A Curious Mind
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That Dr. Seuss had used the “GRINCH” license plate is noted in Charles Cohen’s biography of him: The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodore Seuss Geisel (New York: Random House, 2004), 330.
7. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was a huge hit in the Christmas movie season in 2000. It spent four weeks as the number-one movie in the country, and although it only debuted on November 17, it was the highest grossing movie of 2000 (ultimately making about $345 million), and is the second-highest-grossing movie of the Christmas season ever, after Home Alone. Grinch was nominated for three Academy Awards—for costume design, makeup, and art direction/set direction—and won for makeup.
8. Sales figures for Theodor Geisel’s books in 2013 come from Publisher’s Weekly: Diane Roback, “For Children’s Books in 2013, Divergent Led the Pack,” March 14, 2014, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/61447-for-children-s-books-in-2013-divergent-led-the-pack-facts-figures-2013.html, accessed October 18, 2014.
The New York Times reported Seuss’s total sales at 600 million copies on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street: Michael Winerip, “Mulberry Street May Fade, But ‘Mulberry Street’ Shines On,” January 29, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/education/dr-seuss-book-mulberry-street-turns-75.html, accessed October 18, 2014.
The story of Geisel being rejected twenty-seven times before his first book was published is often repeated, but the details are worth relating. Geisel says he was walking home, stinging from the book’s twenty-seventh rejection, with the manuscript and drawings for Mulberry Street under his arm, when an acquaintance from his student days at Dartmouth College bumped into him on the sidewalk on Madison Avenue in New York City. Mike McClintock asked what Geisel was carrying. “That’s a book no one will publish,” said Geisel. “I’m lugging it home to burn.” McClintock had just that morning been made editor of children’s books at Vanguard; he invited Geisel up to his office, and McClintock and his publisher bought Mulberry Street that day. When the book came out, the legendary book reviewer for the New Yorker, Clifton Fadiman, captured it in a single sentence: “They say it’s for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss’s impossible pictures and the moral tale of the little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well.” Geisel would later say of meeting McClintock on the street, “[I]f I’d been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I’d be in the dry-cleaning business today.”
The story of Geisel meeting McClintock on Madison Avenue is well told in: Judith Morgan and Neil Morgan, Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), 81–82. The Fadiman review, cited pp. 83–84.
9. James Reginato, “The mogul: Brian Grazer, whose movies have grossed $10.5 billion, is arguably the most successful producer in town—and surely the most recognizable. Is it the hair?” W magazine, February 1, 2004.
10. The New York Post did a brief story on the Cuba trip: “Castro Butters Up Media Moguls,” February 15, 2001, 10.
Chapter 5: Every Conversation Is a Curiosity Conversation
1. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her research focuses on shame and vulnerability, and she is the author of several best-selling books. She calls herself “a researcher and a storyteller,” and often says, “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” Her talk at TEDxHouston in June 2010—“The Power of Vulnerability”—is the fourth-most-watched TED talk ever, at 17 million views as of the end of 2014: www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability, accessed October 18, 2014.
2. Bianca Bosker, “Google Design: Why Google.com Homepage Looks So Simple,” Huffington Post, March 27, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/google-design-sergey-brin_n_1384074.html, accessed October 18, 2014.
3. From the website poliotoday.org. The history section is here, with cultural impact and statistics: poliotoday.org/?page_id=13, accessed October 18, 2014.
The website poliotoday.org is created and maintained by Jonas Salk’s research organization, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
4. This list of polio survivors comes from the compilation on Wikipedia, which contains source citations for each person listed: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poliomyelitis_survivors, accessed October 18, 2014.
5. One account of the often-controversial development of the polio vaccine is here: www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/pharmaceuticals/preventing-and-treating-infectious-diseases/salk-and-sabin.aspx, accessed October 18, 2014.
6. Harold M. Schmeck, Jr., “Dr. Jonas Salk, Whose Vaccine Turned Tide on Polio, Dies at 80,” New York Times, June 24, 1995, www.nytimes.com/1995/06/24/obituaries/dr-jonas-salk-whose-vaccine-turned-tide-on-polio-dies-at-80.html, accessed October 18, 2014.
Chapter 6: Good Taste and the Power of Anti-Curiosity
1. Carl Sagan said this in a TV interview with Charlie Rose, May, 27, 1996, The Charlie Rose Show, PBS. The full interview is available on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HEwO-2L4w, accessed October 18, 2014.
At the time of the interview, astronomer and author Sagan was ill with bone marrow cancer. He died six months later, on December 20, 1996.
2. Denzel Washington said he would only do American Gangster if, in the end, the character he was playing, heroin dealer Frank Lucas, got punished.
