♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." alison: good evening. charlie is traveling. i am alison stewart. we begin with politics and another eventful week in washington. the supreme court upheld portions of president trump's travel ban on monday with justices agreeing to hear the full case in october. on tuesday, mitch mcconnell withdrew the senate's health care legislation following growing opposition among conservative party leaders. earlier today, the white house confirmed president trump will meet with russian president vladimir putin next week at the g-20 summit in germany. joining me from washington is shannon pettypiece, white house correspondent with bloomberg

news. a lot went on this week. let's get right to the travel ban. the state department issued new guidelines to embassies and consulates for people who are applying to come to the united states from six predominantly muslim countries. what are the guidelines saying? shannon: essentially what the supreme court said is if you had some sort of connection to the united states, you could be allowed to come into the country if you were from one of these banned countries. what a connection means is where the confusion lies and where the interpretation was. the state department said if you have a close relative, a father, mother, a son, in-law, you could come to the country despite this ban in place. other people, even with distant relatives, that would not be enough to get you into the country. alison: who will make the determination, when is it going to happen?

shannon: the determination is going to be done by the administration, by the state department, border patrol, and homeland security. so it has gone through the legal process. it will be difficult to challenge it from a lower court because you have the supreme court ruling. now it is up to the administration. that is what the guidelines issued by the state department were saying. alison: the first time this issue came up, civil rights attorneys flooded the airports preparing to help people as they land. what are groups like the aclu and civil rights organizations saying about this? shannon: the prediction is where that was sort of a fast train wreck, this will be more like a slow motion train wreck. there will likely continue to be individual cases that get contested, that get disputed, that play out in the courts. not a broad challenge like we saw in the courts earlier, maybe more on individual case-by-case basis.

alison: let's go on to president trump's tweets today. there is one tweet in particular which a lot of people have been talking about and a lot of people have condemned. it was a personal and abrasive tweet against journalists mika brzezinski of msnbc. is someone i say know. both democrats and republicans have been critical of this tweet, which does not often happen to the president currently. did he cross some line that the republicans who have been supporting him? shannon: after all of the pleas from republicans to dial back the tweets, even the president's close friends have been privately encouraging him to dial back the tweets, he leaned into the cross the line tweets even further with a personal attack on someone that fits right in the vein of cyber bullying, essentially saying if

you attack me or if you disagree with me, i will come out and very personally attack you in your most sensitive places on twitter and make it a public feud. it comes at a time when yesterday we were talking about could republicans and democrats come together and get everybody to unite for a health care bill because we have real problems in this country with health care. that was the talk yesterday. and today, complete division. democrats moving even further away from the president. they thought for a second they were going to try to work with him. it completely repels them. republicans and members of the president's own party also coming out and saying stop, this is unacceptable. this is not reflective of what the president of the united states should be saying. alison: mr. trump has said aggressive and abrasive things before. some people thought he would

back down. he hasn't. sometimes it has buoyed in with his base. how has the base reacted so far? shannon: in surveys, usually around 20% to 30% of people say they like the president's tweets. that he should keep tweeting, that they are ok with it. the vast majority of americans, 60% to 70%, would like to see him stop or dial it back, bring it into the presidential realm. however, as i have talked to people close to the president about this, they feel there is this sense that he is still the guy you elected. you did not send him to washington and he became a swamp creature and changed and started putting out politically correct tweets. he feels like he needs to maintain who he is and that authenticity, and he cannot do that pivot and shift because it would alienate his base of supporters. he has not seen any negative repercussions from the tweets. he did this for years. he is president. maybe you could say this hurt his agenda by creating distractions. it is also hard to prove that.

so where is the negative reinforcement to tell him to stop? alison: let's move on to what the president will be doing next week. he will be meeting with russian president vladimir putin at the g-20 summit in germany. do we know what will be on the agenda? shannon: we don't, but this would be a prime moment to bring up russian interference in our elections and the cyber hacking and attacks russia has been carrying out in the united states. there is a desperate hope from the foreign policy community in the u.s., from members of congress, that the president will take this opportunity to say to putin to knock it off, to send a clear signal trying to interfere in our elections is not acceptable. we do not know if the president is going to go that far and say that, because he has shown hesitation about making a big issue over russian interference in the election.

