tv Charlie Rose PBS August 18, 2010 11:00am-12:00pm PST
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captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. th of the pragmatic approach google is adapting looks for new parters in and avenues of growth. now from san francisco, michael copeland from fortune magazine. his article appeared in the july 29th issue and chris anderson from wired and his piece, the web is dead in the upcoming issue and jessica vascellaro writes about google for the wall
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street journal and pleased to have you as well. michael, since you wrote this thing, google is over. saying it's a juggernaut with new competition looming google's best days may be behind it. how so? >> it's a changing nature of how we use the web and the internet and with the rise of things like facebook and twitter and yelp, we're not so much going to the google search box as we are reaching out to our network and looking for answers and increasingly those answers are coming from places like facebook, for example, that google doesn't have access to. so if the last ten years of the web were all about the google search box, the question becomes, is the future of the web and in some ways the future of how we use it the same search
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paradigm and my contention is it is not and we're increasingly spending our times doing other things other than search. >> charlie: okay but look at google, chris, and tell me whether they are using their resources and their power to enter new markets and doing it well? >> i think they are. michael's right and the stories are complimentary in that the shift to the closed platforms whether they're mobile in the form of the iphone or ipad, is a maturing of the internet mark and increasing a world google can't reach and it can't look inside your facebook pages and google's attempt to the droid mark is to bridge the web market to the this new fragmented mobile market and the success has been extraordinary.
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i would say though i entirely agree with michael on the google's web business having reached a plateau i wouldn't count the mobile business out yet. >> charlie: tell me how the dynamics of their own picture has changed in terms of the growth pattern at google. >> not much has changed up fortunately. 90% of their ref views come from online ad and they found other forms as banner ads and display ads but still looking for the next big revenue stream and making a little money from online software like google docs and they're pushing all these new avenues. >> charlie: what is their biggest bet in the future. >> chris me mentioned android a they a recent success.
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we haven't necessarily seen the revenu revenue but it's made great strides in the market place. >> there's a gray area. we're not sure what google wants to do with verizon they want to leave data open and they want equal access to the internet and what they suggested and got lots of people very upset is the wireless world be left open for google and verizon and at&t to compete as they will without guarantee that all forms of day have equal access and it's got all sorts of people very upset. >> charlie: how would it work? for example, youtube could be accessed faster than other things. >> google can play a premium or
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you as a user can play a premium to faster access to youtube and there's a suggestion that it become like cable tv. you can have premium content. google suggested maybe there's a self monitoring network and the problem is it starts to sound whatever is new could be on the premium more advanced, more higher cost network and therefore how neutral can the net possibly be. >> charlie: has this caused people to take another look, chris, at google and whether it is as good as it said it was as a corporate citizen? >> i think this is one of the pai
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parels you lose the nimbleness and the question is can they be a big companies as well as a medium sized company. can they continue to innovate and execute well as they start to compete with the biggest companies in the world. they were a bit of a one-trick pony, to date all revenue comes from advertisetion and moving to mobile to broaden the revenue base and be a proper grown-up company and android success has been an a testament. >> and with the net neutrality is it was google and verizon coming out and setting parameters while the sec was also pursuing and snag made people's eyes roll and to get to the point of how google would
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use it's powers like what are they doing shaping the debate and are they the right ones to be calling the shot. >> charlie: let me talk about privacy, you've wri written abo that and you talked about it facebook and what's the issue. >> by all accounts google uses very little of the information it has for explicit ad targeting. they're not showing ad, g-mail you'll see ads but they're not piecing together youtube and mobile and they began last year targeting display ads to people depending on what websites they visit which is behavior advertising and they're google and their bigger and the privacy groups are on them significantly. >> charlie: can google challenge
