♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: tensions continue to escalate this week between president trump and his counterparts in north korea and iran. in his first speech before the general assembly last week, president trump threatened to destroy north korea and called iran a rogue nation. president trump: the united states has great strength and patience. but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy north korea. rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.

the iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of democracy. it has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos. charlie: over the weekend, the president called kim jong-un a madman and wrongly accused iran of firing missiles. joining me are nick burns, professor of diplomacy at harvard's kennedy school. and michael morrell, the host of a new cbs podcast. i'm pleased to have both of them here. where are we in terms of diplomacy and contingent planning?

>> the fundamental problem is the north koreans are a few months away, six to 12, from demonstrating the capability of putting a u.s. city at risk of nuclear attack. there are three pieces you have to have. one is nuclear weapons. the ability to get a nuclear yield out of explosion at 100%. we know they have that. they have demonstrated it. they have tested it. got that guaranteed.

the second is the ability to deliver a payload the distance you want it to go. they have done a couple of tests that demonstrated the capability to put a missile as far east as chicago or detroit. we don't know 100% what the weight of the payload they tested was, so we don't know exactly how far it could deliver a nuclear weapon. as far as chicago or detroit. we are not 100% how much the payload weighed. that is a big determinant of how far it can go. check for sure on the weapon. close to a check on the missile. third piece is, can you make a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile? the intelligence community thinks they can do that. the last piece is, can you make it all work? can you make all of the electronics work under the intense vibrations of takeoff and reentry and the heat and pressure? on that, we don't know where they are. the consensus view is they are getting very close to that. they are demonstrating that capability. the president has said they will not be allowed to achieve that capability. hence, the fundamental problem we have. i think diplomacy is the right approach.

i think putting pressure on them is the right approach. after 25 years of pressuring them, i am not 100% sure, in fact i am uncertain that will stop him from ultimately demonstrating that capability. charlie: does the language of the united nations, does it make you realize america is serious and angry about this? or does it make them more certain in their desire to do something that will hurt the united states? nick: i think the language of the president over the last eight or nine days confuses them. what we need to do is go back to what we did so effectively in the cold war. strategic deterrence. he is a despicable leader. he is probably evil in many ways. but he is not a madman. we assume he is rational. what eisenhower would have done at the podium last week, or

reagan, or bill clinton, would have been to have said the following -- the united states is not going to be the aggressor. we will not attack north korea. but should they seek to attack, we will respond with overwhelming force. that is strategic deterrence. that is what secretary mattis is saying. it is with secretary tillerson is saying. it is what general dunford said this week in congressional testimony. it is what all of our experts are saying. but the president has come out with this bombastic language -- charlie: destroy your nation. nick: it is too hot for the united nations. it loses its friends. it almost makes kim jong-un to be the victim. i think what the president has been able to do with mattis and tillerson is move the chinese a little bit. we have got to practice strategic deterrence. we have to envelop in a bear hug

the south koreans and japanese, instead of what the president said about canceling free trade. third, sanctions. let me say something positive about the trump administration. in the last week, they have announced two sets of sanctions. sectoral and financial sanctions last week. this week, sanctions against individual companies, some chinese, trading with the north koreans. this is what president bush or president obama did so effectively with the iranians. they increased the leverage and the pain. they raised the cost to the iranians and drove them to the negotiating table. that sanctions piece is critical. if the chinese central bank is serious and instructs the other banks in china to shut down lending to north korea, that is the kind of pressure, but it is diplomatic. it is sanctions. it is not making ourselves into the aggressor. i think that is a tactical mistake. charlie: suppose you were advising the president on the diplomatic front. if the north koreans came to the administration and said we will

put a freeze exactly where we are now. we will freeze it if you eliminate all hostile actions against our country. would you take that deal? nick: i would not immediately. i would open negotiations on some variation. what we probably cannot do right now is agree to a deal that says if the north koreans freeze their nuclear development in place, we will freeze all american military activities. what you want to do in a negotiation is drive up the economic pressure of sanctions, but you also want to have the military preparedness and strength. we have an alliance obligation to south korea and japan to defend them. some variation of that might be a final, messy compromise. but i don't think you agree to it at the beginning. michael: they will not make that offer. they want the same kind of strength going into negotiation. kim jong-un wants to demonstrate the capability of being able to attack a u.s. city, and then he will be happy to have a negotiation about where we go

