>> rose: welcome to our program, we begin this evening with the co-founder of microsoft, paul allen, who has a new book called "idea man." >> you know, i think bill and i were kind of i didn't know and yang in terms of our ability to talk about a tough question and hash it out. i think there was a stylistic difference in terms of intensity and how... and the way he discussed things. because i'm the very logical person. some might say low key. and bill and steve lead with lots and lots of intensity. >> rose: also this evening, john leguizamo who has a one-man show on broadway. >> i think it's one of the most

beautiful, honest, and powerful mediums that we have. i mean, it's... it's such an intimate relationship between the audience and myself, my opinions, my ideas and their feelings towards me and it changes every night how they're feeling and it affects the way i'm feeling. and just can... it's just a perfect soul exchange. that happens. >> rose: paul allen and john leguizamo when we continue. every story needs a hero we can all root for. who beats the odds and comes out on top. but this isn't just a hollywood storyline. it's happening every day, all across america. every time a storefront opens.

or the midnight oil is burned. or when someone chases a dream, not just a dollar. they are small business owners. so if you wanna root for a real hero, support small business. shop small. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: paul allen is here, he is the co-founder of microsoft. today he is the chairman of an investment firm, vulcan, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. he is known for being somewhat of a renaissance man.

he's invested in technology and media and real estate companies and the redevelopment of his native seattle. he has spent over a billion dollars on philanthropy and funds and institute for brain science. his hobbies include spaceships, rock and roll and yachts. a fan of football and basketball he owns the seattle seahawks and the portland trailblazers. his new book is out this week "idea man." a memoir by the co-founder of microsoft, it portrays the role he and bill gates played during the early years of that company. i'm very pleased to have paul allen on this program for the first time. welcome. >> tha you. >> rose: and i have brought it up before, as you know, inviting you here. so it's great to see you. how's your health? >> good. i'm in remission and i get tested every few months but so far so good. >> rose: when you look at where you are today, what is it you regret the host? except having perfect health? >> you know, i think i regret having a family, probably. if you start thinking about things like philanthropy, you can always do more, you can

think of starting things earlier but my life is, i think, fairly unusual that the broad range of things i've been able to be involved in, the different subjects and now we're tackling things like genetics of the brain which are just endlessly fascinating and you've had some shows recently that covered the brain which are great. >> rose: we have, indeed. and you just did a think that i saw which is about sort of being able to photograph the brain. tell me what it was. >> we just released our first data set on the human brain. it's basically two brains and the average of the data points on those two brains and it's ground breaking that we're covering the whole human brain, multiple brains down to an excruciatingly fine level of detail and it's to help scientists around the world make faster progress in their research on the humane brain.

>> rose: and you hope the institute will discover... the cutting sedge what for you? the frontier is what for you in terms of studying the brain? >> well, there's two main aspects to it. i guess i would say the first is eventually i want to understand how the humane brain works. as someone who started out as a programmer, the brain works in completely different fashion than a computer does, so that's fascinating. that's endlessly fascinating, trying to understand how people understand language, react to stress, plan ahead. all these things are... as you know are endlessly fascinating. then there's the possibility of bringing forward or making earlier the discovery of drugs to treat neurodegenerative diseases like alzheimer's which my mother unfortunately has. >> rose: do you wish in any way that you had stayed at microsoft or was the pull for you to explore these other things too strong? >> there was a strong pull to explore different paths but if

you remember i had just gotten over my first bout with cancer, hodgkin's disease and i had to have radiation therapy for that. my working relationship between me and bill had become extremely rocky and it was time to explore different paths which is what i did since i left. >> rose: how did you assess where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do and what was the magnet? >> i won't say it was so much a magnet as just and incredible impetus that i should be doing other things, enjoying life. it was really shocking to me at age 30 to have a life-threatening... potentially life threatening illness. >> rose: when you had the whole world at your command. >> everything at microsoft was going super well so i felt like i was leaving microsoft in a great place but i thought i should explore life and do other things because at microsoft those first years i didn't have

a lot of balance in my life. it was slaving over a hot terminal or managing development projects like thes do we did for the i.b.m. p.c. and i felt like i just had a life threatening illness, there are other things i want to explore. i tried to retire at age 30 if you can believe that. that lasted for about a year and a half. >> rose: what's wrong with retirement? >> if you're a creative person, someone that wants to create new things, explore new avenues it's just not that easy to retire and i became more and more edgy and frustrate sod we started a software company after that but i really enjoyed my short retirement and after that i've tried to have more balance between my work life and my personal life. >> rose: what are the options for microsoft in a world in which there is google and there is facebook and it's a new digit

