we're living in like you know an epidemic of loneliness and it's just accelerating where there's we are so connected but the possibility of loneliness is even more and loneliness is there's pain and you can't measure it and i just think this thing of looking at somebody is the beginning of getting out of pain yeah hey everyone welcome to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every
one of you thank you for coming back every single week to listen to learn to grow and i just want to say i'm so grateful that you take out time every week out of your schedules whether you're walking your dog whether you're cooking whether you're commuting whether you're working or editing right now i just want to thank you for taking out time to choose education the fact that you're choosing
to learn choosing to develop yourselves this is the right place to be and today's guest is someone that i've been fascinated for so many years we've had the fortune of having incredible curious conversations together and today we actually get to video it and record it on audio so that you can witness it too he's truly got one of the most fascinating minds i've ever met the first meeting i had with him was
nothing short of brilliant and i just want to tell you a bit about him now listen very very carefully brian grazer is an academy award-winning producer new york times a best-selling author of a curious mind who's been making movies and television programs for more than 25 years his credits include and this is just the tiniest list in the world a beautiful mind 24 arrested development empire eight mile
friday night lights amongst so many others his films and tv series have been nominated wait for this 43 academy awards and 195 emmys and brian's new book face to face is what we're talking about today it's the art of human connection something i know is so important to every one of you so please welcome to the show brian grazer brian thank you for being here thank you i'm so grateful to have you here thank
you of course this is such a pleasure and honor to be sitting with you hmm i'm psyched yeah i was really excited we both just got back from our vacations only last night i was back from provence and got up early and you were back from am i allowed to say bora bora yes yes yeah okay absolutely i was on a three year late honeymoon you're very busy then oh absolutely absolutely but i want to kick this off
by asking a curious question of my own and i know curious conversations are your fascination yes but you're actually a painter like that's something that you dabble in tell us about how you got involved in that um i got involved in painting through my daughter my daughter was only her name is sage she was three four years old at three i was playing invisible barbies with her where you're playing with the barbie and
then she takes the barbie away and she goes well the barbie's now got red hair and i go i can't see the barbie and she's well it's invisible so i thought i have to transition her to something that i maybe we could do together you know because that was i was looking at my watch so i think it now five years old we decided we'd paint together uh which is something i've never done i don't i've never
played with ceramics or painted or anything before and so i had room to have an art studio and we became painters together and she soon ceased to paint and i just continued to paint and still do to this day paint and i use um primarily acrylic then oil and then oil stick and often pencil to highlight or punctuate faces faces or usually faces uh nuance amaze pressure so paintings what brought your human connection
together yes painting is what brought our human connection together and we became like completely embedded with one another on this painting and tell me tell me about that what is when you say the art of human connection what is human connection to brian grazer like what does that mean to you um it means well first okay first there's the the set point of human connection which begins with eye contact
and um and and there's a whole story about eye contact and why i became i had a heightened awareness to it um but um basically human connection begins with looking at actually looking at somebody but looking at somebody calmly and without ambition just looking at them calmly and feeling them it doesn't mean you have to pause it doesn't you have to know any weird thing but you just have to really
look at them and and be relaxed and be interested and that makes somebody feel like it validates them as a human being it makes them feel human and conversely you will feel human so it just begins with that generous act now once you've established that you're at least on the very very beginning of the pathway to getting to know somebody to getting to ask questions for them to feel like i can answer those
questions and once you're on the pathway then you can really just let biology take over you know and and you find things that are very interesting about them they with you but what i'm personally interested in doing is getting to the place where we both are you know on a one-on-one we're both reaching into our most authentic self yeah where whatever that truth is that lies deep
embedded in you whatever that is to have some of that revealed and i do this now al always without any thought about it and and there is pluses and minuses to this and i always tell people it's like you when you're reaching inside of yourself and you're really accessing that you do say things that are stupid and you make mistakes you're fallible you're and you're you have to say i'm willing to have that fallibility
in myself happen but if somebody feels your soul they forgive that and they often really enjoy it and they it usually becomes the thing that is part of the connective tissue in this connection that you're having that was bridged through just this initial set point of looking at somebody wow that's unbelievable i don't think i'm ever going to look at someone the same ever again after that definition
that's amazing the part that i've really picked up on listening to you that really connected with me was without ambition oh i think that's such a beautiful point i've always felt one of the reasons why from my monk experience that i benefited so much is i felt i spent time with people who had no agenda for me yes and like being around someone who has no agenda for you doesn't want anything from you or isn't trying to
