tv Charlie Rose PBS February 29, 2016 12:00pm-1:01pm PST
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>> rose: welcome to the program. we continue our look at the conflict between the f.b.i. and apple with a conversation with max levchin, a much admired figure in silicon valley and one of the co-founders of paypal. >> i ultimately hope that this propels its way to the supreme court very quickly and the supreme court actually tells apple you are compelled to open this phone. i personally want to see this case in front of the f.b.i. with every bit of evidence so they have access to whatever information they need to make sure my kids are safe. >> rose: we conclude with the oscars. we talk with dana stevens, david edelstein, melena ryzik and christopher john farley. >> usually the films are diverse, you see a lot of different polls of experience,
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but there's only one film out of all the films nominated for best picture that has any romance in it. >> rose: max levchin and the oscars when we continue. funding for charlie rose is provided by the following: captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with our continuing coverage of the encryption debate. on thursday apple hit back at the f.b.i. with a 36-page legal brief. microsoft, google, twitter, facebook and yahoo also moved to throw their support behind apple in court.
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f.b.i. director james comey testifying before congress called encryption the hardest problem i've seen in government. joining us max levchin, co-founder of paypal, chairman of yelp and board of directors at yahoo and c.e.o. and director of a firm of financial technology. we've seen this coming. >> yep. >> rose: tell me more. so if you'll dial history back, you will see even the current director comey has advocated many times in speeches and interviews for essentially backdooring encryption software that is built into various software systems from apple to other operating systems. that was a very black and white and fairly easy issue. that's a terrible idea. there are two simple things to it. one is bad guys don't have to
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abide by our laws. the good guys will weaken encryption, and bad guys will use the strongest thing they can get their hands on. we'll be worse off, they will be better off, bad idea. that's easy. >> rose: bad guys can be criminals, nation states? >> whoever. everyone will have knowledge we purposely weakened our systems and enacted laws presumably to make sure everyone here uses the weakened systems. you can make the argument they will be safeguarded and legal protections around them but we've seen what happened with the break-ins from target to the government break-in in the last couple of years. security is either there or not. even if it's slightly weakened, it basically doesn't exist. this particular case is not exactly the same thing. this one is a subtle, different
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thing, and here the government has asked apple to not just hand over some data that they happen to have. what they're saying, is yes, we know you don't have this data. we want you to build some software that opens up this phone and gives this data to us because we want to investigate a known terrorist, obviously a very bad guy. >> rose: and they say it's one time only. we only want to do this one time, and they say we're not trying to open a backdoor, we deliberately are not trying. so we've got a problem with how people interpret key words -- backdoor, one time only, precedent. >> yes, unfortunately, reality is that this is a very complex issue and people very often don't understand the subtleties and conflict the general encryption issue and this particular issue. this one is a precedent real
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issue that apple and f.b.i. are now digging out. >> rúse: why is that true? because the software can be built. apple doesn't have it. they can sit down and build it. it will be complex, it will be a burden, but they can do it. the thing that tim cook is saying, if the f.b.i. can compel me to build software that basically opens up phones of my customers, they won't stop with the this one. >> rose: stopping there would be naive. apple says we can build software to open a phone up. f.b.i. says, okay, open this phone up with the software you build but then destroy the software. we're not asking you to do anything else with it, we just wanted access to this one phone. i'm keeping over here for a moment the idea someone else may come and say, ah-ha, i know you destroyed that but do it for us
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because we have a case of a mass murderer and if we can get inside his phone, it will tell us stuff about what he did. >> right and the perhaps more scary wrinkle is they open up the phone, say we have a case and real probable cause and a very scary thing going on, what we needed to do is turn on cameras on every laptop out there, or on every phone or -- >> rose: they're not saying that. >> no, they're not, but what apple is saying is if there is precedent where a government organization comes in and tells them build software to do effectively spying on our own citizens, who's to say it won't happen again and again and gets broader and broader. the answer is it's fine, you can compel us to do this, but it has to be out in the open and a law that says this is how it goes down. >> rose: this is the perfect case to decide a a supreme court decision or b a congressional law? >> right. and one more thing that's worth
