Thats right. I better i better not enjoy it, i better luxuriate in it. Its a great privilege. Being a senator is a great privilege, charlie. And it taught me being alive was a great privilege. I write about that. Xd i was sort of more open in this book than id like to be. Sort of let it all hang out. Rose what was the hardest thing for you to write about . Well, the hardest thing to write about is facing my own mortality. The hardest thing to write about is wondering notwithstanding all my bravado and all my assertiveness if i was going to make it. Rose do you think you could have handled death . Im not looking forward to the experience but i think i can and from what we know about human existence, its inevitable. Rose laughs so i will handle it. Rose exactly. A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero one. Rose do you have a different vision for whats good for childrens reading . Authors and prevailing wisdom . Well, my feeling is you tell the truth as best you can and the people who you treat most are children to create a little ghetto land where you discreetly put in information which is totally useless to children. It bothers me a lot. Theres also room for books that are more serious, perhaps, go to another level,. Rose more emotional, more demanding. More yeah, ive been in the business for 40 years and for 40 years ive heard from children and their letters are so fierce. Rose fierce in what way . Well, i mean, they ask you such incredibly personal questions. You wonder if i wonder why are they asking me. Why arent they asking their parents . The answer simply is they probably cannot ask their parents. Rose do you feel inadequate to respond because you dont know the answer . I often dont know the answer but you tell them. Whats touching is theyre asking the question the questions frequently is to do with life and death, sadness and morbidity. Happiness, love. In the spring and summer of 92 i was editor and i was watching the campaign develop. I covered it for the New York Times before and political campaigns in season and i noticed something things i hadnt seen before. First paul tsongas started talking about gay issues then bill clinton appeared at the Palace Theater in may of 92 before a gay audience, before Television Cameras and National Political reporters and made some very concrete promises to the gay crowd he was the presumive nominee then and somebody whose position hadnt done that before and it seemed to me looking at that and looking at the attitude of the republicans what were hammering on gay and lesbian voters and with Pat Robertson and pat buchanan from the pulpit of the Republican National convention, between those two attitudes, those polarizing rejection and acceptance, a national gay block vote formed for the first time and that affected the election in a decisive way. Rose what did you do . I wrote an oped piece for the New York Times saying it had a huge psychological effect and might affect the election and i wrote it and thinking about it the week after i wrote if this is going to happen, why isnt this a book . And if its a book why shouldnt i try to do it . I remember a friend of mine saying why dont you make a rap record youre already making punk records, youre a punk band and i thought thats crazy. Even though we kind of rhymed all the time but the idea of doing a record seemed kind of wild. Rose so whose idea was beastie boys . Well, it was the rose was it your idea . Well, we said lets start a band. It was a punk scene in new york. And it was petering out. And is this other scene was forming and kind of everybody that was around was sort of forming bands and everybody that was around was probably in like five different bands because they were just like 20 or 30 kids hanging out and beastie boys was kind of like, you know, we should start a punk band. Rose how did you get into acting . Well, there was this boys club across the street from the building and there was a drama booth and i got into a play, heard the applause and i said this is my way off the corner. Especially when the coach said i think you have talent, thats all he had to say. Then, of course, the dream started there at the age of 13. Rose youre having great time. The time of my life. Rose can you then look at this career that is at a great moment and say thank god i did this and didnt do Something Else . Thank god its worked for he . Oh, yeah, sometimes i wake up saying what if i didnt make it as an actor . I havent prepared myself to do anything else. Id be a bag man under those cord bard sleeping on the streets. As luck would have it i happened to get lucky and make it. The question is are you a product of your nature or nurture . Nortsdz, your genes or the way you were raised . I believe those things powerfully influence us, theres no question about it. I think were a product primarily of our choice to either of those things and to Everything Else thats happened in our environment. So i put a heavy, heavy focus upon the power of choosing that we are not like animals, that we have an internal awareness of our sell that have enables us to stand apart from ourself. We have our imagination so that we can create something that is not there. We have independent will. We can actually swim upstream. We have a conscience. We have this kind of inward light or moral sense, this compass of what is right and what is wrong. And i think those four unique human endowments, animals do not possess, that is our common heritage. Most Department Stores are very similar. That the merchandise you find in one is rather similar to the other. And its how do you differentiate the bloomingdales from anyone else . Well, the element of romance, the element of product development, doing unique things brought people to bloomingdales brought a worldwide reputation and really helped take the store from the number five store in new york to the unique institution it became. The slogan like no other store we coined when we opened in washington because we wanted to separate ourselves from the rest of the retailers. To me, super bowls are not won by big things done well. Rose right. Theyre won by Little Things done poorly. An off side penalty, possible