>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with the iran nuclear debate moving through congress. and we talked to senator tim tim kaine, democrat from virginia. >> i would hate to think people made a snap pronouncement before they even read the deal and they're uninterested in the details. you saw a whole lot of members of congress come out against the interim negotiation when it started in november of 2013 -- and again, some of the quotes historic mistake, iran got everything they wanted, america lost in this -- a whole lot of people made those statements right out of the gate who have subsequently said, you know what? actually, the interim period was significantly better than what we had before. we had a series of hearings on the foreign relations committee

and i asked every witness withs who have been before us, hawk, dove, everything in between, has this period of negotiation been significantly better than the status go antibefore the status quo started in november 2013 and they all said yes. >> rose: and paul rudd his new tim "ant-man." >> it's like a moment like in "dog day afternoon" where it's subtle and he almost cries and doesn't. a moment timothy has in secrets and lies, these things that have landed with me in some emotional way that i always remember them and they become important things that i think about when i'm working on movies, and i'm not trying to imitate them, but i don't know, it just changes my outlook toward all of it. >> rose: we conclude with a film called "the stanford prison

experiment," starring billy crudup, based on life of dr. philip zimbardo and director kyle alvarez. >> something fixed and permeable regardless of the situation or is it flexible? is it mod final or even corruptible when we're put in unfamiliar, new, powerful situations. >> rose: the answer is that it's obviously corruptible? >> it's clearly mod final and in some people corruptible, if you give them power that they have no experience using, unlimited power that's validated in a particular sense. >> rose: senator tim kaine, actor paul rudd and the film "the stanford prison experiment," when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: additional funding provided by:

>> 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. >> rose: the big story this week after month of negotiations, the nuclear deal heads to capitol hill after a 60-day congressional review. now questions over the future are focused on the senate. senate tim kaine joins me now one of the first senators to call for congressional review of any deal. welcome, senator . good to talk to. >> you charlie great to be with you tonight. >> rose: explain how the congressional process in this case, will work. >> charlie, i was with senator corker and a few others, the author of this review act we

passed 98-1 in the senate and here's what the act provides -- when a deal is done that touches upon the congressional sanctions, congress has the ability to weigh in and approve or disapprove the deal with respect to those sanctions. so now that the deal has been announced, the president wants to wave or suspend congressional sanctions for some time. so the deal gets presented to congress, and we take 60 days to review it, beginning in the senate foreign relations committee, that's the committee of jurisdiction. we have been having eight hearings in the last two months educating ourselves on a good inspections regimes, et cetera and in the next 60 days we'll have a set of hearings between now and when recess starts. there is a chance we'll work during recess, coming back for more discussions, hearing from constituents, administration officials, allies around the globe and others and then

congress can act and we can do one of three things -- we can pass a resolution of approval that's obvious that presidential actions with respect to sanctions. we can pass disapproval and if there is a veto and it's overwritten that disapproves relief under congressional sanctions, or take no action, and no action is defined as approval that will allow the congressional sanctions relief to go forward. so a lot of hearings a lot of people to hear from. then we'll decide as a foreign relations committee and senate whether we will approve, disapprove or take no action. >> rose: and the role of the house? >> the same, they will undertake the same steps. the reason for that, charlie, is this -- if this were a treaty under the constitutional definition, it would take a vote at the senate of a two-thirds margin and the the house wouldn't have anything to do with it, this is not a treaty

legally that would require the two-thirds vote and that's a good thing because it wouldn't be right to cut the house out. the congressional sanctions that brought iran to the table were constructed by the house, too. so both the house and the senate will be weighing in. i think a lot of folks have kind of just predicted that the house, based on how it's composed, and since it has a simple majority vote requirement, so many house members are coming out right away and saying they're against it, i think the resolution of disapproval has higher likelihood in the house. but we set up a 60 day review process for a reason. there is no reason to immediately come out and declare you're for or against it. take the time to figure it out ask the tough questions and make the decision about whether the deal is in america's best interest of national security. >> rose: a lot of senators and fellow democrats have not announced what they will do. they understandably say we want to see the bill, we want to hear

the testimony. principal among them is senator schumer, who is said to be a crucial vote in all this because of his leadership of the house. >> let me tell you the dynamic that i see right now and, you know, i would love to talk maybe a little bit about the substance, thing i like and questions i have. but on the dynamic, i think it is important we take time to dig into this and get it right. you know, what was happening -- and the reason we wrote the review act was frankly congress was kind of blundering into negotiations in destructive ways -- you know, writing threatening new sanctions during the middle of the negotiation, which, frankly, even israeli and american leadership said, hold on, if you do that there's some chance the negotiation could blow up because of your bad faith rather than iranian actions. the letter of 47 senators to the

