Transcripts For WHUT Charlie Rose 20131108

Really not that as i think as much as being able to find the best form for the different subjects that im interested in. And in Something Like contemporary art i was at r. I. S. D. Studying art. In that world its fairly common and accepted for an artist to be a painter, make videos, maybe write a book. And thats because the art world has just moved beyond. Theyve moved beyond form, theyve moved beyond the studio. Its a poststudio world and its been that way for decades. But when an actor does it theres skepticism. Rightly so. Because actors generally speak or at least when you do a certain level of movie have a certain level of celebrity and so people are skeptical of act using their celebrity to, you know, gain in roads to areas that they otherwise wouldnt have access to. So i understand all of that. But i also have done as much work and gone to as much school as, you know, anyone else. So theres nothing i can i cant work any harder than ive been working. 1 of it does it to say to people look, im not a fake, back off. The other 99 of me went to school and studied those things because i want to take writing and directing and everything as seriously as i take acting. Rose do you get a pass because youre james franco, meaning that they give you a break . You dont have to be as good as people who have devoted their life to it . I think it goes both ways. I think and then there are some forums that are more accepted paths for an actor to taken that others so now its generally more you know, people are okay with the actors becoming directors ben affleck won an oscar for best picture and eastwood and kevin costner, its its redford. I mean, anyone, almost anyone from the 70s that was an actor, nicholson, de niro, beatty, theyve all directed and most of them directed some very good movies. When an actor writes a book not a memoir but a book of fiction, i would say the fives are out. Before i have anyone before anyone has read it the guns are already out. So i wrote a book of short stories called palo alto. Rose about where you grew up . It takes place in my hometown palo alto, california, about the time i was a teenager and its about teenagers but its a book of fiction, again. Its not a memoir. It was fairly well accepted. I got decent reviews but there was still what i was doing at the time when that first book came out about three or four years ago was trying i thought i need to keep my two worlds separate. Im not going to write about acting and and i want people to view me as a writer. Then i thought i have all this experience in the film world, almost 20 years of professional work. Other writers use what they know journalists who travel the world and have some crazy experience will write a book about that. They wont say im going to write a book about that. Rose David Ignatius is a perfect example. He writes about Foreign Affairs in the washington post. Hes also a very good novelist and writes books made into movie and there you go. And im sure theyre about Foreign Affairs. Rose right. He writes about what he knows, spice and iran and all of that. John grisham is going to write about lawyers. Rose exactly right. So youre going to write about what you know. Do you fear failure or not . In other words, risk taking is part of who is in its part of you. Its in your d. N. A. I need to do that. I realized fear of embarrassment can be extremely stifling and if i think back to when i was a teenager i loved movies and i loved plays. I would gol to San Francisco and see plays butpy never engageed with acting. I never really tried it and i think that was just fear of embarrassment and then on the stage a fear of public embarrassment. And once i became an actor you get over shyness and everything because you have to talk to a lot of people, this kind of thing. But then the second step was, all right, if im going to i was writing and doing art long before i started doing it publicly. But i knew if im going put this book out or if im going do whatever. Im going to have to face potential criticism or skepticism or whatever. So if this is what i want to do this is the price i have to pay and it kind of got me over that so now if the only thing thats holding me sbak the potential for failure and embarrassment i do it i never want that to hold me back. Rose its one thing to write a book. But its quite another thing to go to yale and say i want to be in your graduate program because their standards are different. Its not just write a novel and see if anybody buys it. Heres a case where you have to meet high standards. You have to get admitted and then you have to stay up with i assume a Certain Program otherwise their reputation is damaged. Im sure some people still argue that oh, do we wnt james franco associated with yale . And et cetera. But i could buy that maybe if it was the undergraduate program. Ph. D. Programs are different. Theyre paying me to go to school. So thats a big commitment from them. And it is a lot of work. So, you know for know kind of keep up with. So that was also something i had to be very clear with myself that i wanted to do it. Fortunately im past the course work phase. Theres two years of courses. Rose now youre writing a december pen sags or before i do that i have to take my oral exams. So in the English Department you have to read 30 books in five subjects. So thats 150 books and then five professors will sit around and ask me questions about those 150 books. So im in the middle of that. I read almost a book a day and so i have my exam