Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20161017

Formation of a multimillion dollar clean energy marketplace. So i would say its important for carbon, and frankly its important for economic competitiveness that we keep pushing on the frontiers, maintain what i consider to be an edge in at least most areas of the Clean Energy Transformation thats coming. So i think its very much in our interest to get the signal straight, get industry, get utilities, get other, get investors, bankers, understanding this is the direction one of my ceo friends like to say and i would apply it to the Paris Agreement, you cant keep waves off the beach. Rose we conclude this evening with chris kelly and Molly Shannon talking about the film other people. I was nervous writing about that time because it is very auto biographical and i dont know if i want to be that personal and there are other cancer movies and other movies with other themes. I had a thousand reasons why not to do it and at the end of the day i just thought no, i keep thinking about this time in my life for a reason. Rose John Dickerson, ernest moniz, chris kelly and Molly Shannon when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following 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 we begin this week with politics, with just 24 days until the election, donald trump has sent the Republican Party into crises mode. The republican nominees demeaning comments about women and allegations that he did more than just talk, have offended the president ial race. Joining me now from washington is John Dickerson. He is the anchor of face the nation and political director of cbs news. John, give me a snapshot of where you think we are on this friday night last weekend before the final debate. Well, we got two competitions going on. One is donald trump versus Hillary Clinton and the other is donald trump versus the Republican Party. Or the Republican Party officials who have been either rushing away from his campaign, leaning away from it and then some are kind of frozen in limbo. But it was telling on the night that donald trump in some peoples eyes kind of rided his campaign in that second debate or at least righted it in terms of some nervous republicans. The next day he came out and went on a really strong rollin shooting match at paul ryan and john mccain and republicans in his party. Newt gingrich pointed out, if he wants to win, donald trump wants to win, he needs to folk on Hillary Clinton and not keep his fired aimed at those republicans who he thinks have betrayed him. Rose so why does he do it . Because he is a counter puncher by instinct. He is also in all the reporting ive done in covering donald trump, there has been time and again stories of him from people who have talked to him off the record and behind the scenes where they say that he is fixated on people who have slide him, people who he thinks has been offensive to him and that is in keeping with that. And also i think when he talked about being unshackled, i think there should be a constant push and pull what donald trump thinks brought him to the dance which is his full 100 donald trump and the establishment of the party which ask the that he rein himself in some. He doesnt feel thats uncomfortable but also ineffective and not what gets him the nomination. There are obviously a lot of people who disagree with that. Rose when he sees the polls, what does he say. Basically the best case, and what he sees in the polls if he were taking a clear eyed view of it hes five or six percentage down depending on which view you take. Hes down in enough states where hes not going to get to 270. Hes close in ohio and doing well in iowa and nevada but in places like virginia, north carolina, colorado where if Hillary Clinton wins those places its over for her assuming she wins the Traditional Democratic states. What ixthink he is, and there are two strategies and its hard to tell how much hes embracing both and he may just be embracing them both. One is he turns out so many of his own base all of these models doing the polling are wrong. There are voters out there who voted for democrats in the past or who havent voted in 20 years. Theres not a lot of evidence that theres a huge group of those people or if there were there are another group of traditional republicans who are not voting for donald trump. The other theory is the one he put in place this week which is if he essentially runs a full force campaign hitting Hillary Clinton, bringing up every one of bill clintons character flaws and women that he had encounter with or alleged encounter with i should say, that it was the press turnout among democrats so much that trumps core base against a depressed Democratic Base will give him a win. Thats essentially a scorched earth policy or scorched earth approach its hard to imagine how that would work and how much of a country would be left even if he were to win. Rose whats the impact of the wiki leak disclosures. There are hacked emails from john podessa. One you see how hard her aides working on trade Promotion Authority or Keystone Pipeline or launched diversionary efforts to keep the conversation off hr emails. So you see diversion and not being straight with the voters. When you talk to people in both parties, a lot of them recognize this as the behind the scenes kind of activity that campaigns go through. Its regrettable that in modern politics, theres so much time and effort is spent