with the farmers that grow our sweet potatoes and merchants that sell our product. we've gone from being in 5 stores to 7,500. booming is using points to make connections that grow your business. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: on sunday night, february 27, the 83rd annual academy awards will be held. who are this year's contenders? what is the debate? the hottest competition seems to be between two movies that tell our history and look at our future. david fincher's "the social network" is one of the most

innovative and exciting knew please? the past year, yet tom hooner's "the king's speech" an old-schrool klass i can, is leading with 12 nominations. there's also "try grit" the western by the coen brothers joel and ethan. then there's the eerie psycho drama "black swan" directed by darren air november ski. then david o.russell's powerful film "the fighter. this year's pictures have given us stories of ballerinas, fighters and families. behind these movies are mystery and magic. from the life of 2 king to the fight of a lifetime. this year we've spoken to the five directions up for oscar but they'll tell you they cannot do it alone. film making is about great partnerships and performances. directors paint landscapes while actors paint portraits and it's the writers who dream up the rich characters and actor breathes life into them.

these artists show us the challenge, the struggle, and the achievement. 17 nominees came to our table, including those for best director, actor, actress in leading and supporting roles, documentary feature writing and more herer in conversation. >> people going to log on in the chance that they're actually going to get laid, get a girl. >>. >> yes. >> that is really good. >> that's it, it's ready. >> right now? >> yeah. >> my biggest fear was it was something i didn't know anything about. i didn't snow the story behind it and i was unsure about how dramatic it could be and my question were answered in the first 20 or 30 pages.

>> rose: and it's not a movie about facebook. >> the themes in it are... and the story is the story telling, friendship, loyalty, and betrayal and power and class and these things that shakespeare would have written about and luck eye for me he wasn't available so i got to write about it. >> you never want to present a character in a movie that you don't empathize with. we were... we had a guy who... from certain he was a judas and he had betrayed his friend and obviously that's a specific p.o.v. people who have seen the movie know these participants and they have said alternately how did jesse eisenberg capture mark zuckerberg?

coming out of the same screening people say we didn't lay a glove on him. so it's a tricky thing. i always try to make sure that... it's not my intention to present an argument where i've already drawn my conclusion. i like that fact there were four people at a table who all thought they were right and i think that makes the most interest drag ma and the most interesting argument. >> and think that if i were mark and facebook i would want the story told from only my perspective. but this is a story told from mark's as well as the people accusing him. i do think that it's fair. i think that like david said, you can't create a movie character that you don't empathize with. i don't think any of us... >> rose: that's true whether it's writer or director. >> or the actor for that matter. >> rose: if you're not

fascinated with your character >> yes. and i understand... i don't think any of us would want a movie that any of us did when we were 19 years old but this is a movie that... he's a fascinating guy who in the end... >> rose: what made him fascinating to you as a writer? >> i think he's got his nosed pressed up against the window of social life at college and then the world. >> rose: he's one of those people that arrives in college a bit socially inept. >> more than a bit. >> rose: (laughs) >> he's a socially awkward guy. by the way, i can identify with that, too. he's most comfortable sitting 18 inches away from a commuter screen. >> rose: and you're most comfortable in a room with the door shut at a computer. >> i would like 24 inches away from the computer. sure, i would like people to think that i'm as quick and clever and charming as the characters that i write. and i would be very happy just

writing what i write, kind of slipping it under the door and having somebody slip a meal under the door in exchange. and that's actually what mark ended up creating. he invented a world where you can reinvent yourself. >> rose: this is not the story of the founding of facebook. it's a movie in which there are various people who saw what happened differently and you reflected that. >> those stories are set against the backdrop of the founding of facebook. it's... i don't think it belongs to any genre, frankly. but the closest one-- and david and i may disagree, but i think closest one it belongs to is a courtroom drama where at the beginning we're certain of someone's guilt or innocence and then we change our mind five times before the end of the movie. there will not be a consensus in the audience about who's good and who's bad and who's right and wrong. those arguments will happen in the parking lot. >> get up! you can't sit there. >> why not? it's a chair. >> that's not a chair, that is... that... that is st.