arena? >> well, in the book i call them the hell hounds because they're breathing down microsoft's neck and in some cases have taken a leadership position in certain areas in the marketplace so as things move toward mobile it's incumbent on microsoft to move quickly and catch up and surpass them but it's... as you know, technology is super competitive, chips, bandwidth, platforms improve all the time. >> rose: but microsoft had all the resources in the world. you were sitting on billions of dollars that were uninvested and here comes google. i think bill once said that discoverys will always come out of the garage or some lab or university where google came out of. and a garage was hewlett-packard and... you know, is it impossible for a great company in a sense to be the generator of brilliant new ideas? >> i think it's impossible to

generate all the good ideas, as you're pointing out. >> rose: they're not hungry enough or what? >> you just aren't going to have all the good ideas. someone in the garage is going to have the good new idea. now, you have to be incredibly vigilant to see a new trend starting to take root and then start to pursue it in your own way and if you're late these days when you get millions of consumers using these platforms quickly it's hard to catch up and surpass them. i think microsoft continues to innovate and has tremendous resources and great people. but it's... but they're fully challenged now by some of these alternatives. the other thing i would say is that all companies have blind spots if you look at google and apple. they didn't really see social networks take root like the way they have so everybody has blind spots and then you say, well, if

you're typically in the leadership position, these companies will say wait a minute i'll just put 50 guys on that and we can duplicate in the a few months but then the meantime the other products you're trying to compete with has improved, more people are using it. and if you get to enough scale where millions and millions of people are using something it's hard to convince them switch to something else. >> rose: so the pursuit of microsoft in order to gain a significant market share and search is simply futile? >> well, they've done better and they have a huge resources on the bing effort. >> rose: it has been better and it's gotten good reviews. >> and they've hired great people to work on it. it will probably do better over time. it's just super competitive and it's... there's inertia. people are reluctant to switch from one thing to another unless it's provably better. unless they can use hit in the first ten minutes and say, you know, my bing search results are better than my google search results. >> rose: what's the future of

social networks, in your judgment? >> that's a great question. i think the momentum is very strong. i use facebook and twitter and i've been tweeting about the book and the sports team and it's a great way to stay in touch. it's interesting to think back and the social network web sites could have existed earlier and yet they didn't. someone had to think of them and implement them and just in a few years they're out there having a major impact and people spend sometimes multiple hours a day using these services. that's one of the great things about technology and the web but some things can get momentum and be pervasive and useful for people so quickly. >> rose: does it excite you as much as it did in the beginning as much as when you were in microsoft? >> well, those halcion days we were just bursting with excitement. we barely slept. we ate... i don't know how many

pizzas on consecutive nights probably. we would take breaks for fast food and watch b movies and go back to work until 3:00 in the morning. >> so talk about as you see the future of mobile devices and how they're going to be the source of information for everything. >> well, all of these portable devices, both the processors, the processor chips, the computer brain that's in them and the software and the screens and the cameras and every aspect of them is improving at an exhilarating pace and the competition is fierce. now i give great credit to steve jobs, what he did with the iphone because he defined a platform that many companies are still trying to catch up and to emulate and the ipad after that.

so we've really had three hip platform definitions in a row which is truly amazing. it's tribute to his foresight to develop computer projects. where do these go in the future? better and better and you'll have things like better speech understanding and game play and and jerry remy decontaminations that come to you instantly as you move around. i'm excited about pla that platform and i've got a couple initiatives working on products for mobile. >> rose: what? >> well, they're not announced yet so i'm not going to go into detail. >> rose: if you look at everybody in silicon valley and you look at just in terms of the 21st century, steve jobs clearly has to be number one, doesn't hi? >> he is a an amazing genius at defining these new design points for platforms. in the book i talk about a discussion i had with them between having a two-button

mouse which was my preference and him very intentlyinsisting that no, paul, you don't understand, it's all about simplicity and ease of use and someone's reaction to the first few minutes that they use something. >> rose: why didn't you understand that? i understood that. >> well, my counterargument was, hey, we've all got more than one finger, steve, so two buttons seems like that's... >> rose: but isn't it a rule of thumb in technology that it's ease of access and ease of use. >> i think now that we're all consumers of this technology we're no longer programmers or developers or insiders. everyone is a user of computer technology so ease of use and whether you can get something to work in an expected way quickly, whether it's a camera or any application is paramount. >> rose: and now design has become an element, too. >> yes and does it feel good in your hand. >> rose: looks good, feels good. >> exactly. and the way you're making a

