Knowledge Junkie Brian Grazer Seeking New Thought-Pusher
Brian Grazer has made little secret of his helplessness over his knowledge addiction: The superproducer's cravings have become so extreme, he can regularly be found shivering in the alley outside the Imagine offices awaiting his cultural attaché, who arrives bearing a bindle of high-grade Blue Insight for Grazer to cook up over a bare lightbulb and inject directly between his concept-hungry toes. But with his trusty idea-pusher having decided it was time to move on, the unusual job listing for his replacement has been making the Hollywood rounds. The New Yorker reports:
The e-mail explained:
This person would be responsible for keeping Brian abreast of everything that's going on in the world; politically, culturally, musically. . . . They're also responsible for finding an interesting person for Brian to meet with every week . . . an astronaut, a journalist, a philosopher, a buddhist monk. . . .
There is LOTS of reading for this position! Grazer may ask you to read any book he's interested in. You'll probably get to read about 4 or 5 books a week and you may be required to travel with him on his private plane to Hawaii, New York, Europe—teaching him anything he asks you about along the way. . . . You will also be provided with an assistant. . . . Salary is around $150,000 a year. . . . You will be to Grazer what Karl Rove was to Bush.
By last week, Grazer's staff had already narrowed the potential attachés down to four finalists, who would interview with the boss. "I've met a lot of good candidates," Grazer said..."They have to be really resourceful," Grazer said. "I like to meet people in dangerous organizations, and my cultural attaché finds out who that person is—who runs the Yakuza, or the Masons, or MI5."
We wish the four the best of luck in the final rounds of what is likely to be the most grueling recruitment process of their young post-graduate careers. They'll soon find themselves dispatched to infiltrate the most ruthless organized crime syndicates on the planet; should they manage to survive their undercover deployments inside the Chechen mafia, the Brazilian Comando Vermelho, the Neopolitan Camorra, and the Central American Mara Salvatrucha, only the candidate with the most compelling and realistically budgeted 60-page treatment of their underworld adventures will win the much coveted cultural attachéship.