trying to confuse the voters. But thats kind of a bipartisan thing. Rose with respect to women, clearly donald trump had to win College Educated women in order to find a path to 270. What do we know about the impact of these allegations about sexual predatory activity and that vote. As you quite rightly pointed out that was the part of the electorate he was trying to improve his standings with. A lot of those College Educated voters are former republicans or have voted for the Republican Party in the past. Mitt romney won with College Educated white women and donald trump is doing worse with that group by about 1518 points depending on which poll you look at. So he really needed to fix the situation there. What weve seen from a preliminary cross tabs in the votes is that he is still doing very poorly with that group of voters. And then well see in the coming days the votes and then, or i should say the opinions of that same group as theyve dealt with and processed the allegations that have come charging donald trump with actually behaving that way that he was talking about on that tape. Rose possible he will not show up for the final debate. With donald trump anything is possible. I think the third debate is his last big chance. I think its not even possible to do, to recoup in a single event but there is, there is a chance for him to come forward and make his last big case with a big audience. And so whether his strategy is to keep burning things down, which is where they appear to be going now, and its another chance for him on a big stage to keep making the kind of adult he did in the second debate, or if he pivots yet again, it would be the biggest stage where he could put that other face forward. So i think its in his interest to participate in the debate. There are democrats who have been arguing to me this week its not in Hillary Clintons interest because shell just, its very unpredictable how to deal with him. Rose what is conventional wisdom today as we go into a weekend about the senate and the house . I think the conventional view is that the house is still in, the democrats dont have a chance of taking over the house although theres a lot of chatter about that. One of the things paul ryan has done with his sort of no mans land position, he said he wont defend or work for donald trump, but hes not unendorsing him. Hes trying to have it both ways but theres a way in which that helps his members. Those members in his district with a lot of trump voters get to beat up on paul ryan saying this is an out rage, were for donald trump and that helps him in his district. For anybody with more moderates in their district, they can try and use what ryan has done as a little bit of cover to say look if you send me back to washington youll be sending me back to a place with a speaker who is not completely in the trump camp. The truck party you grew up with and im channeling now one of these members, the Republican Party you grew up with is not the party of trump. And so thats a very tough thing to do for a speaker to be in both of those positions but hes trying to do it to give his members maximum flexibility. I think there is still the view that he will be able to do that. The question is whether if there is a big wave, lets say theres an antitrump wave, a lot of the house members that will go down will be those who have more moderates in their district. So that the republican majority that returns will be actually more conservative than the one thats there now. I think in the senate, the conventional wisdom is that its trending the democrats way and if theres a big, you know, rob portman in ohio i think is up by 18 points. Hes in fine shape for the republicans. But somebody like pat toomey in pennsylvania he is in a real pickle. But if Hillary Clinton wins pennsylvania by three or four pat toomey might be able to survive but if she wins it by ten thats hard for him to survive and that means the democrats will be back in control of the senate. Rose finally, assuming theres a possibility of a wave election. Is she missing an opportunity to articulate a governing vision, so that she can argue she has a mandate for change. I dont know if shes missing it. I dont know if it can get through. I think her pitch as ive been listening over the last few days, and theyve been trying to get to this place in the Clinton Campaign for the last many weeks, which is a much more positive vision. A sense of what she will do with the office once shes, she gets in it. Thats the challenge of her candidacy overall. What shes trying to say you may find what hes doing is objectionable but you cant just vote on that. We want to try to take america somewhere new and better and give people something to vote for. So i think that is a political necessity, she feels, to get voters to turn out for her not just against donald trump but also to your point, theres a governing benefit to it, which is that you can say, hey we ran on something, we had a set of policies here and once we get elected thats enact them. I wonder if thats even possible in the state, given the state of conversation were in right now, where it is so far off, the concept of issues and that kind of thing. I think this will be seen in the end as a thumbs up or thumbs down on donald trump. And if Hillary Clinton wins in that kind of an election, i think her best work in terms of trying to build a mandate is after the election, in terms of reaching out to the other side, in terms of doing very fast moves to try to build something in the wake of whats going an election where there are a lot of unhappy people. Rose John Dickerson in washington. