>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with season two of "house of cards" on netflix and talk to beau willimon, he is the writer and show runner for the series. >> he is a contradiction as we all are. his contradiction and paradoxs are writ large on the national stage but here's someone who wants power and power tends to put you at the center of the chess board. and yet he feels most comfortable at the edges. >> rose: right. >> so how do those two things mesh? that's one of the big questions we asked in season two and beyond. >> rose: we continue this evening with the story of one of the great college basketball coachs of all time. joining us, seth davis office author of "wooden: a coach's life." >> i wanted to write about that third the dimension which is not to say that as any kind of takedown but we think of him as a sweet old guy reading poetry

from his den. guess what? you don't win ten championship by being sweet. he had a very controversial reputation with respect to his treatment of referees and riding posing players because he didn't believe in talking to his own players during games so he had to have somebody to talk to and that was often times referees. like a lot of great achooefrs, charlie, he was very insecure. >> rose: i was going say that. >> like a lot of people who came out of the great depression. >> rose: we close with matthew barney. his new film is called "river of fundament." >> i felt like i was going to repeat the same pattern over and over again and i thought that if i could let go of a little bit of control, the kind of control that you grow used to as a filmmaker, that i could find a new perspective. and jonathan and i had been talking about taking on the form of opera in some way. >> rose: beau willimon, seth davis and matthew barn barney

when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications

from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: i can turn this around, sir. >> he told me this was your idea? to pursue this compromise? >> i suggested it as an option. >> no, he said you bullied him into it. that he thought it was a mistake. >> if he felt so strongly, he should have advised you otherwise. >> he's not a politician, he relies on our political expertise as much as we rely on his business acumen. >> maybe we shouldn't point fingers until there's a problem. >> you wouldn't call this a problem? >> not if it's solved before it becomes one. >> rose: beau willimon is here. he is the creator, show runner and lead writer of "house of cards." the series follows a scheming politician played by kevin spacey as he navigate it is political world of washington.

last year it was nominated for nine emmy awards and won three of them. now it is back for a second season. here's a teaser for the season. >> i will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which i'm about to enter. >> so help me god. >> so help me god. >> one heart beat away from the presidency and not a single vote cast in my name. democracy so overrated. let's start this new chapter with a clean slate. >> i know you'll do whatever you think is best. >> i think congressional leadership took part. >> a vice president just assumed office. i can't have conspiracies to start going. >> connections are troubling, especially underwood. >> so this goes all the way to the wus? >> it might. >> delete all of our phone history. >> are you going to just walk away, act as if i don't know anything? >> you were with the president 49 minutes. >> he's convincing the president to change his mind. >> you would be making a disastrous mistake.

>> i feel like i'm losing control of my own goddamn administration. >> hit him again and hit him now. >> he's a dangerous man. >> i want him obliterated. >> just make him suffer. >> i don't know whether to be proud or terrified. >> some people think your marriage may be a bit more calculated than you let on. >> we have to strike back hard and fast. they stepped on the wrong (bleep)ing rattlesnake. >> i can turn this around, sir. >> i think he's setting her up. >> i know how to handle him. >> he's trying to set a message that stubbornness is far more costly than obedience. >> you let me know if anyone contacts you. >> agent green, f.b.i.. >> you cannot run away from this! he's got power, he's got a lot to lose and he is winning! >> i need to know that i need to be part of -- >> finish your thought. >> i won't submit myself to this sort of exposure again. >> am i really that sort of

woman. can you blame me if i find this difficult to trust you right now? >> you are out of line, frank! >> there is but one rule: hunt or be hunted. >> welcome back. >> i am pleased to have beau willimon at this table. welcome. >> thanks for having me, charlie. >> so we'll talk about this new season. but let's just quickly do a quick reference. how did you find this? >> about four years ago my agent gave me a call and said david fincher wanted to talk about doing a television adaptation of a bbc version of "house of cards" which is based on lord michael dobbs' novel. >> rose: right, right. >> and i heard about it and he writes about politics as i do in a fictional world and they've heard about "house of cards." and i thought if having a

