Hamlet hes ever seen. As you get older, you see hamlet as the ultimate coming of age story. Weve all had the moment where the phone rings or you get the telegram or email saying dad died, the Family Business has gone bankrupt, your mothers left us, and at that moment when you think life will never be the same, and everything thats been in place to protect you wasnt there anymore, and you have to reckon with the adult world as an adult yourself, and you realize that without all of the safety nets you had before, its a scary place. Charlie we conclude this evening with a film based on the novel the giver. We have jeff bridges, Brenton Thwaites and lois lowery. I create a character where he will go on a journey, have a hard time and be changed. I hope that the reader will enter the same journey and be changed by the end of it. I think thats true of this book and the movie. Charlie the ebola crisis, hamlet and the giver when we continue. And by bloomberg. A provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Charlie we begin this week with the Ebola Outbreak. A second leading doctor in sierra leone has succumbed to the disease and official death toll in all countries is now over 1,000 and the manufacturers of zmapp now say theyve exhausted existing supplies of the experimental ebola treatment. Where does the crisis go from here . Laurie garrett has ideas on that. Won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism on the Ebola Outbreak of 1995. Pleased to have you here. Welcome. Thank you. Charlie you are writing a piece that will go online soon for Foreign Policy and you are saying, world, you dont get it. Right. Charlie what dont we get . We dont get both the enormity, the potential of this spreading to huge nations like nigeria and south africa and that theres no magic bullet. We arent going to come riding in as the great technological america with the magic treatment, the magic cure, the magic vaccine. We might have something, oh two, years from now, but not right now. So were building up a kind of response that is so anemic, so much less than what is needed. Just take for example liberia. It used to have a whopping 200 physicians for 4 million people. Now because of ebola deaths and fear, theyre down to 50 doctors to take care of 4 million people. How can anyone imagine that you can treat all the background diseases and illnesses, the routine car accident, the woman in labor and handle this horrible epidemic with 50 doctors . Charlie so what are the implications of that . I think the first thing i would say is a takehome message i got from my experience in the ebola epidemic in 95 in democratic republic of congo is the tough measures we might in the american context think is uncomfortable walks over the line of Civil Liberties are really what makes a difference. You have to force people into quarantine. You have to take, you know, the loved one out of that home, away from the screaming family members and put them in a quarantine unit for the safety of that family and of the whole neighborhood, everybody around, and you cannot allow funerals and you have to force people to relinquish the dead for mass burial safely carried out by people in spacesuits and if you violate any of this in any cases, you lose control, you lose the ability to fight this virus. Now what were dealing with that weve never seen before in the history of what we know of ebola since 1976 when it first appeared, also in zaire, is that its urbanized. So it used to be you could wall off a community, a rural area, you know, put the soldiers on the highways on the outside of town and prevent people from leaving the area and then concentrate internally on the measures i was describing. But now, you know, its monrovia, its free town, its the three giant cities of the major countries. Charlie how do you make it work . Anybody infected with the ebola virus, you take them somewhere where they will not be able to infect anybody else and they will sit there and die . 30 will survive. Charlie 30. Three out of ten. Even though theyre there exposed to other people who have ebola virus . How will they survive . Theres no known treatment. Their own immune systems will combat the cyrus successfully. The death rate right now is running between about 65 and 70 . Charlie explain to me how it is that if you fly next to somebody youre not necessarily going to get ebola virus, not necessarily. No. Charlie on the other hand, if youre a doctor and you touch a dead body, you might get ebola virus. First you have to consider the conditions. This is not trying to do medical care in new york city. Youre talking about youre inside of a space suit which some of the physicians ive talked to said can reach 121 degrees inside the suit because youre in the tropics, near the equator and the suits are like wearing saran wrap. How long can anybody keep their mind sharp in that kind of heat . Pretty soon you start getting sloppy, and if there arent enough other doctors there to relieve you so that your shifts run, you know, a reasonably short amount of time, then you will make mistakes. Whats a mistake . Youre trying to inject a needle into someone and you poke yourself. Whats a mistake . Charlie transfer of fluids. Absolutely. Whats a mistake . You remove your gear in the wrong sequence so that you take your glove off first, touch your mask, remove your mask, rub your nose and you just infected yourself. Charlie what if we dont do this . Whats going to happen . You mean if we all just sit back and charlie no, if we use