>> rose: welcome to the broadcast. we begin this evening with ken burns and his take on the magnificence of america's national parks. >> this is the declaration of independence applied to the landscape. it's a theirive that's so closely parallels the larger american theirive that you can find in the crevices of the park us. >> rose: we continue with part two of our conversation with former fed chairman paul volcker >> my tax philosophy would be if we can't deal with our expenditure load with the

present tax system we have to think about changing tax system. when we think about changing the tax system, given the problem we started out talking about, you have to talk about a tax that hits consumption. >> rose: conclude about a new movie about koko chanel with the star audrey tautou and director anne fontaine. >> the first idea he had was to free her with clothes so i don't think she had a general idea in the beginning for fashion. >> rose: it was just freedom? >> yeah. i think she was her own laboratory. >> if you die do a bio pick, like an american biopick, all this time i think you can't go through her deeply, it was not my point of view and also i want to be free. when she was young i am free because there is no perfume, no things to do with the house of chanel. i can't completely express, and also she's more moving, she's vulnerable. >> rose: magnificence of our national parks, the ideas of

paul volker and the life of koko chanel when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: ken burns is here. he is, as you know, the film

maker who brought you unforgettable documentaries about the civil war, about baseball, and about jazz. his store january steven ambrose once said more americans get their history from ken burn reasons that any other source. his latest film "national parks, america's best idea" is a the-hour look into the history of the parks as well as the people who fought to create and preserve them. here's a look at the documentary >> they are a treasure house of nature superlatives, 84 million acres of the most stunning landscapes anyone has ever seen. including a mountain so massive it creates its own weather, whose peak rises more than 20,000 feet above sea level, the highest point on the continent.

a valley where a river disappears into burning sands 282 feet below sea level. the lowest, driest, and hottest location in the country. a labyrinth of caves longer than any other ever measured. and the deepest lake in the nation with the clearest water in the world. >> rose: i am pleased to have ken burns back at table. congratulations and welcome back. >> thank you very much. >> rose: let's just stewart this story here. where the idea come from? >> the idea came from one of my long time producing partners dayton duncan. >> rose: who's right here. >> who's right there and is my best friend and we live together and have raised our fapl flees this little village in new hampshire, i've been there 30 years, he's been there 20. we've done films on the landscape, we've done you have? which we've explored this

central question of ours, who are we, through the landscape. so the history of the west in lewis and clark, mark twain on the first cross country automobile trip, a humorous look called horatio's drive, and it reached the wednesday this story because this is declaration of independence applied to this landscape. it's a theirive that so closely parallels the larger american narrative that you can find in the crevices of the parks us. and that's what we're looking for. >> rose: in fact, you have said that national parks are democracy applied to the landscape. >> yeah. i mean, for the first time in human history, human beings set aside land not for kings or noblementor very rich, as all land had been disposed of in all of human history before that, but for everybody and for all time. we've saved vast swathes of our natural landscape for everybody. we're all co-owners. they sort of represent a

democratic impulse and they could have only come from a democratic people. and as it turns out and unbeknownst to either of us when we started this project, the story is not just a top-down one i'd say history and they'd go teddy roosevelt, they're there and important but it's a bottom up story that's black and brown and red and yellow and female and unknown as well as the famous white guys. this isn't a politically correct expedition but a naturally occurring diversity where people fell in love with a place. >> rose: why could ant dictator create national parks? >> well, if you were a dictator you'd create your hunting preserves or your own space, it wouldn't occur to yo you do anything else. now it's been copied all around the world but the initial impulse is me, mine. someone asked me about this other day and i said the movie "it's a wonderful life." we have a choice between pottersville and bedford falls. pottersville is bernie madoff, it's all for me. bedford falls requires an

understanding of commonwealth. that we're in this together, part of a conship of larger things. so if there were no national park it is grand canyons would be lined with mansions of the rich and we'd never see the view. if there were no natural parks, the everglades would have long since been drained as a worthless swamp and paved over. if there were no national parks, that would be a gated community. if there were no national parkss yellowstone would be geyser world. i mean it's literally... this represents in some ways our best selves. >> rose: let's look at this. you'll see some of the technique in this film. this is an excerpt from you are the t first installment in which the national parks represent democratic values. >> what could be more democratic than owning together the most nag siff sent places on your continue innocent? think about europe. in europe, the most magnificent places, the palaces, the parks, are owned by aristocrats, by monarchs, by the wealthy. in america, magnificence is a

