It doesnt get any better than that. I am pleased to have Bryant Gumbel at this table. Welcome. Bryant the last time we did this was 1999 . Charley i dont even remember the 90s. Bryant it was right after my bar mitzvah. [laughter] its a wonderful broadcast. Ive got a lot of really good people. It is a great place to work. It has been a lot of fun. Frame ofwhat is your mind today . Youve got real sports, its a great program. It is a good place to be. Hbo pays you well. Is that it for you . So,n bryant i think charlie. You and i have talked about this. Enjoy working in the mornings, as you presently do. Had my time and my mindset, my way of doing things doesnt really fit with the way things are done now. Charlie would you say that you could slip out tomorrow and no one would notice the difference . I would say they would. Charlie how are you different now . Bryant im much more easy going. If somebodyday, said something that set me off i was eager to fight and more than willing to mix it up. Im more inclined now to say, youre an idiot, i will let you be an idiot. Charlie you have a great marriage. Bryant i have a wonderful marriage. My friends always told me i picked my coverage. Hillary has been wonderful for me. She has been terrific. Charlie there is no ambition left in you . Bryant i have a lot of envision, charlie. Ambition, charlie. I still like being engaged with smart people. I still like discussions and conversations. I just dont feel the need to do them in public. I dont have that overriding ambition for everybody to know what i am thinking. It is not that important to me. It really isnt. Im happy to have discussions with friends and acquaintances, people at dinner. But the idea of getting in front of a camera and engaging people on any and everything and fighting them tooth and nail, i dont have that anymore. I dont. Charlie you do have that about sports. More thane sports as simply, as you will, it is not about the score, at the end of the day, it is about the culture. Sports are culturally relevant. Sports is about real sports like rocky was about boxing. Boxing was the vehicle to tell them about hopes and dreams in class and ambition and disappointment. And real sports uses sports as a vehicle to talk about race and gender and class and education and societal norms and politics and finance and everything else. That often gets overlooked. Charlie lets talk sports. Tom brady. Bryant what would you like . I think the most amusing thing for me is that people are so concerned about deflated footballs and you cannot get their attention on serious stuff. Charlie concussions . Things like that . Bryant yeah. Charlie dont you think the nfl is trying now on concussions . Bryant i think they are eager to get past the problem. Im not going to say they dont care. Do i think it is their priority . I dont get the feeling. Charlie if they dont do something about it bryant it will be their financial downfall. I think in that respect they care. Charlie but they care about the shield, as they say. Which is why they care about brady and all that. Bryant yes, which is why they are probably delighted right now. Everybody is preoccupied with what they like to call deflategate because they are not talking about the other stuff that we generally do. Charlie like what . Like Domestic Violence . Bryant Domestic Violence, concussions. Charlie how many shows have you done on concussions . Bryant too many. Charlie and you would say not enough . Bryant i would say i am happy we have brought it to the floor as often as we have and i think we have done a responsible job. Charlie have you made a difference . Have they changed in response to the kinds of things you have pointed out . Bryant i dont think it is what we pointed out, the problem is so deep that at a certain extension you feel like youre spitting water at the ocean. I dont know. Im not necessarily sure you can have the game without it. Charlie without hard knocks . Bryant thats exactly right. If you made me gone tomorrow charlie we would play touch football. Bryant no, i would take the facemasks off. I think it is going to be the rare individual who leads with his head who doesnt have a facemask. You will wind up with a lot of busted noses and broken teeth, bloody lips, but i suspect you will have fewer people leading with their head. I guess. Charlie the interesting thing to me you know roger as well the most important thing for them is the reputation of the nfl. Bryant yes, they are very protective of the shield. They care a lot about public opinion. Charlie did they change sufficient for you because of all the trouble they got into about ray rice, on Domestic Violence . Butnt they made mistakes, im not necessarily sure there is an easy way out on this. They cant get ahead of legal process. You cant deny somebody due process. As a result, if they have a charge against them, the public may want roger to jump in and suspend the guy immediately. Until he is has gone through the system and he is found guilty, what are you supposed to do . You cant deprive somebody of their living. So im not sure there is an easy way out for them on that. To what extent the problem is inherent and the people who play it, i dont know. I think sometimes it is overstated. We just did a piece recently on the level of Domestic Violence along the guys involved in mma. Mixed martial arts. Charlie high . Bryant compared to the societal norm, yes. But the other thing i was going to add was, compared to the societal norm the nfl is actually less, though it gets a lot of attention. In terms of incidents per 1000 males, it is less. What about one and out . What would you do about that . I guess the problem is less a College Problem than it is a pro problem. In every walk of life the pros play by the same