♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: on thursday, lawmakers in north carolina rolled back the state's controversial bathroom bill. that is the law passed a little over a year ago that required transgender people to use the public bathroom of the gender that appears on the birth certificate. the backlash to the law began almost immediately, and it has had both economic and political ramifications. by one estimate, the law would cost the state $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years. it is also cited as a major factor in last year's governors race which led to the election of democrat roy cooper.

governor cooper joins me from the state capital of raleigh. welcome to the program. it is a pleasure to have you here. gov. cooper: thank you, charlie. i appreciate it. charlie: help us understand this new bill. what was kept, what was kicked out, and why are some people complaining it is too much of a compromise? gov. cooper: first, we never should have been here in the first place. passing house bill 2, the super majority republican legislature and my predecessor, the republican governor, signed this horrible bill into law that discriminates against lgbt community and has hurt our state. it has put a stain on our reputation. the first thing we have done is repeal house bill 2. we have gotten rid of this horrible requirement that you have to go to the restroom of your birth certificate.

the second thing we have done is we have opened up immediately the ability of local governments to put in and have lgbt protections. and we have provided lgbt protections in the future for those local governments. it is not my preferred solution. it is not everything i wanted. but it is progress moving forward, and i believe strongly that we need to have statewide lgbt protections in north carolina. my super majority republican legislature will not let me do that yet. but i'm going to keep fighting for that every single day. charlie: i notice in your own statement, you have said consistently we begin, we begin. you begin to do what this bill? gov. cooper: well, first, under

house bill 2, local governments could not provide lgbt protections for their own employees. with the bill i signed yesterday, they now can. with house bill 2, local governments could not provide protections or require protections for lgbt employees of companies they contracted with. after the bill i signed, they can do that. and there are more protections that local governments can provide for lgbt residents in the future. at that time, we are sure to get those protections available for local governments. some of those protections are not there yet but will be at the end of this moratorium. i know i wanted a clean repeal was nothing additional.

-- with nothing additional. we had to find a compromise that moved north carolina forward. this does that. we have to keep fighting for it in the future. but now we do have some lgbt protections for local governments right now and opened the door for it in the future. but we still have a long way to go in north carolina. and i want to make sure i fight for those lgbt protections. charlie: does it void antidiscrimination laws through 2020? gov. cooper: under house bill 2, no local government could pass any lgbt law permanently. they were completely banned from doing that. what the legislation i signed allows them to provide some lgbt protections now and allows them to provide some additional lgbt protections in 2020. what we had was a permanent ban on lgbt protections, any kind of

protections, that local governments would be able to do. that is what house bill 2 did. if we did not get house bill 2 repealed, we would not have an opportunity to make progress. that is what we have done with this legislation. we have made progress. we have opened the door to more lgbt protections in the future. we have opened the door to lgbt protections now with local government employees and contracting. but we still have a lot to do. but it is progress. it is particularly progress was with a supermajority republican legislature, many of whom liked house bill 2, wanted to keep house bill 2 in place. charlie: as you know, many people have talked about over the last year or so about the

damage to north carolina's reputation and the financial impact. did that have any impact on the republicans in the legislature? gov. cooper: i think it had an impact on some of the republicans in the legislature. others did not want to repeal it at all. but we were able to get a coalition that included republicans and the republican leadership. i do think the economic effect of this -- but the guiding principle for me is moving people's rights forward. that should be paramount over sports or money. what this does is move those rights forward. it does not move them as far forward as i want to move them. it does not move as far forward as a lot of people want to do it. a lot of people want a clean repeal of house bill two. a lot of people want statewide antidiscrimination ordinances in

north carolina. i do, too. but the alternative was to continue to suffer under house bill 2, continue to have transgender kids have this requirement they use the restroom on their birth certificate, and keep them with that kind of message from north carolina. that is wrong. we need to go further in protection of transgender, all lgbt citizens. i will keep fighting for those. clearly, the economic impact on our state has been great. we have been boycotted by companies and by sporting events. it is because of their belief in people's rights too as to why they have boycotted north carolina. we are sending them a strong signal we are making progress and we want them to come to north carolina. we want them to come and help us join this fight for lgbt rights. we want them to come back to put more money in the pockets of

middle-class north carolinians. and we want to be the kind of state we know we are, but that has not been shown to the nation and the world over the last few years with the leadership we have had. things are changing now, and we are going to continue to work for those changes. charlie: some of those who did not want to see you compromise, who wanted to see the bill repealed period, seem to say things were going your way. that there would be more pressure, and if you had not compromised, you would have the ability later to do what you wanted to do. gov. cooper: well, they were not in the rooms with these republicans that i was dealing with. there was a hard opposition to changes in our law. there was a hard opposition to repeal house bill 2 at all.

