A Curious Mind

by Brian Grazer

  This range of expertise is astonishing today, in an era when so many people, even scientists, are so specialized. The kinds of discoveries and insights made by someone like Hooke are thrilling. But what is really humbling is that scientists like Hooke didn’t just revolutionize how we understand the world—from the motions of the planets to the biology of our own bodies. They had to be revolutionaries. They were fighting contempt, mockery, and two thousand years of power structure that not only set strict limits on how each member of society could operate, but also what it was okay to ask questions about.

  As the scholar of curiosity Barbara Benedict explained when we talked to her, “One of the things that made the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientists really extraordinary is that they asked questions that hadn’t been asked before.”

  Hooke, she pointed out, “looked at his own urine under the microscope. That was hugely transgressive. No one had ever thought to look at urine as a subject of scientific examination.”

  Benedict is a literary scholar—she’s the Charles A. Dana professor of English Literature at Trinity College in Connecticut—and she became captivated by curiosity because she kept coming across the word, and the idea, while studying eighteenth-century literature. “I came across the word ‘curious’ so often in every text, I got a little irritated,” Benedict said. “What does it mean when you call someone ‘the curious reader’? Is that a compliment or not?”

  Benedict was so intrigued by the attitudes about curiosity she kept bumping into that she wrote a cultural history of curiosity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, titled simply, Curiosity.

  In fact, says Benedict, before the Renaissance, official power, the kind of power that kings and queens had, along with the organization of society, and the limits on what you could ask questions about were all the same thing. They were interwoven.

  Powerful people controlled information as well as armies. Rulers controlled the story.

  In that setting, curiosity was a sin. It was a transgression. It was “an outlaw impulse,” as Benedict described it in her book.4 Curiosity, including scientific curiosity, was a challenge to the power structure of society—starting with the monarch himself. It was a challenge to two millennia of “wisdom”—“I’m the king because God said I should be the king. You are a serf because God said you should be a serf”—that culminated in the American Revolution.

  Curiosity—asking questions—isn’t just a way of understanding the world. It’s a way of changing it. The people in charge have always known that, going all the way back to the Old Testament, and the myths of Greece and Rome.

  In some places, curiosity is considered almost as dangerous today as it was in 1649. The Chinese government censors the entire Internet for a nation of 1.4 billion people, almost half of whom are online.5

  And everywhere, curiosity retains a little aura of challenge and impertinence.

  Consider what happens when you ask someone a question.

  They might respond, “That’s a good question.”

  Or they might respond, “That’s a curious question.”

  Often, the person who says, “That’s a good question” has the answer ready—it’s a good question, in part, because the person knows the answer. They may also genuinely think you’ve asked a good question—a question that has caused them to have a fresh thought.

  The person who says, “That’s a curious question,” on the other hand, is feeling challenged. They either don’t have an answer at hand, or they feel the question itself is somehow a challenge to their authority.

  So why hasn’t the Internet done more to usher in a wider golden age of curiosity?

  I do think the questions we ask by typing them into an Internet search engine are a kind of curiosity. You can search the question, “Which is faster, a bee or a car?” and find a couple of helpful discussions.

  But the Internet runs the risk, as Barbara Benedict puts it, of being turned into a more comprehensive version of the pope. It’s simply a big version of “the machine with all the answers.”

  Yes, sometimes you simply need to know the GDP of the Ukraine or how many ounces are in a pint. We’ve always had great reference books for things like that—the World Almanac used to be a definitive source.

  Those are facts.

  But here’s the really important question: does having all of human knowledge available in the palm of our hands make us more curious, or less curious?

  When you read about the speed of bees flying, does that inspire you to learn more about the aerodynamics of bees—or does it do the opposite, does it satisfy you enough so you go back to Instagram?

  It was Karl Marx who called religion “the opium of the masses.”6 He meant that religion was designed to provide enough answers that people stopped asking questions.

  We need to be careful, individually, that the Internet doesn’t anesthetize us instead of inspire us.

  There are two things you can’t find on the Internet—just like there were two things Robert Hooke couldn’t find in the Bible or in the decrees of King Charles I:

  You can’t search for the answer to questions that haven’t been asked yet.

  And you can’t Google a new idea.

  The Internet can only tell us what we already know.

  • • •

  IN THE COURSE OF a business meeting, people in the movie business will often say, “That’s good enough.”

  They’ll say, “That script is good enough.” “That actor is good enough.” “That director is good enough.”

  When someone says to me, “That’s good enough,” it never is. It means exactly the opposite. It means the person, or the script, isn’t good enough.

  I’m sure the same thing happens in every line of work.

  It’s such an odd expression, that means exactly the opposite of what the words themselves mean. It’s a way of saying, We’re going to settle here. Mediocrity will do just fine.

  I’m not interested in “good enough.”