in january. Rose how do you have time for acting and directing . Well, there are there is a lot of down time on sets. And i read almost a book a day. I have to. Rose do you speed read or do you just know how to read . I move pretty fast and i listen to audio books and i put it on the doublespeed saiding so i read them twice as fast. I listen to them twice as fast. So gary sinise is reading steinbecks travels with charlie so it sounds like speaks very fast. laughs rose and you get the same understanding from that or even better . I would say the enjoyment factor goes down a little bit but i have to read all these books for an f the exam so i do what i have to. Rose finally theres this. You are, in fact, doing all these kinds of things while its broadening you as a human being perhaps if you focused on one youd be off the charts as an actor. And you say . What i say to that is i have a lot of answers to that. I believe in hard work. I believe in honing something. This is a book so that ive worked on for years. Probably i wrote the first material thats in that book probably four or five years ago. Rose when we talked to brown some of the things i see in this book i heard from you. I was writing short stories when i was at columbia and my editor was actually a teacher of mine at columbia. So this is a work thats been i dont just put it down and throw it out there. But i also feel that there theres only so much polishing to be done and then it becomes less productive. Theres actually a great documentary about the making of south park, strangely enough. Which i think is actually a really cool show. Its called six days to air. So they have six days for every show they make. Six days within that they write the episode then they animate it, then put the voices to it. Six days. And one of the great things that i think trey parker says in there is if i had more time weve honed it down to six days. We used to take longer but if i spent more time it would probably get a few Percentage Points better but not that not so much that it would actually pay off. So i just feel like get it together and it will have the playoff is that it will have a certain amount of energy to it. It might be messier but it will have vitality. And thats how i feel about certain things that i can only hone it so much and then ill start working the energy out of it. The vitality out of it. Rose this is what karina long worth of slate says. This 285 page book has been branded as a novel somewhat misleadingly. A. A. Or actors anonymous is more like a published notebook full of sketches on themes rendered in a variety of different styles, sort of like a greatest hits of what one might be left with at the end of a few years of a lot of creative writing workshops. laughs do you agree with that . Does that resonate with you . I think the i feel like thats a fairly common kind of criticism like, oh this is something out of m. F. A. Programs. Like i hear that not only about myself, i hear it about everything rose m. F. A. Is master of fine arts. If this is something out of an m. F. A. Program so is that criticism. Ive heard that about people so many times. Like get a new line. So i feel like that is exactly what i was trying to do, get put different kinds of points of view or different approaches to a single or a collective of themes together togethering so that it would feel sort of like it does to be an actor in hollywood. You are viewed through many different lenses. Youre viewed and read through your film roles, youre viewed through legitimate journalists whop ask good questions. Youre viewed through gossip magazines and the dirt of your life is brought up. People gossip about you on social networking. All of these things are youre viewed through all of these lenses so i wanted to capture that. Its supposed to be a collage. Rose one of the things you do which is make fun of all of this you did i thing on instagram which is a photo taken of you kissing another guy because of that little blip of conversations about whether you were gay or not. Yeah, yeah. Rose and that was, what, to take a bemused look at how crazy celebrity was . No, i think what im trying to do there is use the aesthetic of gossip blogs to make a piece of art. So one of the things that i try and do that i can do because of my position is push different forms of art or creativity through channel through other kind of public channels. So for example, if this sounds pretentious, im sorry but its what i do. I went on to General Hospital and i played a role of this artist murderer named franco. Rose laughs now that was already kind of interesting because it became i think it was a Performance Art piece and when i went to shh a lot of artists i knew at the time said what youre doing is great i wish i had that public forum for my stuff. But i wanted more ownership over that piece so i brought it to the museum of contemporary art in los angeles and we shot a special episode of General Hospital at the museum of contemporary art and then it was both an episode General Hospital aired on abc and then i also made a kind of weird arty documentary that we took to festivals and now have sold to comedy central. So there you see like Performance Art going through a soap opera then going through museum of contemporary art then going through National Networks and then going through finally ending up in the frame of a weird documentary. And part of the art sr. The framing and the reframing. So when i go on stain gram and do something that is basically what these gossip blogs are doing