From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Charlie common is here, he is a hiphop artist and he is in the movie selma. It will be ours one day when the war is won we will be strong glory glory glory everyday women and men become legends the movement is a rhythm to us freedom is religion to us justice is just a position justice for all is not specific enough resistance is us that is why rosa sat in the bus that is what we want through ferguson with hands up king pointed to the mountaintop and we ran up one day when the glory comes common thank you for having me. Charlie you make me seem so old. Common it is a matter of respect. Charlie tell me about being a part of this film, this song what does it mean for you . Common it is a lifechanging experience for me. From the first day that we sat at rehearsal and ambassador andrew young talked to us after the table read, he started talking about the philosophy. Charlie christian Leadership Conference . Common yes sir. He said, what are you willing to die for . And he said, live for that. What are you willing to die for, live for that. It made me think about, what am i doing with my life, what is my purpose . Through these experiences, obviously the people of the Civil Rights Movement were willing to die for justice and freedom, so it made me examine myself and gave me this experience. I am really connected to the Civil Rights Movement because i wanted to help people and improve lives and dr. King was a hero of mine but you get to learn about the people of selma and what happened in selma and to study that enriched me as a human being. Charlie was your father a hero . Common my father was a hero because he was one of the most authentic human beings i have been around. He would talk to me about the problems he had with drugs, he would talk about spirituality. He would talk about the bible and the koran and my ancestors. He was a balanced human being, he was a gemini. Charlie his last words were . Common you will feel an angel wrapped around your neck. He was sick with cancer and i was on my way to do a performance, perform a song that i wrote to him. It was during the later part of last year, the summer, that we found out that he could be leaving us at anytime. Anytime i was singing, i felt like it could be the last time. When he said the last words, i said that if that was the last time, i feel at peace. Charlie take a look at this. This is your playing james bevel in selma. Singing, lord, singing common selma is the place. A lot of groundwork has been laid by the people here. Charlie this is what they are going to take a stand in selma. Common james bevel was one of the strategists, a brilliant human being, a person that was a salt of the earth gentlemen, which is why you see him wearing overalls and the yamulka. I was honored to play this person. Charlie because he was who he was . Common because he was who he was and i felt these people have contributed so much to American History that it is an honor to carry their tradition. Charlie how did you get the role . Common the director had a film at sundance. Both of our films were selected and she won best director. She saw my work and she reached out and set up a meeting, a skype meeting, and she told me the character she wanted to play, the person she wanted me to be and the vision she had. I immediately started to find out about james bevel. He lived in chicago which is where i am from, he was from mississippi but he moved to chicago. I went to the million man march in 1995 and he was one of the speakers and i kind of remember. Charlie who organized it . Common james bevel along with louis farrakhan. It was called the day of reconciliation where men from across the country were saying lets come together. Charlie acting gives you another outlet for creative expression. What does it do for you . Common it makes me search inside myself and find out things about me that i am afraid to go out to because of my own fears. Charlie how were you raised . Common i was raised to be respectful and loving. I was raised in a midwest, traditional way. I was not around a lot of arts. My mom did not play a lot of music. My mom was like, go to school, she was an educator, she would make sure i have the things i needed. But going outside of the box was not a part of my home and i think that acting allows me to go places i would not go as a human being and relate to other human beings because once i get the opportunity to walk into the shoes of any character i play i have a newfound compassion for people that come from that walk of life. Charlie how did you write the song . Common i experienced selma as an actor. I remember it was a monday, i was talking to my manager and i said ava had talked to me about doing a song but they were busy editing and i just decided, i need to call john legend and we need to create a song for selma. I said, i will call you back. And i texted john legend. He was in london and we had a conversation and i sent him three titles and one of them was glory. He got inspired. It is an incredible blessing. I have had eightyearold white kids to 64yearold men, adult black men come up to me and say, i like that song. Charlie where did the inspiration come from . Common i was thinking, how can i be an extension of dr. King and the people of the Civil Rights Movement now . How can i be a voice for them . And from what i see going on how can i really Say Something that is inspirational, that is truthful, and that is allencompassing . Like, because obviously dr. Kings message to my understanding is that it takes all of us to improve things, it takes black and white and