rule, which is if you are talented enough than talented enough as a dancer, you can get a job without college. A writer, whatever you want. If a guy coming out of high school is good enough to go into the pros, he should have that opportunity, which would get rid of or certainly minimize the impact of oneanddones, which came about when the nba past its role rule that you have to have at least one year of college. I think it is the biggest injustice in all of sports. Charlie the biggest injustice and all of sports is not paying kids to come out of high school. Because they come there to make money for the university because of the athletic program, generates huge endowments from rich alumni. Bryant they call amateur athletics it is amateur only for the guys who are playing, it is not amateur for the coach, not amateur for the school, for the administrators, the university, the networks, the sponsors. It is not amateur for any of them. They are making a meant. Mint. It is only amateur for the guys taking the risk. We should find a way to make sure they are fairly compensated for what they are providing. You have this engine that is providing a multibilliondollar industry. And they are supposedly getting an education for it. But that is done with a wink and a nod. Certainly there must be some way of setting up something. Charlie they are also protected in college, not just about their grades, but also about their conduct. Bryant absolutely. I saw an interesting piece on thats that said, are they treated differently than regular students who follow the law . Dont want to follow the law . The answer is yes. Charlie why are they treated differently . Bryant because they have access to a lawyer. Thats what separates them. That is why they seem to get preferential treatment. It is not preferential by the name, it is because they have the representation in the american legal system. You have a better chance of being guilty with a great lawyer than being innocent without a good one. Charlie are you going to start giving opinions again . Saidissed it and then you bryant it was a dumb thing to do. Charlie not a dumb thing, because you need my opinion. I have a lot of opinions. You know how much i deprive you. I know how much he needed this. You needed this. For 19 years, i have buttoned every show with a brief commentary. I like some of them. Charlie no expect you to hit it out of the park every time. Bryant an boy, i didnt. I guess i think the show needs something in the backend the same way that there was something there that people expected. Was it always great . No. But it kind of buttoned the program. Charlie remember those natural scenes at the end, some river or flood . Bryant i think rand morrison i think he has done a great job. Charlie he has created a very good show. Bryant it is terrific. Nobody in this business is irreplaceable, as we know. But boy, he is close. Charlie does a wonderful job. He really does. Charlie hes pretty good on radio. Bryant its funny, ive never heard him on radio. Charlie really. The story is paul harvey tried to get the two of them together. Because you said if you and i can come together as a package, we will own the freaking radio. Bryant my dad was a lawyer first and then a judge. He died in his chambers, april 10th, 1972. Charlie the most admired man you have ever known . Bryant easily. I have often said it it is not a fair world. My dad was brighter than i am, was harderworking than i am. Did more for society than i ever did. And yet i would venture to say that in his best year he didnt make what people in Television Make in a good month. Charlie 441 speech. Bryant one speech. For bryant yes. Society is not fair. Times change. When i outlived my dad, my dad died at 51. I even counted the days when i passed him. Thats when i really setback sat back you always look at your parents oh, they are so old. When i passed that time i was like he really was young. His 51 years were different in our 51 years. He was a world war ii vet. He died before i ever was on the air. Charlie so he didnt see you. Bryant never. Charlie my father died during night watch. He would watch it every night. He may have been watching it he was on a bicycle, like a treadmill. He fell off and the doctor said he was dead by the time he hit the floor. Bryant held was the . Charlie bryant how old was he . Charlie he was 77. He probably was watching me on television. Bryant he was no doubt very proud. I always tell my friends i would give 20 years of my life to have a round of golf with my dad. My dad never played on a private course, never had a caddy. But he made it possible for me to do all those things. Charlie and you could take him to any course in the world and play. Bryant yeah, and he loved it. He made it possible for me to enjoy that. I pray i play a private clubs and have caddies and everything else. Boy, he would have loved that. Charlie morning shows, what is wrong with them . Bryant i dont know that there is anything wrong with them. Everybody who does one likes to leave believe theirs is better than the one that followed. Times change. I agree with what you are saying. Times change. Audiences change. Whether they are responding to the audience or we should be telling the audience what is important is a debate we can have forever. They are not as substantive as they once were. Would an audience sit there for that now . I dont know. I can remember having a 20 minute conversation with the reverend Ralph Abernathy on the today program. Charlie but you went through a couple of commercial breaks or not . Bryant yeah, ran through a bunch of stops. Im not sure the public would sit through that kind of thing anymore. Charlie jeff zucker . Bryant no, this probably goes back further than that. This was probably steve