Liev Shreiber is convinced his The Omen remake will be a hit due to unrest in
the world. The star believes horror films that pit good against evil thrive when
the world is at war because film fans already feel anxious about global affairs.
And Shreiber doesn't believe the original 1976 film would have become a cult
success had it not been for the fact it was released in the aftermath of the
Vietnam War.
He explains, "I don't think 'The Omen' would've been the same film in 1976
had we not been at the tail end of the Vietnam War ... There was a palpable
anxiety in the U.S. as a result of the political unrest and as a result of The
Vietnam War that people were trying to vent. I don't necessarily think that
there's anything wrong with that. I think that is a function of the
consciousness purging itself. The fact is that it exists and the film will tap
into those sore feelings.
"I don't think 'The Omen' in 2006 would be the success it is going to be
had we not been embroiled in the Middle East as we are now, and had the threat
of something as horrific and unexplainable as 9/11 not occurred. It is truly
preposterous, the acts that are committed in the film in the name of faith, but
thank God it's only a film."
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The Omen': Beware Of Kid
By Kurt Loder
Satan's baby is back, and Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles have him.
The unsuspecting couple, their doomed associates and of course the small but
precocious Spawn of Hell himself all return in director John Moore's stylish
reprise of "The Omen," a very profitable 1976 horror film that's now
been re-floated, with new rigging, by the same studio that put out the original
movie. Because this new one uses the original script, by David Seltzer, it's
nearly identical, in structure and plot detail, to the earlier picture. In fact,
it's a virtual tribute.
Once again, Robert Thorne (Liev Schreiber), a deputy U.S. ambassador in Rome,
receives word in the maternity ward of a local hospital that his wife, Kate
(Julia Stiles), has delivered a stillborn baby. A strange priest appears and
suggests that Robert agree to accept a living infant, whose mother has died in
childbirth, as a substitute — and not tell Kate about the switch. "Give
your love to the living," the priest says. Robert agrees to this odd
proposal.
Shortly thereafter, he learns that he'll be accompanying his boss, the
ambassador, to a new posting in the London embassy. But when it suddenly
develops that the ambassador will be unable to make the trip (ever), Robert, who
happens to be the godson of the President of the United States, finds himself
appointed to this top diplomatic position. Settling into a baronial country
estate outside of London, he and Kate dote on their raven-haired child, whom
they've named Damien. But things start going wrong at a fifth-birthday garden
party for the boy, when a big, drooling black dog shows up on the perimeter of
the festivities, Damien makes smirking eye contact with the beast, and the
Thornes' nanny suddenly takes it into her head to ... give notice, let's say.
For anyone who's seen the original movie, there'll be no surprises from here on
out. A weird new nanny, Mrs. Baylock, appears. (She's played by Mia Farrow,
trailing vestigial horror cred from her starring role in the 1968
"Rosemary's Baby.") Another priest from the Roman hospital, Father
Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite), who was present the night Damien was born, also
turns up, with horrific news about the little lad. ("Its mother was a
jackal!") Then Robert is contacted by a newspaper photographer named
Jennings (David Thewlis), who has discovered ominous portents in the prints of
the pictures he took at Damien's birthday party — and in that biblical
compendium of all-purpose apocalyptic rantings, the Book of Revelation.
Next, as you may recall, Damien flies into a rage as the family limo approaches
a Catholic church. Then Mrs. Baylock announces she's found a pet dog for the boy
— a big black one. Finally, it begins to dawn on Kate, if not her husband,
that "something's not right." Eventually, even Robert begins to get
the picture.
Why remake a horror classic with such slavish fidelity to the original? No doubt
director Moore ("Flight of the Phoenix") realized that the story was
unimprovable. The Antichrist theme — with the son of Satan installed near the
center of world political power — is a perfect pulp subject. And the tale's
unsettling denouement remains unusual in the genre, and, as you may remember,
quite memorable.
To make this material their own to some extent, Moore and his production
designer, Patrick Lumb, and cinematographer, Jonathan Sela, working mostly in
and around Prague, have given the movie a rich, dark sheen. There's lots of
thunder and lightning and rain-slicked cobblestones; and the shadowy Old World
interiors add a certain spooky grandeur of their own. In addition, some of the
most famous scenes from the original film — a startling rooftop leap, and a
fall from a gallery balcony — have been given a contemporary FX jolt. (You
can't help wincing when the victim's body actually bounces after hitting the
gallery's hardwood floor.)
The actors are well-cast, too. Schreiber and Stiles are younger and therefore,
as characters, more emotionally engaging than the original leads, Gregory Peck
and Lee Remick. (Schreiber is also a notably
more interesting performer than the colorless Peck.) And David Thewlis
and Pete Postlethwaite (and Michael Gambon, as well — he pops up as a
devil-child extermination specialist later in the film) are character actors of
easeful expertise.
On the downside, if only a little, Mia Farrow doesn't attempt to capture the
pure evil-bitch malevolence that Billie Whitelaw brought to the original Mrs.
Baylock. (Although Farrow's sinister sweetness adds a creepy frisson of its own
in a crucial hospital scene.) More problematic, I think, is Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick,
the child actor who plays Damien. He's a little too cute, and a little too
blank, to be entirely persuasive as a demonic threat. The Damien in the first
movie, portrayed by Harvey Stephens (who puts in a fleeting, all-grown-up
appearance as a reporter in this film), exuded a considerably more menacing
vibe.
But this new "Omen" works fine. It has its own look and it plays the
story straight, as if this were the first time it was being brought to the
screen. If you haven't seen the original movie, this one should provide some
good, shivery fun. And even if you have, it's certainly more entertaining in
just about every way than "The Da Vinci Code," which, as you may have
heard, is a really hellacious experience.
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The Devil Made Them Do It.
It's 6/6/06. Do you know where your children are? In a remake of the Omen,
Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles are about to find out.
By Fred Schruers
"Look, can we start over?"
Wearing an expensive suit and a slightly forlorn expression, Liev Schreiber
speaks this first in a sequence of four lines that shows Robert Thorn having a
difficult moment with his wife, Katherine, played by Julia Stiles. The script
indicates that he take a beat here, and Schreiber sighs distractedly. They're
only a couple of weeks into a seven-week shoot, but the afternoon has been
arduous for the actors, the crew, and director John Moore.
The company is gathered in the Czech Republic city of Lednice, in a mansion
built in the High Romantic style by the Liechtenstein dynasty. In this
light-flooded drawing room, which will play onscreen as the residence of the
American ambassador to Great Britain, setting lights and camera has taken
considerable time. The result is that this run-through of the lines is rushed
and, for the actors being observed with forced patience by the crew, quite
contrary to the hoped-for mood. "It was all getting a bit terse" is how Moore, a
stocky, gruffly genial Irishman with a buzz cut and an observant air, will
recall the moment.
"I'm sorry your day was frustrating," says Schreiber's Thorn. "Mine wasn't great
either."
Well, no. It isn't that easy when you begin to suspect that your five-year-old
son, Damien, whom you'd accepted at birth from an eager priest in place of your
own dead baby, shows all the earmarks of being Satan's spawn. This moment
between the Thorns happens about a quarter of the way into the film, after the
chilling suicide by hanging of the child's nanny, and just hours after Robert
has been braced by an obsessed and terrified priest (played by Pete
Postlethwaite). We've seen that the young couple, who are earlier portrayed as
healthily sensual, have begun to grow remote, worried.
"You have to raise the stakes in the beginning," Stiles says later, "and see
that they really love each other and that they're intimate and supportive,
because then you see what sort of destructive force they're faced with."
Schreiber has moved closer to her, and they're about to hug on his next line,
which appears in the script as "I'm sorry." But Stiles hardly seems in the mood.
Under scrutiny from dozens of onlookers, and headed later today for a scene
opposite Mia Farrow (who plays Damien's replacement nanny and protector), she's
about as yielding as a plank as Schreiber sets a tentative hand on her to tuck
in for the hug. The actor takes another half beat, then, enfolding Stiles, says
to her in his best, brooding, post-Gregory Peck gravitas, "Can we have sex now?"
