Top 33 Brian Grazer Quotes

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.

The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people’s perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of that world – to be accepted.

The physical effort of reading drains some of the pleasure I might take from whatever I’m reading.

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.

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.

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.

I think the global mass culture is either consciously or unconsciously sensitized to how vulnerable we are here on the planet.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve been in, like, kids’ clubs… I’ve been in the Boom Boom Room in New York, and the kids are going, ‘Oh my God, you produced ‘Arrested Development?” They aren’t talking about ‘A Beautiful Mind’ or ’24.’ It’s like the only thing in my whole career was ‘Arrested Development,’ literally.

I know just how often people get told ‘no’ to their brilliant ideas – not just most of the time, but 90 percent of the time.

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.

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.

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.

Asking for people’s help – rather than directing it – is almost always the smart way of doing things, regardless of the stakes.

I worked for a couple of screamers in my early days in Hollywood. I don’t like being screamed at, and I am not myself a screamer.

I thought law school was more like the guillotine. I didn’t really think I would make it; I just thought this is one of the few ways to potentially get respect, to go to law school.

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.

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.

I try to be thoughtful when I speak but not edited. I make mistakes, but people like vulnerability.

Curiosity at work isn’t a matter of style. It’s much more powerful than that. If you’re the boss, and you manage by asking questions, you’re laying the foundation for the culture of your company or your group. You’re letting people know that the boss is willing to listen.

They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That’s because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone.

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.

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.

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.

You should not do everything in your power to make reviewers cranky before – right before they see your movie.

Under no condition can you teach curiosity.

Curiosity and creating ideas ironically are both democratized; they cost no money, anyone can do them, and it’s up the individual and the force of their personality to give life to them.

I started in TV movies and then had success in my move to features with ‘Night Shift’ and ‘Splash’.

My world was small growing up. I never really left the three-mile radius of my tiny neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.

Curiosity is the process of asking questions, genuine questions, that are not leading to an ask for something in return.

A producer is supposed to generate an idea for a movie. And then they’re supposed to create the team, the group of people that are gonna make this movie. And within that team, the producer has to have a creative vision and a fiscal vision, and they have to adhere to both things.