Hollywood thrives on taking sides. These days, it feels like every piece of media needs a political purity test before it even hits theaters. If a movie doesn't explicitly validate your worldview, it gets labeled as part of the opposition.
Brian Grazer thinks that's a terrible way to make art.
Speaking at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival, the Oscar-winning producer behind Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and 24 laid out his philosophy plain and simple. He doesn't want his films to be left or right. He doesn't want them to lecture you. He wants them to do something that feels almost impossible today: bring people together.
"None of my stories are left or right. I'm not political in any of my movies," Grazer said during a panel titled Building Bridges at the Box Office. He pointed to Frost/Nixon as a prime example. To him, it wasn't a partisan takedown; it was just a direct account of a historic event. He insists his focus remains on universal themes that build empathy, not political walls.
It's a noble goal. But can a massive Hollywood producer actually stay neutral anymore?
The Illusion of the Non-Political Movie
It's easy to say you're making a movie for everyone. Pulling it off is a different story.
Grazer, who co-founded Imagine Entertainment with director Ron Howard back in 1986, has built a legendary career on crowd-pleasers. Think about Apollo 13. It's a film about human ingenuity, survival, and teamwork. On the surface, it has zero political baggage. Yet, it celebrates American institutional excellence—an idea that itself can be viewed through various ideological lenses depending on who you ask.
Look at some of his other massive hits:
- A Beautiful Mind: A deeply human story about mental illness and academic triumph.
- Friday Night Lights: A raw look at high school football that captures the heartbeat of rural America.
- 24: A high-octane thriller that practically defined post-9/11 pop culture and sparked intense real-world debates about national security tactics.
When Grazer says 24 or Frost/Nixon aren't political, he means he didn't write them to serve as campaign ads. He isn't trying to tell you how to vote. But audiences don't watch movies in a vacuum. A film about Richard Nixon or counter-terrorism is going to be interpreted politically no matter how balanced you try to make it.
The real insight here isn't that Grazer's films are devoid of social context. It's that he trusts you, the viewer, to think for yourself.
Why Entertainment Incentives Are Shifting
During the Aspen panel, which was moderated by Steven Olikara of Bridge Entertainment Labs, Grazer didn't just talk about script themes. He pointed out a massive structural problem in modern Hollywood that people rarely talk about: the way artists get paid.
Over the past few years, streaming platforms have completely rewritten the financial playbook. It used to be that if you made a massive box office hit, you got a backend percentage. You won when the audience won. Now, streamers buy out those residual rights upfront. Grazer called this a "socialistic system" where everyone gets paid a flat streaming price regardless of the movie's ultimate cultural impact.
When you take away the massive financial upside of creating a true, four-quadrant cultural phenomenon, you change the creative incentive. Filmmakers become less worried about appealing to the widest possible audience. Instead, they focus on appealing to specific, niche subscriber bases or pleasing industry gatekeepers.
When you combine that financial shift with a fear of viewpoint diversity, you get an industry that struggles to build bridges. When asked if Hollywood is still curious about different perspectives, Grazer paused, grinned, and offered a telling response.
"Sure," he said. "I mean, some people are."
Breaking Out of the Narrative Echo Chamber
Grazer wasn't the only one on the panel pushing back against Hollywood's creative isolation. Cinematographer and Yellowstone director Christina Voros shared how her own assumptions were shattered when she moved from Brooklyn to a small town in West Texas to shoot the hit series.
Voros warned that media consumers and creators alike are trapped in digital echo chambers. "I think we as a culture need to be careful of the filters through which we are guided to perceive this country and the stories of this country," she noted.
Her solution for filmmakers? Stop telling the audience exactly what to feel.
When a script hits you over the head with a moral lecture, the natural human reaction is to push back and reject the conversation entirely. Great storytelling leaves open space. It gives the audience room to project their own lives, values, and questions onto the screen. Yellowstone succeeded precisely because it didn't fit neatly into the coastal media establishment's preconceived boxes. It gave a massive, often ignored segment of the country a story they could claim as their own.
The Path Forward for Storytellers
If you're a writer, creator, or filmmaker trying to reach a fractured audience, the takeaway from veterans like Grazer and Voros is clear. Stop chasing the political news cycle.
If you want to build a career that lasts longer than a single election cycle, focus on these fundamentals:
- Lead with curiosity, not judgment. Grazer treats curiosity as a form of basic manners. If you genuinely want to understand people who don't think like you, your stories will naturally reflect a deeper, more relatable reality.
- Value the American dream as a universal concept. With the nation's 250th anniversary on the horizon, Grazer notes that patriotism and gratitude shouldn't be partisan commodities. You can critique systemic issues while still holding a baseline affection for the cultural fabric of the country.
- Leave room for interpretation. If your script reads like an essay defending a specific thesis, rewrite it. Let your characters make mistakes. Let the antagonist have a valid point. Trust that your audience is smart enough to figure it out.
The world doesn't need more media that tells us who to hate. It needs storytellers who are brave enough to step outside the echo chamber, look people in the eye, and find the common threads that make us human.
