Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20160211

Parts. To mawk the whole thing just cohere and rise into something incandescent. And the challenge is just irresistible. And when you see when with you work with those singers, theyre like the theyre great artists but theyre like great athletes. And they live the dangerous lives of athletes because theyre like high jumpers. And they are expected to be able to jump eight foot. Rose politics and opera when we continue. Funding for charlie rose has been provi rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin this evening with politics. Donald trump and senator Bernie Sanders were the big winners of the New Hampshire primary on tuesday night. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced on wednesday that he would suspend the campaign after his sixth place finish. Poor performance also lead former hewlettpackard chair woman Carly Fiorina to suspend her campaign. The battle now shifts to South Carolina and nevada, the next two states to hold primaries. Joining me now, Maggie Haberman of the new york times, she is also a political analyst for cnn. Annie karni of politico and nate silver founder of fivethirteight. Com. I am pleased to have each of them at this table this evening. So maggie, let me just begin with you. Coming out of New Hampshire, two things, one, Bernie Sanders has, i would assume, prove that he is for real . Yeah, without a doubt. I mean he came in close in iowa and won decisively in New Hampshire. Rose so what does that mean . What it means at minimum is he is going to be wellfunded Going Forward. He has a legitimate claim on the Democratic Party which he is not a member of, as people will remind him frequently. But he has a legitimate claim to say i have energy and enthusiasm, have i all of your younger voters. I want a cross demographics, i think the only one she won in New Hampshire Hillary Clinton was 65 and over. That is a real condemn nation of the establishment. And in that primary, you had a lot of people vote against the status quo. They didnt want more of the same. They said they wanted to see a change of direction. So that is going to give him a lot of ammunition Going Forward. If he does well in nevada. If he wins in the nevada caucuses, then that starts to become something of a Ripple Effect and i think is a problem for Hillary Clinton. Rose so what does she have to do . She has a lot to do. Among the things she has to do first and fore most is not go to sort of her muscle memory which is to immediately want to shake up and change everything about her candidacy. Rose that seems to be where she might go. I think that is partly where she is going to go. What she needs help with is messaging. That has been her problem for nine months. No matter how many different staffers you have, if they cant provide you a clear, central rationale for why you are running, if you yourself condition provide that, there is not much you can do to augment is that. Rose she has not done that. She has not done that she gave a sharper speech in New Hampshire when she was conceding that we had seen before. Clearly a different speech than what we have seen, a bit tighter. But it is still very much all about her. And she really needs to Start Talking about the voters much more. Rose about we. We and you. It is way too much i and my experience still. Rose how do you explain it, that Hillary Clinton dnt have a narrative, doesnt have a message. Shes done nothing but make speeches and prepare to run for i think you can make the casee on one hand she is overprepared in the sense that she gets many many different inputs. And they tend to sort of become overwhelming. She does not have an innate sense of politics. She does not sort of get the inherent rhythms the way her husband does. Which is, even as im saying it i am regretting saying it because we all sort of compare her to her husband which is not fair. She is a different person. But there are just certain skills that he has in terms of. Rose or has had. Or has had, maybe not at the moment. But has had. What he has also never been good about being a sur gat for her, for being honest. Always better being a sur gat for other people. As for her, though, i think that she knows what she wants to do in office. I think what she is not good is articulating that. And that has continued to be a problem. And she likes to talk about the past a lot. That is the problem. Rose is she still the favorite . She is still the favorite bus Bernie Sanders comes in with enormous negatives that would make it hard for him, among them he still has to pass the commander in chief test. The Foreign Policy discussion in the last democratic debate was challenging for him, by all accounts. And i think that is a major. Rose mainly resorts to judgement and i was right on iraq. Judgement, i was right on iraq. Sounding as if he is talking off a briefing book as opposed to something he is really fluent in and you could compare the difference in how she sounds talking about it but she is also the fave result because there is lit reallily no one else running. If there was someone else run, it might be different. Rose might somebody else run. There remains the ongoing speculation that somebody could parachute into the race. I find that very hard to believe unless things got quite dire for her. I still think she will lakely be the nominee. But i think she will go into the general election very, very damaged or very damaged, one very which is problematic. Democrats at this point, with the demographic edge they have in National Campaigns should be able to essentially nominate a cardboard cut out and have them win. But ironically the person who historically cleared the field of all other elected dem krad democrats who could have challenged her, is now seeming like a pretty weak general election can dit at candidate at least for the immediate future and that is surprising people. Rose what would you say about Hillary Clinton. One the message