He Was Getting Straight F's and No One Knew Why.
His Grandmother Said: You're a Genius. You've Got a Gift for Gab.
She Was Right. But It Would Take Hollywood Decades to Catch Up.

The Brian Grazer Story

The Person Who Believed In Me  ·  Hosted by David Begnaud

"Brian Thomas Grazer grew up in the San Fernando Valley getting straight F's in school, undiagnosed with dyslexia, and a grandmother who refused to believe the report cards. He talked his way into Warner Brothers, commandeered a conference room, and called the top twenty power brokers in Hollywood without any authority to do so. He went on to produce A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Splash, Eight Mile, Friday Night Lights, Empire, and more than eighty films and television series generating over fifteen billion dollars at the worldwide box office. But the story behind all of it belongs to his maternal grandmother, Sonia Schwartz - a four-foot-eleven force of nature who told him he was a genius when everyone else thought he was slow, and took little Brian to meet 'the bosses' every single weekend until the lesson finally stuck."

- David Begnaud

Straight F's. Gift for Gab. The Grandmother Who Refused to Read the Report Card.

Brian Grazer was getting straight F's. Not because he was lazy or didn't care - he simply couldn't read, and no one could explain why. The diagnosis of dyslexia wouldn't come until much later. In the meantime, he lived with the shame of being the kid everyone assumed was a little slow. School became a game of survival. He learned to track the rhythm of his teacher's questions, anticipate who was about to be called on, and disappear to the bathroom just in time to avoid being sent to the front of the class. He was not dumb. He was resourceful. There is a difference.

And then there was Grandma Sonia. His maternal grandmother, Sonia Schwartz, saw something nobody else was looking for. While every teacher and every report card was telling one story, Sonia was telling another. She told him he was a genius. She pointed to his curiosity - his relentless questions, his need to understand everything and everyone around him - and named it for what it actually was: a superpower. "Not knowing the answer doesn't mean you're dumb," she'd say. "It just means you're more interested."

That reframe changed everything. A kid who had been dodging questions in classrooms began to see his endless asking as an asset. A kid who felt shame about what he didn't know began to understand that not knowing was the beginning of learning - not evidence of failure. Brian Grazer would go on to spend forty years having weekly curiosity conversations with some of the most powerful people on the planet. Every single one of them traces back to a grandmother who refused to let a report card define her grandson.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Brian on the straight F's and Grandma Sonia's belief in him - ~1:47

Over the Hill Every Weekend. Hollywood Park. Dodger Stadium. This Is the Big Boss.

Grandma Sonia didn't just say encouraging things. She showed Brian how the world worked. Every weekend, she'd drive over the hill from Beverly Hills and pick up little Brian - and they'd go somewhere new. Hollywood Park, where she taught him to gamble. Dodger Stadium, where she'd take him down to the field to meet Tommy Lasorda. A new restaurant every week, where she'd find the top chef and make sure Brian shook his hand. "This is the big boss," she'd say. It wasn't idle socializing. It was an apprenticeship.

What Sonia was teaching her grandson - without ever calling it a lesson - was that the most important people in any room are always accessible if you approach them right. Don't be afraid of power. Walk toward it. Make yourself known. And always find out who runs the place. Brian absorbed this so completely that it would define his professional strategy for the next five decades: call the top person directly, make the assistant feel good, come in without an ask, and let the curiosity do the work.

By the time Brian arrived at Warner Brothers as a law clerk in his early twenties, he already knew how to walk into a room and find the person who mattered most. He commandeered a large office. He called the most powerful people in Hollywood - Coppola, Scorsese, Martin Ritt, Herbert Ross, Richard Brooks - from a position he had invented for himself, with no authority whatsoever. They all said yes. The technique was Sonia's. He'd been practicing it since childhood.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Grandma Sonia's weekly outings and meeting the bosses - ~22:23

Brian, I Think You're Having a Problem with the Truth. The Mentor Who Said It Out Loud.

Early in his career, Brian had a habit. Not lying exactly - he'd never see it that way - but stretching truth. It got him into rooms. It worked. And then a mentor he trusted told him what she actually saw. Deanne Barkley ran all of NBC. She took a liking to Brian when he was in his mid-twenties producing television movies. One day she pulled him aside. "Brian," she said, "I think you're having a problem with the truth." It landed the way true things do.

He invented a mechanism to fix himself. Every time he was about to exaggerate, he'd visualize a light switch and flip it down. Understate. Say less. Hold back. Let the work speak for itself. If a project was in development, say it was in development. The impulse toward hyperbole became a discipline of restraint. He credits Deanne's directness with reshaping something fundamental in how he moved through the world.