the feeling of those close to the president is he is concerned it will undermine his presidency if he acknowledges russians played a role in influencing the election. collusion aside. just with fake news and tweet bots, that sort of interference by the russians could be enough to rattle or delegitimize his presidency. that is the concern. alison: there has been reporting president trump has tasked the national security council to come up with bargaining chips, something he can bring to the meeting to use. what would something like that be? shannon: one could be syria. there is a desire to try and strike a deal in syria. so if we can work out a deal in syria, maybe we could say we will ease off sanctions, which congress is working hard to strengthen sanctions. one could be to ease off sanctions. we could tell russia we will stay out of human rights, we will give you leverage to do what you want in your own country.

that is a message he kind of signaled to other countries. we won't make a big deal over human rights, give us something else. alison: there has been reporting the president and the nsc are not on the same page when it comes to concessions. what does each side think and where don't they agree? shannon: there are people on different sides and pages of this administration, within nsc, the state department, rex tillerson. he butted heads with the president recently. and of course other members of congress have their own views on foreign policy. there are a lot of diverse opinions in there. gary cohn on the economic side is a democrat. jared kushner leans to the left. of course you have the steve bannon nationalist ideology. you have generals like general mattis who come from a

perspective from the military. so there is always butting heads, always conflict. at the end of the day, it is trump as president who will make the final decision. it is going to be up to him. alison: how important is next week, the meeting between putin and trump? shannon: i think that week is going to be crucial because this russia cyber threat is real, not only in interfering in our elections, but hacking other aspects of the american infrastructure. there are threats of hacks on the banking system, the electric grid. so that is a very real threat there. obviously, there is a threat from russia after the invasion of crimea and further expansionary visions the russians might have. it is also crucial as relations go with nato and other european leaders. at the g-7, there were tense moments between germany and france and nato members and the president. so this is a chance to repair and rebuild some of those

relationships and encourage nato and europe you have a strong ally in the u.s. who is going to be there and defend you against a potential threat from a country like russia. alison: correspondent shannon pettypiece reporting from washington for bloomberg news, thank you so much. shannon: thank you. ♪

♪ alison: donald trump's victory in the 2016 election took some of the nation by surprise. his support has remained largely unwavering despite the issues that have so far plagued his administration. a new special report in "the economist" examines what led to the president's rise and why politics may be forever changed. our guest is the u.s. editor and also the report's lead author and spent several weeks in states across the country to better understand the mentality of the president's steadfast backing. i am pleased to welcome him to the program. hi, john. what prompted this? >> i was interested in looking at the trump phenomenon from the ground up. it really feels like in 20, 30, 40 years time, people will be saying about the trump presidency, how did that happen?

there is one way to answer that which is to look at the campaign, the tweets, what is happening in the white house, what is happening on capitol hill. there is an entirely different way of looking at it from the bottom up, what did trump supporters think they were getting out of this deal? what if anything could he do that might upset them? where are the kind of limits of their support for him? alison: how did you decide where to go and to whom to speak? >> i tried to get a mix of places. when we talk about the trump phenomenon in politics, we think of downscale voters in west virginia, appalachia. he did do well in those places. he also did really well in some very fancy, upscale parts of new york and manhattan not far where we are filming this. palm beach, near mar-a-lago. the thing that struck me is if you talk to trump voters in these very different locales, what they say about the president is actually very similar.

they say he is a businessman, he is not a typical politician. he is a good man. the media is being tough on him. you will need to give him more time to do what he wants to do. the whole russian investigation is made up, etc. that kind of consistency of worldview prompted a question for me, which is, if people are not voting on pocketbook issues, they are not really voting on economics it seems to me. what are they voting on? alison: what is his appeal? you kind of come to the conclusion that it is his appeal. what is it? >> i think he has pioneered a kind of white identity politics. the minute you come out with a phrase like that, it sounds like you are accusing trump supporters of being racist. this is not what i am trying to do. i think america has become a much less racist country over the last few decades. there is support for interracial marriage and polling. there's a ton of signs of progress. at the same time, politics has

