>> charlie: welcome to the program. we begin with laurie garrett, council on foreign relations and the challenge of the ebola crisis. >> so we're building up a kind of response that is so anemic, so much less than what is needed. take for example libraryia it used to have a whopping 200 physicians for 4 million people. now because of ebola deaths and fear, they're down to 50 doctors to take care of 4 million people. how can anyone imagine that you can treat all the background diseases and illnesses, the routine car accidents, the woman in labor and handle this horrible epidemic with 50 doctors? >> charlie: we continue this evening with senior critic of the "new york times" on the best

hamlet he's ever seen. >> as you get older, you see hamlet as the ultimate coming of age story. we've all had the moment where the phone rings or you get the telegram or email saying dad died, the family business has gone bankrupt, your mother's left us, and at that moment when you think life will never be the same, and everything that's been in place to protect you wasn't there anymore, and you have to reckon with the adult world as an adult yourself, and you realize that without all of the safety nets you had before, it's a scary place. >> charlie: we conclude this evening with a film based on the novel "the giver." we have jeff bridges, brenton thwaites and lois lowery. >> i create a character where he will go on a journey, have a

hard time and be changed. i hope that the reader will enter the same journey and be changed by the end of it. i think that's true of this book and the movie. >> charlie: the ebola crisis, hamlet and "the giver" when we continue. >> and by bloomberg. a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: we begin this week

with the ebola outbreak. a second leading doctor in sierra leone has succumbed to the disease and official death toll in all countries is now over 1,000 and the manufacturers of zmapp now say they've exhausted existing supplies of the experimental ebola treatment. where does the crisis go from here? laurie garrett has ideas on that. won a pulitzer prize for journalism on the ebola outbreak of 1995. pleased to have you here. welcome. >> thank you. >> charlie: you are writing a piece that will go online soon for foreign policy and you are saying, world, you don't get it. >> right. >> charlie: what don't we get? we don't get both the enormity, the potential of this spreading to huge nations like nigeria and south africa and that there's no magic bullet. we aren't going to come riding in as the great technological america with the magic treatment, the magic cure, the magic vaccine. we might have something, oh two,

years from now, but not right now. so we're building up a kind of response that is so anemic, so much less than what is needed. just take for example liberia. it used to have a whopping 200 physicians for 4 million people. now because of ebola deaths and fear, they're down to 50 doctors to take care of 4 million people. how can anyone imagine that you can treat all the background diseases and illnesses, the routine car accident, the woman in labor and handle this horrible epidemic with 50 doctors? >> charlie: so what are the implications of that? >> i think the first thing i would say is a take-home message i got from my experience in the ebola epidemic in '95 in

democratic republic of congo is the tough measures we might in the american context think is uncomfortable walks over the line of civil liberties are really what makes a difference. you have to force people into quarantine. you have to take, you know, the loved one out of that home, away from the screaming family members and put them in a quarantine unit for the safety of that family and of the whole neighborhood, everybody around, and you cannot allow funerals and you have to force people to relinquish the dead for mass burial safely carried out by people in spacesuits and if you violate any of this in any cases, you lose control, you lose the ability to fight this virus. now what we're dealing with that we've never seen before in the history of what we know of ebola since 1976 when it first

appeared, also in zaire, is that it's urbanized. so it used to be you could wall off a community, a rural area, you know, put the soldiers on the highways on the outside of town and prevent people from leaving the area and then concentrate internally on the measures i was describing. but now, you know, it's monrovia, it's free town, it's the three giant cities of the major countries. >> charlie: how do you make it work? anybody infected with the ebola virus, you take them somewhere where they will not be able to infect anybody else and they will sit there and die? >> 30% will survive. >> charlie: 30. three out of ten. even though they're there exposed to other people who have ebola virus? how will they survive? there's no known treatment. >> their own immune systems will combat the cyrus successfully. the death rate right now is running between about 65 and 70%. >> charlie: explain to me how it is that if you fly next to

