#1370 - Brian Grazer

Joe Rogan (0:02)

All right, here we go. What's up, Brian? How are you?

Brian Grazer (0:04)

Hey, good.

Joe Rogan (0:05)

Thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it.

Brian Grazer (0:07)

Yeah, I'm psyched about it.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

I'm psyched about having you.

Brian Grazer (0:10)

Yeah, I'm now adjusting to the sound.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

Oh, in your ears?

Brian Grazer (0:14)

Yeah, my ears, and is it muffled? It has it all sounding?

Joe Rogan (0:17)

Perfect, sounds perfect.

So we were just talking about your books, and I said, let's save it. Let's save it for the podcast, because I wanted it to sound fresh. I want you to re-say it. So tell me about, you wrote two books?

Brian Grazer (0:29)

I wrote two books. And as you know, I'm a movie writer, and a movie and television producer.

Joe Rogan (0:36)

To say it mildly. I mean, you made some fucking amazing movies.

Brian Grazer (0:40)

Wow, thanks. Thanks, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:41)

My pleasure.

Brian Grazer (0:42)

Yeah, and in all this, I think my whole life and whatever those stories are, the movies are and the successes, I kind of think anyone that's really focused can do what I do. So that was kind of the end product of the first book, which was, it was called A Curious Mind, The Secret to a Bigger Life.

And that book is really about, I mean, how much do you want to know about it?

Joe Rogan (1:12)

Everything, whatever you want to tell me.

Brian Grazer (1:13)

Okay, so basically, I couldn't read it all in elementary school. And it caused a lot of shame and then a lot of trauma.

Joe Rogan (1:25)

Did you have dyslexia?

Brian Grazer (1:27)

I had dyslexia, quite a cute dyslexia. And I think we're out in Woodland Hills, which was the fancy part of the valley. I grew up in the flats of Sherman Oaks, actually as a little kid going to Riverside Drive Elementary School and then later to Nobel Junior High and then later Chatsworth High School.

And in elementary school, I couldn't read it all and they didn't classify it as dyslexia.

It was just, you're slow, you're dumb, you, why can't you answer this? And then you'd say, I can't read, and then that didn't make sense. It just didn't, none of those things computed really that somebody couldn't actually read a word. And I really couldn't read a word. So when you can't read a word, then you find ways to survive, cope, and not have the teacher look you in the eyes, and say, okay, Brian, come to the board and answer this question, because you're never, it's just gonna produce more shame, because you're not, you don't know the answer. It's not possible. So I found that, as that went on for quite a while, around the fourth, fifth, sixth grade, I really looked at people, I really looked them in the eyes to learn.

And I found that by looking somebody in the eyes, you could engage, I didn't know this then, but you engage their heart. If you're really doing it with sincerity and interest, you can engage people and move them and evangelize things. Get people to like play on your team, or you play on their team, they pick you and stuff. Good things happen, except the reading part.

But it enabled me to learn a lot just by looking at people and talking to people. And I had this one mentor, this little grandmother, her name was Sonia. And little Sonia, she was like 4'10, I guess, you know. And she would always say to me, she'd see me once a week, minimally, always once a week. And she'd say, you're going all the way, you're gonna make it big, think big, be big. And she had all these isms, because half my mom's side of the family was Jewish, my dad's side of the family is Catholic, the Jewish side, the grandmother was my mentor, and the person that really was the single person that I could kind of count on in life. And she'd constantly tell me how things, I'd go great, you have a gift for gab, she'd say.

And every time she said, you're gonna go all the way, I'm thinking there's like absolutely no empirical evidence I'm going all the way anywhere, you know? Except my parents were always arguing, let's put him back. The teacher, Ms. Stegg, said, let's put him back. So I just wasn't going anywhere, I didn't think. So that gave rise to me, gave rise to the fact that I thought the way I can really learn a lot is have these kind of curiosity conversations. And once I graduated college, I did this on a weekly basis and I still do it to this day, once a week. Sometimes once every two weeks, but never more than once every two weeks. I never, I'm pretty militant, but I'm extremely militant about it.