Transcripts For WETA Charlie Rose 20130104

Oh. God. Get a doctor. [troy dialing] she made me kill simon. She. She made me kill him. [car door closes, engine starts] [thunder] mummy. [harry cries] get away, you shes coming with me [grahame grunts] oh, my god. [kate breathing heavily] dont be stupid, mr. Tranter. Stupid . if shes t staying with me, then shes not going with you. Neither of them are. Now, get out of the way, dave. Im t going to hurt you. Who are you going to hurt, then . Us . Put him down. Its daddy, harry. Its daddy. Put him down no. All right, then. [kate crying] all right, then. All right, then. Grahame, please [grahame hoaning] [vehicle approaching] no, grahame please are you all right . Yes. [harry shrieking] [wood creaking] sure youre going to be all right on your own . Im looking forward to it. Ill be so on my own, theyll all talk about me. Who is that mysterious lady in cabin 82 . Well, you take care. Yes. Oh. Youve been so kind. What w hsaabout so he a r oh, thank you. Goodbye. Thank you so much. [train whistle blows] ive got some spare time. What say we take your mother out to lunch . How about that new french placethe gastronomique . Ill settle for steak and chips at a fox hounds. Rose welcome to the program, we begin tonight with Evan Williams an biz stone, cofounders of twitter. They talk about their new online publishing platform medium and talk about the art of conversation. In our experience thats what drives a lot of a lot of tweet, a lot of the retweets, a lot of the links that get passed around on the platform originate from someone like you. Theyre clips on youtube from conversations youve had. Theyre articles in the new yorker magazine, et cetera. And these are the things that get passed around and discussed. So without this longer form deeper dive, more relevant kind of conversation, i dont think social media would have anything to be social media about. I think there are two responses to infinite things being published on the web every day. One, whether it is to do it faster and cheaper and try to get it, you know, make these feedback loops tighter. One is to go deep. I mean the other is to go deep. And were starting to see evidence that will is a hunger for depth. And that may be theyre even complimentary, and maybe the middle is what is going to go away. And its going to be either very quick and shallow and immediate and or the very thoughtful, deeper, more meaningful stuff. We continue this evening with david chase. He is the creator of the sopranos, he has directed a new movie called not fade a quaings with the story i wanted to tell is about becoming an artist, really. I mean the first glimmers of the fact that you might do something creative with your life to create pieces of whatever people call art. Rose yeah. Thats what the story is really about. And i mean, and that first crossed my mind when i saw, when i saw like the beatles and the stones and the kinks and i thought they were like almost my age but they were, as the music deepened over the courso of the 0s, it was just pop at first. But because of the storntion when it gets sort of deeper, and the batest too, it becomes about more isnts like mortality and betrayal t becomes about literary subjects. And i thought well thats art. Thats really art too. Maybe coy do that. Because i certainly know how to play the drums. Rose evan william, biz stone, david chase when we continue. Funding for charlie rose was provided by the following captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Evan Williams an biz stone are here, they are the cofounders of twitter. They have started an online publishing platform called medium aimed at high quality content. They are investing in other ventures through their incubator obviousment they join me for a conversation about conversation. About the art and value of it, especially in todays age of texting, twitter, facebook, youtube and more. This is part of a collaboration with fast company magazine. Im pleased to have ev and biz here. And to talk about something that i love, which is conversation. But is there as i ask both of you, a inand yang here . Is there the fact that i sit at this table and have for more than 20 years, having conversations often for an hour, and you guys pioneered the idea that you can say it all in a 140 characters. Well, we i think we pioneered that you can Say Something in 140 characters. And maybe if well done that can be a worthwhile thing. You at least raise the flag as we sat down about, lets make sure that in the advent of everything, we dont lose theni value of what i call the long form conversation. Absolutely. The long form conversation, long form journalism, deeper difs, more meaningful and relevant approaches to whats happening in the world, thats thats what is really important. And in our experience that is what drives a lot of the a lot of the tweets, a lot of the refweets, a lot of the links that get passed around on the platform originate from someone like you. Theyre clips on youtube from conversations youve had. Theyre articles in the new yorker magazine, et cetera. And these are the things that get passed around andw3 discussed. So without this longer form deeper dive, more relevant kind of conversation, i done think social media would have8n anything to be social and media about. Yes. Well, its they are complementary in the best case. In the worstx hase people