  I think part of my reservoir of determination comes from all those decades of curiosity conversations with people who themselves didn’t settle for “good enough.” Their experiences, their accomplishments, are a reminder that you cannot live by curiosity alone. To have a satisfying life (and to make valuable use of curiosity), you also have to have discipline and determination. You have to apply your own imagination to what you learn. Most important, you have to treat the people around you with respect and with grace, and curiosity can help you do that.

  For me, the most valuable kind of curiosity is the kind where there isn’t a specific question I’m trying to get the answer to. The most valuable kind of curiosity is the truly open-hearted question—whether to a Nobel laureate or the person sitting next to you at a wedding.

  And I’ve come to realize over time that you archive curiosity—that is, you archive the results of your curiosity, you save up the insights and the energy it gives you.

  There are a couple of ways of thinking about the kind of open-ended curiosity I’ve been so determined to pursue since I was in my twenties. Those conversations are like a mutual fund—a long-term investment in dozens of different people, personalities, specialties, themes. Some of them will be interesting at the moment we’re having the conversation, but not afterward. Some of them aren’t even interesting while we’re doing them. And some of them will pay off hugely in the long term—because the conversation will spark a broad interest, and a deeper exploration, by me; or because the conversation will get tucked away, and a decade later an idea or an opportunity or a script will come along and I’ll understand it completely, because of a conversation I had years before.

  But just like with the stock market, you don’t know in advance which conversations will perform, and which won’t. So you just keep doing them—you invest a little bit of effort across a wide range of time, space, and people, confident that it’s the right thing to do.

  I also think of the conversations as an artist might. Artists
are always watching for ideas, for points of view, for artifacts that might be helpful. An artist walking along the beach might find a dramatic piece of driftwood, eroded in an interesting way. The driftwood doesn’t fit into any project the artist is working on right now; it’s just compelling on its own. The smart artist takes the driftwood home, displays it on a shelf, and in a month or in a decade, the artist looks up, notices the driftwood again—and turns it into art.

  I don’t have any idea where good ideas come from, but I do know this:

  The more I know about the world—the more I understand about how the world works, the more people I know, the more perspectives I have—the more likely it is that I’ll have a good idea. The more likely it is that I’ll understand a good idea when I hear it. The less likely I’ll agree that something is “good enough.”

  When you know more, you can do more.

  Curiosity is a state of mind. More specifically, it’s the state of having an open mind. Curiosity is a kind of receptivity.

  And best of all, there is no trick to curiosity.

  You just have to ask one good question a day, and listen to the answer.

  Curiosity is a more exciting way to live in the world. It is, truly, the secret to living a bigger life.

  Brian Grazer’s Curiosity Conversations: A Sampler

  * * *

  As part of the work to write A Curious Mind, I did something I had never done before: assembled in one place as comprehensive a list as possible of the people I’ve had curiosity conversations with over the last thirty years. (Actually, some of the staff at Imagine did most of the work to create the list—for which I’m incredibly thankful.)

  Looking through the list of people I’ve had the chance to talk to is, for me, like turning the pages of a photo album. Just like a single snapshot sometimes does, a name can trigger a wave of memories: where I was when I met that person, what we talked about, what they were wearing, even someone’s posture, attitude, or facial expression.

  Reading through the list over and over as we worked on the book, I was struck by two things. First, an incredible sense of gratitude that so many people agreed to sit and talk to me, to give me a sense of their world, when there wasn’t anything tangible to be gained. All these years later, I wish I could call each of these people up and say thank you, again, for what they added to my life. Each person was an adventure—even if we were just sitting on the couches in my office—a journey well beyond the confines and routines of my own life. The breadth of experience and personality and accomplishment on the list is inspiring.

  And second, although A Curious Mind is populated with stories from the conversations, we had so many more we didn’t include that it seemed like it would be fun to offer a wider selection. What follows is a sampler—bonus material, we might call it here in Hollywood—from some of the curiosity conversations that have stayed with me.

  Lunch with Fidel

  The Hotel Nacional in Havana sits on the seaside boulevard, the Malecón, and it has two dozen rooms that are named after famous people who have stayed in them—Fred Astaire (room 228), Stan Musial (245), Jean Paul Sartre (539), and Walt Disney (445) are examples.

  When I visited Havana in February 2001, I was put in the Lucky Luciano Suite (211), a pair of rooms named for the famous Mafioso that are really too large for one person.

  I had come with a group of guy friends—we’d decided we wanted to do one guy trip a year, and we started with Cuba. (I tell a little bit of the story here). The Cuba trip was organized by Tom Freston, who was the CEO of MTV at the time, and the group included Brad Grey, the producer; Jim Wiatt, head of the talent agency William Morris; Bill Roedy, former head of MTV International, Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair; and Leslie Moonves, CEO of CBS, including the CBS News division.

  This was long before the thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba, of course, and a visit to Cuba in those days was a challenge—you never knew quite where you would get to go or whom you would get to meet.

  Before we went to Cuba, I invested a lot of effort trying quietly to set up a curiosity conversation with Fidel Castro, without making any headway.