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose ernest moniz is here. Hes the u. S. Secretary of energy. He was a lead negotiator in securing the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015. That lived economic sanctions in exchange for imposing strict controls on Irans Nuclear weapons capacity. The department of energy is leading several initiatives in order to align with the deep cuts in Carbon Pollution standards targeted from mid century. The landmark Paris Agreement on Climate Change is set to take effect on november 4th. It aims to keep Global Warming below two degrees celsius. Im pleased to have the secretary back at this table. Welcome. Good to be back, thank you. Rose are you thinking about the end of the administration and what you might hope to accomplish between now and that short time in the future. Sure. We are now within the last hundred days. And certainly with the election coming up, we expect the in. Nsition teams to be coming so we are teeing continuing to develop the iran deal and the agenda. We want to tee up the priorities for the incoming team. Rose what are your priorities for the inning deem. Well first of all youve actually alluded to what are two of the major areas. Which of course have aligned with this president , president obamas highest hitters, one is the Climate Clean Energy innovation agenda. And we have a number of specifics to advance there. For example, working with the congress and completing the budget in a way that supports the innovation agenda. And then teeing up with what we expect to be a much more aggressive agenda in terms of our defunding in the next five years. Then of course Nuclear Security is a major focus. The iran deal is one part of what i would call the president s prague agenda which was much broader which involved arms control and nuclear materials. The iran deal is very important but so are things like looking at frankly our Nuclear Deterrence posture in the context of strategic stability given Current Events in the world. That will be important. I would like to see hopefully in the next years the administration and the congress return to a comprehensive test band treaty consideration where i believe the arguments for that are Even Stronger for the United States. So we will be setting up those priorities even as we kind of finish some of the business were doing. Rose whats troubling, if you look at the stories coming out of russia, because of a more aggressive attitude and action. I mean you see possibility of returning to the cold war which i guess make Nuclear Agreements even more and contraband of test nuclear treats even more impairity. Youre right, charlie. Obviously our relationship with russia right now to say the least not in good shape. Rose not heading in the right direction. Not heading in the right direction. In many waysate started with the ukraine situation in 2014 and of course now syria and other issues. Now there i might add that there are two areas where that relationship is having major influence on what the administration and what the department of energy is involved in. One is certainly the issue of deterrence. I would just note that i would not make the analogy too close to the cold war in the following sense. In the cold war, the major issue there was obviously concern about the exchange of very very large numbers of nuclear weapons. Now, i dont want to denigrate that concern because both sides still have large arsenals. But i would say that if you look at the evolution of whats been happening recently, theres probably a higher risk in terms of regional conflicts and perhaps the use of a socalled Smaller Nuclear weapon quite big enough to ruin an otherwise good day, of course. And so that remains a concern. Frankly, you mention russia and russia has explicitly talked about a philosophy of escalation to deescalate. So its a new condition and i think that we have been obviously evaluating that, the next administration will have some difficult decisions. But a second issue that has really been elevated in our attention especially starting with the ukraine incursion is the whole issue of security. Rose i want to come back to the iran deal but first talk about the paris deal. November 4th is the date that it goes into effect. Which is quite remarkable for an International Agreement of this scale. Rose because it failed owe often in the past. Yes, getting the Paris Agreement was quite a substantial achieve. A very big first step. I want to emphasize both figure and first which we can come back to. But then to go to an agreement in mid december to implementation coming into effect in less than 11 months when you have almost 200 countries involved is quite significant. And i just think it shows that the world is ready to not only acknowledge the issue, but to address it by having everybody pitch in, in terms of a lower carbon future. Its a very very big deal. Rose what will be the impact. Well, the impact as i say will be, let me go back to the statement of big first step. So its big because the kinds of commitments made in paris by essentially every country in the world, will put us on a trajectory over the next 10 to 15 years of what i would call deep carbonization lets say in the mid century and beyond. However, the next 10 to 15 years