Out. Tavis so how about the book cover, guys . No, no, forget the book cover. Lets see the after picture. Tavis there you go. Theres the book cover. By the way, i now know why youre mr. Smiley. Tavis why . Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, whats your favorite james taylor song ever written . Tavis ooh, come on, come on. Best james taylor song ever written . Oh, come on, if you had asked me on the spot tavis that changes every week. Say if we had just switched the whole thing and im in your seat . Tavis give me yours, give me yours. Well, come on. Tavis give me yours. Millworker, greatest song ever written. Tavis millworker is good. No. Millworker is great. Tavis carolina in my mind is awfully good. Aw, carolina in my mind is boring, boring. Tavis sweet baby james, pretty good, pretty good. Flag is the best album, by the way, because millworker is on it. Tavis okay. Company man, dont even start with me. Tavis for those of you who dont know this, every time jamie comes on the show, we have this fight about who loves james taylor more. He is the soundtrack of our generation and, therefore, theres no one who speaks to me musically more than him. Tavis i love the humanity in his lyric. The content is so anyway, we and his voice. Tavis yes. Theres just tavis we love you, james taylor. How about that . I love this book. Ah, look at you segue look at you segue you must do this for a living, baby tavis [laugh] 20 years, i been working at it. I really do love the title, though, my brave year of firsts tries, sighs and high fives. This is your 10th one. I know. Tavis does it feel like 10 . Well, look, im barely out of high school. I got 840 combined on my sats, combined. Tavis you beat me. No, i did not. I did not. Therefore, the idea that at some point in my life i would end up an author of books for children is and was a kind of crazy idea that would never have been in my game plan, not that i have a game plan. Yes, 10 books 20 years later, its an astonishing experience for me. Tavis whered the idea for the first one come from . My little girl. Tavis how did you get in this lane . I was an actor for hire. I was married, you know, to this really interesting guy. Tavis 28 years now. I know, coming up december. My fouryearold, my annie, walked into my room swear, walked into my office. I was sitting at my desk and she walked in and went, when i was little, i used diapers, now i use a potty and she walked out of my room. I was stunned by this kid who basically was like fully owning her past. I sat down and i laughed and i wrote on a piece of paper at my desk and wrote when i was little a fouryearolds memoir of her youth because she was talking about her youth like she was talking about the good old days the way we talked about james taylor back in the day or bellbottoms or a shag or something that happened to you in the past. The idea that my daughter who was little, who was four, had a past was astonishing to me because she was so little to me. She was just a baby. So i wrote this list of things that she used to be able to not do and now she could do and, at the end of it, it made me cry and i realized it was a book. I never thought about writing a book, i never dreamt about writing a book, i never anticipated writing a book, nothing. The next thing i knew, it was a book. Tavis so shes a long way from four now. Shell be 26. Tavis exactly. So where do these ideas keep coming from . Well, you know 10 books, 20 years. Ive raised two children. Ive been around a lot of children. This book came out of a friend of mine who runs a coffee shop in the mountains in idaho where i live. He was talking about his daughter. I inquired how she was doing. Her name is frankie. I said, hows frankie doing and he said, oh, shes had an amazing summer of firsts. Tavis ding, ding, ding, ding. You know me. Its like ding, ding, ding. Tavis yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, what comes up is bravery and doing things for the first time and how limited we are as adults to try new things and how much we ask children to do them. So right away, you know, the book pops in my head and comes out. Its really easy. You know what it is . Its like rap music. I interviewed ll cool j once for a movie we did together. For interview magazine, they sent me out to interview him and photograph him, by the way, first time without his hat. Tavis ooh, he lives underneath that hat. He does like his hat, but i photographed him. Im a photographer and i photographed him. We were sitting there talking about whatever we were talking about and, at one point, i said to him, so rap music, is it really like you see in the movies . Do people like to rapoffs and do you create these raps instantaneously . He said yes. I said, okay, rap me about the sugar container on the table. He was able to do it. Tavis freestyle. Okay, look at you, freestyling. For me, this is my freestyling. These come out of me as quickly as that came out of him. You know, in the same way that rap music is about something, these books are about something. So its not just some random boring list of rhyming things. They actually have an intent and a purpose behind them. Tavis why am i blanking on the word what laura does is called . Illustrator. Tavis illustrator. I had a brain fart. No. You know what you were thinking about . Tavis oh, come on, come on. Anyway am i right . Tavis that was jay leno with that blue dress you had