edward's chair. >> people have carved their names on it. >> that chair is the seat on which every king... >> i don't care. >> listen to me! >> by what right? >> my divine right if you must, i'm your king! >> no, you're not. you told me so yourself, you said you didn't want it. why shouldn't i sit here? why shouldn't i listen to you? >> because i have a voice! >> my australian mother invited my australian friends to go to this fringe theater to make up part of the token australian audience of this fringe play reading called "the king's speech." and my mother meredith almost didn't go. she's never been to a play reading in her life but she went to be a good australian to sea what this play is. she called me up and said "i found it excellent." >> and you knew this was your king sglorj >> i knew it. all my research, i thought this was a man who was nice to his core, who was gentle to his core had tremendous humility and when i thought about colin, let's be

honest, colin doesn't exactly look like george. he's a big strapping lad and the real king was small and slight and quite sickly looking. but i felt this spiritual connection to the two men was more important because colin... and i don't want to embarrass him, but he's nice to his core. as far as i can tell he doesn't have a maligned bone in his body. he's got tremendous humility and gentleness and these character qualities or spiritual qualities were much more important than the physical side in terms of making it important to play this role. >> it is an unfair legup like any competition. >> i do not accept it as a given. there are plenty of guns going off. >> i heard the rifle and i felt the ball. you missed your shot, cogburn. >> missed my shot! you are more handicapped without the i than i without the arm. >> i can hit that down to a yard.

that chinaman is running cheap shells on me again. >> we both read the novel and i revisited the novel not too long ago, a few years ago, reading it outloud to my son and that was the point at which we started talking about this might be fun to make into a movie. >> rose: because you liked the novel? >> yes. responding to the novel, not really remembering the movie very well. >> rose: what did you like about the novel? >> well, the novel is told in the first person by this very very precoarse 14-year-old girl and the narrative is very funny, very compelling, it grabs you right away and it's a really good yarn and it's sort of like a... i was read it to my kid. it's sort of like a... in many ways like a young adult adventure story but in... told until a way that's really closer

to literature than it is to sort of a genre novel. >> rose: someone speculated about the fact that a coen movie on the christmas list is something new. that "blood simple" would not have been there. or even "no country for old men." >> i think that they're good christmas movies. (laughter) >> rose: there's something about this and what you did. did you have to resist what your instincts might be to stylistic it up or something? >> not really. we never... to the extent we were aware, we never turned it up or stylisticed it up. we were just trying to serve the novel and we're always trying to serve the story, whatever the story might be. the ones we come up with ourselves tend to be right, less christmasy (laughter) >> rose: but you believe this is the movie for kids as well? >> absolutely. it was the ambition... we felt that it was a story about a

14-year-old girl, we wanted 14-year-old girls to be able to see it. >> rose: tell me about the cast. bridges is easy. >> that was easy for us because we'd worked with jeff before and... >> rose: as someone once said "dude meets the duke." >> yes, exactly. we called jeff right after we fin it had screenplay and thought... you know, curiously we talked to jeff a couple of years ago, we said "we should do something again" and he suggested a western. so that was just another nick that will dropped when we finished this. >> rose: was "no country for old men" a western? >> well, no, we don't... we didn't look at it that way. to us a western is you get up on a horse and you've got six guns in your holsters. >> rose: mine, too, yes. "unforgiven" is a western. >> "unforgiven" is a western. >> i'm not positive this is the western. there are the horses and six guns and icons of the western but it's kind of... it's not

sain gray, it doesn't have... >> rose: not riding out in the sun set. tsunami zane. >> exactly. it's not a genre novel in that sense. >> rose: but your cinematographer, roger deacon, he captures that sense of space >> yes, it's a wonderfully shot movie and when you get roger into into those landscapes, really magical stuff starts to happen, it's true. >> rose: so you made the movie you intended to make. >> yeah. i think so. it's hard to remember what you intended to make once you get to the end of the process. that's... i mean, you go through this long process and at the end of it it's pretty close to what we wanted. >> what the hell, we don't know, we hope mr. portis likes it. >> rose: is that who you hope most of all approves? >> oh, yeah. >> rose: do you really. >> oh, yeah. >> rose: opportunity guy who created the kharker?