is not quote the answer. That will not in itself clearly get us to our two degree sent grade or lower goal. So were going to have to keep pushing beyond that time and we think and the department of energy has a very Important Role that innovation in Clean Energy Technology that both continues to lower costs of renewables and led lights and other technologies, lower those costs and in addition open up brand new areas of say Carbon Dioxide management. For example can we capture Carbon Dioxide and use it in large commodity products throughout the world. That kind of innovation is going to be very important to carry us not just 15 years but 50 years. Rose is the United States in the forefront of that innovation or is china or other countries . I believe we areclearly in the forefront of that innovation. Rose in terms of wind, solar and wind energy. Pushing on Carbon Capture which could allow us to use coal in a low carbon environment. We are pushing on various advanced nuclear technologies. We are pushing very hard on efficiency gains in all sectors. Electricity, manufacturing, vehicles, etcetera. However, we cannot be complacent clearly. Other countries, and we are pleased about it. Other countries have joined us in of the Initiative Starting in paris. And that is the first day of the paris meeting, november 30th, 2015 president obama and the Senior Leaders of 19 other countries stood up and committed to whats called mission innovation. Mission innovation is a commitment by those countries and now the eu to double clean energy on d over a five year period. Give you a scale that would be taking us from 15 billion a year to about 30 billion a year. United states is by far the biggest player in that. It signals two things. One is this innovation agenda is something that countries across the world intend to pursue. And secondly, its also a signal that when you take the Paris Agreement and every country in the world essentially committing to a low carbon trajectory, that means we are seeing the formation of a multitrillion dollar clean energy marketplace. So i would say its important for carbon and frankly its important for economic competitiveness that we keep pushing on the frontiers, maintain what i consider to be an edge in at least most areas of the Clean Energy Transformation thats coming. Its very much in our interest to get industry straight, get investors and bankers understanding. This is one thing my ceo friend likes to say and i would apply it to the Paris Agreement. You cant keep waves off the beach. Thats where were going. And so the issue is, like king kanute suggested, we have to deal with that and manage it to our benefit. Both environmentally and economically. And i might add in terms of security as well. Rose are we energy independent. Yes and no. The issue of our being lets say net btu zero in the next years is certainly a possibility. But i think whats very important to understand is that does not mean that we are isolated from the global market. And thats especially true in oil because its a global price. So if the price spikes internationally, lets say because of a major disruption and lets say the rise just above. Rose is that geo political event. Yes it could be that or something else. Looking at risks and certainly the risks of a few million barrel a day reasonably sustained disruption is not that small. Just look around the world. And so a price spike internationally would propagate right to the American Consumer price. Weve had plenty of evidence for that in other countries. Thats why we continued for example require Petroleum Reserve for example. Rose if you had no political constraints in terms of having to deal with congress and all that is necessary in a democracy, is there a policy you would like to see instituted tomorrow . Would it be for example an all carbon tax, would it be a larger imposition of emission standards. Where would the secretary go if he didnt have political strengths that exist in a democracy. As ive said consistently on this and by the way the president said the same thing last week in an interview with leo dicaprio, that look, today we have the United States a strong climate program. President put that in place in 2013. We are executing it. And we feel pretty confident that with that program we can reach the kinds of goals that we have in 2020 and 2025 in terms of Carbon Emissions. However, however. Rose are those compromised goals. However, and im going to come to your question. The fact is this program in the absence of congressional the action is based upon existing administrative authorities. And consequently, the program has to be in some sense sector by sector. You do a clean power plant for coal plants. You do efficiency standards for vehicles, etcetera. And again, we can get there. At least for a while. However, certainly for the long term, going to Something Like a nice efficient simple economywide approach like a price on Carbon Emissions is clearly a much more efficient way to be able to address this. And i think as a way when combined with innovation to address our longer term needs. So the president always said in 2013, its kind of forgotten perhaps but when he announced the Climate Action plan, based upon initiative authorities, it was prefaced by a statement. Hey wed love to work with congress in getting kind of economywide legislation. I believe were going to get there and i believe were going to get there personally in not the two distant