is her problem Going Forward. They were trying to shake it up am you saw her tap at the new ideas that they were going to talk about race, the way she would win this Going Forward is with africanamerican voters. That iowa and New Hampshire are not indicative of the country. But still she faces a problem that Bernie Sanders is preparing a message of revolution. And shes preparing one of continuation of obama, incremental change. Rose exes. And thats harder to sell to the young people. Its not inspirational. And thats what is exciting all these young people about it. D how she figures that, to sell Something Like that, that is also authentic to her is the message problem. Which is what we are hearing about the staff shakeup. The ground game was proven to be successful in iowa. St helped her win by a tiny margin. New hampshire was more of a message where it is really talking to voters in townhalls an coffee shops and shows it didnt resonate there at all. And shows that is the problem more than a growngd organization. Rose young people, what are they looking for . What can we say about those voters. Well, i think part of it has to do with hillarys theory of change which is an es toric term but her theory is you have to work really hard for change, work within the system and that you have to pay your dues and finally make incremental progress. If are you someone who is 22 years old and either hasnt paid your dues or is seeing big progress for gay rights under obama, for example, youve seen obamacare pass, then maybe you think, you know, actually this obama kind of more dreamy approach works a little bit better, in fact, instead. I think it is indicative. You go to their websites. Hillary is a laundry list literally of issues in alphabetical order. When you hear her talk in New Hampshire, its the same thing. She has this very Impressive Knowledge of 50, 60, 70 years of american political history and policy. Whereas bernie you go, and his first two issues are number one income inequality and number two, free college tuition. He knows young people are underrepresented in american politics. He figured out that i can actually make 18 to 29 years old a constituency for me that gives me something even more powerful than obama had. He won about two thirds of that vote. Bernie has won 80, will 5 . Rose right. And what does he have to do to win more and do better in the africanamerican community. So thats the key question. The one major caveat i have about iowa and New Hampshire is that they are extremely white states. We havent seen much support for sanders in states like South Carolina or north carolina, for example. Nevada i think should be a fairly good test. There is not a lot of polling there. And if there it is as a caucus im not sure i trust it. If clinton loses in nevada, that say really kind of diverse state. A lot of people come from all over the country to move to nevada. You have union workers, hispanics, an africanamerican population. I think they even have she dubt even have to lose. It used to be talked talked abos the fire wall. All of a sudden she are talking about it, the Clinton Campaign is downplaying saying among Democratic Caucus goers it is 80 white, they are starting to downplay it. So even if he does well and puts up a real run for her money, i think it makes him look like he is viable in a more diverse state. Its hard to know. When you go back to 2008 and look at the map. You say now i get why obama did well in iowa and hillary in New Hampshire. Obama did well in the midwest. Right now we only have two data points to put it blandly and we dont really know how that map will fill in. Im fascinated by can bernie do well in states like in appalacha, for example, west virginia, very white. Very working class. They wouldnt typically vote for a vermont socialist but maybe that is where he is going. One thing we have seen change over the course of the cycle so far is bernies support has become more down scale. Which makes sense. Those are voters who have an economic interest in voting for him. But can that translate into winning him, him winning lots of votes in appalacha, in the near south, in the midwest and not just in the kind of states that border canada, so to speak. One of the things i want to say in terms of why clinton is struggling. She has made a lot of her own missteps and the campaign has made missteps but this isnt existing in a vacuum. It is existing ksz and i was thinking of this as you were talking about sanders vote becoming more down scale on the economic spectrum, donald trump and Bernie Sanders, despite being one of the polit krat who has managed to make himself the representative of the oppressed, the other is a vermont selfidentified socialist, they share a lot of a certain messaging points in common. One of which is they are both focused heavy focus on trade. Heavy focus antiwall street. Heavy focus on the working man. Some sem ambulance of pitchfork bri grade. Trump you saw recently started using the beatle song revolution which say big Bernie Sanders song at his rallies. There are these strange forces at play that i think are making it much harder for clinton. This is not a static election. There is a huge desire for change out there. And trump has just changed the landscape on both sides. I think in ways we still dont totally understand that are about going to become clearer now that he has won something. Rose changed the landscape because of his appeal . Because he cuts across income levels as well as. Because is he something we literally have never seen before. When i mentioned he is a plutokrat who makes himself sound like he is a member of the 99 , we never had that. You had mitt romney run in 2012 and was vil iified with his business record. Combined with his ability to command complete Media Attention in a way that we have never seen before t is hard for other people. He always says im good for rating. I think there is something to that. He is you can document that but i think