common treasure. that's the essence of our democracy. >> national parks, the writer and historian wallace steger in once said, are the best idea we've ever had. >> it's not the best idea. the best idea came from thomas jefferson, that all human beings irrespective of the accident of their birth, are entitled to enjoy the aspirations of being fully complete and free human beings. that's america's gift to the world. but right up there are the national parks. >> rose: as i was looking at that, i today you while we were watching it together, where do you get these people? and then you listen to them and you said to me as we were coming out of that that someone said "this has to be scripted." you don't give them the you want to create the most real remembrance and observation you can. >> and then, as you do, listen. just listen. and then follow that line of

thought. and so you listen to somebody like clay jhing kinson or shelton johnson the ranger from yosemite and somebody said to me that was an actor, and i said no. and he doesn't see the thing. that was made up on the spot. it's all extemporaneous. that's, of course, the way it has to be. >> rose: it took you seven years? >> we started the idea ten years ago, tried to figure out the form, wrestled the complicated russian novel of interconnection of all the plots together and we've been shooting for six. and it's been the most... i mean we've... we've had to shoot from the gates of the arctic in northern alaska to the dry tortugas to hawaii volcanos to acadia and all the places in between. that took a lot of time. >> rose: why were you drawn to the 19th century naturalist. >> charlie, he's ascended into my pantheon. he's up there with abraham lincoln and jackie robinson, mark twain, elizabeth cade cady stanton. >> rose: man, that's an impressive place to be. >> we tend to get into sbur

laive thes and hyperboles in this business of ours but he's a scottish born wanderer, who walks into yosemite, gets a job accidentally and is able to sort of escape the specific gravity of his harsh peres be attorney upbringing, a father that beat him until at age is 1 he memorize it had entire new testament and most of the old testament and could find a face in these mountains, an american face sort of connected to emerson and thoreau that was the genius of not only our political freedoms but the genius of our religious freedoms is that i could find god in the cathedral in nature better than i could do that in a cathedral built by man following his dogmatic devotions. and he liberated us all. he began to write as both of a sort of holy man and a scientist. fall the same package. and his writings are as relevant today, if you pick him up, he is a poet. and it's like reading whitman. he's just fantastic.

and he is the father of the park idea. he commands even in the second episode where he has to compete with theodore roosevelt, he commands the first two episodes. he dies at the end of the second and his spirit is... sufficient fuses every moment of the rest of the series and he's got the first word and the last word. >> rose: i have a friend who... a business person, very successful, made a lot of money, retired, moved to wyoming with his wife and bought a cabin, a nice cabin. he gets up every morning in the cabin and goes in search of the beauty that you capture here. >> rose: >> nature never gets it wrong. human beings and civilization quite often, as we know, get it wrong. so much of what we talk about at this table are flaws and our foibles. nature doesn't get it wrong. it's true. and when you submit yourself to nature, there's a paradox that takes place. and these are the only places

where we can see pristine nature. which is we are made to feel our insignificance in the presence of such extraordinary places. and yet that makes us bigger and connected to everything else. and so those of us who are open to it, the hearts... the parks perform a kind of open heart surgery and you can go out there and they feed some thing, some hunger that we all have, i think that maybe some of us have yet to awaken to, but they're there. and person after person from every conceivable background and station who have those moments, every one of the penal that we focus in the film were transformed by the parks. every one of the people we interviewed told us about their experience and each one of us who worked on the film had some personal experience where it awakened memory or it just... just rocked us, rearranged our molecules. i have no other way to describe it than that. >> rose: roll tape. >> one of the last jobs i had in yellowstone was delivering the mail up snowmobile. there i was in the world's first

national park and i remember going down into the valley. there were bison crossing over the road, the,000 pound mammals crossing over the road and it was so cold it was about 60 below zero. and the bison has they breathed, their exhalation would seem to crystal size in the air around them and there were these sheets these ropey strands of crystals kind of flowing down from their breath. and i saw them and they just moved their heads and were looking at me and i remember thinking that if i had not been on that machine i would have thought i had been thrust fully back into the price toe seen, back into the ice age. and i remember just stopping and turning it off because the only way you could shear to turn that thing off and i would turn it off and i would listen and i felt like this was the first day. >> rose: what parks did you fall in love with? >> yosemite. i had an experience there where i told my comrades that this was the first natural national park