but im doing it, im controlling it but it looks no different than the stupid photos they take of me or try and take of me im taking some ownership over it and they reprint it on their stupid blogs and then rose they reprint it simply because its you. They reprint it because its me. I dont read the blogs anymore so i dont know what they said about it but just the fact that they had it on their page i then have my assistants go and take a screen shot of my photo framed by their page and then i will blow that up and i will make a painting out of that. So thats the next step of that project. Rose a little bit about this. You say in defense of myself, this is a piece of fiction. I know my stories might sound like an autobiography and im not making much of an effort to hide when i call my arker the the actor but isnt fiction writing about what i know . So youre writing what you know about . Its what were talking about earlier. I have a professor at yale, michael warner, hes a specialist in American Literature around like between revolution and the civil war. And he said but hes also a highly regarded year theorist. His first book is called letters of the republic. I think it was his thesis when he was a ph. D. And it had no year theory in it. And he said when i realized that i could put my two worlds together i generated so much energy. Thats when i became michael warner. Thats when i became who i am. Something fairly unique. So what happened with my first book im very happy with the first book, but i was spending a lot of energy keeping out this other part of my life and so i thought ill put them both together and i i think a lot of energy will be generated from it. And i know that people will, you know, use this material and pull lines from it and use them against me or read them as nonnonfiction but that was the case in my other book. So whether i write about acting or not people are going to pull lines from it and say that thats me or thats the real me. But this is pointedly not a memoir. This is not a confession, its just using what i know to create an atmosphere, to create characters. But its not its not autobiography. Rose a lot of people have appeared throughout it. Daniel daylewis, tash tino, chaplain, river phoenix. Thats good company. Is there a common denominator there . Yeah, they were all like rose it is who they are thats a common denominator . Well, theyre all actors. Theyre all incredible actors. Rose these were beyond actors. If you think about nicholson and brando and chaplain, they went beyond simply being actors. Youre exactly right. So what i guess im trying to do is a way of using not only the fact theyre acting but everything that they stand for as forms. As generators of power and meaning that you can just say chaplain and it already resonates a lot of different things. Daniel daylouis stands for discipline, character, disappearing into the roles and you get this amalgamation of all the roles hes played already. When you say the name all the roles kind of flow through your head already so if i put them the book, a lot of work is already done just by saying that name. And i like that. I like being able to evoke some of their power just by saying their name. Rose lets talk about directing. You think directing is ar a more interesting form for you than acting . Its control, its collaborative . Yes, youre right. Rose well, youve said it. Im simply saying what youve said. Thats not to say that i dont still get a lot out of acting. But what ive found and heres one of the things that comes from doing multiple things is variety allows me to do the individual things better because when i was only acting professionally i found that i was trying to control movies that i was acting in. I was trying to do more than my job description. Because i had this urge to direct. But i was the actor. And so i had to come to an understanding that movies are directors i believe that movies work best when they are considering a directors when the director is overseeing the whole picture. So when i understood that i did a few things. I accepted the fact that when i sign on as an actor to a movie my job is to help that director achieve his or her vision. Not through some selfserving thing. Serve the movie as the actor. Tell the story as the actor. Now, that doesnt mean i cant give suggestions, but i want the last word to be the directors. Which is one of the the reasons that its so crazy to me that i get blamed for the oscars. I was not the director of the oscars anyway rose stay on that point. Because you did get blamed for that. And how do you treat that criticism . As saying its unfoundd . You know, i like that theres something that people can just point to and go actor. Like they need something. So they have the oscars and i dont care. If they want to make fun of me for the oscars, i dont care i never dreamed about being a great oscar host so people need a thing and its great. Its the oscars and it doesnt affect me and its something people can always do rose does any part of you want to do them again so you can show them i can do this, too . I would do it again if seth rogan was my cohost. Rose laughs and it would be a good show. Rose he was good. Thats one of the reasons i was asked. Seth and i went on the Previous Year and did a bit as our characters in Pineapple Express and it killed that was one of the reasons i was asked to host. I guarantee if i hosted the oscars with seth rogan it would kill it would kill rose there you go, oscar committee. There you go. So as soon as ellen does it next