The biz section of the Times profiles Brian Grazer today. The thesis of the article is that Grazer isn’t famous enough:

[D]espite Mr. Grazer’s enormous success in the movie business, his public profile remains relatively slight when compared with his Hollywood peers. Imagine Entertainment, founded 20 years ago by Mr. Grazer and the director Ron Howard, has produced a strong slate of films, including “Liar Liar,” “Eight Mile,” “Inside Man,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Da Vinci Code.” His latest, “American Gangster,” opened two weeks ago as the top film in the country, taking in more than $43 million at the box office its first weekend.

The diversity of his films makes Mr. Grazer an anomaly in Hollywood, where careers are typically built on well-defined brands. Everyone knows what a Steven Spielberg movie is, or a Jerry Bruckheimer film. But few people could describe a Brian Grazer project, except to say that it will probably make a lot of money.

The assertion is risible: Besides maybe Saul Zaentz, Grazer is in fact probably the best-known producer in Hollywood who is not also a filmmaker. (Scott Rudin is more colorful, but Grazer’s several films nominated for best picture and his partnership with Ron Howard have gotten him much more mainstream ink.) What he is really unhappy with (and this is something that the writer doesn’t mention) is the phenomenon of the faceless producer. That’s a mildly interesting issue, in that they are sometimes the creative force behind a particular film, even in the ongoing era of the cult of the director. But this story isn’t about that. This was my favorite part:

For the last 20 years, Mr. Grazer has met each week with a person who is an expert in science, medicine, politics, fashion, religion — anything other than entertainment. He is so serious about the meetings that he has a staff member whose job it is to find interesting people.

He is not so serious about garnering outside knowledge as to do what normal people do, which is read a book every once in a while!

But those meetings are key parts of his creative process, we are told:

The weekly get-togethers have led to some of Mr. Grazer’s most successful ideas. After meeting with five of the top trial lawyers in the country, Mr. Grazer came up with the idea for “Liar Liar.”

Liar Liar, the Jim Carrey Movie, is about a lawyer who all of a sudden can’t lie any more. For that Grazer needed to meet with not one but five top trial lawyers, when he could have just listened to a Jay Leno monologue and saved himself the expense of that hard-working staff member. The piece mentions Grazer’s well-known head of ludicrously spiked hair, but doesn’t dwell on it. Instead we learn:

He wears a conservative uniform to work each day — black pants, a white shirt and skinny black tie — because he fears looking like the typical Hollywood producer struggling to appear young.

The story also doesn’t mention the junk Gazer has produced, including ultraviolent crap like The Missing. He also gets a pat on the back because Angels and Demons, his follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, will purportedly be his first sequel. What about “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps”?