somebody you're not necessarily going to get ebola virus, not necessarily. >> no. >> charlie: on the other hand, if you're a doctor and you touch a dead body, you might get ebola virus. >> first you have to consider the conditions. this is not trying to do medical care in new york city. you're talking about you're inside of a space suit which some of the physicians i've talked to said can reach 121 degrees inside the suit because you're in the tropics, near the equator and the suits are like wearing saran wrap. how long can anybody keep their mind sharp in that kind of heat? pretty soon you start getting sloppy, and if there aren't enough other doctors there to relieve you so that your shifts run, you know, a reasonably short amount of time, then you will make mistakes. what's a mistake? you're trying to inject a needle into someone and you poke yourself. what's a mistake?

>> charlie: transfer of fluids. >> absolutely. what's a mistake? you remove your gear in the wrong sequence so that you take your glove off first, touch your mask, remove your mask, rub your nose and you just infected yourself. >> charlie: what if we don't do this? what's going to happen? >> you mean if we all just sit back and -- >> charlie: no, if we use everything except quarantine, what's going to happen first in africa? >> it's going to continue to spread in these three countries, sierra leone, liberia and guinea, it's going to take a huge toll in countries that already are destabilized, have very weak governments, more and more people out of terror will start fleeing across borders by any means they can and, therefore, taking the virus into neighbor countries. the borders are very porous, and i also think it's only a matter of time before one of the international responders,

perhaps a journalist, ends up in lagos or johannesburg or rome or london and doesn't realize they're infected and transmits to other people. we already had this happen once with patrick sa sawyer, a libern who flew to lagos and infected a whole crew of people who were both his handlers for the business meeting and his health providers. >> charlie: i hear two things as i talk to people about this, number one the fear, and, on the other hand, people trying to tamp down panic. >> panic. i had a conversation with the president of the world bank here a couple of nights ago. he said we worry about panic, i assume because it will make the risk greater. >> we have been through this before. you and i were on the air so many times in the 1980s at the

beginning of the aids epidemic. what were we looking at? on the one hand you had larry cramer correctly saying, hello! everybody, wake up! you're not paying attention and we're dying here! and on the other hand you had crazy people burning down homes, denying jobs and abusing individuals who they thought had hiv, and you had the walk that line. where's the panic point, where's the feeding the fuels of bigotry and inappropriate response where people are reacting against the microbe, they're reacting against the human who has the microbe. you can't get complacent, on the other hand. you can't just keep saying calm down because pretty soon you're giving a message there's nothing to worry about. >> charlie: do you have a point of view who should get the experimental serum? >> there's so little it's of no

consequence. >> charlie: why so hard to produce it? >> it's experimental. there are three drugs and all have novel methods of production and they don't have standardization. they've never done commercial production, so every step of the way you have to be sure you're making what you think you're making. >> charlie: let me walk through that because my naive brain doesn't understand it. if you have all the money in the world, you couldn't accelerate the product to get as much as you need right now? >> i don't think so. >> charlie: you couldn't take over whatever pharmaceutical company there is and said all you can do for the next six months is make this drug. >> that's not what the c.e.o.s of these companies say. they all say it's tough to make a huge amount. >> charlie: i don't understand that. >> they're using technologies and biological approaches that are new and, keep in mind you don't want contaminants. here's a potential foreign policy nightmare -- almost all

these drugs are either coming from the united states or canada except the glaxosmithkline english vaccine, possibly. what if we turn out to mass distribute something that turns out to eventually make people blind or lose their hearing or something of that nature? then what's the blowback? >> charlie: it's not good. and we haven't had safety trials for my any of it, no hu, except recent cases. >> charlie: have we not been trying to do something about ebola since you last wrote about it? >> yep. >> charlie: yep we haven't or -- >> yep, we haven't tried. >> charlie: we haven't tried? let me be clear. since 1995, with a few subsequent smaller outbreaks elsewhere in africa, researchers at the national institutes of health and a few other research institutions and pharmaceutical companies have tried to come up with cures and vaccines, but

