A Curious Mind Read Online Free Page A
Author: Brian Grazer
huge figure and an important creative force in the movies in the 1960s and 1970s. Under his aegis, Warner Bros. flourished, producing movies like The Exorcist, A Clockwork Orange , Deliverance , Dog Day Afternoon , All the Presidentâ s Men , The Towering Inferno , Dirty Harry , and Blazing Saddles . 12
When I was working just down the hall from him, Calley was forty-four or forty-five years old, at the height of his power, and already a legendâintelligent, eccentric, Machiavellian. Warner Bros. in those days was making a movie a month, 13 and Calley was always thinking a hundred moves ahead. A handful of people loved him, a slightly larger group admired him, and a lot of people feared him.
I think what he found appealing about me was my innocence, my utter naïveté. I wasnât working any angles. I was so new, I didnât even know where the angles were.
Calley would say, âGrazer, come sit in my office.â Heâd put me on the couch, and Iâd watch him work.
The whole thing was a revelation. My own father was a lawyer, a sole practitioner, and he struggled to be successful. I was headed to law schoolâa life of manila file folders, stacks of briefs, thick casebooks, working away at a Naugahyde-topped desk.
Calley worked out of a huge office that was beautiful and elegant. It was set up like a living room. He had no desk. He had a couple of sofas, and he worked all day sitting on the sofa.
He didnât do any writing or typing, he didnât carry piles of work home from the office each day. He talked. He sat in this elegant living room, on the couch, and talked all day. 14 In fact, the contracts I delivered were just the final act, formalizing all the talk. Sitting there on Calleyâs sofa, it was clear that the business part of show business was all about conversation.
And watching Calley work, I realized something: creative thoughts didnât have to follow a straight narrative line. You could pursue your interests, your passions, you could chase any quirky idea that came from some odd corner of your experience or your brain. Here was a world where good ideas had real valueâand no one cared whether the idea was connected to yesterdayâs idea or whether it was related to the previous ten minutes of conversation. If it was an interesting idea, no one cared where it came from at all.
It was an epiphany. Thatâs how my brain workedâlots of ideas, just not organized like the periodic table.
For years, I struggled in school. I wasnât that good at sitting quietly, tucked into a little desk, following a bell schedule andfilling out worksheets. That binary way of learningâeither you know the answer or you donâtâdidnât fit my brain and didnât appeal to me. Iâve always felt like ideas come from all corners of my brain, and I felt that way even as a kid.
I did well in college, but only because by then I had figured out some tricks to succeeding in that environment. But the huge classes and impersonal homework assignments didnât excite me. I didnât learn that much. I was headed to law school because I had gotten in, and because I wasnât quite sure what else to do. I did at least have some idea of what it meant to be a lawyerâalthough, frankly, it seemed a lot like a life sentence to yet more homework assignments, assuming I passed the bar exam.
Calley, on the other hand, was one of the hippest guys in the world. He knew movie stars, he socialized with movie stars. He was highly literateâhe read all the time. He sat on his couch, with ideas and decisions winging through his office all day long without rules or rigidity.
Watching him was intoxicating. I thought, I want to live in this manâs world. Who needs a life of brown accordion files? I want to work on a sofa, follow my curiosity, and make movies. 15
Sitting there in his office, I could clearly understand that the movie business was built on
When I was working just down the hall from him, Calley was forty-four or forty-five years old, at the height of his power, and already a legendâintelligent, eccentric, Machiavellian. Warner Bros. in those days was making a movie a month, 13 and Calley was always thinking a hundred moves ahead. A handful of people loved him, a slightly larger group admired him, and a lot of people feared him.
I think what he found appealing about me was my innocence, my utter naïveté. I wasnât working any angles. I was so new, I didnât even know where the angles were.
Calley would say, âGrazer, come sit in my office.â Heâd put me on the couch, and Iâd watch him work.
The whole thing was a revelation. My own father was a lawyer, a sole practitioner, and he struggled to be successful. I was headed to law schoolâa life of manila file folders, stacks of briefs, thick casebooks, working away at a Naugahyde-topped desk.
Calley worked out of a huge office that was beautiful and elegant. It was set up like a living room. He had no desk. He had a couple of sofas, and he worked all day sitting on the sofa.
He didnât do any writing or typing, he didnât carry piles of work home from the office each day. He talked. He sat in this elegant living room, on the couch, and talked all day. 14 In fact, the contracts I delivered were just the final act, formalizing all the talk. Sitting there on Calleyâs sofa, it was clear that the business part of show business was all about conversation.
And watching Calley work, I realized something: creative thoughts didnât have to follow a straight narrative line. You could pursue your interests, your passions, you could chase any quirky idea that came from some odd corner of your experience or your brain. Here was a world where good ideas had real valueâand no one cared whether the idea was connected to yesterdayâs idea or whether it was related to the previous ten minutes of conversation. If it was an interesting idea, no one cared where it came from at all.
It was an epiphany. Thatâs how my brain workedâlots of ideas, just not organized like the periodic table.
For years, I struggled in school. I wasnât that good at sitting quietly, tucked into a little desk, following a bell schedule andfilling out worksheets. That binary way of learningâeither you know the answer or you donâtâdidnât fit my brain and didnât appeal to me. Iâve always felt like ideas come from all corners of my brain, and I felt that way even as a kid.
I did well in college, but only because by then I had figured out some tricks to succeeding in that environment. But the huge classes and impersonal homework assignments didnât excite me. I didnât learn that much. I was headed to law school because I had gotten in, and because I wasnât quite sure what else to do. I did at least have some idea of what it meant to be a lawyerâalthough, frankly, it seemed a lot like a life sentence to yet more homework assignments, assuming I passed the bar exam.
Calley, on the other hand, was one of the hippest guys in the world. He knew movie stars, he socialized with movie stars. He was highly literateâhe read all the time. He sat on his couch, with ideas and decisions winging through his office all day long without rules or rigidity.
Watching him was intoxicating. I thought, I want to live in this manâs world. Who needs a life of brown accordion files? I want to work on a sofa, follow my curiosity, and make movies. 15
Sitting there in his office, I could clearly understand that the movie business was built on
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