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considering and understanding here. beyond just legal precedent, what apple is not saying because it would be, i think, a p.r. disaster, but it's a very real concern is should we build the tool and the tool exists for a brief moment in time. it's a company for several hundred thousand employees. there will be people involved in this. the tool is pretty terrifying. it will exist for a time, but it will exist. who's to say that as the world knows this tool is being built, you don't have every imaginable bad actor saying we'll do whatever it takes to get our hands on that tool because as soon as we do, we, not our government, some other government, some other agency, some other mafia grabbing this tool while it's in existence, pocketing it and using it for their own purposes and devices, i think apple wants a legal hearing that says this tool must exist under the following framework of law and that's how usage of this tool can or can't
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happen. >> rose: apple doesn't want the responsibility without somebody having said these are the rules, this is how we'll do it and these are the guide reasons and everybody understand that? >> i believe that's the purpose, obviously not authorized to speak on behalf of anyone other than myself. >> rose: i asked you to come and be because you know silicon valley very well and you understand computer science very well, you spent your life there. that puts you in a very different place than me. i only have my curiosity to guide me here. so then do -- back to this one phone. do we wait until it works its way through the courts? that may take a year. do we wait before -- for this national debate to take place
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and may or may not have congressional legislation? what happens in the meantime to the phone that has information because we know what the people were and what they were doing, that might lead us to other plots against america? >> so this is where my emotional parent-husband-family-person-sef and my civil liberties person-public-self conflict. i ultimately hope this propels its way to the supreme court very quickly and the supreme court actually tells apple you are compelled to open this phone up. i personal want to see this case in front of the f.b.i. with every bit of evidence so that they have access to whatever information they need to make sure my kids are safe. >> rose: right. i think that is fundamentally very, very important to me. >> rose: and to most parents. i hope so. on the other hand, i think it is absolutely critical that it is in fact the supreme court that
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says, for this one phone, you are compelled to open and, incidentally, we have a four against four court so doesn't set precedent. so this ruling happens at a particularly curious time, the precedent will not be set. the court can compel apple to open this one phone, then it still goes in front of congress and we still have the public debate and fundamentally decide what it's going to be, what checks and balances will be. do we have every bad guy's phone opened up by supreme court? a little burdensome on the supreme court but that would ensure our civil liberty. >> rose: when you look at apple doing this, they have announce order has been reported that they are developing devices, iphones, future iphones that will even be harder to crack. that's going to make it more difficult. >> yes. >> rose: they say almost impossible for them to penetrate. >> yeah. >> rose: you would know more about that than i would.
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what happens in the future to the need of law enforcement to have access to critical data? the civil liberties case is often having to do with individual's right for privacy. it clearly was raised after edward snowden in terms of people who might not have known their phone was being -- metadata was being collected and all that stuff and may have known about the transactions of people but may not necessarily have had a reason to know. but law enforcement has a legitimate purpose in america in any society and that moans they ought to be able to -- now, there are constitutional restrictions and has to do with due process and the 14th amendment and everything else, but law enforcement has the responsibility to do as much as
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it could and we're putting a ceiling here, and is there any way and shouldn't there be a way for society to develop laws that will say, yes, we know law enforcement has this need, but they have to check off here and here and here before they can do it, rather than saying under no circumstances can they do it because we can develop in today's technology ways that they can never do it? >> so i think apple's -- not sure it's been announced but certainly debated a plan to build something that's effectively unbreakable is actually the right thing to do. i think it is most certainly the case that people that are trying to safeguard themselves on apple or microsoft or vipir or any device have access both bad and good guys to software that is in fact unbreakable. so someone who is absolutely keen on protecting their data
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knows how to do so and will do so. there are many vulnerabilities that happen within systems and have little to do with the math and encryption, they're just implementation problems and bugs and so-called exploits and that's what the f.b.i., n.s.a. and c.i.a. have used successfully over the years and that practice will remain, and that is not something that any one of us needs to worry about. that's the spy craft of the agencies. the notion of compelling a company to do something that fundamentally puts them into a very conflicted situation that apple finds themselves in now is completely side stepped by not allowing this weakness to happen. what this weakness will cause -- >> rose: apple does not want this decision? >> correct. they do not want to be the company deciding what level of privacy they can guarantee their users. but i think what's really important again is the point that, if you weaken the system, the bad guys are generally not going to be affected.
