>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with an analysis of the debate last night. first we talked to bob costa of is debate was trump's exchangey on his own tax returns because he has been able to really posture in this campaign as a working man's billionaire, as someone who's a brash political outsider, a disruption and a scene political people have become frustrated by. but on this idea he may not have paid tax or paid a low rate, it played into clinton's argument that he's not an outsider so much but comes out to have the republican mainstream tax cuts, protect the wealthy and she was able to make this more of a left-right debate than at any point in this campaign.

>> rose: ed luce of the "new york times" and jon meacham, noted presidential historian. >> there are two numbers i think about in trying to describe why trump has happened. one is 19%. 19% of americans trust the government to do the right thing sommer most of the time, down from 77% in the middle of the 1960s. so few than one in five americans believe the federal government will do the right thing. the second number is 135,000, the number that joe biden's middle class task force a few years ago determined was the household income necessary to support a classic post-war middle class life and, as we know, the household income is somewhere around $57,000. >> rose: we conclude with an appreciation of edward albee, the great american dramaist who died at age 88. >> don't be a playwright unless it's something you will be an

incomplete person without doing because it can be a fairly ugly racket. but if it's something you need b your own man or woman, write exactly what you want to write. everybody involved in a production of a play is there because of you. >> rose: politics and remembering albee, when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> 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: we begin this evening with our continuing coverage of the u.s. presidential election. trump and hillary clinton squared off last night in the first presidential debate that was held at hofstra university on long island in new york. the candidates sparred over the economy, iraq and race, among other issues including public criticisms. the general consensus was clinton won. here's a look at some of the debate's key moments. >> president obama and secretary clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of iraq because they got out -- they shouldn't have been in, but once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster and i.s.i.s. was formed. >> and it's just a fact that if you're a young african-american man, and you do the same thing as a young white man, you are more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted and encars rated. so we've got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system. we cannot just say law and

order. >> and i don't believe hillary has the stamina. >> let's let her respond. well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiators a peace deal, a cease fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina. >> rose: joining me from washington, bob costa to have the "the washington post," with me in new york jerry seib, the washington bureau chief for the "wall street journal." i am pleased to have both of them on this program in this day after the great debate. jerry, i begin with you. we've all talked about who won and lost. how did you see it unfold? what do you read from the results that you -- >> well, now the opinions are in. >> i hate the win and lose in a debate, which seems to be the wrong way to look at a debate.

there were almost two debates. there was the first half hour that donald trump does what he does a which is make a visceral connection with voters. he started out which baying here's the problem in america, jobs are shipped overseas. everybody can identify with that. you can debate the veracity of what he says, but it's a point he hits very well, and he made that point and he said, essentially, hillary clinton's been doing this 30 years, who solved the problems? why haven't you solved the problems? i feel he prevailed in the first 30 minutes in. the last 60 minutes, it got away from him a little bit and the rest of that conversation was not on his terms, it was on hers or somebody else's. >> rose: you i had to use words like this, but it was almost like she seduced or baited him into getting off message and irrational. >> yeah, and, you know, you sort of got the feeling that --

hillary clinton is a very tenacious person and she prepared heavily, and you got the feeling that there was a set of marks that she wanted to hit during the course of that 90 minutes and you got the feeling she didn't miss any of them, she hit every one of them. then he by contrast never talked about immigration, his signature issue, didn't talk about building a wall, which, like it or not, he wants to say it, didn't talk about hillary clinton calling some of his supporters deporables, so i think that was just a sign -- those things were signs it kind of got away from him a little bit. >> rose: bob costa, how did you see him and what is the trump campaign seeing today? >> the morning of the debate i staked out trump tower about three hours and watched people come in and out of the gold elevators on fifth avenue. there were a lot of family members, low key, no mock debate going on behind the scenes, and i asked what was going on, they

said, trump is being trump. we saw trump not making an ideological argument for the republican party but hitting his spots on trade, partly immigration, talking about the economy in a populous way, but also a candidate that skews the political norms, who doesn't do the normal preparation. >> rose: today what is trump saying? >> there is a lot of defensiveness about trump's argument the day after, pretty much excuses in a flurry of opinion. they're saying the moderator lester holt of nbc should have asked more questions about the clinton foundation and benghazi and secretary's time at the state department. basically trump did fine, base is still with him, voters saw someone who was passionate even though sometimes itable. there was disappointment he did