future. Rose what does that mean, not the too distant future. Well this is not just me, this is not the secretary of energy, this is just me. I think were going to get there in a few years. Rose you mean five to ten. Personally . Rose yes. The lowest side of that range. For one thing i think, industry i think needs to get a clear signal about the direction were going in. The low carbon direction i said earlier cant keep waves off the beach, were going that way. But exactly how the fiscal policy is going to be structured, etcetera, tax policy, lets get clear signals. The Capital Investment decisions like these Companies Make in the energy business, utility business, were talking decade of scale. Thats why i think personally that in the next few years, we are going to see coming together around a nice clean approach. Doesnt have to be a carbon price but thats certainly one example that economists have said would be an efficient way to go. Rose the president believed that what we do in energy is a crucial National Security issue, National Security issue. In terms of recognize a threat to a planet. Has he ever said to you this is my most important priority, this is what im most proud of in this administration that finally we seem to be making some progress here. Well again, the president has many priorities but yes, hes made very strong statements about this. Ill be perfectly honest, i dont know if im supposed to say this or not but when i met with the president prior to being offered the position, the first earn out of the box from the president was to talk about the climate and clean energy and clean energy as a solution to the climate challenges. So he made it very clear that in his second term in particular, that this was going to be raised dramatically in terms of do you believe his priority public. Rose and you need Political Support even though theres executive action and as you said administrative action you can take has come to understand the severity of the threat to the planet. Obviously its more today than it was ten years ago. More today than it was five years ago. But has that precipitated a consensus that this is an Urgent National priority. I would be hard pressed to say consensus but i do think that the vast majority of the public certainly. Rose i was taking the no, no, clearly the slope is going there. Secondly i think the issue where the climate is changing, a great preponderance of the public recognizes that. Rose there are still some additional arguments made by frankly a lot of this information as to the role of human activity in that. Right, thats always been a we and its also unquestionable. But you can also say well if 9 world is warming, climate is changing we should be addressing it. Certainly the issue with carbon rose your question is whoever created it, we need to deal with it. Well now to me, aside from the community, there is no issue about the very significant Major Driving role of human activity. Ive said before, maybe unwisely in a congressional hearing that you really dont have to know much more than counting. Counting how many co2 molecules are emitted to understand using results obtained in the 19th century that our rate of emitting co2 takes us into this realm of degrees of centigrade warming if we dont address it in these next decades. Rose degrees of centigrade warming. It takes us into degrees as you said earlier, theres kind of an international pretty much consensus that two degrees centigrade is where we feel being beyond that were getting into much riskier territory. Two degrees centigrade by the way will not leave us immune to the effects of Global Warming. Were seeing them right now and we are less than a centigrade p rose bill gates says half the price of today Energy Cheaper than coal and totally reliable and doesnt depend on wind blowing or the sunshine, that is an energy miracle. Lets say we need that kind of energy miracle, he was arguing. So, let me say first of all, that statement by bill gates has engendered two kinds of reactions. One is we agree and one is we dont agree. The latter argument is that look we got the technologies now, lets just deploy them when we get there. And when im asked which of those do i subscribe to, my answer is yes. Because theyre both right. Especially if you look at different time frames. So as i said earlier, the next 10 to 15 years, i can see us getting there as we just continue to drive costs down the way we have been doing with the various technologies. And have the appropriate policies in place. However, if we talk about really deep decarbonization, 80 reduction mid century and we remember to do that, its not just the electricity sector. We have a lot of options actually in terms of reducing carbon. Its also the transportation sector. Its also the industrial sector, which is highly distributed and obviously key to our economy. Thats why, thats where then i started agreeing with bill and saying we have to do the research now to be able to have some of these truly break through technologies include large scale Carbon Management technologies if were going to have them in 1520 years. This is a false dichotomy and we need to proceed in both directions. Rose the next quadrangle Energy Review focused on electricity. Bono was just here talking to me about electricity in africa and his push for that. What is the possibility. What are we talking about. Very important. First let me say that in some sense, look, we have many infrastructures