nothing has progressed to the point of a clinical trial. part of the reason is the profit incentive is very, very low for something that may have a use point very, very rarely, nobody could anticipate this particular outbreak. >> charlie: laurie garrett has a piece called outbreak, heartless but effective. i've seen the drug work against ebola. thank you. >> thank you. >> charlie: back in a moment. stay with us. >> charlie: ben brandy is here, theater critic of the "new york times." he wrote, "there is a netted their madness," looking at the performances of hamlet in the modern era. many performers talked about it at this table. >> i played hamlet young and we

went to the castle where we more or less are certain shakespeare's troupe went. i remember when the date was confirmed, i thought i could have died and gone to heaven. >> when you shoot it, you shoot it out of order and do the last part of the s the so lillo quesh before the other. >> he would put the most important thought of hamlet's is the question. >> towards the middle of the soliloquy, i did that. i was wearing my horn-rimmed spectacles and they had lenses which turned black when the light shown, and i would be wearing them and forgotten, and

i played to be or not to be in horn-rimmed glasses. >> charlie: and he was chuckling? >> chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. >> charlie: you regret most -- not having played hamlet. >> charlie: all of a sudden, you were too drunk? >> because in my lifetime, i think that acting was an avocation. living life was a vocation to me. so i never had the time. i said, i'll do it next year. >> charlie: he did tell you to do hamlet. >> marlon brando practically begged me to drop out of hollywood, walk away, for a year, take off, go to london, study hamlet, play that part before it's too late because he said i never got a chance to play it. >> you don't play hamlet. hamlet plays you.

there's a part of you in him. it has to be you feelings of life because, indeed, the questions he raises, the experience he is going through is in a way a map through life. >> charlie: i am pleased of ben brantley back at this table. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> charlie: this is such a good and obvious idea for a theater critic or for anybody interested in great theater and in great playwrighting, but why this piece and how did you shape it? >> it was an assignment turned out to the culture critics, by the amateur of the times, which was imagine yucke you could curr own exhibit or developments any way you like. it could be fantasy -- the series is called "imagine this," so try to imagine you could use any combination of elements

whatsoever. so i'd seen probably 20, 25 hamlets in the course of my career at the times and hamlet was probably the first shakes speern figure i was aware of even as a kid, had ahold of my imagination as well as the actors' imaginations. sports figures say what if it were babe ruth versus barry bonds, and we theater people tend to think in those terms, too. so i wanted to assemble my fantasy olympics of great hamlets over the years. >> charlie: greats vs. great. yes. >> charlie: went back to 1922. that was the year john barrymore dazzled new york, took it on to london. the british were a little less enthusiastic because he spoke the speech less conversationally than they were supposed to. they were used to high rhetoric. but everyone who saw it, and this was really barrymore to the

peak, just about 40, hadn't begun the downward slide into alcohol. it was riveting. a truly visceral performance you with respect used to. olivier saw it and said before that there had been beautiful, poetic ham lets but they had been cay administrated, just basically poetry but barrymore gave hamlet his balls back. (laughter) >> charlie: what is it about 4q.im? >> even though hamlet is close to 30, he still seems like the ultimate adolescent avatar for our fantasies. he's the guy who rebels against the establishment and upsets an entire kingdom. not unlike holding coffield in a

way but with a power and a sword. we all have the time when you get the phone call, email or letter or telegram saying dad died, the family business has gone bankrupt, your mother's left us. at that moment when you think life will never be the same and everything that's been in place to protect you wasn't there anymore and you have to reckon with the adult world as an adult yourself and you realize that without all of the safety nets you had before, it's a scarey place and you start to think about mortality probably for the first time in your life. >> charlie: what you just said is what oscar the director of the public theater said to me is we're all hamlet because hamlet takes on our appearance, takes on who we are and speaks to us at anytime. >> i think that's true. i think part of growing up is acknowledging mortality, and it's something a lot of us put off indefinitely. it's something we're sort of