native americans and different religious backgrounds, it takes people putting love in the pot. I wanted to put love in the song. Love is not always sitting back and being passive, it is standing up for what you believe in. John legends vocal, the first vocal before i wrote my part his vocal and piano, it led me somewhere too but i wanted to carry the spirit of dr. King. Charlie that is what is important about the performance. I talked to him about it. Andy young and i were together at the last broadcast of colbert, and he said that it was not dr. King but his spirit that was important. You felt that david caught the spirit. Common that is what the film carries. Charlie it is not an imitation, it is the spirit. Common david is not, as ambassador young told you, not emulating dr. King, he is carrying the energy and spirit and what it brought across. Belief in the oneness and the humanity of him, the things that existed in dr. King that were not perfect, obviously david was able to bring back. And ava did a wonderful job of showing that all of these people were people. That inspired me. Charlie none of them were perfect. Common nobody in the whole film was perfect. That was really inspiration because it made me say, look somewhere we have dr. King in us. We all have some of that. The good and the bad, and we can achieve that greatness. Charlie you have to make sure you give greatness the ability to come forward. Common one of my favorite words is greatness. When i speak at different colleges and high schools, i talked about greatness because i really learned there was a period in my life where i was happy with being good and then i wanted to be great. Charlie how good was it to sing in selma . Common one of the greatest moments of my life because i did not get to go to film because of scheduling, i could not film the march across the bridge and that was one of the most hurtful things in my artistic career because we had been through this artistic journey as people and actors. As we were filming this, dr. Maya angelou passed. It was a certain bond we had and because i could not be on the bridge during the filming, to go back i had never been to selma, so to perform a song i did not know would be created during the filming and to see the people in the town being inspired and to see my mother and Oprah Winfrey and my daughter, all these people i love. It was one of the greatest moments. I could not have wrote it better. Charlie you just released your 10th album. It is called nobody is smiling. Common as i said, i am from chicago. There has been a lot of violence, a lot of things happening. And i was around kids because i have a foundation, the Common Ground foundation. I was realizing these kids are missing something from my generation, we have not reached out the way we could. I looked at the situation and i entitled the album to describe the situation, not to stay there but to give a voice for people who are there. Naz did an album called illmatic, he was just describing what he saw. If you talk about a problem, you want to offer a solution and i do my best. Charlie you and kanye, what is the relationship . Common brotherhood and friendship, he is someone i learned from as an artist. He produced some of my greatest music. I actually met kanye when he was 19 and i was 23 or 24 and i was out with albums in chicago and i was the chicago guy. Kanye would come around and want to battle me. Charlie battle you . Take it to you . Common on a hiphop level, on a rap level, because that was a part of the art of hiphop, it is like boxing. Charlie can you i mean, we shouldnt even try to square this larger than life ego and personality with the music. Are they one and the same . Common i think it is both things as far as Creative Genius and the ego of wanting to be the greatest, to be number one. I think a lot of us possess that ego but he expresses his in the way he does. I got to meet his grandfather. When i met him when he was 19 years old, kanye was the same type, confident, and i honestly appreciate that, i call it the muhammad ali philosophy. Sometimes you have to speak greatness into existence and really claim it. That does not mean you knock over anybody else, you do not have to knock over people to do it, just say i am great. I was talking to you about fears, you have to claim it. Charlie because of ferguson and new york and other places, we have had a focus here on conflict between the Africanamerican Community and police. You have thoughts on that . I will bring up a song you know. Common i think the history of the police force and dealing with black people, it has been a conflict there for a long time. And that history carries it goes to generations. The experiences the police have had with some black people and the experiences that black people have had with the police have made us think the police will not treat us well and has probably created a sense with the police where, i think black people will be violent to me. I think that is a history we have to get past and say, we have had instances where black people were wrong, wrongfully shot and killed. And we have had instances where Police Officers lives are threatened by black people. Getting to that place where we cannot judge a person by the way they look and their skin, we cannot judge them because of the uniform. Charlie could the song be interpreted as promoting violence . Common no, because when i read the book which really influenced me, her being a black panther, i never believed she killed a police officer, a state trooper. I believe what she said happened. I was standing up for somebody i feel is wrongfully