everything except quarantine, whats going to happen first in africa . Its going to continue to spread in these three countries, sierra leone, liberia and guinea, its going to take a huge toll in countries that already are destabilized, have very weak governments, more and more people out of terror will start fleeing across borders by any means they can and, therefore, taking the virus into neighbor countries. The borders are very porous, and i also think its only a matter of time before one of the international responders, perhaps a journalist, ends up in lagos or johannesburg or rome or london and doesnt realize theyre infected and transmits to other people. We already had this happen once with patrick sa sawyer, a libern who flew to lagos and infected a whole crew of people who were both his handlers for the business meeting and his health providers. Charlie i hear two things as i talk to people about this, number one the fear, and, on the other hand, people trying to tamp down panic. Panic. I had a conversation with the president of the world bank here a couple of nights ago. He said we worry about panic, i assume because it will make the risk greater. We have been through this before. You and i were on the air so many times in the 1980s at the beginning of the aids epidemic. What were we looking at . On the one hand you had larry cramer correctly saying, hello everybody, wake up youre not paying attention and were dying here and on the other hand you had crazy people burning down homes, denying jobs and abusing individuals who they thought had hiv, and you had the walk that line. Wheres the panic point, wheres the feeding the fuels of bigotry and inappropriate response where people are reacting against the microbe, theyre reacting against the human who has the microbe. You cant get complacent, on the other hand. You cant just keep saying calm down because pretty soon youre giving a message theres nothing to worry about. Charlie do you have a point of view who should get the experimental serum . Theres so little its of no consequence. Charlie why so hard to produce it . Its experimental. There are three drugs and all have novel methods of production and they dont have standardization. Theyve never done commercial production, so every step of the way you have to be sure youre making what you think youre making. Charlie let me walk through that because my naive brain doesnt understand it. If you have all the money in the world, you couldnt accelerate the product to get as much as you need right now . I dont think so. Charlie you couldnt take over whatever Pharmaceutical Company there is and said all you can do for the next six months is make this drug. Thats not what the c. E. O. S of these companies say. They all say its tough to make a huge amount. Charlie i dont understand that. Theyre using technologies and biological approaches that are new and, keep in mind you dont want contaminants. Heres a potential Foreign Policy nightmare almost all these drugs are either coming from the United States or canada except the glaxosmithkline english vaccine, possibly. What if we turn out to mass distribute something that turns out to eventually make people blind or lose their hearing or something of that nature . Then whats the blowback . Charlie its not good. And we havent had safety trials for my any of it, no hu, except recent cases. Charlie have we not been trying to do something about ebola since you last wrote about it . Yep. Charlie yep we havent or yep, we havent tried. Charlie we havent tried . Let me be clear. Since 1995, with a few subsequent smaller outbreaks elsewhere in africa, researchers at the National Institutes of health and a few other Research Institutions and pharmaceutical companies have tried to come up with cures and vaccines, but nothing has progressed to the point of a clinical trial. Part of the reason is the profit incentive is very, very low for something that may have a use point very, very rarely, nobody could anticipate this particular outbreak. Charlie Laurie Garrett has a piece called outbreak, heartless but effective. Ive seen the drug work against ebola. Thank you. Thank you. Charlie back in a moment. Stay with us. Charlie ben brandy is here, theater critic of the New York Times. He wrote, there is a netted their madness, looking at the performances of hamlet in the modern era. Many performers talked about it at this table. I played hamlet young and we went to the castle where we more or less are certain shakespeares troupe went. I remember when the date was confirmed, i thought i could have died and gone to heaven. When you shoot it, you shoot it out of order and do the last part of the s the so lillo quesh before the other. He would put the most important thought of hamlets is the question. Towards the middle of the soliloquy, i did that. I was wearing my hornrimmed spectacles and they had lenses which turned black when the light shown, and i would be wearing them and forgotten, and i played to be or not to be in hornrimmed glasses. Charlie and he was chuckling . Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. Charlie you regret most not having played hamlet. Charlie all of a sudden, you were too drunk . Because in my lifetime, i think that acting was an avocation. Living life was a vocation to me. So i never had the time. I said, ill do it next year. Charlie he did tell you to do hamlet. Marlon brando practically begged me to drop out of hollywood, walk away, for a year, take off, go to london, study hamlet, play that part before its too late because he said i never got a chance to play it. You dont play hamlet. Hamlet plays you. Theres a part of you in him. It has to be you feelings of life because, indeed, the questions he raises, the experience he is going through is in a way a map through life. Charlie i am pleased of ben brantley back at this table. Welcome. Thank you very much. Charlie this is such a good and obvious idea for a theater critic or for anybody interested in great theater and in great playwrighting, but why this piece and how did you shape it . It was an assignment turned out to the culture critics, by the amateur of the times, which was imagine yucke you could curr own exhibit or developments any way you like. It could be fantasy the series is called imagine this, so try to imagine you could use any combination of elements whatsoever. So id seen probably 20, 25 hamlets in the course of my career at the times and hamlet was probably the first shakes speern figure i was aware of even as a kid, had ahold of my imagination as well as the actors imaginations. Sports figures say what if it were babe ruth versus barry bonds, and we theater people tend to think in those terms, too. So i wanted to assemble my fantasy olympics of great hamlets over the years. Charlie greats vs. Great. Yes. Charlie went back to 1922. That was the year John Barrymore dazzled new york, took it on to london. The british were a little less enthusiastic because he spoke the speech less conversationally than they were supposed to. They were used to high rhetoric. But everyone who saw it, and this was really barrymore to the peak, just about 40, hadnt begun the downward slide into alcohol. It was riveting. A truly visceral performance you with respect used to. Olivier saw it and said before that there had been beautiful, poetic ham lets but they had been cay administrated, just basically poetry but barrymore gave hamlet his balls back. laughter charlie what is it about 4q. Im . Even though hamlet is close to 30, he still seems like the ultimate adolescent avatar for our fantasies. Hes the guy who rebels against the establishment and upsets an entire kingdom. Not unlike holding coffield in a way but with a power and a sword. We all have the time when you get the phone call, email or letter or telegram saying dad died, the Family Business has gone bankrupt, your mothers left us. At that moment when you think life will never be the same and everything thats been in place to protect you wasnt there anymore and you have to reckon with the adult world as an adult yourself and you realize that without all of the safety nets you had before, its a scarey place and you start to think about mortality probably for the first time in your life. Charlie what you just said is what oscar the director of the Public Theater said to me is were all hamlet because hamlet takes on our appearance, takes on who we are and speaks to us at anytime. I think thats true. I think part of growing up is acknowledging mortality, and its something a lot of us put off indefinitely. Its something were sort of running from, and hamlet reaches that moment when his father dice and then he learns how horribly his father has died when he thinks, i mean, death is there, how do we deal with it . How do we deal of the fact of it and how do i make something thats very wrong right that i have been made responsible for. Charlie when you look at the great actors, whether olivier or Richard Burton, barrymore or all those who have taken a shot at this, i mean, its almost a coming of age for a good actor. Oh, yeah, yeah. Charlie you have to do this. Yeah. And whats been fascinating is i have been in this job or at least been going to the theater long enough now so that i can see actors progress through the generations of, you know, its romeo, hamlet, macbeth, and then now everyones doing king lear charlie we have clips throughout the conversation. I begin with john gillgood who nod only played hamlet but directed Richard Burton in hamlet here on broadway. Thats right. Charlie here is john gillgood as hamlet. Two months dead. Not so much, not two. So excellent a king it was to this. I peer into a satire, so loving to my mother that he may not beckon the winds of heaven to visit her too roughly. Heaven and earth i must remember why she would hang on him with increasing appetite that grown on what it fed on and jet within a month let me not think on frailty they name is woman gillgood is still widely rared as the most musical of hamlet. Talk about speaking the speech, it just sang. Olivier a couple of years later was a more virile, deliberately freudian interpretation of hamlet. What was the length he consulted with at length . Charlie i remember. But heres what he said. Laurence olivier once you have played it, it will devour and obsess you for the rest of your life. It has me. Ill never play him again, of course. But, by god, i wish i could. Isnt that wonderful . He was in his mid 70s and was thinking if i could just have one more go at it. Most famously the whole wide world was concerned when he won the academy award. Charlie and Richard Burton. Who was directed by john gillgood which seems strange because burton admitted when he did hamlet first time at stratford in the 1950s he was probably overly enfliewnsed by gillgood and falling into the music which is a danger of doing shakespeare where you ride the poetry and forget the person the poetry is coming from. But with gillgood it was done, kineticscope films of it, done where people wore their street