interception thats dropped, a muff punt. Because the superbowl to me builds theres a psychology that in the very beginning a little pebble falls here, a little pebble fall there is and all of a sudden youve got an avalanche and the games out of control and its very difficult in the super bowl to fall behind and get back, get your momentum back and make it a game. So to me as a viewer, i hope the game is close. I hope we can go into half time and still have this game competitive. Rose youve seen 42 of these things. laughs thats right. Rose why do you go back every year . You know something, when you say that, people always ask me how the game has changed and the thing, charlie, is the game hasnt changed. Whoever blocks and tackles and makes the fewest mistakes is going to win it. What has changed is the publics perception of this game. Ive seen it go from a curiosity to a game to an event to an experience and now its a national holiday. Rose have you ever been able to answer finally this question of what makes people evil . I think what creates evil is emotion. Every Single Person i have talked to over the last 35 years on this subject not on the subject about this but on the subject of evil of one kind of another has been brought to this or has been driven to it as children are by emotion. By love or by the withdrawal of love. I know this sounds very feminine, you know . And perhaps i know all this. And i know this is what many people will say, and we say this isnt serious. But our lives, that is what our lives are. Our lives are emotion. And if we dont have emotion we are nothing, you know . If we dont have next to emotion morality, were also nothing. Despair i say hit in the book through this corruption has suffered because of his love for hitler and hitlers love for him became not immoral nor amoral but morality was extinguished in him. Morality is extinguished, there was no human being left. If you go to movies for years forget it, i mean, the ideas of Lonely People rose it comes down to finding interesting characters that you like that you can identify with this a story . Them and create enough variety in the banality. Once you get the money together to make a hollywood movie and with al pacino, his intensity, so many actors today are not great types. I like somebody who is a great lover3 of type who stares at a woman and means it. I tell you what id like to talk to you about if you dont mind, people talk about the way we were, how do you write a song how does it happen . So im going to use this as an example, i think its a good example. That film started out outside a college. And peoplenr said how do you knw what happens . What happens for me is i start out by deciding what imni not going to write so i go im not going to write a march. Hey, everybody, its the way we were not going to do it. Not going to do a waltz. So i decide im going to think about theni bells of the colleg. That was on the sound track, just bells. Know you live with that for three or four days, go to the store, buy ice cream. That becomes slowly but surely this. Then you go to the laundry, now i start thinking about barbra streisand, the most fantastic voice, and im thinking to myself she sings those wonderful long notes. Now im writing long notes. Okay . And i start that process. Now i also happenco to know whee what the title of this piece is, right . So all i now need is to put in the title the way we were thats how that was written. A song like one for chorus line probably one of the easiest songs to write because the lyricist hadlp the title. One. He loved the idea of having all these people in the part and theyre all one. Michael bennett said to me ive got to have a song where i have to have a beat where you go boom and those hats go on. So ive go home and i already have one. Then that becomes that. One, singular sensation its like building a picture in your mind and slowly by surely translating it into the language of music. Rose tell me about young helen. 18 years old, horrible acne, no money, mother not so long ago widowed and shes depressed a lot and my sister mary at age 19 got polio before the salk vaccine so shes in a wheelchair and we dont have any money or anybody to help and i think, charlie we dont know for sure i think my i. Q. Is just fairly average, nothing special, so i had to hit the deck running and get started. Nobody could have been less prepossessing or have fewer credentials and it did take a while, didnt it . I started working at 18. Didnt get to cosmo until i was 43 years old. Thats a lot of years in there. Thats what cosmo is all about, thats our credo, theres something you can doinn maybe better than others. Try to find out what it is. Just keep going. Get up everyday and do whats there. Do the bad stuff first and anybody can do that. Im such an example of an american Success Story what can happen to you from nowhere to somewhere. Rose what do you think makes a great money manager . Well, i think what makes a great money manager is tremendous intensity because every theres so many other smart people working so hard, you have someone thats really intense and determined to beat the market and to beat other people and you have to have someone that and the other characteristic that helps is luck because the timing of when you start a hedge fund and how you do in the First Six Months or a year makes a tremendous amount of difference. Rose you say this is a business and investment book mask cading as a fable. Right. Rose and the fable is . The fable is we talked about it earlier. Just the original idea of in the human condition there is this tendency that just as i can us are, that you want to have wings and you want to fly and you want to be the best and rose but whats wrong with that . Nothings wrong with it as long as you are as youre able to step away and not fly too close to the sun. And some of the great hedge funds managers have stepped away. When i was courting my second husband, i lot my first one wonderful man when he was 34. Jim and i i just lost him three years ago dr. Jim . Thats right. We were married 51 years. But anyway, before we got married he said you know, mary, i dont really think we should get