Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20140919

Other and i think all my movies deal with that in one form or another. Rose mike morell an Terri Gilliam when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following theres a saying around here you stand behind what you say. Around here, we dont make excuses, we make commitments. And when you cant live up to them, you own up and make it right. Some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where its needed most. But i know youll still find it, when you know where to look. Rose additional funding provided by 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. Rose my morem mike morell is here, from 2010 to 2013 he was Deputy Director of the cia, twice served as acting director, yesterday president obama vowed to destroy ice nis syria and iraq. Speaking in florida, he said that the United States would not take on the terrorists alone. He also promised a military audience that they would not return to direct combat in iraq. Yesterday the house of representatives voted to authorize funds to arm the Free Syrian Army. Im pleased to have mike morell back at the tablement welcome. Charlie, thank you, great to be here. Rose let me just go. Give us the picture first of all these groups and why we have come to single out isis and the threat they pose. At the moment there are a number of Al Qaeda Groups in the world that pose a threat to the United States of america, to the homeland. Al qaeda in yemen is at the top of the list. The last three attempted attacks on the homeland came out of yemen. Christmas day bomber, 2009. Printer cartridge plot, 2010 to bring down cargo planes. 2011, nonmetallic suicide vest to bring down aircraft. Theyre very dangerous. You still have al qaeda central leadership in pakistan. They have been degraded. They have been in some cases decimated. But they still pose a threat to the homeland. And now you have syria where you actually have two groups. Youve got the first Al Qaeda Group that was established there Jabhat Alnusra and they are tied, they are aline aligned closely with al qaeda in pakistan. And they pose. Rose which is zawahiri. Zawahiri, they pose a threat to the homeland. And you have isis. Which has garnered everybodys attention because it has grabbed so much territory. It too poses a threat. But we, i think we have to look at these together. And we have to make sure that were focused on all of them, and not just let isis grab all of our attention and grab all of our focus and grab all of our resources. Because these others will bite fuss we do that. Rose is the administration focusing on all three of them . Or four . I dont know. I think that i think that the strategy the president s strategy with regard to iraq and syria will also help us deal with alnusra if successful. But as you and i have talked before, the weakness of that strategy is on the syria side. The strength of the strategy on the iraq side. I know we can come back to that. I hope were still focused on al qaeda in pakistan and al qaeda in yemen. I dont see as much u. S. Activity there as i used to see. But we have to stay focused on them. Rose how much intelligence do we have . Because many people believe that we didnt see the rise of isis and its capacity to take territory as fast as it did. Right. So when i was there, when i was serving at the Central Intelligence agency, we were telling a story about the rising strategic threat of isis. As you know, isis is the direct descendant of aqi. When u. S. Forces left iraq at the end of 2011 aqi is al qaeda in iraq, zarqawis group, the graeb that was established right after the u. S. Invaded iraq. They were essentially they were not defeated but they were significantly degraded at the end of the 2011. When u. S. Military forces left a couple things happened. One is the military pressure was taken off of aqi. And maliki moved in an thorian direction. The Prime Minister of iraq former Prime Minister of iraq and moved in a direction politically that all gwyn alienated the sunnies. And they rallied around aqi. So aqi started its rebirth then. And we reported that. Then syria happens. And what happens with syria is that aqi moves across the border into syria, changes its name, rebrands itself as al qaeda in iraq and the lavant or syria. Because it wants to say its playing in both places in its name so it rebrands itself. And in syria it gets Even Stronger. And it gets Even Stronger in syria for a couple of reasons. One, its getting battlefield experience. Nothings more important than getting battlefield experience. By by having victories in syria, it draws attention. Attention in the terrorism business is good because it means more money flows your way. So more money started flowing its way. And recruits. And recruits. And all these foreign fighters that were going there, the vast majority ended up with either alnusra or with isis. So again growing strength. And then lastly, they got their hands on advanced conventional weapons from syrian arsenals. So their growing strength when they move across the border. They continue to grow in strength. Were telling that whole story. Thats where we were when i left the picture. Now my understanding based on putting kind of piecesing to here and reading the open media and reading what senior officials are telling reporters on background is that we didnt do a very good job from an intelligence perspective. And seeing the Tipping Point. And what i mean by the Tipping Point is seeing when isis had reached the point that it made the decision to start grabbing all this territory inside of iraq. That we kind of missed that. And we also missed, i think, our understanding of the Iraqi Military and how