manipulate and this is what i find fascinating about when you talk about it in this book and and for anyone who's going to read the book afterwards this is what i find fascinating about the way you present it it's not a technique or a tactic for you no it's not like this manipulative strategy for you no it's like a very genuine authentic what you just mentioned there that's what it sounds like to me
yeah how do you help people live it in that way as opposed to like oh brian's taught me i'm going to use this tactic to get use it as a way of getting it how have you come to that place of realizing that human connection is beyond tactics and strategies and sales that's such a great question it's a great question and i have a couple funny answers one is i've had people even recently you know um you know given like my movie
and television success they go wow what a great strategy yeah i go that wasn't a strategy it's just what happened i have no strategy i mean i have desires and i have um there's intentionality uh within the movies and television and just my actions there's intentionality um and and that's sort of the beauty of it of it all like that intentionality leads you is is fired up by something and it leads
you someplace okay so let me go back to your original question so i found that very early in my career i'd um it was just right before i ever produced anything so i i had to be just about turning 24 because i turned i produced something at 24 but i was dying to meet this guy who ran movies and television for cbs i'll even say his name his name was donald march and i wanted to meet donald march and he
knew me and i called him once and it took him like at least two weeks to call me back so i thought if i could get into this big hollywood party then donald march and people like donald march will call me right back so i found that first of all i was i did get in i found that i was incredibly uncomfortable being at this party and i felt that it was a plan it was a construction it was like very artificial to me
so i did see donald march this is really true and i totally screwed it up and i i got to the i screwed it up like because i was nervous i was out of my honest real zone and he literally never called me back ever again just because i said stu you know it just didn't feel right you know and people can feel when things are not that aren't that aren't real they can feel constructions
absolutely particularly if you're paying attention yeah absolutely so i kind of vowed at that time that i was never going to go to hal to any party as an ambition i would go if i thought i could have a good time i thought if i could be naturalistic and just like this could be really fun or this could be a really interesting experience or this could be a really interesting adventure when it's just a
re when it becomes a real thing that i'm doing but when it becomes like you know uh recently someone said fly to saudi and have this one meeting and i thought that's not me i ended up going to saudi incidentally and had this an unbelievably wild experience but and which was incredibly valuable but i couldn't go in surgical as a surgical ambitious strike yeah yeah so i just don't think it works yeah no i i
agree with you it's so funny i was just saying before this podcast i was talking to my team and i was just saying for me every podcast is a genuine conversation yeah i can't approach it with like i gotta make sure like we have to ask this to get this answer and like when you start constructing it like that it's like you lose the conversation so yeah what to speak of business and meetings and tv and movies
it's like anything that's artificially constructed no i i absolutely love that and oh go and i had this other flashpoint thought when you said it's a conversation that it made me think of this it was my instinct about that party stuff was further ratified when i had to give a speech to all the firemen in america all the fire captains in america afternoon have after having produced
a movie about firemen called backdraft with uh billy baldwin and robert de niro and several others and um we were in washington dc and and we had to each say something you know the director ron howard um and the chairman of the studio had to speak and the chairman of the studio was really very high intellect you know very high iq very high intellect very articulate very very and he came walked out on stage right
before me and i thought wow what's this big brain gonna do and you know what he did he froze and he basically said things that were like a speech and got no reaction and i thought in that flashpoint moment i don't have to be that i don't have to compete with that kind of intellect i can just like speak from my heart and like feelings about how i feel about the selfless nature of firemen themselves and
i got a tremendous reaction without having to do that and it was really beautiful incredibly beautiful actually yeah i love that and by the way i just want to say when i was reading through the book your storytelling is unbelievable like what you do on screen and the fact that you can do it on the written page is unbelievable like i feel like i got to know people through this book and that's what i was going to ask you with
the title face to face what are conversations that in your experience do you believe must happen face to face that today we're not doing because of the distractions of technology or the opportunities of email what are the conversations that you believe are non-negotiably have to happen face to face but that we're choosing to do different well mine with you originally yes absolutely i was
immediately magnetized to your incredibly powerful eyes um like and i even commented i remember like i just couldn't believe the sparkle and clarity of your eyes and i didn't know that you were uh i didn't fully appreciate that you were a monk and that completely became compatible to me i thought wow no wonder he had such kind forgiving eyes and it was really again very attracted to that
and um so all of my real curiosity conversations which incidentally you know mine with you there was a professional nature to it but i viewed it as a curiosity conversation because i didn't you were you're very very very well known and particularly by young people and that's who introduced me to you but i knew of you but i didn't know of your massive popularity and even like today as you i didn't know was the number one