time rose i think ellen will be great. Rose i do, too. I want to talk about directing. Tell me about as i lay dying. A novel about William Faulkner about taking someone to their final resting place. This way the fort is over here right here you let me listen to. Ride back across the bridge and meet us on the other banks of the road. Why are they talking to each other . Theres some loose walls. Come on take the rope around the other side, man. There aint nobody that got one to drive. I dont care what we do just so long as we do something sitting here not doing a bleep thing. Meet us on the other side. Can you do that . You can hop off now if you want. I want to take two of us. Come on come on let the rope go let that rope out. Let it go let it go directing you know, people say all actors want to the direct because they want the control. Its not about that for me. Im a huge believer in collaboration. But the thing things that i like to control that i do get to control is the subject matter, who i work with as far as cast and crew and the approach. Rose i thou approach youd say the final cut and the editing. Yes, once i have those three things in motion and we have an idea of how were going to shoot it and a plan to put it together then i open it up. I work with people who i trust and i believe in and i want them contribute. And so the real enjoyment of being a director is all the Creative Conversations and collaborations you get with all these this great host of creative people. And as an actor you get to have some of those conversations but mostly theyre with your director and the other actors. As a director you get to talk to everybody so i love that. Rose and you get to meld it into your vision as well. Rose but, again, i like to take i like to think i have that a light guiding touch once those thing three things are in motion that i really depend on my cinematographer to make it look good. I depend on my editor to put it together and one of the things danny boyle said to me when we did 127 hours is if youre a dictatorial director what you you can demand what you want but the down side is you might get exactly what you want. And you wont open up the possibility for other ideas to come in. Ideas that you didnt think about. And film is a collaborative medium. It involves so many people. If you cut off those tails and say im controlling everything step of the way its going to be limited to your vision. Rose heres what i expect from actors, said mike nichols. I want them surprise me. And i want actors to surprise me and i want every person on the crew to surprise me. I want the wardrobe person to come up with awesome costumes. I want the hair styles to be good but i want them to you know, i dont know hair styles. I want them to bring me the good stuff. So i want every department to do to do that. Rose tell me about spring breakers. Spring breakers is probably my Favorite Movie that ive ever acted in. I think its i think its tough for some people to to see how innovative and amazing that movie is but harmony curran, the director, he turned he took the film medium and he made a film based on technomusic or the he structured it along the lines of technomusic meaning the scenes are fluid they flow into each other the way its ed ted. So youll be in one scene and jump ahead to the scene and go back to this scene. Thats like a remixed song or something. The way he uses reputation repetition. Repetition of the audio. Repetition of visuals is also like like a hiphop song or Something Like that. I could go on the way t way it was shot. And the cinematographer, the colors the use of neon and then as far as my contribution, it was just my favorite role. Kids want to be a doctor. I just wanted to be bad. They kicked me out of school. I thought that was great. I dont have to go to your school, that was the best thing in the world. Some people they want to do the right thing. I like doing the wrong thing everyones always telling me, yo youve got to change. Im about stacking change. Stacking change. Thats it. Money alien, he is the character who its about four College Students that go on spring break and in florida and they meet up with this guy alien who they think they want to be set loose, to be liberated from the rules of that they normally live by and thats what spring break represents to them, kind of almost they tlard liberation so highly that they almost see spring break as a sort of religious rite. And then in comes this kind of dark guru, alien, who really they want liberation . Well, he brings them so far across the lines of civilized morays that they kind of lose themselves. My names alien. My real names al but truth be told i aint from this plan yet yall. Alien . Thats what they call me. Why are you here . I saw yall in there, you look like nice people. Thought maybe id bail you out. Why . I dont know. Come on, yall, why you act suspicious. Get in. Where are we going . Wherever yall want. You got the right idea. Come on, ill be your chauffeur. To me, it is a great metaphor or kind of parallel narrative for the way that we live now. That our lives are so porous and fluid in the way that we interact with each other and, you know, the way things just you can draw up anything on the internet, you people will film absolutely anything and post it and we all look at it and how what we regard as civilized or whatever just kind of deteriorates or it kind of dissolves. But theres also kind of a beauty to that. There is a beauty to the increased mmunication the way that communities are formed on the