you should have seen some of the things they wanted that i said absolutely not. they wanted rfra that would allow people to use their religious beliefs to discriminate against other people. not." "absolutely we said we are not going to do that in north carolina. we are not going to trade one bad law for another bad law. what i want is something that moves to end discrimination. what i want with something that helped to bring our economy back. and what i wanted was something to help remove the stain on our reputation. and this crowd was not going to repeal house bill 2 without something else. this was the best deal we could get right now. it was important. i am not going to let my state or our state, and there are so , many people who are supporting this effort, we are not going to let our state continue to suffer under house bill 2.

we are going to keep working to make changes that move north carolina forward in education, health care, progressive values. we have been a beacon in the south for decades. when people would talk about north carolina, they would talk about our universities and research triangle park, our banks. that is what we want people talking about instead of this horrible house bill 2, which has now been repealed. charlie: is north carolina not a d state nor a blue state but more of a purple state? gov. cooper: we are very purple state. the problem has been redistricting. and what you have ended up with is a lot more super majority republican districts where you have a pretty even number of republicans and democrats in our state who vote that way, but there is a great disparity with

super majority republicans in the legislature. we could spend a whole program talking about the problems of redistricting and the need for nonpartisan redistricting commissions that provide for fair redistricting. that is the root of a lot of problems you are seeing in state legislatures. and it is the root of the problem in congress right now. there is a lot of work to do on that end as well. charlie: how much did this bill play in your election? in a very close election? gov. cooper: it was certainly part of it. i was opposed to house bill 2 on day one, have vowed to work to repeal it. but also the cuts to public education, the refusal to expand medicaid, the dramatic cutbacks in our department of environmental quality, and the anti-environmental laws they

passed. the horrible voter restrictions that thankfully most of them got overturned in the courts, but making it harder for people to register and vote in passing voter restrictions laws the courts said discriminated against african americans with "surgical precision." that is the kind of legislation and legislators i ran against and a governor that signed and promoted all of that. that is the kind of leadership i ran against. it is a combination of all of those issues as to why we won, even in a trump wave. as you know, north carolina did vote for president trump. we were able to emerge from that election. it was a combination of a lot of things going wrong in north carolina. and in those areas, we are going to have to fight to make incremental progress with this legislature.

but i'm going to continue to fight in all of those areas. charlie: governor, thank you for joining us. it was a pleasure to have you on the program. gov. cooper: thank you, charlie. charlie: we will be right back. stay with us. ♪

♪ levy is here.

she has been a staff writer at "the new yorker" magazine since 2008. she was 38 and five months pregnant in 2012 when she traveled to mongolia to report on that country's mining boom. on her second night there, she suffered a miscarriage in her hotel room. she told the story of that experience and the events that followed in an essay for "the new yorker" in 2013. now she has written a memoir called "the rules do not apply." i'm pleased to have her at this table. welcome. ariel: thanks for having me. charlie: we have lots to talk about. first of all, you won the national magazine award for that piece. it was an explanation of meaning? is that a fair statement? ariel: yeah. i think particularly with the piece, i wanted to talk about the kind of experience of being a female human animal. i think it is sort of the last taboo. there are no more taboos around women's sexuality.

but the fact that women are actually animals and the intense stuff happens to us around birth, menstruation, fertility. all the things in that fear of our being and our bodies, i wanted to get into that. charlie: take me back even earlier to that to the life you have had. when you went to mongolia, pregnant happy, yes? , ariel: i was very excited i was having a baby. charlie: for the baby. you have this wonderful line. in a small amount of time, you knew you were a mother. ariel: i knew because i had a living baby in my hands. for 10 minutes, i was somebody's mother. that was like magic. charlie: what do you mean? ariel: because then he died. it was the most painful experience of my life, but it was also the most transcendent