it also keeps people engaged for the next thing. You know, there was a line in the movie about howard stern where there was a ratings study done. And the people who liked howard stern said they only listened for an hour and wanted to see what he would say next. The people who didnt like him would listen for two and a half hours because they wanted to see what he would say next. And there is something to that. Rose so when you think about Bernie Sanders, as a general election candidate, in elect ability. Does i have an argument he has to make . The text book politics 101 answer stays the further you are from the center the worse you do. It would cost him a couple of points. I think thats probably still right. One thing to scr that whereas clinton is receiving fire from all sides from progressive democrats, from republicans, obviously, and probably gets harsher Media Coverage, which bernie would complain about, sanders is kind of a viral media sensation right now. It would be different if you go on to march and april. He is still viable and is being attacked from all sides. There are a lot of people who feel like they were disproportionately impacted by the recession and feel that they have been disproportionately negatively affected by the slow recovery. And i think that all of those forces combined are creating this sense of sort of roiling turmoil that we see. And there was some suspicion for awhile that maybe the polls were misreading this. Or maybe the media was overstating what was going on. New hampshire would suggest otherwise. What is interesting to me too, it plays out in different ways. Some left and some right. Immigration clearly right, on some economic issues, clearly left. I think thats exactly right. Yeah. And its a problem for hillary because she is with the wall street issues and the paid speeches she is rolling out she has a tougher plan to crack down on wall street than Bernie Sanders. But i think that at the bottomline, Bernie Sanders just says she gave speeches to Goldman Sachs and made 600,000 a year and she doesnt look shes having trouble looking like the honest messenger of someone who is going to fight against wall street. That is the moment we are in. I do think one thing also to be pointed out is that Hillary Clinton is still extremely well liked by most democrats. In New Hampshire where she lost very badly, two thirds of democrats still said she would be an acceptable mom nominee whereas donald trump who won easily, half of republicans said he wouldnt be an acceptable nominee. So it is so far a relatively friendly contest on the democratic side. But it is interesting. I think i was wondering a few years ago why we didnt see more upheaval in the United States after having had a very traumatic crisis. And sometimes it is delayed by a few years. You could have a revolution of rising expectations where you do see the stock market going up and some people are getting ahead again. And others are not. And that kind of makes it more acute for voters. Ing well. Ht now the economy is barack obama is popular and you think why is this a moment where people are acting like it is 1929 or a moment of big change. I guess because there is a delay. Rose so here we have done all trump in a lead across the country, almost everywhere you go. You have got kasich and bush and cruz and youve got marco rubio. Where was this race is going . You tell me. Rose and everything that i hear is that its going for a long time. Its definitely going for a long time. I was thinking earlier that it reminded me a little of the end of the movie the candidate where Robert Redford say what is happening now. The candidate isnt asking that, we all are, no one knows. I think you go into South Carolina where trump has a pretty solid lead in all Public Opinion polls. Where ted cruz faces a really tough choice of who he is going to attack and how. And where you have this sort of threeman other race for who is going to become the nontrump or cruz, and that is jeb bush, john kasich and marco rubio. Rose size up that race for me right now. I would put jeb bush in the lead of that race right now which is amazing to say. I think that right to rise the superpac backing him still does have some money and they are buying ads, a lot of them in South Carolina. They are just going to go completely scorched earth against marco rubio and try to lay everything on him that they can after his rev debate performance. I think rubio was very, very damaged by that debate performance the other night. Rose because he fed into what some suspicions were about him. Number one, number two, he did have a bar he had to pass. And he hadnt passed it yet, which is that i can do Something Better than just be the first term senator who gives a good speech. And that was basically what he looked like. He looked like he could give a good speech and say the same line literally over and over and over again which is the problem. Rose and what was it that obama had at the same time when the question was raised about him. It was sort of were you kal owe, basically. Could you perform at a bigger level. Obama is a different and marco lube yo are not the same, at all. But it was the same argument. In terms of kasich, i think a couple of things but one is i dont think he is a great fit for the state. I dont know what his financial situation is. Rose South Carolina. South carolina. And his main consultant john weaver was involved in running a candidate against the sitting governor nikki haley so i have to imagine because South Carolina is such a hot bed of interesting politics, that that will play out in some way for all of those reasons, i give jeb bush the edge. Rose is nikki haley going to give an endorsement. I dont believe so but i think she might find ways to let it be known. Rose she would be a Vice President ial possibility for somebody. And i think has been for quite some time. Rose jeb bush was didnt he spend millions of dollars and still came in third. Does that change. I