health podcast in the world it blows my mind um so i mean because that's just so powerful so i think any any conversation with somebody that you feel matters you know like i would go on this curiosity where i still do this every two weeks meet someone that's expert or renowned and anything i don't do and i they're nobel laureates they're scientists they're all art forms there were there's jay there's many people and
i am those conversations must be experienced through eye contact through looking at somebody face to face and that be by that by creating that bridge then you have the privilege to be curious then you have the privilege to ask questions and you have the privilege of creating this amazing kind of alchemy that can happen and and all of the great insights that i've ever gleaned have come from these kinds of
conversations and i always just felt like each one of these conversations yours included is just like a dot in a greater constellation of dots and i just have faith that they'll connect someday yes they don't have to directly connect they can just live in your mind and be part of the way you curate your life yes um and so so any of those conversations are essential um have to be face to face absolutely
and it's so fascinating you say that because i feel like i'm not sure i know so many people who make time for curious conversations in their lives so it's almost like when you say that these are the types of conversations we have to do face to face i'm almost going through and thinking how often do we make time for that is that something you've made time for forever is this a habit that you
cultivated and practiced for decades because i think a lot of people would look at it and be like oh brian of course you can do that now because you have really cool friends to hang out with but i'm guessing this is something you've been doing for years and years and years and years yeah i did this started this the day i graduated college actually um so i've i've done it completely dead broke uh owing people
money so just graduating college owing money on everyone when you go through it but but and then i've always i've always done this and i created it as i as a discipline that i would not fail at um you know i would i would not i would always do i'd be obedient to this and um and i would have to grovel and beg and you know when on the movie my very first movie splash i did some
other things preceded it that made me well known but not well known enough i mean i wanted to meet edward teller the father of the hydrogen bomb and and for a bunch of reasons i don't have to agree with somebody i just have to be interested in them or the excellence or their process but it took almost three years for him to finally say yes jonah salt took i mean years but i just kept
if you do enough homework which you have to do and you're persistent and you're politely persistent often i would have to wait till like one of their asset that one of those people's assistants had just quit and they have a new person i can actually follow to their car or something i don't know but so no i've done it for my whole life yeah it's really a way to enlarge in my life so it enlarges my mind and large enlarges
creates elasticity in me you know emotional capability and then of course it just you gain these fantastic insights that you can transport to something yeah no it comes across it comes across so genuinely in the way you tell it in the book but also the way we've connected and i think that's what everyone who's listening or watching right now the one thing i'd love for you to do if you're sitting back at home or you're
in your car is start scheduling curious conversations like start finding people that you're curious about not just professionally like notice the difference here it's not about a professional meeting it's not trying to get a deal it's not trying to close something it's about finding someone that you're genuinely interested in that sparks your curiosity like you said could just be a dot that
one day might connect yeah and i love that and i'd highly recommend that we schedule for me the podcast is that yeah like the podcast is just like this beautiful way of just getting to like dive into someone else's mind with no need apart from wanting to learn and grow so yeah i couldn't agree more that it's powerful one one of the things that i'm really intrigued by is uh one thing that i think you can help us
with we live in a generation today where people's attention spans are just getting squashed and so today now you're not competing against another person you're competing against a phone so the phone has access like can anyone be more interesting than a phone because a phone has access to everything right that's the question how do you how you develop patience to stay interested in someone even when you're
wondering what is the connection here i'm not even sure i'm learning like when you're finding it almost difficult how have you stayed interested in someone when you don't have a common denominator because i feel today we look for commonalities and if we don't find it we're like well there's nothing to learn yeah does that make sense it makes total sense it makes total sense well um how do i stay interested uh
i well first of all you don't have to stay interested there could be there's a point where if you feel like you're forcing it or they're forcing it then you don't have to you know you just always want to be polite because you we all want good will we all want the wind blowing to our back yes you know but um but it's often it's it's very unique like only just before our trip um about six weeks ago i had an uber
driver and i i said um and what's good is they don't initiate conversation so i will initiate i said where are you from and he said he's from serbia and so we've got this conversation it led me to the com it led me to martial arts and i said well i've taken many different martial arts i mentioned he goes have you taken this russian martial arts called systema i said no so i go
uh will you drive into my house so instead of just dropping me off he drove in i got all of his contacts because he also said that his mother-in-law has seen me before and i believed you know i felt safe you know and then um i then said can i can will you charge me to teach me this martial arts form called systema he said he would so i had him come over even i had a broken wrist at the time and i still did it