i'd been to, obviously lots of civil war battlefields. and after three or four days of working exhausting hours i should have fallen into a deep sleep, i couldn'tly couldn't and i suddenly remembered that in 1959, a years ago, when i was six years old, my father took me to shan unanimous doe what national park. my mother was dying of cancer. shenandoah. our household was hell. he was not a good dad and one day he just took me on our first and only road trip together and i could suddenly remember lying there awake in yosemite what his hand felt like in mine. i could remember the songs that he sang to me that i've stoung my three daughters, forgetting... you know, they're on my hard drive of personal memory but i'd forgotten where i learned them. i remember every aspect of the drive, every aspect of the hikes he took, he described all the trees and plants. and it was as if yosemite gave me this experience back that had not been repressed, it had been forgotten. and so in my mind it's not so

much that you've got the favorite park as you have a park that sponsored some something else. you know, we're all looking for one and one to equal three. our rational world tells us it's two but we're looking for the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts. and the parks, i think, provide you with experiences that sometimes make it possible to have that kind of higher... theodore roosevelt appealed to the higher emotions of man kind. >> rose: are you making a political statement here? >> you know, it's so funny, people ask that all the time. we try so hard to just tell a good story and yet you know that history is not just about the past. history's the set of questions we in the present ask the past. and so it is necessarily a prix yourry, preoccupied with what's up now. it can't help but be, cob,ly or unconsciously. and you can have film makers who can advocate something in a conscious way but you can realize as you look at the ark of this his they goes from 185 is to is the 80, we back off.

every single issue that we're debating today is there. about presidential leadership, about the nature of democracy, about the role of government, about climate change, about the impact of human beings on these pristine environments, everything is recapitulated in the past. what we try to do is do it with the lightest possible touch or no touch at all and allow people to back and fill. everything that's happened before is happening now. >> rose: and so you believe in a sense that if you... is there something to be said in terms of national parks that we must be vigilant, that we must create more? >> absolutely. >> rose: that we must repo snesz >> yes, i think this is exactly right that these represent-- if you accept our idea that... thomas jefferson had the best idea but once you create the country you'd be hard pressed to find a better idea than this one, that we can find in the arc

of this a key-to-what we do right, what the choices are. this represents our bests selves and i think the national parks are very much pointing us in the right direction. it goes back to the best decisions and the stewardship of the land reflects very highly on who we are as a people. >> rose: okay, one last question but first this teddy roosevelt speech which will give you some of the kinds of themes we've been talking about. here it is. >> on april 24 at the end of roosevelt's visit, the entire population of the town of gardner, montana, gathered at the park's north entrance for a special ceremony. a new arch to welcome visitors to yellowstone was under construction and the president had agreed to speak at the laying of the arch's cornerstone for the occasion, roosevelt reluctantly changed out of his camping clothes, put on a business suit and road through town to the awaiting crowds.

he watched as the cornerstone was carefully put into place then climbed to a rough platform on the stone work of the incomplete pillar and began to speak. >> the yellowstone park is something absolutely unique in the world so far as i know. this park was created and is now administered for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. the scheme of its preservation is noteworthy in its essential democracy. >> rose: magnificent. magnificent president, too, by the way. >> american. >> rose: do you know what's next for ken burns? >> we're updating our baseball series. >> rose: come on! >> there's a lot of water under the baseball bridge. my red sox won the world series but you have steroids, you have strikes, you have amazing yankee performance under joe torre. you have the braves, you have ichiro, the rise of the latin

player. i mean, it's just been a fantastically interesting period and very much a mirror of our own life. we're doing a history of prohibition which is talking about everything that we're talking about now, about the role of government and intrusion into our lives. we've so fallen in love with not only theater but franklin that we're trying to put them together as a family drama and as an extra added bonus we have eleanor. so we have to do vietnam. so after say nothing to war after civil war and reluctantly being pulled into world war ii we realize that we have to do vietnam. we're doing something on the dust bowl before those witnesses to the first man made ecological catastrophe disappear superimposed in the depression. >> rose: what will you do on the seventh day. >> (laughs) >> rose: >> well, we don't rest, we are... you know, if i were given a thousand years to live, i wouldn't run out of topics on american history. >> rose: what's amazing people say about me and more appropriate to you, they say "aren't you going to burn out?"

