A Curious Mind (31 page)

The word “curiosity” appears twice in Walton's 346-page book, most notably in a quote from Sam Walton's wife, Helen, describing her distaste
at having become a public figure: “What I hate is being the object of curiosity. People are so curious about everything, and so we are just public conversation. The whole thing just makes me mad when I think about it. I mean, I hate it” (p. 98). The other use of curiosity is Walton's surprise at being welcomed in the headquarters of his retail competitors early on, while he was trying to learn how other people ran their stores. “As often as not, they'd let me in, maybe out of curiosity” (p. 104). Walton, too, didn't use the word to credit his own curiosity.

12
. The frequency of the words “creativity,” “innovation,” and “curiosity” in the U.S. media comes from Nexis database searches of the category “US Newspapers and Wires” starting January 1, 1980. As the words appeared more and more frequently, the Nexis searches were done week by week for January and June of each year, to get representative counts.

Chapter 3:
The Curiosity Inside the Story

1
. Jonathan Gottschall,
The Storytelling Animal
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2012), 3.

2
. You can Google the phrase “billion-dollar film franchises,” and you get a list from the folks at Nash Information Services, who produce movie-industry news and data focused on the financial performance of movies in a publication called
The Numbers
. Nash's list of movie “franchises” shows that at the U.S. box office, fourteen series of U.S. movies have made $1 billion or more. If you include international sales, the numbers are much larger. In all, forty-seven movie series have grossed more than $1 billion in box office sales. The up-to-date list is here:
www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchises/
, accessed October 18, 2014. Nash's
The Numbers
website also says that the movies I have produced in the last thirty-five years have gross sales of $5,647,276,060. Details here:
www.the-numbers.com/person/208890401-Brian-Grazer#tab=summary
, accessed October 18, 2014.

3
. What parts of the movie
Apollo 13
take liberties with what actually happened? If you're curious, here are a handful of websites that answer the question, including a long interview with T. K. Mattingly, the astronaut
who was bumped from the flight at the last minute because he was exposed to German measles:

Ken Mattingly on the movie
Apollo 13
:
www.universetoday.com/101531/ken-mattingly-explains-how-the-apollo-13-movie-differed-from-real-life/
, accessed October 18, 2014.

From the official NASA oral history website:
www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/MattinglyTK/MattinglyTK_11-6-01.htm
, accessed October 18, 2014.

From
Space.com
, “Apollo 13: Facts About NASA's Near Disaster”:
www.space.com/17250-apollo-13-facts.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

4
. “How Biblically Accurate is
Noah
?” Miriam Krule,
Slate
, March 28, 2014,
www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/03/28/noah_movie_biblical_accuracy_how_the_darren_aronofsky_movie_departs_from.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

5
. How did NPR discover its listeners were having “driveway moments”? A former senior news executive for NPR told me the network receives letters (and now emails) from listeners saying they did not go into the house when they got home—they sat in their cars until the story to which they were listening was over.

6
. If you're not a regular listener to National Public Radio, and don't know what it feels like to be so bewitched by a radio story that you can't leave your car, here's a collection of dozens of NPR stories that are considered “driveway moments.” Listen to one or two. You'll see:
www.npr.org/series/700000/driveway-moments
, accessed October 18, 2014.

Chapter 4:
Curiosity as a Superhero Power

1
. James Stephens (1880–1950) was a popular Irish poet and novelist in the early twentieth century. This line is from
The Crock of Gold
(London: Macmillan, 1912), 9 (viewable via books.google.com).

The full sentence, discussed later in the chapter, is: “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will; indeed, it has led many people into
dangers which mere physical courage would shudder away from, for hunger and love and curiosity are the great impelling forces of life.”

Stephens's death merited a seven-paragraph obituary in the
New York Times:
query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9905E3DC103EEF3BBC4F51DFB467838B649EDE
, accessed October 18, 2014.

2
. Isaac Asmiov's productivity as an author was so impressive that the
New York Times
obituary of him details the number of books he wrote decade by decade—in the obituary's fourth paragraph. Mervyn Rothstein, “Isaac Asimov, Whose Thoughts and Books Traveled the Universe, Is Dead at 72,”
New York Times
, April 7, 1992,
www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-obit.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

There is a catalog of every book Asimov wrote online, compiled by Ed Seiler, with the apparent assistance of Asimov:
www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

3
. In reconstructing this meeting, we exchanged emails with Janet Jeppson Asimov about my brief visit twenty-eight years ago. She has no memory of it, and she apologized for any rudeness. She also said that, although it wasn't publicly known at the time, Isaac Asimov was already infected with the HIV virus that would kill him six years later, and he was already often ill. Janet Asimov said her impatience may well have been a result of—entirely understandable—protectiveness of her husband.

4
. The
New York Times
story of the prostitution ring run out of New York's morgue is just as fun as I remember it—and is practically the outline for a movie script. It ran on August 28, 1976, opposite the obituaries in the “Metro” section. The opening sentence reports that the men running the call-girl ring often “chauffer[ed] prostitutes to clients in the Medical Examiner's official car.” The
Times
never did report what became of the charges against those men—nor did any other media outlet. Here is the original story (PDF):
query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F20617FC3B5E16738DDDA10A94D0405B868BF1D3
, accessed October 18, 2014.

5
. The movie executive and journalist Beverly Gray gives a detailed account of the creation of
Night Shift
and
Splash
in her biography of Ron Howard,
Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond
(Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 2003).