clothes. Burton just married Elizabeth Taylor and so people were lined up around the block like groupies at a rock concert. I wish i could have seen him in person. He was sort of a loose canon interpretation but the visceral charge of it was pretty incredible. Charlie hincredible. Charlie here is Richard Burton. So he goes to heaven. And, so, am i revenged . The villain kills my father. Before that, i his sole son do the same villain send to heaven. This is high on salary not revenge. My father on bread, flush is made, our heart is heavy with him. Am i revenge being purged for his soul when hes in his season for passage . No. I will enter when hes drunk, asleep or in his rage or in his bed. A game, a swearing all about an act that has no salvation and trip him that his soul may be as damned and black as hell whats so great is even though theres very charismatic anger, you can also see a man fighting with his own softness which is a resolution. He knows hes rationalizing hes not gil killing claweddous and t rankles him and fuels the anger. Charlie there was the conflict within Richard Burton. He had been a great actor and then chose a different lifestyle. As John Barrymore. It was the beacon and down into the flesh pots which may not be a bad place to be if thats your choice. He was a glamorous hamlet. I grew up thinking he was a glamorous figure. Charlie an excerpt from Kenneth Brown who clearly in some ways has been more about shakespeare over the life of his career. Hes popular in the sense olivier was especially bringing it to the film. Henry the fifth is still so much. Charlie take a look at this. Kenneth brown. indiscernible i need him, horatio. A fellow with infinite jest, a most excellent fancy. He has borne me on his back a thousand times. Now how strong in my imagination it is. Those lips i kissed i know not how long. Where be your jibes now . You can pose your song with your flashes of merriment. indiscernible i take you to my ladys chamber. Tell her to this favor she must succumb. Laugh at that. Tell me one thing. Whats that . Do you think alexander looked charlie before we talk about ken, i want to talk about mark one more time because i love this. There is a story which you touch on because he plays him enormously deranged. Right. Charlie and hes playing before an audience in which legitimate people are. Take up the story. They toured with him and went to the institution for the criminally insane, broadmoor, and he played hamlet in his soil pajamas. The guy probably slipped on over into craziness. And one of the inmates ran up and said, god, you are really loony take it from me im crazy, i know charlie when he said that, take it from me, youre crazy im loony it seems like acting but its not. Youre there. Hes brave actor. When i saw him as hamlet, it was at the globe when he was playing the set. Once a guy realizes hes going to be crazy, reises he may actually be crazy. This has driven him crazy and the terror of that. You were earlier attracted of the man in black with the skull. Yes, when i was a kid my granddaddy taught shakespeare and i would look through his books. There was always the plates in the books, the etchings, henry in profile, the skull held like that. Just like we saw brannic playing with the icon oography in the movie. Look how interesting in black. Charlie when you look at all these, is there one thats for you that fits an individual judgment . And depending on a whole range of actors. There have been a lot i enjoyed. A lot of productions i enjoyed. Probably the single most revelatory hamlet was ivan. I saw him do it london and at the Brooklyn Academy of music. Hes short, squat, not remotely glamorous. But he gave total transparency. Its the only time i saw it where the contradictions in hamlet made sense because he made sure you followed every step of the journey. The sense of a guy whos only known life as a student, suddenly confronted with reality and feels so betrayed by it. And i still think about it. Broke my heart. Charlie when you said that, you cant feel it for weeks. No, you dont stop. I would love to see it again. I guess of course, weve moved on but that was the most thoroughly thought out hamlet. Charlie any sense lear is becoming the new hamlet . Lear are the baby boomers, a little older than i am, who graduated from the macbeth to the king lear years. Beal is young to be playing lear. Charlie franklin the right age . Yes, and i think john lithgow was probably the right age. Imagine being close to 80 and still being able to memorize all that and create that kind of sense of rage. He is sort of hamlets heir and heres someone who looks at the world finally with clear eyes and goes, i didnt sign up for this. Charlie what we should see in new york on broadway . Between riverside and crazy at the Atlantic Theater company, its the best play about lying and how lying is an essential part of our lives that ive ever seen. Its terrific. So that i recommend. Stars Stephen Mckinley henderson which is a stable of williams productions. Beautiful in this. Charlie thank you. Thank you so much. Charlie ben brantley, theater critic for the New York Times on hamlet. Back in a minute. Stay with us. Charlie the giver First Published in 1993 by lois lowry, follows a boy as he learns the truth about the world he lives in. Sold over 11 million copies worldwide. In 1994 won the newberry medal, also been at the top of the american lobbyist associations list of banned and challenged books. It is now a movie and heres the trailer for the movie the giver. From