Friendship with gore vidal. With the image and reality of the man, he was a case that has been said that celebrity is a mask that eats the face or mailer said anybody becomes fames at a young age which vidal did at the age of 21 lives only in the tzar cough gust of his own image. And i think gore felt a prisoner of what he had created in his, this image he created of himself and he never wanted to admit weakness, never wanted to admit fear. Rose the story of hamilton and the friendship with gore vida l when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Alexander Hamilton is the unlikely founding father who wrote hi of early American History. Roosevelt called him the most brilliant statesman who ever lived. He is the subject of the musical hamilton at the Public Theatre in new york. Writer and composer Linmanuel Miranda takes hamiltons legacy to new hiatal using hiphop rnb and music. Heres a look. Like my country and im not throwing away my future. Im not throwing away my future and im not throwing away my future. Going to die were going to rise were going to rise uprise up throwing away my future. Im not throwing away my future. Hamilton hamilton are you not throwing away my socks. Rose joining me now is the writer exezer and the director thomas kail. Hamilton is moved to broadway this summer. Im pleased to have both of them at this table. Welcome. It could not be better, could it . Not being here but the response to this. It is really remark many. Who is coming, everybody wants the hot ticket in town ever wants to come. The critics crave by it. Two guests on my show peggy noonen over the weekend, david brooks today wrote wonderful columns about it. I mean what more do you need. You sit in a room for six years making something and you have the wildest dream version how you think the show would be received and were experiencing that so were just trying to hang on while we can. I started writing this in 2008 while i was still in my show in the height. I was on my first vacation from the show and i picked up the book at random at borders. Rose you said ill take this one. It had great reviews on the back. I knew he died in a duel so i knew it would be a bang and fell in love with the story. Really the dicksonian nature of his live. Rose explain that. Theres a point where you say Dickens Dickens dickens. What was his life. Alexander hamilton was born possibly out of wedlock. His father split by the time he was ten years old. His mother died in bed with him a few short years later. His brother was an apprentice to a blacksmith so he was by himself. He went to live with the cousin after his mothering death. The cousin killed himself and he got put in charge of a charter, he was a clerk for a Trading Company that traded sugar cane and slaves, the key point of the triangle trade down in st. Croix. He wrote his way off the island. There was a hurricane that ravage st. Croix and wrote a poem about it. Describing the carnage saying it would astonish into angels. The poem was used for relief for the island and people took up a fund to get him an education. Rose here we have a character, a great american. We know theres drama that he dies ataa k÷ the end of the duel. Yes. Rose which he may not have in fact fired his gun. Yes. Lots of differing about that. Rose speculation. Here we have that story. You have translated it into so much more. Tell me about the ideas that you want to pour into this to make it a new look at the Founding Fathers, the American Experience and a different way of presenting, presenting it that would appeal to young people because youre people by young actors diversity. You speak to what we were really conscious of when is how do we eliminate the distance between the story and now. We knew the story would be set then and we knew what it would sound like now. We knew fundamentally this was a country founded and created by immigrants. Somebody in all on our lines stepped off a boat or some former transportation put their foot on this soil and went to work. As we started thinking about taking the inspiration from rons book, we thought okay, here are a lot of events but we have to tell a story. So we had all of the events laid out. We sort of both red the book and made our own time lines and compare hey this really spoke to me, hey this moment feels like its essential. So then you have those things to build around but it became so apparent early on as we were really designing how the show could function that this idea of doubling characters for instance felt really right on. The character who played lafayette, one of his great friends also plays jefferson. Of course they both have this connection to france. They both have this relationship, one antagonistic and one supportive. How can we make the audience feel like who they are and what they understand is actually not so different from what these people were struggling this. Rose hiphop seems like a genius stroke now but thats what you knew. Thats the first thing i checked. I read two chapters of this book and i go someones already done a hiphop version. The quintessential hiphop narrative, this is someone who grew up in hard times and wrote his way out of his circumstances. Wrote his way towards better life. And that is the hiphop narrative from the south bronx in the 70s to today. And so i googled hamilton hiphop musical. Rose thats not fair. I was not there and so thank god now you google it youll see my show but i really, i just, that was the first thing that jumped out at me was this is a fundamental hiphop story. Rose just for a moment a hot shot freshman when i was a senior. Rose he was creating things way back then. He was skewing life from my productions. Thats true. We found out we shared a plot for production even though we never met. We didnt meet until after i graduated college. A couple of my bodies saw this early proto version in the its in the year 2000. I graduate waited, they said you got to meet this guyh h and they were right. I immediate lin in may 2002. I graduated the week