or there's not going to be enough ideas to cover. i could do this 24 hours a day with interesting ideas. i might not do it well but... >> and we don't do it well sometimes and that's okay, that's part of life. i spent today after four months on the road promoting national parks i spent the day working in the editing room on prohibition. i turned to people and i said "i've been with the president, i've been able to speak to him and share with him stuff, i've been on national television, 80 cities around the country, i've shown the thing, we've gotten great notices. i'm happier now working on this film than i've been. it's just doing what we do every single day. there was nothing more thrilling than to try to make something that was not yet done slightly better. >> rose: quickly tell me about showing it to the president. >> you know, we came in, we showed him about an hour's worth of stuff, we selected those things that were about, i thought, presidential leadership. theodore roosevelt, franklin roosevelt, later on in the '60s stewart udal under kennedy and johnson. but we opened with beautiful

footage of the hawaii volcanos. now, we had this in the editing room working on this for five years. we knew we were going to open with hawaii volcanos so there were in the screen room, dayton is on one side of the president, i'm on the other, our feet are up on the ottomans, we're eating his popcorn and there's the hawaii volcanos and he just turns and goes "boy, you guys are really sucking up to me." >> rose: (laughs) >> but mr. president! >> rose: national parks, america's best ideas, an illustrated history is here in my hand with dayton, duncan and ken. it runs until the end of this week. it's airing in two-hour installments that run for six nights. ken burns, remarkable archivist for who we are and what we aspire to be. >> rose: we continue this evening with part of two of our conversation with former federal reserve chairman paul volcker talking about the fiscal health of the government and tax policy

seems to me that the conclusion is we probably need to think seriously about cutting on the expense side, we hay be... need to think about the revenue side. >> i think we can't do it on the revenue side and... we've got to do it on the revenue side. it's too early to do it but it's not too early to begin... you know, one possible approach we talked about is a tax on carbon, tax on energy. that's a big revenue producer, if they're willing to do it. not very popular to say the least. >> rose: it's not popular because it has the word "tax" in it but also because it means that the price at the pump go up to $3 and $4. >> same thing with cap and trade. that doesn't happen with tax in it but the "wall street journal" makes sure it has the word "tax" in it. >> don: (laughs) >> (laughs) and they're friends of mine. and, of course, congress took that out. largely took it out. >> rose: the operative philosophy about this administration is we're not going to tax the middle-class,

but we're going to tax people that make more than $150,000 a year. now that a tax philosophy that you believe... $250,000 a year. is that a tax philosophy you believe is the wisest way to go. >> i don't believe the old russell lawn philosophy, don't tax me, don't tax you, tax the guy behind the tree. and we can't find the guy behind the tree. >> rose: russell long of the senate finance committee. you didn't answer my question. you just told me a cute story. >> (laughs) >> rose: (laughs) what is your tax plosfy? you're certainly not a supply-sider, are you? >> my tax plos philosophy would be if we can't deal with our expenditure load with the present tax system we have to think about changing the tax system. when we think about changing the tax system, given the problem that we started out talking about, you've got to talk about some tax that hits consumption. >> rose: value-added. >> value-added is one. but a tax on carbon would be another. >> rose: right. >> those are two big once.

it doesn't have to be one of those two but there aren't all that many choices. but i think we ought to think about the contribution it can make to a better balance of the economy, better environment for investment, better arrangement for maintaining our competitive position, those are all qualities that with a value added tax. a value added tax is regressive potentially. there are measures you can take to deal with that. they're complicated but you can do it. but that's not the only tax. i'd love to see the expenditures held in check so we don't have to do that. >> rose: but can you do that... you think that's possible to hold expenditures... >> i.... >> rose: i'm asking. >> >> i don't see anything on the horizon right now that suggests that's going to happen. but that doesn't mean it's impossible. i don't see anything on the horizon right now that says we can raise taxes, either. but i.... >> rose: let me close with this. you and i talked about this a

