>> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> mike morell is here. from 2010-2013, he was deputy director of the cia and twice served as acting director during that time. president obama vowed to destroy

isis in syria and iraq. speaking at an air force base in florida, he said that the u.s. would not take on the terrorists alone and promised the military audience they would not return to direct combat. the house of representatives voted to authorize funds to arm the free syrian army. i am pleased to have mike morell back at this table. >> it is great to be here. >> give us the picture first of all these groups and why we have come to single out isis and the threat they pose. >> at the moment, there are a number of al qaeda groups in the world that pose a threat to the u.s., to the homeland. al qaeda in yemen is at the top of the list. the last three attempted attacks on the homeland came out of yemen.

christmas day bomber, 2009. printer cartridge plot, 2010. to bring down cargo planes. 2011, a nonmetallic suicide vest to bring down aircraft. they are very dangerous. you have al qaeda's central leadership in pakistan. they have been degraded, in some cases, decimated. they still pose a threat to the homeland. now you have syria where you have two groups, you have got the first al qaeda group that was established there and they are tied, they are aligned closely with al qaeda in pakistan. >> with zawahiri. >> they pose a threat to the homeland. and you have isis. it has grabbed so much territory. it, too, poses a threat but we have to look at these together and we have to make sure that we're focused on all of them and not just let isis grab all of

our attention and grab our focus and resources. because these others will bite us if we do that. >> is the administration focusing on all three of them? i do not know. >> or all four? >> i think that the president's strategy with regard to iraq and syria will also help us deal with al-nusra if successful. the weakness is on the syria side. the strength is on the iraq side. we can come back to that. i hope we are focused on al qaeda and pakistan and yemen. i do not see as much u.s. activity as i am used to seeing. but we have to stay focused. >> how much intelligence to we seem to have? many believe we did not see the

rise of isis and its capacity to take territory as fast as it did. >> when i was there, when i was serving at the central intelligence agency, we were telling a story about the rising strategic threat of isis. as you know, isis is the direct descendent of aqi. when forces left -- >> aqi is al qaeda in iraq. >> they were established after the u.s. invaded iraq. they were not defeated but significantly degraded at the end of 2011. when u.s. military forces left a couple things happened. one is the military pressure was taken off of aqi and maliki moved in an authoritarian direction and he moved in a

quick lack the prime minister of iraq. >> the former prime minister of iraq. and he moved in a political direction that alienated the sunnis. they rallied around aqi, so it started its rebirth then and we reported it. and then syria happened. and aqi moves across the border in syria and changes its name and rebrands itself as al qaeda in iraq and the levant or syria. because it wants to say it is playing in both places and has a name. it rebrands itself and in syria get stronger and stronger in syria for a couple of reasons. it is getting battlefield experience. nothing is more important than getting battlefield experience. by having victories in syria it draws attention. attention in the terrorism

business is good because it means more money flows your way and recruits. all these foreign fighters that were going there, the vast majority ended up with al-nusra or isis. growing strength. lastly, they got their hands on advanced conventional weapons from syrian arsenals. they grow in strength. as they move across the border, they continue to grow in strength and we are telling the story. that is where we were when i left the picture. my understanding based on putting pieces together here and reading the open media and what senior officials are telling reporters on background is that we did not do a very good job from an intelligence perspective in seeing the tipping point, and what i mean by the tipping point is saying when isis had reached

the point that it made the decision to start grabbing all this territory inside of iraq. we kind of missed that. we also missed i think our understanding of the iraqi military and how brutal it was and its inability to stand up and fight. i think we missed those two things. >> what is the competition between al-nusra and isis? they were fighting each other for a bit in syria. >> there is intense competition. they have occasionally fought with each other and they are still occasionally fighting. >> is it for power or because they have different goals? >> they have exactly the same goal. they share al qaeda's ideology of establishing a global caliphate. what happened was al-nusra was a syrian extremist group that established itself after the syrian civil war started. they were recognized by zawahiri in pakistan as the al qaeda group in syria. you have aqi who decided they

wanted to join the fight in the move across the border and he says no. your fight is in iraq and they said no, we are doing our own thing and we want to get in the game of here. so zawahiri disowned them because they would not follow his orders. some people say incorrectly he disowned them because of their brutality. that is nonsense. they are every bit as brutal. look what they did. it is over whether you are willing to listen to zawahiri and take his orders or not. >> this goes against the advice of zawahiri. and before of osama bin laden. don't get out too far.