>> oh, yeah. >> rose: the other interesting thing about this movie is there is a line in which you said the default mode was always classical. does that ring a bell? >> right. well it was... we were... i was straight ahead... as you were saying, it was an attempt to illustrate ahead... a straight adaptation of the book. but i think that's the case any time we attempt an adaptcation. it was the case with cormac's book, too. we weren't trying to impose any stylistic embellishment on the book that wasn't sort of natural to the material: >> natalie and i had a

conversation about nine years ago in times square. we had a coffee at the old howard johnson's which i think is now an american apparel. (laughter) and that was our first conversation about it and natalie told me that the one thing she always wanted to do was play a dancer. and over the years i continued to develop it. it was just a very hard world to get into. the ballet world is very insular and they wouldn't let us in and natalie... we'd bump into each other and she seed say "how's the laal lay movie coming? i'm getting too old. >> rose: she does that with every director. she goes to every director. "i've always wanted to make a movie about" and they're out working for her while she waits for them to get projects completed. >> you're telling all my secrets! >> rose: the screenplay was from broadway originally? >> there was original early screen set in the off broadway world and my sister was a ballet dancer and i wanted to do something in the ballet word and i started to translate it but it was a hard translation. it was called "the understudy"

and there's no understudies in ballet. that was the first problem. so the conversion took a long time to figure out how to make it work. i talked to a lot of dancers, julianne murphy, julie kent. and julie pointed out something great to me. very early on she went through all the different "swan lake" dances with me and i would ask her what she was doing and performing then at some point i was like well, what exactly is this creature? and she's like well, during the day she's a swan and at night she's half swan, half human. and the idea of a ware wolf movie went over my head. and then the possibility of turning that beautiful creature into... >> rose: something darker. >> exactly. it was very exciting. so that was the thing i kept coming back to. >> i'm charlene. >> hi, i'm charlene. >> we're together! >> what are you going to tell me? is this some mtv girl who works

in a bar? what does she know about boxing? >> i know they're going to vegas and getting paid to train, year round. sounds a hell of a lot better than what you got him doing here >> you gonna let her talk like that to your mother? >> come on, micky. >> i told you, we're together. this is my girlfriend, i want her here. >> i knew we had something completely different as soon as i saw these characters. >> rose: because it's more about family than fighting. >> a mother with seven sisters like a gang and the brother who sort of is more close to... sweetheart relationship with the mother, this weird oedipal thing with the two brothers, i hadn't seen that before. >> the women were what i wanted to bring forward more. the women... the seven sisters, they're very powerful women in the picture. >> rose: tell me about the fight scene. >> well, we only had three days to do it. mark trained to be a real fighter and dick key learned how to hit the mitts with him so they were good with the mitts. mark wanted to look as close to dickie as he was could... mickey excuse me. so he wanted to fight the

sequences are 20-minute-long sequences we took from mickey's fights, shot them with an hbo crew from that period using the beta cams they used in that period, 1990. it's a bit of a period movie. we had eight cameras doing that, often the way hbo does it. and we had 79 hours of footage. it meant mark could do the choreography in big sections, not stopping shot for shot. then we used the actual commentary of larry merchant, roy jones, jr., cut and pasted it, jim lamply. thank you, i needed that. >> rose: you can clearly see that. >> you cannot get actors to duplicate the shock of those announcers after dumping on mickey ward for six rounds and saying what a bum he is, he should retire, he stuns them all and knocks out alfonso sanchez who was supposed to be the next de la hoya. the guy was undefeated.

he never recovered mentally from that knockout. he didn't get up for ten minutes. he was in the center of the ring that from that body shot and that body shot is a very unusual way to knock somebody out. that's also something different you don't see in a movie. >> that's scum, you know that. >> i know, hey joni, how are you? >> good, how are you? >> you okay? >> yeah, yeah, i'm great. >> go easy on the wine, honey. they'll think we're micromanaging. >> i loved the story. and i felt a very intuitive connection to the story and to the character and that's always the best part. that's the most important part for me is the intuitive part and that's... sometimes you have to take a long journey to get to that so this is... >> rose: so what kind of your honor do you have to take to get to that?

>> well, that's the bad news. if you have to kind of... and, you know, we've all been there and certainly that part of the job is sometimes if you don't have that kind of intuitive connection than that's where all of the stuff comes in where you do your research and you do your investigation and you do your biography or whatever it is that we actors do which is all very interesting to me and i enjoy. but the most important part is that gut level response. and, of course, you only get one read of a script that's fresh. after that... >> rose: it's not fresh. >> exactly. you know what's going to happen. so i felt very strongly about it right away. >> rose: because it had all those qualitys? >> because it had very good classic narrative structure. >> rose: right. >> and you know that if you have that as an actor than you're just widing the wave because, of course, all you can do is give what you have and then the director is going to put it together. but i knew that that in the script as it existed that there was a very strong arc to it and

