A Curious Mind (29 page)

• Pay attention not just to what the person you're talking to says, but how they say it. Often there is as much information in people's tone, in the way they tell a story or respond to a question, as in the answer itself.

• The tips about starter conversations apply—along with your own experience of having those starter conversations. Have questions in advance, but let the conversation flow based on what you learn; make your side of the conversation questions—not your own thoughts; be respectful of the clock; be grateful in person and in a very brief follow-up email. If an assistant helps set up a curiosity conversation, be sure to include that person in your thank-you note.

What you'll discover is that people love talking about themselves—about their work, about their challenges, about the story of how they arrived where they are.

The hardest part is the very beginning.

In a formal curiosity conversation, I would recommend not taking notes—the goal is a good conversation. Taking notes might just make someone uncomfortable.

But when you've left a person's office, it's valuable to spend just a few minutes thinking about what the most surprising thing you learned was; what the person's tone and personality was like, compared to what you might have imagined; what choices they've made that were different than you might have made in the same circumstances.

And you don't need to have curiosity conversations in formal settings that you set up. You meet people all the time. The person next to you on the airplane or at the wedding quite likely has a fascinating story and comes from a world different from yours—and all you have to do in that setting is turn, smile, and introduce yourself to start a conversation. “Hi, I'm Brian, I work in the movie business—what do you do?”

Remember that if you're trying to learn something, you should be asking questions and listening to the answers rather than talking about yourself.

You can take the principles above and extend them into a group atmosphere by hosting a gathering. Think of two or three interesting friends or acquaintances—they can be people who know one another or do not—preferably from different lines of work and different backgrounds.

Invite those people, and ask each of them to invite two or three of their most interesting friends or acquaintances. The result will be a group of selected people who are interconnected but (hopefully) very different from one another.

The dinner party can be as formal or informal as you like, but it should be in a place that is conducive to mingling. Use the suggestions above to kick off the dinner conversation and encourage each person to follow their own curiosity, ask questions, listen, and learn about one another.

The journalist Charlie Rose was the first person to seriously suggest a book about curiosity. He'd had me on his PBS interview show to talk about curiosity, and afterward he said, “You should do a book about this.”

That was ten years ago. Charlie Rose planted the seed. Ron Howard—who knew about the incredible range of the curiosity conversations—would also occasionally nudge me to write a book. He feels like there is so much fun and insight packed into those decades of talking to people.

But I was always a little uncomfortable with the idea—a book about my curiosity seemed like it would be egotistical, and not that interesting to anyone else.

One afternoon in 2012 I was talking about the curiosity conversations with Bryan Lourd, one of my show business agents, and he said, “Why don't you write a book about that? Why don't you write a book about curiosity?” Richard Lovett,
Bryan's colleague at CAA, had suggested the same thing. I said that it didn't seem like a very interesting book. Bryan said, “No, not a book about
your
curiosity, a book about the journey curiosity has taken you on. A book about
curiosity
—not as some kind of accomplishment, but as something you use to explore the world.”

That reframing of the idea—a book not about my curiosity, but about what curiosity has enabled me to do, about what curiosity can enable anyone to do—snapped the idea into focus for me.

I didn't want to write a book about all the people I'd had conversations with—I wanted to write about the impulse to have those conversations. I wanted to use the conversations to tell a story: the story of my steady discovery of the power of curiosity in my own life.

In the book, I tell the story of my grandmother, Sonia Schwartz, inspiring and nurturing my curiosity as a boy. There have been some similarly critical people who have supported my curious style as an adult.

The first among those is, in fact, Ron Howard, my closest professional colleague going back thirty years, my business partner at Imagine Entertainment, and my best friend. Ron is my sounding board, my supporter, my conscience, and he never stops encouraging my curiosity.

Michael Rosenberg has been helping Ron and me make movies in a businesslike fashion for twenty-six years. We often have fifteen or twenty projects going at once, and I am sure
Michael wasn't thinking I needed to add a book—requiring hours a week of time—to all our other demands. But he has been an enthusiastic supporter of the book from the start, and he has figured out how to gracefully add
A Curious Mind
to everything else we're doing. We would be lost without Michael's loyalty, determination, and quiet leadership.

Karen Kehela Sherwood was the first person to help me set up the “curiosity conversations,” taking on a task I had done for years by myself. She brought the same determination to getting people to come and talk as I did, but she dramatically widened our range. She brought professionalism to the curiosity conversations, and she made my priorities her priorities—both things for which I am eternally grateful.

After Karen, many executives and assistants helped me continue the conversations over many years.

In 2006, Brad Grossman formalized the curiosity conversation process. He gave the curiosity conversations depth and structure, and he brought such honest interest in new people and new subjects that with his help I met people I never would have met on my own.

At Imagine, the help and guidance of many people has been indispensable, including Erica Huggins, Kim Roth, Robin Ruse-Rinehart Barris, Anna Culp, and Sage Shah. Hillary Messenger and Lee Dreyfuss get me through the day every day.

I want to thank my siblings, Nora and Gavin. They've been listening to my questions longer than anyone else. They keep
me cheerfully connected to the real world, and the world in which we all grew up.