brittle it was, and its inability to stand up and fight. I think we missed those two things. Whats the competition between alnusra and isis . So theres because they were fighting each other a bit in syria. Theres intense competition. And they have occasionally fought with each other and theyre still occasionally fighting with each other. Is it just for power or is it because they have different goals . No, they have exactly the same goal. They share al qaedas oddology of establishing a global caliphate. What happened was alnusra was a syrian Extremist Group that established itself after the Syrian Civil War started. They were recognized by zawahiri in pakistan as the Al Qaeda Group in syria. So then you had aqi who decides hey, i want to go join that fight. So they move across the border and zawahiri says to them no, no, your fight is in iraq. You stay over there. And they said no, were doing our own thing here. We want to get in the game over here. So zawahiri disowns them because they wouldnt follow his orders. Some people say incorrectly that zawahiri disowned them because of their brutality. Thats nonsense. Al qaeda in pakistan is every bit as brutal in isis, look what they did to daniel pearl, for example, same thing that isis has done. No, its over its over its over whether you are willing to listen zawahiri and take his orders or not. It is said that isis ambition to create the isltate now goes against the advice of zawahiri and before of osama bin laden. Right. The others get out too far. So thats the other difference, right. The other difference is that al qaeda in pakistans main focus is attacking the United States first, cutting off the head of the snake, as they call it, and then, and then second, getting rid of all the apostate leaders in the middle east that they feel are working at the behest of the United States and then establishing a caliphate. So isis is coming at this the back way. Isis is saying lets grab territory. Lets establish our caliphate and then well go after the United States. So another example of not listening to zawahiri. Rose what is the ultimate fear we have of isis and these other groups . Two aspects of isis, i think. One is attacking the United States. And i think with isis you have to worry about attacks today. And those attacks come in two forms. They come in young men in the United States who have been radicallized by the isis movement and who conduct attacks all on their own without any direction from isis. And second, our foreign fighters who have gone from the United States, canada or western europe, to syria and get directed by isis to come back and conduct an attack, so thats the threat today. Over the longer term isis can become the kind of threat that al qaeda was on september 10th, 2001. Over time they could put together that kind of operation if they have the time and the space and the resources to do so. So that is the threat that they pose. Alnusra, alnusra poses that same kind of threat today, but because but because they are they are more aligned with zawahiri anmore aligned with al qaeda in pakistan, theyre actually to me more of a concern today in terms of attacking the homeland than isis is because they have that attack America First strategy of zawahiri. Rose so what is the president s strategy . So the president s strategy is to take their territory away. Weaken them, and i believe, although this has not been said, but i believe based on bob orr from cbss very good interview with john brennan, cia direct, director, that is strategy is also to get rid of the leadership as weve done in other parts of the world. So take away their territory, get rid of their leadership, weaken them to the point where they cant hold territory, cant pose a threat. Rose so this is by drones or any other method you can. Any other method. Rose find and kill. Find, kill, capture. Rose find, kill, capture, would they rather kill them or capture . I would rather have them captured, why . Because they can tell me things then. Rose when you look at the strategy the president brings us to today, where we are now, among the people you know and your own analysis, what has been the change in the president s mindset . The change in his mindset, i think, is that when when it moved so quickly to grab territory, it became obvious just how significant a threat this was. So we talked about the threat to the homeland but we didnt talk about one other threat which was the threat to the regon as a whole. Which is the threat to the whole stable of the region. And their definition of Islamic State may not be where it is now between iraq and syria, in fact its larger. In fact, i think we actually talked last time charlie about the correct translation of their name is the Islamic State of iraq and greater syria. And their definition of greater syria is pretty of the entire lavant area. So when they think of their caliphate its much broader than just iraq and syria. So the other concern here in addition to attacks on the homeland is the impact on the stability of the whole region. And sectarian war in the whole region. And the redrawing of all these lines in the middle east. And i think it was their very Quick Movement and success that got everybodys attention and said look, we have to do something about this. And the beheading caught the publics anger. Yeah k and the changed the publics attitude overnight. Rather than being sucked into another conflict in the middle east, they began to say they cannot do this without a reprisal. Right. Which is actually a very interesting look at the question of does isis understand us or not. Because if you were advising isis. Rose if they did they have miscalculated. Theyve miscalculated. If you