i loved it andsy thought it was classic in form. and the older i get the more i can appreciate the whole experience of being an actor and when something works because, of course, we've all done things that don't work and so it's a pleasure and i do feel like i can really enjoy the moment more now. >> rose: are you constantly surprised by what you can bring and what it can bring to you? >> well, i try to be. i wish i could say that. i wish i could say yes, i'm constantly surprised. i'm talking about the process, the work. >> rose: it surprisings you. >> that's a good thing. i mean when you... because, of course, you can't... you have to plan, you have to your lines, it's a false situation. nonetheless, what you're trying to find is a moment of surprise when the camera's rolling and you've even rehearsed and you've even done some takes or whatever that is and then maybe something different happens and that's not

something you want to plan. on the other hand, you want to plan for the not planning of it. >> rose: let's talk about nick. you says you understand her. tell me why you understand her? >> it's hard to describe. i thought that she was very... a very full... filled-out character. that she... you got to see flaws in her. she's not an idealized person, she's a real person. really struggling. and i think, too, because i find her very sane and i liked playing that and that's what's fun about acting is that people i'm playing, we're all... we actors are playing people are discovering things, who are having shocks, who are going through changes, who are evolving and learning and stumbling around like we all do in our real lives and that's fun to try to capture. >> what was the hardest thing about it then?

capturing this... capturing the... >> it's like lace work. movies are so delicate. they're all about details. they're all about tiny little turns and moments and listening and hearing something and breathing. so in that way it's sort of frightening because it is so ephemeral. >> rose: so without you intending to do people watch what happens there and say "these are real people and therefore i understand. have a better understanding of same sex and a better understanding of relationships and i have a better understanding of what marriage can do regardless of your..." >> right. and raising children and what that means and dealing with kids who are growing up yeah. i love that. i love that there's a kind of normalcy about it and yet it is a modern family. >> why are you telling me now >> because i'm telling you now.

>> how come you didn't tell me when we were there? >> i don't know because i was flustered and i'm telling you now. >> you talked to him? >> no, i mean like hi, bye, how are you, fine? >> how are you? >> yeah, he asked me how i was. >> and you told him? >> i mean i didn't want to but we were just... we were stuck there. we were in the same store buying things together at the same time. >> when i first read it i was 21 or 22 and it was the most important script that i had come across at that point. and it became the sort of lens that i saw entire world, everything that i read, everything that i listened to, every movie that i watched all sort of filtered through my dream of making "blue valentine" or my dream of what the movie would be and it gave me something to attach hope to. i was a lot younger, i wasn't really making a lot of movies, i had just come off of a t.v. show and this movie represented, like, the future. like, if i could just... if i could make that happen then there would be, like, i could see my life sort of beyond a

certain point. i mean, the thing that always strikes me when i see the movie is that it's just two days. and i think it's so easy to forget but really because the way the time so of intercut. but the presence is two days in a marriage. and it starts with... it starts with being woken up too early. it starts on the wrong foot anyway, so to me... i mean it's my hope anyway. it's my... it's not really the end. everybody says "oh, and then they get divorced." but to me i think it's the beginning of a more honest... like what you said earlier. once you identify, once you name something, once you take it out of the dark and say "this is a problem, here's what we call it" that's when the change starts to happen. so in my romantic mind it's just the beginning of a... of a conversation. of an honest conversation.

>> attack it! attack it! come on! >> well, good of you to join us. >> sorry. >> girls, this is lily, straight off the plane from san francisco she's filling rebecca's old spot. get warmed up. >> no, it's okay. i'm good. >> should i go again? >> no, thank you, i've seen enough. >> working with darren was a big... >> rose: because you fell in love with "the wrestler" or what >> well, he hadn't made it yet but he had made "pie" and "reck we yes, ma'am" for a dream which shows a great artist. and i always wanted to do a dance film. i danced when i was younger and always just loved going to watch

dance such a cinematic kind of expression because it's movement rather than words. >> rose: so tell me about the character, nina. >> well, nina i really felt started as a child in this world and her journey is sort of becoming a woman and it's really a world that keeps women as little girls. you know, they want them to starve themselves, to not have breasts and hips. they want them to... they call them girls not women, not dancers. they refer to them as girls. they're asking this core of dancers to conform to very specific standards where they're all lifting their legs at the same time. so there's a real sort of... you know, for a very female art, there's a real sort of male domination of it. so it really was... is finding pleasure for herself rather than pleasing other people that allows her transformation to a woman and allows her to sort of kill the little girl. >> rose: has this world that you've chosen, has it give theen