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the good guys will be affected. apple says the same strength applies to everyone, the same level of protection applies to everyone and we're telling you what it is is generally a better outcome. there will be difficulties but n.s.a. was the prism being outlawed many years ago. everyone was beating the drum of, oh, no, now the bad guys -- we'll never read the bad guys' mail. it appears that we have not been that much weaker even though the prison system was -- i'm sorry, the clipper chip is the debate i'm referring to. clipper chip was a notion of a backdoor chip that would go into computers and the n.s.a. would have everything and eventually it got blown up because civil liberties protested it and it was eliminated. >> rose: where are civil liberties when the f.b.i. or law enforcement goes to a bank and says we have a search warrant to look at the financial records of
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this person, we have gone through the proper procedure to get it and here's the search warrant, show it to us. in the past, they have done it. >> yep. >> rose: they've given the information because there was a search warrant. >> mm-hmm. >> rose: also, a problem that they may not have control of it. >> i think that's actually unlikely to change. i think that's both lawful and good, certainly during the years i many times dealt with people who came and said we need to see records of certain tractions because there is a real risk here when we were looking at financial crime. as a financial institution, you are audit, required to keep certain types of records, there is the and thety-money laundering law, all of that works fine today, i think we're in a good place there and don't need to change anything. i think what's special about this case is the request or demand to write software because that creates a precedent that
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software can do anything. software can turn on your microphone, can listen to your phone calls. if apple can be told, hey, you need to do that -- >> rose: is there a problem being asked to do something? >> to build something. >> rose: they're asking them to create. >> or to hand over data they have. the apple is in possession of data, there is precedent where court order is given to the agency and the data is something that must be handed over and has been done in the past and apple has worked with law enforcement agencies plenty of times. this is fundamentally new way of doing this. >> rose: james said yesterday, the code the judge directed apple to write works only on this one phone so the idea of it getting out into the wild and working on my or your phone, at least th the experts tell me, is not a real thing. james comey, director of the f.b.i. >> with all due respect to the director of the f.b.i., i think between him and the judge there
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is probably many layers of indirection or explanation of how good it actually works. it's certainly possible to write code that works on one phone. is it closer to write code that works on any phone? yes. it's fundamentally a check on a phone that it works. >> rose: could the smartest hacker in the world break into this phone without damaging the data inside? >> you know, the knee jerk reaction is no, but it might not be so because ios is built by humans. there are bugs in it. it is plausible that there is a bug that even apple doesn't know about that a very smart hacker already knows about or could drive to do this bypassing apple's involvement. the straightforward, not necessarily easy way, you build
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a new version of ios, eliminate the check around the pin trials and software elimination to have the key, you need apple's help to do this. but could a resource eliminate the tamper-proof chip? it might be they might destroy the chip in the process but that doesn't require help. they can get in and get the key. >> rose: it says something to me that almost everybody among the major companies and major players in silicon valley are supportive of apple to one degree or the other. >> i think what all tim cook's peers -- >> rose: we're talking about google, c.e.o. of microsoft, we're talking about -- >> these are companies that deal in customer data. what i think they're
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fundamentally saying is this is a hugely important matter, uncharted legal territory. we fully support tim cook's leadership in asking congress to create the law that draws a clear line in the sand. dwoa this with a court -- we do this with a court order and these are the checks and balances and this is how the data is discoverable and this is how it is not, completely out in the public so it's clear to american people, when they're buying their device and subscribing to a service, what will and will not end up in the hands of the government under certain circumstances. so i think everyone is on the right side of the debate in terms of what is important to them as private citizens but they understand the long-term implications are very profound and we owe it to ourselves. >> rose: there is no question that the iphone 6, now i assume 7 is right around the corner -- >> probably. >> rose: yes, for sure.