fashion statement with your device. >> rose: tell me what you felt when you saw that magazine? >> well, i'd had a running dialogue with bill that we should do a language called basic, which was very easy to use, language for dartmouth for microprocessor chips and as the chips got better i'd keep going back and saying "the chips are getting better, shouldn't we do a basic?" and he'd say well, that chip isn't good enough. finally the a-08 chip came out and he'd say nobody's making a computer... >> rose: this is before you formed microsoft? >> oh, yes, this is... >> rose: bill was at harvard first year? >> yes, this is the first year. >> rose: and you were living... >> i was living in the sticks of massachusetts working at honeywell and, you know, he said maybe somebody will come out with a computer that has the chip in it and we can write the software because we're not hardware experts and that day in the fall of 1974 where i saw that magazine on the newsstand in harvard square i grabed that

magazine, slapped down my 75 cents and ran back to bill and said this is it, we've got to do it. and he carefully read the article and nodded and said "okay, let's go for it." which we did. >> rose: and both of you knew the train was leaving the station and you had to be on it. >> we were very worried that other people might be doing the same thing but fortunately we'd been prepared for our amazing high school experience and a previous failed product called the a data machine to do a microprocessor based basic. and i simulated the chip on the harvard mainframe and anyway it came together. >> rose: he was a better programer? >> he's an amazing programmer. there were times at harvard working on the software where he would literally put his head on the keyboard and fall asleep and then he'd wake up, look at the screen and then he'd start typing right where he left off. which i maized me.

>> rose: did you bring a larger vision to what could be... >> the idea for that first product was my idea and the book i talk about also the fact that at some point maybe everyone's connected and imagine if everyone has a terminal in their house and they can go on line and print out news articles and at that point it cost a lot of money to rent a terminal and bill said "who's going to pay $75 a month to rent a teletype terminal when they can get a newspaper for ten cents?" and i didn't have an answer back then. but obviously all of that has come true. it's amazing to think about it that 35 years ago there were no personal computers. now there's hundreds millions. >> rose: what did steve ballmer add to the combination? >> well, steve was a hard core business person. >> rose: marketing? >> marketing, sales, staffing, he and bill would have these

thunderous arguments-- because my office was next bill's in the early '80s-- and steve would be saying to bill "bill, you've got to hire more people. we need to hire 35 people just to fulfill our contrt obligations" and bill would be saying "steve, what if we don't get more contracts? somebody could go bankrupt?" and steve would say "i don't care, but we have to hire these people." anyway, you can imagine that and the door basically almost vibrating from the intensity of their discussion. >> rose: so that brings me to the conflict between the two of you. what was at its score in >> you know, i think bill and i were kind of i didn't know and yang in terms of our ability to talk about a tough question and hash it out. i think there was a stylistic difference in terms of intensity and how... and the way he discussed things because i'm very logical person, some might say low key and bill and steve lead with lots and lots of intensity so there was a

stylistic difference there and as things evolved not only that but as things evolved i became more and more focused just on the technology side and bill and steve on the business side so bill and steve were making more decisions in terms of the business scope of the company and staffing up marketing and things like that... >> rose: what was the ownership at that time? >> well, with steve on board i think it was... >> rose: he got 10%? >> i think it was 8%. but i think it was 64-36 before steve. >> rose: so why did bill have 64 and you had 36? >> bill and i had a discussion when he left... he was thinking about leaving harvard to come out and he said i dade lot of work when you were on salary working with the company that made the al tear and i wasn't paid snig that... it went from 50-50 to 60-40. so that's the way it was codifyed in the partnership. >> rose: worked out all right, didn't it? >> no complaints. >> rose: what were the tensest

moments? you felt like what that made you say this is too much to take? >> i think i talked about some of those intense discussions that happened both when i was going through radiation erapy and then there was the discussion that i overheard between bill and steve when they talked about diluting my stake basically down... >> rose: that's the worst when you realized they were scheming against you, in your judgment? >> that was really tough because i... you know, i co-founded the company, i was still contributing. i just got over going through radiation therapy, i wasn't sure about my future and when i heard them talking about that in loud voices and i burst in on them it was very disheartening and shocking. >>. >> rose: this is a clip from the conversation with me, bill talking about the birth of microsoft and your role. >> paul and i had been talking about the opportunity to do software for these computers on a chip ever since 1971 when the first microprocessor chip came out. we even did a little company

that did some of that just as a hobby. so paul said we want to define this industry, let's get their first. now my parents said let's get to college. >> rose: (laughs) and, you know, there was a little bit of tension there so paul moved back here to keep the urgency up and... >> rose: but he... the two of you were so, what, that made him feel like if he was going to do this he had to do it with you? >> well, we had done a lot of things together and the idea of hiring people and forming a company... he wanted know do that and it was a great partner and finally i relented after i'd been here two years. it was a freezing cold day, he showed me this magazine i said "okay, okay." >> rose: you've convinced me that the future is here. >> yh. and so that's when we wrote the basic that became the first product and then started

