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How Brian Grazer and Ron Howard Created Their Dream Jobs

Season 6 Episode 611
Aired on 04/19/2015 | CC tv-14
Producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard have been friends since 1979. Brian had a goal to meet one new person each day, and Ron just happened to be outside Brian's door at Paramount Pictures that day. "I looked out the window, and I said, 'I'm going to meet Ron Howard,'" he says. "And then I call him up. He's really shy."

Brian, who aspired to be a producer someday, found out that Ron had his own unfulfilled dream. "He said, 'I want to be a movie director.' But there's, like, no evidence he could be a real movie director," he says. "I always tell him he had this aura around him. When he walked into my office, it was almost like the sun was behind him. And he had this aura of goodness. And I really felt like this was something of value and that I needed."

They became fast friends and formed Imagine Entertainment in 1986. Together, they have produced beloved films and television shows such as A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, Arrested Development and Empire. "We were two basically unemployed guys that wanted to be something other than what we were," he says. "We just sort of joined up because we believed in each other. We believed we each had something that we couldn't quite state to one another that had value."

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