that is the difference. >> al qaeda and pakistan's focus is attacking the u.s. first and cutting off the head of the snake as they call it. and then second getting rid of all the apostate leaders in the middle east that they feel are working at the behest of the united states. and then establishing a caliphate. isis is coming at this the back way. isis is saying, let's grab territory. let's establish our caliphate and then we will go after the united states. another example of not listening to zawahiri. >> what is the fear we have in terms of these groups? >> to fears we have. -- two fears we have. one is attacking the united states. with isis, you have to worry today. those attacks come in two forms. they come in young men in the u.s. who have been radicalized by the isis movement and conduct

attacks on their own without any direction from isis. and second are foreign fighters who have gone from the u.s., canada, or western europe to syria, and get directed by isis to come back and conduct an attack. that is the threat today. over the longer term isis can become the kind of threat al qaeda was in september 2001. they can put the operation together if they have the time and space and resources to do so. that is the threat that they pose. al nusra poses that same kind of threat today but because they are more aligned with zawahiri and al qaeda in pakistan they are more of a concern in terms of attacking the homeland than

isis is because they have that attack america first strategy of zawahiri. >> what is the president's strategy? >> the president's strategy is to take their territory away, weaken them, and i believe, although this has not been said -- i believe based on the very good interview of john brennan, the c.i.a. director, that the strategy is also to get rid of the leadership. take away their territory, get rid of their leadership and weaken them to the point where they cannot hold territory and cannot pose a threat. >> this is by drones or any other method. >> any other method you can possibly -- >> find and kill. >> find, kill, capture.

would they rather kill or capture? >> i would rather capture. why? because they can tell me things then. >> when you look at the strategy the president brings us to date, where we are now, among the people you know, what has been the change in the president's mindset? >> changing his mindset i think is when it moved so quickly to grab territory. it became obvious just how significant a threat this was. we talked about the threat to the homeland but we did not talk about another threat which is the threat to the region as a whole. a threat to the stability of the region. >> and their definition of islamic state may not just beware it is now, between iraq and syria. it may be -- >> it is larger. we talked last time about the

correct translation of their name is the islamic state of iraq and greater syria. the definition of greater syria is pretty much the entire lavant area. when they think about their caliphate it is bigger than iraq and syria. so the other concern here, in addition to attacks on the homeland, is the impact on the stability of the whole region, and sectarian war in the region and the redrawing of all these lines in the middle east. and i think it was their very quick movement and success that got everybody's attention and said we had to do something. >> and the beheading caught the public's anger. >> and changed the public attitude overnight. >> rather than being sucked into another conflict in the middle east, they began to say they could not do this without reprisal. >> which is a very interesting look at the question, does isis understand us or not? >> or they have miscalculated. >> because if you were advising

isis -- if you were advising them you would say, do not do that. do not behead these people, let them go. if you do this you will ignite passions -- >> fear is a central heart of their modus operandi. general dempsey said if all that fails we may need ground troops. would you assume he meant and do you assume that the president expected him to say that? >> i think general dempsey was misquoted. the president has made -- >> misquoted or misunderstood? >> misunderstood. very good. misunderstood. what the president has decided on the iraq side of the border is to support the iraqi military and kurdish military with intelligence, with enablers, advise and assist special forces.

the decision right now is to put those individuals as the brigade level. not going out on missions. at the command level. that is where the president has decided to put them at this point. those advisors are going to be very important to the iraqi military and to the kurdish peshmerga doing their job right. >> they will be advising them. >> advising them on strategy and tactics. that is what they will be doing. at the same time, supporting them with airstrikes, right? what general dempsey said is there may come a point where we have to not only have advisors at the command level, we may have to have advisors at the ground level. so they would be advising at the ground level but not fighting, not actually fighting themselves. that is a big difference. when i think of combat troops on