microsoft. the. >> rose: is that the way you remember it? >> there's a few sequenng things there. basically bill enticed me to move to boston and he was going to take time off from harvard after his freshman year, growing back for his sophomore year. so he wrote that first basic while he was going to school in harvard and i don't know if he was cutting classes in the middle of that process. but he's the one that enticed know come out and then when the popular electronics came out i went to him and said let's do it. we've been talking about that. and we've done a number of projects that i mentioned earlier before that. >> rose: here's the thing that came up last night on "60 minutes", the conversation you had with leslie stahl. roll tape. >> you describe bill gates in very harsh terms. you describe him as being quite abusive. i mean, it's not a pretty picture. >> i felt like when i wrote it i should just tell it like it

happened in an unvarnished way. >> you know, here he is doing such great work, he's almost a saint now. and it seems like an odd time to write an unflattering portrait of him. >> the timing had nothing to do the many wonderful things that bill has done. but the timing was because i wanted to see if i could do it and hopefully be alive to see it published. >> rose: clearly timing had nothing to do with it. you wanted to write your own story at your own time. >> that's right. >> rose: but you and bill went on to be... continue to have a friendship. >> uh-huh. >> rose: when you had your bout with cancer he was there for you. >> yes. >> rose: yet when you sit down and write some of this do you say "should i put in in or not?" are there moments where you've said "i've gone too far?" very r there moments where you say "god, i don't know how this is going to play." >> i really wasn't thinking about how things would play, i

just asked myself was that a key moment in my life? is it dee the story of microsoft. is it dee what happened and my decisions? and that was some of those things like me over hearing bill and steve, that was the key moment for me in my life. so i felt like tishd be told until the most unvarnished warts and all way. >> rose: what has he said in response? >> we have yet to sit down and talk about the details of the book. >> rose: let me talk to you about e-mails. how about an e-mail? >> i sent him the book and i... we had some exmail exchanges before he got the book. he's had the book for some months now and since he's had the book i have yet to hear from them but i know we'll sit down... >> rose: are you disappointed you haven't heard from him? >> i'm a little surprised but i know sometimes it takes a while to digest things that are

unexpected and i'm sure when we sit down there's such a long history of intense discussions between us it will be an intense discussion. >> rose: of all the things that are in there, what do you think he'll dislike the most? >> i think it was... i think it was that incident with steve. >> rose: why would he dislike that if it's true? >> i... maybe you'll ask bill in his next session. >> rose: right. >> i mean everything in the book we spent so much work trying to make everything as accurate as possible. i have talked to steve since then. so there's no... no one's recollection i think is... no one's disagreed with a single thing. >> rose: what has steve said to you? >> i think steve feels like that wasn't one of the best moments. >> rose: did he come over to your house and say... >> no, i talked to him on the

phone. >> rose: right after it happened? >> no, there's a part in the book that... where he comes over to my house and apologizes, called me from a convenience store, actually, and came over to my house. i was saying... >> rose: because he was embarrassd? >> he was embarrassed and felt bad. >> rose: but you never heard that from bill. >> well, i quote from a letter in the book where bill says that they were laying off steve and so forth. but i was... sorry, i was referring to a conversation i had with steve recently, since he read the book. >> rose: what'd he say? >> again, he said that wasn't one of his finest moments at microsoft. >> rose: what do you want us to come away from here? understanding the life of paul al sflen >> well, it covers so much territory i'm not sure there's any one thing. i think just starting a company from scratch with bill that's had such impact was just a wonderful experience and i

remember when the first millionth copy of the i.b.m. p.c. shipped i just thought there's maybe a million people out there using my software. that was such a rewarding feeling. but since i left microsoft, i mean, that was... that was in 1983 so a lot of water under the bridge since then and a lot of amazing adventures and challenges. and mistakes. and i tried to talk about the mistakes that i made in business and i talk about being too early. sometimes i've been way too early. it's better to be early than to be not there at all. but sometimes i was too early. and for a business opportunity to really develop and take off like a rocket, you have to have not only the idea but the right people around you and a marketplace that's ready to accept the idea and a great product. at the end of the day you have to have a lot of hard work to get there. >> rose: you've done a lot for

your city. you love seattle. >> i do. i do. it's where i live. >> rose: i know that. but what does it mean to you? what is it about seattle that makes it magical for you? >> i just think it's a wonderful city with wonderful people and i have so many roots there. my father worked at the university of washington, my mother was a schoolteacher. obviously the high school experience i had where i met bill and other friends, that was a seminal experience and then my family we were always excited about the arts and giving back to the communities so i've tried to do things that helped take the city forward and give back to the community in different ways. >> rose: spaceship one, the company you founded in 2004, something like that? a lot of people talk about privatization of space what's the future? >> well i think with what richard branson is doing with

spaceship two and virgin galactic, before long you'll have people buying tickets to have a very ballistic flight up to space and back down. i think the actual rocket portion when you're inside the rocket and it's going up to space and back it's roughly a half hour. after that at some point you're going to have orbital space tourism. and i think it's an area where i'm considering doing further initiatives. >> rose: what would you like that do? >> i think the other bital... it takes seven times as much power to get a pound of anything or a personal into orbit than it does to take them straight up and straight down so you have to have a much bigger rocket, a much bigger craft, more difficult problems because you're keeping people in space for a longer period. if you're just going straight up to space and coming back down you don't have the same considerations.