were advising isis you would say dont do that. Dont behead these people, let them go, right. If you do this youre going to ignite passions in the United States and britain. Rose at the same time fear is an essential part of their modus operandi. Right. And this does induce fear. Rose what general dempsey said, if all that fails, we may need Ground Troops. Right. Rose what do you assume he meant . And do you assume that the president expected him to say that . So i think general dempsey was misquoted. So the president has made. Rose misquoted or misunderstood. Misunderstood, misunderstood, very good. Misunderstood. What the president has decided on the iraq side of the border is to support the Iraqi Military and the Kurdish Military with intelligence, with enablers, advise and assist special forces. And the decision right now is to put those individuals as sort of at sort of the brigade level, right. Not going out on missions, at the command level. Thats where the president has decided to put them at this point. Those advisors are going to be very, very important to the Iraqi Military and Kurdish Peshmerga doing their job right. Rose what will they be telling them, teaching them, advising them. Theyll be advising them on strategy and tactics, right, thats what they will be doing. At the same time supporting them with air strikes, right . What general dempsey said was there may come a point where we have to not only have advisors at the command level, we may have to have advisors at the ground level. So they would be advising at the ground level but not fighting, not actually fighting themselves. Right . And thats a big difference. When i think of combat troops on the ground i think of americans in battle. And what general dempsey was talking about was advisors at that lower level. Not fighters. Rose but are they going to be on the firing line . They would be, theyre at risk now simply by being there. Would they be at greater risk, absolutely. Do i think it makes sense to have them at that lower level, yes, absolutely. Rose everybody seems to believe you can to the do it with air power alone. Therefore youve got to have Ground Troops. And the Ground Troops have to come from somewhere. Right. Rose and so far we know that there are those from kurdish kurdi stan and so far there is the anticipation in syria of the Free Syrian Army. Which have been languishing, is it fair to say, because they didnt get the support they wanted several years ago, and have some divisions and all of that. Many people i know says thats not enough. Do you think its enough . On the iraq side, on the iraq side of the border you have the iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga. You have u. S. Advisors, and you have air strikes. Rose and you have the possibility of of sunni militias. Yes. And you have a real opportunity, a real opportunity thanks to secretary kerrys very good work of having a plil cat political solution in iraq that has got everybodys buyin, so on iraq you have all the pieces you need to retake territory. Im confident on the iraq side that within a year, year and a half youre going to see major reversals for isis. Syrias side is completely different. Rose but do you think theyll get the sunni militias who are among those that we talked about earlier, who became disenchanted with the Iraqi Government . So i think theres a very good chance they will, the only reason im hesitating slightly is because the political piece is not completely formed yet. Theres still a couple of key posts that people are fighting over. Rose and do they trust the United States . I think they do. I think they do. I think they actually, the sunnis in iraq actually see the United States as arguing on their behalf. With the shia government in baghdad. So then we flip to the syria side. Where its much harder to see somebody whos going to fight for us, right . The Free Syrian Army is disorganized, its largely infectionive. They have grown more ineffective over time. Training and equipping them is going to be helpful but charlie, its not going to be as helpful as putting advisors with them. Theres been no discussion about putting advisors with them. Obviously because we have a much harder time protecting them in syria. And it seems to be were talking about fewer air strikes in syria. There are reports this morning that the president is going to have to approve himself every air strike in syria, there has been 160 in iraq so far. Rose why is that . I dont know. I dont know. Its a very good question. Rose sounds like you dont believe its the right way to go, to have the president approving air strikes. Sounds like Lyndon Johnson and vietnam. I done know if its accurate but thats the report this morning. So on the syria side, im a lot less confident that theyre going to get this done. And the problem with that is, you have this strong hammer on the iraq side, and you have no anvil on the syria side. So isis if pressed goes across the border into syria and just hangs out there. So the syria part of this is the is the is the weak, is the long. Rose its also the essential part. Its the essential part. And i think to deal more effectively on the syria side, we have to do we have to do a significant number of air strikes to go after isis and alnusra. We have to go after the leadership which means getting the intelligence we need to do that. And we need to think about putting advisors with the Free Syrian Army because putting advisors with them will significantly strengthen them. And then we need to think about Something Else that nobody else is talking about. Which is. Rose which is the guy who started this whole problem is assad. Hes the one who created the instability in his own