tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. first, a conversation tonight with johnny cash's biographer, anh "johnny cash: the life," unflinching look at both the man and the legend, quantic ling his personal demons and his principled stand on social inequalities, and then we will turn to a conversation with actress julie delpy. who just received an oscar nomination for ,"e script of "before midnight which she stars and along with her costar tom i ethan hawke. we are glad you could join us for those conversations coming up right now. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. johnny cash was, without a doubt, one of the country's most influential artists, a singer and songwriter, who gave stories about everyday folk. he was a man filled with self- doubt and who battled robert

hilburn addiction before finding redemption. robert hilburnrobert hilburn tells his story. the text is simply call "johnny cash: the life." and let's take a listen to johnny cash singing one of his most iconic songs, "folsom p rison blues." ♪ mother told me to always be good, but i shot a man in reno just to watch him die. when i hear that whistleblowing, head and -- i hang my cry ♪ were just and i talking. that was a clip of johnny cash

performing in compton. when you think of 2014, you do not think of a country guy there. what was he doing there? >> there was a country music show, kind of like the grand old opry, and a lot of service members moved in there, and it was a real country music haven before hip-hop days. that t-shirt. i think i see your picture. who is that in that picture? >> johnny cash. i am standing next to him at fulsome prison in 1968. isn't that amazing? i look like a narc with my suit on. i was trying to convince them to hire me as a music writer, and i thought about what about writing a story about fulsome prison, and they said, no, we do not want to give any space to that drug addicts, because that was what he was known for in those days. tavis: obviously, we are all

individuals, but what makes johnny cash so different than all of the other artists? times," i wrote about many artists, bob dylan, johnny cash, stevie wonder, and it seems like cash had the most interesting back story. entry music in the 1950's. that was when other people in country music had no more ambition than a hit on the and i knew all about the demons he went through, the struggle with the demons, the drugs, and the artistry, and i kind of wanted to explore that past. tavis: the demons and the drugs on the one hand, and he carried a bible with him everywhere. >> he went to church in arkansas twice on sunday and once on wednesday night, and he heard

all of these destitute farmers singing, and it lifted them up is gave them hope, and that what he was about. lifting them up. ira hayes. fulsome prison. no matter how much you have sinned, no matter how much you have stumbled and fallen, do not give up. as someone said, keep the faith. how influential was that music? beyond gospel -- what are the ingredients that helped him to create his own song styles? >> he grew up listening to country music but mainly gospel. when he knocked on the door of sam phillips after elvis had that, he did not want to be the next elvis presley. he did not want to be a rockstar. he wanted to be a gospel singer, and sam said, i am sorry.

we cannot sell gospel music, and so he went to secular music, and then he went back to do gospel music. ,ecular music on the one hand gospel music on the other, sometimes combining them. line" to"i wlak the his wife, saying he would be faithful, but he was also talking about another way, a religious way, and he said that was his first gospel hit and that sam never knew that. a sense ofng to get what happened in his childhood that caused him to wrestle with these demons and these drugs. to connect the dots. >> arkansas in the depression. his family had a farm in arkansas. atton went from i think $125 bushel -- i am not sure how they $25, andit, a bale, to

farmers could not afford it anymore. fdr set up a program. we will give you 15 acres of land, and we will give you the land, and you pay us back some day, so his father went 200 miles in arkansas and worked every day in the field, hard. it was terrible land. it was not choice farmland, because the government could not afford that, so cash from the age of six would be out there, and they would be singing gospel songs to lift their spirits, and later, his brother died in an accident. his brother was a golden boy of the family. poohingre always pooh- johnny cash, and after his brother died, he said, i wish that had been you rather than him. inc. about what that does to your self image. all the seeds that can help him is gospel music. that is the only thing he sees.