not expand his appeal. this was a moment in front of 80-plus million viewers. he may have kept the base but didn't make an overture to the skeptical. >> rose: why not? comes down to before the debate. trump did not have strategy or preparation. this is a candidate who bet he could be extemporaneous and just be a natural performer coming out of television in his own career. >> rose: do you think he underestimated her? >> i think he saw in her someone he could position himself to be change and that would be enough to really make a case against her, but he didn't think he would have to win on points, that he could make a theme-matic argument and walk away. but we saw points matter especially in the age of fact checking. >> rose: what's interesting, jeer y, you saw the two on stage and you didn't stay moderator and all you saw was the two of them standing

together. in the beginning he was making rational arguments and even though they came right out of his campaign speech, whenever he made a speech to talk about trade, you could see parts of that, as it should be. here's a debate and he's asked to articulate what it is he beans campaigning on which is the same thing he's been campaigning on in the primaries and general election. and he looked presidential. he was on the stage with a woman who was a senator two terms, secretarsecretary of state, a ft lady, and he thought this is what he has to do, he has to be on the same stage with her, believable as a president, believable as a major political leader. >> well, that was the challenge for him is to pass a plausibility test. he didn't have to beat hillary clinton. i think he had to pass a plausibility test. and with some people, i think he probably did. i think he missed an opportunity. this is what bob referred to expand the base. he didn't do anything to shrink his base. those people are with him, i heard from plenty today, they

thought he did just fine. that's not the issue. did he do something to reach out to suburban white women or expand his appeal among college-educated white men and groups within reach of him? so i think in the end when you step back from it, i'm not sure it was a debate that actually was going to move the needle in a big way. i think that hillary clinton probably did herself some good with those suburban women, for example, and probably did herself with the way that she went after the birther issue with african-americans, and they were starting to show some weakness for her. i don't think, though, she necearily did anything to win over millennials, the young voters with, i are a problem for her. >> rose: bob, you started to say? >> i think one of the key moments of this debate was trump's exchange on his own tax returns because he has been able to really posture in this campaign as a working man's billionaire, as someone who's a brash, political outsider, a disruption and a political scene people have become frustrated

by. but when he seemed to almost encourage the idea he may not have paid federal income taxes or may have paid a low rate, it played into clinton's argument that he's not so much an outsider but comes out of the republican mainstream, tax cuts, protect the wealthy and she was able to make all the left-right debate. >> rose: where does he go from here? will the next debate be a dramatically different debate as far as donald trump? >> i think so. when i was in the spin room at hofstra last night, i huddled a bit with mayor julian y, top trump advisors and said what's the plan for st. louis? they said he wants to take the gloves off even more. his natural mode is to fight, fight, fight. even though he was speaking rapidly and combative last night, they think when it comes to president clinton, bill clinton, his personal inphi

dealt in the past, trump wants to make it more deeply cutting and personal in the second showdown. >> rose: will that draw more voters donald trump? >> it's dangerous, i think. i think if our analysis is at all right, the first part of the debate when he wasn't that kind of donald trump was his most effective part. but, you know, he's often told people that he needs to be true to himself, and i think he believes that that is the donald trump who's worked best and, you know, the donald trump that got the nomination. >> rose: the one he's most comfortable with. >> yes, and he thinks has been most successful. it's hard to tell. i do think one of the dangers here for them is they overreact to this debate and go too far in a different direction and maybe that's playing into her hands. i think what hillary clinton was trying to do sometimes last night was to bait him and, you know, he grabbed the bait, and i think there is potential gain there but there is also potential danger there and you

have to wonder which voters is that going to appeal to and are those the ones he needs to add to the list. >> rose: when will the first national poll come out that will impact the debate? >> i think friday. the first quick polls are useful but i don't think deeply meaningful. over the years, i've concluded that you need to let three or four days pass to let the dust settle on the debate, has it really changed anyone's mind, is the first impression a lasting impression, has it changed the way they view somebody enough to move a vote? i don't think that's findable in the first 24 hours after the debate. >> rose: do you think what brought this debate close was because of positive things donald trump was doing or rough water for hillary clinton including from the age of deporables to the collapse on