country that allowed alnusra and isis to become a problem in the first place. We need to talk about how do we get this guy out of there now, without weakening the syrian military, the Syrian Security services and the Syrian Intelligence services. Rose and getting the russians and iranians somehow to allow this to happen. Right. Rose you cant do it without them. Right unless you take him out kinetically, you target assad personally. But getting rid of assad. Rose are you an intelligence agent, how would you do that . How did we get bin laden, you know . How did we take much of al qaeda. Rose we would do that knowing that it might be known that we did it . Sure. Rose we would have no problem with that, taking out assad . I wouldnt have a problem with it. And we would be heroes in the gulf, right . We would be heroes with our gulf allies. Rose what im saying is that a what did the russians do, you have to calculate the consequence. Suppose special force goes in and take him out. What will the russian does . There will be a lot of rhetoric, right, about u. S. Intervention, lawless u. S. Intervention but theres not much they can do. Theres not much they can do. I dont believe. Rose is that a doable mission . I dont know. I dont know. But we need to be thinking about it. Because what hes going to start doing, and what hes already doing is, in his mind, hes calculating two things, assad. Hes saying the u. S. Is going to go after ice nis my country and the u. S. Is going to go after alnusra, essentially, both Al Qaeda Groups. Rose an were going like them a lot. So im going to put all of my focus on the moderate opposition. So in recent days hes already picked up the pace of his military operations against the moderate opposition. And hes calculating that, you know, if this isis thing and this alnusra thing gets serious enough, maybe the United States will come around and see me as a solution to the problem, rather than the cause to the problem. Rose but you cant imagine the United States doing that, can you. No, no. Rose what i do know as people sitting at this table who you respect overall in terms of their Foreign Policy have said, we have to do that. We have to in a sense hold our nose and let assad be and go after isis and alnusra. Right. And you know why i dont like that . Because you already have a guy whos killed thousands and thousands and thousands of his own people, displaced millions, a third of his population. A brutal dictator. And most importantly, he is in the pocket of the iranians. So assad wins. The iranians win. I dont want the iranians to be the hegemonic power in the middle east, the saudis and emirates. So if we shifted horses here, we would lose our friends in the gulf. So. Rose we cant change our policy on assad. Theres an alternative. Theres an alternative to siding with assad against isis and there is what i am saying. There is an alternative to siding with isis with assad against isis, alnusra, and that is getting rid of assad, putting in power a sunni who is going to take on those two groups and who is going to be our friend and not the friend of iran. We need to be thinking about that. Im not saying its easy but we need to be thinking about that as a policy. Rose the iranians are saying today, president rouhani said an interesting thing about the United States. He said, you know, they want to do this thing from the air but they dont want to take any risk. They dont want to take any risk, thats not acceptable to us. They dont have any people that they are risk. And theyre asking to us do it, what dow page of that argument . Does that have validity in the region . Yes, i think it does. I mean i think our friends in the region would like to see us do more. Our friends in the region would like to see us have those advisors with those front line troops. Theyd like to see us do more with the syrian moderate opposition. They would like u. S. Boots on the ground in larger numbers. They are are good reasons why were to the going it to do that at the moment. Down the road, maybe. Rose in your judgement, are the saudi, the emirates doing enough . Those sunni states that have either money or power or both. In this case, yes. Rose theyre doing enough . I think so. Rose what are they doing . They have been providing money and weapons throughout this whole Syrian Civil War to the moderate opposition. Some of those states. Rose then why is the moderated opposition better . Because we havent been doing enough. Rose we or they or both. All of us. Right. We havent been doing enough. Its been too small in scope. You know, youve got nusra with 30,000 people, right . Youve got the whole syrian army which is 100,000 100,000 people. You need to be training more than a few 100 guys at a time, right. The scope of it needs to be much, much larger. They have been in the lead, those moderate gulf states have been in the lead of trying to deal with this. And theyve been wanting us to do more. So there is iran. What role will they play . So iran i worry will play the role of spoiler. So every time that that the Coalition Supporting the moderate opposition in syria has done more, the iranians have come in and doubled down on assad. They they are desperate. He usually has everybody they could find. And even their own people. So theyve brought hezbollah into it. Theyve trained mill ashe militias in iran and brought them to syria. Very effective shia militias. And they brought their own guys and solamani is in damascus all the time advising assad what to do. They do not want to lose assad, why . Because they believe that they need assad to have hezbollah. Thats the channel that all the weapons go through to get to hezbollah. Rose from iran through syria to