>> when you... and people in china are trying to do it. a whole range of people. it's an international effort. goes beyond government. >> rose: and they've done some amazing things wh the boosters they've developed to take people and cargo into space. >> rose: like his car? >> i bought one of the first little sports cars, a little small for me but it's a high-performance little sports car, it's an intriguing thing. >> rose: what do you think of this government's policy towards technology? i mean, do we have a broadband policy? >> you know, being involved in the cable industry, private business has made huge investments to get high speed data channels to everybody's home for reasonable prices. to now i think it's something like 70 million plus homes in the u.s. have high speed data.

that's why i was excited to invest in cable so i think everybody pretty much has access to data many many ways so i think the more important things in terms of technology for the government to be worried about or where we are competitively 20 30, 40, 50 years from now with other countries in terms of the number of engineers we produced the qualities of our secondary education and so forth. because everybody wants to be... everybody knows technology of the future and you have countries like china and india, they're very serious about... >> rose: south korea. >> south korea is another one, excited to take leadership positions in technology. >> rose: do you carry an ipad with you? >> no, i'm a little bit old school. >> rose: what does that mean? pee see in. >> no, i have a blackberry because i can type faster on my

blackberry. >> rose: than you can on an... >> on an ipad or iphone. >> rose: like this? >> yeah, those... i can make those thumbs fly. >> rose: can you really? >> yes. >> rose: but do you have an ipad? >> i do. i do. i think it's... i if you're excited about where the technology is going, you try all these new platforms and these tablet devices like the ipad are great for a kind of light duty... >> rose: it's something on television and the same time, you're enjoying it on the train. >> exactly. >> rose: are you surprised that bill has been so successful at making the transition in from microsoft to philanthropy? >> rose: >> bill is a very, very intense focused dedicated person. whatever task he takes on.

so of these challenges where you talk about solving global health, bill was nice enough to help fund a documentary i did and we've done a few things together in that area and education's another one and these are huge... some people think intractable problems and bill... it's fantastic what he's dlon to... >> rose: a guy you know... that you knew when you were working side by side at microsoft now sort of viewed by the world not so much as leslie said as a saint but clearly someone who has given new meaning to philanthropy. >> well, he's doing... with warren's involvement, he's doing things on a scale that i don't think people thought philanthropy was going to... in a focused way to go after things like vaccines. >> rose: and also making philanthropy exciting around the world. >> right. and he's reached out to other people in have large asset bases to commit to the pledge which i

think is great. >> rose: have you signed the giving pledge? >> i have, i have. i had already planned to give by far the majority of my assets to philanthropy after i passed so i was happy... bill called me up and asked me and i was happy to sign it. i've chosen to focus on things like the brain where i... i think you should focus on areas where you think you can add value. bill's focused on global health. >> rose: maybe this institute you have will do it but there's such an extraordinary possibility and the velocity of understanding the brain, which you know as well as i do from the 12-part series we did with eric kandel, it's stunning. what we're learning now versus what we knew five years ago. >> right. >> rose: it's amazing. >> but i had kind of a bracing conversation with dr. kandel where i rushed into his office with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, i said "dr. kandel, in ten years, 20 years we're

going to know so much more about the brain!" he says "paul, calm down, yes we are, but not in my lifetime and not in your lifetime will we completely understand the brain." >> rose: well, of course not. >> because it's unbelievably complex. >> rose: artificial intelligence. where do you think we will go and when you look at watson and big blue and all of that, what does it say to you about the potential? are you at one with rick hurz well? >> no, i'm not. ray is very, very enthusiastic and i would say overenthusiastic about the rate of progress that's been made in artificial intelligence. progress has been made. i think watson was a recent example of that but these are toy systems compared to what the human brain can do. if you think about just understanding language deeply that uses so much of our brain, draws on our experience, our memories, the structure of

language, auditor system. so i have people working on some of these problems and projects to put, for instance, a biology textbook inside computer software and i asked them how many decades away are we and it's multiple decades. >> rose: how many years ago did we first... were we first introduced to applications? >> oh, i think average person applications, when you've got your whole... if people just... may have just found out when they got their first mobile smart phone device or something like that and they could download applications. >> rose: of all the companies that are out there, whether it's facebook... beyond microsoft or apple or a range of different ones which do you wish that you had been a part of and don't think of it simply in terms of a monetary payback. facebook?