The ad-lib brings down the house ("I wish that was on film," says Stiles,
"because it got a natural reaction"), and the rehearsal quickly gives way to
shooting the scene, which meanders across seven pages of dialogue and plays
flawlessly over several takes, including a kiss on the neck from Katherine for
Robert. During the subsequent break, Moore says he's happy to give Schreiber
more elbow room than actors are used to. "When you're trying to do close,
intimate work with big pieces of metal and glass," says the director, "it's
helpful when you've got someone like Liev, who can, without losing his
concentration for a second, just make people take a breath."
Moore himself has had to catch his breath where he can; Fox green-lighted The
Omen to start shooting less than a year before the 6/6/06 release date that
would keynote its marketing campaign. The triple sixes sometimes known as the
Mark of the Beast fully entered pop culture with the 1976 release of the
original Omen, which starred Gregory Peck and Lee Remick and won not only
good box office but a place in the front rank of the horror genre.
"We saw a gap in the marketplace," says Fox chairman Tom Rothman of the remake.
"With all the resurgence of teen horror pictures, there wasn't yet, except for a
couple of M. Night Shyamalan movies, the adult supernatural thriller that's done
with a real intelligence. There had been a big tradition of those movies from,
obviously, The Omen, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby—enormously successful
pictures. And we thought there was a real dearth of that kind of picture. So,"
he adds with a little laugh, "we went and got Rosemary herself."
"I got a call from the president of production at the studio, who said sort of
excitedly, disbelievingly, 'You'll never guess what we're hearing—Mia Farrow is
interested in playing Mrs. Baylock,' " says Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, Flight
of the Phoenix). "And I was like, 'Come on, you know, pull the other one.
It's too good to be true.' So I cold-called Mia and said, 'Are you really
interested in this?' She said, 'Yeah.' And then all of a sudden, there she is on
set."
Farrow, who had caught only bits of the original on TV, was nevertheless
somewhat "trepidatious" about remaking it. "You think, 'Oh, leave the cult
classics alone, because how often do they come along? Do we really want to
remake The Exorcist? And what about Rosemary's Baby?' " She laughs.
"Where does it end? But John Moore's a brilliant guy, and he has a lot of issues
with the first one, and a very definite idea of how [this one] should be made."
Moore wanted to update Mrs. Baylock and, he says, make her "absolutely
adorable." Says Farrow, "John felt that the flaw in how they used the great
Billie Whitelaw [in the original] was that she shows her hand right away—you
know that she's up to no good. He wants to make a more subtle kind of film where
you're not really sure what's going on; you question the young mother's sanity,
whether this is real or not real."
"Mia is incredible," says Stiles, who just before starting The Omen had
costarred with Farrow off-Broadway in James Lapine's play Fran's Bed. "She is
versatile in terms of what she can do, even just physically. Her face can
express love and kindness and then in the next moment switch to sinister."
Stiles was the first of the principal actors to be cast. "She feels young,
untainted," says Moore. "Therefore she's perfect fodder for Damien's enterprise.
With Julia in that role, you could really sympathize with her as somebody who
feels estrangement from what she thought was her own kid. When she breaks, your
heart breaks for her."
Remick's fine performance in the original showed a vulnerable yet brittle
Katherine, but Stiles wanted to enrich the role. "There was a lot that I loved
about what she did once that character snapped and had gone off the deep end,"
she says. "But there was something a little bit detached. And I'm glad that the
way that the rewrites have happened, I have the liberty of showing a much more
upbeat and positive side of Kate in the beginning."
Rounding out the cast are such acclaimed. actors as Postlethwaite, Michael
Gambon (as the devil-slaying expert Bugenhagen), and David Thewlis (as the
jeopardized photographer Jennings), plus the inexperienced but innately skilled
Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, who aced his screen test for the role of Damien.
Though his portrayal is more diabolical than that of his 1976 predecessor, he
was found by Stiles to be "an adorable, sweet, precious kid"—who greatly amused
her in an early scene together by nudging her when her line was up as Moore
called for action. The director took a lickerish delight in Farrow's work with
Davey-Fitzpatrick when they're introduced on film. "There's an almost
inappropriate sexual tension," he says. "He's her master. She's like a demon
groupie; her character is just electrified to be that near the boss, you know?"
Stiles encouraged Schreiber, with whom she'd worked in 2000's Hamlet, to
join her in this remake, but he was so standoffish with Moore on the phone that
the director, after hanging up, dialed the actor right back to make sure they
were on track. "He had made it very clear that he was not the kind of actor
who's going to be told, 'Stand over there and do that'—to the point that I
thought he wanted out," Moore says. "He was very clear that if he takes the
role, he wants to be able to interpret it. And that was the deal we made.
Because he is a very serious, weighty actor, it actually occurs to you that he
probably knows more about the role than you're ever going to. And it'd be smart
to listen to him. He's got a big fucking brain, you know? It makes you raise
your game a notch. He ended up helping me a lot. He rewrote chunks of the
script."
Schreiber, who adapted and directed last year's Everything Is Illuminated,
says the Omen update by no means discredits the 1976 film: "I loved that
David Seltzer's original script [revised by debuting screenwriter Dan McDermott]
is a very real, human, domestic story." He's also quick to credit the first
Robert Thorn: "I have the benefit of having Gregory Peck, one of the greatest
actors in film history, play this part before me, having done all the textual
analysis." And he knows from experience what it's like remaking a well-loved
film. "There's no way you could do a film that was such a classic as The Omen
and not risk comparison to Gregory Peck," he says. "You know, it happened to me
on The Manchurian Candidate. So you can't let that stymie you. I honestly
feel that actors are truly like snowflakes, and no two are alike. So I could
steal every choice that you made in a scene and it would still be, in my
opinion, vastly different if I'm playing it."
For the update, Schreiber pursued a line of inquiry he picked up from Richard
Donner, the director of the original. "Donner said something amazing: If you
believe that there are outside powers affecting you in a way that you have no
ability to veer away from, then it's horrible," he says. "But what if the Thorns
just lost their heads? Just got carried away? Then it is truly horrible, that a
guy could get so twisted around by life and fanaticism that he's prepared to
take the life of a child."
"The kid is the perfect metaphor," says Moore, "for the notion that the
seemingly most benign or innocent thing can, going unchecked, become pure evil.
Schreiber got it just right in figuring out that basically Thorn is guilty, and
ultimately knows that when he takes the kid at the end, and he's being chased by
armed police—it's a one-way ticket. It's an attempt to basically pay for his
sins."
When Fox releases The Omen worldwide on June 6 (a rare Tuesday bow to
meet the crucial calendar day), the studio will quickly learn whether moviegoers
are ready for adult thrillers again. Stiles seems optimistic. "The thing I liked
about this story," she says, "is it's much more psychologically driven and
creepy, as opposed to gory."
Back in the Thorns' drawing room, it seems ungentlemanly to ask Stiles if the
couple might indeed have sex, at least in the characters' imaginings, this very
day. But for Schreiber, as he exits the set, it's enough to know that his
colleague's face lit up as they clinched. "That's what you live for," he says,
loosening his tie. "It was just about trying to give Julia a moment where
something natural and unexpected happens. We needed to be animated and
affectionate when he gets her to make up with him." He shrugs at the simplicity
that can be found at the heart of a twisted supernatural thriller. "Julia has a
gorgeous smile—and, you know, you do that for each other."
Back to Top
The Omen's Liev Schreiber
Onscreen, he's raising the Antichrist. Offscreen, he's the lucky devil dating
Naomi Watts
by
Michelle Tan
For
the record, Liev Schreiber gets freaked out by horror movies. So, what possessed
him to star in a remake of The Omen, due in theaters on (gasp!) 6/6/06?
"I don't have to watch it," says Schreiber, who also appeared in all
three Scream movies. "I'm drawn to characters dealing with conflict,
and things don't get more conflicted than raising the son of the Devil."
Aside from Lucifer, Schreiber, 38, chatted with PEOPLE'S Michelle Tan about the
other key players in his life -- Shakespeare, his mom and girlfriend Naomi
Watts.
Breaking the Curse
According to Hollywood legend, the 1976 production of The Omen was
haunted by incidents that included lightening striking star Gregory Peck's plane
and the death of an animal trainer. But Schreiber isn't superstitious. "I
did a stunt and I fell into a cast-iron fence and I fractured a rib," he
says. "Everybody was like, 'Oooh, curse of The Omen!' I was like,
'No, but can I have an ice pack, please?'" He's just as fearless
onstage. This summer, the actor -- who won a Tony last year for Glengarry
Glen Ross -- will star in a New York City production of Macbeth,
Shakespeare's famously jinxed play.