lebanon. Right. And hezbollah is essentially a terrorist wing of the iranian government. So when. Rose so when you look at what do you think worries the president the most . I think i think, let me say what i think should worry him. If im not inside of his head. What. Rose if you find out who is, let me know. What i think should worry him is that, is that isis is the tip of the iceberg. And what i mean by that is if you think back, charlie, to september 10th, 2001, al qaeda was at one place in 1 place only on the planet, afghanistan. Today al qaeda is al qaeda islamic extremists are in northern nigeria, mali, more tanya, niger niger, across all of north africa, from morocco, algeria, tunesia, in libya where they are in huge huge numbers n egypt where they are back for the first time in 25 years. Down into east africa, in somalia and increasingly in kenya. Across the gulf into yemen. Up into syria and iraq, and still in south asia and pakistan, afghanistan. Rose thats a lot of front. And bangladesh now, they Just Announced a new cell in bangladesh. So i think what. Rose not to mention asia. Right. Well, theyve done a pretty good job in combatting but the asians have done a pretty good job of rooting it out. So why i say tip of the iceberg, i think in that huge Geographic Area that i just talked about, youre going to see isis like problems pop up over the next five years, ten years, 15 years, 20 years. Rose there is the greatest Foreign Policy challenge to the United States to date. I think so. Rose not russia, not china. I break down National Security in to threats to the United States, and challenges. The greatest threat to the United States without a doubt in my mind is islamic fundamentalism. The greatest challenge to the United States is how do we deal with a rising china. How do we come to terms with a rising power in east asia when we are the status quo power. When we need to have a Good Relationship with this country both for economic reasons and for National Security reasons. Greatest threat, greatest challenge. Rose thank you for coming. Its always great to be here. Rose mike morell, back in a moment. Stay with us. Terry gilliam is here. Hes been called one of the great cinematic of our time, a director responsible for movies such as braz im brazil and 12 monday keerx his new project is set in a futuristic london, following a computer genius who is given a project aimed at discovering the meaning of life. Here is the trailer for the zero theorem. Hows it hanging. Sorry. All right. You seem tense. Theres very little that brings us joy. Youre a tough nut to crack. And of course i dont know nut in the pejorative sense. What seems to be the problem . We are dying. No, were not. He is not. Not, not, not. Zero theorem. I give him two weeks. 100 . The zero thereem is you know i think i have a friend who might be able to help. Youre a pretty intense guy. So tell me, how did it all start . Dow have any idea what the zero theorem is all about . Everything adds up to nothing. Exactly, whats the point of anything . We always wanted to feel different. Unique. You have made a very big mistake. Why would you want to prove that all is for nothing . We know quite clearly that we only had to answer yes and the boys would give us a reason for being. Rose im pleased to have Terry Gilliam back at this table, welcome. Nice to be back. Rose you have said about this movie, it is a glimpse of the world i think were living in now. Thats the world were living in now. Uhhuh. People just need the eyes to see. Rose yes. Its kind of like, i remember when i first started watching felini movies especially dulce vita and things like that, i thought they were fantasies. They were extreme versions of something that was not even very close to reality. Then i went to italy and discovered he was a documentary filmmaker. Thats a documentary filmmaker at work you just watched. Rose oh my gosh, you have to convince me of that. But tell me more what you said, what is the creative ago here, to show us what . Its odd. Im not sure. I mean its very hard this is difficult. Basically trying to raise questions, i suppose. Get people to look at the world slightly differently. I think ive been trying to do that from the beginning, is just say heres another window into the world. Look at it. Rose do you Like Technology . I use it a lot. I mean. Rose but do you like i dont like. I dont like the worship of it. I think it has become. Rose maybe its salvation of us all because it will find the answer to all the things, because those machines will take us where thats what we seem to believe. Theyre very he is duckive. Rose and biochemistry, biomedicine. Theyre very he is duckive things. My computer has now taken me over. I am a victim of my computer because it has access to to much information. Most of it i dont need but with an inquiring mind i can avoid doing real work by just exploring endlessly. Rose it takes you everywhere. Yes. Rose to all kinds of knowledge. Yes. And just a lot of. Rose interesting facts, whatever else. And gossip is what it mainly is. It has replaced the garden fence. And now we just talk nonstop. I think its also, what it has also done is given each of us our own little cinema screen where we are the star,4ue center. Personalizes everything. Yeah. Because i was in france promoting and i said if des cart was alive now we say je suis tweet therefore i am. And i there was andy warhol with 15 minutes of fame. Now we have a 15 megabytes of fame. Rose tell me about this movie and casting it bus Christoph Waltz is unbelievable. Es i mean, well, everything i have seen him in has been wonderful. Rose hes never had a bad conversation hes very smart. Hes great to work with. What