the ground, i think of americans in battle. what general dempsey was talking about was advisors at that lower level, not fighters. >> are they going to be on the firing line? >> yes, they would be. i mean, they are at risk now simply by being there. would they be at greater risk? absolutely. do i think it makes sense to have them at that lower level, yes. absolutely. >> everyone seems to believe you cannot do it with air power alone and you have to have ground troops, and the ground troops have to come from somewhere. >> right. >> so far we know the there are those from kurdistan and so far as there is the anticipation in syria of the free syrian army, which has been languishing. they did not get support years ago. they have some divisions and all of that. many people i know see that is not enough. do you think it is enough? >> on the iraq side of the border, you have the iraqi army

and you have u.s. advisors and airstrikes. >> you have the possibility of sunni militias. >> yes. and you have a real opportunity, real opportunity, thanks to secretary kerry's good work of having a political solution in iraq that gets everybody's buy-in. on iraq, you have got all the pieces you need to retake territory. i am confident on the iraq side that within a year, year and a half, you will see major reversals for isis. the syria side is completely different. >> do you think they will get the sunni militias, who are among those who we talked about who became disenchanted with the iraqi government? >> there is a good chance they will. the political piece is not completely formed yet. there is still a couple of key posts that people are fighting over. >> and do they trust the united states?

>> i think they do. the sunnis see the u.s. as arguing doing on their behalf with the shia government in baghdad. so then we flip to the syria side, where it is much harder to see someone who will fight for us. the free syrian army is disorganized and it is largely ineffective. they have grown more ineffective over time. training and equipping them is going to be helpful but it is not going to be as helpful as putting advisors with them. there has been no discussion of putting advisors with them because we might have harder time protecting them in syria. and it seems to be we are talking about fewer airstrikes in syria. there were reports this morning that the president is going to have to approve himself every airstrike in syria. that does not sound like there will be many airstrikes. there have been 160 in iraq so far.

>> why is that? >> i do not know. i don't know. a very good question. >> it sounds like you do not believe it is the right way to go. to have the president approving airstrikes like lyndon johnson in vietnam. >> i do not know if it is accurate but that is the report this morning. on the syria side, i am not as confident they will get this done. the problem with that is you have the strong hammer on the iraq side and you have no anvil on the syrian side. isis if pressed goes across the border into syria and just hangs out there. so this syria part of this is the weak pole of the tent. it is also the essential part. i think to deal more effectively on the syria side, we have to do a significant number of airstrikes to go after isis and al-nusra. we need to get the intelligence

we need to do that. and we need to think about putting advisors with the free syrian army, putting advisors with them, which will strengthen them. and we need to think about something else that no one is talking about. which is the guy who started this whole problem, asaad. he created the instability in his own country and allowed al-nusra and isis to become a problem in the first place. we need to talk about how do we get this guy out of there now without weakening the syrian military, syrian security services, and syrian intelligence. >> and doing -- unless you target assad personally, but getting rid of assad, how would you do that? >> how did we get bin laden?

how did we take much of al qaeda's leadership? >> you would do that knowing it might be known that we did it. >> sure. >> you have no problem with that, taking out assad. >> i would not have a problem with it and we would be heroes in the gulf. >> who are supporters of the russians and iranians. you have to calculate, what is the consequence? suppose special forces go in there and take him out. what are the russians going to do? >> there will be a lot of rhetoric about intervention, lawless u.s. intervention, but there's not much they can do. i do not believe. >> is that a doable mission? >> i do not know. we need to be thinking about it. because what he is going to start doing, and what he is already doing, he is calculating two things, assad.

he is saying the u.s. will go after isis in my country and the u.s. will go after al-nusra. >> both al qaeda groups. we do not like them a lot. >> i am going to put all my focus on the moderate opposition. in recent days he has picked up the pace of his military operations against the moderate opposition. he is calculating -- if this isis thing and this al-nusra thing gets serious enough, maybe the u.s. will come around and see me as a solution of the problem rather than a cause to the problem. >> you cannot imagine the u.s. doing that, can you? people sitting at this table have said, we have to do that. we have to hold our nose and let assad be, and go after isis and

al-nusra. >> you know why do not like that? you have a guy who has killed thousands and thousands of his own people and displaced millions, one third of his population, a brutal dictator, and most importantly, he is in the pocket of the iranians. assad wins, the iranians win. i do not want the iranians to be the hegemonic power in the middle east. if we shifted horses, we would lose our friends in the gulf. >> we cannot change our policy. >> there is an alternative to siding with him against isis and -- this is what i am saying. there is an alternative to siding with assad against isis and al-nusra and that is getting rid of assad, putting in power a sunni who will take on those two groups and who will be our

