captioning sponsored by rose communications captioning sponsored by rose communications >> rose: welcome to the program. i'm charlie rose. the program is "charlie rose: the week." just ahead, sean penn speaks out out his interview with a drug lord. debates and division as the presidential races heat up. and e.j leonardo dicaprio wins a golden globe for his performance in "the revenant." >> rose: we will have those stories and more on what happened and what might happen.

i>> rose: was it luck at all or is it something else? >> you go through the journey. >> rose: what's the object lesson here? >> persevere and move on. >> rose: tell me the significance of the moment. >> rose: this was the week president obama delivered his time state of the union. two u.s. navy ships and their crews were briefly ketained by iran. and "the revenant" topped the oscar nominations. here are the sights and sounds of the past seven days. >> islamic state says it carried out a coordinated suicide bomb and gun attack in jakarta. >> this was a very powerful explosion, strong enough to rattle the buildings in that area. >> mexico has begun the process to extradite drug kingpin el chapo guzman to the united

states. >> we had a contact upon which we were able to facilitate an invitation. >> rose: iran releases the 10 captured u.s. sailors. >> two boats experienced mechanical issues, and briefly lost contact with the pentagon. >> video showing another chicago police shooting. >> three years after police killed an unarmed african american teenager. >> tonight president obama's final state of the union address. >> obama called on the nation to reject the politics of division >> the suspicion between the parties has gotten worse than ever. >> one of the most feisty g.o.p. political debates. >> if you become the nominee, who the hell knows if you can even service in office. >> i hate to interrupt this episode of "court tv." >> vladimir putin is at itt again, throwing members of the russia's judo team to the floor. >> nobody is going to throw the president to the ground. >> l.a. rams! >> team owners give the rams the green light to move out of slooups.

>> the billion-dollar powerball. >> at this point no one has claimed their share of the almost 1.six million. >> alan rick man died of cancer at 69. >> ♪ kha-kha-changes >> funniy how life changes, isn't it? it. >> rose: yes, it is. >> david bowie dead at 69. >> i'm now very, very happy with the way things are. ♪ i'm stepping through the door ♪ >> eqi librium is being arrived at now. ♪ i'm floating in a most peculiar way ♪ >> rose: we begin this week with one of the more unusual chapters in the war on drugs. in his only interview so far, a conversation with me yesterday, sean penn is speaking out about his controversial interview with the notorious cartel leader joaquin el chapo guzman. penn's account of the seven hours he spent with el chapo

while the drug lord was hide in hiding was published in "rolling stone" magazine one kay after guzman was recaptured by mexican authorities. >> there is this myth about the visit that we made, my colleagues and i, with el chapow that it led-- that it was as the attorney general in mexico is quoted, essential to his capture. we had met with him many weeks earlier. >> rose: on october 2. >> on october 2. in a place nowhere near where he was captured. >> rose: so as far as you know, you had nothing to do and your visit had nothing to do with his recapture? >> the things-- here's the things that we know. we know that the mexican government, they were clearly very humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did. well, nobody found him before they did. we didn't-- we're not smarter than the d.e.a., or the mexican

intelligence. we had a contact, upon which we were able to facilitate an invitation. >> rose: do you believe that the mexican government released this in part because they wanted to see you blamed and to put you at risk? >> yes. >> rose: they wanted to encourage the cartel to put you in their crosshairs? >> yes. >> rose: are you fearful forea your life? >> no. >> i first wanted to know why you wanted to do this, why you wanted to go there. second, i wanted to to know the sense of how you feel about the risk you might be taking and why that risk was worth it. >> i had only-- only had i thought this is somebody who-- upon whose interview could i begin a conversation about the policy of the war on drugs. that was my simple idea. >> rose: you wanted to have a conversation about the policy of a war onf drugs. >> that's right.