is intriguing in this film, hes never off camera. He is the movie. That character, an its so different from anything hes done before. Its a very almost didnt recognize him when you see him up there. Rose i didnt for a moment. And thats exactly right. He is something completely different. What intrigued me about him was here is an actor who had worked a jobbing actor for years, moved, succeeded, he was 52 years old. There is so much information, some of frustration and anger. Bitterness, wisdom, all in there. Rose all that he can now call on. And working with him is just a joy. We would argue about things all the time because hes very im more contrary than he is. Rose what would you argue about . Politics, art. No, the character. Everything. Rose oh, i see. We argue about everything, outside of it, but when were working were arguing about the character. He says why is the character. Rose his character. His character, why he is referring to himself as we all the time. And he and i said well, its in the script. And he wouldnt accept that as an answer. So he got a vienese sci trust to explain people who are alone a lot start doing just that. Rose what about the name he had, cohen. It is cohen left. Now through the whole making of the film i said this san odd name and i never got an answer from pat rushin who wrote the script what this was. And i finally discovered about two weeks ago there was a canadian blog that had seen the fill number canada, its basically playing with the word coalef which is he cleeseas tee, which is hebrew for ecclesiastes, and strangely enough, the day i discovered that, i was writing a preface to this autobiography that comes out next year t was going to begin with the vanity of vanities all of the vanities which is the beginning of ecclesiastes, and i thought is extraordinary. So ecclesiastes is about that, about the vanity of all the ridiculous things people strife for and trying to find out what is life worth living. Take a look at this. This is when he is on the streets of a very futuristic london. Here it is. Every one is getting rich except you. What did we just see . The reason to be alone. I mean the world out there that just is hammering us all the time, demanding, suggesting, offering us solutions buy three fly toilet paper and your life has meaning, its all of that. Its kind of my reaction to the world and why i want to pull back from whats out there. And just arriving in new york. Its overwhelming i find. Maybe im just getting old. But theres something in, the insistence of everything, shouting, shouting, shouting. Rose is there a kind of is there an arc or an evolution in your work . Are you my wife says i keep making the same movie, i just change the costumes. Rose is she right . Theres a point. Theres a point. I think all these movies in one way or another have to do with the individual fighting, the larger world also imagination versus, you know, reality as its proclaimed by its media. Because i think reality is something we have to create every day of our lives, and you have to fight against reality, effectively the media is telling is reality. Its trying to get people to think. And i think its that battle between the world we live in and our dreams. Theyre both necessary. Not, one is not necessarily right and the other wrong. Theyre just at war with each other. And i think all my movies are from one another. Rose have you livered the life of a filmmaker that you wanted to live . You have done it on your terms . I have done it on my terms. It may not be the life i wanted to live. Because maybe i would have liked to make more films. Bigger films. But ive had control of everything i did. You wouldnt do it any other way . I dont know how to do if any other way . The mental makeup to take orders from people that i dont admire. Id like to the movie that you want to make that somehow if you just had the money you would make it but you cant do it because it costs enough so that people that you have to sell the idea to are no not convinced that it would be a commercial success . And art is not enough . No, no, i dont think i do art. I just try to make interesting movies that greets an audience. And i dont agree with the idea that there is an audience, there is an audience for each movie. But when you deal with hollywood theres this audience, its not true. And dealing with hollywood, youve got to be able to pitch. And i pitch to a certain degree with energy. But not necessarily the kind of simple structure that they want. And ive always relied on the fact that i have succeeded or at times they expected to justify my continuing to make the films. Rose what happened to monty python in june . Oh, its very weird. Its almost like it didnt happen. It was an anomaly it was, we played the 02 arena in london which was like 16,000 people in the audience. It went out in cinemas all over the world. It was a huge success. It was extraordinary feeling because youre on stage as mike palen said at one point, god this must be what it feels like to be a dictator. And i mean, this enormous stadium we played at t didnt feel big because the audience loved us so much. It felt absolutely intimate it was like just a bunch of friends gathering together. And it was at the beginning it was a bit, everybody was tense. But by the end it was joyous. We just had a great time. Rose whose idea . It was, it wasnt some of an idea as it was a desperate need to plug a hole. We lost a court case and it was a big, big expensive thing. And aaron has always been trying to get us to do a stage show, so eric said what about this. And we said, okay, its good it wont take us too much time. We get together. Do one show. That show sold out i think was in 47 