friend and not the friend of iran. we need to be thinking about that. i am not saying it is easy, but we need to the thing about that policy. >> let me talk to you about other people in the region. one of them said an interesting thing about the united states. he said they want to do the same from the air but they do not want to take any risk. that is not acceptable to us. they do not have any people there risking and they're asking us to do it. what do you make of that argument? does that have validity in the region? >> i think it does. i think our friends in the region would like to see us do more. our friends in the region would like to see us have those advisors with those front-line troops. they would like to see us do more with the syrian moderate opposition. they would like u.s. boots on the ground in larger numbers. there are good reasons why we will not do that at the moment. down the road, maybe. >> but in your judgment, are the saudis, the emirates doing enough?

those sunni states that had either money or power. both. >> in this case, yes. >> they are doing enough. >> i think so. >> what are they doing? >> i think -- they have been providing money and weapons throughout this whole syrian civil war to the moderate opposition. some of those states -- >> why is the moderate opposition better? >> because we have not been doing enough. >> we or they, or both? >> all of us. we have not been doing enough. it has been too small in scope. you have gotten al-nusra with 30,000 people and you have the syrian army which is 100,000 people.

you need to be training more than a few hundred guys at a time. the scope of it needs to be much larger. they have been in the lead, those moderate gulf states have been in the lead of trying to deal with this, and they have been wanting us to do more. >> there is iran. what role would they play? >> iran i worry will play the role of spoiler. every time that the coalition supporting the moderate opposition in syria has done more, the iranians have come in and doubled down on assad. they are desperate. >> using hezbollah and everybody they can find, and even their own people. they brought hezbollah into it and trained militias in iran and brought them to syria. very effective. >> in damascus.

>> they brought their own guys and he is advising assad. they do not want to lose assad, why? because they believe they need assad to have hezbollah. that is the channel that all the weapons go through to get to hezbollah. >> from iran to syria and lebanon. >> this is the terrorist wing of the iranian government. >> what do you think worries the president the most? >> i think, let me say what i think should worry him. if i am not inside of his head. >> if you find out who is, let me know. >> what i think should worry him is that isis is the tip of the iceberg. what i mean by that is, if you think back to september 10, 2001. al qaeda was at one place and one place only at the time, afghanistan. today, al qaeda is -- islamic extremists are in northern nigeria, up into the sehel, mali, mauretania, tangier, tunisia, to libya where they are

in huge numbers, in egypt where they are back for the first time in 25 years, down into east africa, in somalia and kenya, across the gulf of aden into yemen, up into syria and iraq and still in south asia and pakistan-afghanistan. and bangladesh. they just announced a new cell. >> not to mention asia. >> right. they have done a pretty good job and i will welcome back to that if you want. the asians have done a good job of rooting it out. so why i say tip of the iceberg, i think in that huge geographic area that i talked about you will see isis-like problems pop up over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. >> is this the greatest foreign-policy challenge for the united states today? >> i think so. >> not russia, not china.

>> i break down national security into threats and challenges. the greatest threat to the u.s. without a doubt in my mind is islamic fundamentalism. the greatest challenge to the u.s. is, how do we do with a rising china? how do we come to terms with a rising power in east asia when we are the status quo power, when we need to have a good relationship with this country both for economic reasons and national security reasons. the greatest threat, greatest challenge. >> thank you for coming. >> always great to be here. >> back in a moment. stay with us. ♪ you

>> terry gilliam is here. he has been called one of the cinematic fabulists of our time. he is a director responsible for movies such as "brazil" and "12 monkeys." his new project is set in a futuristic london and follows a computer genius that is given a project to discover the meaning of life. here's the trailer of "the zero theorem." >> how is it hanging? >> sorry. >> we prefer not to be touched. >> you seem tense. you are a tough nut to crack. i do not mean in the pejorative sense. >> what seems to be the problem here? >> we are dying. >> we are not. >> he is not. >> zero theorem. all very hush-hush. >> give him to me. >> the zero theorem is unprovable. >> i have a friend who might be able to help. >> you are a brilliant guy locked up all alone. so tell me how did it all start?