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facebook in any way. >> googled is rumored to be creating a facebook competitor and they're track record so far on social has not been great but i would not count them out. they already have a lot of social network in the g-mail if they can do a better job of organicly intergrated that to the way you live and making you want to use it they could be a force. >> they have all these piece and know a lot about you, what they don't have is the right relationship with you. you have contacts in google and tasks and calendar appointments but you don't have colleagues and friends and relationships and it's going to be tricky for them to change that relationship because i think as a culture of engineers they're really good at developing these applications that are great utilities. a great e mail program or calendar program but not good at
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figuring how people relate to each other and collaborate with each other. >> charlie: chris, let me go back to the web is dead story and you spoke to it the wide open web to the semi-closed platforms. where is that going as it makes its way. >> one is a shift to mobile and as you go to smaller screens, the portable devices, they tend to lean towards the app model which is specialized software that does one thing well and that's one drive and that's been driven by consumer behavior. we want to take it with us and the second is business being drawn to profit and the advertising supported model that was the web's main business model for 20 years has shown its limits and you see newspapers going behind pay walls and
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television providers going to a subscription model that's a recognition ads aren't doing it any more. for the traditional media companies they're not replacing the analog revenues they used to enjoy and i think you're seeing the content creators want closed markets because they can make monetize them and get subscriptions and people will pay for them and consumers want closed markets because those work best on their increasingly portable devices. those are two trends challenging the cannotical that defined the first two decades. >> charlie: would this make a man write a book about free? >> fortunately the first book is about the free and the second book is about freemium is a use
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a little bit teaser and the iphone and ipad apps you can try it but need to pay for the full one and the content behind the pay-walls, read two articles for free and more than that you pay. the notion of the open web is the sampler but the closed -- >> charlie: show free access web is a tease now to get you to pay. >> in chretienly. a shift from free to freemium. >> you're seeing content owners work in the direction of putting things behind the pay wall and google's starting to try to find a place for itself in that world. in the past year we've seen them try to launch paid and subscription service on youtube and you can charge for your apps
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and google's trying to bridge it but ads are still it's sweet spot but it's interesting to see how they are changing their tune and going to content owners and saying let's see if we can work to build a paid service but it's not their sweet spot and no sign the content owners will partner up. >> charlie: the application with the iphone is the most significant development over the last five years, chris? >> i think the ipad in particular is a game changer. the iphone proved to us we want rich multimedia devices in our pocket but the screen was too small to take full advantage. the ipad i think could be the third great computing platform the desk top and laptop and now the ipad. i think what it gives us the opportunity to do is change the
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way we interact at the session times the sessions are in tens of seconds. ten minutes is a good time and when you look at the stats on the ipad apps we're looking at 40 minutes and longer and an hour. >> charlie: that's music to my ears. >> the fact that people are leaning back and it's tactical and the bug in the ipad is it doesn't multitask leads to the focussed engaged immersive experience and where attention goes money tends to follow. >> you're trying to find a place where you can make these lux luxurious glossy ads and it's poorly tapped thus far by everyone online. >> charlie: what you do you
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think of hooloo and flip board? >> i spend a fair amount of time with the flip board folks and mike mckuhn who was was apple and in some way this is the third web browser company but hulu and flip board, what flip board does is pull in all the things you love about the social web. so twitter feeds, facebook, friends update and presents them in what mike mckuhn calls a social magazine and flip through the pages of your friends and flip through the tweets that people have sent across on your twitter stream and it's a great experience and if raises some question of fair use in some people's minds and if i link to a wired story on my facebook
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page, i can pull that thing down on the flip board in its entirety without really going to wired and the advertiser. there are business things to be worked out but takes the threads of the social web in particular that we have to hunt around for and gather together ourself and puts them in one place in a beautiful format and it works well. >> the notion of the designed experience when you talk about it as a social magazine, it puts it together in a way that's easy to follow and leads you to a deeper experience and i think one of the things we're reflecting on the problems of the web and the browser experience is it was no friend a lot of things we do day to day is the curation package and use them with page design to make