conversation with david fincher was the end result of -- then watching the bbc version was a pretty good thing to do. i watched it, i loved it, i saw all sorts of opportunities for how we could make it our own and reinvent it. got on the phone with david. we shared all of our thoughts with one another, had a lot of the same instincts and impulses and decided to team up for this experiment. >> rose: so "house of cards" in britain was a huge success about the parliament and prime minister and intrigue there and deadly to say the least. >> (laughs) >> rose: so you come here and you have to write this and you know the kind of characters you have. what was your model? who -- where in your mind did you find frank underwood played by kevin spacey who in this year's episode is now the vice president. >> it started from a very organic place. anna richardson played francis urquhart in the bbc version, he was fantastic. but francis urquhart came from a place of aristocracy and privilege and i felt the

american myth of anyone could be president sfwr nothing was a large one. i wanted francis to come from a small town. my dad is from south carolina, he grew up in greenville and there's a catch phrase in the bbc version "you very well might think i couldn't possibly comment." which said with a british accent makes total sense but it's not part of the diction of an american. so i thought what part of the country would that diction make sense where it would roll off the tongue and south carolina where my dad was from "you very well might think that i couldn't possibly comment." so i asked my dad what's a small town that you know in south carolina that would be the last place you might think a president might come from? and he said "gaffney." and gaffney was perfect because, you know, there you have a small town off of interstate 85. >> rose: here in spartanburg. >> and it's a place called hope.

>> rose: let's look at this. roll tape. the moment between frank and claire. >> will you give us a few moments please? >> yes. what >> what's wrong? >> it was him. >> who? >> freshman year. >> you mean -- mcguiness? >> rose: francis, francis, please -- please, don't do anything. >> i'm not going to pin a medal on him. >> you have to. >> just a minute, please! just a minute, please! he does not deserve a medal. >> a beg of you! i'm begging you, please. >> no, no! i said just a minute! >> do not make a scene! please.

>> rose: so what's the relationship between these two? >> i told david during our first conversation on the phone that i wanted to do something radical. i wanted to dramatize a successful marriage. so many marriages we see on television are dysfunctional and we see marriages breaking apart. i wanted two people who drew strength from one another. that -- >> rose: these two. >> that's right. the sense of power was mutual and equal. they just happen to operate by completely different rules than most conventional marriages would. >> it is an open marriage in a way. >> yeah. it forces you to ask questions like is infidelity the right word when no rule is being broken? what are the arrangements that we make in our relationships with our spouses, with our friends, with our lovers which allow them to operate hopefully? and so for these two people,

having a certain degree of independence and liberty is the key to their marriage. it's a way of expressing their mutual respect for one another. >> rose: two things you brought from "house of cards." one political story which it was in britain and which it is here. secondly you brought the technique of speaking to camera and it works. >> we outright stole it. boar vo a kind word. so kevin for nine months before we started shooting season 1 was doing a world tour of "richard iii." there's no better training for francis underwood or the directed a dress to camera than doing richard. and there's something great about the directed a dress which allows for an intimacy with the audience. they get to be in on his schemes. they are complicit, his cohorts and i think that only aplifies the drama of the series. >> as you look at the creation

of the second season, what did you think you had to do coming out of the first season? >> we all had high hopes for season 1. we were proud of the work that we did. we knew that releasing the show on netflix was a paradigmatic shift. not only that we were releasing on internet but all 13 episodes in one day. so we knew there was a lot of attention and we hoped people liked it. the response we got exceeded all of our expectations. that puts a good kind of pressure on you. you want to top what you did in season one. and the bright shiny new object of releasing all episodes on one day or releasing a show on to the internet is not there. it's just the story itself. so if anything what it did is motivate us to really try to expand the scope of the series to deepen our exploration of our characters and challenge ourselves to do even better than we did before. >> rose: this is what your friend jay carson who worked for bill clinton said. "with most other writers, you

would spend a lot of time educating them about the reality of politics. but beau worked on three campaigns with me. my version of it is writing a cop show after you've done a couple of ride alongs with the police. beau was a cop." >> (laughs) jay's been very kind. i was always low on the totem pole, mostly doing advanced work in the trenches but jay got me into politics. the first campaign i worked on was schumer in '98. and every campaign i worked on since he was a political wunderkind. he had this new york rise in politics. by the time he was 26 years old he was the national spokesman on howard dean's presidential campaign. so i add to my in the trenches view but jay gave me access to the inner sanctum of what was going on in the higher echelons. gave me the bird's eye view. i grew from those experiences and anecdotally what jay shared with me to write "ides of march" and also to tap into the world of "house of cards." >> rose: "ides of march" was the