friedman. I just ran for the stop sign. Charlie one of the bigger mistakes they make as they will is that they will dump out something really good for something that is not quite as good because it was programmed that way. Weigh them bryant they are not equal. I dont get everybody sitting there and weighing in. You know . Ok, this happened do we really , need six people to say that was great fun . No. Charlie no, you dont. The big advantage you had is the opportunity to do a lot of oneonone stuff. That is the way the program was designed. Unless you are going off to do a piece outside the studio. Outside the studio you can do 1000 one on ones. But at that table, it is not what it is about. Bryant i did a fivepart interview with David Stockman when he was reagans financial guru. I cant imagine now a Morning Program doing a fivepart series of interviews with president obamas chief financial advisor. I cant imagine. Charlie we would do five different shows. Five segments. Bryant but all different. Charlie no, same guy. We could do that, we would do that, and in fact, im arguing for that. Cia, joe brown of the biden. Bryant the other big change is the morning show has been a progression thing. The heaviest stuff goes in the first half hour and you get progressively lighter. I remember for years there we were still talking about the mid east peace prospects in the third half hour. Now a lot of shows i have watched go to the latest makeover in the first half hour. Im kind of out of step. Charlie it is no secret you like the work we are doing because you like news. Bryant yes i do, and i send you notes all the time. Why did you do such and such . Charlie Peter Jennings used to watch this all the time. The idea to talk with some of the oneonone bryant everybodys dream. Charlie except it came with criticism, came with applause, came with judgment. I interviewed somebody wants, peter called me up and said, how could you do that . And then the next night he would call up and say, you should be there the rest of your life. Bryant you get this what happens is when you like a broadcast you become proprietary about it. You are kind of offended when it goes off the rails, which is something you dont want. Its kind of like, hey, put it back where i wanted. Charlie but you like having leisure time. Bryant i do. Charlie beyond playing golf . You want to take hillary out and do a lot of things together . Bryant i like doing things that i didnt get to do for the first im fond of saying time is like closet space. You have to get your fill. I fill mine. I feel like i enjoy. I do something that i enjoy. Charlie heres my argument with you. Here it comes. Without sucking up to you, youve got a lot of talent. You have strongly held views about this world that we live in. I think you have the unique ability to communicate that. You are you know how to grasp an issue and you know how to understand it and communicate it. I think you owe it to us. I would say the same thing to Marlon Brando about acting. And i did. Bryant first of all, im grateful. Charlie i would say to him, if you are content with acting, i dont want this conversation to go one step further. Bryant first of all, i think you. Secondly, in fairness to all of the people on television, they are kind enough to come knocking and ask. They asked about various programs. You can come on in the night you want to. In fact, im getting ready to go on vacation bryant i like doing oneon ones like this. My buddy says you could do a show called, get off of my lawn. Because thats the way you are now. Look, i still like being engaged. I just dont feel an overwhelming need to do it in public. Is anything ever enough . You are right, there are times when i see things happening in the Public Sector or in politics or on the racial front, where i say, boy, oh boy, do i wish i had a forum because i would like to come swinging. Charlie we will give you one tomorrow if you want it. Thats all you can do. Youve got to do. Bryant i dont know. Morning,come friday , the debate with the small d on thursday night. Oh my goodness, letterman said the day after trump announced, he was sorry he was quitting. That is the way i feel sometimes when i see what is passing for dialogue out there. Charlie what would you be doing andou had both the desire the forum . Bryant probably a broadcast like this. My standard wine has been line has been people are fond of , asking who is a good review good interviewer and who is a bad interviewer . A good interview is somebody who says it well. A bad interviewer is somebody who has nothing to say but says it poorly. The idea of having people who have something to say and say it well, i think it is fun, it is engaging, it is interesting, it is substantive, it is socially helpful. It is what tv should be. Not the freak show that is often out there. Charlie what about john stewart leaving this week . Bryant obviously, he has done a marvelous service. This takes me the oddball in the room ive never been a watcher. Im an admirer. Charlie were you in bed by letterman . Bryant no, i just dont find myself turning on the tv much. I like to read. Charlie you didnt watch co. But colbert either . No, im just on a tv watcher. Not a tv watcher. Charlie are you doing anything new with your life . Bryant seems like everything i do is new in my life. Charlie but i mean you are reading and playing golf. I do stupid things like this summer, hillary and i are doing the new york vacation. We are doing things we never did. Charlie see the area of ask ariondacks and all that . Bryant oddly enough i have never been to the frick. Its wonderful. Its now my favorite museum. Metto the moma, the net. Charlie the great thing about the city is you can spend a different night in new york in a different country. If you