we're going to put all our focus-- forget about blame-- we're going to put all our focus, all our energy, all our billions of dollars on the bad guy. and what happens? you get another death the next day, the same one. >> rose: do you mach a moral equivalency between el chapo and people who either buy or sell drugs in america? >> i do if it's me. i can't-- i don't make that judgment for everyone else. but i wouldn't go so far as to buy or sell drugs. >> rose: so he's no better than you or worse than you? >> i say i can't make him worse than me if i'm not out there doing everything that i can to get a conversation going on the way in which we prosecute that war. >> rose: you have said to the a.p.-- and i'm asking now-- you have no regrets. >> yeah, i-- i have a terrible regret. >> rose: what are the

reexwrets? >> i have a regret that the entire discussion about this article ignores its purpose, which was to try to contribute to this discussion about the policy on the war on drugs. let's go-- let's go to the big picture of what we all want. we all want this drug problem to stop. we all want the killings in chicago to stop. we are the consumer, whether you agree with sean penn or not, there is a complicity there, and if you are in the moral right, or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs, just as many. and how much time have they spent in the last week since this article come out talking about that? 1%? >> rose: you're saying there's not much dialogue about-- >> my article failed. let me be clear. my article has failed. >> rose: you can see more of my exclusive interview with sean

penn on "60 minutes" sunday night. the full interview will be blast monday on the nightly edition of "charlie rose." >> rose: turning to the 2016 for the campaign for the white house, the iowa caucuses are just 17 days away but the focus right now is on the fireworks in south carolina. the city of charleston is setting up for presidential debates of both parties. and dan balz is there, the chief correspondent for the "washington post." he covered the republican debate thursday night, and he'll be watching the democrats on sunday. i am pleased to have him on this program. there seems to me to be a growing feeling, donald trump is more likely to be the republican nominee than not. >> well, i don't know whether i would say he's more likely than not, but i think certainly the question now is what will

prevent him from becoming the nominee? you know, we've moved very quickly, i would say in the last 60 days, on this question. i mean, for up to that time, despite the fact that he was strong in the polls, i think a lot of people in the republican party thought eventually he would fall. and there are still a lot of people who think that's possible. but the longer he has stayed up and the more the race has taken on an unconventional kind of contours, i think more people are beginning to think about the possibility if not the probability that he could be the republican nominee, and that's a huge change, charlie. >> rose: he certainly seems to me to be having, as done primarily through rallies-- and i'm not sure you can call it a conversation-- but the way he approaches political rhetoric, it's almost a conversation between him and his audience. >> it is a conversation. i was at a rally of his in iowa last saturday, and i had been to

one a week earlier in new hampshire, and they're fascinating, charlie, pause of the way he does speak. this is a politician or a person who does not necessarily speak in logical partnerships of political talk. he veers in one direction and he veers in another. he knows what he wants to communicate at any given moment. i mean if he's got somebody he wants to go after, he knows how to do it and when to do it in the context of that speech. but if you were to try to diagram a speech at a rally by donald trump, you would be hard pressed to be able to do it in in any logical way. he speaks about so many different things at once that only his most loyal followers probably can keep up with it. >> rose: what kind of person or what kind of organization will simply be able to say within the confines of the republican party, "everybody's got to drop out but one. let's figure out who the one

is." >> that-- as you know, that's so difficult. it's something that the-- that the party leadership or party strategists or people who pay a little attention to the process always say, well, when-- when do the leaders coalesce?" but these nomination battles are, you know, as somebody said many years ago, you know, they are an example of ambition unbound. and each of these candidates at this point who are in that group-- you know, marco rubio, jeb bush, john kasich, chris christie-- all of them still believe they can and should be the one who emerge. >> rose: let's look at the democrats. many people, even they look at the fact that the race is very close in iowa and very close in new hampshire, and it could be a situation in which bernie sanders wins in both-- could be-- no one thinks he can get the nomination. >> it's a curious-- it's a cious thing, charlie.

it's almost as if hillary clinton is at once vulnerable and inevitable. >> rose: yes, exactly. >> that is a very difficult place for her to be because there's no doubt that she's vulnerable in iowa and new hampshire. and yet, there are a lot of people in the party-- and i would suppose a lot of people who are for bernie sanders who believe in the end that she will be the nominee-- but the degree to which that kind of tension exists between vulnerability and inevitability, in some ways allows people who like the idea of sanders to want to keep this fight going because they think in the end, she'll be okay, but there are-- there are risks and consequences for her and the democrats if that becomes the case. i mean, the longer a battle between bernie sanders and hillary clinton goes on, the more it will weaken her-- potentially weaken her for the fall, deplete the resources of