movie made by george clooney. >> right. the great george clooney. it wouldn't have been made without him. george was passionate about that project a from the very beginning and stopped by it, put on a lot of hats, producer, director, actor, writer and he's superhuman. >> rose: have you seen "monuments men"? >> i have not had a chance to see it. we are in the midst of writing season three right now, we got the renewal so almost all of my waking life right now is concentrating on trying to figure out exactly what to do. >> rose: back to the challenge of season 2. what did you think you had to do other than be better than season one, which was pretty good. did you feel like i had to take it here, we have to do something with this, we have to develop this character, we have to understand more about claire? we have to do what? >> well, claire definitely. and really the marriage. one of the great discoveries of season one was how powerful this marriage could be. people bring it up to me all the time. we wanted it to be important but it became a centerpiece so a lot

of season two is seeing how these two people operate, especially now that they've both been complicit in doing something unconscionable. what we see with the death of peter russo and then subsequent acts of ethically dubious -- i mean, that what does that bond mean once they now both have blood on their hands? and let's dig deep interwho are the two people that are capable of doing this sort of thing. >> rose: take a look. this is claire and frank talking over lunch. here it is. >> he's very confident. >> but does he have what it snakes >> well, i looked at his media plan. >> what about his personality? >> charming, direct. very thorough. he found our first interview together in '86. >> i would love to see that! does he have a copy? >> i don't think so. the t.v. station made him watch

it there. >> we should screen that for the president and first lady, show them how it's done. >> cristina. >> what about her? >> have you noticed anything strange between her and the president? >> how do you mean? >> i passed them the hall yesterday and he seemed, i don't know, very intimate. >> they did seem cosi at the prep session. do you think -- >> no. not necessarily. >> but interesting thought, though. >> rose: planted the idea, did she? >> what i love about kevin and robin-- thousands of things-- but such ease with one another. you put them both of them in the same frame, the screen just lights up. and that previous clip we saw, the fearlessness is a real asset to us. i remember when we were shooting that scene in the bathroom and what sort of frames that scene because claire has been

confronted with someone who did something prettyer the to believe her in the past and francis is getting wind of this. that was the last scene of the day, we were shooting at about 3:00 in the morning. their commitment their work ethic, their ability to throw themselves at these very difficult scenes and to give so much to each other is what allow this is marriage that we're trying to investigate to be so powerful and complex and enigmatic. you know, it's really the strength of their craft and the power of their commitment which allows that marriage to be what it is? >> rose: this is kevin spacey on this program talking about frank underwood. here he is. >> what i think people might enjoy about francis as a character is that he has no allegiances. he has no allegiance to party, it's not about democrats or republicans or ideology or passion it's about opportunity to move forward. that's what he sees and that's

what he does. >> rose: to there it is. there's kevin spacey telling you what it is we like about frank underwood. >> and he would know better than anyone he's done a beautiful job portraying him. what i find so endlessly fascinating about francis underwood is that people ask is he good, is he evil? and he doesn't see himself through that lens. he sees ethics and morality as a form of quick sand. >> rose: and he sees the end justifying the means. >> that's right. if i offer you progress does it matter why i'm doing it? does it matter if i'm self-interested in even if you don't agree with what i'm doing i would rather give you forward momentum than stagnation. if that doesn't work, let's try something else out. but when we are stuck in the sand we can do nothing. that's attractive to people in our political climate. he sees ethics as a form of cowardice because it prescribes your behavior. it doesn't give you any choices.

it removes flexibility. whether you agree with that or not, that's his world view so he would smirk at the question of evil, what's good, what's bad. he goes "what gets me one step forward? that's the question i want to ask that's how francis approaches life. >> rose: who is -- was there one political character, one line, one book that would tell us who frank underwood is? is it lyndon johnson? >> lyndon johnson is the most informative by far. he is not a template, we don't -- we're not trying to create a parallel with lyndon johnson and certainly books are endlessly informative in terms of the complexity of the political soul but in l.b.j. you see someone who came from nothing, you see someone who had to fight every

step of the way in order to get where he was. you saw someone who was absolutely determineed to achieve what he said his mind to and you saw someone who really felt more comfortable, i feel, behind the scenes in the shadows than in the spotlight all of those things are applicable to frank underwood. >> rose: that's where his gifts were. >> i'm sorry? >> rose: that's where his gifts were, behind the scene rather than the spotlight. >> and we see francis struggle with that. he is a contradiction, as we all are. his contradiction and paradoxs are writ large. but here's someone who wants power and power tends to put you at the center of the chess board and yet he feels most comfortable at the edges. so how do those two things mesh? that's one of the big questions we ask in season two and beyond. >> rose: good story telling. thank you both. >> thank you so much, charlie. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> we're in good condition and i feel and kind of one of my