>> facebook has a lot of momentum now. i think it's how to monetize the number of people, get revenue from the people that are using facebook and make it a more powerful platform. these platform definitions are so so key and fundamental to the evolution of the industry so it would be interesting to be involved with facebook but i'm so consumed with the brain and trying to do different things that i haven't... it's a great question but i haven't thought in a long time about which other company i'd rather be at. >> rose: the book is called "paul allen, idea man." it's a memoir by the co-founder of microsoft who continues to be fascinated by the world around him and have the resources to pursue his curiosity which is a rather remarkable option to have. thank you. >> rose: thank you. >> rose: john leguizamo is here.

he is an actor, writer, comedian. some say his work defies categorization. he's played everything from a gangster in "carlito's way" to tib bought in shakespeare's "romeo and juliet." he's starring in his fifth one man show called "get foe klown" and here is a look. >> when i wrote ma'am mow mouth we were nowhere to be seen. we were like an invisible people. in the media. so i wrote this whole play about my neighborhood and it was incredible to be up there saying my own words. it was so freeing, so amazing. it wasn't even me, it was shamanism. i've got to be up wont front with you. i ended up with the hallway of the american place theater. i was in a hallway, y'all. and when word got out, guess who was in my hall way? arthur miller was in my hallway. sam shepherd was in my hallway. even pacino showed up to my hallway and i got drama desk nomination and i invite mid-now

divorced parents to the ceremony. and, of course, i don't win, i'm just a runner-up. and my father's (spanish accent) congratulations mijo. of all the losers you came in first place. (laughter) i'm sorry to disappoint you, dad. "no, mijo, it's not you, it's me. i've got to get used to your failures." >> rose: i am pleased to have john leguizamo here back at this table, welcome. >> great to be here, man. honored. >> rose: my pleasure. why did it take you... it's about ten years. >> yeah, ten years. a decade. a full decade. >> rose: this is, what, the fifth one? >> this is my fifth one-man show. i had an incident happen to me ten years ago when i was performing in... i got... performance anxiety. stage fright and i didn't want to do it again. >> rose: stage fright? with your experience? >> you know, it's not a matter of experience. it's... i guess it's your fear

of failure and your fear of... wanting to be perfect all the time and suddenly the whole thing collapsed on me and that's why i didn't want to do one mn shows for ten years and i tryked tricked myself by... to perform again i started doing college talks and i lookedt my resume and i would drink a lot and i'd drink during show and i would improvise and the kids dug it so i started writing it down before i passed out and that's how the show... >> rose: oh, come on. >> i'm serious. that's how i create it had show. >> rose: out of drunkenness you created a show? >> out of a need to trick myself... i used the booze as a lubricant to talk. >> rose: so at ten years you've said "i got something i want to say"? >> yeah. and "ghetto klown" is like the james joyce portrait of an artist as a young man. this is portrait of an artist as a middle aged man and i wanted to track that whole journey starting out and what made me want to perform and the real ups

and downs. i didn't want to pull any punches. sy wanted to say the raw truth of the good and bad, the success, the failures. i say it all clearly and painfully so. >> rose: actors will say if they're in a broadway play or any other kind of theatrical performance "how i am one night is not how i am the next night." >> not at all. i change it... i write... i keep writing. i feel like it's always an unfinished work anyway. so i'm changing scenes, moments, little things, i'm adding, taking out. the other thing is i have... my audience is part of the show and i get a beautiful varied audience. young kids on dates, latin, black, white, older crowd upper east ciders and sometimes they're incredibly rowdy so i have to keep them in shape sometimes. the other thing is how you're feeling. sometimes i'm in a great mood, it's all good for the show. >> rose: you never know what you're going to get when you show up.

they don't and you don't. >> rose: >> it's like playing a game. >> rose: this the highest form of performance? >> i think it's one of the most beautiful honest and powerful mediums we have. it's such an intimate relationship between the audience and myself of my opinions, my ideas and their feelgs towards me and it changes every night how they're feeling and it affects the way i'm feeling and it's just a perfect soul exchange that happens. >> rose: how is on stage different? >> you want it to be this... >> rose: intimate? >> loose and intimate and this connection. you want this to feel the same way even though i'm one person on stage and talking to everybody at the same time. i want this honesty of feeling and i try to do that and i think i accomplish in the this show. that's what i wanted to do with