from here in this relationship. charlie: he has more arrows in his quiver? michael: absolutely. charlie: do have a feeling about the notion there is anything short of a full-scale attack we can do militarily, in terms of cyber, being able to shut them down from a power standpoint? nick: just with iran in the last decade, we have to use all instruments of american power to try to weaken him and coerce him to the negotiating table. i agree with mike. you have to have a rigorous benefit analysis of an attack. there are 30 million south koreans living below the dmz. 200,000 americans and 35,000 american troops. the heavily -- the most heavily mined place on or. the north koreans have a tremendous conventional capacity with artillery. you would have to assume in first days or weeks of the war, maybe hundreds of thousands dead. that is not an exaggeration.

that is why you see serious people, general dunford, secretary mattis, going to the hill and speaking publicly saying diplomacy is the way we go. we get back to rhetoric. as the president keeps punching kim jong-un in this kind of eight-year-old taunting war going on, you listen to mattis in india this week, he has diplomacy eight or nine times in a paragraph. secretary tillerson. they are the calming influence. charlie: we don't want war with the north koreans. nick: that is a very important signal to the north koreans. michael: the problem with the punching. one problem is he does fear, incorrectly, that the united states wants to get rid of him, his regime, and wants to reunite the north and south. he sees these weapons as the ultimate deterrence against us doing that.

when the president uses the kind of language he is using, it reinforces in kim the reason why he wants to have these weapons. the second is, and this is a strange thing about north korea, they use the vitriol like no other country i know but are incredibly sensitive to it. one thing you hear from the north koreans all the time is when south korea says something not nice about kim jong-un, the north koreans get their back up. this language not only reinforces their policy but it is dangerous because it forces them into a corner. nick: the problem with tough rhetoric that plays to the president's base is it introduces into the mind of kim jong-un and his advisors a doubt. are the americans in a defensive posture? will they only attack us if we attack them? could president trump be serious? if they think he is serious,

that we might attack them first, you have the risk of conflict. they put their troops on alert. we have american aircraft this week flying just outside the 12-mile airspace limit. i worry the rhetoric is destabilizing to strategic deterrence and deeply unwise. michael: the chinese did something interesting three or four weeks ago during the height of the kim/trump rhetoric. the chinese said if the united states preemptively attacks north korea, we will fight on the side of north korea. and then they turned around and said if north korea were to attack first, north korea is on its own. that was a message of deterrence to both of us. it was the chinese being the adults in the room. very interesting. united states of america used to be the adult in the room. charlie: is there some

back-channel communication going on now between somebody advising the north korean leader who speaks to the president? nick: i don't know. i'm not in a position to know. charlie: would you expect that to be happening? nick: i would hope so. in a situation like this if you , do not have a diplomatic relationship with a government, and no one in the current government admits to meeting kim jong-un, you need to establish communication. i think secretary tillerson has been trying to do that. in the summer, he was saying if there is a pause in some of these nuclear and missile tests, maybe we can graduate to the next level. kim jong-un didn't give him a chance. there has been a flurry of tests of both varieties. i see secretary tillerson and secretary mattis as adults. i think they are trying to move us toward negotiations. they understand this is a long-term struggle with north korea. it is not going to be resolved this year or next. we need to get to the negotiating table probably for a compromise that will be deeply unsatisfying to people who want to end the crisis. but if you can avoid a war and freeze the north koreans in

place, that is not a bad outcome if you can get it. michael: here is one of the things you have to worry about in a war scenario. when i described the three pieces they need to put a u.s. city at risk, i said we know a lot about one. we know mostly about the other. and the one in the middle we don't know a lot about. at the end of the day, we don't really know what their capabilities are today. if kim jong-un fired an icbm with a nuclear weapon on it today, it might work. jim clapper is saying publicly we have to assume, prudence requires that in military planning and diplomatic thinking, you have to assume he might be able to attack us successfully today with a nuclear weapon. going to war today not only risks definite war with south korea, between north korea and south korea, but maybe a nuclear

strike on korea, maybe on japan, and maybe a nuclear strike on the united states of america. that is how serious this is. charlie: let me turn to iran. they also suffered some rhetorical assault from the president. he said not only was the deal an embarrassment but he called iran a corrupt regime and rogue nation. why is he doing that? why was that necessary? what was the point? michael: let me tee up the problem and let my diplomatic friend solve it for us. charlie: i will sit back and listen. michael: there are two buckets. one is the iranian nuclear weapons program. the second is iranian misbehavior in the region. their own conducting terrorism, their support to terrorists, their support to insurgents, desire for regional influence, desire that israel be wiped off the face of the planet. that whole set of issues. right?