theories is to get our players to believe they're in better condition than any team against whom we will participate and whether they are or not, if they'll believe that it can help them a lot and it's always been my philosophy to go with six or seven men and that's how games are won or lost. >> rose: john wooden is considered among the greatest if not the greatest coach in american sports history. 50 years ago he won his first n.c.a.a. basketball championship at u.c.l.a. over the next decade he won nine more titles powered by the likes of lou alcindor and walton. the a new biography takes a look at the man known as "the wizard of westwood." the book is called "wooden: a coach's life." seth davis wrote this book and there is the cover and there is john wooden. what was it that you wanted to accomplish here? >> well, i had spent some time around coach wooden interviewing him, writing about him in my capacity writing for "sports illustrated" and i always sensed charlie, in the course of those conversations, preparing for those interviews and writing

about them there's a much deeper story to tell. we've been presented with this two dimensional figure. never had any flaws, never had a bad day. and we know that's not real life. so it occurred to me that no one had written a book like this, what i would consider to be a classic biography from a perspective of journalist and historian. >> rose: biography would have written about anybody, not just a coach. >> correct. but somebody who had to live an extraordinary life, as he did. i want to write about that third dimension. which is not to say the book is any kind of takedown because it's not but we think of him that has sweet old guy reading poetry in his den. guess what? you don't win ten championships by being sweet. he was extremely competitive. he loved to win. he had a very controversial reputation with respect to his treatment of referees and rioting opposing players because he didn't believe in talking to his own players during games so he had to have somebody to talk to and that was often times referees. like a lot of great achievers he was very insecure. like a lot of people out of the

great depression. >> rose: what was it about? >> part of it was coming out of the great depression and on his wedding day had $900 in the bank which was a lot of money and the next day it's all gone. so the sense for all the treasure you can accumulate today -- >> rose: my father went through the depression. would never buy anything on credit. >> and then there's something about people who are ultra competitive, particularly in sports. there's always the sense of whatever we do is not going to be good enough. the irony of john wooden's life is those 12 years he won the national championships, for a large measure the 12 unhappiest years of his life. >> because? >> because he was dealing with pressure and expectations and criticism. he was very thin skinned about criticism. that's part about his insecurity. the book opens with a quote from him that says "i've always said for my good friends in coaching i wish they would win one national championship and those i don't think highly of, i wish

they'd win several." because first -- you know, it took him 16 years to win a it too sol it was can he win the big one. then he started winning and wherever he would lose the team wouldn't win by enough or why didn't you win by more? then he was winning by so much that he was criticized for banl. you're ruining the game. he had heart attacks, celining issues, hypertension. his last championship? 1975 was arguably his least talented championship team so he was very much on top of his game. >> rose: he had different types of players. >> well, people said he had championships because he had lou alcindor and will walton. i said that's fine, you have seven to go, pal. so he had two great seven pooters then he didn't have a single starter over 6'5. >> rose: who was the start of that team? >> that was gale good rich and walt hazard. what a lot of people don't realize about john wood season

he was ahead of his time. he was not a great strategist and optician. he played an innovative 221 zone press that enabled him to win championships once the train got rolling he couldn't get off. between the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. i did write a lot about sam gilbert who's an u.c.l.a. booster, was u.c.l.a. booster, a wealthy real estate developer lived in los angeles who over the course of many years lavished favors on john wooden's players that were in violation of n.c.a.a. rules. >> rose: what favors? >> well, it wasn't straight cash when you look at it through a prism of 2014, it almost seems quaint. he would buy their tickets at above face value. he would point out restaurants they could eat and not have to pay. they would go to clothing stores and get clothes at a discount or not have to pay. discounts on cars and tires. they talked about him being a

referral service. and by the way he was the de facto agent for n.c.a.a. players. he represented alcindor, he represented bilawal on the. this was not -- it wasn't even a secret they were clear violations of n.c.a.a. rules and because u.c.l.a. had it going and they were the cash cow the n.c.a.a. never did anything about it. that's a mixed part of john wooden's legacy and i felt like it was important to address it accurately, thoroughly and most importantly, charlie, in context. >> rose: was he a workaholic? >> that may be overstating it. if there's one word that comes through in the book that he emphasizes is balance. he worked very hard but he kept a balance with his family life. one of the reasons he was not more popular is that if he went to conventions and the like at all he wasn't out with the guys, he was with his wife. he was with his family. didn't believe in recruiting. didn't go on the road to recruit because he felt like u.c.l.a. is a great school and -- >> rose: so how did they all