Wicked Games
Between takes, Schreiber helped six-year-old Seamus Davy-Fitzpatrick, who plays
Damien, unleash his inner demons. "Most of what Seamus had to do was fight,
but, kick or scream. So we'd play games where he'd beat up on me," says
Schreiber. While "playing the father of the antichrist is not a huge
endorsement for having children," working with Seamus "did bring up
those latent feelings of wanting to be a father."
Life With Naomi
Schreiber's next movie is The Painted Veil opposite real-life love Naomi
Watts, 37, whom he started dating last spring. Like her boyfriend, Watts is no
stranger to horror. "The Ring scared the pants off me," he says. As
for that other ring -- a 5-carat sparkler Schreiber reportedly bought
Watts, he says, "That is Naomi's. She has some jewelry of mine, but not
that." And those wedding rumors? He's keeping mum.
Mother Knows Best
When he isn't listening Jay-Z or Missy Elliott, the Manhattan-bred actor
practices Bach's "Goldberg Variations" on the piano. He credits his
mother, artist Heather Milgram (who divorced actor Tell Schreiber when Liev was
4), for his "eclectic tastes." I grew up with a constant barrage of
classical music and movies that were black-and-white," says Schreiber, who
also has mom to thank for the nickname "Huggy". "When I was
little I may have been bored sick, but I am grateful to her now."
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'Macbeth' in the Park: Where Fair Is
Foul and War Still Hell
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
These
two would seem to have it all: youth and beauty, the glow of good health, public
acclaim and fabulous wardrobes. As played by Liev Schreiber and Jennifer Ehle,
Shakespeare's Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth are two camera-ready beauties glistening in
the world's gaze, Brad and Angelina granting interviews in iambic pentameter.
Of course beneath the shiny veneers lie hearts of steel, ambition-poisoned minds
and imaginations steeped in blood. The Scottish nobleman and his good wife are
not on a crusade to save the world's children, but hellbent, if need be, on
destroying a few of them. The Public Theater's new production of "Macbeth,"
which was scheduled to open last night at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park,
weather permitting, could whimsically be subtitled "Brangelina Gone Bad!"
Mr. Schreiber and Ms. Ehle are not merely handsome presences cast for their
ability to look sexy even when up to their elbows in stage blood. In
performances for the Public stretching over a decade, Mr. Schreiber has
established himself as the foremost Shakespearean actor of his generation in
America. He has consistently won acclaim for the vocal beauty and subtle
intelligence of his performances as Hamlet, Iago and Henry V, among others.
Ms. Ehle is also an accomplished stage actress, known for work both on Broadway
(a Tony Award-winning turn in "The Real Thing") and in the West End. (She comes
of distinguished theatrical lineage, being the daughter of Rosemary Harris.)
The meticulous craft of their performances comes, therefore, as no surprise. Mr.
Schreiber and Ms. Ehle speak Shakespeare's verse with a natural grace and
clarity, a seduction to match their looks. (Ms. Ehle is seriously ravishing in
her chic dresses by Michael Krass.) Drawn into an intimate relationship with
their characters by means visually glamorous and aurally alluring, we should
shudder all the more at the contrast between good looks and bad acts, verifying
the doomed King Duncan's observation, "There's no art to find the mind's
construction in the face." The problem is that in Moisés Kaufman's elegantly
wrought production set in the tumultuous early 20th century, the Macbeths'
murderous rampage unfolds at an oddly stately pace. Blood flows regularly, but
as if dispensed from silver taps. In the end neither Mr. Schreiber nor Ms. Ehle
seems fully to inhabit the darkness of their characters, despite — or maybe
because of — the fastidiousness of their interpretations.
A dense thoughtfulness has always been a hallmark of Mr. Schreiber's
Shakespearean turns, and it is here matched by Ms. Ehle's nuanced delineation of
Lady Macbeth's gradual disintegration. But together and separately they remain
cool customers in a play that demands something closer to ferocious heat. The
play's dark vision should colonize our imaginations with terrifying images of
the havoc wrought when man's baser nature unleashes its darkness, making
unnatural all that it touches. Spooky sound effects notwithstanding, this
production never really gets under your skin.
Like his leading players, Mr. Kaufman is a supple craftsman, and his felicitous
touches here begin with the late curtain time of 8:30, unusual for productions
at the Delacorte. Darkness descends on the park just as the Macbeths are
dispatching King Duncan (Herb Foster), and the play, so full of imagery evoking
night and its depths, dives permanently into that shadowy otherworld where "fair
is foul and foul is fair."
Best
known for the Tony-winning "I Am My Own Wife" and the long-running "Gross
Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde," Mr. Kaufman has trimmed the
production in accouterments evoking the stresses of war, the Public Theater's
overarching theme this summer for both its plays at the Delacorte. (The second,
in case you haven't heard, is Brecht's "Mother Courage," starring Meryl Streep.)
The audience assembles to a soundtrack of distant explosions. The weird sisters
are ghostly hags of the battlefield, returning not just to offer cryptic counsel
to Macbeth but also to escort his victims from the stage into the realm of the
dead. The play closes not on a note of hope, with peace and right rule restored
to Scotland, but with the witches setting another meeting, presumably to help
foster another cycle of violence (an image perhaps borrowed from Roman
Polanski's film of the play). The set, by Derek McLane, is a decaying mansion
decorated in gilt, surrounded by the rubble of a civilization torn apart by
unrest.
These trappings lend the play a surface topicality, and they are executed
effectively by Mr. McLane and the lighting designer, David Lander, whose
intricate work is particularly impressive given the complications of open-air
staging. The theory behind the production is that Macbeth is a general whose
mind has been corrupted by soul-deadening years on the battlefield, where life
must be lived in the absence of doubt.
But "Macbeth" is not really a play about war, as "King Lear" is not a play about
real estate. So Mr. Kaufman's imagery doesn't expand our vision of the play, and
some of the elaborate staging slackens the pace of a tragedy that best
hypnotizes by keeping the pedal to the metal. "Macbeth" is full of allusions to
time, and too often we are aware of it as it sifts through Mr. Kaufman's
hardworking hands.
Lackluster performances in most of the supporting roles compound the problem.
Varying from competent (Mr. Foster's Duncan and doctor) to bland (the Banquo of
Teagle F. Bougere) to strident (Florencia Lozano's Lady Macduff), the actors
rarely command attention, leaving Mr. Schreiber and Ms. Ehle to provide
virtually all of the dramatic firepower.
That they don't quite deliver enough has less to do with their talents than with
matching actors to roles. Mr. Schreiber and Ms. Ehle offer finely detailed
portraits of complex people breaking apart as their murderous acts reverberate
in their minds and in the world around them. But at no point do these fine
artists seem possessed by their slightly supernatural characters. We leave
impressed by the dedication of actors to their craft, not hollowed out by a
hair-raising encounter with two of Shakespeare's darkest and most disturbing
creations.
Macbeth
By William Shakespeare; directed by Moisés Kaufman; sets by Derek McLane;
costumes by Michael Krass; lighting by David Lander; music by Peter Golub; sound
by Acme Sound Partners; dramaturg, Robert Blacker; fight director, Rick Sordelet.
Shakespeare in the Park, presented by the Public Theater. At the Delacorte
Theater, Central Park; (212) 539-8750. Through July 9. Running time: 2 hours, 20
minutes.
WITH: Liev Schreiber (Macbeth), Jennifer Ehle (Lady Macbeth), Joan MacIntosh,
Ching Valdes-Aran and Lynn Cohen (Weird Sisters), Herb Foster (Duncan), Jacob
Fishel (Malcolm), Teagle F. Bougere (Banquo), Florencia Lozano (Lady Macduff)
and Sterling K. Brown (Macduff).
Back to Top
A Talk About `Macbeth` With Liev
Schreiber
transcript
CHARLIE ROSE: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight we talk about North Korea
with Wendy Sherman and Don Gregg.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON GREGG, KOREA SOCIETY: The Japanese are probably most angry. The South
Vietnamese are probably embarrassed and chagrined and the Chinese are probably
embarrassed and angry. But it`s a risk that the North Koreans took, and there is
analysis coming out of South Korea already saying that the North Koreans are the
clear winner because they were winning to run this risk to flex their muscles
and show the world that they are deeply serious about gaining bilateral talks
with the United States.