you pretty much what you've expected and what you wanted? >> you mean acting sdpler. >> rose: this profession. this job, this... >> you know, i started when i was 11, i did my first film when i was 11. >> rose: i know. >> and so it's been 18 years now that i've been working. >> rose: everybody's doing quick math, now, as you know. >> i'm 29. and so i think it's hard to say what you expected and wanted when choosing a career when you're 11. i was like "i want to be famous." you know? i wasn't like thinking... >> rose: but then you also decided you wanted to go to school. >> yes, yes, yes. which definitely i think added to my ability to take the most out of... >> rose: how did you do that? >> it gave me the... i think the ability to follow up on my curiosity to really go after as deeply as i could anything that i was interested in. it gave me the courage to voice my opinions even to people i was

intimidated by and really respected. when you sit in the room with a professor who is so light years ahead of you intelligence wise and they listen to you with respect, it gives you a different way of being able to think and talk. and most importantly it gave me friends that are completely interesting, completely inspiring and there for me whether i fail or not which i think is a great security to have. >> rose: you said at some point you wanted to put girl roles behind you. where is this? >> well, that was actually, i think... when people ask, i think everyone thinks i'm sort of a good girl, they think "the black swan" was like the big... you know. >> rose: transition. >> not true! >> shh, again, secret. but the really hard part was going back, because i so wanted to leave that little girl voice behind, you know?

nichols for years... mike nichols we did "the sea gull" together on stage and from then on he was getting me to voice coaches, he said you have to get rid of your little girl voice. he's like you talk like a child, get rid of it. and he had me, like, was constantly giving me that feedback like you need to fix your voice. and so it was hard for know go back because it felt like a regression. but it was also... i got to put my whole 20s into it. that whole experience of getting out of that voice into the part. it was really helpful. >> rose: what's your ambition now? >> i think to... to get back to enjoying not working. (laughs) i've been working so much and i think i've gotten into a sort of... yeah, workaholic state is unhealthy. so i'm learning to enjoy my life without having to be busy all

the time. >> my husband has mechanical difficulties with his speech. >> all right. you want mcs, we need to relax your jaw muscles, strengthen your tongue. you do have a flabby tummy so you need to spend time strengthening your diaphragm. simple mechanics, try it. >> jack and jill... >> went up the hill. >> went up the hill. >> little toys... >> going through the evidence there's a lot of imitations of what you can really know so a lot of this was a journey of our imagination depending on what our writer could provide and what we ourselves could bring to it. i think in so much it was judging things. i felt we could have gone very, very badly wrong in all kinds of directions. the human... humor could have been misjudged. it's all too often what would have happened if the stammer had been misjudged if that was

greating or excessive or inauthentic. it had no film, it would have been an absolute catastrophe. i was far more interested if there watching how this... whatever evidence i could find to see how he combats it. how he navigates his way out of it. that told me about what kind of person he was. >> rose: what evidence did you find? >> well, we have film of it. there's not a lot of it. there's the recording. there are various recordings of his speeches and funnily enough, some of the later speech it is stammer is more evidence than in the 1939 speech you hear in the film. some of his later speeches, i think 1943 or '44 his speech to the home guard where you hear that catch in the throat. if i were to slow it down in my mind, the mini narrative of what he were experiencing, i felt i could read the moment where he hit that wall. where that dismay somes over him where he hits the "w" of the word "when" and you see him have

another go and to me it's in his face that he won't go on just by pushing and you see him having to collect himself. i mean there's nothing more heart breaking. this is a man who in front of everyone is having to close his eyes and have a moment with himsf and heaven knows what he's wrestlingling with in that moment. it must be the loaniest thing in the world and, as tom said, it's an abyss and everything has fallen away. new the deepest, darkest imaginable hole. i think there's probably no foreseeable end to it. i had to find what that seizure felt like, what it was made from. something personal only i could find. but what was really interesting to the rest of us, i think, what it told us about him, that he fought that battle in front of people on such a regular basis.