9/11 day? >> i believe it was a mix of the handling o of it. i think it's because donald trump found his swing on trade and economy in the swing states for white working class voters. he was saying i will be your voice. then the birther episode came back, he didn't have a clear arranges and then we find ourselves here with the debate is that how did he handle foreign policy? >> you know, i think he's got a point of view on foreign policy that shakes up republican foreign policy thinkers but has resonance out there. when he says japanese should pay more for their own defense, a lot of people would say, yeah, that's right. i'm not sure why they think that. they think that's the right thing to believe. >> rose: people get upset if they haven't paid up, then you won't defend them in terms of n.a.t.o. or some other agreement. >> right, and i think the idea

that alliances matter which is hillary clinton's comeback also has resonance out there. but i think the harder question for her on foreign policy is the one she tried to turn on him is what are you going to do about syria and i.s.i.s. donald trump has an answer, i'm a tough guy and i know how to take care of bad guys. it's not a policy but it's an attitude. >> rose: he doesn't tell us how to take care of i.s.i.s. >> nobody has a good idea on taking care of i.s.i.s. you know, he -- there is a message he delivers that is radically different for a republican on trade and on immigration. >immigration. he's changed the republican party's position on two very key issues, and those issues do still have some resonance around the country and in swing states. so i don't think we should diminish the fact that that has worked for him and can still work more for him. >> what a muddled answer for

trump on foreign policy. i was struck at the iraq question, how trump has become so different, jerry, not only on trade and immigration from the usual republican but on foreign policy he has these noninterventionist instinct that enable him to win over voters who have been distancing themselves from the republican party ever since bush and the iraq war. trump found himself not making a hawkish case against clinton but zooming around on the iraq question and that was a missed opportunity nor swath of voters looking for a noninterventionist republican and they're seeing clinton as more hawkish as a democrat. >> rose: bob, notwithstanding how many people are reading into how well clinton did or how may have done better than he did and how over the course of the hour and a half he seemed to get worse not better, is there a sense he was not damaged by this, that his constituency was

certainly not affected by this and undecideds are still undecided? >> well, one of the trump's advisors told me about ten minutes before the debate starts, the only person who's not nervous right now is trump. they found it was almost strange backstage that he was very relaxed because the reason for that, they say, is trump thinks the winds of change are behind him and that he doesn't need to be perfect at all times and he actually isn't really interested in making some kind of coherent case on every single policy issue, that he would rather just be donald trump and hope to be a change agent and sweep into the white house and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. >> rose: do you believe he made the effective argument he's a change agent? >> absolutely, and change is the best argument this year. it's a necessary argument and hillary clinton is making the same argument, it may not be a sufficient one but i think it's a powerful one, and i think he owns the change argument, and, you know, we'll see -- >> rose: because anybody running against the party in power and running against hillary clinton who's been in

politics so long owns the change argument? >> in a change environment. this is a populist environment and a change environment, and he happens to, whether he created or stumbled into it, that's the milieu in which he has prospered. >> i was struck about the clinton people know. this jerry is right. both sides believe this is the environment we're in, but the clinton people said, okay, if we can't beat change, we have to rouse every single constituency within the democratic party and clinton came on almost every front ready with what those groups wanted to hear to make sure they come out. >> here's the problem, change is a better argument in august and september than maybe october and november when you get to, okay, now it's for real. i'd like change but i'm a little scared about change, too, and i think that's what hangs in the balance right now because, you know, in our latest "wall street journal," nbc news poll, the

share of people who said they wanted somebody different versus somebody who had experience in sort of a governing authority, it shifted a little bit, the experience argument got a little better and the i just want change argument got a little worse. so when you get real close to doing the real deal, actually walking in and voting for somebody, maybe that changes. >> bob, is he going to campaign in the rust belt which is where, in north carolina, those states that are in balance? >> he was in florida immediately after the debate, flew to florida this morning, went to miami, met with the cuban community, then scheduled to have a rally later in the state. you talk to the trump campaign and republican strategists thanks i say florida looks good for them, but they're very confident about two states they weren't six months ago, ohio and iowa. they're more nervous about north carolina, virginia and colorado. these are mid atlantic states

with vote rich populations and clinton did everything to rub them in her rhetoric and answers. >> rose: how about pennsylvania. >> you think of the famous james carville saying, trump is sending mike pence there to get the old coal and steel towns. the problem with trump and pa is philadelphia has 1.5 million people in it and she will come out of there with such an enormous advantage in terms of a vote count that it makes it very difficult for him to win pennsylvania. reps haven't won it since '88. >> rose: when is your next interview, bob? >> hopefully soon. i spoke to him in the green room, spin room, spoke to his advisors. i think the more access, the better. i'll see if i can get more time. >> rose: thank you.

