What Brian Grazer Learned While Making 8 Mile | Joe Rogan

Now what other stuff do you do in terms of self-improvement? Um, if you should ask for Hanukkah. No, I'm, I'm con, I think a little like you as I've researched you that I'm constantly reading things like all of the time. Always non-fiction however. No fiction at all? No, I just, no. That's interesting for someone who produces a lot of fiction. Well I, what I like is I, yes, that's right. What I've found in my life, the, the, like, the, for me the foundational creative ingredients, or ingredients to a creative equation like making a movie or a TV show or painting or is counterpoint. So I have found that I'm dreamy enough myself, you know, like I, you know, and I've read of course all Joseph Campbell stuff, so I kind of understand formats of myths and the here with a thousand faces and, and, um, and I particularly like underdog stories. There's so many types of underdog stories that it's, um, so anyway, so I have that basic knowledge and then when I learn a subject, let's say I learn the subject of architecture or physics or a little bit of chemistry or whatever the, you know, it's, it's all like from an archeological perspective because it's all new to me. So I found, for example, when I produced the movie Eight Mile, which is about hip hop, right? It's about battles in Detroit. First I thought, I can even go back further. I'll do this quickly though. I thought I should get like the hottest, you know, video director, the coolest guy and I won't say those names, but there, there were the guys that were very visible at being the best at those videos, those hot videos. And then it occurred to me, I should get somebody that approaches it again, archeologically, where everything is a discovery. So I hired someone that knew nothing about hip hop, but was passionate about wanting to do the movie. And he was named Curtis Hanson. He's deceased right now, but he won, I think, believe two Oscars for LA Confidential. So he was kind of a classic American filmmaker that looked at everything with sort of a discovery lens. And that's why you're able to see if I pick the video guy that thinks he knows everything about hip hop, then all the little nuances that are new to the audience's eyes would have never been shot because he'd think, Oh, everybody knows that stuff. That's the good stuff, you know? And so sometimes authority on top of authority doesn't work out well. And I found that my career, all I did was write and produce comedies for the first 17 years of my movie career, starting with Night Shift and then Splash and Parenthood and Nutty Professor and Liar Liar and I could, you know, a lot of comedies, a lot of 5 Eddie Murphy thing, you know, Jim Carrey, three times, you know, and what I found was Jewish writers, Christian actors. In the Jewish words, they go, Jew writers, goyim actor. And goyim is like when Jewish people say it's the Christian, you know, the Catholic guy. It's always, I made eight movies, I think, with Tom Hanks, but he's like Gary Cooper or he's the Christian guy with the Jewish writers. Always, that works. Jew on Jew, no good. Christian on Christian, not funny. Really? Yeah, it just doesn't play. What's wrong with Jew on Jew? Only one Jew on Jew kind of worked in the last Woody Allen and they weren't meteoric hits. Like, you know, he was sort of dominated the ethos, you know, of, you know what I mean, he's of comedy in the 70s and 80s. But it just didn't work. You can't really, but I could name, I mean, Judd Apatow, talented Jewish writer, director. Usually he's got these guys that are like, they're just not that. They're Catholic Christian guys, you know, like our girls. I mean, who's the chicken train wreck? Melissa McCarthy. McCarthy, she's Catholic. He's a Jew. It's like, that's the counterpoint is what works. Isn't train wreck Amy Schumer? Is it Melissa McCarthy too? Oh, you might be right. Oh, it might be both. Yeah, yeah. It's both. Oh, thank God. Thank God we got tiebreaker here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.