on. Oh, please. Tavis that wasnt me. Oh, come on. Tavis by the way, why do i get all black and jay got like blue and flowing . I wore something very tavis its very nice. I mean, youre always hot, youre always hot, but jay i didnt come here to i know, im wearing a tavis you didnt answer my question. Why did jay get all this and i get this . Whats up with that . Because this is a serious conversation and that is tavis send this tape to jay. I do serious conversations. Well, you do. Tavis yeah. And you know what . Something tells me hed love to be sitting in your seat. No, im serious. Tavis he makes a lot more cash, a whole lot of cash. Its so not about the cash, though. Tavis oh, yes, it is. No, its not. Tavis oh, yes, it is. [laughter] no, its not. At this point in your life and this point in my life, its not about the cash. Its got to be about something else, its got to be. If it isnt, i can tell you right now, the first book i wrote, the word cash didnt fall into my head. When it was published and i was driving around in my car one day and my phone rang remember how big the phones were in our cars back there 20 years ago . I remember answering my phone. I remember where i was in hollywood on norton when my publicist and friend, heidi, told me that my first book had crossed a selling platform of 50,000 books. You have to understand. The truth is, i never thought about it from a financial standpoint. I never thought that it would be sold. I didnt really ever put the commerce behind it. For me, it was art. For me, it was just an expression. Tavis has money ever mattered to you . Well, of course, of course. Tavis im serious. So as youve gotten more chronologically gifted cause you still look nice. Im so regretting my outfit. Im so sorry. [laughter] tavis as youve gotten older because youre looking in my eyes and the last time i was here, you were doing a lot of this. I kept going like this, tavis, whats going on . Tavis yeah, yeah, okay. If money used to matter, as youve gotten older, whats taking its place . What does matter more now than commerce . Truth. Tavis i like that. Ill high five you on that. High five me, baby. See . High fives. Tavis i like that, i like that. Im making a movie about the man who invented the high five. Tavis who did . Who did invent. Glenn burke in 1977. Tavis wow. Howd it happen . A black closeted baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Tavis howd the high five dusty baker hit his 30th homerun that put him in the big club, 303030, and glenn burke was on deck. When dusty baker rounded home, glenn burke, for the first time in history, reached behind him. Tavis that was it. That was the first high five and tavis Dodger Stadium . Dodger stadium. Tavis wow, chavez ravine. I want to say october 2, 1977. I could be off by a number. What turned out, of course, to happen is that glenn burke died of aids on the streets of oakland after playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the oakland as. Its an amazing story which im gonna actually produce a film on. The name of his biography is called out at home. Tavis i got to read that. Its very powerful. Tavis what is the sorry, you high fived and then i went to the high five story. Tavis im glad you did. Speaking of brave, whats the bravest thing that Jamie Lee Curtis has ever done . Well, getting sober was the easiest and bravest thing i ever did. I say easiest because, for many, many people, making the declaration is the hardest thing. Actually, putting the words in your mouth that you need help is the hurdle that for me was once i crossed that hurdle, the rest of staying sober and being sober and working with sober people was easy. The hardest thing is acknowledging it. For other people, its the rest of the program thats saying they are or having life intervene where they have Car Accidents or theyre arrested or they get their picture in the tabloids because they have a mug shot. I didnt have any of that. I was all very high bottom, what they call it. So for me, the single greatest accomplishment of my life and will be, no matter what, is being able to take what is a family disease and stop it and say its gonna stop here with me, you know, that the buck stops here. That was huge, i mean, crazy. Tavis i get the sense i could be wrong. You tell me. I get the sense, though, that with all that youve done and encountered, youre not one of those persons that has any regrets about what she did. If im wrong, tell me. I mean, i could be that. No, no. Tavis you do have regrets . There will, of course, be regrets because im human. Recently, its so interesting because i can be a bit of a smart aleck and flippant and i can. Tavis not you, not you. Not me. And i can divert quickly for the joke. You know, i was a jokester in school and i havent had enough coffee today. Where was i going . What were we talking about . [laughter] i hear you had one earlier, darling. Tavis that happens. What were we talking about . Tavis ill give you 10 seconds to figure it out, 10, 9, 8 oh, youre just being mean now. Tavis the prior question was whats the bravest thing youve ever done . Okay, bravery, thank you very much. I cant remember where i was going with this, but it had to do with something. [laughter] its all good. Tavis i was asking you whether or not you lived a life of regrets and you said you dont have regrets. Right, and not regretting anything. Oh, i was being human i found it oh, thank you. Tavis now you