supreme leader of iran, there were a whole lot of things going on that frankly weren't becoming to the body in our institutional role. so we wrote the review act to give us an expedited -- 60 days isn't long but it's long enough to dig into the details. my leagues, and i really respect this, who were saying let me master the details and ask tough questions before i declare they're doing the right thing those who are giving the snap judgment i think are doing the wrong thing and i'll tell you why. when the president started the negotiation in november 2013 issued a snap judgment this is a big giveaway, an historic mistake, iran got everything i wanted and later concluded the interim negotiation period actually was significantly better than the status quo ante. it was positive. >> rose: clearly the president feels strongly that he has to make the case. you saw that in the way he introduced and announced it, i

think, on wednesday or tuesday. you saw that yesterday when the president had his press conference. he seems to be very interested in explaining the deal because the president believes this is the deal and the only deal that will prevent them from having a nuclear weapon other than military action. >> he does believe this, and let me state what i see in the deal so far that's positive, but then maybe tell you where i have questions. so the positive is, prediplomacy, before negotiations started in november 2013, iran had nearly 20,000 centrifuges. they're disabling two-thirds of the centrifuges in this deal and going under 6,000. they had 10,000 kilograms of enriched uranium which is sufficient for multiple nuclear weapons. they're degrading the enrichment percentage and knocking the quantity from 10,000 back to 300, giving back 97% of their stockpile. they had a plutonium reactor in

iraq they were moving toward completing. they've stopped that and are going to mothball it and dismantle it. finally, they were not allowing the international community any inspections to determine what they are doing under this deal. they are agreeing to inspections for 10, 15, 25 years and, in some instances, under this i.a.e.a. additional protocall forever. so if you look at where we were before diplomacy and where we were after this deal, you will see there is a significant change that the administration has been able to achieve. and i'll tell you, charlie, even the critics kind of acknowledge this because the critics who were saying, two and a half years ago iran is within months of being a nuclear threshold state, now they are complaining about this deal because they say, under this deal iran might get a nuclear weapon in year 15. even their criticism acknowledges that the deal dramatically changes the status

quo ante. that's why i think the president feels so strongly about the deal because his deal has achieved these ends and nobody else has advocated a plan that would have achieved those concessions. now, over to the flip side, and this is why we have a review period, this whole thing depends upon whether the verification regime, the inspections regime, gives us the ability to determine is iran meeting their obligations or are they cheating and trying to move to a nuclear breakout? and they have a history of trying to cheat and hide things from the international community with respect to their nuclear program. so you will probably see the main energy and the main kind of spotlight in the 60-day is people's effort to really try to determine whether the inspections regime is sufficient enough to catch cheating or move toward a nuclear breakout. >> rose: people say to me, also, the thing they worry about is not the inspection of

existing sites they worry about the covert. that's what kerns them. >> and that is, frankly, the worry because there are existing sites that were the uranium site and existing sites that were the heavy-water plutonium site under construction. but all of us believe if iran were to try to break toward a nuclear weapon they're not going to do it at the existing sites being inspected that we have intel about what's going on, they will do it in a covert program. so it's important as the white house said from the start to cut a path on all of these and especially the covert path. the inspection regime as it is described in the talking points, now we're going through the agreement to see if it matches the talking points, is an inspections regime that can go anywhere. it can't go anywhere immediately, and that's going to be the subject of a lot of analysis. you heard the supreme leader say a few weeks ago no way are they

going to go into iranian facilities. if they kept that up, it would have been a non-starter. now under the deal there is the possibility of doing inspections anywhere, but you have to give advanced notice. if the irannians object, there is a committee, p5+1 that has to say we agree or don't and what is being reported is that process from we want to inspect to going in could take as much as 24 days. we need to ask the experts what does that mean? does that mean in 24 days they could clean up evidence that there was nuclear material and completely obscure it? or will experts say no, nuclear material leaves a footprint with a half-life of a billion years or. so if they were using nuclear material on any site and you got in 24 ace days later you would definitely know whether they were trying to do something contrary to the agreement. so these are the technical details we have to dig into in

the committee. again, a good agreement, still not good enough if the inspections regime isn't robust enough. so that's going to be where a lot of focus will be. >> rose: here's what it sounds like from me to you that you have heard what the administration has said, you're in the process of reading it. if, after reading it, it delivers what the administration says, you would be inclined to support it. >> one more caveat on it -- you're close -- and here's what i said when the april framework was announced, giving up 98% uranium, two-thirds centrifuges when it was announced, i said if there is a final deal that's an essential match for the framework and an inspections regime robust enough to make sure that the commitments can be verified, then, yes, i think this could be in the best interest of america's national security.