>> you have any idea what the zero theorem is all about? >> everything adds up to nothing. >> what is the point? >> exactly. what is the point of anything? >> we always want to feel different. unique. >> you have made a very big mistake. >> just run away with me. >> i know who you are. >> why would you want to prove that all is for nothing? >> we know quite clearly that we only have to answer yes and the voice would give us a reason for being. >> i am pleased to have terry gilliam back at this table. welcome.

>> nice to be back. >> you have said about this movie, it is a glimpse of the world i think we're living in now. that is the world we're living in now? >> mm-hmm. people just need the eyes to see. i remember when i started watching fellini movies. i thought they were fantasies. they were extreme versions of something that was not even close to reality, and then i went to italy and discovered he was a documentary filmmaker. that is a documentary film maker at work you just watched. >> you have got to convince me of that. but tell me more. what is the creative act here, to show us what? >> it is odd. i am not sure. it is very hard -- this is difficult. it is basically trying to raise questions and get people to look at the world slightly differently. i think i have been trying to do that from the beginning. it is just, here is another window into the world. look at it. >> do you like technology? >> i use all the time. >> but do you like it? >> i do not like the worship of

it. >> maybe it is the salvation of us all. it will find the answer to all those things because those machines will take us where we cannot go. >> that is what we seem to believe. they are very seductive. >> and biochemistry. >> they are very seductive things. my computer has taken me over. i'm a victim of my computer. it has access to so much information, most of it i do not need but with an inquiring mind i can avoid doing real work by exploring endlessly. >> there's all kinds of knowledge. and sex, and whatever else. >> gossip is what mainly it is. it has replaced the garden fence, and we talked nonstop. but also what it has done is given each of us our own little silver screen where we are the star, we are the king, the center. >> you can personalize everything.

i was in france promoting it and if descartes was alive now, i said he would tweet, i tweet, therefore i am. there was andy warhol with 15 minutes of fame. now we have 15 megabytes of fame. >> tell me about this movie and casting it. christoph waltz is unbelievable. >> everything i have seen him in has been wonderful. >> he has never had a bad conversation at this table. >> he is very smart. he is great to work with. in this film, he is never off-camera. he is a movie. that character. it is so different from anything he has done before. you almost do not recognize him when you see him up there. >> i did not. >> that is exactly right. what intrigued me about him is here is an actor who worked for years. others succeeded. he was 52 before he was discovered by the world. the stuff inside is incredible.

there is so much information and frustration and anger, and bitterness, wisdom, all in there. >> all that you can call on for performance. >> it was a joy every day. we argued about things all the time. i am more contrary than he is. >> what would you argue about? politics, art, science? >> character. everything. we argue about everything. when we are working, we argue about the character. why is the character, why is he referring to himself as we all the time and i said it is in the script. he would not accept that so he got a psychiatrist to explain that people who are alone a lot start doing just that. >> what about the name he has, cohen? >> it is qohen leth. throughout making the film, i said, this is an odd name, and i never got an answer from the writer. and i finally discovered, there

was a canadian blog i read, and it is playing with koheleth -- it is the hebrew for ecclesiastes. the day i discovered that, i was writing a preface to this autobiography that comes out next year. it was going to start with "vanity, all is vanity." ecclesiastes is about vanity and what makes life worth living. >> take a look at this. this is when he is on the streets of a very futuristic london. there it is. >> everyone is getting rich except you. learn the secrets of their success. >> buddhism, and the church of the redeemer. >> [indiscernible] >> what did we just see? >> the reason to be alone.

[laughter] i mean, it is the world out there that is hammering us all the time, demanding, suggesting, offering us solutions. buy three-ply toilet paper and your life has meaning. it is all of that. it is my reaction to the world and why i want to pull back from what is out there. just in new york, maybe i am just getting old but there is something in the insistence of everything shouting at you.