WENDY SHERMAN, FORMER AMBASSADOR: When we began the 21st century everyone said
this is going to be the Asian century, that in some ways the 20th Century had
been the integration of Europe and the transatlantic century. But in fact this
has been the Middle East century so far.
And I think that North Korea in some ways is reminding us in a dangerous and
terrible way that we better pay attention to the changing balance of power and
the geopolitics of Asia. Now China is the No. 1 trading partner with South
Korea, not the United States. Japan is the No. 1 supplier to China. Things are
changing in Asia. And the U.S. has to be present.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: And we talk about "Macbeth" with Liev Schreiber.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LIEV SCHREIBER, ACTOR: The trick to good drama is that sense of conflict even
within a character, and it`s something that I learned from reading those plays.
So if you can get someone to identify with the character like Macbeth, it`s much
more -- I think you`re -- it`s a much more successful endeavor than to just get
them to vilify him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: North Korea and "Macbeth" coming up.
(SPONSORSHIP BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: From our studios in New York City, this is CHARLIE ROSE.
CHARLIE ROSE: We begin tonight with North Korea, which test-fired seven missiles
yesterday. At the request of Japan the United Nations Security Council met today
in an emergency session. Japan proposed a draft resolution calling for
sanctions.
China and Russia favor a weaker council statement. Also, Christopher Hill, the
chief U.S. envoy to the six-party talks, left today for the region. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice addressed the missile test in a press conference. And
here`s a part of what she said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: I can`t really judge the motivations from
the North Korean regime. I wouldn`t begin to try. But I will note the effect
that their actions are having.
And the effect is that they are being throughout the world, of course, in the
region but also at NATO, we`ve had expressions from countries all over the world
of concern about this provocation that the North Koreans have engaged in.
The wisdom of the six-party framework is that it is now not a matter of the
United States and North Korea. It is really a matter of the region saying to
North Korea that it has to change its behavior. The international community does
have at its disposal a number of tools to make it more difficult for North Korea
to engage in this kind of brinksmanship and to engage in the continued pursuit
of its nuclear weapons programs and of its missile programs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: Joining me in New York is Donald Gregg, president of the Korea
society. He served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea under President George Bush
from 1989 to 1993, was a prominent foreign policy advisor to President Bush.
Joining me from Washington, Ambassador Wendy Sherman. She formerly served in the
Clinton administration on special advisor on North Korea to both the president
and the secretary of state. She is currently a principal at the Albright Group.
I am pleased to have them both here.
Let me just start with the question that seems to unanswered so far, motivation
for the North Koreans. First you, Don.
DON GREGG: Well, it`s very hard for us to fathom it. I think that the main thing
that I see is that the Sowell (ph) missiles reeks of military participation. I
think is a. --
CHARLIE ROSE: Reeks of military participating meaning what?
DON GREGG: Meaning that it is -- is it a decision in which the military played a
large part.
The North Korean ambassador to the U.N. Yesterday was asked and he said, "Don`t
ask me. I`m a diplomat. I never know what the military is thinking." So that`s
part of it.
I think it is also esprit de corps (ph) saying we want to talk to you, but don`t
tread on me and treat us with respect.
I`m sorry they did it, because I thought that they had a clear enough knowledge
of what it would cost them from the warnings they had received from the United
States, from China, from South Korea, from Russia and from Japan.
CHARLIE ROSE: Have they showed that kind of understanding in terms of an
appreciation of the warnings, an appreciation of consequences before?
DON GREGG: I think the North Koreans have not been bad at playing a rather weak
hand of cards, but I think today they took a very, very calculated risk by
firing the salvo of missiles. And we have a lot to learn before we can make a
definitive judgment as to who won and who lost.
CHARLIE ROSE: We`ll get to questions of what the American response ought to be
and what the U.N. response ought to be. Bit do you think in the end it was
simply "pay attention to me"?
DON GREGG: Largely that. Largely that. Pay attention to me. We want to talk. We
told you we want to talk. And until we talk bilaterally, these major problems,
which grow larger with inattention, are not going to be solved.
CHARLIE ROSE: Wendy Sherman, what do you think about motivation and what they
might have might, in their own calculation, been doing?
WENDY SHERMAN: I agree with much of what Don has said. I think in addition,
North Korea has been watching what has gone on in the world. They learned out of
Iraq and out of Serbia, for that matter, out of the former Yugoslavia, that the
countries that do not have nuclear weapons and missiles are likely to be
attacked by the United States of America, and regimes then will fall.
And Kim Jong-Il above all else does not want to fall. He wants his regime to be
secure. He is playing his cards with the military, which is critical in North
Korea. He is, after all, the chairman of the National Defense Commission.
At the same time he has looked at what the United States has done not only in
Iraq but more recently in Iran. Here a country behaved badly, basically kicked
out the IAEA, said we`re going to hold onto our highly enriched uranium program.
The United States, after saying they weren`t going to negotiate, they weren`t
going to negotiate, offers direct negotiations, offers a package with partners
and allies. It includes a light water reactor, the very reactor that the Clinton
administration was trying to put in place for North Korea, that the Bush
administration said no go.
And so North Korea is indeed saying, "What about us? We`re the country that has
the nuclear weapons. We`re the country that is on the verge of having an
inter-continental ballistic missile. How come you`re dealing with all these
other guys and you`re not dealing with us?"
CHARLIE ROSE: So how do you assess the failure of the long range missile and the
impact it has that after, what was it, 40 seconds?
WENDY SHERMAN: There`s no question that it is better that this Taepodong 2
missile failed than it succeeded. But that shouldn`t give us complete comfort
either, because the North Koreans will get data out of this failed test. They
will no what in their system is working and what in their system is not working.
It will help to enhance their capability.
And I think the fundamental issue here is even after there is condemnation by
the world community, as I think there has been, this was provocative. This was
dangerous. After their sanctions are imposed either multilaterally or
multilaterally, though I think any multilateral sanctions will be quite weak.
We still have a North Korea that has six, eight, ten nuclear weapons or at least
the plutonium for those weapons and a North Korea that has a growing long-range
missile capability. And those two in combination are lethal for the world
community and for the United States. And so the Bush administration ought not to
wait for the two, four, six, eight, 10 years it will take them to perfect that
capability. It`s time to stop allowing North Korea to cross red line after red
line and to stop them in their tracks.
CHARLIE ROSE: I want to come to what that means in just a second, but let me
just go to the Chinese. We all believe the Chinese have influence with the North
Koreans. Did they have influence on this issue?
DON GREGG: I think they exerted considerable influence.
CHARLIE ROSE: What`s the evidence of that?
DON GREGG: Well, what they said publicly and repeatedly. It will be interesting
to see if their vice premiere visits North Korea in a few days, as he`s
scheduled to do. The South Koreans are now saying that they were informed by the
Russians who were informed by the North Koreans in advance of this firing and
the South Koreans assume that probably China was also notified. I don`t know
that for a fact.
CHARLIE ROSE: The question is whether China wanted them not to and exerted any
influence to stop them.
DON GREGG: That`s a very interesting question. And I`m not sure that we fully
know the answer to that. To back up with Wendy was saying, I would quote Rich
Armitage who has broken his silence as deputy secretary of state under Colin
Powell. He has publicly said we will look very foolish if we don`t eventually
give the North Koreans the same incentives via a package to negotiate that we
have now given Iran.
CHARLIE ROSE: He didn`t break his silence. He was on this program about two
weeks ago for an hour interview and said exactly that.
DON GREGG: Good.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me talk about what should be done now, which Wendy opened up.
What do you think the United States should do and has to do?
DON GREGG: Well, I think the way they have reacted so far is commendable.
There`s not been a lot of saber rattling. They`re sending Chris Hill, who is a
very astute diplomat, to the region. Apparently, his trip was scheduled before
that. But anyway, he is going. And I think there is a widely varied rate of
pulse rates going on out there.
I think that each of the neighboring countries feels rather differently about
this. The Japanese are probably most angry. The South Vietnamese are probably
embarrassed and chagrined, and the Chinese are probably embarrassed and angry.
But it`s a risk that the North Koreans took. And there is analysis coming out of
South Korea already saying that the North Koreans are the clear winner, because
they were willing to run this risk to flex their muscles and show the world that
they are deeply serious about gaining bilateral talks with the United States.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think that will be the end result?