get obsessed with the short form. And i think you can look at it like a diet. A diet of entirely bland vegetables, your conversations are not bland vegetables. But healthy food only. Healthy food only and you know a diet of junk food only. Its d thats not sustainable. Thats probably the wrong way to trades it its justnr one thing only is not neither interesting nor necessarily helpful. In the best cases, the long form gives you ideas that you want to engage with people on and thats social media. And the opposite can happen as well. Conversations that start as little blips. And people, having media that lets people just throw something out there and that catches someones pgaation, that can turn into something much deeper. It can be a fragment of an idea that gets expanded upon. Like thats an interesting opinion, lets take that and turn it into something more long form. Rose i mean the realtime instant factor has always been important to me. On the other hand, what we do which is long form conversation, but it is constantly sliced an diced and presented to a whole audiences, you know, and thats important to. But i think its important for who we are is to be able to have a conversation that has a beginning and a middle and an end. A conversation that you know will take you on a ride, on a journey. And thats what the best conversations do. They grab you. And then you hear the music and you hear the sense of the rhythm. And it takes it and goes and builds. And every aspect of human conversation gets exercised. You know, i will have a conversation here with someone. And literally, if its two people i can literally sort of push back like this. Literally a visual sense of, you know, brothers and sisters listen, theyre saying interesting things. And you dont need me. There is a nuance to it, right. It takes you down a path. You Say Something, that makes me think of something, that that makes you think of something again. The kind of ricochet affect. I have been thinking this is maybe off topic but ive been thinking recently about search and how you use a Search Engine, a lot of people when they have a question, they ask a Search Engine a question and the Search Engine returns essentially a document. But a lot of people a question is better asked of a person because you might say wheres howard street. And the other person might say well where are you going . And then i say this hotel. Oh, you dont want howard street. You want Market Street so. Should have asked wheres Market Street. But i wouldnt have known that if i had just asked an algorithm. So there is something to, and that is a short conversation but theres something to people interacting that leads you down that road that sparks those thoughts. I mean i think, you see that, im beginning to see what i value as significant. Search is one way to produce it. It is the the supreme importance of the right question. Ive had people come to this program and say to me, you know, every great book begins with a questionment and you can do that, which is a short form, where is something. And then that produces what follows, the novel begins with a question but it ends with 13 chapters. Right. And thats the kind of question that evan and i have been asking ourselves. Is given todays meni landscape, what would it look like to reimagine publishing . And that is a huge question. And we dont know the answer to it, necessarily, but its something were interested in sprmenting. I think the evolution of conversation online looked at very broadly has been the last dozen or so years, most of our efforts as wells a lots of other people has been, is about lowering the barrier. Getting more voices, into the public discourse. And weve kind of everybody has their own show. Right. And it started with blogs a dozen years ago. And everybody could be a publisher and everybody could have a voicement and if the theory which turnedni out to be true f they had something worthwhile to say, they would eventually it would find its right audience. And now and twitter is sort of the the epitome of that. It cant really get any easier than sending a text message to have a globally available piece of media. But that doesnt lead to quality conversation, necessarily. Thats something we havent seen online, necessarily. And so the question now is how do we raise the quality of the discourse. Its not just about quantity any more. Rose how do you subject we do that . Well, its a hard problem. We have a couple projects were working on. One is branch which is an online conversation platform. And the concept there is very simple. And the idea is just like if you want to sit down with people and have a good conversation an this table, you cant just say whoever wants to show up can show up, and you know, say two words and leave and its just a freeforall. But that is essentially what online conversation has been in the last decade. So and there is tlaes a beauty to that. The openness is great but it doesnt lead to quality conversation so what branch does is simply allow people to host dinner party like conversations and say everybody can watch, but were limiting whoses actually i vitted. Somebody begins by inviting people to discuss a topic on branch. So if that way its almost modelled after what were doing here. Rose indeed. Another project were working on which is medium is more of the, its more like blogging, less like a discussionment but