-- all he sees that can help him is gospel music. wherever he goes, the man in black, for the old and the hungry, and that was his purpose. it also kept him closer to his face. at is what he felt he was here to do, read the gospel. -- cap his faith. -- kept his faith. white clothing. they put on black clothing, and nobody saw the dirt. he later used it as a symbol for what he stood for, but initially it was because that was what was practical. his relationships. this book delves into it in a very deep way. i cannot do justice to it. his relationships. >> his first marriage was ill- fated.

he knew his first wife 17 days before he goes to germany in the air force for three years, and they write letters back and forth, and in all of the letters, they are saying, i love you. let's get married, and she is thinking he will come home every night after dinner -- and have dinner, and he is thinking he will be on the road all of the time, and my wife will be waiting for me, so she started resenting it, and he took that as another blow to his self christine -- self-esteem. not groupies, but women in music, and he found one. the strange thing about "i walk the line" is it is fiction. it was by june. for the early 1960's, there never would have been a june.

he asked another person to marry him, and she would not. start on the drugs, you cannot stop, but what he was trying to do is block out that thing his father said. he was also trying to get over his he was abandoning family. he was leaving his daughters. that was painful. there are letters where he is still asking roseanne and the other daughters, lease forgive me. for what iive me did. i was trying to survive. it was almost until his death bed. made peace with these parts of his life before he passed? >> yes. he was trying to entertain but trying to inspire. you can be redeemed. he had lost his family, his religion, his legacy in music, but by the end, the family was

back, the love of his daughters. he was off the drugs. redeemed on his deathbed. his lesson exemplified everything he was saying, his life. into the future. is his musical legacy safe? he thought he had lost it. if his legacy safe? >> yes, and i think chiefly because of rick rubin. note had flubbed that and produced great work, i think his legacy would have been tarnished pre-at he was 70 years old. he could not see anymore. he lost the feelings in his fingers. he had glaucoma. diabetes. stuff, and theul great thing about doing a book like this, just as you are doing a book on martin luther king, you are tackling a great

subject, and the reason we are attracted to those people is that they are going to be remembered. there is something important. they had a calling. >> and they were imperfect. >> of course. if they were imperfect, i do not know if we would relate to them. great johnny cash is a artist, but do you know what? robert hilburn is a great author. one of the best books of 2013. the book is that good. the book is called "johnny cash: the life," by robert hilburn. robert, good to have you on. coming up, actress julie delpy is here. stay with us. ♪ in three remarkable films, actress julie delpy and her costar ethan hawke have treated

people to a complex set of characters as they meet, fall in love, get married, and reassess their lives. top honors receiving as the awards season heats up, including best screenplay, along with a writers guild nomination. let's take a look at a scene from "before midnight." >> if we are going to spend another 56 more years together, what of me would you like to change? but that is another one of your can't win questions. i am not answering that. >> what do you mean? there is not one thing you would change about me? i am perfect? >> if there is one thing i would change about you, it would be for you to stop trying to change me. know how you work. >> you think? >> yes, i know everything about you.

i know you better than i know anybody else on the planet. >> right now? this is great. i feel close to you, but sometimes, i don't know. i feel like you are breathing helium, and i am breathing oxygen. in high voice] what makes you say that? thank you for my copy. to my mind, the films that were best reviewed last year, whatever that means, "before midnight" and "12 years a slave." too.think "gravity" was tavis: it got such good reviews. did that surprise you? really,yes, i was

really offended by it. no, i was very happy. we were very happy, and i have to say we were a bit surprised because we went in such dark places with this story at times even though the film is quite funny. gets worried that we would a little bit like -- people would get angry at us, the critics, but in the end, it paid off. we decided to be completely genuine, to do exactly what we felt, even if it was not a crowd pleaser, and it turned out to be more successful than the other two wl films, and we were very lucky, because you never know what is going to happen. that you those critics referenced a while ago, and we has got a lot it of love, but there were those who thought it was not as romantic as the first two work. >> you know, it depends on what you see in romance. movies in thec

sense that they are not fantasies of romance. we are trying to make it as real and genuinely real as possible. of course, when you're in a relationship for 10 years, it is not exactly the same. people do not look into each other's eyes and give each other flowers, so there is a little bit of arguing. there is a little bit. i think that is what makes the film personally unique, and in that it is not a cute romantic comedy, but it is a romantic comedy. tavis: i remember having a aboutsation with ethan how stunned i was, and stunned is the right word, about that opening scene that goes on forever. >> that 14-minute tape. tavis: straight through, that dialogue, and it was all scripted. yes, and overlapping, because