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sense of pieces and browsers itemize and fragment and everything falls into bits and pieces then opportunity with apps is to put it back together again in a way that makes it coherent and right. >> the apps are beautiful and go a long way in think of the media but there aren't business mediums yet and going gag to google and competitors, google more than $23 million in revenue and facebook some where in the $1 million range. apple is to have a slow start with its apps. if eyeballs go there, advertisers will go there but the business model is still locked up in the old web with we knew and it could get there but i think it's a little bit early to be calling some of this stuff. >> charlie: while we're having this conversation, all of you, tell me where issi is yahoo and
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microsoft. >> they're struggling mightily as it has been for years. they got the search deal with microsoft where they're going turn things over to microsoft very soon. yahoo's trying to find its new reason for being and it certainly hasn't found it yet. microsoft has bing out there which is nipping at the heels of google in terms of search but microsoft is trying to find its next big act too and maybe it comes from the x-box the gaming platform but microsoft, you know, we talked earlier about whether google is the next microsoft and microsoft is still living off office and windows and the rest of its businesses are just chugging along but not really lighting the world on fire. >> charlie: why is that? >> i think it gets to the
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innovator's dilemm dilemma conu and have protected office and generates most of their revenue and it's hard to break away from those businesses because they're so good and you know you sacrifice -- how you going to sacrifice office to move it online and not charge for it and go after that. it's hard to do and i think google's going to face the same problems. >> charlie: thank you all. pleasure. thank you, jess. thank you, chris. harold ford junior is here and began his political career at 26 succeeding his father in the united states house of represents. representing tennessee's 9th district in congress and in the fall of 2006 he lost a closely contested race for the senate to
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bob corker and lives in new york city and serving as chairman of the leadership council and wrote a book called "more davids than goliath: a political education." pleased have you back. >> thank you. >> charlie: what's the title about. >> my dad taught me early able at about politics and one lesson is not all goliaths are bad but all davids are good and you always have to be mindful and if you get into politics and your job is to protect davids. i was always touched because he said no one should be ashamed of having authority and david always has to be protect two, i grew up going to church the old fashioned way and i was forced too and my preacher always said there were more davids than
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goliaths and it when in one ear and out the other and as i got older it had more meaning and there was a bishop having private prior and he said there's for the davids than goliaths and more problems than answers. and i stopped by a bar on the way home with confederate flags around it and i thought the bishop wanted me to stop here and we pull in and my driver a young white guy named john freeman and he said you sure you want to do this and i said lets stop. the embrace couldn't have been sweeter and more genuine and though we lost the race, at that moment i realized if we were willing to take the campaign anywhere and show courage and determination we would bring ming to the more davids than goliath and we lost in so many ways it opened my eyes and helped me to mature.
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so why do you think you lost? >> i think there were problem a number of reasons and think i did and at the end ever day with two weeks left there were a terrible set of ads. >> charlie: this is the playboy the called me ad. a blond woman suggested you made a lot of trips to las vegas or something. >> she suggested i loved to party and asked her to call me and it got a lot of attention. i don't think there was any doubt that hurt us. we were running neck and neck and the former remember party in tennessee who was a friend, who i won't name, called us halfway through and said rest assured they're going to run this thing on the up and up and four weeks out we were three to four weeks out we were run go ahead ina according to some public polling and said remember the inning i said to you a few months ago,
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all bets are off and they're coming at you with everything. i had in mind a response ad and i knew what i wanted mine to be and any current governor sitting with me in a barn and saying harold's already and can go to washington and do good for all of us. i was unable to convince one of them to do it and at the end of the day i didn't have a plan b and i always thought this would happen and thought it would come true. the real lesson in the chapter can what you do when you lose and face hardship and i've done my best and talked with bill clinton who said the most important thing do for your political future is what you do in the morning after the race, get up, get out, thank voters. be positive, don't be bitter or angry and voters will remember that. >> charlie: after his two-year term as governor he lost and came back. >> and lost to congress the first time running too.