that we are concerned about. But two that i would argue permeate just about every other infrastructure. Our electricity and telecom. And in fact, the convergence of those in these next decades to me is going to be a very very big story in terms of new structures. Rose suggesting what. Much more collection of data throughout the electricity system, transmission system, generation. But potentially, and these get into difficult areas but also potentially going socalled behind the meter into the customers house, managing all of the smart appliances which are going to be filling your house. And how do we optimize all of that . Its going to be a big deal. A second big deal will be the socalled distributive generation technologies which may be particularly important and opportunistic for societies that are currently badly under served in terms of having electricity. Like subsaharan africa, parts of india, hundreds of millions of people there alone. Probably a billion worldwide without electricity services. We may be able to provide those, including through the use of Information Technology for distributive generation in ways that really suit a new actually secure and resillient architecture to serve them. It does raise the issue of cyber. The you rely upon the it structure, obviously the more risk you have to address i. I think so far we are doing a good job of that. Make no mistake about it, the Energy Infrastructure is a major target of Cyber Attacks already. But as youve seen, i think rose meaning that they have tried to make the attack and its been thwarted . Correct, right. Looking at various control systems in the grid and we work very closely with industry. Including at the classified level in terms of threats and in terms of response. Rose how to make them more secure. How to make them more secur. Rose let me go to the iran deal. Have the iranians lived up to the deal. We have reports by the international inspectors, the iaea, they havent said as much. I dont want to give the impression that were on cruise control. It requires active, active interactions. Thats happening. But i think the iaea, the inspectors are doing a really good job. The deal really gave them a whole set of new challenges that, new activities that they had not done elsewhere. Its happening, theyre doing a great job and the iranians are in fact complying. Rose what happens after the 10 or 12 years that was built into the deal. Well first of all, its, we want to emphasize theres no one time frame. The fundamental structure is that there are some significant restrictions on iranian Peaceful Nuclear activity for 15 years. But the transparency and various verification of the agreement that goes on forever. So for 15 years there are revictions what they can do in nuclear and then we go into a greatly elevated verification and transparency regime to make sure that theres still no weapons. Rose are you convinced, this is an easy question, are you convinced that deal will prevent iran from having a nuclear weapon. I many, yes, yes. Because the deal builds in a lot of transparency and various fa indications verifications which goes on and thats sum plemented by our socalled national means. And it builds in a significant Response Time if we have to take other actions. But personally i think right now rose some of the time the deal was being negotiated its two or three months. Correct. Rose now its leaked a year. Now its a minimum of one year for 10 years and kind of a soft landing for this socalled breakout times. Rose what is it about negotiations. Is it part of listening and where its going the negotiation had not gone very far and then when we got together and first of all compared notes in terms of our pasts. Rose yes, it makes it better too. Much much better. Then got down to business. And frankly i want to make sure this is understood, that we say, we have always said and we still say because it is true, the deal is not based on trust. It is based upon verification. Having said that, theres a distinction that i would say for myself and i believe i speak for dr. Selahy as well that we trust each other in the sense of negotiation. And thats important as well. There what i would say is that the important thing is very early on at a technical level, we understood, we came to understand what exactly were our absolute needs and what were his absolute needs. And i think we came to the realization, and this probably was one to two months, came to the realization that there could be a deal. Because our fundamental needs were not in fundamental conflict. Rose what do you do when this administration comes to an end. I think february fly fishing in south america i understand to be quite attractive. Rose right now, our concern is as we discussed earlier weve got a lot to do and we just want to run through the tape on this and then fit out. A little down time but it would help. Rose good for you. Thank you for coming. Great. Rose back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose other people is the film making debut saturday night live cohead quite chris kelly. The film is based on his real Life Experience losing his mother to cancer in 2009. Entertainment weekly calls the film at times heart breaking, at times hilariously looking at a family to do their best getting through a terrible time. Here is a look at the trailer. Heres a fun topic. Cremation. We talked about this. I know we talked about it. Im not going to be burned up okay. How