>> there are many things going on in the character because he's a man who's facing his end and that is something that is very hard for everybody and thank god it's not my situation and we have to remind ourselves that we... how grateful we are and how thankful we have to be for having the life we had. >> rose: indeed. but it is also a sense of what a good life ought to be. >> uh-uh. >> rose: what is it that we ought to live for? >> i think for the others as long as we live for the others there's hope. when we are forced to live for ourselves... and there's a lot of people in extreme situations where they can think about the others, they have to think about themselves. how they got to survive. but in a normal situation where

there are people not in those extreme situations i think hope is about being able to open to the others and i think beyond your own needs and help the others. and the this movie speaks about that also. >> rose: you are now leading man and you are now principle character. how do you approach it? what is the process for you? >> it has to have some kind of impact in you in order to say... and to believe and to feel like, o.k., i am going to give something personal to it that's going to be worth for the viewer to watch or for me to do it. otherwise it will be just go there and deliver the lines and that doesn't make it any good to anybody. not to the view yir, not to myself. so when you read the material somehow you feel okay,ive to do this. not i want to do it, i have to

do it. that's what happened to me with the movie, beyond the fear and insecurity of facing somethat that is so big, it was the desire of doing something i couldn't escape. >> rose: you could not have said no to this? >> no. it was impossible and that implied a lot of fear because what alejandro proposed, it was not a performance, it was a life journey for both of us. >> explain that to me, it was not a performance... >> rose: it was a life journey. there are roles where you go okay, i know more or less how to deal with this from a very professional point of view and there are certain roles like this one where you say how much i have to take off... how i have to take things out of myself in order to get there. how much of a journey i have to do within myself in order to go to that place i'm being honest

enough to do that role. because we're not talking about a man who's... we're speaking about a man who's going through a very strong journey to something very important for himself. >> rose: what is the most important thing to allow you to access the things that you might be fearful of exposing? >> i would say love. >> rose: really? love for the character? love for the... >> love for... i know it's going to sound like very '60s, but love for you, my friend. love for everybody. love for the human race. i mean love from the people because i like people and nibble people and i still trust in people-- including myself-- i do this job. otherwise i would have done something different because i am obsessed about portraying people that are going through a very hard circumstance struggling with themselves in order to become better and to do less

harm to others. that's why inspires me and that's what i look for when i read material. and there's a moment where you have to really give up of yourself and give up yourself and give all of yourself for something in order to remind us that there is hope that we can see each other and we can help each other and we can thank each other for being just that. >> what's your plan... >> i'm not here to talk about that. >> what's your plan? oh, yes, you are. you >> you watch the fight and you'll see the plan. >> hey, what is this? scared? you'm embarrassed because you don't have a plan? we're brothers, just tell me. let him punch himself out, take him to the body, get inside, switch stances like you're going to work his right, hit him on the left. >> you ain't me! >> we ran low, there's a scene

in the beginning of of the movie with dickie walking around the streets where he's like the mayor of the streets and that's really what it's like for him. people shouting hi, going in and out of barbershops. i was meeting policemen who'd arrested him ten times who he knows on a first-name basis. going to crack houses he used to be at, gyms they used to train at and then mickey and dickie came and spent three and four weeks. >> they lived in my house for a while. >> so we just spent all day training, hanging out, sparring. >> rose: how long was me prison? >> well, actually he went down for eight years. we had to condense it for the movie. there was an awful lot which was condensed for it. but as he says, it was the best thing that could have happened to him because he got clean, got clean in the head and it was when he realized okay, he's got to stop it with this belief that he is still going to make his comeback and that' he's a star. he had this crazy burden throughout his life like i was

saying which he was finally able to n prison to say it's done. what am i doing? i'm living a lie. and able to tell the rest of the family, "it's mickey's time now" and have them believe that. and come out of jail to train him to be world champ. >> you said that you were studying international relations >> oh, yeah, wow, that was a... that was a long time ago. um... yeah, i was considering it but then i dropped out of school. >> oh? you dropped out of college? yeah, just wasn't my thing. >> no, huh? why's that? >> i don't know, it just seemed like a massive waste of money after a while you know? i was just sitting on my ass listening to people spout ideas i could have just as easily have learned in a book. >> paul's one of those classic american bachelors who lives his life completely for his own pleasure, i think. and he gets a call out of the blue from someone who says that she's the child... his...