great suffering came a solution, communities. Injected. Three beautiful places where disorder became harmony. You know how to fly those . Absolutely you get to fly to the edge . Eah. Whats out there. I dont know. Lets go. Its real. Theyre called books. Hello, my name i know who you are. Who are you . The giver. When the elders need guidance, i provide it using memories of the past. Our world was different. There was more. More is this. Uch more. Where . You will see them all in time. People tend to do away with emotions, the mornings injections take them away. When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong. I have been doing it for months. What do you feel . Hes not usually like this. Im surprised youre not more worried about him. I would be. Bring up jonas activity. Hes inquisitive. You should know better than anyone. The way things look and the way things are very different. Watch. Thats my father. Ere is no way for me to prepare you for the truth. The children. Young and the old are killed. Things we dont know. Youre scaring me. Go back to your family unit. It isnt my family. Neither is yours. Jonas has become dangerous. I know theres something more, something inside us. Jonas there has to be a way to show them. You can stop this. You can change things. I want you to fight him, and then i want you to indiscernible . Charlie Brenton Thwaites place jonas, jeff bridges the giver and loi lois lowry, whata great group of people at one table. You first read this when it came out . No, a couple of years after, 18 years ago, and i was looking for a prog to direct my a project to direct my dad, lloyd bridges, in. Charlie yeah. And i saw this wonderful cover when i was looking through a catalog of kids back because i wanted my kids to see the movie and i came across this with the grizzled guy on the cover and newberry award stamp and i thought, this looks interesting. I loved it as a kid but as an adult piece of literature, i was knocked out. I find out, my kids said, we know that book we studied that book in school theres lesson plans we study. And i get more excited and i thought, this will be a cinch to get off the ground. Then i find, as you said, no, its on the list of banned books as well, which further excited me because i like movies that have a little danger and edge. Charlie you do. But it proved to be quite difficult in that controversy stopped us from getting this film made for 18 years, and also i must say that the world that lois created is an amazing one and a lot of the story takes place in jonas mind so the challenge was how do we get that into a screenplay that financeers could look at and see i know what you guys have in mind, so we went through half a dozen writers and directors to get it made and finally ended up with the right man for the gig. Charlie took you how many years . 18 years, and i started to look more and more like the grizzled guy on the cover, and my dad took off, and i said, oh, well charlie you got to be what you that it your dad could be. There you go. Charlie what are you saying about memory . Ive always been interested in the subject of memory and the idea for the book came when i realized my father who was probably 90 at the time was beginning to lose his and had forgotten, for example, my older sister, his first child who died young, and i began to think what it would be like if we could obliterate memories that made us sad, the bad things in our life, would that be good. When a writer thinks like that, a story takes shape. Charlie you think of the possibilities for characters and all that. Yes. And in answer to the question what i think about memory, i came to the conclusion that memories are the most vital part of us. Charlie some peoples memories do such terrible things to them they go to Great Lengths to erase memories. People in this book have done that. Its been a bad choice out of the best intentions. Charlie so when you saw the screenplay, what did you want to well, i read the book first and thought, wow, what a seductive world. We dont have to wake up every morning to all this destruction, to all this hate. And thats what first attracted me. Its, you know, the socalled utopia that turns out to be a distopia. Because i thought that was very, very compelling, the idea that they were selling here that, in exchange for memory, you live in peace and calm. Its all about the tradeoff. Yeah, its all about the tradeoff. Charlie look an unhealthy tradeoff to me. Very unhealthy tradeoff but a compelling one. Charlie yes, indeed. And more compelling every day. Charlie and you felt a connection to jonas, the character . I always feel a connection to the central characters of the films that i take on. Charlie is it a prerequisite for you before you take it on . If you dont feel a connection to the central character, you wont codo it . Yeah, you have to go on a journey for the audience and if you cant take it theres no hope of them going on it. You know, a young man who has been brought up in ignorance, who starts to discover Something Else inside him a heart, emotion, feeling, color, love and then inevitably acts on that knowledge. So its like a blind man whos suddenly found his sight. Charlie ive interviewed those people. Its extraordinary when they talk about what its like. Thats what happens to this character. Charlie how did you see jonas . I saw him as, you know, an innocent boy who was very happy and very comfortable, almost, you know, the question i raise is what if he didnt feel these things he was feeling at