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>> charlie: in '74. >> he shared that with me. >> charlie: he was out the next day saying -- >> and was elected two years later. >> charlie: if that commercial would not have run you would have been the u.s. senator. >> i can't say that for certain but i go to say -- they only ran the ad when they realized that other things didn't work. i was a democrat that fit the values of my state. again, we were running narrowly ahead of my remember opponent and there was no doubt, people ask why do you think race may have been a part of it and they could have used a black woman. they chose to have a white woman. i'm in an inner racial marriage and they were trying to make the point and after five or six days of running corker denounced the ad and ken melman defended the ad whos with the republican
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party chairman. there are no sour grapes. there's no crying in the book. i tell the story of what happened and talking about the lesson in politics is that i was elected at 26 years old and talk about my first race and how my dad at four years old i cut his first radio commercial for his campaign and all the lessons i learned along the way and everyone is going to face a knock down. everyone faces hardship and whatever pursuit or path you go down and in politics there's no doubt, negative campaigning is not a spectator sport, it's a live, rough and tumble deal and a looked at running for the senate here in new york several months ago and it was a combative environment there. >> charlie: you're getting way ahead of me. you got to be a congressman at 26 years old because i were the son of, in part -- >> no doubt. >> charlie: a very well known and popular congressman. >> when i ran -- >> charlie: i wish he was here
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right now. he's an interesting man. >> he loved the book. in a lot of ways the book credits him with so much -- i don't run from it. i make very clear i love my dad and give him great credit for teaching me about politics and even in the senate race when we couldn't get the ad we wanted we sat up until 2:00 in the morning and i thought the ad was brilliant and he said we have to outwork them even more. we got start on the other side of the state at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning and end in west tennessee and we have two time zones one is where i'm from and the other on the arkansas-mississippi border but when i ran for congress and announced the saturday before easter in '96 i couldn't raise a dime for the first several weeks largely because my opponents were state legislators and the said if you support him we're going to hold it against you and my mayor at the time did not support me. everybody viewed it as a chance
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to knock my dad and family out of the political person and my uncle was active and an aunt that was a state senator and the only people who invited me to speak were kindergarteners and i spoke at every kindergarten class in the memphis school system and in a loss of ways for a young guys and women interested in politics and starting, as a wrote it i thought this is what it's really about. how you get out and listen to people and meet people where they worship and shop. >> charlie: why did you move out of tennessee to come to new york after you lost? >> initially, i didn't think i would leave tennessee. i split my time between nashville after i left and in '08 i got married to a young lady from florida, who you met.
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>> charlie: wonderful. >> i married up and she loved new york and loved memphis and nashville but i said i want to raise my family in the city i never got a chance to live here after college or law school and a went right to law school and ran for congress in my third year in law school and i thought if i get a chance to get back into politics, i love my life and love my wife and want to start a family here and realized long after i decided to live here i was teaching at nyu i didn't have to abandon my political aspirations. i talk about that in the book and constantly being involved in serving and figuring ways to be active and serve on the board here and the cornell board and finding ways to be more involved. >> >> charlie: and gave serious consideration to running for the
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incumbent governor who had the great support of another senator. >> right. >> charlie: why did you think you could do this? >> two reasons, one, i support chuck schoomer. i continue to have concerns about my party's overall imagine as it relates to the business community and what's happening in new york city and new york state i think as we think about job growth and job creation in new york and for that matter, nationally, it's clear we he have to begin to do things differently. i was always a pro-business, protax cut democrat because i believe that's the way you stimulate not only job creation and entrepreneurship. >> charlie: a democratic leadership. >> school reform and the reason
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i'm a democrat is because i happen to believe that people are going to clean up the studio and this building when we leave and their kids should have every right to go to college and i think my party gives people a better chance and i thought about this race, one, i think we could have used a stronger voice in washington. i think new york has a history -- when i was in congress i watched the great senate leadership from the state and i thought i could offer something different and hopefully one day live up to the grand standard and two, i think my party has to be more in tune to what makes america greater than we are today which is how do we inspire and prepare the next generation to lead and have to do more with energy, entitlements and education and in new york how to make the financial service end industries stronger and better and shouldn't overregulate because i applaud what the senate did as the regulators
