A Curious Mind (19 page)

But that doesn't work. You just end up reshaping an interesting, unconventional story into a different story to match the popular conception.

So when someone tells me “no,” almost always, that's it. I don't want them to unfurl this long, persuasive argument about why they think my idea isn't any good, or isn't right for them, or could be much better if I reconfigured it somehow.

I decline all that input because I'm worried about being persuaded out of something I really believe in. I'm worried about being persuaded into something I don't believe in—just because someone smart and persuasive is sitting in front of me, making
their
case.

If I've formed an opinion on something fundamental like a movie we should do, if I've dedicated a lot of time to it, a lot of money, a lot of curiosity, then I don't want any more information on it. I don't want you trying to “recontextualize” an artistic decision that I've made.

Thanks anyway, I don't want your critique.

Because here's another thing I know for sure.

You don't know what a good idea is.

At least, you don't know what a good idea is any more than I know what a good idea is. No one in Hollywood really knows what a good idea is before a movie hits the screens. We only know if it's a
good
idea after it's done.

That's not about success, by the way. At Imagine, we've done some movies that were successful, but weren't necessarily great movies. Much more important, we've done some great movies that weren't huge box office hits—
Rush
,
Get On Up
,
Frost/Nixon
,
The Doors
.

In advance, my passion for something I think is a good idea, an interesting idea, is just as valid as someone's decision that it isn't. But the certainty that something is a worthwhile idea is fragile. It requires energy and determination and optimism to keep going. I don't want other people's negativity to get inside my head, to undermine my confidence. I don't need to hear a list of criticisms—whether it's sincere or not. When you're trying to get a movie made, when you're making your case, you've spent months or years working on something, and you need to develop a kind of invulnerability if you're both going to get it made, and protect it.

When I'm checking in with people I want to join us, it works something like this.

I'll send out the script, I'll send out all the information—I'm the producer, Ron Howard is the director, here's the budget, here's the cast.

After a little while, I get on the phone. They'll say, “We're going to pass.”

I'll say, “You're passing? Honestly? Are you
sure
you're passing? Okay, then, thank you very much. I really appreciate you reading it.”

If it's something I think is really right for the person I'm talking to—if I think
they're the ones making a mistake—I might say, “You can't say no! You gotta say yes!”

But that's it. No curiosity. The wall goes up. Anti-curiosity.

Because I don't need someone casting doubt, when they've spent an hour thinking about the project, and I've spent three years thinking about it. If they're saying no, I need all my determination and confidence to grab hold of the idea and take it to the next person with the same level of passion and enthusiasm. You can't get anything done trying to absorb and neutralize everyone else's criticisms.

There have been moments when I've been a little too quick with my anti-curiosity. Ron Howard and I took Imagine Entertainment public in 1986.
³
We thought it would be an innovative way to run a creative company. But public companies are much more complicated to run than private companies—and that turns out to be particularly true in a hit-and-miss kind of business like movie and TV production. We were undercapitalized. We were uncomfortable with all the rules about public companies—what we had to reveal, what we could talk about, what we couldn't talk about. After seven years, in 1993, Ron and I bought the company back from the shareholders. Before we went public, we certainly hadn't been nearly curious enough about what being a “public” company would require of us.

When it comes to movies, there is one really memorable case where I shouldn't have suspended my curiosity—the quirky movie
Cry-Baby
from 1990. Curiosity got me into that
movie. A script came in from director John Waters. I read it. I was attracted to it.

I had just seen
Hairspray
, which Waters had written and directed, and I loved it. I thought
Cry-Baby
could either be a flop, or an unexpected hit like
Grease.
I said yes. We got an incredible cast to work with John Waters—Johnny Depp as the lead (it was his big movie break), and also Willem Dafoe, Patty Hearst, Troy Donahue, Joey Heatherton, Iggy Pop, Traci Lords.

I loved working with John Waters. I loved working with Johnny Depp. But here's what I didn't do: I didn't go back and see John Waters's other movies. A couple of people told me to—before you pay for a John Waters movie, they said, go watch a bunch of John Waters movies. He's not exactly mainstream. They said, at least watch
Pink Flamingos
, which is pretty edgy, before you green-light
Cry-Baby.

I was having none of it. I didn't want any of that hesitation in my psyche. I'd decided I was being curious enough—curious enough to see what happened with this John Waters film.

At the box office,
Cry-Baby
was a flop.

The lesson is pretty clear: I should have watched John Waters's previous movies. I should have watched
Pink Flamingos.
I didn't live with that script at all. I got excited, and I didn't want to second-guess my instincts.

So how do you know when not to be curious?

It looks harder to figure out than it really is.

Most of the time, curiosity is energizing. It motivates you.
It takes you to places you haven't been before, it introduces you to people you haven't met before, it teaches you something new about people you know already.

Sometimes curiosity carries you to places that are hugely unpleasant or painful, but important. It's hard to read about child abuse, it's hard to read about war, it's hard to hear about the painful experiences of people you love. But in all those kinds of cases, you have an obligation to learn, to listen, to understand.

Sometimes you have to listen to people offering criticism of yourself—a smart boss might have great advice about how to be more effective at work, about how to write better, or how to be more persuasive. A colleague might be able to tell you how you sabotage yourself, or undermine your work, or damage relationships you need to be nurturing.

In those instances, there's something constructive coming from the curiosity, from listening, even though the conversation itself might be unpleasant.