become even more racialized. if you look at some of the surveys of trump voters, there is this big american national election study done every presidential year. if you look at that, a large majority of people who voted for donald trump say whites in america need to work together to undo laws that are unfair to other whites. if that is not a white identity politics, i do not know what is. alison: that is an interesting phrase, laws that are unfair to whites. what falls under that category? >> i would imagine it would be things like affirmative action. a few other federal programs like this, but this is consistent with what a lot of sociologists and researchers have found in parts of rural america. "strangers in their own land" found this sense of mourning on

the part of some white rural america, longing for a time that is lost when men were on top, when it seemed easier to come out of high school and go straight into a job which you were secure in for life, could afford a car, a family holiday and those sorts of things. so trump clearly taps into that, but if you pick that as the limits of trump's support, you miss this upscale trump phenomenon, which to me is as interesting. alison: one of the things about the racial issue, white national politics, if you get a group of people of color together they will say it has always been there. it is just now there is a leader saying it is ok to express that, that this is not something that has gone away or gotten better, but for a while, it was something you were not allowed to express out loud. when you spoke to people, did you get any sense they were willing to talk about brown people and black people in a different way? >> people i asked the question to directly were a little bit defensive. often they went out of the way

to make the point about how they personally did not hold racist views and so forth. but i had a really interesting experience along these lines. i was in a town called coleman in north alabama. it is a largely white town, founded by the descendents of german immigrants. almost everyone there voted for donald trump. i was speaking to the mayor and i said, how much of this is about race? he said it does not have anything to do with race. there is this town nearby called colony which is entirely african american and all the folks there voted for donald trump, too. so i thought, hang on. i got straight in my car and headed down the road to colony. alison: good reporter. >> colony was fascinating because it was a little town founded after reconstruction at a time when some freed slaves were able to get 40 acres and a mule. not many people as you know got that deal, but some did.

the settlement had been there since the late 19th century. it was and is an entirely african american small-town. i went around there talking to people about how they viewed politics. they also agreed that race was much less of a problem in america. some of them had memories of schools being desegregated and so forth, some of the older folks i talked to there. i looked at the voter rolls. almost everyone in colony voted for hillary clinton. there's something interesting going on. america has become less racist on most objective measures, but politics has become more racialized. alison: what do you think is least understood about this group, about the devout trump supporter? >> i think the thing that is least understood, i will cheat a bit and say two things. one, i think if you just look at trump rallies in the 2016 campaign and red across that archetypal trump supporters, you might think of very large men in biker jackets and tattoos

shouting, "lock her up." the typical trump supporter is a typical republican. 90% of people who voted for mitt romney went on to vote for donald trump. is much more polite small-town america, where i spent much of my time during this reporting, small-town america is a very polite, nice place. trump supporters were unfailingly kind, nice, and polite. this idea it is some tremendous, angry, upsurge of emotion is not quite right. the second thing, just briefly, people like me who spend their time looking at public policy have a big tendency to overestimate how much people know about politics, how closely they are following politics. about 20% it seems of americans follow politics pretty closely. for the rest, they are not paying a lot of attention to what is going on. it is very easy to forget that when you are a news junkie like me. alison: what i thought was

interesting and a little bit sad was that many people you talked to did not have a basic understanding about which party stood for what. >> again, i found this really striking. it is the case when you talk to voters often that they jumble together a lot of points of view that do not fit neatly into one party or the other i have found, and yet there are consistent republicans or democrats. for them, what i did is i tried to find out if it was just a few people in my notebook or if that is true, if there's research that backs this up. the national election study says that about 30% of people who voted in 2016 cannot place republicans and democrats on a left-right axis. if you say which of these parties is in favor of more spending and which of these parties is in favor of cutting spending, about 30% of voters are not quite sure. a decent number of trump voters in 2016 thought the democrats

were the more conservative party than the republicans, and a not insignificant number of hillary clinton voters also thought democrats were more conservative than republicans. so these kind of really neat categories that i have used, that i use all the time as a writer and reporter, they suggest a level of political knowledge which is not entirely accurate. alison: i want to go back to something because it is something i am stuck on. when you describe the trump voters as kind and nice, we discussed this. i spent time with trump voters who were lovely people, really cared about their family. as someone who's parents went to segregated schools, and i'm not a dinosaur so it was not that long ago, how do the trump voters square with the haze of racism especially around the campaign? >> i think first, they would