seconds. This is crazy. Rose on the internet. Yeah. And then we penciled in a few more. And we ended up doing ten. And we could have done, gone on and on. Rose and you didnt because you made the amount of money you needed to make and that was it or because we wanted to get back into our own lives, own careers. It was interesting. Suddenly you return to 30 years ago. And i had always liked the fact that python had quit while we were ahead. We went out wile we were still good. And its very strange, you suddenly are back with your mates and we always see each other, its not like were separated in anyway but the old relationships when it comes to work are coming back, an its very odd. Rose but i was told by one of the members, i had forgotten who told me this, was the reason you stopped was that you didnt think you had it in you to make more of them at the level you had made them. That you thought they were so good, and you couldnt you were stretched to making that good and sustain it that good. You said lets stop while were on top. It was basically that, is what it was. People were pulling in different directions. That was going on. And it was just like the same chemistry wasnt it wasnt work the same way because when the chemistry worked it was wonderful stuff. And i thought i would you know, meaning of life went out and it wasnt quite the same as previously it was like we had gone back to sketch format as opposed to life of bryan which felt much more narrative. And it was like, this is good it was some of the best stuff weve done and some of the worst stuff we have done. Okay, run for it. What is it about opera that attracts you to direct it . This is like, i dont i think its a job like quality in my life. When life is getting interesting and enjoyable, it has i have to do something to punish myself. If god wont do it, i have to do it. And i did it one a few years ago. I did the i have never done opera before. I have to the done theatre before. This is all new. I dont particularly like opera because the images of the lets somebody simple. A 55yearold fat woman pretending to be a young 18yearold virgin, i cant, my suspense of disbelief is to the great enough to deal with this no matter how beautiful the music is. So i have got when people have been trying to get me to do opera for about 20 years. And the English National Opera Company caught me in a moment when i was just not sure what i was doing. And i love the fact that had hadnt succeeded with the opera it wasnt really an opera. It was an assembly of 8 sim fonic pieces he had strung together so it gave me a lot of room to play. And fortunately it was a huge success. It got great critical reviews, it won prizes. Full every night. So foolishly i said okay, ill do another one because i love ber lirx os. I said i would do another opera that doesnt work. I only take operas that dont work. Because at least it gives me a chance, i dont have to fight all the great versions that have been done prior. So i can be did and this chelini has worked out to be a huge success as well. Its frustrating. You do something and basically only like 20,000 people see it. And ive always been, wanted to be a populist as opposed to but thats changed, hasnt it . Isnt there ways to broadcast it around the world . Theyve done that in both cases. Its gone out on television but its not the same experience. When it was being recorded for tv i was sitting up in another room watching the monster. And at the Halfway Point i just laughed. I said i cant watch this. How is it to do it outside . We have never been outside. All these things have been inside. Outside its opera outside. No, no, no. You cant do that. I was years ago. Did you do that because you need the containment of the sound . I think theres no, i could do it outside if i years ago they wanted me to do paliacci in verona at the huge opera theatre there. And the problem is the opera starts while the sun is still setting. And its got to be black before we start. Its got to be. Its like this, you come to a black space, the focus is so you can control it. Why did i design it this way. Its perfect. Theres nothing out there. There is not even camera people. No, its great. Its total total focus is on you. Its brilliant. Of all the things you do what are you best at . I dont know. I really dont. I think is it film, is it opera . Is it sketches. I honestly done know any more, i really dont know what im good at. I keep thinking i dont really know how to do anything. Maybe youve found it. Maybe. But its a bit late, isnt it . And well then thats the question. Do you think most creative artists get, do their best when theyre very young . I think theres a point when you really youve got energy. All the things i do except for drawing acquire energy. Films are still the thing i like the most. Because i love the process. Its not the control, its like the experience, the shape of the experience. Unlike theatre, opera, where you rehearse for a couple months, then youve got a few weeks on stage. And then you dont know what youve done until the audience arrive whether it works or not. Which makes me very nervous. With film you have time to prepare it, think about it, dream it. And then, then i love looking for locations. I love finding the actors. I love the process. Then the shooting becomes, thats the painful part of the process because time is a dictator, bomb bomb. And youre up against everything. Moments happen every day that make it worthwhile, magic happens. An acker will come and do something you didnt expect. Its like oh, thats wonderful. A whole new way of looking at it. And then after all of that, youve got six month notice editing room to calmly look at it, change it, move it