number of times. we have seen an economy in trouble and we have seen a government called on to rescue the economy by taking interventionist positions in companies in the financial sector, insurance sector, which might be the same, our own bill sector. first was it all necessary? >> well, i think it was basically necessary but the right question is what should have we done earlier to prevent it? >> rose: and the answer is? >> well, i think that was... i think we were not alert. we were not.... >> rose: exactly, yes. >> we were not alert about the consumption thing. we were not alert about the housing boom. we were not alert about subprime mortgages. we weren't alert about credit default swaps. >> rose: a whole range of things yeah. the things that got us there

because we didn't see them coming and didn't therefore adjust, react. >> some of them we may have seen coming but nobody wanted to act. >> rose: so how do you make sure... because, i mean, you don't believe we're turning... we're making a dramatic turn in our economic system in the way that financial markets work and the way that economic system works. but therefore what do you do about the fact that we now have... we own 80%... taxpayers own 80% of a.i.g. taxpayers own what percent of citicorp down the line. general motors. >> well, i think with a recovery in the economy, even a rather slow recovery of the economy, a lot of that intervention gradual can be reversed. some of it the government will make money on. the ones that we used to make money have already been done. but they'll make some money on the other things and they'll lose some money on some. but that... i don't know how successful chrysler and general motors will be. but.... >> rose: chrysler's now bought up fiat. >> it will be a year or two to

see whether they can turn around or not. so gradually these things ought to be withdrawn. we've discussed ad nauseam with the knowledge that all that intervention took place once and the intervention may take place another time which affects attitudes. i do not believe... although, you know, this is disturbing in terms of business attitudes and confidence that, as you say, we're going to have dramatic change in the capitalistic system in the united states. i do not believe that. but it's going to take some time to get back to it. >> rose: bottom line, are you optimistic about america? >> i'm an american. but i think we've got lots of problems. i thought you were going to raise a question at the end here about trust and confidence in government generally which.... >> rose: well, that's where i'm going. >> i think that has been a disturbing element for me for a long time. i worried about it and not much is done. how can we sit here knowing once

after the inauguration, almost a year after the election and half of the government positions in washington under deputy secretary assistant secretaries are sitting there vacant. and we do hit in the treasury department in the midst of the greatest crisis anybody's been into. >> rose: and the pentagon. >> and depending upon it and who are those leaders depending on? they don't have responsible officials in office ready to share the load. and people who have been vetted. but that's a... it's... up and down the line in civil service it just doesn't have the attraction that it wasn't had and the government doesn't make it's easy. it's hard to go to work for government. you think that's an easy thing to do and you're attracting a lot of people who can't compete, that's not right. a lot of people compete very well and have an interest in this got and have an interest in the country, want to work for the government and they find it

so hard to get through the recruitment process, or the non-existing recruitment process. >> rose: the vetting. >> they get discouraged and off they go. it's not... i mean, the lack of kind of basic element of trust... it's good to be skeptical about government. we ought to be skeptical. but at the bottom, you know, we need some trust that these officials are there, they're responsible, they're doing the best they can in the interest of the country. a lot of that's been lost, this feeling that the lobbyists are controlling everything and the amount of money involved is enormous, which it is. i mean, i... when i started out in government, k street didn't exist. it was just a dirt road. it wasn't literally a dirt road, but, you know, it wasn't.... >> rose: it wasn't filled with lobbyist offices. >> it wasn't filled with huge buildings to house lobbyists. >> rose: do you think something something the president ought to be speaking to? >> well, i... yes. i wish he would. i don't think it's been on the

top of his priority list. >> rose: but it needs to be because it's part of the solution? >> i think that is true. i think that's absolutely true. but like everything else, you know, the president can't snap his fingers and have it happen. but if he... i think leadership in this area is important. and important to him politically he's going to be around for a while and if the government's running better and has more respect, it will be to his benefit enormously or whoever is in the leadership position. >> rose: in the same way he changed the image of the united states overseas, you can change the image of government domestically. >> and this is because of 9/11 in part but partly because of the economic crisis, partly because of barack obama there is a chance of the image being restored to a considerable degree. i think there's a real opportunity. it was a sudden burst after 9/11 of interest in government. it was a certain... well, a limited burst i think recently

but it gets frustrated because you haven't got the organization to deal with it. >> rose: thank you for coming. it's a measure to see you again. >> i hate to end up on that note. >> rose: well, it's the reality we have. >> rose: audrey tautou is here. she is one of france's most talented and best-known actresses, in 2001 she rose to international stardom with her role in "amalie." american audiences also know her from "dirty pretty things" and "the da vinci code." for her latest part she plays legendary designer coco chanel the years before she became rich and famous. the film is called "coco before chanel." here is a clip from the film.