internet that would never have been formed before and all of that so this movie captures all of it. It captures the beauty of it and at the same time it shows the ugliness of it and i just think its a masterpiece. Rose and what about the sal mineo role. The movie. It is a feature film, its about the last day in his life. Yes. So i did a movie i directed a movie called sal over two years ago. We took it to the venice film festival. Its going to be sadness, its going to be something that from my experience was never, ever been seen before. Its going to be a story what do you mean by never ever been seen before . I just feel like i mean, were starting to evolve a little bit but i feel like the way i want to make this film, no ones had the balls to make it the way i want to make it. Rose and how do you want to make it . I want to make it realistic. Rose slick . Realistic. Slick . Realistic sorry, realistic. Give me realistic. I need to know what realistic means to you that. Scares me the realistic part. The book is nothing but gritty, beautiful, realistic truth. And i feel like a lot of movies are being made about horrifying situations and circumstances but when theyre being shown and when the stories are being told theyre watered down. Everything is all of a sudden soft and youre talking about something horrifying but youre looking at it and its not so horrifying anymore. Its actually quite pleasant. Sal mineo was a twotime oscar nominee i think before he was 20. He got nominated for Rebel Without a cause he was probably about 15. And he got nominated for exodus. He was also a singer i didnt know this until i did the movie. I guess he would fill, like, arenas. He was sort of i dont know. A Justin Bieber of his time. And then when he got older his star faded a little. For several reasons. He sort of came out of the closet. He wasnt the cute young kid anymore. And he did a couple movies that at the time i guess where controversial but you look at them now and theyre pretty tame. And so he found himself in the mid70s in his 30s kind of struggling still very passionate about acting and movies but having a hard time. Much harder time than he did when he was younger. And then he was murdered. He was stabbed to death in front of his apartment on holloway in the heart of hollywood. Like if you know right there, its the center of hollywood. And they didnt catch his murderer for i think a year and a half. And so what happened was the gossip blog not the blogs, the gossip magazines just speculated. There was no journalistic integrity or anything, just mineo killed by gay lover or mineo killed in drug scandal. There was no validity to that at all other than they knew that he was gay and i guess maybe he partied every once in a while but he wasnt an addict or anything. And so later a woman called the police and said my boyfriend whos now in jail for another crime was bragging when those news stories about sal mineos murder came out he was bragging they was one who killed him. He was at the apartment just robbing an apartment and sal mineo walked in upon him at the wrong moment at the wrong time. And he stabbed him. And so he was convicted of mineos murder. But people that was over 30 years ago and still people that i talk to say oh, you did a movie about sal mineo. Didnt his lover kill him . Its the you know, his memory is still tainted. Now that wasnt the only reason i wanted to make the movie to set the record straight. To me i saw there was a new biography about that i mean had come out and i started thinking about how would i do this . If i did the story of mineo, how would i do it. Id already played james dean, i did an part piece about natalie wood and i kind of thought, well ill do something about sal. And i found that his situation was a great kind of tragedy. And ive heard people like woody allen talk about this. The tragedy of the artist who cant practice his art. And that was sal because he was living now days youd say, well sal go get a video camera and go make your own movies, or whatever. And he probably would. But at that time movies and Television Shows were still kind of a rarefied thing and you had to be on the inside to kind of do it and so there was an actor who was still very, very passionate about what he did but couldnt practice it in the same way so i wanted to kind of capture the tragedy of that. Rose this book is called actors anonymous a novel by james franco. Whats next . Whats next . Im doing a im going to run down the ligs. Theres i adapted a book by Cormac Mccarthy called child of god. Very dark about neck roe feel ya but very good. We got very good reviews for that in venice and new york and toronto. I think it will be released in february. I directed a movie about rose who did the screenplay . I did with my producing partner but based on cormacs book. Its a third novel, one of his very early ones. I directed a movie based on the childhood of charles bird flu cow ski which im hoping to premier as sun dance in january. Rose there was a movie about him, wasnt there . Theres been a few. There was a great one with mickry rourke. Rose thats the one i know. There was whats his name . Oh, man, im such a jerk. Ben garza a played him once. I think theres a couple others. Garza a. Matt dillon played him. Mat dillon was really good but matt is such a handsome guy and poor Charles Bukowski was plagued with the worst acne ever and soy felt like matt dillon was doing everything to capture the character but, like, they needed to do more to the surface in his face because hes so handsome, so