on this first issue, i believe the jcpoa, the nuclear deal has put that issue in a box for the next 10 to 15 years. it is not perfect, but it is pretty darn good because it has put them in a box for 10 to 15 years. as far as i know, the iranians are living up to almost the entirety of the agreement. there are a handful of small issues where they are not in compliance. but those are minor issues. the president had to make a decision about how to handle the first one, and he also needs to make a decision on how to handle the second one. how do we disincentivize, deter, the iranians from this misbehavior in the region? that is the second thing he has to decide that has to be done against the following backdrop which is the most interesting internal politics in iran in a long time. there is a real struggle

internally playing out publicly between the hardliners and what i call the centrists, many people would call them moderates. charlie: rouhani. he is a centrist. it is a fight, a struggle over whether iran will remain a revolutionary nation or going to be a normal nation. it was fought publicly -- charlie: i asked the prime minister of iran. he said we want to be both. michael: you can't be both. both cannot exist, coexist at the same time. this debate played out publicly on the debate stage between rouhani and this very conservative candidate for president. the iranian people voted and spoke overwhelmingly they wanted to go in a certain direction. the question in trying to manage the nuclear issue, president has to make a decision soon, and managing the regional

misbehavior, how do you do that in a way that does not strengthen the hardliners and weaken the centrists? nick is going to tell us -- charlie: before you do that. when you talk about supporting terrorism, the charge against iran is they are heavily involved against the saudis in yemen. that is one. go ahead. nick: iran itself conducts terrorism around the world against israeli and jewish targets and the targets of its neighbors. charlie: how does it do that? nick: it has an apparatus -- doing?: what is it i am asking because -- assassinating -- nick: the saudi ambassador in the united states several years ago. charlie: that was not carried d? out. it was interrupted. nick: it was interrupted. there was an attack in europe several years ago.

the iranians were involved in that. i think it is fair to say they are the only state in the world is still practices terrorism as a statecraft. they provide support to terrorist groups, hezbollah, hamas, and others. hezbollah could not exist without the support it gets from iran. support to insurgents in the region trying to overthrow sunni regimes in yemen, iran, and saudi arabia. their support for people like president assad is another issue. that is what i mean by regional misbehavior. nick: to use mike's construct of these two big problems, i think president trump is right to try to push the iranians back on the big struggle for power in the middle east. president trump is wrong to try to wiggle out of the iran nuclear deal. why? there is a big shia/sunni struggle for power. charlie: we have taken sides and

said we support the saudis who represent the sunnis. nick: sunnis. -- president trump was right to do that. charlie: why was he right? i thought president obama's tactic was different. not saying you're coming. behind the saudis. i thought president obama's tactic was to try to recognize iran has a legitimate interest in the region and try to get the saudis to talk to them. the foreign minister said at this table we cannot get them to talk to us. the foreign minister said, we cannot get them to talk to us. isn't that what the president wanted to do, obama, he wanted the saudis to talk to the iranians? nick: it is hard to do that when the iranians are launching military offenses through the hutu rebels in yemen trying to establish a line from tehran to damascus to lebanon. it is as if the great shia power of iran is punching a big hole in the sunni world challenging the power of the sunni state. this is an existential issue for the gulf region and israel.

as we all know, israeli relations with these countries are the best ever because they have a common enemy. i think president trump has been right. despite my deep respect for president obama and support for him, i did not think he was effective on this. we have to be sending military aid and acting politically to isolate the iranians. charlie: we made a big deal with the saudis to sell them military equipment. nick: we did. i think we were right to do that. on the other hand, as you know, i was the point person on iran for the bush administration, we spent our time sanctioning the iranians. we never got to the negotiating table. i think it would be a great mistake for president trump to walk away from the nuclear deal. charlie: why shouldn't we be trying to have a better relationship with iran so you can push back wherever they are being adventurous, wherever there is behavior that does not follow what you hope would come out of the nuclear deal?