>> rose: i am pleased to have her back at this table. welcome. >> thank you very much. >> rose: let's talk about coco chanel and what kind of woman she was. >> well, she was a very unusual woman for that that time. she was so brilliant and tough and eccentric. she was a rebel and very modern. >> rose: had you been asked to play her before? >> yes, a few... a couple of

times, yes. >> rose: and you always said no? >> yes, because i was not interested in the project. i didn't want to make like a movie about her whole life. i wanted to find, you know, a story where we would go deeper in her personality. and when i met anne fontaine, the director, i really felt that she was, you know, the perfect person.... >> rose: to make this film. >> yeah, to make this film. >> rose: and she, in fact, said about you that she couldn't... once you signed on she knew she could make the film she envisioned. >> yes. >> rose: now why do you think she might have said that? or what did she have in mind? >> because i... you know, she told me that she was wondering if i would be tough enough or... to play this part and when i met her she said that i was looking at her with a very cold look and very... with a lot of maybe strength or authority.

>> rose: is that you? >> no, no, no! but i'm not a weak person. >> rose: so she looked at you and thought she saw that in you? >> well.... >> rose: you had that look. >> she's a director, you know. >> rose: that's her talent, to be able to see.... >> of course! >> rose:... someone who reflects those things naturally. >> yes. even if the person doesn't realize that she has that inside her. me, i wouldn't say about me or describe me as a tough or severe cold person. >> rose: it is said about chanel that you read everything, you saw all the films, you were obsessive in your research. >> that's not true. i was kind of lazy. >> rose: really. >> yes. because i did some research.... >> rose: and one thing is true about cocoa that shah nell, she was not lazy. >> no, but i don't really like to rehearse and, you know, to

know exactly how i'm going to play a scene when i'm coming. i did some work, but the problem i had is that as much as i was getting some information, it started to become contradictive because chanel was hiding a lot, her youth. >> rose: ah. >> so she was saying.... >> rose: made it up. >> ...a lot of lice. >> rose: yes. >> so it was difficult to find the truth between all those informations. so i ended by using more of the photos which were more or less static. >> rose: what would be interesting to find out is why she wanted to hide her childhood. what made her be embarrassed and want to hide those things? >> yes, yes. well, i think it was a question of maybe surviving. she didn't want maybe people to complain or feel pity for her.

she was very proud. i don't know. i don't really have an answer for that. >> rose: what was her relationship with etian. etienne. >> i think he realized that he could... he was the one who could open the doors of.... >> rose: so it was a pragmatic... >> yeah, she was clever. >> rose: a clever decision. this is a man that can help me get where i want to go and i will share life with him but i will further my own ambitions? >> well, i think she didn't have any other solution. she wanted to leave mulan, this little town in the middle of france. she didn't want to spend her life that and have a miserable destiny and he was an opportunity, you know? but i think she was sincere and she always talked about him in very good terms saying that he was a... i don't know the word. >> rose: benefactor?

>> yes. so they were very good friends so it was not only a calculateive.... >> rose: she liked him but was not madly in love with him. >> yes. >> rose: admired him but was not.... >> yes, yes. >> rose: her skill in fashion. >> well, i think that she.... >> rose: to make clothes natural none of this corset stuff. >> i think she really wanted to have the same freedom as a man, which is very, very modern and almost a fantasy at that time. and i think that the first option that she has was to free her with clothes. so i don't think that she had a general idea at the beginning for passion. >> rose: it was just freedom. >> yeah, i think she was her own laboratory and she made clothes for herself top find the egality.... >> rose: equality. >>... with man. so i think it's more than fashion. it's more than clothes.