and learned systema which was a very different kind of a form of martial arts and i was really glad to do that but i didn't know that would happen um wow i didn't know that after the paris terrorist attacks several years ago that that that uber driver was dropping us off at the at the ritz hotel and i asked him this question about the tax and i said well i want to know how it made people feel like just how does it make you feel
one-on-one on the street not just what the news is and he said shame and i thought that was really interesting to me and i understood it because i understood that it meant to them that they don't have the strength themselves to protect themselves so it's about protection because they were victims recently of two terrorist attacks yes so you just learn a lot if you just are open-minded yes yes so
you can learn from anyone and ever you can learn from everything it doesn't need to be yeah someone that you've admired or looked up to it could actually be yeah you just have to not get ahead of yourself and hope that it has some material reason for you right and then it kind of hap something something almost always good happens and you're so right like in your health podcast it's like
we're living in like you know an epidemic of loneliness and it's just accelerating where there's we are so connected but the possibility of loneliness is even more because of of what you just said yeah and the thing that that you could speak to i mean is that everything there's a metric for it uh within our within our medical system except internal pain and loneliness is there's pain and you can't measure it
and i just think this thing of looking at somebody is the beginning of getting out of pain yeah and it might be the beginning of a movie or a television show or or just confidence itself you know like having confidence can really you know is really valuable yeah and let's touch on confidence because i think you're so right that like sitting and talking to someone can actually be really like scary and almost
feel like you're naked like if you feel like someone's looking at you and especially when like you said like you talked about looking at someone you know with compassion without judgment but often we're looking at people and it's very piercing or you feel pierced by people's look how do we develop like okay stepping in face to face but how do we kind of break down those
barriers that we have of feeling really scared to be looked at or to see which i think so many of us have like we look away when people look at us like we try and avoid eye eye contact because we feel kind of nervous by it yeah yeah well i i think i think you you would could probably attest to this is that yeah i mean everybody the number one of the number number one two or three fear is public speaking yes
yeah i could not i was well my first year in college as a freshman i was in a public speaking class and it was 125 kids his name was mr french i can say this there's some names i can't say and mr french took me aside at the end of the class and he said i i really would like to recommend that you discontinue college oh wow it was like the most discouraging thing i really be because i couldn't i couldn't do it i
couldn't public speak i couldn't speak in this class so he really thought i should go to an occupational school and discontinue college and um so that's how acutely you know nervous i was but somebody said to me one day just think you're to yourself like you're just giving somebody a gift start off by saying i'm grateful to be here that will be the beginning of how you can loosen up
i'm grateful to be here i'm grateful you're here having me and it's the same thing with eye contact you don't have to say i'm grateful but you can feel like you know what everyone is feeling what you're feeling if you look at somebody calmly and go hey how you doing something good will happen it will be very very unusual if something good doesn't happen yeah so that's so true i love that so i think of it as
as just a nice thing to do just yeah thing oh 100 100 and i think you're so right that it can be an internal thing yeah it doesn't need to even be verbalized it doesn't need to be vocalized it can be internal yeah absolutely absolutely and if you start feeling that it's kind of like um i had some very famous guy say to me i knew you before you made your very first movie night shift and now you've made all
these movies and won oscars and stuff like that but i know you brian have you ever looked in the mirror and kissed the mirror and i said no i haven't so it just means like take a minute to love yourself a little bit yes and then give that to other people yeah absolutely no no 100 100 and i think that that's so much of it that if we've never looked at ourself in the eye it's hard to look others in the eye
yeah yeah right like it becomes more complicated it's like if we've not been able to truly see ourselves then how can we allow others to see us truly as well yeah and and and i feel like no you you've inspired just now i've never said that before i'm just never said it i've never said that oh my god i thought you just must have already i've literally just no no i've literally just said it right now in this
conversation yeah it's just you know to to be truly seen one has to see themselves first to allow others to truly see you and i i definitely experienced that in uh there's a beautiful analogy in the vedic literatures of a mirror of the mind and it said that when we first try and see ourselves the mirror is very dusty and so you can't see yourself so when you try and wipe the dust the first
thing that happens is the dust comes in your face and so it's actually quite a tough process to start seeing yourself and then finally when the dust disappears you can then see yourself clearly so a lot of us are going through that dusting phase of trying to see ourselves clearly and therefore the people that we want to show ourselves to we can't because we're still trying to see ourselves yeah
wow that's very heavy i love i love don't worry if it's too heavy i love that i well i you know just like it's also just as a personal validation i kind of felt like what i said to you is what i felt but now it's further validated by you know um well i i you know body of work well when i was reading through the book all i was doing was nodding all the time but what i found different and what i love about the storytelling