3. The ticker trading symbol for Imagine on the NASDAQ was IFEI—Imagine Films Entertainment Inc.
Chapter 7: The Golden Age of Curiosity
1. From Arthur C. Clarke’s 1951 book predicting the future of space travel: The Exploration of Space (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951, since re-issued), chapter 18, p. 187.
2. Bees are surprisingly fast: they cruise along at about fifteen miles an hour and can go twenty miles an hour when they need to. So they are as fast as a slow-moving car—but up close, given their small size, they seem to be going quite fast.
More on the speed of flying bees at this site from the University of California: ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=10898, accessed October 18, 2014.
3. An excellent scientific biography of Robert Hooke: Michael W. Davidson, “Robert Hooke: Physics, Architecture, Astronomy, Paleontology, Biology,” LabMedicine 41, 180–82.
Available online: labmed.ascpjournals.org/content/41/3/180.full, accessed October 18, 2014.
4. Curiosity as “an outlaw impulse,” from Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 25.
5. Beina Xu, “Media Censorship in China,” Council on Foreign Relations, February 12, 2014, www.cfr.org/china/media-censorship-china/p11515, accessed October 18, 2014.
6. The Karl Marx quote is often miscited as, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” The full context of the quote is revealing, because Marx was making an observation on the oppression and misery of the working class, which he thought religion tried to both paper over and justify. The full quote, which comes from Marx’ Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right (Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 131), is: “The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression of and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is a demand for their true happiness. The call to abandon illusions about their condition is the call to abandon a condition which requires illusions. Thus, the critique of religion is the critique in embryo of the vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
Index
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A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list
of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.
Entries found on pages 273–286 refer to content found in the Notes.
Abrahamson, Joan, 154–55
Academy Awards, 107–8, 139, 165, 177
accountability
and curiosity, 182
and democracy, 183–84
action, taking, 9, 129, 149
See also: doing nothing
actors: characteristics of great, 140–41
Adam and Eve story, 11–13
advertising executives:
curiosity of, 94
Affleck, Ben, 90
Allen, Herbert A., 117
Allende, Salvador, 70
Allred, Gloria, 53
American dream:
Imagine movies about, 167–68
American Gangster (movie), 6, 36, 77, 167–68, 169
Andersen, Hans Christian, 104
animals:
curiosity of, 6–7
answers to questions:
and familiarity as enemy of curiosity, 159
paying attention to, 9
purpose of, 152
and questioning culture, 152
“right,” 146–52
surprising, 63–67
See also: listening
anti-curiosity
and Cry-Baby movie, 173–74
definition of, 170
of Grazer, 172–74
and “making the case,” 170, 171
need for, 169–85
and “no,” 170–71, 172–73
and when to be anti-curious, 175
and when not to be curious, 173–75
Apollo 13 (movie):
and curiosity as shared knowledge, 82
and curiosity as storytelling, 35–36
Hanks’s role in, 148
as Howard-Grazer production, 31
influence of Grazer’s early career on, 6
London showing of, 226–29
Lovell-Grazer curiosity conversation and, 24
reality and, 78
“right” version of, 148
as story of real people, 164
which parts are true, 279
White House screening of, 129–31
See also: Lovell, Jim
archiving results of curiosity, 198–99
Arrested Development (TV show), 79, 119
art:
of Jeff Koons, 219–21
and Grazer’s interest in painting, 124
artistic curiosity, 199
Ashley, Ted, 17
Asimov, Isaac, 23, 97–100, 110, 281
Asimov, Janet Jeppson, 99, 110, 281
Aspen Ideas Festival:
Koons-Grazer meeting at, 221
Asperger Syndrome:
and Grazer’s curiosity on behalf of Riley, 162
audience expectations, 112
autonomy:
curiosity and, 192
Avco Theater (Los Angeles):
Cry-Baby at, 218
Splash at, 108, 218
Backdraft (movie), 31, 45, 128
Bailey, F. Lee, 26–28, 73
Baldridge, Letitia, 87–88, 90, 91
baseball:
McCain-Grazer conversation about, 208
baseball cap:
as Grazer’s gift to Bush (George W.), 212–13
Beastie Boys, 48
Beatty, Warren, 5, 106