accused. Charlie what is next for you . Common i want to keep creating, keep putting out art. I do have my foundation which is important, the Common Ground foundation. I am working on new music and films. I have not solidified a project i am going to do, i want to continue to grow as an actor and keep creating music. Thank you for having me. Charlie back in a minute, stay with us. Charlie ethan hawke is here, his performance in boyhood earned him an oscar nomination and he stars in a film called predestination. He just directed his first documentary, seymour an introduction. tell me about when they first approached you about boyhood. Ethan linkletter approached me about 14 years ago. My son was about to be born. Rick had been we made before sunrise together. He wanted to make a movie about childhood but it felt like the best ones like 400 blows, even the best of them have this lie where you grow up in one moment but it does not happen at one moment. He was talking about tolstoys childhood childhood, boyhood, and youth. He said, what if we did that on film . What if you play the dad . At the end of the movie, you will be released from prison. I said, are you asking me to do this . This is very rick. He said, i would want you to but you would never commit to Something Like that. He said, you will want to do other things and be busy. That is how it happened. Charlie it worked out amazingly well because everything could have gone wrong over a 12 year period. Ethan the movie is a strange act of faith. When it started, i did not think it would come out. I thought 35 years from now we would talk about this movie we tried to make. Charlie orson welleslike. Ethan we would get years in and it would fall apart, someone would lose interest because we could not have contracts, you cannot contract somebody more than seven years so it was a handshake deal. The idea that the film company did not go out of business. Miramax does not exist, they were the dominant when we started. But ifc is still trucking and they made this happen. Charlie it does not have a plot. Ethan it substitutes time for plot. It is an architecture that i get a kick out of. People think that some actor is brilliant daniel daylewis, he is brilliant in lincoln. I take the opposite, what is really hard is it is hard to be good on an episode of matlock. Because when you have plot to sell, that is when you see bad acting. The russians will be here in 14 minutes and we have to turn off the bomb. What rick did is strip the movie of plot. The goal is to not act at all, it is to be present and be creative. What makes that so hard is plot because in real life we do not have a plot. Charlie we are living moment to moment. Ethan there is this artifice. But rick has taken it away and instead substituted time which makes the movie not boring. It is so interesting to watch cinema cinema is 24 frames a second. As an art form, it is about time. Charlie were you influenced by your own fatherhood . Ethan rick gave me the opportunity to do a portrait. That is what i was hired to do it is the line in my psyche. It was when i was a young person, it is for any young person when you are seeing yourself. You get told you are from a broken home or the product of a failed marriage. It creates this feeling that maybe there is something wrong. As you get older you see that that is not true. One of the things i am proud of for the movie, i am proud for my own kids because i have had to walk them through the same thing i went through, which is something i swore i would never do but life is mysterious. Getting to make a movie that looks that square in the eyes, that i hope normalizes the fact that none of us have a normal family. My wife, her parents love each other and have been together for 30 something years and are a beautiful couple but the family is not normal. They have their own, you know. Charlie what about the kid, Ellar Coltrane . Who i met. Ethan he is the miracle of the movie. When people say, are you lucky it would have been an experiment, a cool exercise in cinema except for, ellar turned out to be james dean. He infuses the movie with his own artistry from a very young age but particularly from adolescence forward. He is a special young man. Lorelei in the beginning, who plays the daughter, my daughter samantha, her energy carries the beginning of the movie. The movie is built on the backs of childhood, that beautiful spirit of creative play that young people have. Patricia and i, rick put us in a disadvantaged situation because we are professional actors doing scenes with young people doing long takes, it was a workshop situation. These kids are not acting so if you start acting, you look like a real idiot. It was a dangerous situation. Charlie this is what you said what i love is that in spanning the years you see the characters at the end of the movie are so obviously different than the beginning but clearly the same people. That gets at the essential question. well said. Ethan thanks. Charlie how does your character change and how was it a continuation . Ethan when we started this, this is what i thought about, my own father when i was six years old. Young, mason junior, staring at the sky. When i was that age, what did i think about my dad . What did he look and feel and sound like to me at my High School Graduation . They were different men, both the same but very different. And all the changes that happened seem inevitable in hindsight. In the moment, you never know whether he will go left and right but four years later you couldnt have gone anyway but left. That is the way life feels. Charlie looking back it seems inevitable