You know to stop being curious when your results are just the opposite of what you need—when they sap your momentum, drain your enthusiasm, corrode your confidence. When you're getting a critique but not much in the way of useful ideas, that's the moment for a pinch of anti-curiosity.

•  •  •

I ADMIT THAT I
don't know specifically where interesting ideas come from. But I know generally: they come from mixing a lot
of experiences, information, and perspectives, then noticing something unusual or revealing or new. But it's not that important to know where good ideas come from. It's important to recognize what you think is an interesting idea when you see it.

That presents a problem, of course, because I just said that no one in Hollywood really knows what a good idea is until we see it out there in the world.

But I do know what I think is a good idea, an interesting idea, when I see it.

A TV series built around catching a terrorist, where the good guy is racing the clock in real time. That's an interesting idea.

A movie about how one man—one very smart and also very strange man—came to shape the FBI for forty years, and thus shape crime fighting and America itself. That's an interesting idea.

Jim Carrey as a lawyer who can't tell a lie for twenty-four hours. That's an interesting idea.

Tom Hanks as a Harvard professor who needs to find the Holy Grail in order to clear himself of murder charges, and in the process uncovers the deepest secrets of the Catholic Church. That's an interesting idea.

All these ideas worked out really well—I thought they were good ideas, we brought together a team behind each one of them, and that team made good movies and TV shows.

We've had interesting ideas that didn't work out that well. How about Russell Crowe as a washed-up 1920s boxer who
makes a tremendous comeback, and becomes world champion? That was the movie
Cinderella Man
, which wasn't a big hit with moviegoers. But it's a good movie.

How about a movie dramatizing David Frost's four interviews with disgraced president Richard Nixon? It also wasn't a big hit with moviegoers. But
Frost/Nixon
is a good movie—it received five Oscar nominations and five Golden Globe nominations.

You may or may not like those TV shows or movies. The important thing is that I thought they were worthwhile ideas when they came to me, I recognized them as interesting. I worked passionately to develop each of them. I didn't just think they were interesting ideas, I believed they were, and then I acted like they were interesting ideas.

So how did I know they were worthwhile?

It's a question of taste.

They were good ideas—in my opinion. But my opinion about something like a movie or a TV show isn't the same as the opinion of a person buying a ticket and a bucket of popcorn to see
Liar Liar
or
Cinderella Man
.

My “opinion” about this kind of storytelling is based on decades of experience—listening to people talk about movie ideas, reading their pitches, reading their scripts, seeing what happens between idea and script and screen. My opinion is based on understanding, over and over, the work necessary to create movies and TV shows of quality—and trying to understand why quality sometimes matters to popularity, and why it sometimes doesn't.

My opinion is based on something people outside show business never see—all the things I say “no” to. Because I say “no” as much as anyone. The stories that we get pitched and don't make are as important a measure of taste as the ones we do. We are trying to make movies we love, as I tried to make clear in the conversation I had about the stalled movie. We're trying to make movies with a sense of good taste about them.

I do think I have good taste in movies. But it is clearly my own sense of taste about them. Steven Spielberg has good taste about movies, James Cameron has good taste about movies—but their movies look nothing like our movies.

If you have good taste, three things are true. First, you have the ability to judge the quality of something, whether it's music or art, architecture or cooking, movies or books. Second, your sense of whether something is worthwhile is individual—you bring a perspective to your judgments. And third, there is also something universal about your judgments—your taste can be understood and appreciated by people who aren't as experienced as you, whose sense of taste isn't as well developed as yours. Your good taste is educated, it has a splash of individuality about it, and also a certain breadth of appeal.

That's what taste is, in fact: an educated, experienced opinion that you can articulate, and with which other people can agree or argue.

What I think is a good idea comes from applying my forty years of experience—my taste—to the ideas that come my way. It's a little more complicated than that, of course—I may think
something is a good idea that isn't commercially viable; or I may pick the occasional project that's just fun, that doesn't really hit the top of the curve in terms of taste, but is very entertaining.

So to find interesting ideas, to have good ideas, most of us need curiosity.

And to recognize those ideas with real confidence you need good taste.

And to develop that sense of taste—of personal style and experienced judgment—you also need curiosity.

That's where my sense of taste comes from, in large part: curiosity—and experience.

If you've only ever heard one song, say, “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones, you can't have a well-developed sense of music taste. If your experience with art is only seeing Andy Warhol—or only seeing Andrew Wyeth—you can't have an evolved sense of taste about art.

You may say, hey, I really liked that song. Or hey, I really didn't care for those paintings by Andrew Wyeth. But that's not taste, that's opinion.

Developing a sense of taste means exposing yourself to a wide range of something—a wide range of music, a wide range of art—and not just exposing yourself, but asking questions. Why is Andy Warhol considered a great artist? What was he thinking when he did his art? What do other people think of his art—people with well-developed taste? What other art was being produced at the same time as Warhol's? What are his
best pieces? Who thinks his art is great? What other artists did Warhol influence? What other parts of the culture did Warhol influence?

Obviously, it helps to like what you're paying attention to, because developing a sense of taste requires commitment. There's no point in developing a sense of taste about hip-hop music if you really don't like listening to hip-hop music; the same is true of opera.

The point of all that curiosity isn't to persuade you to have the same opinion as anyone else about Andy Warhol. It's to give you a framework for understanding his work. You still have your own reaction—you can say, I understand the importance of Andy Warhol, but I don't really like his art. It's not to my taste.