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that when tim cook makes the point that if, in fact, there is a precedent set here, that a lot of people trusted apple knowing and believing they were buying an encrypted phone and, in fact, it goes to the heart of apple's credibility if they are not getting a phone free of encryption -- or encrypted, and especially in china, which has become their big market. >> right. there is salary piece of this that is very relevant internationally and in china, particularly where presumably an entirely different type of due process, an entirely different level of legal framework applies, and apple has to be an international company, it has to cater to everyone in the world and they have to have some sort of clear set of standards.
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i suspect that plays into it. my guess is that, in this case, tim cook is fundamentally concerned with the u.s. side of the argument but it cannot escape this is something that will have rerp cautions worldwide. >> rose: and you said you believe there is a way not to have a master key but do this one time, and you supported law enforcement, but you've changed your mind. bwas there one particular thing that changed your mind? was it tim cook's argument with david muirer that the president was involved here and it would do damage to the idea of privacy? >> there was a thing he said in the interview that set off my mind from the bath of going bad guys' phones need to be cracked open, don't care about anything else, to my view today, he mentioned congress and this notion of checks and balances,
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notion of accountability in law enforcement is something our congress is fundamentally in charge of and not having them involved is what ultimately made me think, you know, this is fairly fundamental. this is something where a brand-new level, a brand-new type of access is being discussed and we have no precedent, we have no law around it. so i think that's what got me thinking about this. >> rose: tim also on this show made the point that we need a dialogue, a conversation, decision-making, you know, and this is one of those issues that maybe, maybe all the amount of law enforcement and the f.b.i. working with apple would not have gotten to a solution. you really needed congress to come to grips with it, representing the people, and you feed the supreme court representing another branch of government to do it, that the hoped-for idea -- because they have been talking about encryption. the conversation between apple
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and the government has been going on for several years, at least, and especially when apple announced how successful their encrypted machines were, devices. >> yep. >> rose: finally, in terms of technology and where we are going and what's taking place in the marketplace, from your sense as a computer scientist, what's next? i mean, we've seen the dominance of mobile devices. we've seen the prevalence of the cloud. >> it's only going to get a lot more interesting. that's my statement. i think we'll have lots of these debates. this is certainly not the last. >> rose: in terms of role of society in our world or --
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>> the role of law in the newly-changed software infrastructure. cloud is something people are talking about but more significantly, your data lives not on a computer or phone you physically have. there is a more complete and up-to-date copy exists on a server in someone else's hands. so what used to be between you and your data and law enforcement has become a three-way relationship. it's you, your data, law enforcement and a third party that has a complete copy of the data. that is unprecedented. we're going to find out exactly what it means. >> rose: here's what's interesting: those servers are owned by amazon, microsoft, apple, other major companies.
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that's where the cloud is. >> yep. exactly. >> rose: my impression is tim cook would have had no problem if they had accessed the cloud to get this information that this phone that did delivered there. >> because there would be a clear legal precedent with which everyone is familiar with, there is a copy, it doesn't need to be broken, it is an item apple has in their possession, they have been compelled by a court order to hand it over, have done it in the past and could do it again. that wouldn't be difficult. the difficulty in this case is the government compelling apple to build software that today could be used for good in this one case but tomorrow can be used and if compelled once will be compelled again to be used for all kinds of surveillance that does not need to be announced or debated, it's just doable. so what they're asking for is established precedent, tell us what it means.
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can we really be forced to write software that effectively be used to spy on our citizens, both by our government, other governments, by third parties, et cetera. so i think that's fundamentally -- >> rose: yeah, and it ought to be said that this country has survived and prevailed and been the kind of nation it has been because of its respect for constitutional principles. >> precisely, and there is a great factoid, jackson and adams in the days to have the founding father communicated with each other after the u.s. was fully established in encrypted form because they were worried about the post master general reading their mail and using the information to blackmail them. that's a precedent for being concerned about the government's role in communications. >> rose: thank you. pleasure. max levchin. back in a moment. stay with us.
