“The thing that you root for that lives inside of these—what did you call them, ‘assholes?’—is family,” Grazer replied. “If you have family in shows, you're going to always root for them, even in the case of Arrested Development. And then I have to be humble enough to say that had they not been assholes, they would have been Modern Family. So it's very successful within its own limitations."

The Aspen talk largely revolved around Grazer’s recent book, A Curious Mind, which details the producer’s habit of meeting and learning from experts in fields he’s unfamiliar with—science, government, literature. Toward the end of the hour, an audience member asked whether Grazer had any regrets in his career. “I have a lot of mulligans for sure,” he said with a laugh. “Every category—movies, TV, and life.”

One particular work came to mind. "I agreed to be part of a movie called Cowboys & Aliens,” he said, referring to the 2011 box-office bomb starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. “I don't like cowboys, or aliens! But there were a lot of superstars involved with it—Ron Howard; Steven Spielberg; the director of Iron Man, Jon Favreau. I remember having this one meeting, an early meeting, and they're talking about the title, Cowboys and Aliens. I said, 'We aren't really calling it that, are we?' [The others said] 'Yeah, of course we are!' I was going, I don't get this at all.

“Every once in a while I rationalize quality,” he continued. “There are so many decision you make, and you're trying to do excellence. We know what excellence is. We know what better food is versus not good food. But there's a rationalizing process—that's good enough. Anytime the light bulb goes, that's good enough, it's shitty!"

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