guess we have to have some. What do you think about bush. We have to have some healthy disagreement. Bush clearly has the most still has a good ground game. Very professional staff. But i think this say product that all right maybe failed upon lodge. It was new coke or something. Where right now, as many republicans have a negative view within his own party of bush, as a positive view, i could see him winning this semifinal and beating rubio who has not had a lot of exposure. Im not saying he wouldnt pass the nomination. Im saying he has to win that three man fight. Bush could easily. Rose is he likely to win it . In other words to win it, he has to beelt rubio. He has to beat rubio, kasich and he has to come in reasonably close to cruz and trump. Rose is he on one route and trump is on other. And it goes into florida where it becomes complicated and frankly at this point i would give the edge to trump. And if trump wins florida, he will be very, very hard to stop. I think the longer it goes, it is better for Hillary Clinton. Because her race is going longer now. If the republican field clarified while she is still battling Bernie Sanders, i think that would be the worst case for her where she just comes into a general, she wins the nomination. Rose do you agree that marco rubio suffered serious damage . I mean i think so. It was really disconcerting thing to watch and say that line over and over again. But it was one moment. Like i dont know. Like you said, it played into an image of him. If it played into it because its actually true and he continues to do it, then yes. If it was one messy debate performance and he recovers then i dont think an entire candidacy is based on one glitch. The best news is that Chris Christie got out because Chris Christie on that debate stage with him, or the best news is that christie couldnt christie essentially the other night put on a bomb vest and just ran on marco rubio and hurt himself in the process, i would argue. But he really was problem attic for rubio. Rose why did he do that . I think he thought rubio was his biggest obstacle toward moving up but i also think christie is genuinely or was genuinely upset at the superpac ads that marco rubio group had been that the superpac supporting him had aired in New Hampshire. They really thwarted christies momentum in december or the perception of momentum and they were quite negative. Rose what i am surprised by what we said so far, even though it is conventional wisdom t is that kasich cannot come out of this New Hampshire primary with a lot of momentum. Because lots of people found him a very attractive personality in the way he campaigns. In the in how he reacted to audiences in all those town meetings. How is he Going Forward saying i learned a lot about listening. It is a kind of the exact opposite of donald trump. Absolutely. And i say all of this about kasich with the caveat that i called the trump thing wrong for many months. So im not suggesting that im certain that this is how it is going to go. I just think the environment in South Carolina is a little different and tougher. A little bit of a victim of the calender. In the final third of the republican race you have all these blue and purpose purple states where he could potentially do very well. A lot are winner take all, or winner take most states. But to get there were here when are you going to kind of lose fourth or fifth place everywhere else. Exactly. So the calender is really his biggest enemy. And the fact that look, he actually has a fairly conservative track record. Its an impressive resume as governor of ohio. Hes run a very folksy campaign. Can he pivot quickly enough when frankly hes not the most interesting story. One thing i want to say earlier about trump and rubio is trump so dominated the Media Coverage and as parts of the media we all play a role in that. That in some ways its like were still in september for marco rubio and john kasich. And candidates and voters dont know very much about these candidates. They are just learning about them. So you probably see more volatility. It is probably why rubio might get a Second Chance is its not like voters know a lot about him. You kind of liked him after iowa and then it was a really bad debate but i think hell get another look. But that is why i agree that the kind of longer this goes on and trump is slowly picking up delegates here and there, we can argue about his feeling. I think he probably has a lower then typical nominee but 20, 25, 30 , people will turn out for him no matter what, even without a ground game to speak of. Regardless of what he says. This was what New Hampshire showed, i think, and tell me if you disagree with this. Many of his voters made up their mind months ago and never waiverred. Rose if kasich does well and you can look at the possibility of a kasich rubio ticket, it is trouble for the democrats, isnt it . Yes, it is. This is one of the is up sitions about kasich is he is running to be Vice President. I dont believe anybody runs to be Vice President but i do think of the candidates in this race, he has probably run the race that would be best suited to being picked for the ticket. Is he a successful governor, popular governor, of a swing state, why not. Rose and a Third Party Candidate . Hello . Do you have anyone in mind . Rose there is only one, isnt there . Michael bloomberg is the only one who talked about it publicly that has some sense of plaws ability. Is he the only one. And who has a sense of plaws ability mostly because of the unlimited reseurses. He could spend a billion dollars of his own money. Rose he has experience, he has a highly known profile on important issues. Absolutely. But what i can make a case where Mike Bloomberg makes a lot of sense for the reasons you just said and also make the case that as we saw with trump and sanders winning on this populist message of antiwall street, i dont know how Mike Bloomberg in 2016 which has been so defined by income inequality