i'm going through the hundred-plus pages and the appendices to determine whether the details match the talking points and doing independent work, as are my colleagues, to determine whether the inspections regime is sufficient, that the commitments will be verified. those are the two questions i'm digging into. >> rose: do you believe there are members of congress who are inclined not to support this, but seeing the evidence as described by the president, because the president believes this will keep iran from getting a nuclear weapon, do you believe the people are prepared to listen to the testimony, the administration, the experts and vote for this, that's a possibility? >> yeah, very good question. my answer is i sure hope so, because i would hate to think that on a matter this important people made a snap judgment or pronouncement before they even read the deal and they're

uninterested in the details. and my one bit of evidence that gives me hope that that may be true is you saw a whole lot of members of congress come out against the interim negotiation when it started in november of 2013 -- and again some of the quotes, an historic mistake iran got everything they wanted america lost in this, a whole lot of people made those statements right out of the gate who subsequently said, you know what? actually, the interim period was significantly better than what we had before. we had a series of hearings on the foreign relations committee and i've asked every witness who's been before us, hawk, dove, everything in between, has this period of negotiation been significantly better than the status quo ante before the diplomacy started in november 2013, and without exception everybody said yes. >> rose: because of the way the process was written, do you expect it to be an agreement

that will go into effect? >> this is appropriate charlie. it is proprietarily deferential to the white house because remember, the white house was taking the position we don't want to have any congressional review because the sanction statutes themselves gave the president a unilateral ability to wave or suspend the sanctions. so the president said so i don't need a vote of congress. well, those of us who thought that was wrong said, you know what? you might not under the existing sanctions statute, but we're going to pass a new law that gives you the ability to conduct diplomacy and get the best deal you can but that sets up an appropriate congressional review if you decide to waive or suspend sanctions. so basically what we did is put a hurdle in the place of this deal that wasn't there before, and if the president gets over that hurdle, then the deal will

go forward. now, down the road remember what iran wants finally is they want the congressional sanctions to be eliminated completely, not just waived or suspended. for that to happen congress has to vote first amendmentively in both houses to suspend the statutes. that may not be for some years down the road as we test compliance just as there are some things iran doesn't have to implement for years as they test the pave pluns with respect to sanctions relief. >> rose: thank you so much. senator tim kaine from virginia. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: paul rudd, superhero, is here, star and co-writer of marvelstudio's new teach "ant-man." his power comes in the form of a suit that can shrink him to

microscopic size. the trailer for "ant-man" and here is paul. >> i have been watching you for a while now. you're different. now, don't let anyone tell you that you have nothing to offer. >> second chances don't come around all that often. i suggest take a really close look at it. this is your chance. to earn that look in your daughter's eyes, to become a hero that she already thinks you are. i'm about saving our world.

i need you to be the "ant-man." >> huh... ♪ >> one question -- is it true they changed the name? >> rose: i am pleased to have paul rudd back at the table. is the guy that created marvel comics still alive? >> yes, stan lee and he is actually in the film. he's in all the marvel films. >> rose: so iron man, ant man

and what else? >> the avengers. there's thor captain america hawkeye, scarlet witch. >> rose: are you a big fan of the comics? >> i never grew up as a fan boy. i had some comics but i didn't really get into it too much. >> rose: i'm exactly where you are, but i do and have grown to appreciate what they mean to our culture. >> absolutely. i've also, you know, over the last couple of years played catch-up a little bit, and i really see the appeal. >> rose: what is it, black and white? >> i think some of that. you know, they really -- good versus evil and you know that same thing of "star wars," all those great epic tales. >> rose: and interesting characters, i assume. >> yeah. >> rose: tell me about this one.