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look more and more at the room making -- >> charlie: are you saying this evening if you're going to have a political future it's going to be in new york not tennessee. you're not going move back to it tennessee it will fob or an office in new york. >> any elected office political future is new york. this is home and where i'll raise my family. >> charlie: and we talked about the chapters in here and your father who we would love to have here at the table with us which is a great father-son story. >> he's my best friend. >> charlie: is that right? >> mmm hmm. i think to continue to have the relationship they had particularly in politics i think you look across the generation and sometimes my dad never called to tell me what to do. he never called to say i you did this right or that wrong and still waits for know call and
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eve tone this day, it's not uncommon to hear maybe a predecessor called and he still doesn't do. >> charlie: what do you think about the president's statement with the mosque. >> i think he has the right position. i think he hopes he would have stead differently the first time and had to clarify the things the next day but they're not looking to build a mosque. it's an islamic cultural center. >> charlie: it's all referred to -- >> but the terms of this have been defined by those oppose and mayor bloomberg has it right, if you can't build this in manhattan and a conversation will probably happen in the next couple days whether it should be built close to ground zero i think that conversation has
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legitimacy but for someone to suggest it should not be built, if we can build it in the united states and new york city -- >> charlie: i don't know that people are saying that. they're opposed with primarily in terms of the vicinity of where it is. >> some are opposed to it altogether. i think it should be built right where they're proposing to build it. >> charlie: right where -- >> i think the statement we send to the world about not only our tolerance but our ability to have meaningful real conversation beings differences and people -- and there will be those who have differences with those who practice islam and people who practice asking more of those who do not and what better statement to the world and i think it will turn into nothing but an ugly, nasty political conversation that will have bad racial overtones over the next two months in an election season.
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you already see come republicans and republican candidates challenging their democratic opponents to the declare whether they're with obama or against him. >> charlie: and harry reed. >> he said he opposed the center being built where nay want to build it. >> charlie: didn't the president say i'm not saying that i think it ought to be in any specific location. i'm just saying i support the building of -- >> and that may be where the conversation evolved. i hope it stops there. some are making the case it should not be built and that's just wrong. we're america at the end of the day and if we're afraid of this and run from this, then we run the essence, the core, the beginning of who error based on the freedom of exercising
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religion. >> charlie: what would you grade him the first two years. >> on the economy, a b. on national security, an a-minus and give him on a facing crisis a b-plus. remember he helped plug this oil well. people say he started late, was a little aloof. nonsense. that's the toughest, biggest spill and worked with b.p. and kept the relationship strong and now what he's done in regard to nuclear proliferation and with regard to afghanistan and as smooth a transition he made from mccrystal to petraeus and the team with gates and holebrook and secretary clinton -- >> charlie: he's doing the right thing in afghanistan. >> he's doing the right thing in afghanistan and made it clear, petraeus did this weekend on "meet the press" conditions
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will dictate but they're not owe oblivious to the sentiment and gates, the way he handled saying he'd be gone by 2011 and the economy is where they need to focus and i applaud the president being out. he's out today and will be out the next couple days with town hall meetings and some of it is his fault in he made a case that his stimulus would create things and a lot is not his fault but the presidents at the end of the day are in charge with leading the nation from a national security standpoint and the chief promoter. he has his hands full i think have differences about taxes. >> charlie: wait, you would extend some, which ones? >> permanent all the middle
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class ones. >> charlie: that's the president's position. >> let me finish phase in the rate and raise the dividend to 20% and keep the dividends over two years. >> charlie: he's going to no longer continue the tax cuts for people who made more than $250,000. >> i would faze that in over a three-year period. if you give the relief on the capital gains, the legitimate question after that is how do you pay for it. i think he has to listen closely to the deficit commission and i'm in support of raising the retirement age to 70 and even when we reach 70 if i'm able to afford a lifestyle without taking my social security, give me tax incentives to continue to invest and save more. the american entitlement system