and looking forward it seems mysterious. Ethan that is the process of life. Charlie the interesting thing about you, you are a student of the world. Both the world around you that has nothing to do with you and the world of your chosen profession. You think about acting as a profession, you think about the creative side, who said what about it and what you can learn from them to be better at it. Ethan there is this talent myth in this country that i am allergic to, this idea that bob dylan sits down and the gift is translated. Or marlon brando, he is a beautiful guy and a genius. What that does is relinquish us from responsibility to work hard. I am not as talented as them. If you really want to focus on the profession of acting, there is this cult of personality that follows actors. Isnt George Clooney amazing isnt Jack Nicholson amazing . They kind of deify the personality. But if you look at the history of academy awards, how many british people, irish people welsh people are nominated. Every year, it is a tiny population and they are constantly creating great actors. There is a relationship to craft there and there is not the same talent myth. Young actresses can look to judi dench and Vanessa Redgrave and helen mirren and see a room that they are not in, a room that is not about looks, it is not about being clever, it is not about money, it is not about advertising campaigns. It is about having something to say, having harnessed your own talent. Our country is not furnished with that. I feel for i am old enough now to look at young actors and to want to say this out loud on television. Charlie like you just did. Ethan like i just did. Charlie you are up for best supporting actor. Eddie redmayne. Ethan let me be clear, i acted because i admire their respect for the profession. There is no secret dig there. For me, bradley cooper, he is on stage right now in the elephant man. Someone who was taking his craft seriously and i find that exciting. The brits are always doing that, there are so Many American actors that do not get the education and encouragement. For my money, what we were talking about earlier was that Michael Keaton did something this year that none of the rest of us do which is that when i was younger, Richard Linkletter gave me this book called a life by kazan. People say, isnt he amazing great performances. The list of the great performances in the movies. If you read the book, the way that he talks about acting, i have never had anyone talk that way, the respect he has for it. It is very exciting. One of the things he talks about, brando in on the waterfront, these performances that are revered as changing acting, they had something personal at stake in the character. Charlie connected to their life in a unique way . Ethan that was secret to them. On that celluloid, they were going through something personal. Whether it was true or not, they create the feeling that you are not eating a reheated meal, you are watching something original. And Michael Keaton, it is a character different than himself. I get that with the before trilogy, people think that is me. No experiences are unique, everybody struggles with ego and that is what bird man is about. What are the right ways. Michael king put that, that id on screen. Charlie you made a documentary. What is it about . A piano teacher . Ethan i was invited to a dinner party and i did not want to go i was doing a play. Monday night is my night off. I have this terrible bout of stage fright and i started acting really young, it was coming as a surprise. I was really in a state of crisis for myself. If you love something and you feel it being taken away from you, it is really scary. I was about to turn 40 and i think i have always been the youngest person i knew. Dead Poets Society came out i was the youngest person at my job. That was no longer true and i felt the earth coming out from underneath me. I was standing next to the 85 year old piano teacher who said, what is bothering you . It started as a long, silly conversation. I told my wife about it and i started googling him and telling her that somebody should make a documentary about this guy, he is amazing. She said, why dont you do it . Ill help you. We set out to do it together. Charlie here is a clip from seymour an introduction. Ethan i decided to confide with him my most terrifying secret which is that for the last five years or so, i have been performing with a sometimes really crippling stage fright. It was a longer conversation but the bottom line was that people should be more nervous. That a great many artists are not nervous enough. Seymour you did not tell them about sandra bernhard. She went to a dressing room to dress and in front of the door there was a young actress with an autographed book with a trembling hand, like this. She signed her autograph. The young actress was amazed at the trembling hand and she said, madam, i do not mean to be presumptuous but i see you are nervous. What is it that i never get nervous when i have to act . And Sandra Bernard took her hand and said, my poor dear, you will get nervous when you learn how to act. [laughter] charlie you know what it is about. The more you know about something, the more you know how difficult it is to be really good at it. Ethan i had the luxury once to be in a room with tom stoppard. He was nearing his 70th birthday when we did that. One of the Great American theater directors, jack obrien, from that generation. They were clearly in a room i was not in. I was really excited. Charlie meaning that they understood things that you have not come to appreciate. Ethan we are made