"ghetto klown" was do the things that i can do like in movies and keep the heightened reality but rip that heightened reality. then just be as raw and real as i am in real life and that's the scenes i fight with my wife is pretty verbatim what happened. >> rose: how does she feel about that? >> she... i was terrified the first time she dime see the show i didn't know what was going to happen but i waited years and she gave me the blessing. she felt like the honesty of what i'm saying was worth revealing these things about us. >> rose: did you learn something about yourself in writing this? >> i've been to extensive amounts of therapy which i love. >> rose: you love? >> i love my therapy. >> rose: why do you love it? because you know who you are? >> therapy saved me. i was about to be expeled in high school. i wasn't getting... and the school forced me, mary bertram high where q-tip and one of the wayans brothers went. >> rose: (laughs) exactly, right. >> they wouldn't let me back to school unless i went to therapy.

we were ghetto so i would pay a dollar for therapy and they would make me go twice a week for four years until i was 21 and they... therapy saved me. change mid-whole... >> rose: what did it teach you? how were you different when you came out? >> rose: >> then i learned the demons that were driving me, all that ray zi drive for attention was misplaced anger, misplaced need for my father's attention. it was a lot of the... that that ended up being in pike from and this show. now therapy's... it keeps you in line. it's fine tuneup. you can't always know what the demons that are driving you. it's good to open it up. >> rose: do they come out on stage, too? >> yeah. i talk about the nervous break down i had and the fwigt my father in "freak" when he came to see the show and he flipped out on me and threatened to sue

me. >> rose: didn't he sue you, snow did he threaten? >> he threatened. he talked to lawyers but he realized it was going to be a lost cause. >> rose: because it was true? >> because it's my interpretation of things. i'm going say it's completely true and he's going to argue that it's not but we're never going to agree on that but we are going to agree that we had a disagreement. >> rose: to you introduce us also in this one man show to actors that you have had an involvement with. a to pa clean know, sean penn. >> patrick swayze. >> rose: what do you say about steven say gal? >> steven segal, let me contextualize it. i was doing a movie called "executive decision" and i was supposed to be his captain and he's the sergeant and we're supposed to be on the same side and we start to rehearse and he starts saying "i'm in command. what i saw is lay" and i started laughing. i cracked up because i thought he was kidding. who talks like that, you know

what i mean? so i started cracking up in his face and out of nowhere he akey does me against the brick wall. he goes... and knocks me out and i'm like why? why? what i wanted to say at the time was how big and fat he was and how he runs like a girl, because he does. and if you look online you can find it. >> rose: you just got him back didn't you? >> every night. >> rose: for that one aquito. >> he runs like a girl but hits like a 6'5 dude. so he knocked the air out of me good. >> rose: you learned their voices, too. >> oh, yeah. >> rose: you're very good at impregs presentations. >> i didn't realize it but i spent a lot of time on youtube watching their movies and hours and hours trying to get the gestures and movements pachlt chino. >> rose: tell me about the pacino part. >> pacino taught me my best lesson in the world. it was incredible. we were doing "carlito's way" sean pen was in it as well, tw incredible actors and pacino said "just be yourself. just be yourself.

that's all i can ask you is do less and be yourself." and it took a while for him to convince me of that because i just wanted to be pacino, i wanted to be his level and i thought i had to bring all the arsenal and i was being as raw and too wild and it was great because pacino is the greatest actor i've ever worked with. i just feel like he's so with you right there. he itch surprised his... he's just more present i've been with anybody in film or anything. >> you also teed him off a bit because you were ad-libbing all over the place. >> rose: it was my chance to blow myself up in front of the world. is. >> rose: to think you could go beyond the script. >> so i was ad-libbing and rewriting like crazy. i was saying the craziest things that i can't repeat here. i think i raised the "f" level of the script 300 times. >> rose: you had a lot of acting... a lot of professional teachers. >> yes. lots. >> rose: including lee

strassmann. >> i was in class with lee strassmann one day and i was doing a sense memory exercise where we recall something painful from a childhood, i had plenty to choose from but i chose my dog got run over by a car and i was emotionally constipated at that time and therapy had cured me of a lot of things and he was like lose yourself, lose yourself. concentrate get the electrical out of my class you talented shmuck. and he told me to be the dog, bark, bark. and i was growling and doing all the dog stuff and i wanted to bite him. i didn't. and he passed away this night probably because of my acting, i don't know. that same day you had the lesson in here's a scene from "ghetto klown" where you are reenacting your first public performance as a kid. here it is. >> the thing about ray-ray is that he was paranoid in reverse because he thought people were out to do good to him. (laughter) "see those people over three? they want to help us.

let's help them give us the money they want us to have." (laughter) and he was entrepreneurial, ahead of his time because he took me down one day to the i.r.t. 7 train and back in the day we used to call it the colombian limo, now it's curfully a hurry. (laughter) "do your voices in there for a coin. go do it for coin, come on, johnny! go johnny, go johnny." go me! go me! (laughter) (whistling) and i see that conductor's boot and... boof, that's how i used to talk. norf, souf, we were so poor we couldn't afort th. so i said "how you doing?