want to be in the dominican republic, there are neighborhoods where all the people are dominican, all the food is dominican, and the whole culture bryant an oped in the times two weeks ago was talking about travel. My fatherinlaw and i got engaged in conversation about this. It is hard when you live in new york to jump up and go somewhere else, because you can say, i can do it here. There is nothing im going to buy in paris or london or anywhere that i cant buy in manhattan. Im going to get the food thats better. The only thing im not going to get is the experience. It becomes difficult. Manhattan offers so much. Charlie you could be on the water somewhere. I was thinking about all that, because i just got back from the south of france. This is as interesting and as good, except french villages which are different, unique, and the food and the attitude. Bryant you have to go out the villages. You had to go out and stay with them. No radio, no tv, no phone. We lived there for a little while. Charlie if i was an editor today and came to you with a television program, i would say to you helped me understand what its like from a young black mans perspective, this clash with blue on black. Help us understand that. Bryant is one of those things you cant talk about it but until you have been there it is funny you should have said this because before i sat down here i reached to that paper on your left. And in the Washington Post there is a columnist, a young woman, in the csection. I didnt mean it that way. She got stopped and she happens to be white. It escalated and got somewhat out of control with the officers screaming at her to get back in the car. And she was left with an impression that im sure no amount of discussion could have ever revealed to her until she went through it, when you are a person of color and go through it, it is a frightening exercise. My son has been arrested for walking while black. I get it. You cant buy your way out of it. You cant educate your way out of it. Charlie is it happening too much or do we had least know about it now . Bryant too often people are inclined to say if he had a different attitude, if he hadnt been driving, almost as if the victim is partially to blame. He shouldnt have resisted in the case of brown. In the case of sondra bland, her attitude. Stop. This has nothing to do with the victims. This has everything to do with the culture of the meaning a person of color. There is no justification for society where my son has a far greater chance of being stopped, held, killed then your son simply because hes black. Theres no amount of discussion that is ever going to impress that on someone. Charlie i think you should give me 20 of your life and i will fill in for you. Thank you for coming. Bryant its always a pleasure. Charlie back in a moment, stay with us. Charlie her latest project is the prophet. Charlie her latest project is the prophet. She produces and voices a character based on the lebanese poet. Heres a look at the trailer. Do i hear a mouse . Them on name is mustafa, once yours . Im going to miss him. I have flown away many times. What would i have left if i disavowed all that i believe . Charlie im pleased to have salma hayek. What is it about this . All of us grew up with the profit. All of us knows nothing about it, about its poetry, about its inspiration. How did you discover it and say i have to make a movie . Salma i discovered it because my grandfather always had the book on his bedside table. I was sort of haunted by this drawing of a man and associated it with my grandfather. He died when i was six. It was the first traumatizing experience with death. When i was 18 i found that book in someones house. It was the first time i could read it and i knew it was the same book. About love, about everything. And a little about him and who he was. That doesnt mean he makes a good movie. This book doesnt have a story. I thought it was important to highlight these things today and it would make a great movie. It is important to highlight that the writer wrote a book that had 120 million copies sold. Different crees, people from all over the world. Charlie you think it has a builtin international audience. Salma i think it has an audience. I want to remind the world that it was an arab man who wrote a book about philosophy. I think this is a nice thing to think about. It talks to a part of you that when you hear it, it almost sounds familiar not because you heard it before but because it is a simple truth about the simple things in life, that brings us all together. When she came out of the movie she told me. She was proud of me and then she went on to write a poem about how we are free and therefore we never die and are eternal. She made a drawing. Shes coming out of the tomb and dancing among the rest of the family. Charlie everybody takes Something Different from it. Salma our children are growing up to be consumers. And everything we show them has everything digested for them. Same for us. It takes you into a journey eight times through the film. It is always surprising when you are going to come and you dont know what they are going to look like you all different kinds of techniques of the nations. This journeys inside yourself. Everybody is going to find Something Different. Charlie you think this filing some of the rules salma it is a movie made out of a philosophy the author is arabic. You want unique and different styles. It was impossible and we had no script at the beginning. It was really difficult. I also had this crazy idea to make a philosophy of making the book the same philosophy of the principles the book holds. We have animators from all religions, different ages, all over the world, because the movie is also about freedom. I thought it was apportioned