>> well, i play scott lang who has been in prison and winds up stealing ant man's suit. i'm not the original ant man. the original is hank penn who creates the pin particle that enables a person to shrink. >> rose: what's the advantage to shrink? >> you're invisible, but retaining the strength of a human being and the ability to talk to ants. it sounds silly when i describe it. (laughter) >> rose: well, yes, it does. talking to ants is important. >> you know, you would never guess that it was. >> rose: you go over there get in a pile and -- >> need your help, guys. they're everywhere. >> rose: you can't kill them. you have an army at your beck and cal call whenever you need them. >> rose: can you make them

larger than life? >> you could. >> rose: there's a protagonist. >> played by corey stoll. >> rose: and he plays a character who wants to take the ant suit and use it for nefarious friends? >> he was hank pin's protege. hank pin put away the suit for years because he knew the dangers it could possess if it got in the wrong hands. corey plays someone who went off the rails and is trying to sell a serum to the highest bitter. he becomes the yellow jacket. >> rose: peyton reed, the correct -- >> yes. >> rose: -- said he's not used to being a hero. more like george clooney's character danny in oceans eleven, he's trying to create a new life and find redemption after a life of crime? >> that's right. well, scott lang, the great motivation in his hyphis his daughter. he has a little girl. >> rose: has to pay child

support. >> he has to pay child support. he wants to go straight and narrow. it's hard to find work with his record, even though, you know he's a very bright guy and he stole from the corporation and then paid back, you know, people that the corporation was stealing from. a bit of a robin hood quality. >> rose: i read all the things you are obligated to do. you have no time off for the next five years. >> please! tell me! i have a general idea. >> rose: no, but you're lined up for a bunch of things. >> it depends on how this goes, and i've already shot some captain america three. the marvel universe, i don't think it's been done on this scale before, which is all of these movies do kind of culminate in big like, avengers three, they're all kind of connected. >> rose: blockbusters? it's called the marvel cinematic universe, the mcu. >> rose: are you doing other

things. >> i am, yeah, absolutely. i've always tried to go back and forth between interesting things or smaller things, plays whatever they are. so, you know hopefully, over the next few years i will have time to do other things. >> rose: when the director said, get me paul rudd, what does he mean? he wants somebody that's attractive, beautiful, handsome and somebody who -- >> probably means matt damon wasn't available. >> rose: but you get a writing credit. how many get a writing credit? >> a lot of the ones i work with, seth rogen, a lot of the guys i seem to work with in the past. it's something we're all interested in and like doing. so i could see directing down the road. >> rose: what don't you do that you like to do? >> play golf. >> rose: would you likely? yeah. >> rose: do you like golf? i don't know, i don't play it, but it seems --

>> rose: people who play it seem to be obsessed by it. >> i know. no matter where you go, you can always do it. >> rose: it takes a fair amount of time a lifetime. >> i feel like golf is like violin. >> rose: or piano. i missed the boat. >> rose: you will never be quite as good as you want to be. >> i look at a piano or guitar and violin and i think i knowsounds it's capable of making and it's too frustrating to try because i can't make the sounds. golf will be the same thing. >> rose: there is also this about you. you can do drama comedy and pretty much whatever they ask can't you? >> i don't know. i would like to attempt to do whatever they ask. i do think that drama and comedy are not so different from one another, and the stuff that i focus on tends to be just kind of character and what's actually happening to the character. >> rose: is that really true? for you. >> yeah. >> rose: it's not that

different? >> depends on the comedy. something like anchor man, which is a cartoon, you know, you get a little bit more leeway, but i'm not trying to play it where the character thinks what is going on is funny. people will sometimes describe me as being a comedian. but i've never done standup. my background isn't comedy. i actually studied theater. this whole thing with career and comedy came about around the time of anchor man and kind of went left. >> rose: do you think of yourself in any way akin to steve carell? >> yeah. i mean, when we were shooting 40-year-old virgin early on, steve and i would have conversations and he would say i hope the studio is not regretting their decision green lighting this because i don't plan on playing a big zany, jim carey-type performance and i think that's why it probably

shut down a week after the first few days because they were concerned. >> rose: because he wasn't jim carey? >> yeah, they said, he seems like a serial killer. we even put it in the movie later on. (laughter) >> rose: did they change anything or did they realize it? >> they changed his wardrobe. >> rose: really? yeah. i think it was just not what they were expecting. then we got on the same page a little bit but there were a few days that we actually -- we didn't show up to set because it was very touch and go. >> rose: because of steve. yeah, because he was playing the reality of that character. and i relate that. that's the way i approach stuff. >> rose: so are you going to be on netflix? >> in the next couple of weeks, there is a show called wet hot american summer. this is a prequel.