, because before he died, he lived. and i experienced motherhood very briefly. i experienced what maternal love feels like, which is the most brutal -- charlie: you felt it all. ariel: yeah. i'm sure had he lived to be four now, i am sure i would feel all sorts of other things i did not get a chance to feel. but i experienced that primal maternal love where you think i would die for you, it is not even a thought. charlie: and you wanted to take a picture of him. ariel: i did. yeah. i took a picture. charlie: because? ariel: because the whole thing was so shocking. it was so surreal to be in mongolia and to have a living person who came out of my body. that had never happened to me before. and i knew he was going to die. and this was going to be it. this was going to be the only

time we had together. and i knew i would want to see his face again. and believe me, i looked at it a lot. charlie: every time you look at it, you have the same emotion you just described? ariel: it is different. i don't look at it as much anymore. but when i first got back, yeah. charlie: when you got back, what kind of condition were you in? ariel: not the best. i was so sad i could barely breathe. i had a little identity crisis on my hands because a switch had flipped in my heart, and i felt like i was a mother. and a switch have flipped in my body, and i was making milk. i was lactating for a baby that was not there. in the deepest part of myself, i felt like i was a mother. but that was invisible to the rest of the world because i had no child. so, i was in a profound state of grief. charlie: did writing about it --

i don't want to use the word "catharsis" -- but something? ariel: yeah, definitely something. i don't know -- i mean, i have only ever experienced that set of circumstances and then written about it. i don't know what the grieving process would have been like if i had not written about it. but then again, i also do not know what it is like to not write about everything that happens because that is what i have always done. charlie: let me talk about your life. your parents sound fascinating. ariel: yeah. i dig them. charlie: you dig them. children of the 60's? ariel: yeah. charlie: tell me about them. ariel: well, they are both feminists. my mom really stressed my whole life that i could do and be whatever i wanted, and she had a lot of faith -- she always said, "of course, you will be a

writer." i think that was a huge gift to give to a kid that wanted to be a writer, to say of course, that is what is going to happen. my dad is a writer. my dad has written -- if you name any kind of lefty group, like greenpeace, name it, he has probably written copy for them. charlie: there is a moment where you describe him and says he -- and you are saying he wants , you to be proud of the fact that he approved of your first girlfriend. ariel: he said, "aren't you impressed i am so cool with this?" i said, "not really." charlie: why wouldn't you be? ariel: it is only in keeping with everything about you. charlie: but they give you confidence and they gave you -- ariel: well, they were very loving. my mom really believed i could write. like, she really always told me that is what is going to happen.

so, i believed her, you know. charlie: why do you think someone can write as good as you can? ariel: that is a nice thing to say. it is all i ever do, write things. charlie: is it natural, learned? ariel: i taught a writing class at wesleyan where i attended college. i taught that class like a year ago. i thought it was either people could write or not. it was a joy to interact with the students. i think some people have it. that is just what they do, that is how they exist. charlie: you also came back and were divorced. ariel: yes. two weeks after i got back from mongolia, my former spouse went to rehab for alcohol abuse. charlie: for alcoholism. ariel: for alcohol abuse, yes.

it was not the beginning of the problems around that. at that moment in time, i felt like i could not do it. i just felt like i could not do two recoveries at once and needed to do my own. charlie: but you sent this to her? ariel: oh, yeah. i love her. she is very important to me. i sent it to her to read before i turned it in to my editor. i said if there is anything you cannot live with, tell me and i will take it out. she is a really generous, selfless person. charlie: what did she say? ariel: she said, "i'm not going to censor you. it is your story. you do what you have got to do." charlie: how is she today? ariel: she is doing very well. i'm very proud of her. charlie: the irony of this is you now have a relationship with a man who is a doctor in mongolia, who is now in south africa? ariel: i do. no, right now he is in your greenroom. charlie: so he is watching this.

ariel: i believe so, unless he fell asleep. charlie: how did that happen? ariel: it happened because when i went to this clinic in mongolia after i lost my son, there was this person there who i connected with and we started writing to each other. at first, it was really my lifeline because dr. john was the only person who had ever seen what felt so intensely true to me. it was making me insane it was invisible to the rest of the world. that is that he saw, here is a mother with her baby who has died. it is not likely would email about that night. but it was a comfort to be interacting with someone who was there and saw that happen. and then it was just a matter of chance. we just happened to connect beyond that. charlie: being in love is another. it took a while? through emails and everything

else? ariel: normally, i think people would think it was not convenient if you lived in new york to fall in love with someone who worked in mongolia and lived in south africa. but for me, it was convenient because that way there was time for me to grieve and for us to fall in love sort of simultaneously. charlie: there is nothing that really happen to you? ariel: not really. charlie: and then these terrible things happened to you. ariel: this showed me i had never experienced real suffering before. charlie: did you know how to deal with it? ariel: i don't know if anyone could know before they have experienced real grief and real loss. i don't know if you can be prepared for it, because it is so all-encompassing. i really felt like for a while i lived in grief, like it was a tunnel i lived in. charlie: a dark tunnel. ariel: it was not a nice tunnel.