we thought the nuclear deal with -- would lead to some betterment of relations because you could build on that. that has not happened. people on the right will argue that as soon as they release the sanctions, the money coming into iran would immediately turn to support their misbehavior. nick: i supported the nuclear deal, president obama's deal, because i thought if we could freeze them for 10 to 15 years, good for us. strategic, tactical advantage for us. they get sanctions relief. we put restrictions on them. if we walk away from the deal, they get sanctions relief and all the restrictions are off so we lose big time. charlie: you can't rebuild the sanctions. nick: there are people more idealistic about the iranians who argued in 2015 for the deal saying it will change the behavior and middle east. we have seen nothing like that. charlie: i don't know if they said that. nick: some of them said that.

we have seen nothing like that. and they are a threat to israel and the arab partners we have had for generations. charlie: should we view them as a hostile power to american interests? therefore, anybody against iran is our friend? michael: i agree with nick 100%. on the nuclear issue, they are in compliance. stepping away from it would be a strategic mistake. it would split us from our allies. it would play to the hardliners. it would send them back to working on the nuclear program. it would create in a few months a nuclear crisis. we already have one with north korea. let's not start another one with iran. leave that alone. second, i agree we need to find places in the middle east where we can push back on what the iranians are doing to raise the cost to them, to determine.

-- two deter them. -- to deter them. charlie: what is an example of that where we can find a place to push back to deter the iranians? what policy would do that? michael: we are doing that as we speak. there are u.s. special forces on the ground in yemen that were put there by the trump administration to support the saudis. that is supporting our allies and pushing back on what the iranians are trying to achieve in yemen. that is a perfect example. we should be willing to do things like that to raise the cost. we should, in order to not disrupt the political debate in iran, do as much of this with our allies as we can. when we do it by ourselves, we become something the hardliners -- charlie: your argument is we need to band with the people who want to isolate iran. when we do it by ourselves, we michael: we banded together and isolated them on the nuclear issue. let's band together and isolate them on the regional issues. charlie: so they hurt, and therefore may change the

behavior. michael: right. is syria.other place we have american special forces on the ground. it is a fluid situation where the eastern half of the country is up for grabs. we want to deny iran basic control of the syrian space with the syrian government, given what that future would portend for the syrian people. charlie: "the new york times" had a piece on the front page in the past week. "assad in full control." nick: he has survived. he is in control. he is stronger than he has been since the civil war began. on a line from damascus all the way to a level, there is control. idlib province is under siege right now. the eastern part of the country is up for grabs. charlie: with the russians on facebook buying ads and a range of other things, it is clear it was a policy of the russian government to disrupt the american democratic process.

this is apart from what happened with hacking. michael: i think we've learned two important things in the last 72 hours. one is that the russian propaganda in the united states went well beyond just the elections. they were playing deeper in u.s. society. they were playing in the black lives matter issue trying to divide americans on race. that is one thing we learned. the second thing we learned is they are still doing it today. today. within a few hours of president trump and the nfl scrumming with

each other, the russians were playing on that issue, trying to divide america on that issue. they have not stopped. they are still doing it today. charlie: how are they doing it? michael: they have fake accounts. they are starting to be uncovered. they have fake accounts. they also use bots, robots, computers sending out these messages, these tweets, these facebook posts to social media that gets their message across. nick: nine months into his presidency, our president has not defended the country against these actions mike just described. any other president would have formed a bipartisan committee to investigate and raise our defenses. it does get to the credibility of 2018 and 2020 elections. it goes beyond it. charlie: it is urgent. nick: it is urgent.

the fact that the president this week denies there is a problem means congress needs to exercise its constitutional responsibility and take this matter into its own hands, as they did with the russia sanctions. charlie: hillary clinton on this program on monday night on -- was rigorous in calling for a bipartisan investigating committee to get to the bottom of this. nick: she is right. it has to happen. the executive and legislative have been tussling since 1789 over who has power in foreign affairs. congress has to take it if the president is not going to exercise it. charlie: thank you both. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪ charlie: president trump was in

new york for the opening of the yuan general assembly. he focused on a new axis of evil. venezuela, iran, and north korea. he announced executive orders aimed at halting the nuclear program. joining me now is the chief international correspondent. outside of my own cbs news she is my favorite international correspondent. great to have you.