before. We basically never stopped talking. Its just been a 13 year conversation that has led us to this table which is slightly mind blowing. Rose you been complement each other. I say tom your hair looks great. And i say rose you know what i mean. Your skills meshed with his skills. One of the things that i credit from enormously with all the time is both in the7c creation of heights and hamilton, he came in and worked. When the heights happened and we were both broke and had day jobs, she would say well bring in a song on friday. Bring in a song on troy and well talk about it. He created deadlines even though we had no apparatus or way of knowing whether the show was going to be anything. And it created somewhere for me to go when something for me to do is something to work towards. And weve kind of continued that with every project weve worked on. The continuation of that because he read that book and wrote one song. He didnt write 50 songs he wrote a single song thinking maybe ill make this into an album. That was in 2009. He happened to do it at this little place on pennsylvania avenue. And he did this, the only song that existed from whatever this potential hamilton thing could be. And what i realized in that is that it was no different from the relationship we forged on heights which is what lin is able to do is take very complex ideas and not show you how smartest but make them accessible to all of us. One of the great gifts hes given us with this show is he doesnt stand upexwqa there and say look where i am youre down there. He built a ladder and he says come up here and be up here with me. So my job was to help try to architect that ladder and get every Single Person who walks into the Public Theatre and rodgers on broadway to participate and feel like its also for them. And i think thats one of the things ive been you know, ive been riding shotgun on for over a decade now and really admired. Rose the lyrics im just like my country im young scrappy and hungry and im not throwing awayxa my shot. Charlie rose is wrapped in this. You performed that. Actually Alexander Hamilton the opening number of the show. Rose before we see that is that what the president responded to when he said geithner should see this. Yes. I told them, i told the assembled audience. This is the first time performing the song in public. They had asked me to perform something from in the heights and i said i have 16 bars about the first ones i could learn and they allowed me to close out the show with that. And his response is weve got to get geithner in here. Rose he thought geithner was hamilton. He had a quote at that time because of the Economic Crises had just, everything had just blown up and he said he got the hardest job as treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton. That was the quote geithner had. This was very important in the Obama Administration in may 2009. Soa they were just figuring out how to do this thing. How to get us out of the hole we were in. I think he was trickled by the fact i made the treasury secretary sing. That song was from the perspective. He also performed it from burrs point of view. Rose where did that . Bjhj come from, aaron burr perspective. We have Andrew Lloyd Weber the antagonist narrating the story. Judas anywhere eights jesus christ super star. Thats immediately where i went. That was a difficult task for me figuring out who aaron burr is. Hes known as the villain rose you make more of him. I do after learning more about his life. I have to learn my way in becauseb biographies. Gore wrote a historical fiction novel. His words are a lot craftier than mine. One of the things i learned about burr hes an early feminist. His daughter received an education greater than any man of that error you. He was close with his wife and daughter. He was on the mission for Alexander Hamilton for the abolition of slaves in new york city, new york state. So there are redeeming characteristics to this guy. I had to find my way into that because every biography either is in defense of him or vilifies him. Rose on one hand aaron burr was amazing, cautious, careful, laid back. He wrote volumes of written work and burr left behind less than two. That tells you how much burr reserved the right to change his mind about any position he had at any particular point. The tragedy of the show is where burr is reckless and left to go and hamilton is cautious and throws away his shut one kills the other. Thats how they are remembered forever. And i think hamilton knew they would be bound forever. And whether that would whether that would ensure his legacy of someone who then had to be spokenqhe becomes slightly obsolete at that point in his life. This is someone who thought about death so often in his life and towards the end not empowered not able to affect change in that way. We talked very early on and i think againw6 its to the credit of writing to leslie odam who plays burr. We know stories about two enemies who shoot each other. Lets make a story about two friends this were complex and one kills the other. Rose you thought about playing burr. Yes. Every time i wrote a burr song i was like man, this guy. Rose becauseb narrator. Because he gets all the best songs in the show. Leslie is now you watch the show you cant imagine me playing the role because it really fits leslie like a glove. He gets this wonderful moments one of my favorites being the room where it happens, where he is talking about not being in power. And seeing hamilton trade away the capital in exchange for Financial Plan and being like how am i not in this room. How am i not in the room where it happened. Rose take a look at this. This is you at the whitehouse in 2009 performing is first rap song you wrote for hamilton. Here it is. Dropped in the middle grow up to be a hero and scholar without a farther got a lot farther by working a lot harder by being a lot smarter by being a stealth daughter. By 14 place them in charge of the trade in charter for being slaughtered and carted