[ad_1]
Brian Grazer is relentless. Said one former Hollywood studio executive: “If you throw him out the door, he comes in the window. If you throw him out the window, he comes through the chimney. If you throw him out the chimney, he comes through the pipes.” It is this relentlessness that got him past gatekeepers to meet with some of America’s greatest filmmakers while doing entry-level work at Warner Brothers. It is the same tenacity that helped him to realize his vision for making a live-action movie about The Grinch after it was initially rejected by Dr. Seuss’s widow. And it is what helped Grazer and his longtime creative partner, Ron Howard, to not just launch Imagine Entertainment, but also to sustain it.
For going on more than 40 years, Imagine Entertainment has produced a steady stream of films and TV shows—including 8 Mile, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Arrested Development and Empire—that have become iconic. Their work has been awarded Emmys, Golden Globes, Grammys, and Oscars. They also received Hollywood’s highest honor, the Oscar for Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind. In an industry not known for longevity, Imagine Entertainment has changed the script—proving its durability.
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Grazer about how he helped to build Imagine Entertainment from the ground up, the secret to creating enduring films in an ever-evolving industry, and why—even with so many accolades—he approaches every project with the same relentless determination.
What inspired your interest in filmmaking and the creation of Imagine Entertainment?
I have always been a storyteller. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. I was middle class. When I went to college at the University of Southern California, I was surrounded by a lot of rich kids. Because I was not rich at the time, I felt out of place. So, I created an identity to better fit in. I didn’t tell other students, but I worked at night at the Howard Johnson hotel to earn enough money to buy a Porsche 911T Targa. I would park in the red zone in front of the girls’ dorm so people like Ron Howard, who also went to USC, might notice and ask, “Who’s that guy with the Porsche?” I would tell kids that I skied in Gstaad, that I went to Le Dome to sip mimosas, and made-up a bunch of stuff. I was always creative.
After graduating, I worked as a law clerk for Warner Brothers. I delivered papers, mostly to celebrities. I used the opportunity to do an exercise—to try to meet a new person every day who was expert at their craft, including master filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and Hal Ashby. Everyone said yes to meeting. Then one person, Lou Wasserman, the head of MCA—the corporation that owned Universal Pictures—basically told me to not come in his office, and instead handed me a pencil, a pad of paper and some advice. He said to put the pencil to the paper since it had higher value together than as separate parts. Then he told me to get out. The interaction inspired me to start writing my stories down.
I wrote hundreds of short stories and outlines. Some of them became movies for television. But a couple of them, Night Shift and Splashbecame major motion pictures directed by Ron Howard. By the time we started collaborating, Ron was already a famous actor for his roles on the Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days. Our films helped establish him as a successful director too. And they established me in Hollywood, even earning me my first Academy Award nomination for the screenplay for Splash. The success of those early collaborations motivated Ron and me to start our own company—to own our creative output.
Before we called it Imagine, we considered other names. Because most of my stories started as what if ideas—what if I had the worst job in the world and worked in the New York City morgue at night, which became Night Shiftor what if I met a mermaid, which became Splash—I proposed calling it What If? It didn’t stick. We evolved it to Imagine That. Which became Imagine Entertainment. That’s the story.
[ad_2]
Source link