deny it is there, and they don't hear the same thing voters with your family's experience or the voters whose parents might have immigrated from elsewhere here. i think the dial is adjusted differently. they do not think it is fair. they do not think in their personal lives their prejudiced. then there is a whole line of argument that says, well, the civil rights era was a long time, which of course it wasn't, and shouldn't the playing field be entirely leveled? is affirmative action some plot against my family and my children? alison: they feel the playing field is now unlevel at their disadvantage, that they are the victimized in some way? >> i think that is right. i think it comes across in race. i think there is also a bit of it in gender. so one of the things that was surprising about last year's

election was how little it was about gender. all the very large levels of support even among college-educated republican women for donald trump. quite a lot of trump supporters come again, if you look at the survey data and think it is better if a man is working and a woman is at home. it is a kind of social conservativism, not in an abortion, gay marriage kind of way. it is a social conservativism like in the 1950's. often these are women who themselves are working and do not necessarily want to be. they would rather have a situation where their husbands were being the breadwinner. so that was something that fascinated me as well and scrambles your categories a little bit when you go around talking to people. alison: it sounds like you talked to people who were a bit nostalgic. announcer: yeah, i think nostalgia is a huge thing. "make america great again" is an incredibly nostalgic message. a very surprising message for me looking into american politics.

the first rule of american politics i was told is you need to be the most forward-looking candidate, the most city-on-a-hill kind of candidate. and then you have this candidate, donald trump, who early on was going around saying america is a hellhole going down fast. the whole appeal of "make america great again," no one is quite specific on when it was great. or at least the president hasn't. and yet it is a deeply backward looking, deeply nostalgic appeal, and it is very powerful. alison: one thing i thought was particular interesting that you pointed out in your piece, your report, was the way people vote depends on their educational level. right? the more education you have, you tend to be more progressive. the less education, more conservative. it feels it is a self-perpetuating cycle.

you will have educated folks saying we know better how to run the country than you people without education. people without education say you do not know how it is to live in the world. and it goes around and around. from your conversations, was there anything you could see that would break that cycle? >> as you rightly observe, it is really hard to get out of it. if a political divide is over something like the income tax rate, you can imagine coming to a compromise about that. when a political divide comes about what sort of person are you, it becomes a lot harder to bridge. one of the things when i was reporting this was spend a lot of time in a well educated district of virginia around arlington, something like 35% of voters there have postgraduate degrees and went for hillary clinton by miles. the next day, i spent time in west virginia, the opposite end of the scale. people with very low levels of education relative to west virginia's eighth and big trump supporting territory.

and the mutual antipathy you describe there is really powerful. west virginia is a coal mining place. a lot of people you talk to there think the declining coal mining jobs are deliberately chosen by the fancy people with postgraduate degrees in virginia. you know, the level of mistrust bordering on hatred is something that shocked me. alison: it is also a level of not understanding each other coming from both sides because they live different lives. a lot of this is also about proximity, urban versus rural, as much as anything else. >> they do live very different lives. you see that at its most stark in the life expectancy numbers. i mean these two congressional districts i was talking about,

virginia and west virginia, the average male life expectancy in bits of west virginia's third is 16.5 years lower than it is in virginia's eighth district around arlington. these places are less than 200 miles apart. the difference is extraordinary. alison: something i had not thought about and it was interesting to read in your report was what you described as the california effect. we have all made it new york and the south or the northeast and the south, but there's an important part about the california contingent of the trump administration and trump ethos. can you explain that? >> that's right. if you look back in the 1990's in california, it was a wrenching time for racial politics. the republican party for a certain time tried to play on resentment against the rising latino minority.

there was a lot of politicking around spanish-language in schools and immigration and so forth. then at a certain point, the republican party made peace with all of that, but there was a whole load of california conservatives who were losing sight of that argument who took it to washington. the white house is full of sort of california refugees, people like steve bannon who spent time in hollywood as a film producer. stephen miller who works closely with him at the white house. quite a lot of the breitbart tendency in the white house seems to have grown up within white california that did not particularly like the way that state changed racially and has taken the fight nationally. alison: we are talking on a day when the president of the united states tweeted something very

personal about a member of the news media. is there anything president trump can do? does he have any achilles heel with his base? is there anything he could do or say that would shake their support? >> i think he has a huge amount of latitude with them. partly on things like this. people i talked to about the tweeting, often said things like, we don't really like him. we wish he was a bit more presidential, but then they sort of qualify that i saying, the news media is out to get him. it is a way for him to get his message across. we don't really like it, but, hey it is part of who he is. he is an unconventional politician. it.ike