running from, and hamlet reaches that moment when his father dice and then he learns how horribly his father has died when he thinks, i mean, death is there, how do we deal with it? how do we deal of the fact of it and how do i make something that's very wrong right that i have been made responsible for. >> charlie: when you look at the great actors, whether olivier or richard burton, barrymore or all those who have taken a shot at this, i mean, it's almost a coming of age for a good actor. >> oh, yeah, yeah. >> charlie: you have to do this. >> yeah. and what's been fascinating is i have been in this job or at least been going to the theater long enough now so that i can see actors progress through the generations of, you know, it's romeo, hamlet, macbeth, and then now everyone's doing king lear! >> charlie: we have clips throughout the conversation. i begin with john gillgood who nod only played hamlet but directed richard burton in

hamlet here on broadway. >> that's right. >> charlie: here is john gillgood as hamlet. >> two months dead. not so much, not two. so excellent a king it was to this. i peer into a satire, so loving to my mother that he may not beckon the winds of heaven to visit her too roughly. heaven and earth i must remember why she would hang on him with increasing appetite that grown on what it fed on and jet within a month let me not think on -- frailty! they name is woman! >> gillgood is still widely rared as the most musical of hamlet. talk about speaking the speech, it just sang. olivier a couple of years later was a more virile, deliberately

freudian interpretation of hamlet. what was the length he consulted with at length? >> charlie: i remember. but here's what he said. laurence olivier -- once you have played it, it will devour and obsess you for the rest of your life. it has me. i'll never play him again, of course. but, by god, i wish i could. ." >> isn't that wonderful? he was in his mid '70s and was thinking if i could just have one more go at it. most famously the whole wide world was concerned when he won the academy award. >> charlie: and richard burton. >> who was directed by john gillgood which seems strange because burton admitted when he did hamlet first time at stratford in the 1950s he was probably overly enfliewnsed by gillgood and falling into the music which is a danger of doing

shakespeare where you ride the poetry and forget the person the poetry is coming from. but with gillgood it was done, kineticscope films of it, done where people wore their street clothes. burton just married elizabeth taylor and so people were lined up around the block like groupies at a rock concert. i wish i could have seen him in person. he was sort of a loose canon interpretation but the visceral charge of it was pretty incredible. >> charlie: hincredible. >> charlie: here is richard burton. >> so he goes to heaven. and, so, am i revenged?

the villain kills my father. before that, i his sole son do the same villain send to heaven. this is high on salary not revenge. my father on bread, flush is made, our heart is heavy with him. am i revenge being purged for his soul when he's in his season for passage? no. i will enter when he's drunk, asleep or in his rage or in his bed. a game, a swearing all about an

act that has no salvation and trip him that his soul may be as damned and black as hell! >> what's so great is even though there's very charismatic anger, you can also see a man fighting with his own softness which is a resolution. he knows he's rationalizing he's not gil killing claweddous and t rankles him and fuels the anger. >> charlie: there was the conflict within richard burton. he had been a great actor and then chose a different lifestyle. >> as john barrymore. it was the beacon and down into the flesh pots which may not be a bad place to be if that's your choice. he was a glamorous hamlet. i grew up thinking he was a glamorous figure. >> charlie: an excerpt from kenneth brown who clearly in

some ways has been more about shakespeare over the life of his career. >> he's popular in the sense olivier was especially bringing it to the film. henry the fifth is still so much. >> charlie: take a look at this. kenneth brown. >> (indiscernible) i need him, horatio. a fellow with infinite jest, a most excellent fancy. he has borne me on his back a thousand times. now how strong in my imagination it is. those lips i kissed i know not how long. where be your jibes now? you can pose your song with your flashes of merriment.

(indiscernible) i take you to my lady's chamber. tell her to this favor she must succumb. laugh at that. tell me one thing. >> what's that? do you think alexander looked -- >> charlie: before we talk about ken, i want to talk about mark one more time because i love this. there is a story which you touch on -- because he plays him enormously deranged. >> right. >> charlie: and he's playing before an audience in which legitimate people are. take up the story. >> they toured with him and went to the institution for the criminally insane, broadmoor,