away across the ways hamilton kept something to be a part of the brother horrible border set the lane my lane the future drips, dripping down the drain j connected to the brain he wrote hisklemp first retrain but the words got around that kid is insane man education dont forget where you came and the world whats your name, man Alexander Hamilton. [laughter] Alexander Hamilton there isnt anything he hasnt done but just you wait, you wait his father split two years later see alex and his mother half dead and alex got better mother was the cousin the cousin committed suicide there was nothing but ruin something new inside alex you got a sense of yourself started retreating and reading to do for someone less he wo5u have been destitute without a sense of restitution started working for his late mother all the things he cant afford every book he can get his hands on on the bow of the ship headed for the new land in the harbor now coming up from the bottom im the damn fool that shouted. Rose there you go. Its unbelievable. Could this have ever been done. Its almost like if they didnt have hiphop it had to be invented and created for this. Wow, thank you. That means a lot. Theres a lot i think the score is both a love letter to hiphop and musical theatre. Theres a lot of references in both embedded throughout but youre right it is this tight upped language and we learned early on in the process of making it any time we dipped into oral speeches as prose. Its so high in the opening number that we have to keep it at that level throughout the show. There are times we take musical breaks slow it down and speed it back up again but this heightened language seemed to be the only way to sort of convey hamiltons world view. Rose did you once say that hamilton reminds you of tupak. Yes. I think in that he embodies so many contradictions. He is both thoughtful and boisterous. He is both brilliant and self destructive in certain ways. You know, he would getc . Into fights that in rent retrospect why are you hiding with that life. Thats what i think of him who embodied so many Different Things to so many different people and he carries that with him. Rose is your family somehow involved in politics in new york. Yes. He was advisor for the spanish affairs. Rg79 there was an intrigue of politics within you. More than allergy actually. I grew up around politicians my whole life. New york politicians, local politicians. I know what it is to fight for turf. I know what it is to fight for you know, these amount of blocks for a councilmember and i sort of grew up inoculated by it. Rose you werent surprised though that in the end he played hamilton. No. Another wise casting decision by me. When lin were working on heights one of the early conversations we had was you should play the main character just until we find somebody else. Just because itsa0lx too hard to teach. And then we did the show. Lin ended up playing the lead character of that show. We said all right for the next show sit next to me we can be out there in the audience watching it together and then he wrote that first song and did it at the whitehouse. And i said okay, for the next show. I knew where it was headed. Rose was there a residual sadness for hampton. Thats something we deal with both implicitly and explicitly in the show. He suffered so much loss at such a young age. Profound sense of loss and lack of belonging. And so hes someone who came here so unmoored and looking for something to hold on to. And then all along his path heendeared himself to these men one of them being washington who he refused to see as a father figure. Rose why did he refuse to see him as a father figure. He was the chief of staff to general washington during theq3 war. At like 22. And by the way quit because he wanted to command. And he saw battle is the only way for social mobility and he knew he had no family connections and no family past. Rose he was thinking of social mobility. Yes. One of the first letters we have of hamilton he writes to a friend and says we shall conclude by saying i wish there was a war. Even at 14 thats the only way hes going to rise. Rose which is interesting because the American History is about the president we most admire, commander in chiefs of war, lincoln, roosevelt washington. Whats interesting i grew up in alexander virginia, basically 15 minutes from mount vernon. One of the questions in light of your question of hamilton, what washington did by stepping down by not running for a third term of course he would have been elected. If he said i need to teach this country how to move beyond me. As lin says in the lyric teach them how to say goodbye. Theres something incredibly poignant watching this moment where hamilton who looked up to so few is literally at the moment looking up to washington who has an idea of something thats grandeur and greater. We often talked when what does it mean to build a cathedral or build something that you know wont be completed for generations. For someone who came from so little and just wanted to have life around him he tried to create life for the generations well beyond when he was going to be gone. Rose rebecca mead of the new york said he portrayed the Founding Fathers not as exalting statesman but reckless sons, revolutionaries and sometimes petty rivals living at a moment of extreme volatility, opportunity and risk. Whats interesting about American History and this musical shows it, is that for all these geniuses coming together, it all falls apart 0feud and accusations. And colliding ambitions. The war really holds people together. Once that war is over, its tough to figure out all right so whats the country we all agreed o i think people think of the Founding Fathers, they think of the proar tuesday of john trumpable those were the days but that was maybe six months that existed. You have hamilton with fundamentally different versions of what this country can be and those are the fights were still having. What the public and theatre believes in so deeply is f