>> rose: sperm. >> yes, i'm your daughter and i have a brother. and we have two moms. >> rose: (laughs) and we're going to meet you. >> and we want to meet you. right. >> rose: and you have a moral responsibility to come see us. >> yeah. i think at first it's also a little like yeah, i made two... yeah, my stuff is good, i made a couple kids, too. and i think he at first comes to curiosity but quickly things take off. my wife and i knew a famous hollywood bachelor and in the '70s he still had the 20-year-old models all around. he had the house on the hill, the lime green '64 mercedes and seemingly had it all but on his deathbed he said "i really wish i had a family to have shared all this with.

i love this kind of twist. these guys are very appealing. they live life in a really unapologetic way. they live it by their own sort of... on their own terms and to see him go from someone who only thinks about himself to someone who all of a sudden... >> rose: understands there's something else. >> it's a nice journey to take. we're programmed for it a little bit. >> rose: and the relationship develops because? >> he's got one foot in the door. (laughter) 6-he's got... i mean, there's two kids there. and he definitely... he's very attracted to her, you know? and. >> rose: it happens doesn't it? >> it's instant family. the movie is told from such a

personal place and honest place that it transcends the device of nature of politics that usually pulls people apart and actually brings us together, which is what great film making, story telling can do, should do without being conscious of that effort. >> for me at least, when i am working the film that it took me three or four years to put together, you know, i try to see it as a little bit more than entertainment. to entertain people you can find a clown they will entertain for two hours but i hope that the

film not only is entertaining, that's for sure, people are get me two hours of their life, i have to not only entertain it but i will love that the film can explore different territories and if you achieve to create an emotional catharsis provoke thoughts, emotions and shake some preconceptions of things that you want to bring to the table, not pointing, not preaching, just to shake the tree and expose this story and kharker to bring ideas, emotions and put the people in the stable territory that they didn't know and they are uncomfortable in a way but at the same time soothed and loved and to have an experience then i think the film is not at the core of an entertainment piece but a little bit more, i would say, they provoke something and that's what i think ours should be doing. >> rose: what brought you the

story? >> i think it's a mysterious process but i guess there was some poem of a mexican poet that is very short it was a musical piece from ravel who set the tone. and i feel that in this stage of my life having a father who is now ill and i have a deep relation and have a fear of losing him since i was ten years old and now being the father of two kids and confronting myself with those thoughts i think those are things that this film is... and dealing with some of the bipolar disease on a very unfortunate level in different areas of my life, all those things for me close, have been close to me. those things impact me and the immigration as the object is... >> rose: immigration. >> yes, i mean all the slavery

of the 21st century which is the immigration problem that is not about bars low that. it's the south of this country, the north of my country, the south of my country, in asia, everywhere. so the illegal conditions of these guys make slavery now league and that's something that we have to bring into urgency. >> rose: you've described it as a great oak. >> my old oak tree. >> rose: your old oak. >> rose: isn't that great? >> it's always when my father was... when i was a kid i was measuring with my father trying to see when i will be bigger than him and when we were close always my father said like feel the old oak. ... still the old oak. >> rose: he would joke. so >> so i always remembered that. even though he's shorter. >> rose: you'll always look up to him. >> i'm not feeling that at all.

i'm really liking more and more. you know? let's not try to tame this. let's let it be, like, lush, overgrown, fecund. >> fecund? >> like fertile, yeah? >> i love that word. you don't hear people use it very often. >> yeah. >> yeah, i like, that right on, let's do that. >> i started writing the film, god, like 2004, 2005. on my own. my partner wendy and i had just decided to go with a sperm donor we wanted to have a kid, start a family and that was a big decision for us and i kind of got very deep into researching what would it mean go with a sperm donor and when i sat down to write a screenplay i realized that that's all i had been thinking about for a long time,

sperm donors and families and i invented this family. and i ran into an old friend who's a screen writer who revealed to me in one conversation that he had been a sperm donor back in college and i said, well this is kismet. something something going on in my family and i think we should try to write this script together and i think we should try to make something that's very personal in a way more universal and mainstream. let's try to make a larger picture out of this. and miraculously we did. >> paulson and bernanke had not consulted with other government and didn't understand the consequences of foreign bankruptcy laws. >> lehman brothers london continued to empty... >> under british law, lehman's london office had to be closed immediately. >> all transactions came to a halt. and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of transactions. >> the hedge funds who had had