DON GREGG: I think the difficulty is that what they did plays right into the
hands of hard-liners in the Bush administration that don`t want to talk to them
under any circumstances. And here I think what they have done is make it harder
for those people who swallow their pride and suddenly say, "OK, well, we will
talk to these people."
I think what has happened really delays the resumption of dialogue, which in my
view is the only way these problems are eventually going to be solved.
CHARLIE ROSE: Bilateral negotiations.
DON GREGG: Bilateral.
CHARLIE ROSE: Wendy Sherman, do you believe that, as well?
WENDY SHERMAN: I believe that there have to be bilateral negotiations. It`s fine
if they`re in the context of the six-party talks. I do think there is some
utility to the multilateral form that has been set up here.
But although none of us want a nuclear Korean Peninsula, none of the parties in
the talks, we don`t all share exactly the same objectives. And the Chinese, when
we negotiated a missile moratorium in the `90s after the 1998 missile launch, we
know for a fact that the Chinese were quite active in helping us to attain that
missile moratorium.
So I suspect the Chinese did put some pressure on North Korea, not nearly as
much as the United States wanted China to. I don`t think China will ever put on
the kind of pressure that the Bush administration hopes for -- cut off oil or
cut off food supplies or cut off any economic assistance -- but nonetheless the
Chinese cannot be happy with this instance.
And they can`t be happy, also, because Japan will hasten its path to
militarization, to missile defense. That means that China is going to build up
their military some more. And we could be off to an arms race on the Korean
Peninsula, which is not good for anyone.
I think the Bush administration is doing some of the right things here. The
entire international community should condemn what occurred here. It was
provocative. It was dangerous.
I think after the sanctions or whatever action is taken, however, we will
ultimately move back to negotiations. And a couple things have to happen when
the negotiations get started again.
First, I think the world of Ambassador Hill. I think he is a very capable and
professional and skilled diplomat, but he has come to these negotiations with
very little in his pocket, because the administration is so divided internally.
And I think unfortunately that after North Korea has seen that Iran has had
Condoleezza Rice directly involved and has had the undersecretary for political
affairs directly involved, they are going to want someone higher in the
hierarchy than Ambassador Hill, as skilled as he is.
And so I would urge the Bush administration to think about a North Korea policy
coordinator of some high level or at least some acknowledgment that this is on
high on the priority list for the administration. They don`t want to do that
right now, because they don`t want North Korea to think that they`re playing
right into this saber rattling on North Korea`s part.
But nonetheless there has to be an indication that the U.S. is going to go at
this negotiation seriously, have direct talks within the context of the
multilateral discussions, and put some package on the table that is real
diplomacy, not just covering over things because the administration can`t come
to one mind.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think diplomacy is the only answer?
WENDY SHERMAN: I think all of the options where North Korea is concerned are
very unattractive. And so of all of the unattractive options, diplomacy is the
best option. It will, at the very least, help test North Korea`s intentions and
see if, in fact, they will give up their nuclear weapons or will give up their
long range ballistic missiles.
I don`t think we know the answer to that anymore. At one point I was sure that
they would. But it has gone on for so long, and they have gained so much
additional leverage with their additional nuclear weapons that I`m not so sure
anymore but we have to find out.
CHARLIE ROSE: go ahead.
DON GREGG: I was just going to support what Wendy said by the need to have a
higher level of dialogue. When the North Koreans fired their first Taepodong
missile there was a panel formed which recommended that higher- level person be
appointed, which was Bill Perry.
And he and Ash Carter were really the heroes of the first Taepodong crisis
because the work they did eventually brought Jo Myung Rak (ph) to Washington,
took Madeleine Albright to North Korea. And it was really the high point of
North Korean-American recommendations.
CHARLIE ROSE: And so what is Terry recommending now?
DON GREGG: Well, it`s a terrible irony. I was in Seoul and was asked to debate
Ash Carter live after his editorial calling on us to strike the missile on the
pad.
And I said, "Ash, it`s really bittersweet to see you and Bill, the heroes of
1999 and 2000, now recommending something way over the top."
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but why...
DON GREGG: I said you may provoke the North Koreans into a launch. He said, "Oh,
no, we`ll never do that." But look what`s happened.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think what they said provoked them into this launch, that
somehow they were listening to what Perry and Ashcroft were saying?
There was a very strong statement out of Pyongyang, corresponding to what they
said. If there is a preemptive strike by the United States against us, we will
respond devastatingly, including nuclear weapons.
CHARLIE ROSE: These are two reasonable men, right?
DON GREGG: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Why do you think they came to that conclusion?
DON GREGG: Wendy, what do you think? I haven`t a clue.
WENDY SHERMAN: I have talked to them both at length about this. I think that,
although I don`t agree with them tactically in this instance, because I think
the North Koreans would have retaliated, not only against the American troops in
South Korea but against South Korea, which they were very skeptical of and
because I don`t have confidence that the Bush administration would know how to
do the delicate diplomacy before and after such a cruise missile attack.
But I think that Bill and Ash are very frustrated that the Bush administration
has not taken more direct action, has allowed North Korea to cross one red line
after another.
And as you may recall-- and I`m sure Don does and you may as well, Charlie -- in
1994 Brent Scowcroft wrote an op-ed calling on the Clinton administration to
bomb Pyongbyong (ph), which was under deliberations and became the agreed
framework agreement. But Pyongbyong (ph) was the graphite moderator reactor
which still exists today which got frozen by the agreed framework. That its time
was operational.
The IAEA was being kicked out. And Brent pushed for very strong action, which
probably had some positive effect, both to make the Clinton administration more
muscular and also to make North Korea a little nervous about what might happen.
The -- and I think that Bill and Ash saw this op-ed as the counter to that. But
the circumstances are quite different. This administration has done quite a bit
of saber rattling and beyond by a pre-emptive war in Iraq. And by action
elsewhere in the world. So I don`t think that these are parallel circumstances.
I think in this judgment, tactically, they were mistaken.
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you think the world can offer the North Koreans to make
them give up the development of missiles that can carry nuclear weapons?
WENDY SHERMAN: I don`t know. If there is a package that will make them give it
up anymore.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because they don`t care about the welfare of their people, to
they?
WENDY SHERMAN: Not particularly. As you know, in the `90s two million people
starved to death. They don`t have enough arable land to support their people
with agriculture. But what little they have they give to the military. And they
depend on the U.S., on Japan, on South Korea, on China and the World Food
Program for food for their people.
Nonetheless people are very malnourished. There are no human rights. It`s not a
place any of us would want to live.
But nonetheless, I think that if you were to put a package together, it would
have elements of economic assistance, energy and food. It would most importantly
have security guarantees from the United States even if it was a regional
umbrella. It would include the United States so that Kim Jong-Il would know his
country would not be attacked.
And finally, something that`s very hard for Americans to understand and that is
a path to full diplomatic relations, which is a way to give credibility to the
country, to the sovereign of that country, elected or not. And to say that they
have a right to exist.
This is very hard for us to comprehend. It`s very hard for us to do. But North
Korea in some ways is looking for respect.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you agree with that?
DON GREGG: I absolutely agree with that. I would put security first and
foremost. There`s just an armistice in place. They have told me in my four trips
there that what we want is a security guarantee, some kind of a peace treaty
with the...
CHARLIE ROSE: Because they fear the United States.
DON GREGG: Because they fear the United States.
CHARLIE ROSE: Named them as part of an axis and secondly...
DON GREGG: Yes, and what -- they`ve seen what we have done. They see the way we
use our force, particularly this president.
And the first questions they ask me, and it`s the same guy is talked to by Chris
Hill. Why is George W. Bush so different from his father? Why does George W.
Bush hate Bill Clinton so much? Why don`t you understand us better? Why don`t
you treat us with more respect? I mean, these are the things that have uppermost
in their mind.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, I assume that what the -- I assume your response was you
didn`t keep your -- you didn`t adhere to the agreement you made with the Clinton
administration.
DON GREGG: Well, my first -- my answer to the first question was George Bush was
raised in Texas, and his father was raised in New England. And they seemed to
get a kick out of that.
CHARLIE ROSE: As someone who lived in Texas I`m not sure that`s accurate. But
having said that, their fear of a strike against them and losing power is
legitimate and real.
