blood sugar and helping him clean up.
“I mean, it’s kind of the most embarrassing
thing that could happen,” Grazer says. “But he
probably thought, ‘Wow this guy really cares.’ I
think that moment made him really engage.” En-
gage a lot. After their initial, messily brief meeting,
they scheduled a later, eight-hour curiosity conver-
sation at Grazer’s home that also included George
Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
It’s that embrace of human fallibility and vul-
nerability that is at the core of so many of the most
memorable characters in the stories Imagine tells:
the Nobel laureate who can master math but not
his own mind, the astronaut who is denied his only
chance at a lunar landing. (Grazer writes about
the 1996 Oscars ceremony at which Apollo 13,
nominated for Best Picture, lost. Lovell,
two seats away from him, reached over
and clasped his arm. “It’s O.K.,” he said,
“I didn’t make it to the moon either.”)
One of Grazer’s favorite insights in
Face to Face belongs not to him, but to
Oprah Winfrey, who has interviewed
thousands of people in her career,
and found that nearly all of them—
Presidents, royalty, billionaires—have
the same question when the camera goes
off: “Was that O.K.?” No matter who we
are, we want to please and we carry that
innate, even sweet fear that we’re failing
to please. “It means you care,” Grazer
says, “so I’d say it’s a good thing.”
He’ll be asking “Is this O.K.?” a lot
soon, as Imagine continues to expand
far beyond its roots. Its new content
will include more multi cultural movies,
pre-school TV, documentaries—like the
recently released Pavarotti and the ear-
lier Grammy-winning Beatles doc Eight
Days a Week—and even podcasts and
Broadway adaptations of Parenthood
and A Beautiful Mind.
Grazer and Howard are 68 and 65
respectively, both keeping a teenag-
er’s pace, but the question inevitably
arises of whether the partnership that
has churned out nearly four decades of
work is beginning to think about the
body of work that will endure in the de-
cades that will come after them. Grazer
answers philosophically.
“Honestly, very honestly I just live in
the present,” he says. “Because we don’t
really know if tomorrow’s happening.”
He very much seems to be enjoying
all of his todays. I’m put in mind of a mo-
ment several years ago, when I was seated
at a table with Grazer at the annual
TIME 100 Gala, the dinner at which this
magazine celebrates the 100 most influ-
ential people in the world. The gala is, by
any measure, a glittery affair— especially
for journalists who, to be frank, don’t get
out all that often. But Grazer surely gets
out all the time—to Oscar ceremonies,
White House screenings, overseas pre-
mieres, royal audiences.
All the same, during the dinner, I
spotted Grazer looking about, smiling,
taking in the faces, wholly in the mo-
ment. He caught me looking, and he
beamed. “This is just great!” he said. As
a cradle-to-grave outlook on life, that’s a
pretty hard one to beat.
‘Hollywood is
1,000% that—
almost more
than talent.’
BRIAN GRAZER,
co-founder, Imagine
Entertainment, on human
communication
PEYTON FULFORD—THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
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