Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer says politics have never been part of his approach to filmmaking.

The Apollo 13 producer, whose credits also include A Beautiful Mind, Arrested Development, and 24, reflected on the philosophy that’s guided his decades-long career during a panel at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival, where he said he’s always been more interested in stories that connect people than divide them.

“None of my stories are left or right. I’m not political in any of my movies. Frost/Nixon was just an account of an event. But I’m never political,” Grazer said. “I’m only about working on universal themes to create unity with other people, so we demystify other people, other people’s problems.”

According to Fox News, Grazer made the comments during a discussion titled Building Bridges at the Box Office, where he joined Yellowstone director and cinematographer Christina Voros and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Joshua Seftel for a conversation about storytelling and the state of Hollywood.

Asked by moderator Steven Olikara whether Hollywood is still “curious” at a time when differing viewpoints can be difficult to find, Grazer paused before cracking a smile.

“Sure,” he said after a beat, drawing laughs from the audience. “I mean, some people are.”

He went on to argue that the industry’s evolving business model has changed the way artists approach their work.

“The mechanics of the business of Hollywood has changed so significantly in the last four years, it could cause artists to be disincentivized,” Grazer said. “The compensation structure is predominantly based on a socialistic system — that was political — but in that everybody gets paid, you know, you get a streaming price. So you’re not incentivized to work your ass off, feel the risk of that, own that, and fail, lose money, or make $90 million or something. That’s what artists can do.”

For Grazer, curiosity remains one of the most important qualities a storyteller can have.

“And so curiosity really always, to me, was, at the very minimum, just being polite to human beings,” he said. “If you’re interested in other people … you usually create a human moment. It becomes memorable, at least for the day.”

Later in the conversation, Grazer was asked how filmmakers should celebrate America’s upcoming 250th anniversary. He argued that appreciation for the country shouldn’t be viewed as a partisan issue.

“Be grateful to America, be kind to America. I think that’s what would be really nice if that lived in the fabric of our culture,” he said.

Voros echoed the importance of challenging assumptions through storytelling, recalling how relocating from Brooklyn to a small town in West Texas while working on Yellowstone reshaped many of her own preconceived notions.

“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,” Voros said. “You can get into an echo chamber pretty quickly, regardless of where you live or what you feel.”

She added that audiences should leave room to discover something new instead of bringing fixed expectations into every story.

Seftel struck a similar note, saying, “I simply want people to understand each other. It’s not that hard to tell stories that help us understand each other. And I just hope we can keep doing that.”