>> rose: what happened before? (laughter) >> yeah, what's going on with andy? this is a movie, oh, gosh, 15 years ago or so, aim amy poller, brad cooper -- >> rose: a billing cast. not so much at the time but developed a cult following over the years so all of us have returned to do eight episodes. the movie took place on last a day of camp. >> rose: amy and you and bradley. >> yeah, and elizabeth banks. janine geraffilo, john hammond. it's a big cast, an bless -- an impressive line up. >> rose: where did you go to school. >> the british american drama academy. i went to the american academy of dramatic arts and after i graduated, i did a program in

england that was all just shakespeare. >> rose: suppose you were just out of -- like a teenager out of whatever level that would be, high school or junior high school, what would you want to do if you could be the greatest actor you possibly wand to be? would you go to certain schools? is it more important just to get work? >> this is exactly what i asked myself when i was a teenager. what i did was i learned about this school called the american academy of dramatic arts. i didn't know that much about it but i saw all the people that had graduated from there. once i made up my mind that i wanted to be an actor the best actor and follow the route of all the actors i admired went, and that was theater, study classical theater, live in new york. and for me, it was just about trying to get as many opportunities as i could to work. >> rose: and what was the end goal? >> the end goal, for me was to

work on things. i wanted to have a career as an actor. i wanted to make a living doing what i loved and i wanted to work on things that meant something to me. i didn't want to just work to work. i didn't want to be famous just to be famous. >> rose: did you want to be a star? >> i wanted to -- i loved movies, and i loved -- what surprised me is i didn't grow up going to the theater, but i really loved performing on stage and in dramatic plays and i think that i just wanted to do it for a living. i was very young when my sister was born. i thought, if i go and do a silly dance, people nil i'm good. >> rose: and they laugh. and i got approval, and that manifested itself into this career. >> rose: and you watch other people, talk to directors. obviously, in the end, you have to create something that is

uniquely you. we are all uniquely us. >> so i think that -- you know i remember reading a quote once from groucho marx saying, you know, don't try to work on who you are. try to work on creating an image. be yourself and the image will form itself. and, so, i see certain things that other actors do that absolutely knock me out and i think how do they do it? but part of what it knocked me out is it was them that did it. i can't do that. >> rose: in the same way that people who do hamlet, for example, most of them are reluctant to watch other hamlets because they don't want to be influenced too much, rather than watching how everybody did it and decide what they -- how they want to do it, they want to look at it with fresh eyes. >> that makes sense. but there are moments you see in movies that are thunderbolt moments that i remember and think about, andeth not so much

even entire performances, it's moments. it's like a moment alpacino has in dog day afternoon, it's so quick and subtle where he just almost cries and brings it back really quick and doesn't. a moment that timothy spall has in secrets and lies. these things that have landed with me in some emotional way that i always remember them and they become important things that i think about when i'm working on movies and i'm not trying to imitate them, but i don't know it just changes my outlook toward all of it. >> rose: who has a career you most admire? not the most admirable career -- career but the person who's just done it right. >> daniel davis shows up every few years, does something incredible and then just lives his life. he's my favorite. >> rose: the power of the performances? >> i think he's so good. >> rose: he wasn't a bad

lincoln. >> as far as who's done it right, i always go back to paul newman. you know he really was, i think -- i loved his movies so much, and he was a guy that gave so many towering performances and so many fantastic films and, yet gave more than he got. >> rose: this is not about being a movie star. this is about a life. >> and that's what we should try to emulate. i think it was important because he was very good at his job and loved his job but, you know i think about, like, you know, i came here, i was picked up and driven here, and i'm wearing this suit that i didn't pay for. i had somebody put makeup on my face which made me look good on television. i'm here to talk about a movie i was in. it's important to remember 99% of the world doesn't care. so, you know we need to remember that and put that in its place, and then when you look at your life and look at what it is that we should do, it's all that other stuff. >> rose: exactly. and use this part. >> rose: children help you

realize that, too, don't they? >> oh, yeah. absolutely. i mean, you know i work with some hospitals and with a couple of charities and with kids and it's the best. it's the best grounding, not to mention i have two of my own. so it really does kind of hold up and mirror what's actually important. >> rose: "ant-man" opens in theaters july 17. thank you. congratulations. >> thanks a lot. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: this is a real story in 1971 stanford university professor dr. philip zimbardo gathered 24 student volunteers to partake in what became the infamous "the stanford prison experiment." the study sought to understand the psychology of imprisonment by re-creating life in jail. it has some of the most fundamental question about human nature. are humans inherently good or evil? do we all have the capacity to

