by Brian Grazer ; Charles Fishman ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2015
An appealing argument for maintaining open-minded receptivity, with special appeal for film buffs.
Academy Award–winning film and TV producer Grazer ranks curiosity with innovation and creativity as keys to shaping a successful career and a happy life.
“Curiosity has been the most valuable quality, the most important resource, the central motivation of my life,” writes the author. With the collaboration of business journalist Fishman (The Big Thirst: the Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, 2011 etc.), Grazer explains how a lively sense of curiosity and willingness to ask questions opened doors for him and widened his horizons. In 1974, at loose ends in the interim between college graduation and the beginning of law school, he chanced to overhear a young man describe how he had just quit a cushy job in the legal department at Warner Brothers, a job that entailed delivering legal documents. Grazer applied for the job. Rather than simply dropping off the packages, he pretended that he had to deliver them in person, giving him the opportunity to meet an array of fascinating people (e.g., Warren Beatty, Lew Wasserman) and engage them in brief conversations. At the same time, he took every opportunity to meet the higher-ups at Warner Brothers. As he gained confidence and his career advanced, Grazer made it a practice to conduct what he called “curiosity conversations” with people in all walks of life, and he has interviewed more than 500 people over the last 35 years (everyone from Barack Obama to Isaac Asimov to Tyra Banks to Amy Tan). The author explains that he did not meet with these people to get ideas for films but because he was “interested in a topic or a person.” These face-to-face encounters allowed him “to build up a reservoir of experiences and points of view” and keep him “plugged in to what's going on in science, in music, in popular culture…[and] the attitude, the mood, that surrounds what's happening.”
An appealing argument for maintaining open-minded receptivity, with special appeal for film buffs.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3075-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
More by Brian Grazer
BOOK REVIEW
by Brian Grazer
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
Share your opinion of this book
More by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
BOOK REVIEW
by Jon Krakauer
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.