lise: great to be on. charlie: just talk about the as ther you at the bbc chief international correspondent. are you on one plane after another from -- and from one hotspot to the other? e: i see everyday and is not possible because i am not on tv every day. there are times i am off tv and it is my role is covering the main stories of the day. you also cover the main stories of the day. in the last six years it has often taken me to places like syria or iraq, the gaza strip. many of the main stories of the day are not historical, but often frontline coverage in these terrible and terrifying wars of our time.

charlie: have you seen anything like that in all of your international coverage? lise: we are witnessing the most documented war ever. television has brought the distant war into the living rooms of america. this is something everyone can watch. all of the institutions, the great powers have proved to be unable or unwilling to end the war and this war stopped being about syria a long time ago. there are so many powers with so many interests, these are proxies, they are worried about the kurds, saudi arabia is there the kurds, about

saudi arabia is worried about iran, america has played a certain role, not the kind that it's arab allies would want, a -- iran is there defending its interests, russia is there. everyone has something they want from syria. unfortunately if you drill down it is not about the welfare of the syrians -- and i said from the beginning that the fate of one man, president assad, has mattered more than 22 million people -- whether it is for those who say he must stay or go and here we are approaching the seventh year of what started as a peaceful uprising. president assad is still in power, and the opposition has lost any territorial foothold that could challenge president assad. charlie: do they have credibility with the syrian people. lyse: more than half of syria's prewar population is either

displaced inside syria, dad, or a refugee abroad. that is syria today. many fear that it has been an existential crisis to syria, that syria as they knew it no longer exists. you sit with syrians and you can see they don't want to say it. they want to believe that something called syria still exists. and will have to say it does. but when we are looking at now is jordan have an influence in the south, turks have influence in the north, the russians and a -- the russians and iranians having influence where president assad prevailed. it is not a full partition. it has not been flipped. there are definitely tensions pulling it apart. but there are people trying to pull it back together. i think there are many narratives about syrians not , there is nothing that is black and white. there's a kaleidoscope of interests. a kaleidoscope is correct because a kaleidoscope is constantly changing. you have people who shift their allegiances, it deals with russia toward the end of last

year which ended in a negotiated which was for the northern city of aleppo and you did quite a lot of reporting on that. look at the region, is it in anyone's interest led alone syria's? in the last two years even saudi arabia would say we do not want the state to collapse in syria. it is not in our interest for president assad to precipitously go. charlie cole and they are looking for some kind of transition. foreign policy has to be out there and for their domestic interests. president trump has decided that the interest is in the fight against the so-called islamic state. the hard reality is that they are willing to put their

aircraft into the sky to fight against the so-called islamic state, regarded as a threat to the world. they've accepted that president assad isn't about to go. he is not going to go voluntarily and is not going to be toppled military. -- militarily. right now the negotiators are not really going anywhere. even those who accept that say that if there is to be a future for syria, there has to be a change of leadership. that has to come from within syria itself. following the negotiations for the past few years, the syrian delegation has never indicated they are ready to go for a political transition. the words they use in damascus is "a government of national unity." in other words, we are not giving you defense, interior, finance. if you didn't defeat us on the battlefield, why can you defeat us on the negotiating table?

i think what the u.n. envoy, what world powers, and i think even russia understands -- because russia and iran and china are the ones who are going to get the big contracts cut -- -- that is what they talk about in syria now. they don't want to go into nationbuilding. they have the money nor the interest. the eu foreign policy chief is saying we've got some money, but if you want this money, you have to engage in a political transition. president assad and his supporters buy it? that's where the syrian crisis is now. charlie: there's another crisis between saudi arabia and iran. it is seen in syria to a degree. -- it is seen in yemen, it is seen in syria to a degree. where does this battle between shia and sunni, between iran and its allies, and between saudi

arabia and its allies and -- and its allies? lyse: it comes down to a battle of power between the main sunni and shia powers. charlie: when he was elected, president trump went to riyadh. and that side was reflected in his u.n. speech when he lashed out against iran. lyse: right. to use his words, "the murderous regime of iran." is the i think most people would second one. say it is not essentially a doctrinal fight, a religious fight. it is a political fight between saudi arabia and iran. they are vying for influence across the region. saudi arabia does feel threatened by what they see, they still see it despite iran's

iran evenenials, that under sanctions, they became a power in iraq, and yemen. charlie: shia wanted power in iraq. malady was close to it. i think when you get down to it, it is about power. it is about access to the government, access to money, access to positions, access to determining the future course of a country. the saudis are trying to get more involved in iraq because they want to challenge iran on its spheres of influence. i think that is where you see this, because it is interesting. when you speak to senior saudis, they say the battle in syria is less about president assad. that is officially why they are there. it is about iran. that is the biggest fault line, one of the biggest fault lines,