it almost feels to me that once they made the decision to support a particular candidate, they are able to bend how they view the world to in order to fit. >> on the left and the right. cox i agree. i was writing mainly about trump supporters. i think the same thing happens on the left. one of the starkest illustrations of this, if you look at a policy issue, attitudes towards russia -- it used to be the case the republican party was the anti-communist party, the hostile to russia party, the -- vladimir putin was a big bogeyman. donald trump wins the nomination, gets elected, and republican voters have a much more favorable view of vladimir putin, and democratic voters heading in the opposite direction. both sides do this, i am sorry but that is a rather long answer to your question. i was much more struck by the latitude he has, and clearly he made the joke about being able to shoot somebody in the street, and people would forgive him, i do not think that is the case. within the realm of normal politics, i think he could get away with pretty much anything. >> he is their guy.

>> he is their guy. imagine you are a coal miner in west virginia. lots of democrats did not understand why people in coal mining towns in west virginia voted for a billionaire who showed up there and said, guys, you will have your jobs back. democrats look at that and say the president can't do that, he doesn't get to command the world price of coal. anyway coal comes from wyoming these days. america has a ton of natural gas from fracking. this is kind of hucksterism. but it is so much more powerful to turn up in a town and say, i am going to do the thing that you really want than it is to turn up in a town and say, i have got these initiatives for world broadband and job retraining and so forth, even those -- though those things might be more helpful politically, it comes down to political identity, who is on your side.

who is on the other side. i think donald trump has a genius for convincing people that he is on their side. that is really powerful stuff in politics. >> what do you anticipate in the next few years with the trump administration? do you anticipate a reelection? >> the thing that has struck me so far is looking at the first five months of the you have the attempt to repeal and replace obamacare, which has been a mess in congress right now. we have a special counsel looking at what has been happening at the white house. you have various promises the president made -- building the wall. tearing up nafta. kickedve been sort of into the long grass.

you would have thought, given that that the loss of his supporters would have given up on him by now. that hasn't been the case. there is a bit of movement in the polls. since then, it has been stable. my hunch is that people will not desert him. as for reelection, it is obviously too early to say. in my opinion, people are too quick to underestimate the ability to get reelected. if you look at the approval ratings, the economy is strong, imagine where it will be in a few years time. i don't know i think people are too quick to write him off. there is a real power to what he has been able to do. which is, i think, not like something we have seen before in an american president. my concern, it is something that worries me, is that it could be more enduring than people think. allison: john, from the economist, it is called "trump's america." it is a fascinating read. thank you so much. ♪

, starringw movie three nuns frustrated with their restrictive lives. -- "littleefuge

hours" have been -- here is a look. ♪ >> hi dad. >> hi sweetheart. look at that smile. about some guy who's going to magically come and save life. >> did he just smile at you? why did he smile. who is that? >> i don't know. sister alessandra. >> they spin on me, they called me a jew. >> homosexuality. are you rolling your eyes. >> you are rolling your eyes.

music] >> one of you thinks you are quite the jester. >> girls can be tough. i will know life. -- not lie. very tough. >> you know who my father is! never been touched by a man. >> no, never. pleasurethe greatest on earth. >> eight mortal sin, you would not get into heaven. >> yet, well then you probably should not do it. ♪ >> hers c, revelation.

>> eating blood. >> you think i have never written down "eating blood" before? rare, you have the distinction of being someone who is able to use their college studies in your work. you had a minor in medieval studies and you are able to use it into film. you are in a class on sexual transgression in medieval work? >> it. >> when you first read the story, when did you think you could apply it to film? >> i was alone away by the history of it because i was growing up in america, not familiar with what it was like to grow up in the middle ages because we are a 200 year-old country. past aren'tn the

like we thought they were. the religious. intowere kind of forced that. for various reasons they were stuck in this life and did not want to be there and were rebelling all the time. we were reading about what it was like for those people. that sort of irony of what we think they are and the way they ially are got my attention in always wanted to do something like that and it was in the back of my mind for many years and the opportunity to came up to do something about it. a approachy, taking that was sort of more humanist, cutting through the fake aura of what people were like to what they truly were.