and i'm trying i know you're telling some great stories from there and i want everyone else to go and get the book too but the thing in the book is that the way you tell stories is is it's it's effortless but it's also from your deep observation and analysis right like it's you you deeply observe details yes from what people are wearing all the way through to their lips everything matters
yeah and it does and that's what i loved about the book and that's what i'm validating back is that i truly believe that becoming an expert in observation yeah is is everything because if you genuinely are observing the scene and the unseen yeah no that's really smart i love it i like i learned from you no no no i love it you're inspiring everything we're doing i mean you went through the discipline of becoming a monk
which is i and i so admire that it's um but it's it's really true you have to be deeply observational yeah well we'd have the awkward task of having to walk down the same path every day and having to find something new on it yeah like that was one of our tasks like we were trying to walk down the same path and have to find something unique every day yes wow and it was like it's hard after
a while like it sounds easy but after a while no you really have to look and and i think that's what i'm seeing in you is that you're meeting all these people that everyone in your industry meets but you're able to meet them uniquely i do that's what you i definitely do yeah many people have met all the people i've met yes but don't see what i see or feel what i felt from just like could be a millisecond just
some little nuance or a question that they turn away from and you wonder why and it means something yeah absolutely how many days did you do that particular thing though that we did for about 30 days so it's and you had to articulate it yes we had to explain every day and and often they would they would play with us in the sense that we were asked to find a new stone every day
and so what you would do what your what your material manipulative mind would do is you would find two stones and then you'd say okay i'm going to show this one today and tomorrow i'll talk about that one oh my gosh and then and the next day the monks would say okay now we're not looking for stones anymore we're looking for new flowers and your ego mind loses and you're like oh man like you know and it's just great
because it just crushes your your ego and your manipulative mind to show you that life doesn't work like that like you've got to really be present it's not just about manipulating the answer anyway so yeah yeah so you can't start developing patterns and outsmart it correct that's correct and we think we can right yeah we think we can how have you let go of control in these conversations i feel like
when you're in these difficult meetings or you're in situations even when there may be abyss how do you let go of control because when i'm reading this it sounds like you're able to really detach yeah from where things are going and allow it to naturally flow how have you given up control over these that's a good question um and i know it's taking something about it well i think uh i i know what you're saying uh i
think i trust that i'll have something to add because i do come to all these conversations prepared so how do you prepare tell me that well i would read something about somebody you know i would read but but i i leave some things unsaid i knew you were a monk when we met i knew that you did that um and i knew certain very important facts uh although i didn't know there was a number one podcast in the world
but i knew some very important facts but i wanted to be fresh and have it be real so when i meet you i can discover with you and you will say something to me that will lead to something else that i don't know the answer to yes and that becomes really fun and it becomes exciting and and becomes like you know i don't want to sound weird but it becomes like your best date then like you're you're in the zone
of something cool you know like in that vertical line but you don't know where it's going and how it's gonna how it's gonna produce life yeah and so that's really fun for me um i you know i am scared sometimes of if there's nobody that fits silent but i just get through that how do you how do you deal with awkward silences and conversations i think that's something that everyone
who's listening right now knows that whether you're on a date or you're at dinner with friends yeah there's so many awkward silences and you're sitting with hugely influential people and there's those awkward silences how do you navigate those i'm not beyond like groveling girl i might just go like oh come on what are you thinking about or and if i get nothing then i'll say i'll do the i will i will turn
a fact into a question i'll go did you know the following thing did you know that song from gucci mane just dropped last week or i'd say um i was just i went to the atacama desert and have you ever been they go no and they just no i go well i went because i was searching for the greatest night sky in the world and my wife said it there's two places and one of them is the atacama desert in northern chile so we went to it wow
or i could say everyone can go like how's your family where's your vacation what do you like to eat what do you hate to eat you can go you can invent stuff yeah and this is part of what you're saying like i feel like there's such a need for us to become better conversationalists yes there are and and i feel like we've started talking in abbreviations and acronyms because of social media so
like absolutely i i like you know like you would it's such a normal thing when your partner is out to message them and just say milk like you would just say milk in a message and they know that that means get milk yeah and you know what that means but then when you turn that into a conversation and you start talking in like you see them walk out the door and you're like milk with nothing else and
there's nothing else and it's like so much of our conversation gets shrunk into abbreviations and acronyms yes it does and no doubt just stuff and i'm just like but there is a need what i feel you're doing is you're telling us to expand our vocabularies and our minds to actually dive into a real conversation and stop talking like we do on small tests trust that an act trust that an actual conversation will produce