her campaign at a time when the republicans will be gearing up to take her on if she's the nominee. ♪ i'm a grinner, i'm a lover and i'm a sinner. ♪ i play my music in the sun. ♪ and i'm a joker i'm a smoker. ♪ i'm a midnight toaker i get my lovin' on the run ♪ >> rose: that's steve miller performing "the joker." and along with songs like "jet airliner" "take the money and run" and "fly like an eagle" miller at the top of the charts in the 1970s and a 80s. this spring he'll be inducted into the rock 'n' roll hall of fame. >> "the joker" was a song that saved my career. i was-- it was my seventh album

with capitol records. they didn't care about what i was doing at all. and i made the record in a couple of weeks, and i turned it in, and i went out and did a 60-city tour, and last thing i said to them was, you know, "try to have some albums in the stores in the cities that i'm actually working in." you know, it was always that kind of a fight, you know. and i went out and it was like a viral-- like, when things go viral today. that's what "the joker" did. when i came back i had the number one single, finally, after 11 years of recording and trying to, you know, make hit singles, timely -- >> number one single. >> i finally had it. and that gave me the finances, you know, to improve my sound system and my production. >> rose: did it give you confidence? >> yeah, yeah, it did. and it gave me a bigger

audience. so what happened was i went from the "the joker" to playing the filmore auditorium to playing hockey arenas, to playing areinas to football stayed yums in two years. >> rose: my goodness. >> it was-- so there was a lot of development that had to happen. >> rose: when you write songs, you have to have a lot of confidence in yourself, don't you? >> i don't think so. >> rose: you don't think so. >> no. when i would write songs, i always wanted to heartharmony. i love harmony singing. and i love four-part harmony. i walk around hearing stuff in four-part harmony all the time. i hear a song and i want to sing the second part or the lower part or the higher part. so i was writing songs to kind of get harmony parts, to get choruses that i could sing. and i never felt like i was a brilliant songwriter. i felt like i knew how to make singles. >> rose: the audience new?

>> the audience is always changing. the audiences change every couple of years. my audience is really something. it ranges from six years old or 10 years old to 80 now. i mean, i've watched it all my life, you know. and, you know, in the 90s, it was all kids. people would come see me and go, "my god. your audience is so young." i think when we scoped it out it was, you know, between the ages of twen and 25, and it was 60% girls and it was-- and these were, you know, 20,000 kids coming in. all they knew was the greatest hits. and that's a whole audience that was created in the 90s. and there's whole audience was created in the 80s. and then there's the 70s audience and the 60s audience, and you get these overlaps to now when we go out and play you look out and it's pretty cool. it's like a lot of kids, a lot of old people, a lot of middle-aged people.

and the main thing is they love music, you know. they're people who really like music and they really like live performance, and they're my audience. and i've had this deal with them all my life where if they come see me, it's going to sound great. we're going to play really good. >> rose: i'll give you my best. i'm going to give you my best. >> we'll sing really well. yeah, this is going to be a good show. >> rose: the hungarian film "son of saul" debuted this year at the cannes film festival where it won the grand price prize. this week it was nominated for an oscar for best foreign film. it follows saul aslander, a jewish prisoner, forced to work for the nazis at auschwitz. outside of the gas chambers he discovers a dying by boyhe believes to be his son. it is a film the "washington post" describes as unbearable

brilliant." the director is laszlo nemes, and saul is played by geza rohrig. >> this family exposes the crime, the most horrific crime of the nazis, which is deliberately picking and forcing juice to gurn juice. in other words. to burn juice. in other words the system works like this, how can the most juice be murdered by the least amount of germans being involved. so besides killing them, they also took their soul, their innocence away because, again, they forced them to be assisting in the extermination process. and that's th to me the most diabolical aspect of nazism, to make cane out of able. >> it's our most important step

in the vision of the holocaust. i don't now whether we're ready for that new kind of vision, but i think we might be ready not to forget the theatrical versions of the holocaust. >> rose: and remember the horror? >> yeah, but my film is not about-- i mean, my film never shows the horror in an open way. it's always very restricted to the main character. it's very narrow in its focus. it leaves everything to-- mostly everything to the imagination of the viewer. so i think in the way that this film relies on the viewer and is, i think, is an innovation, because now the viewer has to go flew the journey of this film. and it becomes personal because the imagination is at work.