to feel quite often that wisdom is placed low on the totem pole of things that are interesting, right . If you spend time with it and with people who value it, it becomes very exciting. I walked away from that experience really looking forward to the rest of my life as opposed to there is a danger, this is not news to you, you have actors on all the time. There is hyperbole in my profession and it is a wonderful thing to be young but it can create a feeling of, what am i doing . There is a great profile on tom brady. Charlie in the new york times. Ethan someone is gearing up for oscar season and they make a big deal. They are asking him about the value of the super bowl and why not retire . You get this clear sense that a lot of us do not know what we are doing if we are not engaged in the game. What are we living for besides the superficial element . We know it is superficial but we do not know what is not superficial. Charlie take a look at this. Robin mr. Anderson thinks that everything inside him as worthless. I think you have something inside you that is worth a great deal. I sound my barbaric yawp. A yawp is a loud cry or yell. I would like you to give a demonstration. You cannot do it sitting down. Get in yawping stance. Not just a yawp, a barbaric yawp. Louder. That is a mouse. There it is. You have a barbarian in you after all. You do not get away that easy. Think of uncle walt upstairs what does he remind you of . Ethan a madman. Robin you can do better. Ethan a sweatytoothed madman. Robin give him action. Ethan his hands reach out and choke me. He is mumbling like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold. You push it and stretch it and it will never be enough. From the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying, it will only cover your face as you cry and scream. [applause] robin dont you forget this. Charlie remember that . What did it mean to you . Ethan everything. I mean, i just turned 18 couple of days before. And i really wanted to be an actor. I do not know why. And i did not know what it was though. I read about it. My mother gave me a book on Laurence Olivier and i liked watching one flew over the cuckoos nest and dog day afternoon. I watched John Malkovich doing sam shepard play and that struck me as something i never heard before. I liked that. That was the first time i ever acted. I had posed before, or i had imitated somebody. But like we mentioned earlier, there is a celebration of the self that goes around acting that is toxic and the real joy is losing yourself. You hear athletes, they do not remember the game. We had rehearsed enough, worked hard and talked enough and peter peter weir was the director he wanted to do that in one take. Robin williams was, first of all, i grew up on mork and mindy. Second, he was coming back from the oscar for good morning, vietnam. He used to joke around on set and it would make me crazy because his focus was laser but mine was not. It was difficult to stay concentrated. And it happened. I felt this buzz of what it was like to act. And he says remember this. The memory is different now that he is gone, the memory changed. This has a power. Now it is filled with how hard this profession is, you know . Two of the greatest talents of my life, Robin Williams and Philip Seymour hoffman, both passed away last year. Very, very serious artists. They are not celebrities to me. Philip was the first one of my generation to be a fully actualized actor artist. Yet something to say with the choices he made, the way he carried himself. He was a serious person. Robin, too. Depression is a real demon to a lot of creative people. It is part of what the documentary is about to me finding balance. Where the beauty that is attainable in the performing arts can match with life which does not have the grace you can have when you are acting. If you have watched robin when it is flowing through him, i will tell you something. After that scene, you go to the Craft Service table, you get a cup of coffee, and Robin Williams is sitting by himself totally depleted. It did not come for free, you know . I worked with Philip Seymour hoffman, it did not come for free. Death of a salesman, it did not come for free. My other hero as a young man was river phoenix, my own private idaho, that was the bar for young men. It is popular now to talk about gay rights and gay marriage, something i think is important but he did it when it was unpopular and he was 23. It was not cool, when you work hard to get a career going for yourself. Make a movie with gus van sant about a gay hustler. It is hard to grow up and it does not stop when you are 40. Robin, phil, it is a tough row to hoe. So, i dont know. Did i answer your question . Charlie you said it well. It is great to have you here. You should write about what you talked about today, write about yourself and acting in that sense of the life you have lived, not so much as a memoir but observational insight. Ethan that is a good idea. Charlie thank you for coming. Ethan thank you for having me. Charlie ethan hawke nominated for best supporting actor for his performance in boyhood. Thank you for joining us, see you next time. Cory live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to bloomberg west. Im cory johnson. A check of your Bloomberg Top headlines. President obama and german chancellor Angela Merkel spoke say continued aggression in ukraine has stiffened their resolve to make russia pay. President obama it is true that if, in fact, diplomacy fails what i have asked my team to do is to look at all options. What other means can we put in place to change mr. Putins