The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood

[Ale]

Nov 28, 2007, 04:00 PM | by Sean Smith

Power Lists are so over. Magazines, including EW, have done them for decades, but as way of digging deep into Hollywood's DNA, "power" has become sort of beside the point. "Power" just tells you who's in charge. It doesn't tell you who's shaking things up. So EW decided to go in search of the people who are rocking the industry's world this year, the people with ideas – innovative, creative, dangerous, renegade ideas – who are changing the way movies are made. We went looking for the 50 Smartest People in Hollywood.

Below are the results of three months of constant research, hundreds of hours of conversations with the brightest minds in the industry, and weeks of heated debate. We started with a list of more than 300 contenders, and it proved surprisingly hard to chop them down to a trim 50. We had to establish strict criteria to determine who would – and who would not – make the cut. Here were our rules:

1) Every person on the list had to be smart not just in general, but smart right now. They had to be leading the industry forward in some way, today.

2) The list would be about the movie business only. (We'll do a Smartest People in TV list, too, next year).

3) The list would represent a broad range of intelligence in the movie business – not just the suits and the stars, but the composers and the costume designers, too.

4) "Smart" could mean many things. It encompasses books smarts and street smarts, financial genius and emotional intelligence. We weren't interested in IQ. What mattered was the originality of each person's thinking and the reach of their ideas beyond the borders of their own careers.

5) At 50 names, the list could not possibly include every smart person in Hollywood. Each person on this list needed to help paint a portrait of where movies are today and where they're headed. Each person on this list tells a different story about the movie business today. They are all smart, certainly, but they also symbolize, collectively, Hollywood now.

6) We ranked them first, and primarily, by their overall impact on the industry this year, and then factored in the influence of each person within their own profession. It allows for a diverse and surprising list, where a cinematographer (Emmanuel Lubezki) can take the #24 slot, while an Oscar winning director (Michael Moore) can come in below him at #27. It will also give you, we're sure, plenty to argue with us about.

We hope you're happy to see a few familiar faces rewarded on this list and are intrigued by the people you've never heard of. You'll find the complete package – with #5 entry Will Smith on the cover – on newsstands this week and, of course, here on EW.com, along with a quiz to test your Hollywood IQ. (Yes, you'll be graded, but we won't tell anyone your score.) Feel free to tell us how brilliant or idiotic our choices on the comments section below. And make sure to tell us who you'd nominate as one of the 50 Smartest People in Hollywood. We'll take it under advisement.

The list after the jump...

Entertainment Weekly's 50 Smartest People in Hollywood:

1. Judd Apatow, director/writer/producer

2. Steven Spielberg, director/producer

3. James Cameron, director/producer

4. Ari Emanuel, partner of the Endeavor Agency

5. Will Smith, actor/producer

6. Meryl Streep, actor

7. Peter Rice, president of Fox Searchlight

8. Tyler Perry, actor/director/writer/producer

9. David Heyman, producer

10. John Knoll, visual-effects supervisor of Industrial Light & Magic

11. Brian Grazer, producer

12. Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios

13. George Clooney, actor/director/producer

14. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer

15. Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment

16. Peter Jackson, director/producer

17. Will Ferrell, actor/producer

18. Robert Zemeckis, director

19. Tom Rothman, co-chair of Fox Filmed Entertainment

20. Ben Stiller, actor/director/producer

21. Johnny Depp, actor/producer

22. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation

23. Brad Bird, writer/director

24. Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematographer

25. Zack Snyder, director

26. Stacey Snider, CEO of DreamWorks SKG

27. Michael Moore, documentarian

28. Paul Greengrass, director

29. J.J. Abrams, producer/director

30. Jodie Foster, actor/director

31. Kathleen Kennedy, producer

32. Thelma Schoonmaker, editor

33. Angelina Jolie, actor

34. Sacha Baron Cohen, actor/writer/producer

35. Tim Palen, co-president of film marketing for Lionsgate

36. Modi Wiczyk, co-CEO of Media Rights Capital

37. Guillermo del Toro, writer/producer/director

38. Diablo Cody, screenwriter

39. Mary Zophres, costume designer

40. Jeff Skoll, founder of Participant Productions

41. Stefan Sonnenfeld, president of Company

42. Daniel Battsek, president of Miramax Films[

43. Beth Swofford, agent at CAA

44. Roderick Jaynes, editor

45. Cate Blanchett, actor

46. Jeff Walker, Comic-Con impresario

47. Amy Powell, senior vice president of interactive marketing at Paramount

48. Gustavo Santaolalla, composer

49. Sarah Polley, actor/writer/director

50. Ben Affleck, actor/director/writer/producer

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2007/11/smart-list-intr.html

[VIsqo]

WOW, Will Smith is number five people!!!!!!

[bart5]

Wow, Will is an Actor/Producer?? I just thought he was an emcee all this time... :bangcomp:

I know this is a hollywood topic, but come on...give credit to his rapping abilities.

[Ale]

5. WILL SMITH

AGE 39

JOB TITLE Actor/producer

SMART BECAUSE He has revitalized and redefined old-fashioned movie stardom in an era when movie stardom has become small and suspect. After hitting the scene in the mid-'80s as rapper Fresh Prince, then transitioning successfully to TV, Smith soon demonstrated surprising versatility and a knack for picking blockbusters that have given him license to do...well, anything, from Oscar-nominated drama (The Pursuit of Happyness) to event-film spectacle (I Am Legend). He credits Ali director Michael Mann with enlightening his filmmaking mind, and pure elbow grease for achieving a level of global popularity unprecedented for an African-American actor. Smith sums up his work ethic this way: ''I don't like to lose.'' Here are his keys to a winning career.

SET A GOAL ''When I started in movies, I said, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.' The biggest movie stars make the biggest movies, so [my producing partner James Lassiter and I] looked at the top 10 movies of all time. At that point, they were all special-effects movies. So Independence Day — no-brainer. Men in Black — no-brainer. I, Robot — no-brainer.''

PICK A ROLE MODEL ''Tom Hanks is the prototype of where I want to be. I admire how he is able to morph with the times and the audience. He is very savvy that way.''

WORK YOUR ASS OFF ''My father had a ridiculous work ethic. He started his own business. To him, kids were convenient employees. So from a really early age, I was working — and I was in charge.''

MANAGE YOUR FEAR ''After [1999' s disappointment]Wild Wild West, I got scared and started choosing incorrectly. For me, I did Bad Boys IIand Men in Black II out of fear. That was a bad time for me psychologically because I wasn't thinking the right way about filmmaking.''

STRETCH YOURSELF — ASAP ''The smartest move I ever made was Six Degrees of Separation. I was [thinking of] leaving The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airand needed to set a tone. Separation was so far at the other end of the spectrum of anything I had done. It became easier for me to convince Jerry Bruckheimer that I could do Bad Boys. It blew open a world of possibilities for me.''

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20163012_46,00.html

Edited December 3, 2007 by Ale