possibly the biggest, now fracturing the middle east, versus the smaller one between qatar, saudi arabia, and the emirates. charlie: why don't the saudis at some point say, enough is enough, they are supporting people that are opposed to us and they are supporting terrorism? that's what they said about qatar. they said, we've got these 13 demands. turns out most of them boil down to not so much al jazeera and all those other things, but boiled down to some sense of please stop supporting revolutions against us and our allies. yes or no? you tell me, you're there. what is at the heart of this? again, i think it comes down to power. in their eyes, qatar, from its inception, has been a maverick

rogue nation. they punch above their weight. you listen to the qatari, they say we should be able to forge our own independent policy. we have big ambitions and we are very wealthy. charlie: we've play all size, we have a big american base there. lyse: let's be honest, they hosted the taliban of afghanistan. that wasn't really a maverick move. the united states wanted them to do that. they also gave refuge to hamas. the united states was also very aware of that. they also given refuge to radical clerics who go on al jazeera and condemn the monarchs in the gulf, condemn the saudis, so the saudis see it as a direct threat. in this battle there are rights and wrongs of both sides. charlie: how will it end? it will take a long time.

president has said, oh, this is easy. this is something i can do. the west and the europeans tend to think that it is a squabble. can you just get along? your political unity is being affected, your financial unity is being affected. they say it is much deeper. they feel threatened by qatar, but it is equally true -- take the one phrase president trump used time and time again in his speech and some ways hypocritically, "sovereignty." qatar sees themselves as a sovereign nation. they do not see the muslim brotherhood is a thread. it is not regarded as a terrorist nation by all the world's nations. the saudis and egyptians and emirati don't like it. as a threat. president trump got the emir of qatar and the crown prince of saudi arabia to talk to each other.

apparently the call didn't go that badly. but the way they played it out, it just set off sparks again because they then presented it as being different. charlie: thank you for coming. great to have you here. chief international correspondent for the bbc. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

charlie: alfred hitchcock's film "psycho" was hailed as a classic upon its release in 1960. the unexpected violent murder of janet lee's character shocked audiences across the world. roger ebert wrote that the scene remains the most effective slashing in movie history. alexandre philippe's new documentary "7852" offers a new look. analysis into the making of the shower scene and its profound effect on cinema. here's a look at the trailer. >> i once made a movie. it was intended to cause people to scream and yell. i am her fight to find -- horrified to find that some people took it seriously. >> it was actually the first time in the history of movies where it wasn't safe to be in the movie theater. >> when a moment of violence is

so suggestive, so unlike anything you have seen. >> murder was now going to be an acceptable part of entertainment. >> "psycho" you thought could happen to you. this is the first movie that showed you could be naked alone in the shower, and someone is going to come in and just stab you. >> it had to be done in impression is to clean. the head, the feet, the hands. >> he has broken the covenant for filmmaker an audience, and the audience cannot wait to see more. ♪ charlie: i am pleased to have alexandre philippe at this table. welcome. what is it for you? was it an obsession with hitchcock or an obsession with this particular scene?

alexandre: i think it was very much and his work. there are being -- with hitchcock -- i think it was very much an obsession with hitchcock and his work. grown-up and watching his movies over and over again in switzerland, there was a point where i started wondering, why do i keep going back to these movies? obviously they are extremely entertaining, but there is also something he is doing. becoming a film maker, i think mr. hitchcock has become an endless source of inspiration for me. charlie: why is it that this "psycho" has this kind of impact on audiences? alexandre: there's so many reasons that "psycho" broke a number of taboos and changed profoundly cinema, but also the way that we watch movies.

