Brian's Brain

ItБЂ™s more natural and instinctive. After a lot of practice, you look at the bird, and it triggers little switches in your brain. It looks right. You know what it is at a glance.БЂ«The Hollywood producer Brian Grazer, who has produced many of the biggest hit movies of the past twenty years, uses almost exactly the same language to describe the first time he met the actor Tom Hanks. It was in 1983. Hanks was then a virtual unknown. All he had done was the now (justly) forgotten TV show called Bosom Buddies. БЂњHe came in and read for the movie Splash, and right there, in the moment, I can tell you just what I saw,БЂ«Grazer says. In that first instant, he knew Hanks was special. БЂњWe read hundreds of people for that part, and other people were funnier than him. But they werenБЂ™t as likable as him. I felt like I could live inside of him. I felt like his problems were problems I could relate to. You know, in order to make somebody laugh, you have to be interesting, and in order to be interesting, you have to do things that are mean ...»