something of value yeah you don't have to know what it is but i guarantee you'll produce something of value even if it's awkward at first yeah and i love preparation and trust i think those are great practical takeaways for everyone listening that preparation and trust together yes is a beautiful synergy yeah you have to do preparation yes you do because then you're not that's not fair to the person you're
calling up or texting or emailing can i meet you you have to do some preparation yeah correct correct and there's no shortcuts yeah and just for everyone's information this is the research we do for all our guests like we go dive in like it's prepared and and at the same time i love the reason why i'm validating preparation and trust is that's how i approach this conversation of we're very prepared we're very
researched but at the same time i just want to have a real exchange yes and so i'm not tied to that framework but the framework gives you a foundation to then build on yeah right i mean look look there are times yes there are times where i'm interviewing somebody and i know their body of work but they just written a book and i sometimes say to my wife veronica should i tell him i read it and then
we always conclude no say i heard about it i heard it was amazing but i haven't had a chance to read it yes um but you can choose whatever you want to choose that's my choice because i don't want to get busted yeah because then it just kind of undermines the whole thing so absolutely so you can't do everything but you can do enough you can do something you know you can we can all prepare a little yes
yeah i love that one one of the things that fascinates me about your work is this theme of redemption yeah like this consistent theme that keeps coming back up and i think that with communication even within face-to-face communication redemption is such a need in our lives yeah because i think we think we regret what we've said we feel pain by what we've said or heard from others like communication has so much weight to
it when it's been done negatively that redemption is something that we all need where does that why is that theme so striking for you and and how have you seen that kind of play out in your work well okay so redemption um well first of all my goal with making movies or television shows or whether it's friday night lights where they lose the game originally in the movie or you don't always have to
win at things um but it's good redemption to me would be uh you know an emotional resolution that is a plus so you don't have to get the girl you just have to do your best you don't have to get the girl you just have to have dignity you just in other words i i just want either the movies or television their shows are documentaries and you know um pavarotti which we just finished it wasn't a perfect person
but there's redemption in pavarotti so i want to show that i want i want people to i want to send out good vibes into the world however it goes even if it's just me saying hey to somebody hey like or um i don't want to there's so many examples i just want to have good vibes good vibes out there i i i realized um this is a big digression but i i kind of learned the message of this when as first of all
as a kid i'd have my parents periodically take me to a movie and it was always like a huge drag to get in the car it was very inconvenient then my dad would be mad because he couldn't find a parking spot and then all of a sudden there's bad vibes and then we have to wait in line and then we get our ticket and then we have to put our sweaters down or someone has to save the seats while someone gets the food
anyway before the movie starts the whole theater the auditorium is usually kind of tense and bad vibes so that was my memory of the movie-going experience of course i loved all those james bond movies and stuff nonetheless that's what i remember and then i remember the same thing happened when you got out trying to get your car to the parking spot all that stuff i see the movie e.t
in the cinerama dome this famous theater in hollywood actually we're quite close to it i've been there yeah it's yeah and it was very new at the time and all the same things were happening hard to park and i'm thinking oh my god the movie's over i sort of thought of course people are going to step on my feet i'm just a little guy it was so strange everybody the whole vibe was really good nobody pushed
no rush to the car the energetics of the entire auditorium had changed had transformed to something else and i thought wow that's amazing if i can be some way have that be my goal to try to make movies or television shows that make you feel better you know yeah um because that gives you confidence and it and confidence gives you the ability to hatch new ideas and you know so so that's kind of how
redemption factors into it in the movie like eight mile that i produced about a rapper you know i've watched that movie way too many times eminem's behind that you can't see it oh i know yeah so yeah and so that movie is not like a man be you know it's not a it's not it's you know it's a serious movie you know it's intense there's you know words and this and that and uh there was there's acts of violence and stuff
but ultimately it's an aspirational film it's a movie about a kid that had to become self-actualized to sort of emotionally survive it wasn't even about him going off to be the biggest hip-hop star in the world in fact that isn't what happens in the story of the movie he just was able to say yeah i am white trash liberate himself from all his emotional injuries so that he can actually look at people
and know himself and dust off the mirror as you said so yeah you know it it's there's all these different sizes shapes and forms in which you can do that yeah no and i love that and i definitely got that message from that movie i mean i must have watched that movie growing up i don't know like a million times and it's every time i watched it personally it just gave me more permission to be
myself wow like that's what i was getting from see that's cool yeah it's like permission to be yourself because that's what you see his character be rabbit go through of just getting permission to then finally stage and say be on stage and not be better or be worse yeah just to be yourself yes and i think that that's that's really to me where human connection starts is when you give yourself permission to be