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>> rose: the 88th academy awards will air sunday night on abc. chris rock will return as host for the second time, there are 12 nominations. for the second year in a row, the academy of pictures embroiled in controversy after 20 acting agencies went to white actors. dana stevens, movie critic for slate, david edelstein, chief film critic for the new york magazines, melena ryzik, culture reporter for the "new york times," and christopher john farley, senior editor at "the wall street journal." how does this size up this year? >> what's been nominated for best picture in a sense --
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usually the films are diverse, you see a lot of different polls of experience, but there is only one film out of all the films nominate for best picture that actually has any romance. a lot of films are big tent pole films like "star wars: the force awakens" is not up for best picture. so i find it interesting hollywood has chosen to focus on these films and leave out a lot of others that might have added to the mix. i understand we'll get to the diverse context laider. so i look at the list and say, okay, there are some films i enjoyed but could have been more if people had been more daring. >> rose: i ask others to read the list. big short, bridge of spice, "the martian," "spotlight." what do you think?
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"the big short," "spotlight." >> and "the revenant." i think the smart money is on "the revenant" because that seems to have the momentum behind and also won some of the big predictor awards people look at that watch this stuff closely, so that's probably the one that has the best chance if you put money on it. >> rose: we sometimes do what should and is likely to win. if i ask you what should win, "the revenant," or something else should win? >> i would probably vote for "the big short," although as a journalist, i think we all at this table are probably a little bit behind "spotlight" because it's one of the few movies that showcases our field in a positive way. but i think "the big short" would be a really interesting choice and would be one of the rare comedies or comedic films to win, and it's a real risk by the director to take on this material that is tough to deal with and make it visually interesting, make it vi it sin
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cinematically interesting. >> rose: david? i would give the people a good combat medal, not an oscar. >> rose: because? the movie had a combination of a macho show-off technique, muscular, look what we can put our actors through combined with the new native american, woo-woo spiritualism that's become really offensive. i was partial to "room" and "the big short." both of those did things i've never seen on screen. "the big short" was able to create the syntax that allowed for -- "the big short" is great
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journalism and in the way of some of the best n.p.r. shows like "american life," it wove in information in a thrilling, suspenseful story at the same time schaiting i politically. the room did something i've never seen which is make a case for childhood fantasy, make a case for someone raised in the worst conditions imaginable, what you can do as a parent to create a loving environment that transforms everything. so that's where i am. >> first of all, i love david's hatred for "the revenant." it's now descended a couple of degrees from hearing the speech. i think "spotlight" may be my favorite if i got to vote. i didn't hate "the revenant" as much as david but what irritates me about the momentum behind it for best picture and director, is this director would have pulled off, if he gets the two
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awards, he will be the first director in oscar history to win back-to-back best picture and director. that should be more a more legendary movie and maybe one more different from birdman, the movie last year. >> rose: linney abramson from "room" and "the revenant." come mccarthy "spotlight." adam mckay "the big short" and george from "spotlight." out of that, who is it likely to be? >> i think it's going to be -- i think adam has a chance for making it an interesting topic. >> rose: i don't think he has a chance. >> i don't think he has a chance. i think even he himself told me when i talked to him that when he was going to the screenings with academy members that the style of the movie, the sort of
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fast-pace cutting, visual jokes and a lot of visual information was kind of flying over the heads of some of the academy members. >> what an indictment. what an indictment of the voters. >> and having covered the oscars closely, i think he might be right. >> it may be as simple as it's a comedy. comedies almost never get nominated at the oscars much less wifnlt i think it's surprising "the big short" has gotten the love it has. >> none of the critic scripts went for it. i'm not a sure big max fan, but isn't it cool george miller, great george miller has such a disreputable genre movie. he's not going to win, but i think it's wonderful the academy -- if it couldn't recognize "creed" -- if you can't nominate "creed" which
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everybody loved -- >> and which is the consummate oscar movie. it has a happy ending -- >> the only person you would nominate was the white guy. it was, like, do the right thing. setting that aside, it's cool george miller got a nomination for this crazy motorcycle movie. >> rose: just talked about best actor bryan cranston, matt damon, leonardo, "steve jobs" and eddie for "the danish girl." >> it's practically a coronation. that would be the upset of the night. >> it's somewhat of a makeup call. >> rose: it's a brilliant performance by him. >> maybe that will make him lighten up and start taking on res oscar-seeking roles. >> i would like him to wear his seriousness more lightly. i think it's hurt him as an actor. >> rose: seriousness about
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causes or roles? >> no, i love his change activism and things like that, but seems as if this sort of crawling miles and miles over frozen tundra and grunting and suffering is a metaphor for his quest for the oscars. >> when i saw the movie, i thought, give him the oscar so we can stop crying so hard. >> rose: best actors, kate cate blanchette, saoirse. >> i think kat cate blanchette deserves consideration. she puts up good performances. >> rose: she was good in truth.