come to u.c.l.a.? >> well, it took a while. >> rose: every other great coach had to recruit. dean smith recruits. >> no question. no question. this is one of the reasons why people ask would john wooden be successful today. my answer is well, he'd have to adapt. he'd have to recruit. believe me, all those guys are out on the road. it was a different time. it took him 16 years to win his first national championship. he had an assistant coach named jerry norman who recruited early players that got the championship run going then he won the title in' 64 and '65 with this very exciting uptempo style and here's this incredible seven-foot prodigy from new york city, this african american young man who if anybody was ever too smart for his own good it was kareem. a brilliant young man who was seduced by the hollywood produced image of california where there was no racism and everything was sunny and great and he went out on his visit and after everybody promising the world he meets -- he called

wooden mr. pepperidge farm, promised him nothing but a chance to get an education and alcindor connected with him and i they ream is the best to play and that got it rolling. >> rose: to ever play the college game. >> ever play basketball, period. i'm talking with all respect to michael and russell and oscar and lebron, you talk about high school college and professional, i think kareem was the best. once that championship train got rolling, it had its own me men tum and wooden was so good at what he did. after having this once in a generation talent, here's this crazy redheaded hippy kid from san diego begging to play for you because he revered ail sin dorr, bilawal on the did, and john wooden, so a lot of it created this own momentum. >> rose: who did he remain closest to? dean smith is legendary very having wonderful relationship.

mike kryzewski has a good relationship with his players. >> very much so. and what's interesting, charlie. is you know when people say to me, well what did wooden's players think of him? my answer is well, there are two guys, there's the guy they played for and the guy they were able to have a relationship with well into his 90s. you had him on the show. he was i think 92 or 94. what a blessing that he lived so long. >> rose: you didn't feel like you were talking to someone who had -- >> charlie, to the moment he stopped breathing he was 100% mentally sharp. so what happens what happened was he was not emotionally connected to the players. he was not involved in their personal lives, especially the tumult of the '60s. he would counsel them against interracial dating. not because he had issues bauds he knew other people did and that might cause trouble and that would impinge on his precious basketball program. so a lot of the players, especially they didn't play, left their experience playing for him with ambivalence or even hostility toward him if they

didn't play. the beauty is he lived to be almost 100 and he was always available to them and as they say as we get older our fathers get smarter, that's what happened. they became teachers and ministers and coaches and businessmen and doctors and lawyers and most of all dads who had kids of their own who thought they didn't know what they were talking about, they were able to process the things that he was trying to teach them when they weren't so receptive and call them up and go to breakfast with him. so you have numerous examples of players who thought wooden didn't care about them or care for them oar didn't play enjoy playing for him because of the pressures but they could talk to him about it and he lived that credo, the sign on his office well said "it's what you learn after you know it all that counts." the thing about john wooden that people don't snow he originally aspired to be a civil engineer. i think he may have had o.c.d. stuff going. he saw order and details and he saw things in their place he

chose purdue because he learned he had to participate in these summer camp and he had no money so he had to make his money in the summer sometime he switched to english which put him on the path to coaching. so he was teaching high school english and became very disconcerted with the way the parents were fixated on children's grades and john wooden's feeling was for this child getting a b is a great -- is a success. that's the best he can do. for this child, getting a b is not success because he didn't live up to his potential. >> rose: this is a quote from him. "somebody asked me how come it took you so long to win a national championship and i said i'm a slow learner, but you notice when i learn something i have it down pretty good." >> 16 years. how about this, 14 years to win his first n.c.a.a. tournament game. you think the current coach at lauch will make 14 years without winning a game in the n.c.a.a. tournament? he was developing his craft year

by year, day by day, practice plan by practice plan he wrote them on 3 x 5 index cards and lured it over the practices and when the games began, there was no fire and brimstone speech, it was no newt rockne. he would say "i've done my job, i've prepared you, once the game starts don't look at the bench." he never called time out. lost a couple big games because he refused. that was their final exam. that's the way he taught his klass. it was an ethics class that he never intended to be -- he never intended to coach basketball in something called the astro dome. it was not in his game plan. >> rose: why is he the greatest coach in the history of american sports? >> because of the turnover that occurs at the college level. red auerbach had bill russell for all the celtics championships. phil jackson, my new neighbor and friend in the south bay of los angeles had mike until chicago and kobe in l.a. john wooden, even lombardi,