yourself and you give someone else the permission to be themselves without judgment ambition all the other stuff you mentioned of just without like crowding it into like you having to be a certain way and them having to be yeah well that's so well said because that is sort of like thinking of your best date or your best meeting with somebody even just a business meeting your best meeting is when
that happens right when those guards go down and both people feel permission to be themselves but i thought you did that when i first met you obviously i'd i mean some of you the movies you've made are some of my favorite movies rush too is one of my favorite movies i love that movie and it's for me those have been so when i got the opportunity to meet you and my team had mentioned to me that we could me
i you know for me it was like i was like wow i'm meeting someone that i've like admired for a long time really look up to you i was nervous because i was meeting someone that you know that that's important to me in some context and and it's just you were so good at helping me be myself because the first thing i think you said to me when i came to your home was just like oh gee i've been listening to you all
week and like you're like i've been listening to your youtube videos and i heard you say this and i was just like oh wow like i just feel at ease because someone's giving me context that they've they're aware of what i'm doing and and they're meeting me and i just felt wow someone who's so busy someone who has so many huge things going on had the time to do that yeah and i'm like if you've got the time to do that
to make someone like me feel at ease then for me we've all got time to do that yeah for everyone that we meet you know and so often i think we have meetings where we've done no preparation for the person yeah someone walks into a room and you're like all right so tell me why you're here right and it's like it's horrible you're like always pitching yourself and it's like i think people don't want
to pitch themselves you're not your best when you're pitching yourself no and and i think there's a pressure to pitch yourself and i love being in scenarios where i'm not pitching myself because that's when i can truly give myself permission i feel you really did that for me when we met and i thought that was a beautiful thing to point out because i feel the fact that you did that for me i'm
i'm hoping people listening and watching we can all do that for everyone in our lives yes just giving people that yeah what a memory you have because i do remember before the day we met a lot of people said oh my god you're meeting jay shetty and then on and on and it was like all diverse groups of people are going oh you're meeting jay oh you're meeting jay and i thought wow i've really missed out by not
meeting jay clearly so then um jamie said okay you know whatever day it was so i crashed course in like the last three the three days prior to this meeting i watched and listened to so many of your pieces now that wow i get it you know like i actually was able to well it was very easy to connect into into you so um yeah yeah no thank you but no i really felt that and i think that that's such a powerful thing to do
that for someone is to help them i think sometimes we have to let our guards down but we have to help other people let their guard down too yeah and i think that is an environment and a space that we create which i think you create and i think that's why so many of the most successful people in the world that are mentioned in this book are able to do that with you as well oh thanks yeah
i think well the thing i did do another thing i feel like i have so many stories yeah everything go for it but when i started my career and i got and i all of a sudden i i had uh you know some power and money and all that you know i was very aware of powerful men for the most part having that elevated desk when you walked in i mean all those hollywood cliches are really true you know you'd go in to see like in the
day you know there was sam goldwyn or you know louis b mayer i mean it was very long before me or daryl zanik and they had known to have elevated desks you know like so when you walked in you felt smaller and you sat across the desk and and even in my time in the 1990s it was still carried out that way guys that were really powerful they all had bla bla vinyl furniture like really lethally tough
black stuff and um and i remember thinking i'm gonna do just the opposite i'm gonna i'm not gonna even have a desk or i had one way off in the distance and everything was always like sitting around a very democratic kind of a vibe where it's like a coffee table a big l-shaped couch and you just sit and chill because you get the best out of artists when they're not scared yes so i thought that's the that's the way i'm going to
get my competitive edge yeah not by intimidating somebody and making them certain that they know that i'm powerful i'm going to just the opposite i love that that's awesome that's so beautiful and you did that our first meeting was at your home yeah yeah i was like okay i'll it okay you know and i just think that you you really live that and i think that's amazing because i i always feel that the people that
change culture are the people that change culture like you have to change the culture to be someone who makes a difference and i think today so many people are scared because they're following the rules like they see their agent treat the younger agent badly so they think when i become the senior agent that's what i'm gonna have to do yeah and i think we just perpetuate that culture we don't break cycles and we
don't break generational curses right like we just let them perpetuate it's amazing to see you just like go no i'm i'm going to change that what gave you the courage to like what gave you the boldness to to do that um well look i like everybody else want to feel special i want to earn my right i want to earn you know i want to earn feeling special yeah and i want to and i want to be acknowledged for it
um so you know there was a time where like the five main big producers all four of them all looked sort of similar you know they had they did action films they were very aggro um they yelled at assistants and stuff and you know they were very aggressive threw plates of food on them there's a lot of famous stories now i don't even want to say that i'm better than that i was just different