My kids are the joy of my life. Riley, Sage, Thomas, and Patrick are the best curiosity guides I've ever had—they each pull me into universes I would never get to visit without them.

My fiancée, Veronica Smiley, has been at my side throughout the creation of
A Curious Mind
, and she has been indispensable. Veronica sees the best in people, and she knows instinctively how to get the best out of me. Her generosity, her cheerfulness, and her sense of adventure are contagious.

In terms of getting curiosity from the idea for a book to the printed page, I am indebted to Simon Green at CAA for his work in getting the book published.

Jonathan Karp, the president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, understood the kind of book I wanted this to be from the beginning—and from the spark of the idea through the writing process, he has given us support and brilliant editing, and he has held on to a clear vision of the book and its possibilities, which have kept me focused.

Also at Simon & Schuster, Sydney Tanigawa gave
A Curious Mind
a careful and thoughtful word edit; the book is much better for her attention. We've had great support throughout Simon & Schuster: Megan Hogan, in Jonathan Karp's office; Cary Goldstein and Kellyn Patterson in publicity; Richard Rhorer and Dana Trocker in marketing; Irene Kheradi, Gina DiMascia, and Ffej Caplan in managing editorial; Jackie Seow, Christopher Lin, and Joy O'Meara in art and design; and Lisa
Erwin and Carla Benton in production and copyediting, as well as Judith Hancock for creating the book's index.

Finally, I want to thank my coauthor and collaborator, Charles Fishman, a nationally renowned journalist. He asks questions for a living, and he asked questions about curiosity that had never occurred to me. I know how much work goes into a movie or a TV show, but I had no idea how much work goes into a book. Charles has done a remarkable job shaping our own curiosity conversations into a completely original narrative. I often start our calls with the greeting “The Mighty Fish!” He has been exactly that.

I first heard about Brian Grazer's book project when my agent, Raphael Sagalyn, called and said, “I'm going to say a single word to you. Let's see if this one word is a book idea you might be interested in. The word is ‘curiosity.' ”

He had me immediately. There aren't many single-word topics as engaging and important as curiosity. And then Rafe told me the author was the Academy Award–winning producer Brian Grazer.

I want to thank Brian for the chance to step into his world and to think about curiosity in ways I had never considered. Brian is a master storyteller, and it has been fascinating, fun, and illuminating to work with him day after day bringing curiosity to life. His core belief in the power of curiosity to make everyone's life better is an inspiration.

I also want to thank Jonathan Karp for thinking this might be a project I'd be interested in. His support from the earliest conversations about how to shape the book until the final editing has been indispensable. Sydney Tanigawa, our editor at Simon & Schuster, has been patient and insightful.

The book would not have been written without the team at Imagine Entertainment. No one there ever hesitated to help or refused a single request. Thanks to Ron Howard, Michael Rosenberg, Erica Huggins, Kim Roth, Robin Ruse-Rinehart Barris, Anna Culp, and Sage Shah. Hillary Messenger and Lee Dreyfuss made sure I stayed connected to Brian. Their good humor never failed.

No book gets finished without the counsel of Rafe, the guidance of Geoff, or the patience and support of Trish, Nicolas, and Maya. My best curiosity conversations start and end with them.

© JEFF LIPSKY

Academy Award–winning producer Brian Grazer has been making movies and television programs for more than thirty years. As both a writer and producer, he has personally been nominated for four Academy Awards. In 2002 he won the Best Picture Oscar for
A Beautiful Mind
.

In addition to
A Beautiful Mind
, Grazer's films include
Apollo 13
,
Friday Night Lights, American Gangster, 8 Mile, Frost
/Nixon, Liar Liar
, and
Splash.
The TV series Grazer has produced include
24, Arrested Development, Parenthood, Sports Night, Empire
, and
Friday Night Lights.

Over the years, Grazer's films and TV shows have been nominated for a total of forty-three Oscars and 149 Emmys. His movies have generated more than $13 billion in worldwide theatrical, music, and video grosses. Reflecting this combination of commercial and artistic achievement, the Producers Guild of America honored Grazer with the David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

Grazer grew up in the San Fernando Valley and is a graduate of the University of Southern California's School of
Cinematic Arts. He began his career as a producer developing television projects. It was while producing TV pilots for Paramount Pictures in the early 1980s that Grazer first met his longtime friend and business partner Ron Howard. Their collaboration began in 1982 with the hit comedies
Night Shift
and
Splash
, and in 1986 the two founded Imagine Entertainment, which they continue to run together as chairmen.

Grazer lives in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, and has four children. This is his first book.

Charles Fishman is an award-winning journalist and
New York Times
bestselling author. His reporting has won UCLA's Gerald Loeb Award, the highest award in business journalism, three times. His first book,
The Wal-Mart Effect
, about Wal-Mart's impact on the way Americans live, made the bestseller lists of the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
, and has become the standard for understanding Wal-Mart. His second book,
The Big Thirst
, about our conflicted relationship with water, is the bestselling book about water in a generation and is reshaping how communities approach water problems.

Fishman grew up in Miami and is a graduate of Harvard College. He started his career as a
Washington Post
reporter, and went on to work at the
Orlando Sentinel
, the
News & Observer
in Raleigh, and
Fast Company
magazine. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, also a journalist, and their two children.