that's your mount rushmore. >> rose: lombardi? >> lombardi and then john wooden. >> rose: so wooden, phil jackson -- >> john wooden, phil jackson, vince lombardi and red auerbach. >> rose: because they -- they didn't just do it one time. >> they kept doing it. what's interesting is bill russell will tell you it's actually harder to keep wining with the same players because tensions build up and it's hard to sustain. there's a great argument on who could make it better than bill russell but you're talking about a guy who won with seven-foot centers. he won with small starting line ups. he won a lot of different ways and you did it not only with the usual roster turnover in college athletics but he did it at a time of incredible social upheaval. >> rose: this is when john wooden was 90 something talking about basketball and coaching and life. >> well, for years i would take an extra course in psychology

even after i was teaching. just to learn something about working with people because i think as far as knowledge of the game, whether it be baseball managers or basketball teacher, coaches or whatever it is, i think the knowledge -- there's not too much difference. there's tremendous difference in the way they can get those you should their -- superstrigs work together. >> rose: he has on a tuxedo because he's just been to an event or going to an event. >> i felt underdressed when i saw. that. >> rose: in fact, russell-and-was there and walton and we did a program with him. and bill russell never played for him. loved him. >> loved him. there were two forces that prevented him from advancing. the first was bilawal on the and then later in the '50s a coach named pete newel, he coached at california who outcoached wooden and people in the cal family and

pete and his primary accolate named john knight didn't care for wooden. >> rose: why was that? >> a couple indiana guys very strong willed. a lot of it had to do with pete newel but a lot of it had to do with sam gilbert, charlie. whatever you want to say about bob knight-- and i'm no fan of a lot of the thing he is has done-- there's never been a whiff of impropriety with respect to n.c.a.a. rules with coach knight. >> did everybody know about gilbert? >> everybody knew about sam bill gert. jim murray, the legendary l.a. times columnist in wrote sam gilbert was more important than u.c.l.a. basketball than building of the paville because lucious allen was unhappy after his sophomore year and talked about transferring and it was when they were put in touch with sam gilbert and he took care of their financial worries and related to them on a personal level. wooden couldn't talk about what it was like to be black and 19 in westwood, california at that

time. sam gilbert was an old jewish guy who was able to connect with them on that level. so he filled that void. but wooden, wherever anybody asked him about coach knight he said "i think he's a fabulous teacher and i admire the way his kids play. i might not approve of his methods but he's a great coach. and that irked bob knight to no end. >> rose: the thing that surprised me is he wasn't close to his players. >> when they played for him. that came later. in his mind -- it's interesting this kind of existence we live different realities. i asked him this question. i said the players that i talked to said you weren't invested in their personal lives and he said well, whether they think i was or not i was very interested in them as people so i mentioned that to lucious allen and he shook his head. he said "it's interesting that he deluded himself." and that's exactly what he said. he said "when i played for him i did not like that man very much." now that doesn't mean john wooden was wrong at the time.

you're talking about a 19, 20-year-old african american kid from inner city kansas city and he didn't always understand. >> rose: and we go out with something you might be surprised coming from a hugely successful basketball coach but here it is. john wooden. >> it was right next door to the vietnam memorial and anybody's ever been, it's incredibly emotional experience that is and when we walked out of there we could see tears running down our cheeks and coach recited an incredible poem that i can't -- he is so phenomenal with his poetry and -- >> do you remember what it was? >> no written word, no oral plea can teach our youth what they should be, nor all the books on all the shelves, it's what the teachers are themselves. and the other one was that they asked me why i teach, they asked me why i teach and i replied where can i find such company? there sits a statesman, strong,

unbiased, wise and never need a webster, silver tucked. a doctor sits beside him whose quick steady hand may lend a bone and there a builder, upward rise the arches of that church he builds and they speak the word of god and all about a gathering of teachers, farmers, merchants, laborers, men, those who work and vote and build and plant and pray and i may say i may not eat the food or see the church or hear the word and where they speak and yet again i may. and later i may say i knew him once and he was weak or strong or bold or proud or gay, i knew him once, but then he was a boy. they asked me why i teach and i reply "where could i find such company?" >> pretty good, huh? >> 92. i couldn't do that if you paid