would you like it if somebody sets you on fire. No thank you. Its not like i dont like camping, i dont like fires and i dont want to be personally lit on fire. I want to be frozen. Do they have that as an option. How are you doing sacramento. Youre a new york city boy in the house. Not too good for us now, are you. Im glad that youre moving home for a bit. Your moms going to need a lot of help. Look at us, were drug addicts. I thought you didnt wanted to try medical marijuana. Well, i tried it. Just pretty. You know your mother was supposed to be born dead so shes still very very lucky. Oh, grandpa. Ask her doctor. Well hes dead but if he wasnt you could. He hung himself. Thats true. I cant stand to see that. No, no. Stop. Does anybody have any questions. Whats going on. You got to live your life but you cant see anyone for a year. How about we just travel the whole world real quick and see ever. I get to see you get that beautiful revelation about life. Everything becomes clear. Something that happens to other people. Youre other peoples other people. Remember that wand that i bought on the internet. I looked it up and it doesnt cure cancer. Rose chris kelly and the star of the film, Molly Shannon. I am thrilled to have you here. Im so thrilled. We are so thrilled to be here. What an honor for us, charlie. Rose thank you. What does it say about grief, this film . Well, i think that it can be, its a complicated time. Its not just one thing. I think the characters go through all different emotions. Anger, sadness, hysterical laughter. Its a complicated time and i think chris really grasps that in the movie with all the characters going through all different kinds of complicated feelings. As this woman my character puts away. Rose comedy has a place at a moment like this. I think so, yeah. Thats the thing is people asked me a lot of like how did you know what percentage to make it sad or what percentage to make it funny. From my Life Experience i wouldnt know how to write this movie an as a drama because i remember it being a very funny time and it was awful and i wish it hasnt happened. My mom was so known and my family had such a strong sense of humor. We laughed a lot of days. You dont just sit around 24 7 saying this is awful, this is sad. There are moments of levity. Times there would be awful moments of the world followed by the most funniest moments. Rose sitting around with your mom dying, was this such a profound influence, profound experience that you said i feel compelled to write about this. I feel compelled to make a piece of art on what i have gone through and what everybody connected to this debt went through. Yes, not right away. Ive written tv and ive written primarily comedy and sketch comedy. So it wasnt until year later when i was thinking i wanted to write a feature. Rose writing a feature brought you back rather than the other way around. Obviously i wanted to write about and they say write what you know. It was meaningful because of my mother, my sisters and my family. I was nervous about writing about that time because it is very auto biographical and i dont know if i want to be that personal. There are other cancer employees with different themes and i thought of a lot of reasons why not to do it. But i kept thinking about this time of my life for a lot of reasons, i should just shut that off. Rose you wanted to, why, molly. I wanted to. Rose essential qualities. When i was casting the film i wasnt saying this person looks exactly like my sister but for my mother i really wanted to capture her, her essence which is someone who is very funny, someone who kind of lit up a room as soon as they walked into it, someone who could be loud and stubborn and graceful and sweet and all these different things. And primarily i wanted somebody who was funny. I wanted someone who would bring levity to the movie but actually when she was getting sick she made it sadder in some ways you know. She was the best. Rose when you read it you just loved it. It took my breath away. Honestly i cried. I sat in my bed reading and was so moved to the material and felt so lucky to be offered such a fantastic part. Rose what was it about his mother that you thought boy i can really get inside this character. Lets see. She seemed, well i really related to how close she was to her kids, to her son especially and how much she want to be a mom. Like how much she just loved being a mother. I personally really relate to that. Thats all i ever really wanted. I lost my mom when i was four and i would play on the playground, i would be the mother and this other girl amy would be the mother and i kind of dealt with grief being the best mother to all the kids in the playground. All the kids wanted to be in my family and i wanted to replay this game over and over where i was the best mother and fun mother. I really related to that how the line that says i get to see my whole world at dinner tonight. She doesnt need to travel around the world, she gets to see her whole world at dinner. Thats a line where i felt like my heart burst when i read it. I found it so moving. Rose in the end its about people and family. People. Rose did you go mainly text or did you think about personal experiences and what you knew about this process. I did mainly focus on the text. And then in addition i spoke to chris moms best friend in real life and i spoke a lot to chris. And then i also pull on my own experiences, my own, my father died of