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we've known the last 40 years is going to have to change. we made decisions about war. we made decisions about tax cuts. we made decisions about government spending. and the problems going forward aren't partisan as much as arithmetic problems. have you to come up with five more points on the board in order to reach nine and this president i give him credit for pulling the commission against a lot of republicans opposed and as it relates to the elections as tough as it's going to be the task by the republicans is what you are going to do and how you would do it differently and the argument that obama is bad and we'd be in a worse position without tarp and the money has been paid back with interest. the car industry, the republicans criticize him and gm and ford and chrysler are in
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better position and equally important america's capacity to build things. >> charlie: what do you think mid-terms look like? >> i think it's going to be very close. the -- >> charlie: less than -- >> a shift in the house. i don't think republicans will pick up -- i think house members are faced with campaigns every two years and they understand the toughness. there was a great piece a sunday ago in the new york times bay congressman in missouri saying look, i realize unlike '94 there's a tough year and the question is between now and september when the legislative calendar ends whether democrats can put together enough smart proposals and i think the senate is going to be tougher and you look around the country and i think it will be tough if
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>> democrats we're a party that's pro growth, pro business and look out for you. if we make that point we'll hold our majority if not it will be tough the morning after the election. >> charlie: more davids than goliaths. a political education. harold ford jr. a proud resident of new york city and new york state. >> great to be here. thank you, sir. >> charlie: and the first book was published when he was just 20 years old. when the new york times reviewed it called it the most disturbing novel made in a long time and a film was made and starred robert downey jr. here's a look at the book. >> this is your formative years. >> come on, we'll go out. >> whoa, blackout.
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>> you must party with joanne and blair. >> i'm out of here, guys. >> i will beg, claire will plead. >> please. please. >> okay. fine. you're loss. >> let's do it. >> charlie: a quarter of a century later he returns to the character, i'm pleased to to have bret easton ellis. you began to think of this when you were write book. >> i thought of less than zero when i want to refamiliarize myself with a writer named brett zenelis and make sure i was up to date with who this guy was and had not looked at less than zero since the publication in
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1985 and i reread the book in 2005 and it was okay. it was fine. i thought it was pretty well written for someone who was 19 or 20 and something happened after i read it asking where is he now and where is that 19-year-old boy and i began to have this internal dialog in my head and began answering questions i kept asking myself that led to an outline and making more notes and that led to an ultimately the novel. >> charlie: is this a sequel for something else. my publisher likes to refer to it as a sequel but i wasn't interested end returning to the group scene of less than zero because i never saw it as a grou group portrait of a generation
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and clay the embodiment and i never took it as a sweeping indictment of 80s young culture in southern california but a writer has a different relationship with the book than his audience has. >> charlie: and how is it different? >> i lived with that book for four or five years. i'm there for a very long time. the book has a whole host of associations and a whole map of means it doesn't have for the reader that goes through it in five or six hours. i'm very -- i'm looking over at your desk and see the 25th anniversary version of less than zero and i'm thinking that's amazing that book right now even exists when i thought no one outside of my group of friends was going to read that book. that's what i mean by how different the writer's relationship to the book is than a reader's relationship to the book is or the reader's sentimentality and they read it
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a certain moment in their life which i think a lot of young people read less than zero and for some reason i had nothing to do with it means something to them. >> charlie: is what you do now something you imagined you'd be doing? >> i guess it is. i say that because yes, i've experienced quote, unquote, the writer's life through my career but the writer's life, i don't know how to define that. i have my life and then i like to write. but the myth of the writer's life is changing. the idea that you can be a very young writer and write a novel that is put into book shops that people will go buy and slowly make its way out of warehouses on the eastcoast and over to the westcoast and then it will take about five to six months before all the publications discover this novel and then start rioting about it and april when
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less than zero came out and november when it was being written about that era is over. >> charlie: how does it work today? >> i don't know. we're in a transitional process but i don't think that that can happen again. because of where we are as a culture and what the nof means to the culture which is not as relevant as it once was. the novel used to be a thing that came out and the big important social realists novel that everyone talked about and would come out and our parents would even discuss to a certain degree and almost seemed like a message from the front. that was imparting information to us about what's what was going on in contemporary society. we don't need that any more. the book -- the big literary novel say like less than zero, the debate the book encouraged.