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>> she got it for jasmine. >> rose: she got it two years ago, what? >> lebrie larson is wonderful. nothing's going to soften my substance on brie. >> and she has been working the circuit hard. >> she was great in short-term 12, too, when she was not nominated. >> rose: best supporting actor, christian bale, tom hardy, mark ruffalo whom i love, sylvester stallone for "creed." >> i think's sly's year. >> rose: is it a good performance is this. >> i think it pulls out things of him we didn't see before and in such a beloved character people are so familiar with to give it a different shade. >> rose: amazing how much he's gotten out of that. >> and he didn't win the oscar
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for his original rocky performance. it wasn't such a well-directed movie. it lost screenplay to patty for network, so the movie and the director won, but the guy who conceived, wrote and starred in it didn't win. it's making up for past injustice. >> rose: best supporting actress jennifer jason leigh, "carol" and kate winslet from "steve jobs." >> alicia is in the lead. "ex machina" was a better performance. here she is playing artificial intelligence creature. she's giving two performances, one as the creature and two as
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the creature being human. it made it a multi-layered performance. one that wasn't recognized. >> rose: what about jennifer jason leigh? >> don't you think nominating her is like welcoming her back into the fold? >> rose: i can't wait to see what chris rock says about diversity in his open remarks. >> i'm sure whatever he says will be really right on and interesting and provocative. i wonder if a few well-timed jokes can make up for what's happening here. >> rose: what's happening? well, essentially "the los angeles times" did a follow-up to their landmark story about what's really going on in the academy, the fact it's 91% white, 76% male, and that helps to contribute to the kinds of choices we see the academy make year after year in terms of who gets nominated and why. and the fact there are so many movies out there year that featured people of color that were not nominated, like
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"creed," like "beast of no nation" like straight out of compton, like tangerine, films not only well reviewed but made a lot of money. the movie that made the most last year was "star wars: the force awakens." it doesn't just hurt people of color. it actually hurts all of hollywood which could use that kind of attention and that kind of influx of energy and yet those movies were left off the list. >> it also hurts the oscar telecast because their ratings are down not only when they're not voting for the most popular movies, that's part of it, but when you're voting for a narrow slate of nominees, people are turned off by that, they don't want to watch. >> there is no reason it
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wouldn't have been nice to see "chi-raq" get something. "creed" should have been a lock for a nomination. one of the depressing things is most of the academy voters look like me. >> rose: is that the problem or i is the problem more at the executive level and making the film in terms of more directors of color? more directors -- women directors opened and, on and on? >> a study came out from u.s.c. look at what's going on behind the camera and highlighted how few female directors there are and how few directors of color there are. out of 109 films, only two were directed by black women. what people don't know is this isn't just about black and white and other colors. it's about green. this movie was actually powered to a large extent by people of
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color. over 40% of the tickets are bought by people of color and, so, to not have them represented in awards, not have them represented on screen actually hurts hollywood's bottom line in a time when they're being challenged again and again by technology, streaming services, people not wanting to go to sticky movie theaters anymore. they need help. last year hollywood learned is $11.1 million. they need energy brought by "creed," straight out of "straif compton," "star wars: the force awakens," or else they will undercut their business model. >> those are incredible blockbusters you mentioned but i would like to see hollywood