back in the day, people were walking in out of a theater with this idea that you have to line up to wait for a movie to begin was brand-new. it was part of the marketing of the movie. he did that because he did not want people to walk in on the middle of the shower scene. i think when you look at the shower scene -- it is frankly the ultimate cinematic trick. i fully believe that this is something hitchcock had been working towards his entire life. he saw an opportunity when he read the book to have this sort of epic murder in the bathtub. it is so fascinating to me that he took seven days to shoot this one scene, something that had never been done before and probably has not been done since. charlie: this is what your movie is about. alexandre: the movie really focuses on very narrowly the shower scene. i am a big believer in looking

at details as a way for me to investigate hitchcock and his craft, and to talk about cinema. the scene -- i've been working now three years full-time on it -- and i feel like i am just scratching the surface, getting to the point where i am starting to understand it. i could be working on that scene for the rest of my life and never get to the bottom of it. charlie: this is janet leigh's body double recalling her audition with hitchcock. here it is. >> i was 21 years old, a pinup model. i was working with the photographer, and he said that universal was looking for somebody to pose in a film, so i called and made an appointment. i went and spoke with mr. hitchcock, and basically had to

strip down, got dressed again, and then was interviewed by janet leigh. i had to strip down for her, too. just to my underpants, but anyway. my body was very similar to hers, so i got hired. i had to report for makeup one or two days later, and there is the red light flashing, no admittance, all of this, and i thought here they are expecting a stripper. i was not quite completely nude. i had what was called a crotch patch. during filming with the shower going and everything, it would come loose. i told hitchcock, why don't we take this thing off? he said no. the whole time he wore a suit, black tie and white shirt. i was hired for two or three days and wound up working for seven.

charlie: what did you learn about hitchcock? alexandre: oh my goodness, i don't even know where to begin. for me it was really sort of an investigation into his process. for instance, he sort of gives you little clues along the way. the trailer we just watched a little bit of, the six minute extended trailer he did for "psycho" reviews walking around the property show you things, actually giving you clues. there is one point where he approaches the painting of susanna and the elders in norman bates' office, the painting he removed to peep through the wall and watch marion. he says, "this painting has great significance because --" and then he pauses and goes on. and says let's go onto cabin number one. it is a signifier that hitchcock wants you to figure out why

he is using this painting. i went to great lengths to find out why this particular painting, and there are hundreds of versions of susanna and the elders, white was this one. -- why did he use this version of the painting? this is when you realize that hitchcock was so precise -- why in his film making that everything had meaning. same with the investigation we did with the sound of the knife striking the flesh. he used a very specific type of melon called a cassava. there are hundreds of varieties of melon, and some of these there are special orders and you can just order one. you have to order a case. i think we had about 220 melons onset, and we stabbed the mall -- them all. and recorded each melon specifically to try and find why he picked because of a -- why he picked the cassava versus any other.

i won't give it away. charlie: how did this influence cinema forever after? the influence is positive and in terms of negative. technique, a created a brand-new language. walter murch says in my film people were not used to watching , movies in this particular way, the sort of fast editing, different point of views. the scene is edited and a way -- in a way where you are both marion and also the killer. it is really something that people in 1960 were not used to seeing, and sure enough the reaction was extremely powerful. i just lost my train of thought. charlie: how did this influence cinema? alexandre: on the other hand you

, are looking at a scene that i think is quite problematic because it is, quite frankly, the first true slasher scene where you have a woman vulnerable and alone in the shower being brutally killed with a knife. i think it opened a possibility of violence in cinema that we quite frankly have not recovered from. here we are 57 years later, and i think we are still talking about the shower scene. it is still something that fascinates and horrifies. charlie: did hitchcock talk about it? was he interviewed about it? did he uncover all the secrets? alexandre: no. not at all. when he was asked about the shower scene, he said "i'm really quite surprised about the reaction.

'psycho' was a big joke." but this is hitchcock being hitchcock. i believe he truly cared about that film. it is the purest expression of his moral universe, this idea that horrible things can happen to good people at any time for no good reason. is a really upsetting thing. he does it again in "the birds." i look at "psycho" and "the birds" as companion pieces. also the fact that you have a made themd references companion pieces. nobody knows why the birds attack. it is never explained, but they do. charlie: good to have you here. "78/52" opens in select theaters and will be available october 18. see you next time.

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alisa: i am alisa parenti in new york and you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of your first word news. u.s. health and human services secretary tom price has resigned. a statement by the white house says he offered his resignation to president trump earlier today and it was accepted. price's travel itinerary came under scrutiny after he frequently used military planes. the tab reportedly in excess of $1 million. the u.s. is warning against travel to cuba and ordered about 60% of its staff to leave. the embassy in havana will stop processing visas indefinitely. washington says u.s. tourists could be exposed to harm after diplomats experienced unexplained health problems.