6
. 
Newsweek
did a story on the selling of the rights to
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
: “The Grinch's Gatekeeper,” November 12, 2000,
www.newsweek.com/grinchs-gatekeeper-156985
, accessed October 18, 2014.

Audrey's “GRINCH” license plate was noted in an Associated Press profile from 2004, the year that Theodor Geisel would have turned 100: “A Seussian Pair of Shoulders,” by Michelle Morgante, Associated Press, February 28, 2004, published in the
Los Angeles Times
,
articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/28/entertainment/et-morgante28
, accessed October 18, 2014.

That Dr. Seuss had used the “GRINCH” license plate is noted in Charles Cohen's biography of him:
The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodore Seuss Geisel
(New York: Random House, 2004), 330.

7
. 
Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
was a huge hit in the Christmas movie season in 2000. It spent four weeks as the number-one movie in the country, and although it only debuted on November 17, it was the highest grossing movie of 2000 (ultimately making about $345 million), and is the second-highest-grossing movie of the Christmas season ever, after
Home Alone
.
Grinch
was nominated for three Academy Awards—for costume design, makeup, and art direction/set direction—and won for makeup.

8
. Sales figures for Theodor Geisel's books in 2013 come from
Publisher's Weekly
: Diane Roback, “For Children's Books in 2013, Divergent Led the Pack,” March 14, 2014,
www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/61447-for-children-s-books-in-2013-divergent-led-the-pack-facts-figures-2013.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

The
New York Times
reported Seuss's total sales at 600 million copies on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
: Michael Winerip, “Mulberry Street May Fade, But ‘Mulberry Street' Shines On,” January 29, 2012,
www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/education/dr-seuss-book-mulberry-street-turns-75.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

The story of Geisel being rejected twenty-seven times before his first book was published is often repeated, but the details are worth relating. Geisel says he was walking home, stinging from the book's twenty-seventh rejection, with the manuscript and drawings for
Mulberry Street
under his arm, when an acquaintance from his student days at Dartmouth College bumped into him on the sidewalk on Madison Avenue in New York City. Mike McClintock asked what Geisel was carrying. “That's a book no one will publish,” said Geisel. “I'm lugging it home to burn.” McClintock had just that morning been made editor of children's books at Vanguard; he invited Geisel up to his office, and McClintock and his publisher bought
Mulberry Street
that day. When the book came out, the legendary book reviewer for the
New Yorker
, Clifton Fadiman, captured it in a single sentence: “They say it's for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss's impossible pictures and the moral tale of the little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well.” Geisel would later say of meeting McClintock on the street, “[I]f I'd been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I'd be in the dry-cleaning business today.”

The story of Geisel meeting McClintock on Madison Avenue is well told in: Judith Morgan and Neil Morgan,
Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), 81–82. The Fadiman review, cited pp. 83–84.

9
. James Reginato, “The mogul: Brian Grazer, whose movies have grossed $10.5 billion, is arguably the most successful producer in town—and surely the most recognizable. Is it the hair?”
W
magazine, February 1, 2004.

10
. The
New York Post
did a brief story on the Cuba trip: “Castro Butters Up Media Moguls,” February 15, 2001, 10.

Chapter 5:
Every Conversation Is a Curiosity Conversation

1
. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her research focuses on shame and vulnerability, and she is the author of several best-selling books. She calls herself
“a researcher and a storyteller,” and often says, “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” Her talk at TEDxHouston in June 2010—“The Power of Vulnerability”—is the fourth-most-watched TED talk ever, at 17 million views as of the end of 2014:
www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability
, accessed October 18, 2014.

2
. Bianca Bosker, “Google Design: Why
Google.com
Homepage Looks So Simple,”
Huffington Post
, March 27, 2012,
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/google-design-sergey-brin_n_1384074.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

3
. From the website poliotoday.org. The history section is here, with cultural impact and statistics:
poliotoday.org/?page_id=13
, accessed October 18, 2014.

The website
poliotoday.org
is created and maintained by Jonas Salk's research organization, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

4
. This list of polio survivors comes from the compilation on Wikipedia, which contains source citations for each person listed:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poliomyelitis_survivors
, accessed October 18, 2014.

5
. One account of the often-controversial development of the polio vaccine is here:
www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/pharmaceuticals/preventing-and-treating-infectious-diseases/salk-and-sabin.aspx
, accessed October 18, 2014.

6
. Harold M. Schmeck, Jr., “Dr. Jonas Salk, Whose Vaccine Turned Tide on Polio, Dies at 80,”
New York Times
, June 24, 1995,
www.nytimes.com/1995/06/24/obituaries/dr-jonas-salk-whose-vaccine-turned-tide-on-polio-dies-at-80.html
, accessed October 18, 2014.

Chapter 6:
Good Taste and the Power of Anti-Curiosity

1
. Carl Sagan said this in a TV interview with Charlie Rose, May, 27, 1996,
The Charlie Rose Show
, PBS. The full interview is available on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HEwO-2L4w
, accessed October 18, 2014.

At the time of the interview, astronomer and author Sagan was ill with bone marrow cancer. He died six months later, on December 20, 1996.

2
. Denzel Washington said
he would only do
American Gangster
if, in the end, the character he was playing, heroin dealer Frank Lucas, got punished.

3
. The ticker trading symbol for Imagine on the NASDAQ was IFEI—Imagine Films Entertainment Inc.