DON GREGG: Right. I think it is legitimate and real.
CHARLIE ROSE: And so what you have to do is create something, some kind of
agreement that convinces them you will never do that unless provoked.
DON GREGG: That`s right. And I don`t think the Bush administration is able to do
that, because I think there are those within the Bush administration who do not
want to validate Kim Jong-Il`s rule in any way. I think they are much more
interested in a regime change.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, tell me who they are. What are we talking about here within
the Bush administration? Who is on what side?
DON GREGG: I think the -- during the first term the set-up of the National
Security Council, the vice president`s office and the Pentagon was ranged
against the Department of State.
In this term I think it has been better. I think that Condoleezza Rice and
Christopher Hill have really tried harder to put diplomacy first and foremost.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, but who is now arguing for no concessions to...
DON GREGG: I think within the vice president`s office and within the Pentagon.
CHARLIE ROSE: Wendy? What would you answer to that?
WENDY SHERMAN: I also think, that although the president has said to Secretary
Rice, "Go ahead. Try diplomacy," in his heart he doesn`t much like Kim Jong-Il.
His heart is not in getting this solved in a diplomatic manner.
And you know, some people I`m sure most people watching this say I don`t like
Kim Jong-Il much myself either. One of the things that came out of the Perry
process which I was very privileged to be the person that`s counselor of the
department inside the administration who worked with Bill and Ash and then
replaced Bill as the North Korea policy coordinator, is one of the lessons out
of the Perry process, is you have to deal with the regime as it is, not as you
wish it to be.
Because analyst after analyst has predicted the demise of this regime. How could
they possibly survive after two million people die? How could they possibly
survive with an economy that has failed? How could they possibly survive this
isolated from the world? And yet they do.
Because he has enormous control, because they have a million man army, because
they have 20,000 rounds of artillery, because it is more like a cult than a
country. And people believe that all good that they have in their lives comes
from the Dear Leader. And they don`t know much yet, because it is such a closed
society. There is another world out there that they might be able to have.
CHARLIE ROSE: You know, there are people also that after this firing of these
missiles, they`re saying the president had it right about Iran and North Korea.
WENDY SHERMAN: Absolutely. And I had calls on my phone today with people saying
I was out of my mind to say that we ought to negotiate or engage with them.
They`re horrible people. We should take them out.
Except then you have to stop and ask what does it mean to take them out and if
you launch a cruise missile strike at their nuclear reactor or at an
inter-continental ballistic missile and they respond with their million man
army, their chemical or biological weapons, or some kind of a dirty bomb or
crude nuclear weapon.
People have to understand that Seoul, the capital of South Korea is 30 miles
from the demilitarized zone, that million man army is forward deployed. There
are still about 30,000 American troops in Seoul, in South Korea. There would be
hundreds of thousands, easily hundreds of thousands of deaths. South Korea, the
U.S., Japan, our allies.
We would win that war. North Korea knows we would win that war, but there would
be a real war in the way that we haven`t seen even in Iraq or Vietnam if this
came to pass.
So when I said earlier there are a lot of unattractive options, I certainly
understand the desire to end this, to stop them but that path is a very
dangerous one. It is one that South Korea, our ally, does not want us to take,
because they do not want to bear the consequences, either of a precipitous
implosion of that country and all of the economic demand that would create, or
of the deaths and the catastrophic end of their country as they know it, if
there is war.
CHARLIE ROSE: Can the United States and China live with the -- and other people,
too, but I`m just taking those two powerful countries -- live with the idea
that, if diplomacy fails, that North Korea, with the leadership that it has,
will have nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them to the West Coast or
to Tokyo?
Can we live with that and expect that some kind of containment will and some
kind of reasonableness will make it livable?
DON GREGG: I think we have to keep reminding ourselves that the missiles that
they are building are meant to deter us not to attack us. And I think it is very
easy to get carried away in sort of judging what these missiles are.
The North Koreans are not idiots. They know that if they were to fire a missile
at the United States, they would stand in danger of having a large part of their
country obliterated. So what they are building is not designed to attack us. It
is designed to deter us. And the longer we don`t talk to them, the more
comfortable they will become with that capacity, the higher the price will be
for them to give it up and there has been an awful lot of time wasted so far but
not addressing that issue directly.
CHARLIE ROSE: So you think this is diplomatically doable.
DON GREGG: On balance I do, but the longer the time goes the closer that balance
becomes and the harder it`s going to be to reach...
CHARLIE ROSE: And we think they`re five, six, seven years away from having...
DON GREGG: "James Defense Weekly" says there are a dozen or ten years away from
miniaturization of any kind of war head to put on the missiles they have.
WENDY SHERMAN: I think at the end of the day, Charlie, people make assessments
and estimates on the basis of what they know. We have this limitation to our
assets where North Korea is concerned and to our intelligence. As a result we`re
all making educated guesses but no one knows for sure. And I think don is quite
right that as time goes on, this gets to be a tougher and tougher problem not an
easier one.
Some people have said that the Bush administration has already decided to live
with a nuclear North Korea, because they`ve allowed North Korea to continue to
produce plutonium, carry on with what was a secret highly enriched uranium
program and haven`t stopped them. So it makes one wonder whether, at the end of
the day people, would have rather in the Bush administration some form of
containment, dangerous as this is, than to deal with a regime that they don`t
particularly like.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you, Wendy Sherman.
Thank you, Don Gregg. Great to see you.
DON GREGG: Thank you.
WENDY SHERMAN: We`ll be right back. Stay with us.
(MUSIC)
CHARLIE ROSE: Liev Schreiber is one of most distinguished Shakespearean actors,
having performed in many of the roles written by Shakespeare. He returns to
Shakespeare in the Park this summer for the production of "Macbeth". Here`s a
look at him in the title role.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LIEV SCHREIBER: I dare do all that may be become a man. Who dares do more is
none.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What beast what`s then that made you break this enterprise
to me? And you wouldst do it, then you were a man? And to be more than what you
were, you would be so much more the man, nor time nor place did then adhere, and
yet you would make both? They`ve made themselves. As if their fitness now does
unmake you?
I have given suck and know how tender it is to love the babe that milks me. I
would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from its boneless
gums and dashed the brains out had I so sworn as you had done to this.
LIEV SCHREIBER: If we should fail..
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We fail. But screw your courage to the sticking place and
we`ll not fail.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: I am pleased to have Liev Schreiber at this table. This production
continues until July 9. And I am happy to talk about "Macbeth", as well.
Welcome.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Thank you.
CHARLIE ROSE: Shakespeare`s in your blood.
LIEV SCHREIBER: That would be nice. Yes. OK. No, I have made a commitment to it.
And I don`t know if it`s that I`ve made a personal commitment to it because I
believe in it or if it`s just one of those things where I`ve made a commitment
to it because I`m one of the silly -- silly guys in school who actually studied
it.
CHARLIE ROSE: And it resonates with you.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes, I realized I might have a market cornered.
CHARLIE ROSE: You`ve done "Hamlet". You`ve done "Henry V". You`ve done what
else?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Iago.
CHARLIE ROSE: Iago.
LIEV SCHREIBER: "Tempest".
CHARLIE ROSE: "Tempest".
LIEV SCHREIBER: "Richard III", "Romeo and Juliet".
CHARLIE ROSE: Everything except Lear.
LIEV SCHREIBER: No.
CHARLIE ROSE: Where does Macbeth come in an actor`s life if, in fact, you could
plot it out? I realize that things don`t happen that way.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: You do what? You do "Romeo and Juliet" first. You do "Henry V"
second. You do "Richard III" or you do "Hamlet" second. How does it...
LIEV SCHREIBER: "Macbeth" is probably the midlife crisis for you, isn`t it? It`s
sort of the nervous breakdown play.
No, it was just -- it`s one that I`ve always wanted to do. I`d done it before. I
played Banquo for George Wolf`s production.
CHARLIE ROSE: His brother.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Best friend. And -- and it had always stuck with me. I love how
short it is. I love the poetry. I love the lucidity of it. I think it`s one of
the -- I think it`s one of the sharper plays.