what ice up? next stop is jackson heights." ♪ for my first impersonation i'm gonna do... i say, boy, you're a chicken heart boy. >> rose: this is the first time you've seen this? >> thas the first time i've seen myself doing the show which is strange since i have to do the show tonight. i'll be fine. >> rose: how do you get up for it? >> oh, man... >> rose: you used to go in early like 11:00. >> i don't do that that much. i go in at 2:00 p.m. >> rose: what happens between 2:00 and curtain? >> i go with the material in my head, i visualize the show then i take like a power nap and then i start warming up my body, my voices any own voice and things that i'm feeling and that i can do like an inventory of howty'm feeling and then i pump myself up seeing a lot of great things about myself in my head. >> rose: what do you say in >> i say "i can rock the house, i can take them to the next level." and then i get the finger, do

the finger things which part of my routine. >> rose: what's the finger thing? >> i flip the bird. i don't need to prove anybody anything. i don't need to please anybody. and it's my mental routine to get going and i do pushups and five minutes, places mr. leguizamo, then i'm stretching and i jump out there and start dancing. >> rose: start dancing? >> to james brown. we open up to james brown. because i use the music of the times to give the decade. so we go from the '60s to now and james brown is '60s, jimmy casterbunch for the 70s. break dancing. then we do the '80s and we do cool mo d.. and it's interesting. that did happen to me. i was with my boy and we broke into the conductor's booth and i did voices and i got arrested and they took me to 110th precinct. >> rose: yes? >> and my moms had to come in there. and my mother was "please, senor he's not a delinquent, he's just

hyper." >> rose: he's having therapy. he's going to be okay. >> he'll be fine, just take the cuffs off. >> rose: you go back and forth between spanish and english. >> i do more spanish than i ever did because i feel the like the crowds... the census proved we're more than 50% of new york city. so i give translations for the people who aren't bilingual. but you can learn spanish. >> rose: you any >> call your bank and press two. >> rose: this is another clip when you star as a... when you're acting as a drag queen on screen and stage. part of his life. >> i get up to and i'm like okay okay, i'm ready for my closeup. (laughter) and somebody show john the other side of the camera, okay? let's hurry before your beard's perk through. rolling speed and action. you are a spanish fly. and you are an uptight cellulite dinosaur fossil faced white honky cracker. >> you listen to me you little sway back third world... >> she went there. >> selfish...

>> oh, my go i'm self-ish? you're selfish! >> and patrick is... chi-chi, i look so good i think they're going to eat me up. you're a dinosaur, vita, only love you're going to get is from a paleontologist. well, chi-chi, that's funny coming from somebody who looks like they got road heart hard and put away wet. patrick, that's not the line. (laughter) time out. time out. patrick, what are you doing? patrick, i'm the funny one! you're the prett one! well, when you're a guy, as a woman you're kind of beastly, i mean, really. >> rose: "ghetto klown" john leguizamo runs until july 10. >> we just got extended to july 10, that's right. >> rose: what's the great ambition for you? >> that's a deep question. i guess to do great work. i mean, that's always been the thing that drives me to... i want to do great work. i want to do the best i can be

in yiing and acting and that's the thing that drives me. >> rose: you have an amazing work ethic. >> yeah, i'm different to the max in a good way. therapy has made it less of a have veng and more of a celebratory thing. >> what's the conversation like between you and the they arist? >> well, crazy enough my therapist is dr. tillman. he's an argentine jewish man, beautiful man and he sounds just like my dad but on xanax, it's very strange. >> rose: your dad on sank nagasaki. >> yeah, he's like (spanish accent) "you use your humor to survive your core issues. it got you out of the ghetto but it's now holding you back." >> rose: very good. >> he's a brilliant man. >> rose: is it hard to do voices? or is it... do you have to have a great ear? >> you have to have a love for the sound and i think that's all it is. i think most things in life that you're great at is a love for something and then you put the

hours into it and the hours prove results that's how i think everything is. >> rose: you were a clown in class. >> i was the school class clown and that was my ambition... that was many what m ambition was going towards and it was a very competitive clown for classes... school for class clowns. there were a table a lunch if you were funny you could sit at but i got to sit there a lot of times and it made my junior year the best year of my high school. >> rose: thank you, john. great to see you. >> pleasure, man, always great to see you. >> rose: pleasure. john leguizamo. the play is called "ghetto klown" a one man show and it runs until july 10, as i said. captioning sponsored by rose communications

captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

ow! of course. thank you. i'd call her honeydew goodbody, not lisa. the very fact that she is called lisa proves that she exists.