act with cruelty to another? the plan two-week investigation was cut short after six days due to damaging effect on participants. the controversial study is the subject of a new feature film. here is the trailer for the film. >> would you rather be a guard or a prisoner? >> i don't think i have the qualities to be a guard. >> prisoner. , i guess. sounds like it would be a whole lot less work. >> prisoner. why is that? nobody likes guards. good afternoon, gentlemen this experiment will be an extension of my research into effects prisons can have on human behavior. you all have been chosen prison guards, but under no circumstances whatsoever are you to physically assault the

prisoners in any way. but remember, just as you were watching the prisoners, my graduate staff and i will be watching you. >> all right gentlemen, we're going to have ourselves some fun. rule number one, prisoners must remain silent. >> this is an exercise period. is it just me or are these guys taking this a bit too seriously? >> why don't you give me 20 pushups. >> this guy thinks he's john wayne or something. >> you address me as mr. crenshaw. >> this might be an interesting two weeks after all. >> why don't you make up your bunk 8612. >> i did mr. corrections officer. >> that's not what i see. hey, what are you doing? i just made that! >> what was that? you're not supposed to do that!

>> shall we step in? no, let the guards figure it out. see where it goes. >> evening, gentlemen, how about we make this a night to remember. >> this is all real. they won't let you go! they won't let us leave! >> these are not prisoners! those are not subjects! those are boys and you are harming them! (screaming) >> i want out! i want out now! >> i had no idea it would turn out this way. >> rose: dr. philip zimbardo who conducted the experiment, billy crudup, and director kyle alvarez. how much does the film, in your judgment mirror reality? >> it mirrors reality of the experiment almost entirely. physically, it's identical.

they sent a whole crew down to the basement, took videos and measurements. the only thing that's added is they've arranged a set so that they could lift the ceiling or the back doors off so the camera could go down and look into the cells. but the actual experiences were identical to what's happening in the study with the exception of the squeezing six days into two hours. so there were a lot of things even more dramatic they couldn't fit in. >> rose: what did you hope to prove or to establish or to discover? >> very simple human nature. to what extent is our sense of morale conscience morality fixed and permeable regardless of the situation or is it flexible, is it mod final or even corruptible when we're put in unfamiliar, new powerful situations? >> rose: is the answer that it is obviously corruptible? >> it's clearly mod final and in some people corruptible, if you give them power that they have no experience using unlimited

power that's validated in a particular setting. >> rose: so what's happening then? if the reality is that we have an unlimited power, it will be corruptible, what's going on that simply human nature is that you lose your inhibitions and your restrictions and your moral principles if you're unrestrained? >> if you're unrestrained, but also you're in a setting where that becomes an acceptable way to function, and, you know, in the study, we are looking at really extremes, but it's no different than people who become managers, people who play roles in mental hospitals, you know so, essentially, our guards are mirrored in mental hospitals, in many high school teachers in summer camps. again, it's not everybody, but in all the research i've done and in others, it's the majority of people who step across that line from good to evil. >> rose: why did you have to limit it to six days? >> it was out of control meaning each day, after day two

a prisoner had an emotional breakdown, in an experiment where everybody knew it was an experiment crying, irrational thinking. day after day guards became ever more sadistic and brutal. now, the reason i ended it was -- and this is not in the film, the only thing that's not in the film, is i invited my girlfriend down who is a psychologist who we just started to live together, we thought about getting married, she was on her way to be a professor at berkeley, and what happened was she saw this terrible abuse that happened every night at 10:00 when the guards took the prisoners to the last toilet run with bags over their head. i look up and for me it's the checkout, 10:00 toilet run because i had now become the prison superintendent. i could see stuff, had no effect. she starts tearing up and yelling. i said, what kind of a psychologist are you? we're having this argument, she runs out and we're having this

argument in jordan hall by the fountain and she just says, i don't understand, how could you see the suffering i see and not be upset? these are not prisoners, not guard, they're boys, and you are responsible. and she says, if this is the real you, i don't think i want to continue my relationship. and i said oh, my god, we have to end the study. >> rose: how did you find this, what's the movie about and what's the movie you wanted to make? >> it's a projects sort of been kicked around the industry for a while but never had been made. the script had been really respected. you work long enough in the industry and start hearing of scripts people love that are untillummable, never get made and this was one of those. when i had an opportunity to read it and they were looking for a director and a way to bring it back up again, you sort of start reading this and thinking, oh i was familiar with an experiment but on a surface level. i had never taken a psychology