And for some reason it had this sort of strange curse on it that has nothing to
do with any of the superstitious stuff. I think that there is something about --
it`s hard to get the production right, which always shocked me, because it`s
such a lucid play. And I think it`s such a clear trajectory in it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Peter O`Toole, for example, in a long conversation with me said
"Macbeth", after he did "Macbeth" he got these terrible reviews. I mean, he just
felt like he was so up for this, and it just collapsed around him.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes. I don`t know why that is. And it seems to happen
consistently. I don`t remember anyone ever talking about a fantastic production
-- well there was that -- the Trevor Nunn, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench one that
everyone seems to talk about.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, that`s a good start when you`ve got those three.
LIEV SCHREIBER: That`s one. There should be more. And I wanted to kind of kind
of -- hopefully to, along with the Public Theater, try to add another.
CHARLIE ROSE: Who is Macbeth?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Macbeth is a -- well, there`s two very different stories here.
There`s the real history, because in fact Macbeth was a great nationalist king
of Scotland, but in the retelling of it, the play was commissioned by Banquo`s
grandchildren, and Macbeth became kind of a baddy.
CHARLIE ROSE: Macbeth, in fact, had killed.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes, in fact, that`s correct. So I think that who Macbeth is in
Shakespeare`s play is a character who, through some -- some supernatural
soliciting, has -- has been told that he will become king. And given that
information, he has the choice of how to act. And he chooses to kill the king.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because the king is going to have -- be succeeded by his son,
Malcolm.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Correct. Correct.
CHARLIE ROSE: And Macbeth sees his way to the king blocked.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Right. And it`s -- for me it`s about a guy who is a good soldier
and a decent person, who is -- clearly has a conscience, who is tempted with
power and ambition.
CHARLIE ROSE: So the conflict is between goodness and the lust for power?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I think so. There`s a line in the play where he says, "And mine
eternal Jewel given to the common enemy of man." And I think of that common
enemy of man is ambition as embodied in the devil.
For me, the model that I always like is if you go back to the original sin, the
serpent, what he actually gave Adam and Eve was knowledge of their own
nakedness. And that that awareness, a person`s awareness of the -- their place
in life, their station in life not being sufficient is sort of the root of all
evil, I think. And I think Shakespeare chooses that model of ambition and
awareness.
He was perfectly fine before someone told him that he wasn`t fine. And then
everything sort of stems from that.
CHARLIE ROSE: And his relationship with Lady Macbeth?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Very, very complicated. I think that she suffers from the same
thing. And what I love about Shakespeare is, and I think he proceeds Freud and
everyone else in this, is the first sort of modern psychologist in that that
relationship is so nuanced and so full of behavior that I think we recognize
from contemporary life.
They`re so in love with each other, and yet at the same time they feel each
other`s aspirations and ambitions and good qualities and bad qualities. In this
case it is the latter.
CHARLIE ROSE: Some would say that if she had survived that she would have --
that he would have done better in the end.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes. I don`t know.
CHARLIE ROSE: Kind of like Jimmy Stewart once said or somebody once said that if
Ronald Reagan had met Nancy Reagan earlier he would have won an Academy Award
and never gotten into politics.
LIEV SCHREIBER: It seems like -- it seems like he shuts her down. In Act IV of
the play he tells her, "Well, then God be with you. We will keep our self
alone." And he shuts her out.
And she has a scene in which she asks him, "Why do you keep yourself alone? Let
me in." And he keeps her out, because I think he`s sort of driven to a sort of
mad -- a madness of solitude by the -- by his own ambition and by the spirits
that he`s seeing.
CHARLIE ROSE: You need to do this, go back to the stage every once in a while to
whatever?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes, I do. I think it keeps me sharp. I also think that it`s one
of the few things that I actually have an ability for.
And I also feel like -- that we, you know, that we all owe ourselves - - owe
something to the cultural melting pot. And for me, the Shakespeare festival is
one of the greatest things I think this country has to offer, that they do these
well-budgeted productions of Shakespeare plays for free in Central Park.
And I feel and I hope, along with the rest of the board at the public and Oscar
Eustace (ph) that that theater should be the seminal Shakespeare theater in this
country. And so I think that you have to make some sacrifices. It`s like I said
to you earlier today I was so inspired by Al Gore`s movie.
CHARLIE ROSE: "An Inconvenient Truth".
LIEV SCHREIBER: I just saw it this afternoon. And I thought, that`s -- that`s a
really great thing to do with your life. I mean, to be committed to something
that...
CHARLIE ROSE: An idea that`s so much bigger than you are.
LIEV SCHREIBER: That`s right, that`s right.
CHARLIE ROSE: That just the...
LIEV SCHREIBER: There`s a tremendous humility in that and a tremendous sense of
service. And it was, you know, sitting in -- very happy to be here. I was
sitting in the green room and watching the Warren Buffet/Bill Gates interview
you did. And it really puts you in perspective. It really puts things in
perspective.
And I think it`s sort of the opposite of what happens to Macbeth. There`s
something about Shakespeare that reminds you of scale, that there are things
that are bigger than you. And I think it`s...
CHARLIE ROSE: Human suffering, war and peace.
LIEV SCHREIBER: That`s right. But the ideas are actually...
CHARLIE ROSE: Protecting the planet, whatever it might be. Global health.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes. Absolutely. The ideas are actually bigger than the career.
And I think that that`s a very rewarding thing for anyone to do in any form in
their life.
CHARLIE ROSE: Since 2003, the country -- I`ve asked this many times - - has gone
through a wrenching political experience, which is the war in Iraq. Has there
been enough theater devoted to the ideas and the conflict that was clearly in
the body politic of the country?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Well, you know, it depends on your personal feelings about it.
In my -- my personal feeling is no, there hasn`t been. But I think there`s been
some excellent stuff. I don`t know if you`ve had a chance yet to see David
Hare`s ...
CHARLIE ROSE: No, and I want to.
LIEV SCHREIBER: "Stuff Happens". It`s amazing.
CHARLIE ROSE: I haven`t seen it, because stuff happens.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes, exactly. Which is a very good reason, but do try and see
it, because what`s so remarkable, what he did as a piece of writing is he
doesn`t sort of pick a side. Well, of course, he picks a side to some degree,
but the form of the play is that he just sets to narrative the events of the
past eight years.
And when you see them contextualized by a two-hour running time, you know, these
things sort of slip by us over the source of eight years, but when you see these
events assembled in a period of two hours.
CHARLIE ROSE: It has a narrative flow.
LIEV SCHREIBER: And it`s a shocking one, a really shocking one. It`s a really
shocking one.
And I think that there is -- there is a tendency in America, and I think I felt
this in Al Gore`s movie, as well, that we sort of let politics flow over us
rather than being active, regardless of what we feel participating.
CHARLIE ROSE: Did you have to find -- you just mentioned what good qualities
there was in Macbeth. Do you have to -- do you search for those so that you can
have some way to make someone who is a murderer in pursuit of power have this
redeeming quality that is -- that is something?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes. No, I believe in that, probably because of Shakespeare. I
learned that from Shakespeare, the duality of, you know, for instance, for all
intents and purposes, "Merchant of Venice" is a very anti-Semitic play,
relatively.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
LIEV SCHREIBER: And yet Shakespeare can`t help but write the speech "hath not a
Jew eyes? Senses, emotions." And you see that he`s always playing those two
sides off of each other.
In Othello as well, there is this horrible vicious murder. And yet at the other
side of that in the soliloquies is this deeply compassionate vulnerable human
being.
And I think that that`s the trick to good drama, is that sense of conflict even
within a character. And it`s something that I learned from reading those plays.
So if you can get someone to identify with a character like Macbeth, it`s much
more -- you`re -- I think it`s a much more successful endeavor than to just get
them to vilify him.
CHARLIE ROSE: So to access -- to access the journey he`s on.
LIEV SCHREIBER: To find the humanity, to find the common thread so that you can
-- so that people can find the connection in their own life and emotionally
identify with it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is the second act tough?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Physically, yes. Because there`s that huge break.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.
LIEV SCHREIBER: And it`s not as bad because, you know, there`s that huge break.
I have about 10 minutes off while we -- while my guys knock off Lady Macbeth and
everything.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right, right.
LIEV SCHREIBER: And then there`s the big fight at the end. But I actually find
the first act more difficult just because you`re working more. You know, he`s
on...
CHARLIE ROSE: He`s on more often.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Almost every scene in the first act. The second act is the sort
of, dramatically, the more expansive act and also the big fight. So emotionally
more demanding.