didnt find it. I threw it in your lap. You didnt find it. I gave that to you. You didnt give it to me you nudged me. Tavis give it to me then. Go ahead. Okay. I did an interview recently where it was one of those quick 20 questions things and you have to come up with the answers quickly. They said, what is the thing you hate most about yourself . And i said that im human. When i really thought about it later, what i was saying is that i hate that im bulletproof, that im not bulletproof. I want to be bulletproof. I want to be a superhero. I want to be its interesting because its the exact opposite of the way i live. Im uninterested in superheroes. I am only interested in real stories, real people, real connection. So my flip remark really made me do a lot of soulsearching of what did that really mean . I guess what im saying is, you cant live a truthful life without regret. I mean, i cannot lie to you and say i do not regret things i have done in my past, but the really good news is that there are very few of them and i hope that as i get older and the time on the planet and the time with the people that i spend adds up that those regrets will be really small moments in my life and that the great majority of my life will be one of integrity, one of grace, one of depth, one of some humor, less cleavage and more clarity. Tavis less cleavage, more clarity. Im down with one of those, but anyway, as you get older, which i think youre doing gracefully thank you. Tavis are you enjoying the journey . Yes, i am. Tavis but getting older, im discovering, is not the same for the faint of heart. I mean, this is coming,st dont see it you know. We hear about it. Someone can say, you know, you should wear sun block cause youre gonna regret not wearing it. You know, i was a girl who would put we would go to palm springs. I grew up here in california. You know, my girlfriends, wed go to palm springs for the weekend and bain de soleil orange gelee which was basically like crisco for your skin. Lets just put this and just bake in the sun, just bake because we all thought it was hot to have tans or whatever. Obviously, there are things that you kind of look back and go, oh, wow. But for the most part, im finding a lot of humor in getting older. Tavis you mentioned humanity a moment ago. What is it about the humanity of children specifically that so turns you on, interests you as subject matter . Because theyre true. Theyre just the truest thing youre gonna find. Here is the great irony. Were an adult. Its a book about bravery, about celebrating bravery in children in doing things for the first time, trying something new and succeeding. How often do we do that in our daily life . How often do we adults try new things . Yet these children are so open and willing to try and willing to look foolish and stumble and fall. I think its because, as weve gotten older, the media has made falling kind of like a joke. Its like the media now is at the ready to catch any public figure from falling, literally, spiritually, physically, mentally. Theyre just lying in wait. That lens is poised not to take a beautiful photograph of you. It is poised to catch you in your flaw as a human being. Thats why i think my response to that flippant question of what do you hate most about yourself is that im human because i am flawed and therefore, by being flawed, im vulnerable. The media now has given the message to adults. Dont try new things, dont look foolish because we will catch you and then broadcast it to the world. I think children dont have that. Tavis i wonder whether or not you think these children that youre writing to now are growing up in a world, inhabiting a world, where theyre seeing more or less bravery, more or less courage . I mean, i get what the book is about, but on a much larger scale, i wonder whether or not were giving them a world where i wonder if were more cowardly now than weve ever been. Well, were cowardly because we dont see war, we play war. Tavis right. We sit at our consoles and play gears of war or, believe me, i have a 16yearold son and i have the gamut. So well play that, but we dont see it. We dont see images from war. We dont turn on the news and see the evidence of war, the result of war. Maybe twice a year, memorial day, veterans day, well go out, well hang our flags, well try to inculcate in our children some sense of National Honor for the fallen. But really, we dont see it. We just dont see the pictures. Theres no driveby on the freeway of death up close. So we dont really see bravery. I get the absolute privilege the last couple of years, i hope every year until im an old lady, to go to the lapd medal of valor ceremony and narrate each of the stories that accompany that soldier, that police officer, who was injured in the line of duty or killed in the line of duty. I tell their story at a huge luncheon filled with Police Officers and their families with charlie beck honoring the fallen and the injured in the line of duty. But again, we dont see it. So i think our children are inured from any absolute sense of risk and, therefore, bravery has a whole different face to it. Tavis how much bravery does it take to age in this business as a woman . Am i overstating it . No. Heres the reality and its sad and true. When you cut to me in a movie and your image of me is from trading places and you cut to me, i know that there are a bunch of people who go, oh, wow, she really got