it the hair?
⁹

People in Hollywood, of course, know the hair.

People in the rest of the world—people who may not even know my name but know
A Beautiful Mind
or
Arrested Development
or
The Da Vinci Code
—some of them know the hair too. “That Hollywood guy with the hair that stands straight up”—that's a common description of me.

The hair is part of my image, part of my persona.

And the hair is no accident. Of course it isn't an accident—because I have to gel it vertical every single morning.

But my hair isn't just a fashion quirk. It's not even really a matter of personal taste.

After Ron Howard and I had done a couple of movies, I was building a reasonable reputation in Hollywood. It was nothing like the visibility of Ron, of course—he was a star and a director and the icon of an era. I was a producer, and also a newcomer, especially compared to Ron.

But I wanted to make an impression. 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.

When Ron and I were getting Imagine up and running in
the early nineties, it was during a period when male Hollywood producers were developing a kind of collective persona. There was a group of young, successful producers doing loud, aggressive movies. They were themselves loud and aggressive—they were “yellers,” people who sometimes managed their colleagues by throwing things and screaming. And many in this same group wore beards. Bearded, aggressive men, producing aggressive movies.

That wasn't me. I wasn't doing loud movies, I don't look great with facial hair. I worked for a couple of screamers in my early days in Hollywood. I don't like being screamed at, and I am not a screamer myself.

But I didn't want to simply fade into the background. I felt I needed to define myself in a way that made me memorable.

So this question of personal style—what to wear, how to look—was on my mind.

It all fell into place one afternoon in 1993, when I was swimming with my daughter Sage, who was then about five. As I surfaced in the pool, I ran my fingers through my wet hair, standing it straight up.

“That looks cool!” Sage said.

I looked at myself in the mirror with my hair standing up, and I thought, “That's really interesting.”

So I gelled it straight up. I started that very day.

The hair got noticed. It instantly produced an extreme reaction from people.

I'd say 25 percent of people thought it was cool.

Another 50 percent of people were curious about it. Why do you do your hair like that? How do you do your hair like that?

Some people who already knew me were in this curious category. They said, Brian, what's up with the hair? What are you thinking? What got you to do that?

Then there was the other 25 percent—the people who hated the hair. The hair made them angry. They looked at my hair and immediately decided I was an asshole.