great to have you here. >> thank you. >> rose: we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: we continue our discussion now about the debate with ed luce of the financial "new york times," joins us from washington and nashville, tennessee. presidential historian jon meacham. i am pleased to have them on this program a day after the big debate. we begin with ed luce who said the following in the financial times, it was a tale of contrasting preparations, people thought donald trump was gaining exec takes when he said he had not spent much time working on the first presidential debate. turns out he was telling the triewvment mr. trump set his bar as low as possible yet was still unable to clear it. it did not seem as if he even tried. so what are the consequences for donald trump, ed? >> well, you know, that's the million-dollar question because i and most of my colleagues in this profession have seen one

debate performance many times in the past and drawn one conclusion, namely trump's unprepared, boorish, overbearing, fact-free, and large segments of the electorate have seen a completely different debate and, so, the poll numbers have not gone the way we would expect. i would be astonished if he got a bounce out of last night's debate. i would be more astonished than on previous occasions, but it's quite possible. so he failed to clear the bar i think he set himself which was very, very low. he had no answers to questions that he must have known would come up, like the birther controversy, or his net worth and whether he'll release his tax returns, he had no prepared answerons that. so, to my eyes, his performance was disastrous. but as i say, i mistrust my judgment of where the polls will go. >> rose: so what is your

judgment, jon meacham? >> well, i think it was rather like a guy in a sports bar debating a woman at a brooking seminar. they just weren't living in -- they weren't in the same world. but a lot of america goes to sports bars. so i share ed's skepticism about our capacity to prognosticate, at this point. it seems to me that the more the days tick by and we're down to 44, 43 days, this is becoming more and more a referendum on secretary clinton more so than a referendum on donald trump. and i think she did a good bit of work in the debate proving her conventionality is a virtue and not a vice. it is not always seen that way this year. i don't think she has, as we're supposed to say, closed the deal, but i think a strong performance in the town hall format which is more difficult for trump to try to single her

out for direct attack when there are other people around i think will push this toward a result where i suspect she wins, i suspect she gets below 50%, which presents its own series of issues going forward. but none of us should be surprised that trump decided to work from his gut, because that's what got him this far. >> rose: it was really two debates. it was a beginning and then it was another debate that morphed into something having to do with donald trump being enormously off message and interrupting and being almost irritated in terms of what he wanted to do and say. >> well, i think he was -- essentially, this has been his performance style. i don't think any of us should be particularly surprised. it was more like a rally performance, you're right, than a traditional debate one. but again -- you know, i talked to him in may about this.

his basic view is, if the experts are so smart, why am i the nominee of the republican party? and i think he is going to stick with this throughout. it's far too late for there to be -- i banned this word in my household -- a pivot of any kind, but i think it is what it is at this point. we have the most conventionally prepared candidate since george h.w. bush versus the least conventionally prepared major party nominee in american history. >> rose: ed, he certainly was not reagan, as you have suggested in your column, and ronald reagan came into a debate with jimmy carter with the reputation, even though he had been governor for two terms in california, but, to america, not well known and to some americans a bit scary and, in one debate, he seemed to have cleared that up. donald trump didn't do that. >> no, he didn't do that. ronald reagan, in 1980, had one

goal and that was so make himself genial, likable, believable in the role of president, and he achieved that goal. donald trump, last night, had one goal, which was pretty much the same thing, which was to clear a very, very low bar of being a calm, temperamentally trustworthy individual, and it wasn't very hard for hillary to knock him off course. she just needed to needle him on the things that most matter to himself -- his net worth, his prowess as a business dealmaker -- and if that's all it takes, it shouldn't be that hard for her to keep doing this. >> rose: also, he's clearly unnerved by questioning about his inheritance that he is not, in fact, a self-made person. >> yeah, i mean, the $14 million number comes from debt an that trump owed in filing in the mid