old. Its the nature of the movie business. Its the tinsel town and all that. Nowadays, when you make movies, you dont need any lights at all. You have to remember, back in the day, the film stocks that they had were very, very insensitive and they would have these humongous lights and lighting was everything, so everyone looked good. Nowadays with digital film where you dont need any light at all, you could shoot in the [bleep] dark. It makes people not look so good and it makes aging on film much, much harder. But im old enough and savvy enough to understand that, when someone cuts to me, there will be a moment of wow, she got old. Oh, shes still funny, though or whatever. Tavis why cant it be that, wow, jamie lee is still hot, she looks great or shes aging gracefully. Why cant it be that . I just dont think its the way that i mean, thats a sort of positive way of looking at it. My experience is that thats probably not the way. So what happens is, you have a lot of people who are completely destroying their faces with this genocide of beauty which is an epidemic, a pandemic, where people are trying to alter natures course. It is deadly and you see it everywhere you look on the news, on television, in the movies, and its sad. You know, its a reality, but sad. Tavis so you see yourself doing this for many more years . I dont really know. You know what . I really dont know. Ive published 10 books for children, ive obviously been in movies, ive been on tv. I havent sat in your chair yet. Tavis is that a threat . [laughter] no, never. Tavis Jamie Lee Curtis comes to pbs. You know what i love . What i love is that somebody gets to call you mr. Smiley. I love it. Somebody said it backstage. They said, well, were almost ready for mr. Smiley. Tavis theres only one person on this whole set that does that. Thats karen. Karens the only one. Karen . Yeah, i just spoke to you. Tavis i get called many other things around here, but only karen calls me mr. Smiley. You know, i dont know. I want to be with my people. Thats what i want to be with. I mean, obviously, ive done a lot of things. I never thought id do them. I barely got out of high school and i look back at my life often and go, wow, this was awesome but i dont know. You have to carry it forward, so i dont know what im gonna do with that. Tavis how often do you get a chance to interact with the kids who actually read your books . You know, thats the reason. Tavis you got a nice app, by the way, too. They did an amazing app of one of my books, my balloon book which is called where do balloons go . An uplifting mystery about loss and letting go and creativity. A company came to me and said, wed like to make an app of your book and its [bleep] fantastic, like crazy great. Tavis i saw it. Its so much fun. You make balloon animals and you can send faxes and emails and send balloon animals to people. Its nutty and so much fun to play with. But am i gonna like be pulling every book into an app world . I dont know. Theres a point where i think youve got to just gracefully bow out and, you know, tend to your rose garden and take care of your people. Tavis well, dont do that any time soon, please. I promise you, the next time i come here, i will be naked. I promise you i will wear so little clothing. I thought im finally on a legitimate tv show. Im gonna dress like a lady, i swear. Tavis thanks a lot, jamie. Thanks a whole lot, jamie lee. I literally thought i would be respectable on your tv show. Tavis the new book from Jamie Lee Curtis is oh, thats not the book. You know what . Tavis thats james taylor and tavis oh, to tavis slow down, slow down. Read that out loud again. What does that top line say . To a true friend how low can we go. Tavis thats right, and its signed at the bottom by not even james taylor, just james. Tavis do you see this . You know what . Tavis anyway, the new book by Jamie Lee Curtis is called my brave year of firsts tries, sighs and high fives. Im not sure i like you anymore. Tavis i love you, jamie lee, and theres nothing you can do about it. Yeah, sing to me then. Tavis i will offcamera. Thats our show for tonight. Until next time, keep the faith. For more information on todays show, visit tavis smiley at pbs. Org. Tavis hi, im tavis smiley. Join me next time for a conversation with legendary blues musician and buddy guy. That is next time. We will see you then. There is a saying that dr. King had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. I try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. We know that we are only halfway to completely eliminating hunger and we have work to do. Walmart committed 2 billion to fighting hunger in the u. S. As we work together, we can stamp hunger out. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Be more. Pbs. Captioning sponsored by Macneil Lehrer productions ifill a massive winter storm disrupted travel today for tens of thousands of americans across the country. Good evening, im gwen ifill. Warner and im margaret warner. On the newshour tonight, we get the latest on the snow, sleet and rain that have snarled roads, knocked out power and delayed flights. Ifill then, with images from the connecticut massacre still raw, Spencer Michels looks at a California Law that aims to head off such violence. Reporter though no one knows the diagnosis of the perpetrator of the shootings in newtown, the killings have raised once again the issue of forcing the mentallyl