Producer Brian Grazer takes pulse of pop culture

By Matthew Belloni and Stephen Galloway

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - In the quarter-century since Brian Grazer burst onto the scene with the hits "Night Shift" and "Splash," he has become one of Hollywood's most reliable -- and prolific -- producers.

Grazer has been uniquely able to keep his finger on the pulse of the culture, taking such diverse material as last year's "American Gangster," 2002's "8 Mile" and 2001's "A Beautiful Mind" to box office heights (and winning a best picture Oscar for the latter). Grazer's successful partnership with director Ron Howard in Imagine Entertainment generated this year's awards contender "Frost/Nixon," which opens in theaters on Friday, and he also produced Clint Eastwood's "Changeling."

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: YOU'RE KNOWN FOR HAVING AN ADVISER,

OF SORTS, WHOSE JOB IS TO ARRANGE MEETINGS WITH INTERESTING AND

UNUSUAL PEOPLE. HOW DID THAT START?

Grazer: I've been doing it for 25 years. One thing I learned in college is that I couldn't learn in college. Then I realized that movies are about subjects, and subjects distill themselves into people and experts. I realized I can call these people. I just created a discipline, and I started doing it about once every three weeks.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WHO ARE THE PEOPLE YOU'VE MET THAT

MOST STAND OUT?

Grazer: (They) are usually the ones who disagree with you. Edward Teller stood out because he's a technocrat, and he was one of the founders of the hydrogen bomb, and he doesn't have any real belief in humanity or in the arts, and so everything we as storytellers stand for is very antithetical to his belief system. (And) I met a man who taught fire walking. Jonas Salk stood out. James Watson. Carl Sagan.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO DO THAT?

Grazer: Well, it's probably a little Jungian. When you challenge yourself or disrupt your comfort zone, or you deal with language or subjects or experts that cause you to feel inferior in some way, you learn the most. I'm curious about myself and my own psyche and what works and doesn't work about it. I grew up never using the first-person pronoun, and then I learned later that the more you know about yourself, the better that is going to serve you with storytelling.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: HOW DOES YOUR OWN PSYCHE AFFECT

YOUR CHOICE OF FILMS?

Grazer: I like making movies about good and evil and the moral drive. I look at things in a very polarized way. Even though the world, I know, is gray -- I'm told that the world is gray -- I see things in a polarized fashion. That might help me with films.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WAS THERE A FILM YOU MADE WHERE YOU