makes the case. If you think about the metric that president obama won 2012 on, it really was that voters four out of five on exit polls says he cares about people like me. I think that will be a challenge for Mike Bloomberg. Is he much more of a tech no krat. He was a good manager of new york city but emoting and annie and i both covered him at city hall, was not always seen as his strong suit. One of the things trump does is he does connect with people. For all of sort of the flourishes and the minimal direct voter contact that he did, people do feel a connection to him. I think that last nights results are the kind of situation that would make Mike Bloomberg think more realistically about it he looks at it. And he looks at it. I agree with that. He looks at it and he sees donald trump and says the rules done seem to apply this year to anyone so why would they apply to me. I think its true that they would apply to him and he is kked to wall street. Rose it used to be said that if it was sanders versus trump then that was opened up a real door to a third party and he would be the most logical one because of resources and also political experience. Bloomberg as he became in his latter years in new york is not that far removed from Hillary Clinton. Hes not dead center, more center left himself. Meanwhile trump might runway to the center. If you go back and look at what trump said in 1999 and 2 thousand when he was con tell plating running on the reform ticket, you know, kind of the populist centrist but one with frankly for a national platform, i thought bloomberg did a good job in new york too. But for a national platform, better retail, political skills. A little bit more creative and clever. Trump kind of already is a Third Party Candidate. And pretty effective one without figured out the best way to run as a third party is to win. True. I hear you just noag you and hearing you, that you might have gotten to the point where having watched this campaign that you can imagine donald trump at the republican nominee and you can imagine him as being a very effective general election candidate. There is a version of him that can be very controlled, that can be much more subdued. He did a townhall on monday in londonderry, New Hampshire, where there were so many i feel your pain moments right out of the bill clinton play book. A man held up a framed picture of his son who died of a Drug Overdose and trump standing in the middle of the room did a lot of engaging with this guy. The day before that trump was in holderness at a larger rally where he was complaining about the length of his drive. And worrying about missing the super bowl. So it just depends on when you catch him. I wouldnt want to miss the super bowl either. Who among us. But i will say that he does, he has hinted that he will do things differently. So you see him as a Stronger Political talent then you ever imagined. No question about that and its funny, if you have been marinating in the new york tabloids as long as i have, as long as many of us have at this table. Marinate sght right word. It was hard to say, it was hard to see trump as i think the rest of the country would see him. But the rest of the country does not see sort of who we have all gotten to know over the years. The rest of the country see this very successful businessman. This person with this famous brand that everybody knows. O sitting in your living room as the apprentice for 14 seasons. I do think that he is very mindful that there are things he will have to do differently if he is the nominee. And i think is he prepared to do them. The question is him frankly getting. It is hard to argue with success. It is working for him. One thing i will say about that and we havent mentioned that here, but he beat the public polls in terms of his number. He exceeded where the polling was showing him. Thats not a small thing. Rose and coming off a loss. Absolutely. And coming in second in iowa and winning New Hampshire, thats not an unwinning formula for being the nominee. Rose thank you. Great to see you. Thank you. Rose back in a moment, stay with us. Sir richard eyre is here threct director of theater, opera and television, served as direct are of the National Theater in london, he has won an astounding six olivier awards. His latest production is the puccini opera Manon Lescaut. It opens at the metropolitan opera in new york on february 12th. He has also directed the dresser, a tel play based on the 1980 theater production starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as an aging actor and his assistant played by sir ial ian mckelal called serious and grown up television, a mature delight. Im very pleased to have sir richard eyre back on this program, welcome. Thank you. Rose opera is not new for you. No, i directed my first opera. I was slightly more than a child, 20 years ago. And it was, i was persuaded into opera. I was sort of prejudiced against opera because i thought that it was all about big gestures and unreality and everything about opera was overblown. The great director george sha ulte talked me into hi directed a production of guys and dolls. And he said i loved your guys and dolls. He is hungarian. You must direct opera. For years he asked mee. And finally i said yes to la traf yoti, 21, it 2 years ago. And since then i have relied on. Rose youve come back. And i came back to it at the met with carmen about seven years ago at the invitation of peter gelb who had recently taken over the met. And i have been a regular visiter since. And Manon Lescaut is my fourth opera in seven years at the met. Rose help me pronounce it, i thought it was manon. Manon. Manon, its based on a french 18th century novel but of course its in italian and the italians say we dont say manon in the french way. But please dont ask me what the correct italian pronuns yaition is. Rose by you find opera fascinating because . Because first of all. Rose music. Its music theater. And music theater i