the start of the film and what if he isnt chosen to be the receiver of memory, would he have lived a happy life in his community . But i dont. You know, im chosen to receive the memory of the history of the world. So starting that journey, you know, i was just watching the trailer and took me back to the head space when i was riding to the quarters and the nervousness and anxiety i felt in meeting the giver and brenton working with jeff and starting the whole movie and it was a huge parallel into how jeff was feeling. Charlie tell me about the role of the giver. Who is the giver . Society realizes the memory is valuable, they just dont want to have any. Charlie because it has pain and all. It has pain, you know. So the giver is a fellow who retains all of the histories of the world and he counsels the council of elders from time to time to give them a advice, you know, and thats his role. You know, when his time is, you know, coming to an end, he will find somebody in the community, and the elders have tracked all of the kids as theyre growing up. One of the things the kids dont have to do anymore is choose what they want to do, thats all handled for them. And theres a ceremony that happens and hes chosen to be the giver. The receiver, im sorry, and im the giver to give him and if in a way, i become te giver also when i find out i can feel things. Charlie how did you come to this world of saneness . Partly because i grew up on army posts. Theres a rigid, orderly community. One time, ages 11 to 13, i lived in postwar tokyo, and i lived in a compound with a bal a walld it. On the other side of the wall was the colorful, noisy, vibrant city of tokyo, but i lived in a place where all of the houses and the people were much the same. There was no gate in that wall and i had a bicycle. At that age, i very often road by myself out into the streets. Ive always been somebody who, like jonas, wants to see beyond. So i think part of that background on these various Army Installations probably played into that world. Charlie heres a clip from the film in which the giver, jeff, explaining to jonas, brenton, answering the question why society created sameness. Here it is. Red, just like her hair. Green, blue, many different colors. It was all people who chose to do away with all of them. They created sameness. If we were different, we could be envious, angry, consumed with hatred. We need sameness, dont you think . Oh, i completely agree. I do. Beautiful. Charlie so there it is. Theres the explanation of sameness. To eliminate all these things. And eliminate a lot of difficult things. Charlie casting meryl streep. First of all, casting is her choice. Charlie hes the producer. That was the worry, thinking whos going to turn up. Charlie exactly. My boss . Or my playmate . And he game in every day as the giver. Charlie exactly where you wanted him to be. Yeah. Charlie youve got jeff, meryl. I had screen tested a year before. Charlie for another film . For another film i was going to make called timeless. I had heard about this kid from far month queensland brought up in australia, you know, when a talent hits the street, word spreads. I heard about his graduation performance. Charlie what was your graduation performance . laughter what was it . Me and my buddy took our clothes off and put chains on our hands and pretended we were in a filipino jail. Its very dark and quite funny, so we thought it was an opportunity to go really deep and has this funny layer to it. Did you write it . No. Had you seen the movie talking at the same time thats like the film in your garage, its going to come out the film in my garage hes talking about, you know, im from a show business family so we often entertain each other. So i had this idea that my father, i went to him and said, dad, you like to party . He said, yeah. I said, lets make the movie. Well get casey, bos oldest son to shoot it, his son played jonas, and we shot the whole book. Bud cort narrated it. Charlie have you seen this . Not 18 years but we have it. Ive done many readings of the book. Charlie just the two of you . No. Charlie just the two of you or it was important to me as a producer to get everyone on the same page and this is the story we want to tell, so we assembled all of as many of the cast members and we had my brother actually narrated the book and i played the giver but we had, you know, a big table and we read the book to each other. We recorded it, maybe. You lost to brenton. Then a year later we were t. S. A. Ing the giver we were casting the giver, casting jonas, and, of course, initially the part was for, as was written, a 12yearold or 13yearold. We decided to up the ages in order to maybe give access to aid wooer audience to the story, and that the when he came back in again. And he knocked it out of the park. Charlie how did he knock it out of the park . He literally knocked it out of the park because he was auditioning with Cameron Monaghan who plays asher in the movie and he knocked him out of the park, he knocked him through the wall. In the scene we were auditioning for, theres a fight scene between my character and asher, and phillip would say i would say, phil, how are we going to do the fight scene . I wont fight ten days with all of the guys coming to read. He said, just improvise. I thought, how is this going to go down . Im going to have to fight him back. And phillip just lets it go and doesnt say cut. You end up fighting ten guys that day. Oh, my gosh we ended up with a hole in the wall laughter charlie