more like the discussion, the conversation is i may put out a thought or an idea. And its he the idea is anybody can contribute and the best ideas float to the top. And they can react off of each other. But the thing that is different about it for most of the web is it is less focused on right now. Its kind of the opposite of twitter. The complement is its not right now, its more thoughtful things that evolve over time. And have longer shelf life. And the type of things that you might go then talk about onni twitter or branch. But it is very clearly not trying to get everybody just to put in their two cents. A you really want to get an idea out there into the world, work on it, use this platform, get feedback. It will find its audience that way. Which is another attempt but were this far into it. There is a word that comes to mind when i think of the word conversation and that word is engagement. When you are having a good conversation, you get in sync. You get you become engauged with that other person or those other people. And then once you become engaged, thats when i think some of the comprehension or thats when youre able to take away some knowledge. That is when you can learn something. Exactly, you can learn something. And thats difficult to recreate in our business. You know, you used a second word that i used in terms of when i talk about this show. And the art of inteviewing. I always say to people which is obvious. You have to have a good conversation will have a journey and an arc to it. But what else it needs, you know, it needs a certain clarity that allows Everything Else to sort of spring out of it. And secondly, you know, you need to listen and third, you know, you need to employee, listen and engage. The engagement of conversation is a crucial element. I mean its not a 73e up thing. Its much more of a focus and engagement. Yeah. Thats when you are really learning. Yeah. Well, thats know one has been able to recreate that online bltion i think. That happens very rarely in emails or when people are very passionate. What happens with emails. Not as much as should. I mean email is. Rose you are for the abolition. No, email is like the most intimate witness to our lives in some capacity. And yet it hadnt changed since the days of hot mail and before. And we keep file its in there. You know, we share pictures of our kids in there. There are receipts in there. Email knows a lot about our lives. Ive been dying for someone to recreate email and just come at it from a completely different angle. Like show me all the pictures in my email, as a photo album right now. Show me all the excel spreadsheets, show me, just werent it to me in a different way. Because email is also unfair. Just because someone has my email address, they expect that i will give them my time. That didntnr seem fair to me. Every day its just t requires more it isate it needs to be, its ripe for remanaging. And someone will do it. And. Rose was there a moment in which you guys decided this is where we want to go. We want to be able to go in this direction, having created twitter. Medium is sort of the culmination of the last almost 15 years in working on these systems. Because theres always ideas and things that are bothering you that you never get to or that dont fit in the current system. And twitter is optimized for realtime immediatesy bringing people closer to whatever it is they care about. And when i stepped away from there daytoday, i wanted to go back to my blog. I started blogging in 1996 or something. And i, of course, running a company like twitter didnt have a lot of time to do that. I went to write again, write deeper things, be able to think. I mostly write for myself to figure out what i think. And i found the tools just hadnt really evolved in the last decade or so. And really this theme much most of this stuff thats got answer lot of attention on the internet the last few years have been about lowering the barrier, connecting people, getting this really quick feedback loops which serves a certain purpose. But there wasnt that much work on how do we increase quality. And i think theres two, one of the things i like to know is that were deeming in a world of infinite information. Even email is designed so youre going to read all those emails and empty them out of your indocks. But were going to get to a point where everybody is getting too much email to empty it all. Gmail is doing a good job of filtering that. But when it came, i think there is two responses to infinite things being pub learned on the web every day. One is to do it faster and cheaper and try to get it make these feed black loops tight are. The other is to go deep. And were starting to see evidence that there is a hunger for depth. And that may be they are even complementary. And maybe the middle is what is going to go away. And it is going to be very quick, shallow and immediate, and that is where the value comes. Or the very thoughtful, deeper, more meaningful stuff. One of the things just to jump in legal quick here,. Because the last decade or more has been about the democratization of information and were essentially living in a world of infinite information now, the quote that company coulds to mind is albert einsteins information is not knowledge. Rose yes. So how do we now that we are living in a world of information, how do we take a step back and try to figure out