upon ( laughter ) >> because we're not showing the horror, but we are showing the human face. it's actually the human face as a reference. i think that is what gives this film its importance because we for-- the holocaust became a sort of abstraction. we forgot about the face, the individual. we-- it became too big to understand. but if you have one person, now it becomes understandable, i think, in a very visceral way. >> rose: "the revenant" is having a big week in the entertainment world. the survival tale set on the american frontier has just been nominated for 12 oscars. and at sunday's golden globes, the film won best drama along with best director for alejandro gonzalez inarritu, and best actor in a drama for leonardo

dicaprio. >> hugh glass is an interesting story for all of us, a cam fire lesson that represents the american iconic frontiers man, a man's struggle against nature and i think his ability to also conquer nature as well. it's been told from gen raipgz to generation. but it's a very interesting time period. you have this oregon territory which was very much like the amazon, and you had the first sort of capitalistic move out west to extract the natural resources and the clash of the indigenous populations with french and english fur trappers. and here is this man that's, you know, mauled by a bear, left for dead, buried alive, and has to summon something within his will to persevere and move on, and revenge is the thing that sort of fuels him from the onset. >> you took him from me.

you understand? >> we knew that we wanted to make a movie where he submerged ourselves in these actual elements and we wanted to see what sort of poetry came about what sort of questions arose in us as film makers. >> rose: this had been around for a while, hadn't it? >> yes, i read the first draft five years ago. and i was really, you know, intrigued by the story of this man who actually was, you know, a real story about this character that 200 years ago was attacked by a bear, and then in the full winter he can survive 200 miles to find revenge. and i thought what this guy has in mind, what happened in this guy's life? anything that is known of him before and after is pure legend. there is no actually -- >> there's no way he could have done what he did. >> no one was writing stories at that time. these men were alone by

themselves in these very, very difficult times. and it was unknown, unchartered territory. but what i loved was that this fact of being attacked by a bear and then survive was so improbable that it requires a willing suspension of disbelief, right, which is basically the foundation of the cinematic faith of poetry. and i said you need to suspend the disbelief to make this-- you need to stop judgment or prejudice to believe that a man can do that. and to attempt that in a cinematic experience is what really art is about, to make probable the improbable, and all the elements were there. >> rose: that's "charlie rose: the week" for this week. before we leave you tonight, we note the passing of david bowie, the always-inventive, enormously talented singer and songwriter died of cancer sunday. he was 69. from the archive, here is david

bowie at the table. i'm charlie rose. we'll see you next time. >> i really-- i've gotten an incredible appetite for what we do and how we do it and how we express it. and ever since i was a kid, it's-- i always want ton what's out there. i always want to know what's happening. >> rose: do you think of yourself first as a musician? >> uh, no, no, actually,y find that the idea of having to say that i'm a musician in any way is an embarrassment to me because i don't really believe that. i've always felt that what i do is i use music for my way of expression. i don't believe i'm very accomplished at it. and i sigh-- i give a little sigh of relief every time that i come up with something which sounds whole and complete and sort of functions as a piece of music. i'm sort of-- and fortunately,

it does seem to be there all the time. i never seem to go dry when it comes to writing music. but i don't feel like a musician. >> rose: because you don't feel that you have that talent? >> because, probably i don't really take myself seriously enough as a musician at all. i'm far too interested, probably too interested for me own good, but i'm far more interested in the blending of different things. and i just can't-- i don't have-- i have the attention span of a grasshopper, which means it's very difficult for me to become a craftsman. >> rose: what is it you think you do best? >> you know what? i think i would love to have been-- i would actually-- i would love to have been like sting and being a teacher. i really would have liked to have done that. what i-- what gets-- what really sort of gets me off is to be able to introduce people to new things. i love the feeling of introducing a new subject or something, especially to younger people, that maybe excites them

and gets them going on something and influences them to do something. you know, opening up some kind of world. i love taking people to art galleries and really corny things like that. i love going to museums with them as well. and it's a joy that i've always had with my son, especially, has been just terrific to be able to do that, take him to the theater one week maybe, then take him to a dance or a rock show and then an art museum and all these different things. it's just great to see how somebody else takes these same influences and puts them together their own way. because i remember when people did that for me. i always felt it was a gift when anybody took me anywhere or showed me a new way of doing things. i always felt that was the greatest gift they could give to me, and i loved doing that back.

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