A Beautiful Mind (movie), 6, 31, 45, 119, 148, 163–66, 168
A Beautiful Mind (Nasar), 163, 164
bee-car story, 187–88, 190–91, 285
Bel-Air Hotel (Los Angeles): Oprah-Grazer conversation at, 225–26
Benedict, Barbara, 13, 194–95, 196
Berle, Milton, 217
Bible:
Adam and Eve story in, 11–13
Asimov’s literary guides to, 98
bin Laden, Osama, 49
Blatty, William Peter, 5
Blue Crush (movie), 124
Blue sky question, 274–75
Boredom, curiosity as cure, 1
Boseman, Chad, 137
“boss”:
asking questions of, 150
in entertainment industry, 141
at Imagine Entertainment, 127–32
using curiosity as, 134–37, 139–43, 144–50
boxing:
Mailer-Grazer conversation about, 221–23
Braddock, James J., 207, 221, 222
bravery:
curiosity and, 97, 124, 169, 191
Brin, Sergey, 146, 147
Brolin, Josh, 93
Bronfman, Clarissa, 131
Bronfman, Edgar Jr., 128–29, 130, 131
Brown, Brené, 127, 283–84
Brown, James, 101, 137–39, 149
See also: Get On Up
Brown, Paul, 57, 278
Bush, George H.W., 42, 276
Bush, George W., 205, 207, 209, 212–13, 221
Calley, John, 17, 18–19, 20, 21, 28, 275
Cameron, James, 178
Captain Phillips (movie), 78
car-bee story, 187–88, 190–91, 284–85
car cup holders, 55, 278
Carrey, Jim, 28, 45, 110, 111, 176
Cartel (movie script), 93–94
Carter, Graydon, 125–26, 163, 203, 206
Casey, Bill, 49
Castro, Fidel, 126, 202–6
CBS, 125, 203, 204, 274–75
Charles (British prince), 226
children:
curiosity of, 3, 7, 10–11, 193
and Dr. Seuss’s books, 113–14
Chile:
De Negri story and, 69–76
China:
curiosity in, 195–96
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 23, 48–49, 73
Cinderella Man (movie), 176–77, 207, 212–13, 221
city planners:
curiosity of, 94
Clarke, Arthur C., 153–54, 187
classrooms:
curiosity in, 13–14
Clinton, Bill, 129–32, 212
Clinton, Chelsea, 130
Clinton, Hillary, 130
Closet Land (movie), 75, 205
coaches:
curiosity and, 54, 59
Colby, William, 49
Columbia Pictures, 21
commitment:
taste and, 180
compassion:
connections and, 133
complacency:
and benefits of curiosity, 33–34
confidence:
anti-curiosity and, 172, 173
and asking questions as admitting ignorance, 118
and being different, 123
curiosity as source of, 33, 34, 100–101, 118, 132, 169, 181, 191
as foundation of ambition, 109
of Gates, 44
as important in entertainment business, 33
and making hard calls, 118
and recognizing good ideas, 179
taste and, 180–81
and when to stop being curious, 175
connections:
actors and, 140–41
characteristics of, 133
curiosity conversations and, 127
curiosity as means for making, 132–45, 161–62, 189
and familiarity as enemy of curiosity, 158, 160
importance of, 133–34
“making your case” and, 140
and management, 134–37, 142–44
motivation and, 142
and purpose of curiosity, 161–62
sincerity of, 133
trust and, 133, 189
in workplace, 133–46
Connelly, Jennifer, 164, 165
consumer research, 57, 59
conversation:
as art, 199
as central to entertainment business, 19
See also: curiosity conversations; specific conversation
Corning, 14
courage:
curiosity as form of, 97, 124, 132, 169, 191
creativity:
curiosity compared with, 58–62, 189–90
curiosity as tool for sparking, 37, 55, 58–62, 132, 151, 192
experts’ views about, 60
Grazer’s views about, 151, 193
talking about, 58, 59–60
teaching, 60–61
criticism:
and when not to be anti-curious, 175
Crowe, Russell, 78, 143, 144, 148, 164, 165, 176–77, 207
Cruise, Tom, 141–43, 145
Cry-Baby (movie), 173–74, 218
Cuba:
Grazer and media executives trip to, 125–26, 202–6
Cukor, George, 220
Culp, Anna, 148–49, 182
culture:
curiosity and, 6, 13–14, 182, 193
curiosity:
archiving of, 198–99
on behalf of others, 162–66
bias against, 13–14
camouflaging of, 8
characteristics of, 14, 62, 196
cost of, 38
culture and, 6, 13–14, 182, 193
curiosity about, 192
as dangerous, 195–96
as “deconstructive” process, 191–92
definition of, 10
as disruptive force, 11, 14, 53–57, 63
emotional, 24, 31–32, 76, 90–91
enemies of, 158–59
fear and, 97, 114–15, 116, 123, 124, 125
golden-age of, 192–200
Grazer’s approach to, 57–58
as habit, 16–28, 58, 191
and human development, 82, 83
as impertinent, 11, 95, 196
as innate, 38
limits of, 169–85, 190
loss of, 187
as management tool, 28, 111–13, 134–52
most valuable kind of, 198–99
“natural,” 116
prevalence of, 6–7, 94–96, 133
as providing a framework, 180
as receptivity, 199
as requiring work, 116
as revolutionary, 11, 193–95
as risky, 67
scientific, 193–95
as secret to living a bigger life, 200
as secret weapon, 6
as sin, 195
as state of mind, 200
surprise and, 63, 67, 91, 160
talking about, 58–60
as technique, 32