how do we turn information, how do we sort of all chemically transmute it into actual comprehension and knowledge so we can take that knowledge and do something about it. And not just for the individual but for society. I mean being a long Time Internet utopian type of guy, 15 years ago i really thought, i think a lot of us really thought once everybody can publish, once theres, the truth is out there so to Speak Society will be smarter and make better decisions. And you look at this and you think well maybe thats not entirely true. Theres something, like because there is way more information and way more noise its actually easier to manipulate the media than ever. Even though the truth is out there, it is not necessarily what people Pay Attention to. So our ultimate goal is to shift, shift the discourse and decisions of society to at least believe the right idea more of the time or at least explore more. And change the feedback loop so its not just about attention or popularity or page views or clicks but what else can we measure. And i think it comes down to simple things about these feedback mechanisms that were giving two people who are putting stuff out there. Just to answer your other question about was there a point when you guys decided that you would start thinking about this in a deeper more meaningful way, just to be very specific about it, evan and i actually launched the web site of our Newest Company obvious from our hotel room at the Aspen Institute after having a long conversation with walter isaacson. We had already been thinking we wanted to jump back into creating something new. But it just, as an anecdote i thought since you asked i thought it was funny that we actually were in a hotel room, and we launched obvious. Com from there. And ef started to immediately sketching out. Here is what we are going to build. Rose how do you two Work Together . I mean dow have complementary skills. No. Rose do you have complementary skills or do you have parallel skills. They used to overlap a lot more. And now i think theyre more distinguished. I mean we used to both work on product a lot more. But with twitter biz is sort of the message and story an language and the communication. The narrative. I think these days what you a company has to have a story and a narrative. And a way of interacting with people. Because consumers are so empowered to learn everything they can about products and choices that they make. So at twitter my role is really lets build a brand by telling the story. And lets create a bird to represent freedom of expression, et cetera. But in terms of how do we Work Together, i travel a lot. I talk to a lot of different people. Im a visiting scholar at oxford and berkeley and i do a lot of lecturing. And i just talk to people in all types of different fields. And i bring this back home to the nest, so to speak. And i have conversations with ev and i say i was just talking to this guy, he is a professor at newcastle. Let me tell you this story about the browser he built into the slum in india. And heres what happened. And every. In a while something that i have talked to, to somebody in abu dhabi will come up in one of our conversations, so my role is really just to, and ev is very kind to, in letting me come up with ideas that will never work. And nonetheless will follow themnand sometimes he will turn it into something. I mostly stay at home and geek out with designers and engineers. Rose is that right, is that what you do . Is that where are you happiest. Geeks and engineers. Building products, building product, really, yeah. Hes the type that like sort of cant chew gum and walk at the same time. Ev is like, if im not focused what is it you say, i can do only one thing great. I think if you are trying to solve really hard problems you need to be obsessed with them. Rose and you Design Software and you design what . We design these systems. I think about them as systems because they are dynamic. They take inputs from the world. The world reacts to each other. Imagine twitter didnt do anything before they were people using it. Right, exactly. Its all about that. And so the medium is the same way there has to be people using, how they interact with each other, what it encourages, what it discourages, thats the design, how it looks, what it represents. Biz comes along, biz always has different ways of looking at things which i appreciate because they, you know, we get very into our heads and very into our product and we dont we assume everyone sees it how we do. And we assume it makes all the sense in the world because we have been obsessing about it. I started out as an artist so im directing a film with help from ron howard with this project, imagination thing. And im working on whats the fill number. Im still working on it but im writing the story. Its part of this project imagination thing. Stuff like that i sort of flex my creative muscles, to eve point, the eternal mantra of obvious is to build systems that help people Work Together to make the world a better place. And this speaks very much to evs sort of and my just my just world positive view. People are basically good, if you give them the right tools theyll prove it to you every day. There is a quote i think that is in i think is in the wall, on the wall if twitters new york office that says what is freedom of speech, twitter is. Is that true . We mope