assets with lehman in london discovered overnight to their complete horror that they couldn't get those assets back. >> the film is about the systemic corruption of the united states by the financial services industry. that's what the film is about, and the consequences of that systemic corruption. >> rose: and you decided to make what kind of film? the story of? or did you know there was a story there that you wanted to tell? >> i knew there was a story i wanted to tell. it turned out the story was more extreme and more remarkable and shocking than i realized but when you get to the point where gigantic financial institutions are collapsing on a daily basis, something big is going on. >> rose: what didn't you know when you started making this film that you now know? >> i would say there are two things and i found them both, actually, surprising and shocking. the first was the ethical level to which american finance,

particularly investment banking, had sunk. the other thing that shocked me, i have to say, was the astonishing incompetence of the government's response during the crisis period of 2008. the one thing that i thought we could assume with a treasury department headed by henry paulson, the previous c.e.o. of goldman sachs, would be knowledge and competence about the financial markets. >> when the boys built that base taliban and forces in the valuely, they were completely in shock. it was like a middle finger sticking out. and they realized once they could not knock off restrepo, we had the upper hand. they started becoming afraid. >> it took me a long time out there to understand courage and i saw a lot of it. i saw it just about everyday. and one of the reasons it was so hard to understand was because

the soldiers don't really acknowledge the word. if a... i saw this. a guy ran through gunfire, heavy machine gun fire to grab and pull to safety another guy in the platoon who had been injured and was in the open and if you asked that guy, wow, that was so brave of you, why did you do that, his response would be-- and was when i asked him-- "listen, it's not courage, that's being a soldier." like if i didn't rub through gunfire to save my buddy, my brother you're not a friend, a soldier, nothing. you shouldn't be here. >> rose: so it's duty. >> it's duty. so that's the minimum duty. so courage is something over the top and soldiers don't rise that. you do your job and do it not for the officers and the command and not even for the country. you do your job for your brothers out there and they do the same thing for you and that's the only way anyone can get through combat. >> rose: what do they talk about?

>> at restrepo? >> rose: yes. >> you have to understand they were on a hill top for a year without running water, without cooked food, without internet, without phone, without television without anything. they were behind sandbags with boxes of ammo for an entire year. no women, nothing. they couldn't call their girlfriend. they were up there a month at a time. they walked down to main base once a month to take a shower, burn their uniforms, get new ones, call their girlfriend and go back up. so it's almost like a strange experiment, take 20 guys, put them on a hill top like that for a year and i felt like i was getting an interesting glimpse inside the male psyche. you remove all the outside influences, particularly women, and what you get is there's a tremendous roughness to that. >> rose: what happens when they come home? >> well, they're fall the army so only one guy got out of the army. they don't come home, per se, do their... >> rose: to civilian life. >> right. they went back to vincenza italy

where they're base. they called it coward's land. the reason they called it coward's land because men who had never been in combat on the base in vincenza can order around men who have been and that drives them absolutely crazy. and after a couple of month there is, many of them said to me as bad as it was in the korengal, a fifth of all the combat in afghanistan was happening in that valley. 150 men were absorbing a fifth of all the combat in afghanistan. nevertheless they said, you know if we could go back there tomorrow, we would do it. and what i really wanted to do with my book was understand what it was that they missed. how can you take a young man, put him through that for a year then bring him back to all the pleasures and delights of civilization and he wants to go back to o.p. restrepo. what is it missing in his life back home? what's happening out there that now seems so essential?

i think what they're really missing is this brotherhood. if you're in a combat platoon at a place like restrepo every person in the platoon is necessary. and that feeling of necessariness is intoxicating and you can't coupely kate it back in solt so one of these guys said to me there are guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other, but we would all die for each other. you can't find that relationship back home because thank god it's not necessary and once you're exposed to it, it's such a sure thing, so solid, so reassuring that everything else in a weird way looks frightening by comparison. >> and you said the willingness to die for your brother is, in fact, a form of love. >> it is. in the end i concluded that's what courage is is love. it may be the ultimate expression of love. i would rather risk my life than watch you lose your life. that's a very intense statement and every single guy up there felt that way about everyone else, even guys that didn't like

and when they come home they can't find that anywhere and they miss it. and without that love i don't think combat would be possible. >> rose: oscar night? a remarkable evening and celebration of the best in film making, in the end, we're all winners because we get to see the remarkable achievements of people who care about films. we're all winners and we thank the nominees for sharing their conversations with us on this program. and we thank you for watching. see you next time.

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