1980s to his father $14 million as opposed to the $1 million donald trump said was the small loan fred trump gave to him in 1975, that clearly riled him up. i know that, you know, that those who've estimated how much trump really inherited from his father show that, if he'd invested it simply in a passive index in the 1970s, it would now be greater than his real as opposed to his alleged net worth. so, you know, that's the kind of thing that cuts to the core of his self-image as this swash buckling, ground-breaking, globally envied dealmaker and, you know, hillary use add small fraction of that kind of material last night. there is a lot more where that came from. >> rose: the other thing, though, is -- she has lacked or the campaign has lacked and everybody has taken note of this, enthusiasm -- enthusiasm

for her and enthusiasm of certain blocks she's dependent on. did she, in that debate last night, in a sense the way she took on the birther issue as a racial issue and the way that she talked about donald trump inspire her base as well as the sanders' base to come to her side with enthusiasm? >> i honestly think no. i think she made some progress there. my reaction is that she was -- and this is always so easy to do from the comfort of where i'm sitting -- but i thought she was perhaps overly passive in that moment, which i totally understand. i mean, she got on stage with an angry bear and, so, you need to figure out exactly what the parameters are before you can really go in and go for the kill, so to speak. i suspect she will now, and i saw even this morning when she was talking to reporters, there was an extraordinary -- there

was a tangible -- tangibly higher level of confidence, and i think she will be able to cles that and perhaps inspire some of those undecideds. let's be clear. the one big idea that has particularly younger voters excited came from bernie sanders is the college plan. it says something and goes back to my referendum point here, she's pretty much the establishment. there is no more establishment figure than a clinton in 2016, and the new idea she got, she got from her challenger, and, so, i think that's part of the reason you still have this significant number of people who are not quite ready to sign on. >> rose: and the reason that he will try to make the argument, look, you have been at this 30 years and haven't come up with a solution, why should we believe you will do anything different if you're in the white

house. >> classic populist argument and that's whet got him this far. >> rose: it is. the momentum he's had, we assume it will be with less momentum, less velocity, ed? >> yeah, but with giant health warnings attached to that assumption. you know, i think, as jon says, there are sort of two pretty hardened, unprecedentedly polarized blocks here of sort of 40, 45% for each and they're not going to be shifted and the key things is whether the turnout will be lifted on each side. i think hillary is probably going to get a higher african-american turnout after last night than she would have before partly because of h how she handled the birther issue. and, you know, trump igoing to have done nothing to bring back the college-educated republican

women in the suburbs who are all important in states like pennsylvania around philadelphia. so it's also a turnout game rather than a swing voter game, and i think hillary has to have won points last night on that. >> rose: so are we looking at a contest unless the next debate changes which is mostly about turnout and enthusiasm because people who support him are not going to be impacted by what happened last night. they will still support him. people who may have been leaning to him have not closed the deal as to whether they want to go. so what you have to see here is whether they can build and bring out their voters with the great enthusiasm, so turnout becomes crucial. >> so i think that the -- you know, i have been writing and many have been writing for a year or two now but hillary is lack ago big theme, she's lacking some glue that brings

her campaign together that says why you should be voting for her and i don't think in the six weeks she's going to be come up with it. it's been missing for a year or two. the way she's going to win is through trump self-emulating and people fearing a trump presidency more than they despise a hillary one. sorry to put it to negatively. >> rose: if likability is an issue, can she become more likable? and did she make some -- this is for both of you -- some progress on that front. >> i thought so. did, too. look, she's the grownup in the room, that's the case she has to make, and her husband ran a message campaign, she's got to run -- we were just talking about -- a turnout campaign. 1992 was about economy and change. she's not a plausible change agent. she actually here, in the irony of history, the clintons entered

american history as an agent of change. she now has to make a case she's an agent of stability. >> rose: interesting. so change is not necessarily a pathway to the white house because she can argue against him stability is more important. >> that's the case she's got to make. when she says he does haven't the temperament, what she's saying is i can be trusted with the codes, i can get off the helicopter and handle a crisis, i am stability, he is not worth the risk, that's their argument. >> rose: ed, what did you think about the guam but he tried to say, listen, against the advice of my lawyer, i'll make my income tax returns available if she'll give up all of the e-mails she deleted, if she could. >> well, i think that was a relatively clever way of getting her to sort of feel uncomfortable on the email issue. on whether she came across as

more likable or more human, i did take her husband's advice a couple of times during the debate and muted it to watch her body language. i'm not one of those who ever comments on her fashion or her body language, but she did smile quite a lot. she didn't, when the sound was on, screech or shout, as some of her critics have alleged. i see that there are a couple of critics of the red pantsuit, but i do think she came across as warm and human not at least because trump helped her to do so. he was really rude and interrupting and kept saying "wrong" in a low voice into the microphone over her answers. so i think, you know, she did make progress on the warmth front. >> rose: what's interesting about that is there is a bit of reagan in doing that. reagan said to carter, there you go again, with a certain smile and beamusement, and hillary clinton used that kind of thing. you know, listen to you -- to