so. Its always been very near to our heart and what drove us, like i said, for years we were about giving more people voices. And biz even said the twitter bird that represents freedom is what we optimize for for a long time. I used to say what other company, you know, any company can sort of use the first letter of its name to represent their logo. But only twitter can use the image of a bird in flight to represent what it is. Rose yeah. What are the questions about twitters future . What are the questions . Um, i think the questions are the same old questions, know, how much money is it going to make. Those are the types of questions. People arent questioning whether or not its relevant and go. Rose im more interested, not in that, for example, think social media generally, whether its facebook or twitter, think of the idea that it has taken on in terms of the arab spring, where it got an enormous amount of attention. Think of the idea it takes on now, you know, in villages in china which are no longer in a sense cocoons where nobody knows anything. Think of places where, i mean where does it go . Whats its next form . Not so much how much, what market valuation is go to be put on it. I think. Rose not that that is not important. I think the novelty goes away and it becomes part of the fab lick of society, in many ways. Like it has for say tech or media sectors, that impacts more and more the society. Because i think for a lot of people it is still a novelty. I tweeted that, that was fun, versus this essential way that i find out what is happening in the world right now. Its news. And is that increasingly what tweets are about, what twitter is becoming . I think people use it for different things. For some people its very social. Rose where is the rising tide. Yes. Rose where is the rising tide . Its information. And we optimize for information. Years ago we kind of realized its not at the heart its not really about social connection as much as about realtime conversation. Some subset of that is social. Its about what your friends are doing if they are on there. The biggest misunderstood thing about twitter is that it is an information source. Its not just a podium on which to broadcast. Whenever you talk to people who say i dont use twitter, i dont have anything i want to tweet. You city done sit down with them and ask them what are you interested in, sports, news, did you know all these account, every major news conversation, every play frere that team, Everything Else, every actor, musician you are interested in, as well as the smartest people in your industry are on there saying things every day and you dont have to tweet ever. Right. nr eventually you probably will. Or will you see a tweet on some news program. But for me, i mean its a network. Its a vast global network. And my idealistic view in terms of when you ask wherexd is it heading, my idealistic view is this idea that you may follow a movie star. You may follow a close friend. But you can also follow someone half a world away. And the context in which theyre placed because they are one after the other, its easier to, i think, again, idealistically or as operationally place yourself in that persons shyes that is half a world away. Unlock empathy in so many people. And in a way, i deally create a world in which people dont think of themselves as citizens of a particular city, state or country. They think of themselves as citizens of the world. I means thats kind of the overly optimistic view of how a system like this can impact the world. And i often like to talk about because twitters realtime and discuss it can spread quickly, ideas can spread quickly to different people. I often like to talk about the med a for of a flock of birds moving around an object in flight. It looks incredibly choreographed. It looks practiced and difficult. In reality, its just rudmentary information among individuals in realtime that allow the many to suddenly become one, and then become many again. And thats present in nature. But that wasnt before twitter present in humanity. And the idea that human kit suddenly come together as one and get something done, ideally we could do something now in a year that would take 100 years to do because were working together and in uni son. Thats an overly as operational view of the future i want to live in. Rose does time an distance no longer have meaning. Well, we live in San Francisco and were here in new york now. So there must be still a reason for it. But i think distance does. It does. But there are things, there are things that i have been thinking about lately. Like i think i put this out as a branch conversation. I forget how i worded it. But the idea that so many people think well, we shouldnt be spending money on exploring mars because we have problems here at home. And i dont think the two things are mutually exclusive. I think we can work on problems at home and spend money exploring mars. And its important to explore mars because it puts in perspective our world. And the fact that which we are global citizens. And there are other planets. Rose and its to follow prot jex of science. Science in pursuit of truth and in pursuit of knowledge. Whenever that is projected in a forward manner, it produces results that you dont quite know. I also believe in any conversation about conversation the more you know, the better you are. On the other hand, with