eventually, grief became something that lived in me instead. charlie: you lived in it, then it lived in you. ariel: that's how i think of it. charlie: and today? ariel: i will always have a little part of my heart that has a hole in it for that baby. and i will always have grief for my first relationship, my first marriage. just because you get divorced and fall in love with somebody else does not mean you do not care about someone. those are sad things, but it is ok. i just take them with me. charlie: "the rules do not apply." where does the title come from? ariel: because i basically thought the rules my mother and certainly her mother had to follow were not relevant to me. i felt like i was the beneficiary of this enormous gift from the women's movement that made it so i could grow up thinking i was going to be the protagonist in my own life and i could follow my dreams. charlie: and i can do anything. ariel: and i could fall in love with a woman and marry her.

i had so many freedoms that were unthinkable to my mother or her mother. i felt like i was living a different version -- charlie: is the book about feminism other than the fact you are a feminist? ariel: in some ways because i talk a lot about becoming a writer who focuses on women. charlie: you profiled women, that's what you did. ariel: i focused a lot on women who are unconventional and who have accomplished great things. so, i think that is feminism, yeah. i also think writing about the body, what happens with women's bodies, i consider that to be part of the feminist object, too. charlie: how is feminism when -- doing today? ariel: well, we have certainly got ourselves a powerful opponent to focus on. i think when you have an election where you have literally the most competent, most well-prepared woman ever running against the least competent, least qualified man

ever. and the man wins even after you have heard him say that he thinks it is ok to sexual assault women, that is galvanizing. i do think that is a moment where women were like, wait a minute. charlie: what about the women who voted for him? ariel: i cannot explain it. i don't know why they did it. i don't understand. i don't get it. charlie: even some women who "i do not want to have to feel like i have to vote for someone because they are a woman. i should vote for her because she is the most qualified candidate i have ever seen." ariel: i think she was. charlie: barack obama said exactly that. ariel: i think he was right. i think it would be a much more relaxing time to exist if she was running the free world right now. charlie: if you were writing this over, would you change anything? ariel: i am sure a comma here or there. charlie: i am not talking about grammar. would you have included more?

ariel: no, i would not have. charlie: you know where i am going. ariel: i just realized. [laughter] it took me a second. i did not write about my relationship with john because i did not want to write a book that ended with, "and then i fell in love." charlie: you didn't want it to be a sweetheart ending. ariel: i did not want to suggest prince charming came and saved me because he did not save me. charlie: you saved yourself. ariel: falling in love with someone else did not do anything -- charlie: what saved you? ariel: what saved me was, after a while, surrendering. after a while where i would wake up every morning and think this is not acceptable, i don't accept this. it is not ok with me that my child is dead. it is not ok with me that my spouse is an alcoholic. i don't accept this reality. eventually, it became clear to me whether i accepted it or not, it would be real so i might as well surrender. charlie: to know when you get up

in the morning and say, "i can't accept this," charlie: to go when you get up in the morning i cannot accept it to where you get beyond it, what does that take? ariel: time, i think. you just have to suffer and live through pain and not try to push it away. charlie: all of these people have reacted to this so strongly. what is it that they are reacting to, do you think? everybody, men and women are saying about this -- i suspect there are lots of people who read this and one long sitting. i think it is because it is very short. it is a very short book. charlie: it is something else, that you are caught up in your life, caught up in where you were, what happened, and how you struggle to find another place.