  We flew into a Cuban military base—and it turned out that several of us had separately tried to set up meetings with Fidel. We made it clear to the folks taking care of us that we would welcome a meeting with Fidel.

  Cubans, we learned during our visit, try to avoid referring to Fidel by name. They have a gesture they use in place of saying his name—you use your thumb and forefinger to pull on your chin like you’re stroking a beard.

  We had a few false alarms. Once we were leaving a Havana club at two thirty in the morning, and an aide came and told us Fidel would see us at four a.m.. We were exhausted. We all looked at each other and said, “Okay! Let’s do it!”

  Almost as soon as we said yes, word came back that the meeting wasn’t going to happen after all.

  The day before we left, we were told that Fidel would host us as a group for lunch the next day, starting at noon. We had been scheduled to leave then, so we had to push our departure back.

  The next morning, we were ready to go. We were given a destination. We piled into the cars and headed off at high speed. Then, suddenly, the cars swerved to the side, did a U-turn, and accelerated in exactly the opposite direction, to a different destination.

  Was that mystery? Theatrics? Was it designed to provide Fidel with some real security? Who knows.

  As soon as we arrived at the new location, we were introduced to Fidel, who was dressed in his classic army fatigues. We were all given rum drinks, and we stood around talking.

  I was with Les Moonves, talking to Fidel. Les was arguably the most powerful person in our group, and after William Paley himself (founder of CBS), he was arguably the most successful broadcaster of all time. Fidel clearly knew who Les was, and treated him as if he were the “leader” of our group, directing a lot of his attention to Moonves. Fidel talked with such energy that he actually had two translators, who took turns.

  Fidel, too, held a drink, but in an hour of standing around, I never saw the glass touch his lips. I also never saw him tire, either of the standing or of holding the drink. After more than an hour, I whispered to Les, “Do you think we’re ever going to go inside for lunch?”

  Les said loudly, and partly to Fidel, “Maybe we ought to go inside and have lunch!”

  As if he’d completely forgotten about the meal, Fidel agreed immediately and ushered us into lunch. The meal consisted of two parts: many long courses of Cuban food; and Fidel, talking about the wonders of Cuba. He didn’t talk with us—he talked at us.

  He knew the details of everything. The weather for every part of Cuba. The kilowatts required to run a light bulb in a Cuban home. He could granularize anything about the country, its people, its economy.

  At one point, Fidel turned quite pointedly to Les and said, “When you get back to your country and your president, Bush, I wish you would tell him my thoughts”—and he proceeded to unfurl a long dissertation he wanted Moonves to pass on to the United States president. As if Les would naturally, and immediately, report in with President Bush.

  For literally hours, Fidel didn’t ask a single question of us, or engage us in conversation. He talked, and we ate and listened.

  Finally, he paused. He looked at us. And then, through the translator, he said to me, “How do you get your hair to stand up that way?” Everybody laughed.

  I think Fidel is so focused on symbolism and iconography that he might have been curious about what kind of statement I was trying to make with my hair. Feeling a little self-conscious, I decided to try to act smart. I said to Castro, “I make movies,” and I listed the serious dramas we’ve made—only the dramas, none of the comedies—and I concluded by saying, “And I made a movie about how totalitarian governments torture their citizens, called Closet Land.”

  Clearly, I wasn’t thinking at all. I guess I thought he would be impressed. Instead, maybe he thought, Perh
aps we will detain the one with the funny hair for a year.

  Graydon Carter looked at me with an expression that said, “Are you crazy?”

  Then Graydon looked at Fidel, beamed, and said, “He also made The Klumps!”

  It was the perfect deflection, but also scary. It gave me a moment to realize what I’d just said.

  Fidel let it all pass without a raised eyebrow. Eventually, lunch stretched to five thirty. The jets were waiting to fly us back to the United States. Again, I nodded to Les that maybe it was time to go. And again, Les elegantly moved us along, telling Fidel it was really time for us to go.

  Fidel presented each of us with a box of cigars as a parting gift. I was wearing a beautiful Cuban guayabera I had bought, and as we left, Fidel autographed the shirt, while I was wearing it, right in the middle of the back.

  The Hero, the Prediction and the Dangerous Baseball Cap

  On this particular day in June 2005, the second stop of the afternoon was a magnificent office in the United States Capitol. It was generously appointed, with rich wood paneling and solid, elegant furniture. The space conveyed not so much a sense of power as something much deeper: a sense of authority. It was the office of Senator John McCain, and I had an appointment to have a curiosity conversation with one of the most interesting and influential men in the United States Senate.

  It was shaping up to be quite an afternoon, that Wednesday, June 8. I had spent the hour in one of the least regal Senate offices before arriving at McCain’s office, with one of the least influential members of the United States Senate at the time: Barack Obama.

  And after my conversation with Senator McCain, I had to hustle a few blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to have dinner and a movie with the most powerful person in the world—President George W. Bush.