this proviso, if it somehow stifles you from being spontaneous, then it is a hindrance of what you know. You cannot be hostage to the conversation you have. And your own research. If you go forward and are you only going to discussion which is within the bounds of this paper, thats your own conversation, then the conversation will be limited. But if, in fact, you can say im going to use what you say, like tennis, the best conversations are in part like dennis, if we are playing tennis where i hit the ball depends where you hit it to me. If i drive it down the line to your backhand that will affect the shot you have. I like what you said about you cant be hostage to what you quote, unquote, know. Right. Thats one of the reasons like you said the way evan and i Work Together is i may come up with something thats just ridiculous. But evan is willing to listen for a certain amount of time anyway. And say okay, like you know, there is a bad example but assume theres no gravity, okay. Okay. We could do this. And you know, and there might be something in there that actually would work with gravity that would be a good idea. And that the way he reacts to it may be different than the way i would react to if or someone that had his core competent that i dont. How we would react to that question, boom, it reminded me about a conversation as well david kelly, you know, who created the z school odyssey. That whole theory of kbrb is take people from a diversity of experiences and have them impact on one Product Development or one idea this is not unique to them but they are, you know, executing with a certain amount of skill. So you take an idea and you have somebody who is an anthro poll gist an somebody who is a writer an historian. And how they see all the aspects. They are also are great at asking the question. They are big on a question of how might we. Thats right. How might we. We visited with david kelley recently, just to have him, we brought our company down there, like a field day. And its just amazing to see, okay, so your team designs the mouse, the computer mouse. What are you doing today. Today the peruvian government has asked us to redesign their schools. Yes, thats right. And thats their evolution. Yeah. Its just absolutely amazing. But theyre able to approach that because of the way they work. Rose indeed. Its nass naturing and also its fascinating to me that you can david has this most wonderful sense of curiosity about things. That is the other word we havent had, questions, engagement, curiosity. People just, who have a curiosity to know every day, i get up every morning and i probably suffer, i probably, you know, should spend less time in a sense just pursuing the curiosity and perhaps saying that im going to limit my fields of endeavor so that i can, you know, drill down more. You clearly have that. Your range of topics you cover and the amount you know about them is unfathomable to me. Unlike its fuel so that you can focus on, i mean in a way you are extremely focused because its your curiosity that allows you to have this incredible range of conversations to produce this highly developed experience. So youre like both of us combined. We always said if the two of us could be as good as within man. Rose well, it there is the magic of how you Work Together is really fascinating to me. I mean its like will you see people in which one is most are outside or most are inside or has nothing to do with gender. People who really somehow their natural talent, you mentioned ron howard and brian glazer. They do very different things. And yet, you know, theres a crossover which i think is fueled by their curiosity. Brian grazer is famous for inviting people from all different fields from around the world to come and talk to him. For what. Just because. Rose hes the most wonderful quality he has. In fact the new york wrote about it he has done this to me. Its like i havent seen you, can i come in and just talk. And then i will find out that he is doing something really interesting. And he does, he has an advantage. In that blin grazer calls you, he gets the phone call threw and he knows enough people that he get its the phone call flew. But at the same time, you know there is a lot of ways and this is why the internet now is such a wonderful tool. It enables to you get through it enables you to find that mind and in a place that you can ask those questions. And it may be, and it may in what i think your hoping and which i hope the Television Program does as it seems, and as it, online, it gives you a chance to not only ask the question but it enables you to join in the conversation which is i think where we are and where we end. Thank you. Pleasure. Thanks for having us. Enjoyed it. Great to see you again. Thank you, charlie. Well be back, stay with us. 4r. Rose david chase is here, creator of the soprano, the series about an Italian American mob family from new jersey, perhaps the most critically acclaimed show of all time. Now he is trying directing the his first feature film about a boy growing up in the music revolution of the 19 iouals it csled c not fade a qua and here is the trailer. Starting the stien, i need a backup on vocal. Land of midnight. Look at him, high heels. How come you never talked to me in high school. We talked. Once, you said intingt pencil sharpener. You have a good voice. I think we saw most of these. If