me. >> rose: that was a long poem. thank you, congratulations. >> this is such a thrill. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> many lights appeared above my head and they were like a ladder of lights with many rungs. i seized if first and began to ascend from the river. the ladder twisted, it was not easy to climb but as it swayed the fields of gold on the other bank were receded from me as did the waters and i took the rungs of this ladder one by one. >> rose: matthew barney is here. he is an artist and filmmaker best known for his cinematic series cremaster cycle. he now has a seven part opera based honor man mailer's novel "ancient evening." he has worked on the film since 2007 with composer jonathan

bepler. it premiers at the brooklyn academy of music on february 12. i'm pleased to have matthew barney here at this table, welcome. good to see you. how did this start for you? >> well, there are two things. one, i -- i lost my way. the films that i had been making and i wanted to -- >> lost your way? >> i lost my way. city felt like i was going to repeat the same pattern over and over again and i thought -- i thought that if i could let go of a little bit of control, the kind of control that you grow used to as a filmmaker that i could find a new perspective. and jonathan and i had been talking about taking on the form of opera in some way and in doing that, doing what we had done in cremaster cycle but

doing it in realtime and letting it happen the way that it often had on set, the sense that i often set up scenes in a way that's much more to do with performance than traditional film making. is i tend to set up a situation and let it run and in that way i fill them a lot more than i need to. it's not a very economical way of making a film but it's the way i've always done it. so in a certain sense we felt like if the audience could just see what was happening on set they would have a greater understanding of what the spirit of the project is. around that same time norman mailer invited me to an awards ceremony. he was given the french legion of on honor and he said have you ever read "ancient evenings." i said i hadn't.

he said you should read at least the first one hundred pages and get back to me. and i said -- >> rose: sure. >> sure, why? >> he said i think's a film in this for you. i said i don't want to make films right now. i want to try something different and i read the book, read the first hundred pages and i wrote back to him and i said i am interested in this but i am interested in using it as a libretto for whatever it is jonathan and i are talking about. if this is an opera, if this is a site specific piece of situation at theiler but it's not. and norman passed away not long after. that but what we ended up with a a hybrid. it's somewhere between documentary notage of performances, live performances and a piece of cinema. >> so you were going to make it before he died? you had the intention to make it before he died?

he said to me at this table as you probably know that he considered ancient evenings to be his best work. and he thought it was his most misunderstand as well. do you talk about that? >> we don't talk about that. we talked about cremaster 3. >> about your work, not his? >> as a way of talking about the book because it dealt with the masonic mythology and dealing with freemasonry in some way it dealt with egyptian mythology. and so when he suggested the book and i read it i thought i've already dealt with egyptian mythology as directly as i'd be comfortable dealing with it and ancient evening is very, very much about the core mythology of isis, osiris, set. so i was terrified to read it

and think how can you deal with this material in a way that's not cliched. of course mailer did in this sort of hypersexual way which interested me but it was also a form of explicit sexual imagerys that is different from the way that i would choose to do it. so i would say the rot schism of the book was another way in for me. >> rose: so what's the sorry fundamentally about? >> well, river of fundament as as islamic jihad influenzaed as the review of "ancient evening" as it is by the text in a certain way, that what bloom suggested is that ancient evenings is autobiographical. that there's a protagonist who's a nobleman and noblemen work for the pharaoh and the noblemen

wants what the pharaoh has and so he uses sorcery to figure out a way to live again and so through these sort of tricks and devices he can have life again. although he doesn't -- by blood he doesn't deserve it. and bloom suggested that if failer is the nobleman, hemingway is the pharaoh. and that mailer wanted to write the great american novel. he wanted that position and it may have been a time when america didn't need that. as the -- cinema became more and more important. whatever the reason so that

relationship between mailer and hemingway or the nobleman and pharaoh became central to "river of fundament." >> rose: mailer was on this show several times. he talks about reincarnation. >> i believe there's life after death. i believe in reincarnation. >> rose: reincarnation? >> yeah. it makes sense to me. why do we have all this stuff that can't be used over and over again. >> rose: any motion of who knew you might have been before? >> no. >> rose: do you feel a sense of i have to spend a lot of my time working because there's a thing -- i haven't yet hit the home run i wanted to hit? >> well, i have no idea. you never hit the home run you wanted to hit. dose yefk ski died in mystery because he handwritten the >> most saturday died an unhappy man. >> you have to keep your sights above what you've done so far so i will die dissatisfied because i won't do some of the books i wanted to do. >> does that resonate with you?