class. i was loosely familiar. i thought, a lot of it must have been embellished. i finished reading the research and i thought, this happened down to the things you're describing with your girlfriend, now at the time, your wife, and now into the movie. i wanted to create a film where you were watching it and make it believable but sort of questioning how much of this could really have happened. the story is so profound and so -- has stayed within our culture for so long for a reason that made a film that did that justice that said we don't need to embellish around it. we need to make a cinema but we can make a film. >> rose: was it the story or the character that interested you the most? >> the story, character and the relevance. i mean it's infrequent when you get to be a part of a piece of entertainment that's socially relevant, and that's always an interesting thing to be offered as an actor. if you're not generating your

own material, you count on the people who are generating the material who kind of curate your life and artistic life and career, and i can't think of anything i would want to do more than be a part of something entertaining, softly artisting and has something to talk about confusing ideas. in fact, what dr. zimbardo said before about his own experience in the process, losing himself was incredibly intriguing to me. to be a person a trained psychologist, a ph.d. someone capable of understanding how the human mind works in different situations, being lost in the situation that he created for others, that's a fascinating thing to investigate. >> rose: what's the challenge as an actor? >> how do you portray and manifest that level of confusion, that blindness, exactly what he said, watching the destruction of the psychology of these young boys and not registering the mew manhattan in that. i mean, without becoming

nefarious, without becoming a villain, without becoming the antagonist, showing the humanity in our -- all of our abilities to be cruel at times, i think is a worthy endeavor. >> rose: take a look. this is where you were questioning or laying down the rules of the experiment for the volunteer guard. here it is. >> i am dr. phil zimbardo, professor psychology here at stanford university. welcome to orientation. you're going to be very pleased to know you all have been chosen to be the prison guard in this study. that choice was made based upon the exemplary qualities that you all demonstrated during your interviews. so good for you. this experiment will be and a extension of my research of the effects prisons can have on human behavior.

being it summer and the school is almost empty, we should have complete privacy for the study and, as you will soon see we have cleared out some of the teachers' offices and converted them into prison cells and the hallway will serve as the prison yard. but remember, just as you were watching the prisoners, my graduate staff and i will be watching you. under no circumstances whatsoever are you to hit or physically assault the prisoners in any way. now, you will all be given sunglasses and uniforms to give the prisoners a sense of a unified, singular authority. once a prisoner is jailed, he will not be able to leave except under established procedures. and from this point forward, you should never refer to this as a study or an experiment again. >> rose: so there is this, the limitations of the experiment.

what were the limitations? >> it was clear that, after the first day, i had to enforce no physical abuse -- that is, make explicit. see, guards, symbols of power had billy clubs whistles handcuffs. i said if you touch the prisoner with your club it's the same as hitting them. if you abuse that we'll take you out of the study. but i did not limit psychological abuse. so that's what the guards slipped into. really, the subtle thing is they created an environment of learned helplessness, meaning a guard would tell a joke, a prisoner would laugh and they'd punish them, tell another joke the prisoner wouldn't laugh they would punish them. the prisoners didn't know what to do so they ended up doing nothing, they became like zombies. it was zombie-like.

the other thing that happened is prisoners who couldn't deal with a guard's abuse began to have breakdowns and none of the other prisoners gave them support. we bugged the cells. none of them said, i'm sorry buddy, i'm sorry 8612. and when the prisoner left, they vanished. nobody ever talked about it. nobody ever talked about them after they left. so it was a very strange kind of anonymity that was created. i mean we tried to make the prisoners be individual by having numbers instead of names a, but in their mind, they lost respect for each other as well as for themselves. >> rose: is their natural instinct to be in favor of the prisoners? >> you mean the audience? >> rose: yes. yeah actually, to me, the illuminating aspect what i felt i had a grasp on the material is you read it the first time and oh, you feel bad for the prisoners. then you read it again, you start learning about it and

you're, like, wait to me, this is the most interesting exit interviews were the guards saying, well now i'm aware of what i can be capable of doing. i know that i am capable of causing this harm that i didn't know i had the ability to do, and i find that there's -- to me, i think trying to create a film that, of course, has sympathy for the prisoners, but a certain amount of empathy for what the guards go through as well. i think it's a really challenging thing to ask of an audience. >> rose: billy talking about the man sitting to your left, i found him delightful, engaging terrifying, formidable, with the strongest sense of self of any person i've ever accounted. with the strongest sense of self of any person i've ever encountered. you've encountered a lot of people with a strong sense of self. i can name a director. >> i do. my colleagues have their own sense, and to understand who you