the muss sick still there, not here. Coy give a crap about music. You wouldnt understand become in a band. Thats my true family. Your true family, theyre going to pay your enormous food bills, i assume. Two shows a night, call me in six days six days. You discuss what happens when you beckman of the family. Ill buy dinner, hey haircut is too much to ask but if you show up at that strafernlt without a tie and jacket. Im pleased to have david chase back at this table. Come. Thank you, again. This was a song that buddy holly sang with the crickets. With the crickets, yes. Rose why this movie for you . A couple of reasons. One is that when i finished the sopranos, people said oh you can write your own ticket but i was writing and there were no tickets coming. It wasnt really happening. Rose what does that mean . I wanted to do a psychological thriller. And i wasnt satisfied with what i was coming up with. This was in the back of my mind, had been there for years years. And then right around that time, and i love this music, thats number one. I just love this music since i was, you know, 18. Rose music of the 60s. How would you define it deeper than that, just music of the 60s. Well, not all muss eck of the 60s. British invasion and dylan and the blues that really got to me. Rose right. And then right around that time when i was trying to decide Keith Richards fem out of the tree in hawaii and was very seriously hurt. And it dawned on me that he was for the first time that he was mortal because they were still working. And i thought wow, you know, its not always going to be like this ant i wanted to capture that moment in time when it all started. Rose so then you set out to make a movie. Yeah. Rose now could you have you could have chosen, i mean you could have chose tone do Something Else for hbo, same idea. You could have fouj other forms but you wanted to make a feature film. I wanted to make a feature film all my life. Never cracked it. Tried but couldnt. Tried but couldnt. I wrote scripts and i got some close to being made. I wrote some on assignment but nothing ever happened. What does that say . Opinions here you are, you create the sopranos, you know, anybody would have wanted you to make a film for them. What does that say, i dont know, nothing succeeds like success. It is a corrupt business. Or why were they so stupid not to know what talent you had. The word on me was that i was dark and complicated. I dont even know what dark means. You consider the sopranos dark. Everybody did. I think that was. Rose you said before you dont foe really whether it was drama or comedy. I dont in the end am but there are allegedly dark come dees too. Dark dramas and dark come december. No, i dont know about that. No, the sopranos to me, exseptember for the fact that there are murders which is more of a Hollywood Convention s very life like. Rose life like means human behalf behavior. Rose they get angry with their wives. They delude themselves and others. They lie to each other. All the things that people do they just did it on a larger scale and killed more. And make excuses for whatever we do. Rose and engaged in illegal activities. Right so i dont have anybody in my team one member of my family was sort of involved in that tangentically but i just mean human life wz so you sent out to do this, so what is the next 12e7. I became friends with Stevie Van Zandt during the show. Rose who is a consultant. Executive producer and musical supervisor and he wrote the only original piece of music in here and produced all the performances that the fictional band do. We game friendly and we would go out to to dinner with our wives and talk about nothing but 60s music. And this movie sort of becomes an extension of those conversations. We kept talking and talking and i was developing pieces of paper with notes on it about what i wanted it to be. Then i went a away to write. But i knew he agreed to help me when it came time to produce the music. Is one music in the 60s that influenced you more and you thought more about and were more interested in. One musician. Rose you were in love with the musk of the 60s. Was there one musician that touched you more than any other. I guess the stones. Rose really. I guess the stones. I love the beatles the same as the stones but i think the stones was more of an influence on me. They expressed my mood better, somehow. Rose how would you characterize your mood. Dark so they were right about you. No, i dont know, what was my mood. Dark guy writing dark come december or dramas. My mood was mellow dramatic this tell the story of two people who want to be musicians. W3ette. He always says on february 8th there werei] like 12 gi stars sold, after the beetles there were 12,000 the next day. So when you go you decide you write a script and then are you going to decide how to cast it. Was casting difficult if. Casting was difficult because we wantedco to cast musicians who couldco act. Because in the end doing the muss wick would have been easier, more life like and real. But so we had a nationwide Talent Search and online and everything and went to july yard, broadway agents and all this stuff it was really kind of fruitless because we were looking for like five sinatras without could also act and it didnt happen. Big surprise. And there were no elvises out there. I always wondered whether springsteen would be a good acker. People