his whole goal was sort of taking these people that we assume are these highfalutin religious people and showing that there was an element of hypocrisy and pent-up repression that did not have a chance to be discussed in his time. >> was that your goal? >> yes. very much. host: let's talk about the nuns, they are sort of evil mean girls? aubrey: i guess you could describe them that way. they are girls and women that were forced into being nuns back in that day. not everyone that was a nun was religious, they had a lot of pent-up aggression. for those reasons. host: your character especially. she seems pretty salty and saucy.

aubrey: yes. i think she sees herself as a protector of the other sisters, she is definitely a more dominant force. host: one of the things that i loved and laughed out loud at in the first way seconds of dialogue, the nuns are cursing. was that intentional to hit it right out of the gate? let people know the film will be a little different, be prepared? jeff: the moment was played for a laugh, but the overall approach was to make it feel contemporary with dialogue so we could identify with these people as opposed to seeing them as something that is more rarefied. when the author wrote the book, he wrote it in a dialect for the people. it was less like a joke and more a way of humanizing these people. for us to connect. you can have options, you can have people speeding with a british accent or italian accent, and all of that seemed like the wrong choice. with the sort of speed and tone

of the comedy at was trying to attempt, i thought the best way to achieve that was to have people talk the way we talk now. we could identify more. host: dave, you have perhaps the most challenging part in the movie. for a good part of it, you don't speak. dave: right. host: your character pretends to be a deaf mute. when you're thinking about that, we do meet you in the beginning and you fall silent, how did you prepare for that? how do you decide you would play that? dave: it was the thing that i was most nervous about. i had several conversations with jeff about because i was nervous that i was going to be sitting there in scenes doing nothing. just blank faced, doing nothing. ultimately, he had me think about it in a different way where he had me approach this has more of a challenge. i had to get across all of these emotions without speaking and pretending i can't hear anyone,

hopefully that comes across in the reactions on my face. it definitely was difficult and i give jeff a lot of credit. i leaned on him during this seems a lot to make sure that what i was thinking came across on my face. host: talking about faces -- for the three actresses you really have to use your face, a lot. you are covered up from head to toe in a habit. aubrey: oh my god, it was most of the movie. host: did you just concentrate realize?did you or did it come to you after

wardrobe? aubrey: we didn't have a rehearsal. that was something that, once we put fully all of the wardrobe on, we were kind of like, wow, here we go. it just kind of happened. host: you are lucky you have three actresses with the greatest eyes. i was like, who has that express of eyes? let's take a look at a clip with you as the sister. we will get a sense of who she is. >> what is going on with sister? she has been so out of it. >> dad is probably visiting or something. >> again? >> she is delusional. >> yes she is so delusional. >> she is pathetic. just because your dad gives money to a convent does not mean you will get everything you want. >> the other day she was staring out of the window for 10 minutes, not moving. >> really? >> probably daydreaming about a guy to take her away. >> good luck. >> i know. so, what was mother saying to you earlier? >> nothing. mind your own business.

host: how is that for you guys come in terms of being in a location, in italy, in a remote part of tuscany? where can i see that in your performance, that you were there and caring about the historical accuracy? aubrey: i don't know. it was great. it felt, everything felt real. we were walking around the round -- grounds of a 14th century convent. it was great for acting and for getting into those characters, i think. dragging that come up when the donkey down the kind of thing was

definitely a moment where, wow, this is really hard. people had to do a lot of crazy stuff. it was helpful. dave: i think a lot of people will try to reduce this movie to a raunchy none comedy, but because of where we shot and the effort that jeff put into making it all historically accurate, it really is a beautiful art film, disguised as a raunchy comedy. i don't know, i think that adds to the comedy, when you are in these beautiful locations that are shot so well and we are playing everything very seriously, as opposed to trying to play into the jokes. host: i read that you described jeff as having a strong point of view, and that really drew you to the project. tell me what you mean by that, and why that is useful to you as an actor? dave: just because, with a director, that is what you want. you want somebody that knows exactly what they want and with jeff, he just -- i don't know how to describe it exactly, he sees the world in a unique, amazing way, and i want to jump on board with those people.