ariel: i think it is a universal coming-of-age story, even though the specifics involved will not happen to a lot of people, but we all, i think, go through a process where we figure out that everybody doesn't get everything and that is being an adult, admitting that, accepting it, and appreciating what you have. we all have to do this. charlie: we have to realize, men, women, everybody else that you can't have it all. ariel: absolutely. charlie: because time is finite. ariel: there is a misconception that feminism said you can have it all, but i think, the thinking that you are entitled to everything you want in life, that is not the thinking of a feminist. that is the thinking of a toddler. charlie: that's a great line. toddlers do think they can have it all? ariel: yeah, they do seem to

think that. charlie: so where are you now? i mean, you have written this book, which has gotten the enormous response here at the new yorker. ariel: yeah. charlie: you are in a relationship. ariel: yeah. yeah. charlie: so have you reached the other side to speak, having to swim through treacherous and dangerous waters? ariel: i think i have, yet, because i'm really happy and i feel really grateful. i feel the opposite of this is unacceptable. charlie: what do you think the lessons are? ariel: for me, this process this s dis-abused me of the illusion i could control my life. i think that as a writer, i had gotten accustomed to this sort of authorial power of crafting a narrative and i just thought if i was diligent and strategic

enough i could get everything. i could have it all, all the things i wanted. charlie: the lesson is you can have it all? is that the lesson? ariel: everybody doesn't get everything and that it's ok. the sooner you accept what you have and find what is in there to be grateful for, the less you are going to suffer. charlie: the book is called "the rules do not apply." it is a delight to have you at this table. profoundly admirable, admiring the way you can make sentences work. ariel: thank you so much. charlie: back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

frank capra, john houston, john ford, and george -- five of the most successful directors working in hollywood in the early 20th century. they each of their careers on hold to enlist in the military and used their filmmaking skills to document world war ii for the american public. "five came back" is a new docu-series. the series is adapted from mark ' book of the same name. steven spielberg, francis ford

coppola, william del toro, paul greengrass offer commentary on the iconic directors and the impact their war documentaries had on hollywood and america at large. entertainment weekly called "five came back" a fascinating, thorough history must. here is the trailer. cried hitler's die will make you masters of the world. >> a lot of people laughed. he was a clown. if it weren't so evil, it was comedy. >> america stands at the crossroads of its destiny. narrator: in the early years of hitler's rise, moviegoing have become an essential part of america's culture, but americans did not realize the extent of the threat that hitler's posed. >> he understood cinema could be put in the service of propaganda. >> these guys are going to beat us. >> western civilization was at

stake and we are going to fight until we win. >> five filmmakers wanted to respond as so many millions of men and women responded. they chose to serve. ♪ >> these documentaries were powerful for american audiences. >> the enormity of the task was worth it. >> we had an enormous story to tell. >> the greatest heroes and the greatest villains on the world stage. >> this was real filmmaking. >> this is the people's war. it is our war. >> these five men were saying goodbye to families who never knew if they would return. and yet, coming out of it, each one made their greatest film. >> i believe a film should have something to say. >> it should make people think and feel. long after they have left the theater.

>> nothing could prepare anyone for the intensity of the conflict. >> these filmmakers changed the world. ♪ charlie: i am pleased to have the author of five came back mark harris and the director laurent bouzereau. where did the idea come to make this into that? >> when i was working on the book, i became really interested era and these world war ii movies and when the book came out, i was surprised at the number of early readers who said to me it was fascinating to read about these documentaries, too bad most of these are lost. i would say, the documentaries are not lost. you can still see them. they all still exist. they are property of the u.s. government. i thought this is a real opportunity for us as well as i could try to describe these

films in the book, there is nothing like being able to show them to people, so that was the germ of the idea to make it a documentary. charlie: and then the idea was to take five directors and explain each director. yes, that was our directors big innovation. charlie: tell me about it. >> we were trying to figure out an innovative way to tell the story, and it was steven spielberg who said to me, you know, let us try to think of a very interesting way of telling those stories and, you know, who better than directors to talk about directors? so then came the search for five directors to speak for the five guys, and it was great. we had a very short list. everyone sort of organically was available. it worked out. charlie: what were they charged with? >> they were charged with being interviewed in the same way your interviewing me right now, but they had to come in with a lot

of knowledge. they had all red the book, even before we approached them, you know. and they also did a lot of research. mark wrote scripts for each of the episodes and would highlight exactly if steven spielberg came in to talk about william wyler or the things pertaining to him, so they were prepared, but they were so familiar with the movies, so familiar with their lives. some of them, steven spielberg knew wyler, so they came in with their new knowledge and appreciation. charlie: so your challenge was to connect them all? >> yes. if was really well done in the book and it was not only to connect them but to make sure that on one hand, you know, we had this epic story of world war ii> .