i dont play Charles Bukowski. Not to say im handsome as matt dillon but i dont play him. I just directed sound and fury another faulkner adaptation. Rose where . In mississippi. And the last thing ill talk about because theres too many things is im now filming a movie called the interview directed by seth rogan and Adam Goldberg and i play a t. V. Host. Rose seriously . Yes. Rose what do you want to say about that . Well, i was talking to your producer, actually, and maybe you could relate to the situation. I dont want to give too much away. But i play a t. V. Host not of your stature, actually im one of your competitors trying to get legitimacy but im a bit of a goof, the characters name is dave skylark. So i get an interview with someone and the c. I. A. Wants me to take him out. So ive heard that youve had interviews what a lot of people so have you ever been asked to rose no kill anybody. Rose not only that. Ive had no connection before i do the interview or after i do the interview with any of the people. Most recently assad and before that ahmadinejad. Nobody asked you to kill assad . No, no. Rose you couldnt say if they did. Maybe you already did, you poisoned him. Rose but the security youll find is amazing. You can bring no cameras in. Very tight security if someone other than you didnt have any ricin to put into the rose no, youve been watching breaking bad havent you. Thats the other thing i want to ask you about. So i think thats an interesting parallel. So you have a part in the last season of breaking bad. Well, not only that, but an episode right before the last episode. A very important moment because it turns the characters path and you are actually interviewing these people that run this Company Called gray matter and they were walter whites old partners that kind of stole the idea from him, i guess. So you so in that sense you could say that charlie rose was using himself and kind of looking a little silly because youre interviewing these people that all the viewers know are thieves. But youre just taking them at their word and i think not to say that you know, you dont come off bad, nobody will ever doubt your integrity. But i think its sort of similar to the way that i use james franco in the book. That that james franco does weird things, does things that in life i would like to think that i wouldnt do. Rose you know what i do . I do it, a i didnt get paid. To be on the show . Rose i like Vince Gilligan and bryan and nerve the film. Like aaron, like all of them. I did it because i was a huge fan of the show. And whenever you i do anything and ive done this a number of times you understand acting better and therefore i understand who you are better. I understand the experience of what you have to do. I understand how hard it is to do it, too. I know a lot of good directors who have said to me like Robert Altman had a huge respect for actors and said its damn hard to act. I worked with alton and i love alton. But let me ask you this because youre very good on it but youre playing yourself. So when you do that so i just did a movie called thts the end with seth rogan and we all played at least versions of ourself at least were named after ourselves. So when you play charlie rose is there there must be stuff that people ask you to do that you wont do because you think charlie rose would never do that. Rose i dont think of it like that i just think of it as i wouldnt do that for whatever reason charlie rose would dont that but people have said that to me. You shouldnt do this and that because you are who you are would not do that in real life so you shouldnt do that. Ive also been asked to do acting. Robert redford once asked know do a part in a film but not play myself. In the end i wasnt very good im sure but i did a test for him. He said in the end i cant do this because he was also acting and directing in the film and he said in the end people will see you and not the character. Youre not that good. So people wont see you. Theyll see you and not the character. And im asking more than i have time to help you get through which is making that leap so that people dont see charlie rose, they see the character. So thats an issue. Yeah, yeah. But when i approach this this is more than i want to say about this i basically try to i was scripted, i followed the script. And i secondly loved everybody that was there and i just tried to be as good as i could and make it as real as i could because its not real for me to read a script. Its real for know talk to you the way i am now. Thats real. Because i dont know what im going to say next. In a script you know what youre going to say next and you have to make it real. As bill nye once said to me, you have to say lines as if you have just thought them. All of that is a learning experience. I agree. And thats why it can be difficult for you would think that it would be easy for people to just play themselves if theyre not trained as actors. But its not because often youre asking them to say scripted lines and in life theyre not saying scripted lines. Rose thats what it is. The other thing to say about all of this is i have more than one job. See, i admire what you do. I really do. Its clear because no matter why youre doing it, youre out there pushing the edges of different things. Youre not holding yourself out and saying im the best ever at any of these things youre just saying this is something that i want to do. This is something i want to bring to bear and try and because i can, i will. Right . Right. Rose thats it. Well, i