The experience also became Liar Liar - a film about a man who physically cannot lie for one day, starring Jim Carrey. Brian took the most uncomfortable thing that had been said to him and turned it into one of the highest-grossing comedies of the 1990s. That's the Brian Grazer pattern: take the shame, the failure, the hard truth - and build something from it. Grandma Sonia taught him to do that. Deanne Barkley gave him the raw material.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Deanne Barkley tells Brian he has a problem with the truth - ~27:47

Put the Pencil to the Paper. Now Get Out of Here. The Lew Wasserman Moment That Started Everything.

Lew Wasserman was the most powerful person in all of Hollywood. Once the industry's most dominant talent agent, then the CEO of Universal Pictures - the patriarch of everything. Every studio head feared him. Every executive deferred to him. Brian Grazer was 23 years old, operating out of a commandeered conference room at Warner Brothers with no actual authority. He needed to meet Lew Wasserman. So he did what Grandma Sonia had taught him: he worked every assistant until he got a 5 minute meeting.

He got off the elevator on the 15th floor of the tower at Universal. The assistants looked up at this young twerp - 23 years old, walking toward Wasserman's office like he belonged there. Wasserman came toward him. And then Wasserman threw his hands in the air: stop. He did not invite Brian in. He went to his office, came back with a No. 2 pencil and a legal tablet, and handed them to Brian. "Put the pencil to the paper," he said. "It will have greater value than it did as separate parts. Now get out of here."

Brian rode the elevator down humiliated. Then, slowly, the translation arrived. Don't come in and pick my brain. Come in with something worth saying. Have an idea. Write something. Represent it. So Brian went home and started writing. He wrote Splash - the story of a man who falls in love with a mermaid - with no money, no connection, and no guarantee that anyone would ever read it. He was nominated for an Academy Award as a writer. The whole career began with a pencil and a legal pad and the words: now get out of here.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The Lew Wasserman pencil moment that launched Splash - ~31:55

He Started Walking to the Stage. The Winner Was Braveheart. An Astronaut Said Seven Words.

By the time Apollo 13 was nominated for Best Picture, Brian Grazer was convinced he was going to win the Academy Award. He was sitting in the aisle seat at the Oscars, Ron Howard and Tom Hanks and the actual astronaut Jim Lovell nearby. When the presenter opened the envelope, Brian stood up. He started walking toward the stage. The winner was Braveheart. Brian walked backward, grabbed the back of his chair so he wouldn't fall, and lowered himself into his seat in front of the entire industry.

A studio chairman leaned over and said one word: "Loser." Brian sat there feeling as small as he'd ever felt in a room full of people. He had stood up. He had started walking. Everyone had seen it. And now a studio chairman was putting a word to the whole thing. He described the feeling as one of the most humiliating moments of his professional life.

That's when Jim Lovell reached over. The real astronaut - the man who had nearly died in space on the actual Apollo 13 mission, who had trained his entire life to walk on the moon and never made it - leaned across Tom Hanks and Ron Howard and grabbed Brian's wrist. "I never made it to the moon either," Lovell said. In seven words, the whole thing collapsed into the right size. Brian didn't lose the Oscar. He made a movie. And the man who nearly died in space thought it was worth something.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The Apollo 13 Oscar stumble and Jim Lovell's seven words - ~51:35

"I Am Nice and I Am Caring." The Son Who Inspired A Beautiful Mind.

Riley is Brian's oldest son. He has Asperger's syndrome and lives in an assisted living facility in San Juan Capistrano. His Instagram bio - the four words he chose to tell the world who he is - reads: "I am nice and I am caring." Brian had never read it. When David read it to him in the interview, Brian went quiet.

Brian named his firstborn Riley because he wanted him to have "the life of Riley" - a phrase that means a beautiful, easy life. What followed was more complicated, and more meaningful. One afternoon, Brian dropped Riley off at high school and watched from his car as other kids hid Riley's lunch and then his drink, so that Riley had to turn in circles trying to find where things had gone. Brian sat in the car and wept. He couldn't stop watching. And something in him said: I have to do something with this.

He made A Beautiful Mind - one of the most celebrated films in Oscar history, winner of Best Picture - with the specific intention of destigmatizing mental disability. The movie didn't come from a pitch meeting or a script. It came from a school parking lot, and from the same impulse Grandma Sonia had given him as a child: I see you. You are not what they say you are. You have more value than they can see. Brian had been carrying that message his whole life. A Beautiful Mind was his way of passing it on.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Riley's Instagram bio and the story behind A Beautiful Mind - ~1:08:14

"I'm Brian Grazer and the person who believed in me was Grandma Sonia Schwartz."