i wanted to take me on this journey because i could never come up with this myself. i am serious to see it through his eyes. >> i slept with another man's wife, he is a noble man, he is my master. >> that is adultery. that is a serious sin. >> sometimes she would put her mouth around my sex. >> yeah well, that is sodomy. that is a serious sin. >> is it considered sodomy if i place my mouth on her sex while she had her's around mine? >> why would you do that? >> she liked it.

host: that is dave franco in the little hours, he is joining me with aubrey plaza and jeff bana. storyas an outline of the then you, as a director clearly shaped the film and the direction and the narrative. how does that work -- you as a director with a strong point of view, an outline, and improv? jeff: i think improvisation is a vague generic term. it is a spectrum. there are movies where people don't know the scene until they get into it. i think my approach is a little more mannered. it did break down what people are saying. it was not like a one sentence line per scene, it was spelled out what this person was saying. i didn't want the actual lines written for them. i wanted in their own words -- it in their own words. host: why? jeff: there is something contrived i feel where an actor is forced to say certain lines

that might not be natural. in my first movie i tried to make the dialogue written such a way that it feels the way people talk so people are trailing off and there is overlapping dialogue. i realized a faster way of doing that is to actually have the actors inspired to figure lines and have a little bit of the unknown added to it so when they say they lines and the actor is saying the response, they're not anticipating and waiting for them to finish, but there are actually listening and more present. i tried that with my second movie and i liked the result, i wanted to try to get on this one. adding to the fact this was supposed to have a collect wheel -- colloquial field, it would be a noun -- nice counterpoint to this filmmaking in the beautiful locations. we generally would have three or four takes, i would sort of shape their performance and give suggestions for lines and tell them to edit stuff out. by the third or fourth take we

were locked in for the rest of the coverage it wasn't the kind of thing where we would throw things on the wall and see what would stick, it was a tool for the dialogue specifically. more authentic. host: aubrey, what did you learn about yourself from this project? aubrey: i learned that there are all different kinds of improv. i learned that, yes, it is a different kind of movie and style that high of ever been in before. i learned a lot about how i am in that situation and how i can kind of stay rooted in my own plan for what i came up with for the character, but i can collaborate with the director on every scene and try to kind of weave those together. it is a different kind of process.

it is challenging, but rewarding in different ways than i am used to. host: the timeframe was fairly fast, 20 days? what effect does that have on the actors and the work you do? you have a limited amount of time and this has to get done. dave: i guess that adds a little pressure, but you try not to think about it. i mean, again, it is like jeff knew what he wanted and he knew what he needed from us and he guided us in a really specific way. one thing that he was doing and just bringing it back to improv is, a lot of movies where there is improv, actors would go on long tangents that have nothing to do with driving the story forward, and jeff made sure we did not do that. he simplified that. host: aubrey, you are a producer and actor. you have two elements, but you know you need to protect your skill and craft and what you are working on how do you balance the two?

aubrey: i would say that once we started shooting, i was really focusing on being an actor. in preproduction i had different things that i -- i helped the research on nun services, the chapel services because they needed dialogue. john c. reilly wasn't going to improvise a service. i think being a producer on the film was a little bit like hosting the cast and crew with

jeff. we have this group of people in the middle of nowhere in tuscany. we're trying to keep this ship afloat and anticipate disasters and think on our feet, and just kind of make good choices and take care of everyone. i think that is the overall, you know, description of what happens as a producer on a movie like that. for me, it was mostly about acting, but i would kind of help in whatever way i could. just -- jeff: setting the tone. she titled the movie. aubrey: whatever needs to be done. host: in the promotion of the film you have embraced some of the criticism. badge ofken it on as a honore. criticism from various catholic groups. before you start of the film, did you folks, as producer and director, and friends, sit down and say, ok, this is what we are

doing, we know this could be thorny for some people. what were those conversations like? jeff: i was not over thinking that kind of stuff. it did not occur to me until we got locations in italy we had to tell people it was called "the little hours" and it was an adaptation of the decameron. even though the book was written in 1350, it still ruffles feathers in italy. catholic country. i think it is a really important part of their culture and history but at the same time, i think it is a bit controversial. that was sort of a reality check that maybe some people would be offended. for me, it was more of an in -- expression of what happened in history. of course people will choose to not want to look at the past, for me i think shining a light on it is super interesting. ♪

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