listen to you, i'm responsible for everything bad that's happening and his response is you are. i think looking at him with a sense of beamusement saying, there you go again, i can't believe you're continuing to do this. >> yeah, i mean, i wasn't here in the states in 1980, but, i mean, i think it was at the end of a pretty bad decade and americans were feeling a a a e as carter put it. there are very split perceptions in this country, and in terms of misreading that, i think there are a lot of people, as jon says, who hate hillary, who are extremely frustrated, who hear about america doing relatively well against europe and others,

but who agree with trump that basically we're third world. trump's vision of america, it's not just half of america that will see that, the rest of the world is incredulous. there is warfare on our streets in hispanics and blacks live in hell? his vision of america on the precipice, ton brink of collapse was quite an extraordinary vision, but a lot of americans feel this, so, you know, i don't know whether his anger was entirely misplaced to their ears. it's just a question of what proportion of americans electorate do they make up and is hatred of hillary really their overriding political motive in life? >> rose: well, certainly, it's against the establishment and the feeling they have because they have got an bad deal and the future does not look as bright in their generation and their take holm pay as a

personal is not as good as it used to be. jeff greenfield last night on this program after the debate said the first thing she ought to do is go to working class areas of america, whether pennsylvania or michigan or ohio, and say, i know how you feel, and i understand, you know, the issues that you are facing in your personal life and i want to tell you that even if you don't vote for me, i'm going to come back here and listen to you and if i'm president, you have my word that even if you don't vote for me and even if i don't appeal to you now, i will come back here to you, might be something that would be a pathway for her, not to gain votes, but to gain a sense of who she is. jon? >> i thought -- i think that's an interesting idea. i also think i was struck by -- and i just missed it, perhaps this is part of her stump speech now -- >> rose: right. -- but the description of her father's work.

you know, she doesn't talk about her father very much. >> rose: because her mother was the principal factor in her life. >> right. to eme, that was striking in that she was trying to present herself as essentially what she is, which is a child of the post-war middle class, a middle class that is under the severest of strains and which most people don't believe can be perpetuated. there are two numbers that i always think about in trying to describe why trump has happened. one is 19%. 19% of americans trust the government to do the right thing, some or most of the time. that's down from 77% in the middle of the 1 1960s. so fewer than one in five americans believe that the federal government will do the right thing. the second number is 135,000, the number joe biden's middle class task force a few years ago determined was the household income necessary to support a

classic post-war middle class life and, as we know, the household income is somearound $57,000. so if you're looking for an explanation for trump, it's the fall from 77 to 19, and that missing almost $80,000 of income that people had come to think of as if they worked hard, as bill clinton would say, if they played by the rules that they would be able to enjoy that kind of life. that's why trump is happening. >> rose: on that word, thank you, jon meacham, thank you, ed luce. >> thanks, charlie. >> rose: we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: edward albee died early this month at age 88 at his home in new york. the "new york times" called him the foremost american playwright of his generation who's psychologically astute dramas discovered the gap between sees

preparation and truth. he wrote the zoo story, sandbox and who's afraid of virginia wolf as part of 30 stories. he won the pulitzer prize for drama. he appeared many times to talk about his work, life and theater on this program. ben brandy said he's among the greatest play wrights. he asks the most basic existential questions. he confronts death and sex with eyes that remain very wide open. >> no other way to do it. >> rose: what is that about? i think a play that doesn't ask tough questions is wasting your time. that's why the most of broadway is going to. if you're going to spend $100 or more to go to the theater, something should happen to you. maybe somebody should be asking you some questions about your

values or the way you think about things, and maybe you should come out of the theater something having happened to you, maybe you should be changing or thinking about changing, but if you just go there and the only thing you worry about is where you left the damn car, then you wasted your hundred bucks is that you just answered the question i wanted to ask you without me asking. what should you get out of the theater, something that tells you and confronts you with something about the life that you are living tore place you are living. >> exactly, certainly, and it should ask -- ideally, a place should hold a mirror up to people and say, look, this is the way you behave, this is the way you live and react to things. >> rose: this is what you accept. >> if you don't like what you see on stage, why don't you change? >> rose: do you think playwrights, the best of them, have what quality? >> the quality of holding that mirror up to people. >> rose: the ability to