seeing the film, is it the book in your hand . Well, it is now, of course, because i have been watching this film develop over the past year and ive incorporated it. So now when i think about the book, those are the scenes i see. Charlie this is your imagery of the book now . It is now. The kids in the book were younger and thats what i used to see, but when i think of the kids now i think of brenton and cameron. Charlie is it a coming of age story for you as well . It is. In fact, i wonder how they will relate to the age difference now, but a lot of jewish people give it as a bar mitzvah book, because the boy is 12 turning 13 and they see it as a turning of age. At the same time, a lot of Christian Churches have incorporated it into their curriculum because they see it as a christian allegoer. So it covers a lot of bases. Charlie whos batting the book . Very conservative groups. I cant give them names. Charlie yeah. Whats their objection . Its hard for me to know because i sometimes take things out of context and dangle up a passage that they dont like. Theres a Pivotal Moment in the book which is also in the movie. I hate to do spoilers, but its you know what you should talk about . You should talk about the scene that we cut out that you were very excited about. I love that. All right theres another controversial scene. Didnt make the cut, did it . But was a scene some parents objected to. In the book the boy does volunteer work in whats called the house of the old taking care of old people and theres an lovely, tender scene where he is bathing an elderly woman in a bathtub. Hes in the bath with her. No, hes not in the bath with her. But i jokingly told jeff im sorry they cut that out because that was to be my cameo role, im old enough to play the old lady in the bathtub and he keeps repeating that as i was serious. But thats one thing they objected to, boy with a nude older lady, reference to sexual feelings in the boy, very oblique, and then the difficult scene where a newborn baby was killed. I think another reason it was on the banned books list is because it falls right into the themes of our film, trying to protect our children and protect us from things that are frightening and the darker sides of life and, you know, were yeah, and the parents who want to ban the book are doing so with the most benevolent reasons, they want to protect their kids. And society as well. The irony is, in the society portrayed by your world in the giver, there are no books left and that would have been because of people protecting their community from unhappiness removed books. Charlie i love the library the giver. 30,000 books in there. Charlie heres a scene between meryl and jeff. whispering we both know what happened ten years ago with the girl. The girl had a name. You think i dont remember . I know you feel for her. The boy must hold in the pain. Dont fail us again. Chilling. Charlie tell ne tell me the. Well, prior to jonas character, the giver had another receiver to give the memories to, and there was a failure and it didnt happen. Shall i reveal what happens to this girl or not . Well, you went too far. I went too far. You went too far laughter i went too fast and i gave her too much too soon and it blew her mind. I must say, as long as were talking about actors, i just want to yell out i wont yell out, ill say it quietly, odeya rush, well be hearing a lot from this actor in the film, shes wonderful, playing theona. Its hard not to turn it into a teenage romance but there are three kisses in the movie. Charlie what else influenced you . Im interested in your mind in the writing of this book. Its very hard to think back where my mind was 21 years ago when i sat down to write this, but im sure all writers are influenced by everything theyve read, and you mentioned the classic distaupian literature. But i create a character in a situation where hes going to have a journey and he will have a hard time and by the end he will be changed and i do it with the hope that the reader will enter the same journey and be changed by the end of it. I think its true for this book and this movie. I cant claim it to be true for all my books but this one does. Charlie how many copies sold . Over 10 million. It fluctuates. Charlie all authors should wish for that. Yeah. Charlie thank you all. Great pleasure to have you here. Pleasure to see you. Charlie thank you so much. Thank you. Charlie the movie the giver opens this friday august 15th. You will be hearing a lot about it. Among other reasons because you can see and feel the sense that it has the possibility to appeal to a Cross Section of audiences not only with good acting and the directing and the fascinating players but also an interesting connection to the world of the whole range of ideas. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. Charlie for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org this is nightly Business Report with Tyler Mathisen and susie gharib. Markets rattled, the dow dips, bond prices rise as the conflict between russia and ukraine enters a new faphase. What is next for stocks and bonds and what is your best move now . Food for thoughts, the once casual diner may be faltering but one Company Standing out from the rest. All rivevved up, the value o cars is accelerating fast. That and more for nightly Business Report for friday, august 15th. It looked like the stock market was set to end on a high note but then things suddenly changed after the first hour of trading. Reports of ukrainian troops ta