around. Its like at that point you have got the pieces of the jigsaw. Now lets put them in hopefully the right order. The zero theorem is the perfect example. We semi wrote the movie in the editing room. I was pulling scene as part, cutting them in half, took three scenes off the end, like it and that is the moment that i really love because it just may the editor and were playing within the limitations of what we created during the shoot. So i like having a border, a finity area to work within, whether its budget, time, or whatever. Because without it i, you know, the explosion is diluted. Dow love the arcade fire experiments. That was fun, that was great. Because. Rose they came to you. They came to me and ive always loved their take on it i had never been a rock groupie so here say chance to be a rock groupie and tag along with them to several shows. And it was it was a joy. I actually, its like working with people. I love working with people. Youre talented, especially people with more and different talents than i do. Because lets see if we can pull this together and make something. And the arcade fire was very strange. We went out and Madison Square garden and i was supposedly directing. I wasnt directing it. I cant do that. So the pro guy who is cut, five and four, to three, two. And i was given four cameras to play with which i was it was outrage usly funny. But the show went out and it was a great show and everybody was happy. What did you think of breaking bad . Oh, yeah just you. I was against all of it. I was get netflix, i was against all of it. People kept telling me about breaking bad. And last november my wife was away. And i signed on for netflix. The first month was free. And i was going to do the whole thing for free. And i got through almost four series. I binged. Yes. Because i couldnt stop it. It was so brilliant. And to me its the best thing ive seen in a long time because okay, its imperfect, its up and down defending depending, but the totality of it, and the premise was so utterly brilliant and the cast was great. I just loved it. And you finished it. I finished it Christmas Day while the family was downstairs watching i went upstairs and got through the last series because they were watching something i didnt want to watch. I think it was frozen, i was like oh, come on. And now ive just finished the version of the killing. Have you watched that. Oh, yeah. Its so good. Its so, because the writing in all of these things is so excellent and its not doing what holly wood seems to have to do now, the structure has to be by the numbers. For people like you its a god send, isnt it . I dont know. I dont know. You can create in a whole new different way. But youre not confined by time. Thats my problem. I need to be confined by time. Thats the problem. Thats right. You need an hour and a half, or somebody to fell you an hour and a half an no more. Imagine looking at one of my old scripts that richard la graferb and i wrote after fisher king. And were seeing if we can expand it to like an eight part series. I dont know. Its but its something to play with. Maybe thats the thing. Have you worked with anybody who has more talent than Robin Williams . Oh, his was so unique. Yeah, i mean hes a very unique talent. I mean, i strange enough i had to watch fisher king last week because a blue ray version is coming out and i had to look at it technically. And i wasnt certain because i miss robin so much. But watching it, it was wonderful. And hes alive. Hes alive and hes just robin and the thing about that film, that character hes playing is as much, probably all of robin, almost, in one character. The joy, the nightmares, all in there. And its and i really felt, i felt so good coming out because robins still with us. Rose thank you for coming. Thank you. Oh, this table. Rose been there done that its zero theorem opens in theatres on friday september 19th. That would be this friday. Right. Rose thank you for joining us. See you next time. Zero theorem. All very hush hush. Hand picking talent to crunch it sin before i was hired. Nobody lasts. Its a guarantees burnout project. I worked it for about three beaks when i was a fresh hot shot out of school. After that i couldnt concentrate, that is why management made me a supervisor. You might know im short of a fourth scoop. Thats why it shows you, nothing left to lose. Well, the tech boys should be around at your place about now change the locks, the standard at home workforce security. I have got my money on you. Youll be proving that theorem in no time. What exactly will we be proving . That management is getting desperate. If you ever wonder when all the stuff gets crunched winsd up . Voila rose for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us yen line at pbs. Org and charlie roast. Com. Charlie rose. Com captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org. Funding for charlie rose has been provided by the coke told cocacola company, supporting this Program Since 2002. American express. And charles schwab. Additional funding provided by . And by bloomberg, provider of scottish, scotti. This is nightly Business Report with Tyler Mathisen and susie gharib. End of an era, oracles cofounder and longtime ceo, larry ellison, is stepping down as chief executive. Who is in and what is next for the Software Giant . Ready or not. Here comes who looks like the largest u. S. Ipo ever, but there are pros and cons the way the company does business. And historic polls, scotland, deciding whether to go it alone, all this on nightly Business Report, september 18th. Good evening, more historic closes on the dow, thanks to a strong rally on wall street, but we begin tonight with stunning ne