understand and then put it into die. >> any good playwright, painter, composer, anybody involved in the arts will admit they have many more questions than answers. so your job is to ask interesting questions and expect the audience to provide some good answers. you know, i don't have any answers, but i've got a lot of questions. >> rose: you're just where i am, a lot of questions and no answers. >> exactly. >> rose: that's my purpose. so we're functioning together. >> rose: well, exactly, but you're an artist. when you set out to write a play, how do you go about it? >> i discover one day that i have been thinking about a play, so it's been obviously starting -- >> rose: a play or an idea? when i become aware of it, it is a play. i started out as a rotten poet and a terrible novelist and a bad short story writer in my teens and 20s, but i was a writer, and, so, i tried the one

thing, eventually, i hadn't tried before. >> rose: trial and error got you. >> and i wrote a story that worked better and i quit my jobs delivering tell grams to western union, i got thrown out of my wealthy family's home and the whole thing, and started having a absolutely wonderful time. i've had a wonderful time for 50 years being a playwright. >> rose: why did they throw you out to have the home? >> because i wasn't what they got when they adopted me, not what they wanted, anyway. >> rose: what did they want, and what did they get? >> i thought they wanted somewoulsomeonewho would be a cn or a doctor or lawyer or someone respectable. they didn't want a writer on their hands, good god, no. >> rose: but one that wins pulitzer prizes, that's pretty good. >> well, that happened after they threw me out. >> rose: so you started with a play in mind?

>> i discover that what is obviously going to be a play, since that's all i write, is formulating in my head, there are people there and things are happening to them i don't quite know yet, so i listen for a long time. and sometimes these characters do scenes for me, and i realize that i am writing the play without necessarily being consciously aware that i'm doing it. and then i'll test my characters out. i'll take a walk on the beach ad put my characters in a situation i know can't be in the play, figure out how well i know them, and, if they can handle themselves in an improvised scene, it means i know them well enough to trust them in my play. >> rose: meaning they can handle themselves in way that rings authentic. >> to them, each individually. >> rose: so what they do and say is natural to them and therefore -- >> and only them. >> rose: so you demand what of the artist, of the audience? >> i want people to come in,

every time they go to the theater and see the first play they've ever seen, so they don't come in with any prejudice, any preconditioning of what a play should be. it must be naturalistic, a comedy, this. if they're willing to not come in with any prejudice, anything that's half decent gets a fair shake. >> rose: they will consider the ideas that are being -- but i realize these are all not easy standards. actors are better than other actors. >> sure. >> rose: directors are better than other directors. >> you try to get the best actors and directors you can, of course. >> rose: have you seen plays of yours that all of a sudden were exponentially better for you because the actors who came to do the roles interpreted it more inside of your head than anybody else? >> of course, of course. there are some actors who seem to understand getting inside of

my characters' heads more than other actors do, and i try to work with those actors and those directors, of course. >> rose: how long does it take you to write a good play? >> damned if i know. how long have i been thinking about it before i'm aware that i'm thinking about it? i don't know. >> rose: not that it should take as long as it takes. it takes as long as it takes. >> it takes as long as it takes. how long is the play? as long as it should be. >> rose: or everything else. why haven't you been able to transfer this skill to novels, short stories? >> because i'm a playwright. >> rose: that's not an answer. yes, it is. >> rose: you're not a playwright. >> i don't think like a poet or a novelist, i think like a playwright. >> rose: but you have a command of language. >> yeah. >> rose: you can't or don't think like a poet? >> i did a lot of poetry. >> rose: you found out you weren't very good? >> they were very skillful but they were very skillful by other

people, they were imitations. >> rose: right. it wasn't until i wrote my first play that i felt i was doing something that i could do well and that maybe nobody else could do it quite the way i was doing it. i felt, yeah, you're a playwright, this is what you are, and this is what you are and, therefore, what you should do. it felt right for the first time. it felt like i was writing like me for the first time. i don't write things down every day. i think i go around behaving like a writer every day. >> rose: what's that? oh, staring at people and listening to them and imagining what they're really like. >> rose: do you carry notebooks? >> in my head. i don't keep notebooks. >> rose: really? no. now that my mind is going with my vast age, i think i probably should start writing things down, but i've always operated on the theory if there is something that wants to be in the play, if i can't remember it when it's time, it shouldn't be