>> rose: and what about the love of her life? cap elle? >> well, he has a very important influence on her destiny. he was the first man that she was... that saw that she was different and that her difference was a strength and she had to be confident. he's the first man who really considered her. so if she decided to follow this road of fashion, i think it's also because of him. so he helped her to maybe see clearly what she could be. >> rose: and the impact of his death? >> she really fell into the work. >> rose: the work. >> she was saying that when she

was in love she didn't want to go to work. she was a passionate woman and when he died i think that it was the only thing she could rely on. >> rose: talking about earlier movies, "amalie." >> yes. >> rose: what impact did that have on you and your career and all that you became? >> well, i think it was a kind of tsunami for me. >> rose: a tsunami? >> yes. >> rose: (laughs) in a good way. >> yes, of course. >> rose: this brought a huge wave that gave you opportunities? >> yes. but the celebrity came very suddenly. >> rose: yes. >> and i was not expecting that at all. >> rose: were you prepared for it? >> no, no. no, no, no, no. i mean, no, because i had never wished to become famous so.... >> rose: you'd never thought

about it? >> no. i think i was more scared than hoping. >> rose: i've read contradictory things about you. one was that you wanted to come to america and live and be a hollywood actress and another said that's the last thing you wanted. that you really wanted to remain in paris and be a french actress. >> well, maybe i will make another contradiction. >> rose: all right, please. >> which is... i'm between those two things. you know? >> rose: you mean you go back and forth in your head? >> no, i mean that i like to come and visit and do a movie once in a while if i have the opportunity, but i'm... i don't want to work for that. and.... >> rose: you don't want to work for that means you don't want to make what commitment it's required. >> yes. >> rose: what is it that would be required that you don't want to do. >> well, i think i would have to

spend a... i don't know. it's what i think, maybe i... it's a very... for me it's a very foreign universe so i really feel like a tourist. so far me i think that i would have to be there and to meet people and, i don't know, to show myself or maybe i'm wrong, but, you know, i'm not like that. but i.... >> rose: so what are you like? what is life for you when you're not working? >> i like to enrich myself by discovering things. >> rose: reading and... >> reading and learning. >> rose: traveling. >> learning to grow or to paint and writing. >> rose: oh, you're painting? >> i'm learning. >> rose: how do you learn to paint? just by doing it or do you take lessons? >> no, i went to a school and, you know, we're doing... i'm doing something. but for me i will never show

anything to anybody. >> rose: until you're ready. when you look at coco chanel, were you not interested in... how how interested were you in the war years, for example? world war ii for her. >> yeah. >> rose: and what happened to her. >> yes. >> rose: and how she became this... after the war is when she became sort of the great international fashion figure. did that interest you or you were primarily interested in a film about the young coco chanel. >> no, i was interested in the young coco chanel because for me it's the most mysterious moment of her life. i really think that when you have such a brilliant brain it's very concern i was curious about understanding how she constructed herself. >> rose: why is she brilliant? what is brilliant about her? >> because she's... i mean,

she's smart, she can... she's an observer and she knows exactly how to use a situation and she has a... she was very ahead on her time. >> rose: some will make the point that there are people in history who imagine what they want to be and become that person. >> she wanted something to happen in her life and i think that she was feeling that she was different. she wanted to become somebody, that's for sure. but i think that she didn't really know what she wanted. she wished to become a singer first and an actress but she was just... i mean, she was very ambitious and.... >> rose: right.

congratulations. >> thanks. >> rose: great to have you here. coco chanel, autry tautou. back in a moment, we'll talk in the film's director. stay with us. >> her designs changed the world of fashion and the empire she built still bears he but before she was chanel, she was coco.

>> rose: we continue with our

look at the film "coco chanel" the w the director anne fontaine. she is a writer and director of ten french language films. the latest film is, of course, "coco before chanel." we want to talk to her about directing this film and about how she approached this and why audrey tautou was the actress that she envisioned to make the film that she wanted to make. welcome. you just saw what audrey and i talked about and i quoted you as saying that you could make the film you envisioned once she was committed. >> that's true. >> rose: why. >> because i need to believe that she exists. that gabrielle chanel young could be real for me, not only an actress that is going to do an imitation of her and to perform, you know? i want something in chanel has to be there at the beginning because she has this kind of body, very special, you can't understand chanel, she was the

first androgynous woman. >> rose: she was the first androgynous woman. she was the first fashion designer to create pants, too. >> of course. and she had this taste of masculine clothes mixed with feminine clothes. but she was... because she has this kind... very thin body, very small like... almost anorexic for this period because women were very vol lop chew white house. very.... >> rose: rubinesque or whatever. >> exactly. and you have to have an intensity on the eyes because all her education, it threw the way she looks at the person, she looks at everything, she's completely intuitive. and i thought audrey when i met her, she was so incredible, concentrated, she looks at me behind my head, you know? i felt this very dark eyes on me