understand. Secondly, the music is so ambitious. And the whole enterprise is so ambitious and at the met i get to work with the best singers in the world. And thats not propaganda. Rose like if you go to you get to work with the best musicians. So i get to work with the best singers, best conductors in the world, the best opera orchestra and the best opera chofer us in the world plus this extraordinary steuks, organization, that manages in some bewilledderring way to produce these operas, productions of great quality in conditions, if you go backstage at the met, you think i dont know how this works but it does. And it works very successfully. Peter likes to reach out for Motion Picture film directors too. Youre not the first. Yes, the first production he put on was a production of madame butterfly directed by the late, great anthony minutegela and thats being revived now. He goes into theater essentially hes looking for people with an experience of musical, of music drama. And anthony migella was somebody whose music was very strong in his movies. And im very lucky that he came to me and who has done a number of productions who is a considerable musical director of music, musicals on broadway. And i think what peter has done and i think its a virtuous decision is to say look, lets thin out the division between Broadway Musical theater and musical and opera musical theater and say its about putting drama its about telling the story using music and using the human voice. Rose and for you did you need to have, acquire special skills to be able to do this as well as you wanted to . The special skill is it requires me to study the score for about two years. Rose really. Because i read music like a dyslexic. I have to follow with my finger and i have to listen to it. And eventually i desiefer the hire glim hieroglyphics. And it takes me about two years to really get on top of a musical score. And so i have to, i cant go into a rehearsal room without feeling that i know as much as i can about the score and about the lib rato. Rose does that mean that you can talk to the operatic star stars with the same authority that you could talk to a brilliant shakespearean acker if he National Theat sner. Well, i wouldnt say quite the same authority. But at least i can have a conversation. Rose an theyre willing to listen. And theyre willing to listen. Its a matter of mutual respect. I have something to offer them. And they have everything to offer me. Rose okay. Do you do this because its a challenge, because its just a place to add and paint with a different brush . No its a different experience. It really is, being yesterday morning was the dress rehearsal of manon less kawtdment you have this 3,000 seat theater. There are probably 90 members of the orchestra. There are certainly 85 members of the chorus. There are a four massive sets. And so just the logistical puzzle of pulling all that together and making it, i mean the object is always to make the whole more than the sum of the parts, to make the whole thing just cohere and just rise into something that is incandescent. And the challenge is just irresistible. And when you see, when you work with those singers, theyre like, theyre great artists but theyre like great athletes. And they live the dangerous lives of athletes because theyre like high jumpers. And they are expected to be able to jump eight foot. And then one day they do 7 foot 11 and people say. They set the standard, they raised the bar. They have raised the bar. And so the sense of danger is glad ator yal. And the audience, they are not ungenerous. I dont say they come along brimming with but there is a sense of show us something special. We know you can do it. And willing it. An when they do do it i find it profoundly moving. Rose does it mean if you found the right property you would like to make a musical on film . No, because it is live. And you know, i love film. I love movies. I like watching movies. I like making the kind i have made, a very, very small budget and about splal stories, not epics. But for me the thing about theater and opera is that theyre at the center of theater you cant, the human being is always roughly the same size, you know, between 6 foot five and, you know, five foot. And its the human voice and this unampified human voice, the vuller in able of t the humanity of it is what i kind profoundly moving. And it cant be manipulated whereas with a movie, you know, you can now adays you can manipulate. You can practically create. Tools that you are are so much so much more than have been in the past. But interesting, i find still that the one thing that distinguishes movies which are truly successful and live on, are ones in which the human values are more important than the mechanical ones. Of course. And i have just, you know, ive seen a lot of movies recently where thats not the case. And i came out feeling bombarded and completely inordinate length of time by special affects and noise that absolutely has no dynamic at all. It is just loud or louder or loudest. And there is no, there is no sort of nuance about it. This was in germany, was it, before we came here. The Manon Lescaut, i first did it nearly two years ago with the conductor simon rattle. Yes. And the berlin fill harmonic. Fantastic. So it is a coproduction with the met. And it is a great opportunity, you know. You do it in germany and get to redo it. The german love opera. The germans love opera. And the germans fate or the individual states in germany are very generous towards their towards the or thes. All of the arts but particularly opera. What is the best operahouse for you . Since you have become a. Well, ive worked in about five operahouses. And you might expect me to say the met and im not going to disappoint you. Because i do believe its from a sound standpoint. Its astonishingly good acoustics given that its vast. Strangely, i find it has an intimacy and the acoustic is very, very generous. Its also very well run and very