there. >> rose: so the idea has to be powerful enough to remember it. >> and also the characters have to approve of it. >> rose: but, obviously, you're a literary person. would it seems to me that that might, you know, compel you to write things down, you know. >> well, you see, as a playwright, you don't write yourself in books. you write your characters. and this is stuff that your characters are going to have to want to say. and what you do is choose characters who are going to say what you want them to say but you play the trick on yourself that they say what you want and don't say what you don't want to. >> rose: really? also i'm lazy so i don't write too much down. >> rose: but at some point, they have a life of their own. >> of course. >> rose: what point is that? before i trust them to be in the play. i'll figure out who they are and i'll take them on long walks with me in my head and improvise

a scene that can't be in the play and i'll see how they behave in that scene, how they interact with eachouter. >> rose: that's true, isn't it. >> yeah, it is. and if i know them well enough, if they can do that, they've got a kind of three-dimensionality, i can trust them to be in the play. the difficulty comes when people don't want to relate to what you've written, you wonder whether you've done your job properly or too well, maybe, and that's why people don't want to relate to it. the difficulty comes sometimes when you get a production that you think is destructive of the play, which happens from time to time. >> rose: really? yeah. >> rose: in other words, somebody's out there maybe producing the delicate balance and it's destructive of all you intended the delicate balance to be? >> that can happen from time to time. i've had a few productions in new york city where i thought that the inevitable paranoia

that goes with any career in the arts that the director and the star were out to get me. i've had a few of those, but you recover from those. >> rose: you have a healthy dose of paranoia? >> healthy, of course. >> rose: you have a dose of paranoia. >> a healthy one, sure. >> rose: how about insecurity? no. no, i've never been insecure. >> rose: how about fear? of what? >> rose: of anything. death. >> well, i don't approve of death. >> rose: i don't either. i think it's a great waste of time. >> rose: you would rage against it? >> i would indeed, i would like to think. so fear? i don't think so. i don't think i would like to start a play and not be able to finish it, that would make me unhappy. fear? no. >> rose: when you teach playwrighting at the university -- >> well, you can't teach playwrighting, i run workshops. >> rose: workshops.

in which my young playwrighting students come and we do work. >> rose: it's not like lectures. >> oh, no, i can do that stuff but it bores me. >> rose: what do you hope to impart to those future play playwrights? >> i tell them at the beginning don't be a play weight unless it's something you will be incomplete without doing because it can be a fairly disappointing, tough and fairly ugly racket. but if it's sothing you need, you need to be your own man or woman, don't be owned by anybody, write as well as you possibly can, exactly what you want to write. everybody involved in the production of the play is there because of you, i tell them that. life is too short to compromise too much, to sell out. learn your craft, do it as well as you possibly can but don't be owned by anybody. >> rose: the most important lesson i have learned from you which is so basic, it is part of your own philosophy, which is

make sure -- i mean, understand that death follows life and it is inevitable and make sure you don't just glide through life -- >> that you don't waste your life. >> rose: easy control of who you are and your own destiny. >> what can be worse than coming to the end of life and realizing you're filled with regret, not over stuff you have done, because you can handle that, but you're filled with regret over what you haven't done and you will never have time to do. what could be worse? >> rose: or to have said "no" more often than you said "yes" to risk, to expertation, to taking a chance. >> always be able to see the precipice wherever you're walking. >> rose: most of your stuff is about life and death. love is about the only other thing. >> that occurs in one of them, yes. >> rose: you because of three pulitzer prizes have achieved some exalted place.

the interesting thing is that you did not win for virginia woolf. you were awarded it by the jury and then somebody overruled it for reasons i've never quite understood. >> i've never quite understood it either? >> you either. no. maybe the play was considered too violent or dirty, some nonsense. >> rose: was virginia woolf as good as you've ever been? >> i can't make any judgments. >> rose: all right. i think some of the plays of mine that have been crucified by the critics and closed instantly, i think they're just as good as -- >> rose: the man be three arms was about dealing with celebrity. >> it was a wonderful play, i thought. but what do i know? >> rose: how about this notion, there is the thing at tennessee williams, it is said, and who else, there was somebody else i was thinking about, williams and a couple, the notion was they had a couple of great plays and then sort of --

they lost it. >> this happens to some play wrights. >> rose: did you ever fear that after all that enormous early success, seascape in the '70s, delicate balance in the '60s, that's 20 years ago -- >> no, every worthwhile writer has a fairly accurate take on how he's really doing and understands the popularity and critical acceptance don't necessarily, but sometimes might, don't necessarily have much to do with excellence, and you go about your business because you can't be affected by any of that stuff. you're either right or you're wrong. >> rose: edward albee, dead at 88. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes,

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

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

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.