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i don't remember the last time a literary novel did that. i don't know if that's its purpose any more if it ever was the purpose. i look back at the publication of less than zero and the question you ask the idea of the writer's life, it means something very different now than it perhaps meant when began for me. >> charlie: did you see it at the time as defining the ethos of a generation? >> no. it doesn't have a plot. >> charlie: you saw it as what? >> a reflection of what i was going through as a teenager and that's simply it. it was emotion based and putting together a collage of my journals and embellishments of certain parties i went to. kind of a mirror of the lifestyle i was involved in at
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that time of my life but then of course the writer kicks in and you become a technician and want to form it into a novel and give it a novelistic shape but it doesn't start from pra pragmati and i saying it would mean -- >> charlie: you sat down to write something your mere experience. >> meant something to me. >> charlie: where was clay at the beginning of this? >> well clay's in his 40s and a successful screen writer probably employed by the studios and paid a lot of money to write movies like "adrenaline" and "concealed " and in the middle of casting a film he wrote because he's that kind of a successful screen writer and has a hand in producing the film as well and
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he meets a young actress and becomes obsessed with her without realizing who she is connected to and it happens to be a lot of people that he knows. so the book becomes a paranoia noir and he's a narcissist. i thought it was interesting to put him in the center of a chandler-esque conspiracy novel and see what happens when the person that has nothing to do with the conspiracy pushes himself to the middle and what's the collateral damage. >> charlie: what's the influence of ramon chandler on you? >> i didn't get the
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existentialism on you? >> no one has matched it in term of genre. i think there were famous story where's chandler couldn't remember who did what to whom. he wanted to create a portrait of a man who hangs on to his own morality in a blasted moral wasteland. that to me is fairly universal and that idea of this man trying to hold on to his humanity in a world that is often inhuman strikes a cord. the mysteries don't. you can't remember some of the mysteries of chandler's each in his long novels written in the last days of his life being undone by alcoholism and there's a lot of emotion for the writing
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and moving and go of sentences. it's a match and he writes about l.a. in a way that i've never come across. at the time i was working on imperial bedrooms he was a big influence and reading him a lot because i recently moved back to l.a. and he comforted me in a strange way and i wanted to write like him. >> charlie: that's my point. >> it happens a lot. you read a particular writer and it happened with me with less than zero and reading joe diddien and it's a strange triumvirate but in college i was writing rules of traction and the long stream of conscious passages were influenced by my reading of ulysses and i am a writer who is often influenced
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by other writers, as critics say i like to rip them off but chandler while i was working on imperial bedrooms a big deal to me. >> charlie: how long does it fak take to you write this? >> i finished doing the u.k. and ireland and constantly shocked by the journalists who interviewed me saying you mentioned the book all the time during the lunar park -- >> charlie: you were thinking about him? >> even before i finished it. >> charlie: that's when you first began to think about it? >> yes. and after being done with lunar park i moved back to l.a. and worked on it and i'm a slow writer and this is a slim book about 170 pages long and a kept thinking that since clay as a screen writer it was going to be
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written like a screen play but it has a screen writer sensability to it and working in that minimalism that i haven't done that since less than zero and there was something very enticing and fun and also soming that admittedly takes me a long time to do and the book took about three years to write which is on average for me pretty quick but i'm a slow writer. >> charlie: the amazing thing to me about being a writer, take a look at this, this is is competing with this. you come up to bat, how many times in a lifetime and so people are saying is it the same, is it as good? is he growing? is he not growing? has he lost it? not about other writers but all about you. >> in other people's minds not in my mind.
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i cannot lay the books out -- >> charlie: you're not going i have to grow from here to here? >> absolutely not. each book is different and about where i was at a certain point in my life and start from an emotional place. i'm in the know kind of writer that says next time out you have to write that big novel or that novel because you wrote lunar park and people think you're much more emotional now and it will open doors to a whole new -- you cannot take the audience' sponsor the reader' response into account because then you might as well be doing advertising and doing something else than writing a novel that reflect yours sensitivity and you like to use the novel as a form i'm not a painter or musician or filmmaker, i'm a novelist and that's how it work for me and it has to come from
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