and he played hamlet in his soil pajamas. the guy probably slipped on over into craziness. and one of the inmates ran up and said, god, you are really loony! take it from me! i'm crazy, i know! >> charlie: when he said that, take it from me, you're crazy! i'm loony! it seems like acting but it's not. you're there. >> he's brave actor. when i saw him as hamlet, it was at the globe when he was playing the set. once a guy realizes he's going to be crazy, reises he may actually be crazy. this has driven him crazy and the terror of that. >> you were earlier attracted of the man in black with the skull. >> yes, when i was a kid my

grand-daddy taught shakespeare and i would look through his books. there was always the plates in the books, the etchings, henry in profile, the skull held like that. just like we saw brannic playing with the icon oography in the movie. look how interesting in black. >> charlie: when you look at all these, is there one that's for you that fits an individual judgment? and depending on a whole range of actors. >> there have been a lot i enjoyed. a lot of productions i enjoyed. probably the single most revelatory hamlet was ivan. i saw him do it london and at the brooklyn academy of music. he's short, squat, not remotely glamorous. but he gave total transparency. it's the only time i saw it

where the contradictions in hamlet made sense because he made sure you followed every step of the journey. the sense of a guy who's only known life as a student, suddenly confronted with reality and feels so betrayed by it. and i still think about it. broke my heart. >> charlie: when you said that, you can't feel it for weeks. >> no, you don't stop. i would love to see it again. i guess -- of course, we've moved on but that was the most thoroughly thought out hamlet. >> charlie: any sense lear is becoming the new hamlet? >> lear are the baby boomers, a little older than i am, who graduated from the macbeth to the king lear years.

beal is young to be playing lear. >> charlie: franklin the right age? >> yes, and i think john lithgow was probably the right age. imagine being close to 80 and still being able to memorize all that and create that kind of sense of rage. he is sort of hamlet's heir and here's someone who looks at the world finally with clear eyes and goes, i didn't sign up for this. >> charlie: what we should see in new york on broadway? >> "between riverside and crazy" at the atlantic theater company, it's the best play about lying and how lying is an essential part of our lives that i've ever seen. it's terrific. so that i recommend.

stars stephen mckinley henderson which is a stable of williams productions. beautiful in this. >> charlie: thank you. thank you so much. >> charlie: ben brantley, theater critic for the "new york times" on hamlet. back in a minute. stay with us. >> charlie: "the giver" first published in 1993 by lois lowry, follows a boy as he learns the truth about the world he lives in. sold over 11 million copies worldwide. in 1994 won the newberry medal, also been at the top of the american lobbyist associations list of banned and challenged books. it is now a movie and here's the trailer for the movie the giver. >> from great suffering came a solution, communities. >> injected. three beautiful places where disorder became harmony. ♪

>> you know how to fly those? absolutely! you get to fly to the edge? eah. what's out there. i don't know. let's go. it's real. ♪ >> they're called books. hello, my name -- i know who you are. who are you? "the giver." when the elders need guidance, i provide it using memories of the past. our world was different. there was more. >> more is this. uch more. ♪ >> where? you will see them all in time. people tend to do away with emotions, the mornings injections take them away. >> when people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong. >> i have been doing it for

months. >> what do you feel? he's not usually like this. i'm surprised you're not more worried about him. i would be. >> bring up jonas' activity. he's inquisitive. you should know better than anyone. >> the way things look and the way things are very different. watch. >> that's my father. ere is no way for me to prepare you for the truth. >> the children. young and the old are killed. >> things we don't know. you're scaring me. go back to your family unit. it isn't my family. neither is yours. jonas has become dangerous. i know there's something more, something inside us. >> jonas -- there has to be a way to show them. >> you can stop this. you can change things. >> i want you to fight him, and

then i want you to (indiscernible). >> charlie: brenton thwaites place jonas, jeff bridges "the giver" and loi lois lowry, whata great group of people at one table. you first read this when it came out? >> no, a couple of years after, 18 years ago, and i was looking for a prog to direct my -- a project to direct my dad, lloyd bridges, in. >> charlie: yeah. and i saw this wonderful cover when i was looking through a catalog of kids back because i wanted my kids to see the movie and i came across this with the grizzled guy on the cover and newberry award stamp and i thought, this looks interesting. i loved it as a kid but as an adult piece of literature, i was knocked out. i find out, my kids said, we