are and be explicit about it is a trick i've only really encountered with dr. zimbardo. he is himself in a way that is impressive to me. >> we talked about that in certain scenes where you would have to be -- where you're one step ahead of the others because you know, when you studied this, you know the thought process. we talk about when the parents come to visit, and this happened in real life you know, you're able to dig one step deeper than even they realize. so there's sort of a -- manipulation isn't the right word but an awareness of human behavior that puts you on a higher social plane or abilities, which we talked about in a lot of the scenes. >> rose: where are you? terms of you continue to get in most performances a great review? is it building towards anything that is an ambition for you? >> this is the pinnacle of my ambition, to be really in

formidable material that asks a lot of the audience is provocative and gives me an opportunity to exercise a part of my craft that i haven't had an opportunity before. >> rose: so you exercise things you hadn't had an opportunity to do here? >> absolutely. i mean so, personally, i'm not terribly smart. so to play a smart guy was exercising something new. but there's a complexity in dr. zimbardo at this moment in time with heightened stakes with an attempt to try to quantify and, like become an academic around what's becoming a very emotional experience. it was hard to compartmentalize all those things, so i haven't had the opportunity to do it. i've played a lot of complicated characters but none like this. >> rose: another historical reality is abu ghraib. >> right. >> rose: you have compared what happened there to the kinds of psych psychological impact that you

see in this experiment. >> more than compare. in 2008, such a stain on america's image abroad where a bunch of army reservists military police, on the night shift in abu ghraib prison abused prisoners for three months. we know that because they took pictures. what was released -- >> rose: their own selfies. their own selfies. the problem is there are a thousand of those pictures. we only saw not even the worst. so what happened was the lawyer for one of the guards contacted me essentially saying, those pictures are like your prison study -- guards putting bags over heads stripping them naked, sexually abusing -- would you like to be an expert witness for my client? i said, no, what he did was horrific. he said burks if you're an expert witness you would have access to him, the situation and all the investigative reports and i couldn't resist. so i got to know everything

there is about abu ghraib. i read more than nine one i read all 1300 13 investigative reports, more than 200 pages. i read about the power of the situation, the system that created that and essentially i was able to say in his court martial trial that as chip frederick says, he's guilty as charged but the situational defense should mitigate the severity of the sentence. they wanted to give him 15 years of hard time and they reduced it to eight and finally we got it reduced to four. so he's guilty, but what i showed was every single one of the nine guards on the night shift did these terrible things. not a single guard on the day shift did. how come? military intelligence went to military police and said, we want your guards on the night shift to take off the gloves. they use the you euphemism, to prepare them for interrogation so when we interrogate them they

will spill the beans. in three months no senior officer went to the dungeon. so essentially do whatever you want, no surveillance, no oversight, and essentially it was day by day they did worse and worse things. it was creative evil. they piled the prisoners up naked in a pyramid, took a picture. next night let's have a masturbation contest. so each night it got more extreme until it was exposed. >> rose: what do you hope viewers to walk away from? >> for me, i didn't want to make a film positioning itself to tell you what tex permanent were about. the conversations that could be had around the experiment are so broad that it could mean so many things to so many different people. i wanted to make an objective film that said, this is what

happened these six days, watch it, take of what you will. we learned very little back stories on people's lives, so i hope it engages conversation and leads people to the materials to the book and the documentary and into the larger conversation to be had. but also i hope it works as cinema and entertainment, quote, unquote. >> rose: thank you. great to have you. when is it open? >> july 17 in new york. >> rose: july 17th. thank you. everywhere in the world. the week afterwards elsewhere, yeah. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com.

this is nightly business report. >> searching for profit and google found it. the company topped earnings expectations and it's stock soared initially after hours trading. >> don't look now. netflix shares rocket higher but is the dominant player in video streaming about to face some stiff competition? >> five years later, did wall street reforms following the financial crisis price people out of the housing market? all of that and more tonight on nightly business report for thursday, july 16th. >> good evening, everybody. glad you could join us. a fresh record for the nasdaq but we begin tonight with earnings from google. the company which is one of the most widely held stocks by mutual funds reported stronger than expected second quarter