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change its attitude toward niche filmmakers. accept the fact of making a movie for $5 million or $10 million with the expectation of finding a niche and making 20, $30 million in return, as opposed to doing everything, rolling the dice on $100 million, $200 million movies with the hope of making a billion down the road. the mentality shifted so much. that's why filmmakers of color and female filmmakers are going in droves to netflix, amazon and television, why they have been pushed out of the movies by a culture that's actually gotten worse in the last few years. >> look at the film "tangerine" made on an iphone, a definition of an edgy, interesting film made for almost no money and got totally ignored by the oscars. on "rotten tomatoes, got great reviews. also a small film totally
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ignored. >> rose: is the problem the academy is simply racist, that the people there don't appreciate the contributions of people of color? >> twofold, one, the demographic to have the academy is very monolithically white male and everybody is predisposed to look at things that mirror their own experience. so if you were an older white man, you might not be as inclined to pop "straight out of compton" in your d.v.d. player while your grandchildren probably will be. but the larger problem is hollywood is a part of america and there are obstacles within the industry to women and people of color, sort of institutional obstacles to having them make films. you mentioned filmmakers are leaving -- women and people of color are leaving films to go to netflix, that's true or streaming service or tv or whatever, but they're still not represented in the numbers they should be. they're still not represented in the demographically correct dmurms that they are in the
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population. so obviously, when you're looking at the stats, when 4% of films are directed by women and more than 50% of any kind of entertainment, tv, movies, streaming do not feature any asian-american characters, those are larger problems everybody has to deal with. >> rose: do all of you believe this will change because of all of the attention it's gotten this time? >> well, the academy's done concrete moves toward making a change, faster than i would have thought they would have. after the oscars the white twitter campaign went crazy and started to be a subject of popular discourse, whether this will change anything remains to be seen, but they snapped to it in terms of changing recruiting rules. >> on the ground, it's hard to know whether that is actually going to happen because they are putting those steps forward but you have to jump through some hoops to become a member of the academy even as they are saying they will welcome more women and people of color, the nominating process involves getting people
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to recommend you. so that's still a part of it. it still depends on the network you have within that community. >> here's the weirdest thing. hollywood, the people of hollywood know that this has been a particularly traumatic year for african-americans and, so, the academy has a black female president. they chose chris rock to emcee, and they gave a special award to spike lee, a very well publicized award to spike lee. on an executive level, i think they did everything they could. it was just literally the composition of the voters that let them down this year. so i am optimistic that they are going to try anything that they can. but the culture of hollywood itself and what gets made -- >> even tinkering with the academy is the wrong end of the pipeline. things need to change further up the stream.
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>> the mystery is people have been having these conversations for at least a decade. the directors guild has had diversity programs in place for that long, the producers' guild, these kind of institutional things in hollywood that help people get a leg up in the business or their network have been working on it, and yet we are stin still having this conversation and that's the frustration when i talked to performers and writers in the industry is why are we still having this conversation. >> they were confronting mythmaking. one of the myths is if you make these casting decisions, people won't come to the theater. i love the fact "star wars: the force awakens" was so successful with a black male action hero and female white hero side by side bringing in a billion dollars.