well staffed. And there is a sense of community there whereas a number of operahouses theaters that have i worked, you miss that feeling that everybody is working in the same direction. Did you change it between the time it was in germany and what you will do here on february 12th . Yes, made it better. Sor some critics who may have found fault with it at have a point in your judgement . No, to be honest i didnt read the critics because pie german is extremely rudiment are. So why change it . What would be your own intuition. I know i can make this better. I know this moment of storytelling can be cleare clearer. I know that all the mf cease of the opera can be stronger and it can have a more powerful comeum latif affect. The opera is about sexual passion. And it is unambiguously about sexual passion. Yeah. So you just look for ways in which to sort of amplify that degree of passion. If you had your career to do over and you started as an actor, for im not sure how long, several years. A bad actor. And you knew that. I knew, i was not sufficiently confident when i started and when i finished for my intuition or my intelligence to be suppressed by my talent . Thats to say that my selfmonsterring won out over my ability and i feel it became paralyzed. It is almost like your brain won over your heart. Yes. Because you know, if you start to, im sure in your job, if you start to hear yourself talking in the way that if an actor starts to see themselves moving and hear themselves speaking, then the selfcensorship becomes so extreme that you become paralyzed. But when you became a director did you instantly know that this was for me . I did. That the talents i have are so directly applicable to this . Astonishingly i did. And i was very, very lucky. I think everybody who has some sort of patron in their lives is very lucky. And often it is apparent or a teacher or a sibling, i was lucky. There was another director. I was acting in a company. I asked if i could put together a production for a sunday night with some of the actors in the show i was in. I did this show and he said to me you have to choose, you have to choose whether to be a director or an actor. And i thought astonishing. I didnt know i had a choice. I said well obviously a director. He took me on as his assistant and then gave me productions. And from there i never looked backness. An over this long and distinguished career anything you had not done or wanted to do or might do . Well, im very much hoping to make a film in the fall of ian mcewing noffal the children act. I love ian mcewing. He is a very old friend of mine rrs he has been at this table many, many times. And all of his friends have been at . Taiblg too. Interest is a great book to be written, im not sure it has been written about the friendship between them all, the late Christopher Hitchins and others. Julian barnes. Rose when christopher died they all came here and sat around this table to talk about christopher. And it was amazing. Ian was here, sitting here. And you just, i mean its something about british requires. Theyre all the same generation. Yeah. And oddly theyre not all ox bridge, you know, oxford and cambridge at all. They are just of a similar sensibility at the time. And theyve become very, very distinct. And i think the remarkable thing about them is that they all remained at the top of tair game. And thats an extraordinary thing for a generation of novelists. Rose now did somebody made a film of one of ians books, didnt they . I made a film with, well, it wasnt of ians book. I made a film called the lunch in 1984 which was about thacherrism. It was about the politics of the right and is the kind of slow corruption of the media. And there was a character very strongly based on christopher hitchens. Who was a political journalist. Yeah. And all of that. Played by tim curry. Wow. So that is a film are you going to make. That is a film i plan to make. Nothing of shakespeare, nothing of checkoff, nog of any great dram tises that you wanted to make and never did for one reason or another . The shakespeare play that i have never done, i have done all the shakespeare tragedies. The play i have never done is is 12th right. I have never found the right cast. So sometime in the next 15 years. Im only 72. You have a long time. So you have done lear. I have done lear. You have done macbeth. I did lear with ian hold am and im talking to Anthony Hopkins. Hes very keen to make a film of lear. And he would be probably the definitive lear. Really . Hes the most remarkable actor still. You should know, did you work with him. I have. I have worked with him on the dresser, with ian mckellen. And so it was hand i believe elector and gandalf together on stage in west london. Feeding off each other. They had known each other, i mean ive worked a lot with ian mckelan. I had never worked with tony hopkins. Have i known him for a long time. I have known them both for a long time. Rose so this is sir richard, sir anthony and sir ian. I got them together, anticipating that it might be quite awkward having these two giants working together. And they just fell in love. And it was perfectly clear. Rose with the work and the acting of each other. They just, you could see both of them, either of them sitting back and thinking how clever they have chosen to do the line that way. And there was this wonderful warmth and generosity between them. Rose this was for bbc2. This was for bbc26789 it was, we shot it in we rehearsed for two weeks, mostly sitting around the table. Awful lot of anecdotage. There should have been a fly on the wall documentary. And then we shot. Rose you can have cameras we can put on and they will just record everything happening at the table. We should have done that. We should be it should be going on. Its about aging. Its about aging. It is set in a theatre with a star actor and his dresser who is the assistant. The man who is like his mind seizing through the performance. Theyve worked