each one of them had absolute freedom to create what they want. Charlie your husband supported it at the end. Sounding i had one week before i would give the investors a door out. We were the people that one of the banks helped us from lebanon. And then charlie they said i believe in you. Salma he. Charlie heels and said, it is an interesting marriage, he really insisted that you work. He knew you would not be happy otherwise. Otherwise he would not have been happy if you are not working. Salma i dont think so. One of the things he fell in love with me is my passion for what i do. He didnt want me turning into someone he didnt marry. We are both independent. I wont let him participate in a lot of the things im in. I have to work hard to make a living to pay those bills. Charlie you met him that was a determination on your part. You had to put that movie on the screen. Salma it was a way for me to show a part of mexicos history people are not aware. It was a fertile time for art and ideology. People dont think of mexico is a sophisticated place. Trotsky was leaving there. Charlie unfortunately for trotsky. Salma he would have been killed anywhere and he had a good time. Charlie you a very good director. Salma yes you everything that i do as a producer is very visual. Freda was very important. One of the things i loved about the story that i wanted people to be inspired by was her courage to be unique. Who better than julie taymor to be unique. This lion king connection the story comes from the perspective of the little girl. Roger does a great job. It is simple, it feels very earthy. He understands global audiences very well. I think it was the best choice for this part of the story. In regard to crazy artists that are really extraordinary that tell the poems. It is great because the children understand the poetry through images. Even if they dont understand all the words they understand all the conceptual images. Charlie this is an adaptation, and animation, of on love. Charlie the mother of l and maitre. Salma i fell in love with the character and that would be me plain that character. Charlie did you go out and get the talent that was in the film . Salma yes. Charlie was it worth it . Salma yes. Him mimis and says the poetry in a way that is like a conversation with a little child. He didnt even look at the script because he knew all the poems i heart. Charlie whenever you are sitting in the first certain rows you always raise your hand because you like to speak, you are passionate about public issues. One of the interesting things you have said and conferences in which i have participated is you strongly make the argument that to defeat isis what we have to do speak to the young people who are joining isis or other groups. At the same time when we have to do is provide an alternative so they are not the word to find their own identity, yes . Salma that if they are leeward to find their own identity, it means they are not their own identity. They are not exposed to a simulation that will make them come up with their own sense of purpose. But they are easily brainwashed. I believe young people today dont have enough of this stimulation. They think smartly about their own purpose. Our future is in their hands. One of the things people said about this movie, they say you people are not interested in a philosophy. This is a big mistake. They are underestimated. It is not just about entertaining them. We have to find materials that inspire them and inspire them to think outside the box. We cannot keep repeating the same patterns in history. Charlie are you took in about your film that will inspire them . Salma my film will inspire them, but we must find different ways. My film will inspire them to think on their own and to appreciate life. We try to entertain ourselves from life, away from life, instead of really pondering upon life. There is a part of them that has not been fed. Charlie if i ever met a selfstarter, it is you. Youre prepared to do whatever it takes, whatever role you need to accept to make something happen. Youre prepared to do what it is. Agreed . Salma yes. A charlie where does that come from . Salma a sense of conviction. When someone else wants to say it is a good exercise for keeping in touch with your amp at the end learning to be many different characters. When im going to go through the trouble of producing, which is a pain in the neck, because it is something i want to say that i have a conviction over and i believe in, every single time they told me it is not that it is impossible, this will never happen, and nobody will like it. Charlie what did you say . I said lets see. And i have been right every time. I hope im right with this one too. May i convince me i confess something . I have stage fright very badly. I go to psychoanalysis. I will make this confession. It is my shrink that tells me you must make a question in front of everyone. It terrifies me, but i have all these questions in my head. It is an exercise. I dont have a lot of questions and i want some answers. And usually they dont answer my questions. Charlie so you are in pursuit of the answer to the question you have. Salma it is an act of bravery to raise my hand. Charlie keep asking questions. The prophet opens on august 7. See you next time. You will be free indeed, not in your days without a care or nights without grief, but rather when these things bite off your life and yet you rise above them. Bound. The following is a paid advertisement for timelifes video collection. Announcer it was the summer of 1969. America had just put the first man on the moon. Hair was big and skirts were short. Cbs had just pulled the plug on the smothers brothers show by replacing it with hee haw. It was a real funny show. Hee haw, hee haw