know that book! we studied that book in school there's lesson plans we study. and i get more excited and i thought, this will be a cinch to get off the ground. then i find, as you said, no, it's on the list of banned books as well, which further excited me because i like movies that have a little danger and edge. >> charlie: you do. but it proved to be quite difficult in that controversy stopped us from getting this film made for 18 years, and also i must say that the world that lois created is an amazing one and a lot of the story takes place in jonas' mind so the challenge was how do we get that into a screenplay that financeers could look at and see i know what you guys have in mind, so we went through half a dozen writers and directors to get it made and finally ended up with the right man for the gig. >> charlie: took you how many years?

>> 18 years, and i started to look more and more like the grizzled guy on the cover, and my dad took off, and i said, oh, well -- >> charlie: you got to be what you that it your dad could be. >> there you go. >> charlie: what are you saying about memory? >> i've always been interested in the subject of memory and the idea for the book came when i realized my father who was probably 90 at the time was beginning to lose his and had forgotten, for example, my older sister, his first child who died young, and i began to think what it would be like if we could obliterate memories that made us sad, the bad things in our life, would that be good. when a writer thinks like that, a story takes shape. >> charlie: you think of the possibilities for characters and all that. >> yes. and in answer to the question what i think about memory, i came to the conclusion that memories are the most vital part of us. >> charlie: some people's memories do such terrible things to them they go to great lengths

to erase memories. >> people in this book have done that. it's been a bad choice out of the best intentions. >> charlie: so when you saw the screenplay, what did you want to -- >> well, i read the book first and thought, wow, what a seductive world. we don't have to wake up every morning to all this destruction, to all this hate. and that's what first attracted me. it's, you know, the so-called utopia that turns out to be a distopia. because i thought that was very, very compelling, the idea that they were selling here that, in exchange for memory, you live in peace and calm. >> it's all about the tradeoff. yeah, it's all about the tradeoff. >> charlie: look an unhealthy tradeoff to me. >> very unhealthy tradeoff but a compelling one. >> charlie: yes, indeed. and more compelling every

day. >> charlie: and you felt a connection to jonas, the character? >> i always feel a connection to the central characters of the films that i take on. >> charlie: is it a prerequisite for you before you take it on? if you don't feel a connection to the central character, you won't codo it? >> yeah, you have to go on a journey for the audience and if you can't take it there's no hope of them going on it. you know, a young man who has been brought up in ignorance, who starts to discover something else inside him -- a heart, emotion, feeling, color, love -- and then inevitably acts on that knowledge. so it's like a blind man who's suddenly found his sight. >> charlie: i've interviewed those people. it's extraordinary when they talk about what it's like. >> that's what happens to this character. >> charlie: how did you see

jonas? >> i saw him as, you know, an innocent boy who was very happy and very comfortable, almost, you know, the question i raise is what if he didn't feel these things he was feeling at the start of the film and what if he isn't chosen to be the receiver of memory, would he have lived a happy life in his community? but i don't. you know, i'm chosen to receive the memory of the history of the world. so starting that journey, you know, i was just watching the trailer and took me back to the head space when i was riding to the quarters and the nervousness and anxiety i felt in meeting the giver and brenton working with jeff and starting the whole movie and it was a huge parallel into how jeff was feeling. >> charlie: tell me about the role of "the giver."