>> sure. yeah. it does. i think again when the book was suggested to me or handed to me a certain way i started feeling like my touching point which, again was cremaster 3 and its relation to egyptian mythology that all i could do is collide two language which is were very much at adds in the sense that cremaster 3 and the cycle is an entrope i can model. and i felt like i could collide that with a model which is more religious. that became very interesting to me. it led jonathan and i eventually to add the language of whitman and emerson and other writers as a way of colliding with mailer's

language which happens more and more as the film progresses. >> this is the mailer eulogy in "river of fundament." it's a central scene me the film yes? >> it's early in the film but yes. >> rose: roll the tape. let's look at this. >> here we are. we're here to celebrate norman mailer. a man who, as the song goes, did it his way. to his public he never seemed afraid of his own mortality. not norman. no. and yet in reality norman was a deeply sensitive soul full of doubt. i remember when ancient evenings came out in the early '80s and

nobody liked it. here was this sprawling ambitious work hurled into the arena and nobody bit. norman didn't seem to care, but i know he did. the world wasn't ready for a book like ancient evening. we didn't understand it then. and now we can. (humming) now we can. we do. i think i speak for all of us when i say we loved him. very much. >> rose: so what did we just see? >> well, it's the beginning of the film in a sense that the film begins in a much more

nationalistic way. there are guests that awake for norman mailer and over the course of the film slowly the naturalistic guests were replaced by spirits, including several spirits of norman himself. and so i guess what we're seeing is the border of that changed. there's a seine that follows tse the first spirit of norman entering but probably more importantly what happens in the eulogy is that music begins to creep into the room in the sense that the film has somethinging to do with the tradition of opera. these scenes are something like the very beginnings of the narrative as it's sung. this happens more and more as the film progresses. >> rose: among the people there with elaine strip, who you saw, salman rushdie, maggie

gyllenhaal, why them? >> well, some of them had a direct relationship to norman and i think intention was to create a believable way where people from his social circle would be there and other actors who were chosen i think were cast as an extension of thatover that interest, making it naturalistic. in other words to find people whose sensibility aligns with with that. and, for example, maggie gyllenhaal and paul giamatti and ellen bursten were chosen far reason. >> rose: this is where you asked me to come participate in that and our schedules didn't match up. it looked like a remarkable thing. there is also this. you put it on a barge and you can see the apartment which is a

book on the heights, i guess, wasn't it? >> it was the top floor of a brownstone in brooklyn heights built at 1 x 1 scale. so mailer opened up the roof and built an extension on top which is quiting acentric. it had these ladders and ropes and plank ways that he would ascend and cross to get to everyday to get to a position of a crow's nest where he could look out over the new york harbor, zitd at a desk and write and when i first visited that house it was, that resonated for me very much and it ended being another structure and the film ends in that writing position and the last version of these spirits of norman who has performed by chief dave

beautiful bald eagle, a dakota man of '95 is the one who occupies that chair. >> this does make a new direction for you, doesn't it? >> it does. >> rose: is it defined or is it -- >> are you going somewhere with this or is this simply a rethinking of what you have done and searching for? >> i think it's too large and too long of a project to say that it's transitional. i can't say that. i would say that the big change for me is this -- embracing live performance and using is a way to reframe my interest in cinema. that there are a number of scenes in the film that were performed and filmed in front of an audience in dang that along came all of the challenges that you have with live theater and something running in realtime.

and it did reactivate my interest in remaking film. >> seven parts, runs over five hours? >> 5:20, two intermissions. it was always intended to be in the language of opera an evening like piece. we talked about making it for stage. we experimented a bit with that at at festival in manchester and decided that the stage was too fixed, the perspective was too fixed and so we moved on to performing in specific locations. >> it's very much a musical event. >> it is, yeah. it's nearly through composed. it's a lot of music in it. a lot of different types of music in it. >> what's the collaboration you have with blepler? >> jonathan and i worked

together for years now. he did the music for the cremaster cycle. so in the case of those films it was sort of a combination of traditional scoring to developing scenes together in this case with river of fundament we developed all of it together. we started with the writing together and set up each scene as a condition for music. whether the physical situation would drive that or the musical concept would drive that. so there's a little bit of both. it was collaborative in that sense that we started writing together. >> rose: river of fundament premier it is a brooklyn academy of music february 12? congratulations. matthew barney. thank you for joining us. see you next time.

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