than that i'm not constructed i don't have a lot of sort of confrontational stuff going on in me uh in that way so i thought how am i gonna have a nick do i need a nickname or how do i do this um and i and i quite honestly i a lot of them had you know beards i can't i could not grow a beard quite honestly so i thought how am i going to do it so i did want to you know have something and so that's
when i sort of popped my hair up because my daughter sage thought oh that looked great wearing a swimming pool and i thought well okay that could be different yeah yeah and um so but i i didn't really you know um i i just kind of felt like and my career started with making a mermaid yes yeah i mean if my if my career started by with an action film or it started with um something that was less risky you know less against the
system or yeah you know like that seemed less crazy like everyone thought a mermaid movie is if you're gonna pick what could be a dumb idea that would be the dumb idea yes so i had a lot of people hundreds of people sort of say that was a very bad idea and so the fact that it worked validated this sort of movement for myself to just continue to try my finding my authentic self
trust the theme that lives inside of that authentic self and have that be transported in to movies or television that i do and so most of my movies and television shows the ones i work on that certainly that work have a theme and usually the theme is rooting for love rooting for friendship brotherhood is always a thing to me you know um and self-respect and identity is critical you know it's the avoidance of shame
yeah so many movies are kind of access around of respect you know having men men want to feel respected we all want to feel respected women want to feel respected yeah and so you have to allow people to have that identity um and best the good things will come from it amazing that's beautiful brian we end every interview with the final five this is a rapid fire quick fire okay so answers have to be
one word to one sentence maximum uh that's a cap and i will probably i will probably make you expand on stuff but but we'll try and stick with that right this is your final fight yes the first question is the movie you've re-watched the most godfather okay nice second question what is one movie you wish you created um oh my oh god what is that with michael j fox i love that movie uh um uh you know what it is
back to the fact that i'm sorry back to the future because i had made many many oh sorry i'm gonna stop back in the future i wish i would no camera well because i had produced a lot of hit comedies but when back to the future was made and i thought i thought wow that blows my mind that takes comedy to a whole other level i just thought the intricacy the genius to create something you know retrofit
back that story was brilliant i thought it was really brilliant i wish i could have made that movie amazing question number three if you could have a conversation a curious conversation with anyone dead or alive who would it be someone you haven't spoken to yet i would really love love to meet really have a conversation with the pope with the pope okay side question not one of the final five what would you ask him
what would be one question that you'd ask him how does he have the strength and ability to change which is almost an inflexible system nice yeah amazing okay great i'm sure we can dive into that on another day too question number four what's one of your favorite scenes from the house of cards because i know you like this shirt oh my god i do love house of cards uh i don't have a favorite scene but i
i do like i did like when kevin spacey would become so evil so badass that it's shocking you know i guess i like things that are unpredictable and he he and that became unpredictable so amazing and i liked it it was a big surprise to me because i offered robin wright to be in a beautiful mind i think she's an amazing actress um but she declined and uh i shouldn't say that but anyway
she did and i've always been a big fan because she's brave and she's she she's super badass in that show yeah i love it and the final and fifth question of the final five is if you could give one message to everyone listening what would that be if you had to give a final message to everyone listening it's a one step to look at somebody in the eyes please do it amazing i love it how
beautiful what a beautiful message to give to people just forget facetime forget messaging get in front of people get face to face have more curious conversations have conversations without ambition that line is going to stick with me the rest of my life so happy that is such a beautiful way of putting it thank you so much brian welcome for everyone who's been listening and watching thank you so much for tuning in today
i highly recommend that you go and get the book face to face the art of human connection it's in bookstores right now you can order it online too and we'll put the link into the comment section so you can order it straight from our feed make sure you go get the book if you want to hear about stories and what i love about this book is there are lots of people in our lives that we may never get to have curious
conversations with ourselves but it's people like brian who bring those curious conversations into our lives so there are a host of people in this book that you'd love to speak with and you may never get to speak with face to face but brian has and he's asked them incredible questions and you get to read about all of them in the book so in the same way as i always say i feel mentored by steve jobs even
though i never met him because i've studied everything he's ever said you will find the same mentorship and insight in this book so i highly recommend that you go and get face to face by brian grazer brian it's been an honor and my pleasure to have you here today in my home and also to interview you and i'm excited for our relationship to continue i'm excited for more conversations me too i'm so grateful i loved you're
brilliant i loved how this turned out yeah yeah yeah brilliant thank you thank you thank you so much perfect thank you if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today