used to say it was going to happenment that was that prediction. I dont note. I dont note. I dont know. Now he is Something Else, you know, hes on mt. Rushmore. I dont know. But i mean jagger has tried to act. Keith was one of the pirates of the caribbean. Was he in it. I think he was in it. He may have been. I didnt see. I think but my, what i know is that johnnie dep modelled the character. De. After the keith. De but i think in three or four or Something Like that, kooert came on as his father i think. Oh i see. So the story you want to tell is a generational conflict. No the story i want to tell is about becoming an artist, really. Having the first fake glimmers of the fact that you might do something create tough create pieces that people call art that is what the story is really about. And i mean that first crossed my mind when i saw like the beatles and stones and kinks and they were like almost my age but they were, as the music deepened t was just pop at first but because of the stones when it gets deeper, it becomes about more subjects like mortality and betrayal, it becomes about literary subjects and i thought thats really art too. Maybe coy even do that. Because i sort of know how to play the drums. Were you good. As a drummer, i wasnt bad. I wasnt great. You might have been a musician. I wanted to be a musician more than anything. My father when i wanted to drop out of college my father sent me for testing because he thought i was so crazy. Centered down at nyu and the test showed i want odd to be a musician but they ruled it invalid because they said they had some way to say i knew i was rigs the test. Rose one of the terrible things about life i said this before, has been recorded before t is the notion that life squeezes out the best in you. So it doesnt, you know, its the attrition of living, you know. Uhhuh. A very fevo succeed in not being either suffocated by having you know, its about children and family and mortgage its and a whole range of things. Absolutely. Its about luck. Its about luck too. The luck of getting a shot to do what you most wanii to do. I mean that doesnt happen for a lot it just doesnt happen for a lot of people. Is it happening for you now . Yes. Because of what this did for you. Absolutely it happened while the sopranos was happening. I didnt realize it but it was. Heres what is interesting too. You said your moth other influenced every aspect of the sopranos. She influenced the one character for sure who was was the mother. The relationship with him means she created him and he created the show and so there. What did your mother want to you do . My mother wanted me to an i lawyer or a teacher. We are italian but we are protestant. Or a ministerment and my father had this idea that i should be a labor negotiate never south america. I dont even know what that is. That more creative than i would have imagined. I done even know if there were unions there. I dont either. But this is what he thought. Someone came into his Hardware Store and told him that was a big business. Rose he wanted you to be wealthy so you could take care of yourself and he turned out wealthy. Unless they get a percentage of what they negotiate. Right. Douglas in this thing, his relationship with his parents is. Very close to my own. Happy thanksgiving. What i am paying that damn college 2,000 a year for. There are people with longer hair than me. Look at her coatment looks like he just got off the boat at ellis island. What . He kills himself down at that store six days a week plus friday until 9 w that psoriasis f this is what you do,. My father really, i mean the way i analyze it now, my father was a first generation Italian Americanment and i think like a lot of ethnic groups, the people at that time wanted to assimilate. They wanted to let their ethnic heritage go away. And for some reason, my father thought that long hair and a pea coat and boots, so you look like you just got off the boat. You look like you just got off ellis island. You look like a green horn. I never understood that, you note. I looked like o i looked like, to me, likenr an english beatles guyment and hi been to ellis island and have seen the museum. Doesnt look like woodstock to me so i dont know what he was talking about. There was also this point, the character here, douglas, after he becomes, has a little bit of success, the girl that he had a crush on wants him. Uhhuh. How come you never talk to me in high school. Miss vogels class. Once, you said something about the pencil sharpener. I really liked you. Yeah, i know. You have a good voice. Pardon. Thanksgiving at karens house, you sang lead. o7 the band sounded more soulful than tonight. Anyway, itsxd just my opinion. You guys dont have a name yet. This latest idea, wanted to call us the lord byrons. You got a lot to say. Time is on your side. I was making with that part of the movie a slightly smaller subject or more particular subject which was that before, i talked to a friend of mine in the 80s. He is the one that touched this off to me, he said that the whole thing about rock n roll in the 60s was if you werent a jock, it finally became a way for to you get girls and prove to your father that he was full of and i said you know that kind of was it. Rose yeah. Movie traces what, nine years. Actually six, six years, well, for me its really 62 to 68, six years. Rose and what do you wantus