cancer, i lost my mom when i was really little in a car accident. I put on my own things within myself and mixed it altogether. Rose this is what you told esquire. Of all the movies ive seen i dont want to payment them with all one brush but where are the beautiful lessons in the end. What is the music as you sit. Why isnt this experience more beautiful. I want it to be more poignant and more overwrought. It was brutal and boring at times and it was really funny at time as well. Was that true. All of us. Rose my father died, i was in another city died unexpected of a heart attack. My mother died a year later with lung cancer. I went through that with her. Its all the things you just said. It was boring at times. It was simply matter of factually at times. It was unknown at times. Its all of that, you know. Its very scary like limbo that youre in. I moved back from new york and i had kind of put my work on hold and i was so glad to be there. I wouldnt have had it any other way and i was very lucky and grateful i could be there for that time. But you have so much time that you want to be there and you want to be presented, you want to be with your mother and there would be times where she was resting and at night your mind wanders and you have so much free time to think of all the scenarios. Its crazy, it was horrible. Aside from the fact i wish it never happened, it was sort of a lovely time in my live to be able to spend so much time oneonone with her. Rose thats what a lot of people say too. There was a chance to really talk about the meaning of life. Totally. Rose the meaning of life because there is finality to this. People ask me how much is the movie auto biographical. Its not that every scene is true. There are a couple scenes were fully open vented but those conversations of my mom are the most sort of auto biographical. Like the line you mentioned i get to see the whole world at dinner tonight. Im like you should be dying you should go and see the country. Moments and specific sentences my mom said are the truest. Rose on saturday night live you said you consider yourself a dramatic because i dont like, i always took the emotional truth of the characters. Like i never want to act silly or make fun of the characters. Marry Kathryn Gallagher is the character im most known for her. To me thats a girl who has such a big heart and just wants to be kissed. It was very dramatic and emotional to me even though its a big comedy character, it always felt so serious to me. So i dont know, i went to nyu drama school and i was a regular actress and i kind of happened to get into comedy because somebody in la said comedy is king. And i was like is it . Comedy is king . And so well maybe i can get started this way. But i was a very serious dramatic actress, charlie. Rose and saturday night live is king too. Yes, it sure us. Rose what does that do for you, not in terms of your career but your sense of essential experiences to give you. Its huge. Theres nothing like that. The adrenaline, the life performance, getting to create your own original material. Your writing, you write yourself to try to get on the show. Everybody is vying for spot. Its most creative like a comedy boot camp. I was drug ling for many years performance with like hundreds of people at a time to like millions and i was thinking like oh wow, this is so great. When i did my stain, i had to pay for the band and i would buy people tickets if they couldnt afford to come. I went from just hat small group of entertaining people to just soil. I think its amazing, if you strike a chord and people relat to your character, the response you get back is just i wasnt presented for that. Its a very surreal thing. Rose how about the challenge of being a writer. Lets so much output. Its so great because it forces you to write so much under such intense pressure. I mean you write everything on tuesday night, so todays writing night so ill go from here and ill go all night. Its great, you write three, four five sketches a night. And you kind of have to turn your brain off and go with your gut and never think whats the funniest. You write sketches and sometims they work and sometimes you stay up all night and you think this is the best thing ive ever written. You forget about it and you move on. Rrell that we had a joke once about a cricket, there wasnt even a eek. I said will, if we bomb lets fail brilliantly. Lets keep trying harder and pour our hearts into it. We did this sketch about a guy who lost a hundred pounds. We just kept committing harder and harder to the more it would fail and nobody would laugh just so we could enjoy that too t where youre always trying to laugh, why not embrace sloppy. If youre a new writer and youre wondering why are people at the show. Everyone fails and everyone succeeds and you just dont know. Rose its in select theatres and available on dvd. Congratulations. Thank you very much. You too charlie, this was such a an honor. Rose thank you for joining us. See you next time. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Youre watching pbs. Captioning by vitac, underwritten by Firemans Fund announcer the following kqed production was produced in hidefinition. Its all about licking your plate. The food is just fabulous. I should be a psychoanalyst for the amount of money i spend in restaurants. I had a horrible experience. I dont even think we were at the same restaurant and everybody, im sure, saved room for those desserts