>> is there a kind of -- is there an arc or an evolution in your work? >> my wife says i just make the same movie over and over. i just change the costumes. >> is she right? >> there is a point. there is a point. all these movies have to do with the individual fighting the larger world, and imagination versus reality as it is proclaimed by the media. i think reality is something we have to create every day of our lives and you have to fight against the reality that the media is telling us is reality. it is trying to get people to

think and it is that battle between the world we live in and our dreams. they're both necessary. one is not necessarily right and the other wrong. they are at war with each other and i think all my movies do with that in one form or another. >> have you lived the life of a filmmaker that you wanted to live, have you done it on your terms? >> on my terms? it may not be the life i wanted to be. maybe i would have liked to make more films, bigger films, but i have control of everything i do. and that is what is important. >> you would not do it any other way. >> i do not know how to do it any other way. i do not have the mental makeup to take orders from people i do not admire. i would like to take orders -- >> if you just had the money you would make it but you cannot do it because it cost enough so people -- you have to sell the idea to convince them that it would be a success? >> yes. >> and art is not enough for

them. >> i do not try to do art. i try to make interesting movies that reach an audience and i do not agree that there is that there is "an audience." there is an audience for each movie. when you deal with hollywood there is just "audience." dealing with hollywood, you have to be able to pitch and i pitched to a certain degree with energy but not necessarily the kind of simple structure that they want. i have always relied on the fact that i succeeded more times than they expected to justify my continuing making films. >> what happened in monty python in june? >> it is very weird. it is almost like it did not happen. it was an anomaly. we played the o2 arena in london which was like 16,000 people in the audience and it went out in cinemas all over the world. it was a huge success. it was an extraordinary feeling

to be on stage as mike palin says at one point, this must be what it feels like to be a dictator. it is an enormous stadium and it did not feel big, because the audience loved us so much. >> it felt intimate. >> it felt absolutely intimate. it was like just a bunch of friends gathered together and at at the beginning everybody was tense but by the end it was joyous. we had a great time. >> whose idea? >> it was a desperate need to plug a hole. we lost a court case and it was a big expensive thing and eric idle has always been trying to get us to do a stage show. eric said, what about this and we said ok. it is good. it will not take us too much time and we get together and do one show. that show sold out within 47 seconds. this is crazy. >> on the internet.

>> and we penciled in a few more and we ended up doing 10. we could have gone on and on. >> you did not because you made the amount of money that you need to make and that was it or because -- >> we wanted to get back to our own lives and careers. it was interesting. you suddenly returned to 30 years ago and i have always liked the fact that python quit while we were still ahead, we went out while we were still good and that is very strange. you are back with your mates and will we see each other, it is not like we are separated in any way but the old relationships when it comes to work are coming back and it is very odd. >> i was told by one of the members that the reason you stopped was that you did not think you had it in you to make more of them at the level you had made them, you thought they were so good and you could not -- you are stretched to make it

that good and sustain it that good and you said let's stop while we are on top. >> it was basically that. people were pulling in different directions. that was going on. it was like the same chemistry was not working the same way. because when the chemistry worked it was wonderful stuff. and i thought, "meaning of life" went out, and it was not quite the same as previous. it was like we had gone back to sketch format as opposed to "life of brian" which felt much more narrative. it was both some of the best stuff we have done and some of the worst stuff we have done. we said, ok, run for it. >> what is it about opera that attracts you to directing? >> i don't know. i think it is a job-like quality in my life. when life is getting enjoyable and interesting, i have to do something to punish myself. god will not do it so i have to. i did one a few years ago. i did berlioz's "damnation of

faust." i had never done opera or theater before. this is all new. i do not particularly like opera because the images of a 55-year-old fat woman pretending to be a young 18-year-old virgin, my suspension of disbelief is not great enough to deal with that no matter how beautiful the music is. and people have been trying to do opera for about 20 years and the english national opera company caught me at a moment when i was not sure what i was doing. i love the fact that berlioz had not succeeded with the opera. it was not really an opera. it was an assembly of eight symphonic pieces that he had strung together and it gave me a lot of room to play and it was a huge success. it got great critical reviews one critical prizes, full overnight. foolishly, i said i would do another one of berlioz. another opera that does not work.