on the other, we had those five very specific stories, very personal, so it was sort of the back and forth balance between the personal and emotional on the world stage. charlie: and how that change their lives. >> how they change their lives. charlie: this began as a way to honor your father? >> it did. my father was a world war ii veteran. he died when i was young. there was also a way to apologize to him posthumously. i want to apologize for the fact that i did not listen to his war stories very much. it was scary to me the idea that someone would leave his family and go overseas to, you know, fight for his life and his country, and of course as i got older and more interested in world history, i regretted not pay more attention to him, so for my father and my three uncles who were all world war ii veterans, this is my way of trying to reopen the conversation. charlie: how did you choose which director for which director? >> well, that's a great question. we had a lot of thoughts.

one thing we did not want to do is try to think who is the modern version of william wyler? it was more like trying to find directors who had sensibilities or traits that were comparable to those of the five original directors from the past, so steven spielberg, who i have known for many years, i was always impressed with his humanity. how kind he was, and also, you know, his fascination with his own roots, being jewish, and we felt that william wyler was very similar in spirit and steven spielberg talks about meeting wyler and being a young director meeting a legendary director and saying i was so impressed with wyler and how kind he was, and that was my experience, frankly, and so i thought perfect , casting. francis coppola, i remember being a teenager living in france and "apocalypse now" came out, which was a huge event in

france, and coppola had done a press conference at the con film festival and said making the film was like a war and he was so passionate about it and it was combat, filmmaking, and there were famous pictures of him holding a gun to his head. i'm like, this echoes john huston in many ways. and a sort of fiery personality. paul greengrass comes from the documentary world and he identified with john ford. in a way that was very personal and could relate to his own journey. toro is known for fantasy and horror films just like frank capra, and his films are extremely emotional, and so he really connected with

frank capra. he is very famous for the movies he directed but before that, he was extremely famous for being a screenwriter and coming up with the most iconic movie lines , whether raiders of the lost ark or empire strikes back, so it was important we had a director who was also very famous for his screenplays and therefore, we enrolled him to speak about george stevens. he had a great affinity with stevens, and that is how we got our five guys. charlie: when frank cap for solid triumph of the will, how did that affect them? >> he came to new york when he was charged figure out how to make the series of movies that became "why we fight." capra was in a tough place because the government wanted to have him make these new training films for soldiers, but they did not give him writers, a staff, and they barely gave him a budget. he comes to new york and these triumph of the will and his

first reaction is we are going to lose. we are going to lose the war. forget the movies, we are going to lose the war. and then, he thought, i can use this movie and kill two birds with one stone. first of all, we can turn their own propaganda against them by showing our incoming soldiers, how the enemy thinks, and second of all, we have all this seized propaganda footage from germany, japan, from italy. i do not have the money to shoot these movies, but i can certainly compile a movie from existing footage and get the message across that way. charlie: the movies were in part propaganda. >> yes, they were. they were. that was part of the task that the government gave these five filmmakers, to sell the war, not only to the american public, but to soldiers who were 18 or 19 years old and were coming in and did not really know the reason we were in the war in the first place. charlie: to give them a reason

as to why we were fighting. >> not just give them a reason, but excite them and inflame their patriotism, and frank capra was very good at doing that. charlie: did any of them have resistance to that at all? >> they all wanted to serve their country. capra had the most directly propaganda-istic assignment your . for the other four, they thought they would travel the world to wherever the battle fronts were and document the war, just to bring the truth of the war home to the public. i think sometimes their impulses as film makers to tell a great story and their impulses as patriots to come you know, sell the war and make the case for our side, and as artists, they clashed with each other and sometimes, one thing led to another. charlie: this is not related to your film, but there was a story about some of the film taken in

world war ii, and the government prevented from being shown and i think it was german concentration camps, and i think it involved alfred hitchcock had who had been brought over to edit it. the british army film unit, the counterpart of the american effort, did deploy hitchcock as a propaganda filmmaker and all of these feature filmmakers who went through efforts to the war, at some point, had some of what they did suppressed or censored because the content was too violent. i mean, most americans did not see the vast majority of d-day footage because it was much too bloody. john huston had a movie suppressed for 35 years because it was a movie called "let there be light" about the psychological toll of the war on veterans. it was too emotional and upsetting. it did not tell the story the army wanted to tell. charlie: did the camera have to