who is "the giver"? >> society realizes the memory is valuable, they just don't want to have any. >> charlie: because it has pain and all. >> it has pain, you know. so "the giver" is a fellow who retains all of the histories of the world and he counsels the council of elders from time to time to give them a advice, you know, and that's his role. you know, when his time is, you know, coming to an end, he will find somebody in the community, and the elders have tracked all of the kids as they're growing up. one of the things the kids don't have to do anymore is choose what they want to do, that's all handled for them. and there's a ceremony that happens and he's chosen to be the giver. the receiver, i'm sorry, and i'm the giver to give him -- >> and if in a way, i become te

giver also when i find out i can feel things. >> charlie: how did you come to this world of saneness? >> partly because i grew up on army posts. there's a rigid, orderly community. one time, ages 11 to 13, i lived in post-war tokyo, and i lived in a compound with a bal a walld it. on the other side of the wall was the colorful, noisy, vibrant city of tokyo, but i lived in a place where all of the houses and the people were much the same. there was no gate in that wall and i had a bicycle. at that age, i very often road by myself out into the streets. i've always been somebody who, like jonas, wants to see beyond. so i think part of that background on these various army installations probably played into that world. >> charlie: here's a clip from the film in which the giver,

jeff, explaining to jonas, brenton, answering the question why society created sameness. here it is. >> red, just like her hair. green, blue, many different colors. it was all people who chose to do away with all of them. they created sameness. if we were different, we could be envious, angry, consumed with hatred. we need sameness, don't you think? >> oh, i completely agree. i do. >> beautiful. >> charlie: so there it is. there's the explanation of sameness. to eliminate all these things. >> and eliminate a lot of difficult things. >> charlie: casting meryl streep. >> first of all, casting is her

choice. >> charlie: he's the producer. that was the worry, thinking who's going to turn up. >> charlie: exactly. my boss? or my playmate? and he game in every day as the giver. >> charlie: exactly where you wanted him to be. >> yeah. >> charlie: you've got jeff, meryl. >> i had screen tested a year before. >> charlie: for another film? for another film i was going to make called "timeless." i had heard about this kid from far month queensland brought up in australia, you know, when a talent hits the street, word spreads. i heard about his graduation performance. >> charlie: what was your graduation performance? (laughter) what was it? >> me and my buddy took our clothes off and put chains on our hands and pretended we were in a filipino jail.

it's very dark and quite funny, so we thought it was an opportunity to go really deep and has this funny layer to it. >> did you write it? no. had you seen the movie -- (talking at the same time) >> that's like the film in your garage, it's going to come out! >> the film in my garage he's talking about, you know, i'm from a show business family so we often entertain each other. so i had this idea that my father, i went to him and said, dad, you like to party? he said, yeah. i said, let's make the movie. we'll get casey, bo's oldest son to shoot it, his son played jonas, and we shot the whole book. bud cort narrated it.

>> charlie: have you seen this? >> not 18 years but we have it. i've done many readings of the book. >> charlie: just the two of you? >> no. >> charlie: just the two of you or -- >> it was important to me as a producer to get everyone on the same page and this is the story we want to tell, so we assembled all of -- as many of the cast members and we had -- my brother actually narrated the book and i played the giver but we had, you know, a big table and we read the book to each other. we recorded it, maybe. >> you lost to brenton. then a year later we were t.s.a.ing "the giver" -- we were casting "the giver," casting jonas, and, of course, initially the part was for, as was written, a 12-year-old or 13-year-old. we decided to up the ages in order to maybe give access to aid wooer audience to the story, and that the when he came back in again.

and he knocked it out of the park. >> charlie: how did he knock it out of the park? >> he literally knocked it out of the park because he was auditioning with cameron monaghan who plays asher in the movie and he knocked him out of the park, he knocked him through the wall. >> in the scene we were auditioning for, there's a fight scene between my character and asher, and phillip would say -- i would say, phil, how are we going to do the fight scene? i won't fight ten days with all of the guys coming to read. he said, just improvise. i thought, how is this going to go down? i'm going to have to fight him back. and phillip just lets it go and doesn't say cut. you end up fighting ten guys that day. >> oh, my gosh! we ended up with a hole in the wall (laughter)

>> charlie: seeing the film, is it the book in your hand? >> well, it is now, of course, because i have been watching this film develop over the past year and i've incorporated it. so now when i think about the book, those are the scenes i see. >> charlie: this is your imagery of the book now? >> it is now. the kids in the book were younger and that's what i used to see, but when i think of the kids now i think of brenton and cameron. >> charlie: is it a coming of age story for you as well? >> it is. in fact, i wonder how they will relate to the age difference now, but a lot of jewish people give it as a bar mitzvah book, because the boy is 12 turning 13 and they see it as a turning of age. at the same time, a lot of christian churches have incorporated it into their curriculum because they see it as a christian allegoer. so it covers a lot of bases.