together for years and years and years. Its not exclusively about the theater. Obviously set in the theater and they are doing a production of king lear and the tension is will the star actor Anthony Hopkins character get on stage because hes had some sort of breakdown. Grantedly it becomes a story about more about mortality than about the theater. And more about the relationships that build in the workplace. It could be a newspaper. It could be a television station. It could be, you know, it could even be a Small Business but theyre mutually depend enter. And gradually you see that the old man is on the way out and trying to, and he has a sort of awareness that his time is coming to an end. And trying to, settle his debts. And on the whole thing. Rose who was attached to this before . Not recently but it was. First done as a movie. It was done as a movie with albert finny. Albert finny. Rose who did it. Tom courtney. Thats right. And tom courtney had done it in the theater. It started as a theatre play. Ronald hardwood. Who is a terrific playwright and oscar winning screen writer. He wrote this play, well, whatever, 1980. Yeah. Exactly. So long, long time ago. And it is it has the stage of a classic because precisely because its not exclusively about the theater. Its just about aging. Colin who i know who say producer tells the story about as you were approaching Anthony Hopkins for lunch or something shouted out im not doing it on stage. Yes, thats true and he meant it. And he tells movingly tony hopkins who is a wonderful theater actor, but he tells the story of being on stage with judy dench and anthony and cleopatra. And tony says i was standing at the side of the stage wearing this armor. I thought i look pretty good in this. And i suddenly thought there is judi dench acting away. Im not half as good as her. And he said my nerve went. And he cant be koaksed back on to a stage, you know. Rose at that moment told him. He just stood outside himself and its i guess what we were talking about earlier, when the third eye, the actors third eye looks down and this you cant do it. Then there is no way back. Rose you know, youve had an interesting life beyond the theater. You went through depression. I did. I when through a period of quite bad depressionment but i think its an occupational hazard. I think in our world you work very, very, very intensely on a piece of work. And then it stops like that. And the day after it stops, if you dont have the ammunition to deal with this, then i find there is a desperate deslation about it. Rose because you dont know where you are going next or simply because work brings you so much focus and so much purpose every day that the next day you get up and you have no focus, no purpose. Its a mixture of that. You know, its a mixture of needing for your identity to be validated. Rose but its also the thing, there is a roughly poem by an american poet called howard nemorov called the end of the war. And the last line is i could hear the dust falling between the walls. And that is what it is like for me when the noise stops and theres nothing going on. The silence is quite frightening and depressing. I have learned that. Rose how did you come to deal with it . Talked, acknowledged it. Rose publicly and. I wrote about it. Yeah. And i wrote about having medication. Rose you have to have medication the rest of your life. No, no, no. I just got better. Rose it clearly does not stop you from working now at all. No, it probably makes me work. Rose we had a couple of young people talking about bipolar here and the number of people who have had bipolar depression. And who have been almost enormously creative. And used it in bursts of high creativity. Yes. Well, we give it a name. Im not sure it is a virtue that we give all these conditions names. And we say bipolar where we used to say yeah, a bit up today, bit down. Rose a vast difference though. There is a vast difference. There is a clinical dirchtion. And anybody who has experienced real depression. Rose and is connected to your brain. Yeah. It is you know, its a miserable condition. And it is holily different from just feeling blue. Rose and can be suicidal. Yeah. Ive never felt that. For me the flicker of life has always been much stronger. And the sense of shame sort of, i mean, what does it matter when you are dead. But the sense of leaving behind the shaism shame, i would find, i mean if its not. Rose the shame of suicide. If its not too absurd to say, i would say i would find that difficult to live with. Or difficult to die for. Rose i know lots of people feel the same way. On the other hand, there are a lot of people in this world who are in unimagined pain. Yes. Rose you know. So i would not judge someone who had pain that i could not appreciate or understand. I think thats one of the things that one of the functions of art. Its not the central function is empathy, i mean, most difficult thing to imagine what somebody else is going through, to actually really empathize, to see with their eyes, to hear with their ears, to understand with their mind. And to understand somebody elses pain, i think, is the most extraordinary gift. And an essential one. Rose thank you. Pleasure as always. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, see you neck time. For more about this program and earlier episodes vits us online at pbs. Org and charlie rose. Com captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org funding for funding for charlie rose is provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Tune in tomorrow night, the newshour president ial debate in partnership with facebook in milwaukee, wiscon announcer the following kqed production was produced in high definition. Must have soup the pancake is to die for it was a gutbomb, but i liked it. I actually fantasized in private moments about the food i had. I didnt like it. You didnt like it . Dining here makes me feel rich. And what about dessert . Pecan pie . Sweet potato pie