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it worked out for "star wars: the force awakens," why can't you do that for your movie as well? if any message is sent this year, i hope it registers with executives and studio heads. >> rose: thank you. we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: we leave you with a look at the best picture nominees who came to the table for conversations about their craft and their film. we have four directors and casts for the films "room," "the big short," "spotlight" and, finally, "the revenant." >> the film takes place in a 10x10 box which presents challenges and we tend to think cinema is about wide open spaces and fast camera movement, but i think what we really set ourselves was to see if we could turn this small space into a
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whole world also for the audience because we're trying to capture something of the little boy's sense of the place and, therefore, the task is not to make it feel small and contained but rich and full and storied and a place where a complete childhood can be acted out. >> rose: how does the relationship change outside of the room? >> well, a lot. i think there is a lot in that second half, a lot about expectation and how bautiful it is to not have one. so jack comes into this world not knowing what anything is so he gets to come at it from a place of curiosity, at times feeling disyorntd by everything but he's getting to know it all and it's a strange world he can explore and you start to see how adaptable a child is. versus joey is coming to terms with a very bizarre situation where she was a 17-year-old girl in this bedroom kept completely in tact and it's this dream for
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seven years of hers to go back to it and be who she was. but when she returns home, she realizes there isn't anything there for her anymore. >> rose: is this a comedy or tragedy? >> it's both. it's a true story, so we knew from the very beginning it would never adhere to one strict genre. at the real people steve plays and christian bale and all these great actors, when they found out there was a bubble and no one else knew about it, they were very excited. it was exciting times. they had a lot of energy and it changed and became tragic. so it was both. >> rose: you wanted to do this, to read about you in this magazine, you really wanted to make this movie about wall street and the crash. >> yeah, i read this book and felt like michael lewis' book was one of the books of our times, that it dealt with a lot of issues. >> rose: why? i think it dealt with culture, it dealt with contact and it dealt with information. you don't often see those three
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things intertwined so brilliantly. by the time i was done reading it, i felt like i had looked behind the curtain of wall street, to some degree, i know it's more complicated than that. so we decided with this movie that we were going to go for it all, we were going to explain it, have great carkts, go for the whole thing lewis pulled off for his book. >> rose: and the story, in your definition? >> you know, you have marty, read an article in the globe the first weekend in boston, mcnamara had written a column and basically said a local torn, mitchell, alleged cardinal had knowledge of these abuse crimes of father john geoghan and his simple question is what did we do about that? >> you really kept us focused on not just writing the story -- >> rose: marty. marty said what we're trying
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to do is see if church officials covered up. that was our focus. >> the key for marty is the column discussed the church documents that had been turned over and placed under a confidentiality order. the line eileen mcnamara used is the truth may never be known and that got to marty, a red flag and he said journalists should never settle for a statement, that it's our job to find the truth. >> our job is to transport people to a period in time they knew nothing about. they were excited about the idea of going after this. >> rose: creating a sense of blindness. >> how could it ever be a part of something like. this i think they had no idea. i think, too there were so many amazing moments in the investigation, and characters involved all around the investigation that we really had to distill it down to two hours and in doing so not only deal
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with the amount of flow of information and its dissemination but the spirit of that investigation which at one moment was exciting and another incredibly tedious and then ultimately thrilling, how to combine those things because we're trying to tell an entertaining story. >story. what it captured so beautifully is you have these two institutions that in some way are part of the same problem. within the globe, there was a looking away. >> rose: complicit. yes, not an act of -- not active, but it happened, right? but what is beautiful is you have an institution right itself on film. you see what it looks like, okay? if there is a possibility for it. and so that opens up the possibility for the catholic church to do the same thing. these guys are not asking the catholic church to do anything more than what they did themselves which is to look at the truth, expose it and then
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right the wrong. >> hugh glass is an interesting story for all of us. it's a camp fire legend that represents the iconic american front tiersman and man's struggle against nature and i think his ability to also conquer nature as well. so it's been told from generation to generation, but it's a very interesting time period. first off, you have the oregon territory like the amazon, the capitalistic move out west to extract the natural resources, you have the clash of the indigenous populations with the 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. but we knew that we wanted to make a movie where we submerged
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ourselves in these actual elements and we wanted to see what sort of poetry came about, what sort of questions that arose in us as filmmakers. so that's what we did. i said this therefore, but alejandro almost had a tough time explaining to me why exactly he wanted to go on this mecca, but i saw something in his eyes, he wanted to submerge himself in these environments and see what came out. so it was almost like a large portion of our lives together in nature asking ourselves these questions. >> rose: almost like the birdman kind of shooting. >> yes, many, many, many things i learned from birdman i applied here because i thought to me the point of view of hugh glass, hi
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man: it's like holy mother of comfort food.ion. kastner: throw it down. it's noodle crack. patel: you have to be ready for the heart attack on a platter. crowell: okay, i'm the bacon guy. man: oh, i just did a jig every time i dipped into it. man #2: it just completely blew my mind. woman: it felt like i had a mouthful of raw vegetables and dry dough. sbrocco: oh, please. i want the dessert first! [ laughs ] i told him he had to wait.
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