also feel like if i held myself it sort of goes with that embarrassment thing. If i held myself back bauds i am not the best at everything i do i wouldnt do anything. Rose exactly. And so theres also as a creative person you need to accept a level that youre at. And just say if this is the book i can write now then just write it. And it will speak to certain people it doesnt need to be in the canon every time. The whole notion this that in the end youll regret what you didnt do rather than what you what you did in the end. Youll always regret what you did do even if you fall on your face because you can get up an try again. I agree. Rose and i dont think people are as critical of failure as you might imagine and thats why they love comeback stories. Uhhuh. Rose they love somebody that gets up off the ground and says i can win. That love somebody that loses and comes back and wins the next year. All of that is sort of what america sort of likes. And i would say all of that is also a little or more or less contingent on do you have good intentions . What are your intentions . And that was one thing that sean penn said to me early on. I cant remember the movie. Theres a race movie i always forget the name. Bubble gulf of mexico or smchlgt i dont know. Something. Theres a two drivers get together in the car for this Cross Country race and the theres an italian driver and he gets in and grabs the rearview mirror, rips it off and throws it out the window and the other guy says what are you doing . And he says where were going we dont need to look behind us. And sean said thats how you should feel about the movies you do. If you know you did it for the right reason and this applies to any project and it doesnt get accepted like you want it to doesnt make a lot of money or whatever, you just keep driving because you know you did it for the right reason. Rose thats the way he views his life, as you know. Yeah. Rose and so does johnny depp. Go do it if thats where your instinct is. This is called actors anonymous. All the movies that have coming out, the roles that weve been talking about also youll see. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Pleasure. James franco for the hour. Every day, dominion lineman Myron Burrell bring science to life, keeps our waterways healthy and lifts our spirits by supporting the arts. Dominion, what we do everyday powers your everyday. Policy,about history, and insight. A new perspective on current ,ffairs, bringing experience insight, stability and scholarship to the issues of today. Your host is Pulitzer Prize winning author, douglas latman. From the miller center, this is american forum. Back to the miller centers american form. Im doug blackmon. On our program today, we take a short journey back in time to a place in reality we wish had never been. A tiny town set amid the orange groves of rural florida in the years just after world war ii and then euro for which African Americans there was even in the 1950s no assurance of Legal Protection from the police and courts. No sense of the duty to ensure a black man accused of crimes he given a fair trial and little chance a jury made up of white men, often men who had fought just a few years before against notions of not the racial supremacy would take seriously the Constitutional Rights of a life man, even when his was at stake. Our guest is gilbert king, who has written a truly gripping book examining in its gear early her goodn on by marshall, the legendary an aa cp attorney and jurists who later wins brown be board of education, the case that ended segregation and america and becomes the first African American member of the supreme court. Earlier this year, gilbert king published the devil in the grove Thurgood Marshall, the groveland boys, and the dawn of a new america. Of a legale story travesty involving for young black men accused of a rape that never occurred. Yet for which three of the accused would lose their lives. Of thethem at the hand very sheriff charged with the responsibility to protect them. The book is profound in its revelation of the banality that once pervaded so many communities and the influence of this case on a towering figure in our national history. Writtenso a powerful he book from an eclectic author and a photographer very few of us have heard of before. For writing the book earlier this year, he was awarded the whole a surprise. Inc. You for joining us. It really is a huge ledger for me because i have been a tremendous admirer of your book. I was blown away by it when i discovered it earlier this year. Like everyone to hear you tell the story of the groveland boys and what happened why wasplace in time this case so important . I will just give you a little background. Like doug said, this is not showing up in a lot of Thurgood Marshall biographies and was not texts. F civil rights it was seen as a to kill a mockingbird case that made a lot of headlines and then blew over and was forgotten. Thurgood marshall never forgot this case. He always used to talk about a because the Groveland Case fit the perception of himself. He was called mr. Civil rights and he was involved at this case at the same time brown versus board was starting. It was ae tone, dangerous case because marshall had to go down to florida to represent the gluck to represent the groveland boys. He was really irreplaceable to the entire Civil Rights Movement at the time. Aboutl you a little bit how this case started, it started in july of 1949. It was a young farm girl who had been separated from her husband, anot