>> charlie: who's batting the book? >> very conservative groups. i can't give them names. >> charlie: yeah. what's their objection? >> it's hard for me to know because i sometimes take things out of context and dangle up a passage that they don't like. there's a pivotal moment in the book which is also in the movie. i hate to do spoilers, but it's -- >> you know what you should talk about? you should talk about the scene that we cut out that you were very excited about. i love that. >> all right there's another controversial scene. >> didn't make the cut, did it? but was a scene some parents objected to. in the book the boy does volunteer work in what's called the house of the old taking care of old people and there's an lovely, tender scene where he is

bathing an elderly woman in a bathtub. >> he's in the bath with her. no, he's not in the bath with her. but i jokingly told jeff i'm sorry they cut that out because that was to be my cameo role, i'm old enough to play the old lady in the bathtub and he keeps repeating that as i was serious. but that's one thing they objected to, boy with a nude older lady, reference to sexual feelings in the boy, very oblique, and then the difficult scene where a newborn baby was killed. >> i think another reason it was on the banned books list is because it falls right into the themes of our film, trying to protect our children and protect us from things that are frightening and the darker sides of life and, you know, we're --

>> yeah, and the parents who want to ban the book are doing so with the most benevolent reasons, they want to protect their kids. >> and society as well. the irony is, in the society portrayed by your world in "the giver," there are no books left and that would have been because of people protecting their community from unhappiness removed books. >> charlie: i love the library "the giver." >> 30,000 books in there. >> charlie: here's a scene between meryl and jeff. (whispering) >> we both know what happened ten years ago with the girl. >> the girl had a name. you think i don't remember? i know you feel for her. the boy must hold in the pain. don't fail us again.

>> chilling. >> charlie: tell ne tell me the. well, prior to jonas' character, "the giver" had another receiver to give the memories to, and there was a failure and it didn't happen. shall i reveal what happens to this girl or not? >> well, you went too far. i went too far. you went too far -- (laughter) >> i went too fast and i gave her too much too soon and it blew her mind. i must say, as long as we're talking about actors, i just want to yell out -- i won't yell out, i'll say it quietly, odeya

rush, we'll be hearing a lot from this actor in the film, she's wonderful, playing theona. >> it's hard not to turn it into a teenage romance but there are three kisses in the movie. >> charlie: what else influenced you? i'm interested in your mind in the writing of this book. it's very hard to think back where my mind was 21 years ago when i sat down to write this, but i'm sure all writers are influenced by everything they've read, and you mentioned the classic distaupian literature. but i create a character in a situation where he's going to have a journey and he will have a hard time and by the end he will be changed and i do it with the hope that the reader will enter the same journey and be changed by the end of it. i think it's true for this book and this movie.

i can't claim it to be true for all my books but this one does. >> charlie: how many copies sold? >> over 10 million. it fluctuates. >> charlie: all authors should wish for that. >> yeah. >> charlie: thank you all. great pleasure to have you here. >> pleasure to see you. >> charlie: thank you so much. thank you. >> charlie: the movie "the giver" opens this friday august 15th. you will be hearing a lot about it. among other reasons because you can see and feel the sense that it has the possibility to appeal to a cross section of audiences not only with good acting and the directing and the fascinating players but also an interesting connection to the world of the whole range of ideas. thank you for joining us. see you next time. >> charlie: for more about

this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. >> markets rattled, the dow dips, bond prices rise as the conflict between russia and ukraine enters a new faphase. what is next for stocks and bonds and what is your best move now? food for thoughts, the once casual diner may be faltering but one company standing out from the rest. >> all rivevved up, the value o cars is accelerating fast. that and more for "nightly business report" for friday, august 15th. it looked like the stock market was set to end on a high note but then things suddenly changed after the first hour of trading. reports of ukrainian troops

ta