be there in order to document the day? -- d-day? >> they did. charlie: what risk did they put themselves to? >> tremendous risk. john ford was there at d-day. george stevens was overseeing the army efforts. we are talking about literally hundreds of cameras and dozens of cameramen and still photographers who were, you know, as much in harm's way as any soldier on d-day, maybe more, because they were carrying cameras, not guns. charlie: what happened to them? what was the impact of the public of these films? laurent: the impact was tremendous because you have to put yourself back in the time where you had to go to the movies to see there's newsreel footage. it is nothing you can get on your iphone or watch on tv. so i think when you think about

midway, the movie john ford did, that was the first time that war was shown in color. the footage that george stevens got of the camps, this is before there is a vocabulary for the holocaust, so those were a tremendous discoveries for viewers, extremely shocking and impactful, albeit in a propagandic kind of way. charlie: what impact did it have on the lives and future lives of these directors? laurent: when they came back, they all, i think there was a spirit of independence, first of all, that they wanted to create their own company and be working for themselves as directors. frank capra created his own company, and wyler's first the war, speaks for itself. i'm sure you are familiar with it. it is interesting to compare that film to "it's a wonderful life," which is the movie that frank appel does, and that fails

at the box office. john ford goes on and make some of the most iconic westerns. george stevens does not work for a very long time. >> george stevens was the first one of thento do concentration camps, footage eventually shown as evidence at the nuremberg trials. he was shaken by that. he had been a really successful director of comedy before the war and said he could never make another comedy after what he is seeing in germany, so in the 1940's and 1950's and 1960's, he becomes a very distinguished director of drama. charlie: did it make any difference? >> it really did make a difference. the trial had been widely covered by the press and everybody said the first few days were sort of flat and boring and the prosecutors were not making an oppressive case was shown and a

spotlight was turn on the defendant's box. the defendants were forced to view the movies, and the witnesses for the trial say the effect was electrifying. the defendant's own attorneys said that after seeing the movie, they found it impossible to sit in the same room with the people they were representing. laurent: it goes from being a filmmaker of comedies and musicals into doing documentary filmmaking and once he goes into the camps, he becomes an evidence gathered her, so that speaks for his transformation as a filmmaker, as a man, and is reflected after the war when he comes back and cannot work. charlie: john houston's film after the war which was "let there be light" was banned. laurent: yes. about ptsd. i would say out of all the movies i had to watch repeatedly aside from the holocaust footage, it is one that brings tears to my eyes. it is just so vivid to see those

men. this is before actually the word maybe existed or did not exist at the time, ptsd, but it is a notion that is really discovered in that film, and it was banned and he fought to get it eventually released. charlie: ptsd, posttraumatic stress disorder. laurent: correct. charlie: did these guys, when they came back, change hollywood? >> they did, in a way. frank cap's big dream that directors would become independent of studios failed. ironically, the first maybe his company made, it's a wonderful life, was such a box office flop , that it sank the whole company, but was a spirit of independence within them and a desire to make more socially realistic, tougher, more honest movies than what they have been making before the war, and you see that grow throughout the 1940's and 1950's straight into the the 1960's.

charlie: how did the all-powerful studio heads react to all this? mark: thing about the all-powerful studio heads is they like to conserve their power, so it was a constant growing fight over everything everything from weather studio actors would pick projects for directors to direct. how much would the production code allow these directors to put in movies? that was a 20 year fight until the production code and fell apart. it was the partnership with stevens and wyler. he asked them to go in and they each planned to make three movies, a total of nine. charlie: each year? mark: no, in the first wave of their project. that would have been nine movies independent of the studios, and going to bee was "it's a wonderful life," and amazingly now, because we all consider it a classic, it was a very expensive movie. it did not make its money back,

and there was no money left for the company. they had to give up after one movie. charlie: when you look at the five who made these films, is there one you admire more than the others? i have a real fondness for william wyler. he took me to see "ben hur," and discovering that movie was like discovering a whole new vocabulary of images and it touched me tremendously, and got me really interested in cinema, so wyler. but all of them made gigantic contributions, and i have studied all of them, and through this documentary, i have an even bigger appreciation for them. charlie: thank you for coming. laurent: thank you for having mark us. mark: thank you. charlie: pleasure. the film begins on march 31. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

with a checkstart of your first word news. the u.s. condemns the attack and stands ready to assist russia after a bombing in st. petersburg killed at least 11 people. officials say a homemade device detonated inside a train. a judiciary committee party line vote sent the nomination of judge neil gorsuch for confirmation on friday. democrats have the votes to block that nomination. mitch mcconnell may change the rules to a simple majority threshold of 51 vote for the confirmation.