and you know colette says that chanel is a dark bowl, a little dark bowl and that i felt. she's so french, audrey and chanel. they are so french. they have this kind of elegance, you know? and she's not beautiful, she's unique. it's more rare, i think. >> rose: the obvious question is why you wanted to stop the film where you did. >> bauds i thought it was an angle, of course, a point of view, it was to stop at the beginning of the celebrity. >> rose: exactly. >> because why to go ten years after or to years. >> rose: because so many interesting thins happened to her. >> i know that, of course. >> rose: the lovers. >> yes. >> rose: the t nazi stuff. >> of course, the nazi stuff, it's when she's more than 50, a years old. >> rose: so? >> yes, but i'm going to explain you something. the life chanel has, 87 years old, okay. if you do a biopic, like an

american, hollywood biopic, all this time i think you can't go through her deeply. it was not my point of view. and also i want to be free, you know? when she was young i am free because there is no perfume, no things to do with the house of chanel. i can't completely express the correct... and also she's more moving. she's vulnerable. and i think it's interesting to see how a lower class girl like that, she's a courtesan, like a whore, she can manage the man, use them, and also be insecure and fragile underneath because they're tragedies on her life and you can't understand chanel old when she's with a cigarette, very bourgeois, you know? you can't understand. if you don't know that, it's something i think very interesting. >> rose: what did you learn about why she constantly denied or made up her life?

>> i think of course as audrey says, it's a protection. but also she wants to expand her life. she says this sentence i like very much because it's like a writer's sentence, she says "i invent my life because i didn't like it." and she has to make fiction about her life because the beginnings are so awful, you know? when she's abandoned by the father at ten years old without no news at all, never he came back, he said that he will come back but never it happened, she was so insecure. but she had this temperament... temperament, you can say? >> rose: yes, temperament is good. >> incredible with determination. her personality is amazing for this period, you know? because it's very difficult to be different all the time. it's very difficult to be very lower class and to grow through the others. you know, she can't... of course she's like a heroine of a ball

zach romance, you know? >>. >> rose: do you think she ever sort of believed herself that she had become what she intended to become or was she always the insecure person that she began? >> i think-- it's my point of view, of course, because i met the last assistance of chanel who lived with her the lhasa years that there was a loneliness at the end and a melancholyly. never... she had, of course, very happy moments, but there is something vulnerable for the end of her life and you know... maybe you know that what she says the last day of her life. >> rose: which was? >> she was coming in the ritz hotel where she lived and she says to the man who opens the door, concierge "how are you today?" he says "very well, and you?"

and she says "i'm going to die in seven or eight minutes." and it was true. ten minutes later... she's a freak. but there is something so moving. even when she's old and when you see the beginning, the youth, you understand i think deeper how this young farmer girl... she's completely wild. she has no education. it could be painting, it could be something, but her talent, it's how to sew. but she... at the beginning she thinks that to sew it was for ordinary women, you know? and what i like in the way her vocation appears to her, it's very original because she never thought... she never dreamed to be that, the stylist, brilliant stylist. she says that only style remains fashion she doesn't care about. >> rose: yes, but she was more interested in creating style rather than fashion. >> exactly.

and i think that's very timeless attitude because it's for that reason when you see audrey tautou in the movie, we can't put her today, she will be okay with this black dress, with this.... >> rose: exactly. >> she's very modern, incredible modern. she's a kind of feminist before, you know? >> rose: your directing, people have made comparisons with luis malle and others. >> yes, that's true. and others? sometimes it happens in france, you know, that critics say because i make a criticism of the bourgeois see and maybe subjects incorrect like dry cleaning, it was a very strange story, you know, of a couple that felt... fall in love with a travesty and you know these kind of stories. and how... on the side, i don't know how... the word in english,

but transgressive. >> rose: have you decided on your next movie smfrjts yes. >> rose: it is? >> it is a comedy with isobel rupert. >> rose: oh, terrific. >> and a man who's playing in the coco chanel and after that doris lessing, also, an adaptation. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you. >> rose: congratulations on the film. >> thank you. >> rose: thank you for joining us. anne fontaine, the director of "coco before chanel." see you tomorrow captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org