i only take opera's that don't work. at least he gives me a chance. i do not have to fight all the good versions that have been done prior and this has worked out to be a huge success as well. it is frustrating. you do something and basically only like 20,000 people see it. i have always wanted to be a populist as opposed to -- >> but that has changed, hasn't it? isn't there ways to broadcast it around the world? >> they have done that in both cases. it has gone out on television. but it is not the same experience, being recorded for tv or watching the monitor. at the halfway point, i left. i could not watch this. >> how is it to do it outside? >> we had never been outside. all these things had been done inside. >> doing the opera outside? you have never done that? >> i have never done that. >> is that because you need the containment of the sound? >> i think there is -- i could do it outside. years ago they wanted me to do

pagliacci in verona. at the huge amphitheater there. the problem is, the opera starts when the sun is still setting. no, it has got to be black before -- [laughter] it has got to be. it is like this. you come into a black space, the focus is -- you control it. there is nothing out there. >> not even camera people. >> it is -- the total focus is on you. >> it is brilliant. >> of all the things you do what are you best at? >> i don't know. >> is it film? is it opera? is it sketches? >> i do not know what i am good at. i keep thinking i do not know how to do anything. it is a bit late.

>> that is a question. do you think most creative artists get to their best when they are very young? >> i think there is a point where you have got energy. almost all the things i do except for drawing require energy. films are the thing i love the most. i love the process. >> is it about control? >> it is not the control. it is the shape of experience as opposed to opera where you rehearse for a few months and a week on stage and you do not know whether it works or not until the audience arrives. it makes me very nervous. with film you have time to prepare it and think about it, dream it, and i love looking for locations and finding the actors, and the shooting becomes, that is the painful part of the process because time is the dictator and you are up against everything. moments happen every day that make it worthwhile. an actor will come in and do something unexpected, and that is wonderful. that is a whole new way of

looking at it and after all that you have six months in the editing room to calmly look at it, change it, move it around. it's like at that point you have the pieces of the jigsaw. let's put them and hopefully the right order. "zero theorem" is the perfect example. in the editing room, i was pulling seams apart and took scenes off the end. that is the moment i love. it made the editor -- we are playing within the limitations of what we created during the shoot. that is all. i love having a border, a finite area whether it is budget, time, whatever. without it, the explosion is diluted. bombs work by keeping tight. >> did you love the arcade fire experience? >> that was fun.

that was great. >> they came to you. >> they came to me, and i have never been a rock groupie. here was a chance to be a rock groupie and tag along with them for several shows. and it was a joy. i like working with people who are talented. especially people who have more and different talents than i do. because then, let's see if we can pull this together and the arcade fire was strange. we went out in madison square garden and i was supposedly directing. i was not directing it. i cannot do that. the pro guy was doing this, i was given four cameras, and it was a great show and it went out and everyone was happy. >> what do you think of "breaking bad"? >> i was against all of it, netflix, all of it. people kept telling me and then my wife was away. last november.

i signed up and one month was free and i got through almost four series. i binged. i could not stop it. it was so brilliant. to me, it is the best thing i have seen in the long time because it is imperfect, it is up and down, but the totality of it. the premise was so utterly brilliant. and the cast was great. i just loved it. >> and you finished it. >> christmas day while the family was downstairs. i went upstairs and got through the last series because they were watching something i did not want to watch and it was "frozen." now i have just finished the danish version of "the killing." have you watched that? it is so good because the writing and all these things is so excellent and it is not doing what hollywood has to do now. the structure has to be by the numbers. >> for people like you it is a godsend, isn't it?

>> i don't know. >> you can create in a wholly different way. you are not confined by time. >> that is my problem. i need to be confined by time. i think that is the problem. >> you need an hour and a half. somebody tells you an hour and a half and no more. >> i am looking at one of my old scripts that we wrote after "fisher king" and seeing if we can expand it to an eight part series. i do not know. but it is something to play with. >> have you worked with anybody who has more talent than robin williams? >> his was so unique. it was a very unique talent. strangely enough, i had to watch "fisher king" last week because a blu-ray is coming out and i had to look at it technically. and i was not sure, because i miss him so much. but watching it, it was wonderful and he is alive, he is

alive and he is just robin. the thing about that film, the character he is playing, almost all of robin in one character. the joy, the nightmares, all in there. and i felt so good coming up because robin is still with us. >> thank you for coming. great to see you. >> this table. [laughter] >> been there, done that. "zero theorem" opens this friday. much success. loved having you. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

.

>> it all starts, right now.