in real life, you overlap each other, and we had no cuts. in a regular film, if you want people to overlap, you'd cut it that way, but here, it is one shot with the two of us, so we have to rehearse it. basically, the editing is done in the reversal. it is very, very tricky. it is almost impossible. days on that two scene, and we finally got one good take, and that was it. the film was shot in 15 days. goalslms are little mere with me, because it works, but it basically could not work -- are like little mere goals with me. miracles. it helps when you have

two good thespians. and to your point about these things being little pieces of magic for you, you have become one of the darlings of the independent film world. people love you for the projects you choose to do, so many of them in the projects. ndy projects. >> in the beginning, i did a few hollywood films that did not work so much. they were not great hollywood films, and there are great hollywood films, but those were not. i started going towards more indy, and people do not have imagination, so they started thinking that once i did that, that is what i did. it is fine. i am not complaining.

i am happy doing independent film. but the world of independent film is getting a touch harder. i have projects that are more mainstream movies, so i am not completely in the independent world. i like infilms that hollywood, as well. that there isct pressure in any project that one has to do in a certain amount of time, but when you are shooting something in 15 days, yes, and you do this consistently. i do not even know what the question is, but doing this consistently with the shooting schedules. >> you have very little chance for a mistake. like you have to be very focused, and the intensity of the work. you have to rehearse. but it is the same for every film.

longer shoots are a bit easier, i would say. i dream of having a, you know, eight-we shoot, and that is not that much. -- eight-week shoot. time is money. it is harder and harder to make films. you know what is funny? a friend e-mailed me that he downloaded a film that he got for free somewhere. and i was, thank you. you have no idea. you really hurt independent films when you do that, because we make little money. the films are made for little money. it is very hard to make them. we are lucky that this film made good money and everything, but it really kills independent cinema, because we are the first people -- you know, we are like the developing world of cinema.

we are the first ones. we are the first ones to suffer from all of that stuff, so it is really tough. been asked this question a few times in my career, and i love being able to do these shows on pbs because it allows us having these uninterrupted conversations, and there are a lot of things i enjoyed about having the show on pbs, and i say that for the president back in washington of pbs. toen that you are not going get rich doing it. i don't care how long you are on pbs. you are not going to get rich creed you can make a living, but you are not going to get rich. whereas if i were on a commercial outlet, things would be different, so i do that to ask why labor so diligently as you do with these films? to your earlier point. you may not get rich doing it.

>> we do make a living with it. it is not like i am poor. i have a house that i got a long time ago a long time ago very cheap, so i am not on the street. the truth is, i think a lot of , it is a lot of work, even when you make a lot of money. it is a lot of work with less money. i love writing. and i love it, and i feel really blessed to be able to actually make a living with something that i love doing, and i am sure it is the same for you. avis: i assume there is greater amount of joy for you in being him to write and help reduce your own stuff and make a decent living but not get rich versus always doing the other stuff that you do not write and make more money.

>> yes, i like the challenge of doing all of that. careero, early on in my when i was a young activist, i would read screenplays, and i would, like, you know thinking, how can i make this act in work with such bad dialogue? that is really when i started writing. i always wanted to write, i wanted to write to someone complex and real. long before you and even talk about making a fourth one of these? do.hese are so hard to making a film every nine years. takes nine years to make a film. time,richard all of the eathan, -- eason --

and we do not even mention what we would do next. at some point, all of the stars will align. >> 2012, we shot it, and then rick albany and said, i know you are seeing the film in new york, but are you think you could go to new york two weeks to promote, and the rest of the time we can shoot, because we can do it. it.we decided to go do we had a storyline and all of that, but the screenplay was not even written. the writing took much longer. so what is 2014 plus nine. somebody do the math. 2023? be 2021uld actually

because we shot two years ago. every nine years. tavis: my point was i am putting you on the board as a confirmed guest in 2023. >> i wanted to be very precise. tavis: somewhere around 2023, julie delpy will come back and talk about the next iteration that she and ethan hawke get together to do. the latest one out on blu-ray, a cute success last year, called "before midnight," starring julie delpy and ethan hawk. congratulations. good to have you on. that is our show for tonight. thanks for watching. as always, heat the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with joseph gordon-levitt and singer gloria gaynor.

that is next time. we will see you then. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> b

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