married until inaudible it would make me feel better. Rose jim said that . And i said i think youre right. So i met margaret, his new wife, and dad and i was asking him, mother used tonr say never let e sun go down on your anger. And i say never let Something Like that ruin your life. Youve got to make up w your parents. Youve got to make up with somebody that youve had problems with. And it was really wonderful. It really brought us together and i had to talk to trustees once and someone came up to me and said this has done something for my family, because there was Something Like that going on. You musnt ever let something bitter influence the rest of yourni life. Ive always maintained that grandmothers are the best models in the world. If you dont have a good grandmother youre not going to be a good novelist. And they told me about the family origins and the plantations, the german migrant families, the incredible incident that my great grandmother on the stagecoach assaulted by a ban did who sees her rings and asks her for the rings she says no, theyre my wedding rings. And he says ill just chop them off with which he does with a machete. And she was dignified, and said is there anything more you desire . All these stories accumulate and you want to write them when youre 15 or 20 or 25 but the story isnt over yet. The story of this woman goes beyond that. So i waited until her 72nd birthday when she dies and then i could tell the novel. Rose is this the mexican the answer to the mexican every woman . Yes. My true grandmothers were very strong mexican women, early widows who had to bring up their children, work and be very tough so it is an homage to them in a great sense. Also, you know, writing about mexico you never really give the is male the role of the protagonist. Its obviously about a very macho mexican and this covers the same period of mexican history the 20th century. But the protagonist is not a woman. So the way of looking at the perspective is completely different. Totally difference. Rose how much influence did your grandmother have on you in terms of the way you looked at women . Very much. I grew up in the united states. My father was at the Mexican Embassy during the newt deal years but every summer i went to mexico and lived with my two grandmothers and they had a tremendous influence. Not only did they tell me stories, they kept alive the english language. I could have been simply an english language reader and writer and i began the Spanish Language reading and writing. Thats what my grandmothers did. Rose what you have achieved as a literary figure and a writer is primarily the force of your intellect or the force of your energy . Well, Energy Without which there is nothing. So i was genetically very sound. I come from an energetic family. I came from a family that refused ever to to accept a fee. My grandfather was blind at the age of ten. He wanted to go to the senate, which was an important place in those days. And he got there at the age of 38 being able to read. Rose and you would read to him . I read to him as a kid, i was brought up in his house. And i never, ever felt sorry for myself because i would think of him. I had two eyes, at least. So i had these examples in front of me of people who had overcome quite a lot. So i was that combined with energy. Rose what would you do different in the life that you have lived . I cant think of anything. I have done pretty much what i wanted to do. Ill give a little of advice out there for those who worry about their place in the world. Always remember that it is of no consequence to you what people think of you. Its what you think of them. Thats how you live your life. M you sometimes have tears of rapture, sometimes tears of fear. Rose you once said that even if you feel you should keep steady at the funeral of your relatives, you should weep. Thats right. Thats right. Rose can you define what it is that makes great art for you . Intensity. Intensity and coherence. Now, dont ask me what i mean by intensity or by coherence. There is actually some that is right goes directly in some sort of way it goes directly to your Central Nervous system. It gets through all of the habit and all the things that youve seen before. I dont mean that you live in a continuous state of astonishment but you live in the hope of such a state. I mean, obviously not every work of art does this to you. I can name others, too, many others. But when you hit upon or run into an image which speaks with that degree of directness and that degree even if you dont understand the finer points you cant say no. You just have to give in to it. With Good Research you can embarrass anybody. Make anybody squirm. You could do it to me. But if you are really after illumination, the how an interviewees character, qualities, substance, texture, if youre really after that you can ask very pointed questions, sensible questions to get them to talk. You can establish which you do so well a chemistry of confidentiality, what comes across the table which, you dirty dog, you have done on a couple of occasions over the past and you got me saying things i had no intention of saying and why . Because youre two people who know a little bit about the same subject. If the interviewee has respect for the interviewer and feels that the interviewer knows a good deal and is well prepared you can ask anything and you will find that the interviewee will be a coconspirator with you. Rose how many days out of a normal year are you on the road . Im trying to cut it down to 18 nights. Rose 81 nights. And how old are you . 73. Almost 74. Rose it makes you young . I love to play. And getting out on the road, unless i get sick its the greatest ng the world. If i get sick i still play. laughs rose do you play almost every day of your life . Oh, yeah. Rose you do. You hit the keyboard everyday . Right. Except when im writing and theres a deadline and a commission. Then technique suffers because youre gripping the pencil eight to 12 sometimes in a panic half the night after 12 hours already and then its not good for european know playing. Rose now did you write take 5 or paul desmond . Paul desmond. Rose time out . Time out wa