CHARLIE ROSE: When you got ready to do this, this is the first time you`ve done
Macbeth?
LIEV SCHREIBER: No. First time I`ve played the character, yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Did you -- did you go out and read everything you could find about
"Macbeth"? Did you go out and see every performance of "Macbeth" that`s on film?
Or...
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes, what I like to do is I like to watch everything that I can
possibly see. I watched the Orson Welles again. I watched the Polanski. I
watched the Anthony Shirr (ph). I watched the McKellen and several others.
Nickel Williamson (ph).
CHARLIE ROSE: And how do you keep those things from creeping into your
performance?
LIEV SCHREIBER: It`s impossible. You know, because I`ve become this guy who does
remakes, everyone asks me this all the time.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
LIEV SCHREIBER: I really think it`s impossible. If you`re connected to A, the
text, first of all, which is I think the core -- the core engine of any
Shakespeare performance, and your own truth within that text, you`re going to be
different from that other actor.
Now if they have good ideas, I personally feel that you owe it to the audience
to steal every single one of them.
CHARLIE ROSE: I do, too. If there`s something good it`s worth stealing.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Absolutely.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you find your own authenticity in terms of whatever you do
with it.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes. It`s also part of what I love about the Shakespeare plays
is that there`s this 400-year tradition of story telling that passes from
generation to generation. And I find that very satisfying to be a part of that.
CHARLIE ROSE: How hard was it to get the language when you first began as a
young actor?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I don`t know that I had it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let`s assume you got it at some point. What is this key to
unlocking the rhythm of the language?
There`s a great story that I think may be true. I hope it is. Hunter Thompson,
who was a friend of mine, a friend of this show, was once seen at the New York
Public Library. And he was pouring over Shakespeare. And I said, "What are you
doing, Hunter?"
"I`m trying to get the rhythm -- trying to get the rhythm of the way Shakespeare
wrote." And if you`ve got to speak it, it`s ten times more.
LIEV SCHREIBER: I think it`s built into all of us. I really do. And I really
think...
CHARLIE ROSE: All of us who are actors? All of us who are human beings?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I think all of us, period. You just have to access it. I think
that part of what`s so appealing about verse plays from the Greeks through to
Shakespeare, is that that inner rhythm exists in all of us. It has something to
do with biology and a pulse. We just have it. And all of those verse forms, I
think, are wrists on the human pulse.
CHARLIE ROSE: I so much want to have you do the "tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow."
LIEV SCHREIBER: I do it differently.
CHARLIE ROSE: How do you do it?
LIEV SCHREIBER: There`s something about it that got me this year that I really
wanted to try. And I`m very happy that I got the opportunity to. I believe that
the two first lines of that soliloquy are connected.
"She should have died hereafter. There would have been time for such a word."
And then there`s no end stop there. I believe that tomorrow is directly related
to that first statement.
So "She should have died thereafter. There would have been a time for such a
word tomorrow -- and tomorrow and tomorrow." So that you see in the moment the
discovery of his own sort of existential mojo (ph), that what he was first
talking about is tomorrow there would be a time to mourn for her, after the
battle, perhaps once I was dead. Tomorrow it would be OK. But isn`t there always
a tomorrow?
And isn`t that the horror of existence, that if I have to accept, as Macbeth is
told by the witches, that he may live forever, given that there is no person who
is not born of woman, he has an eternal tomorrow in front of him without her.
And so in a sense it`s an existential speech and at the same time a very
romantic one.
CHARLIE ROSE: "It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury."
LIEV SCHREIBER: That`s not very flattering but true.
CHARLIE ROSE: Signifying...
LIEV SCHREIBER: Nothing.
CHARLIE ROSE: Roll tape. This is a clip from "Macbeth" in Central Park.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LIEV SCHREIBER: As one did laugh in his sleep and the other cried murder but
they did wake each other. I stood and heard them, but they did say their prayers
and address them again to sleep.
JENNIFER EHLE: There are two lodged together.
LIEV SCHREIBER: One cried "God bless us" and the other "our manners" (ph), if
they`d seen me with these hangman`s hands. Listening their fear, I could not say
amen when they did say, "God bless us."
JENNIFER EHLE: Consider it not so deeply.
LIEV SCHREIBER: But wherefore could not I pronounce "amen"? I had most need of
blessing, and amen stuck in my throat.
JENNIFER EHLE: These seeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will
make us mad.
LIEV SCHREIBER: I thought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more. Macbeth does
murder sleep." The innocent sleep. Sleep that knits up the ravell`d sleave of
care. The death of each day`s life, sore labour`s back. Balm of hurt minds,
great nature`s second course, chief nourisher in life`s feast.
JENNIFER EHLE: What do you mean?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house: "Glamis hath
murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no
more."
JENNIFER EHLE: Who was it that doth cried? Why, worthy thane, you do unbend your
noble strength, to think so brainsickly of things. Go get some water and wash
this filthy witness from your hands. Why have you brought these daggers from the
place? They must lie there: go carry them; smear the sleepy grooms with blood.
LIEV SCHREIBER: I`ll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; look
on`t again I dare not.
JENNIFER EHLE: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
are but as pictures: `tis the eye of childhood that fears the painted devil. If
he do bleed, I`ll gild the faces of the grooms withal; for it must seem their
guilt.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIEV SCHREIBER: I`ve never been a method or thought I was a method person. And I
am -- I think the older I get the more I think that there is truth to it. It`s
very -- it`s a hard play to do.
CHARLIE ROSE: What did you see that made you have that thought?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I felt bad for him. I felt bad for him. I felt how...
CHARLIE ROSE: Then you succeeded as an actor?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I wouldn`t go that far, but I know -- you know, it`s just so
amazing to me that that 400-year-old arcane text can elicit so much emotion.
CHARLIE ROSE: And resonate so deeply.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes. I don`t react like that often. I never do. That`s not my
performance. It`s those words. It`s horrible. It`s horrible. And it`s wonderful
that it`s so horrible. It`s wonderful that it`s so -- for some people so
resonant. And I`m thrilled to be a part of that.
CHARLIE ROSE: Did you know Joe Papp?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I idolized him. I never knew him personally. I could pass him on
the street or something and say, "Oh, that`s Joe Papp." But I couldn`t say I
knew him.
CHARLIE ROSE: Of course you knew George Wolf.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Very well. George Wolf is pretty much the person I would say who
was responsible for my career.
CHARLIE ROSE: How so? George Wolf was the director of the Public Theater.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes. George took me under his wing. I played a small part in the
production of "The Tempest" that he did. And George invited me in to the Public
Theater and sat me down and had a long talk with me about doing Shakespeare and
sticking with it.
CHARLIE ROSE: And what did he say?
LIEV SCHREIBER: He said all sorts of very complimentary things, which you know,
as you probably know are very motivating.
CHARLIE ROSE: Of course.
LIEV SCHREIBER: And he said that, you know, he would like me to do another
production there. He asked me if I would do "Hamlet" and continually supported
me, gave me the part of Banquo. And I -- that`s what -- you know, there`s a
young actor in this "Macbeth", Jacob, who plays Malcolm, who I just think is a
stunning verse speaker. And I think that he will be one of those guys that we`re
going to see again and again, doing these roles.
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you see in his performance? The verse?
LIEV SCHREIBER: Clarity of verse. He -- the language flows out of him naturally.
And the sense is connected directly to the words. The emotion is not before or
after the line. It`s absolutely on the line, so that -- so that the words
actually carry the emotion.
That`s what`s so remarkable about these text, which is I don`t know any other
playwright that accomplishes that. Well, there are some. I mean, I think in
places, obviously, I think Pinter and I think Mamet has also done it in places.
But it`s -- they`ll usually go for one or two emotions, while Shakespeare I
think can carry the whole scale.
And it`s right on the word so that -- and there are very -- there are very few
actors who actually do that, that they simultaneously create an emotional
performance while -- while making sense of the language.
CHARLIE ROSE: I just want to switch to movies for a moment, because "Omen", is
it three?
LIEV SCHREIBER: No, it`s a first one. It`s a remake of the first one.
CHARLIE ROSE: It was Gregory Peck did the first one.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Why do they want you to do remakes?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I don`t know. Maybe it has something to do with the Shakespeare.
If you can breathe life into these stale old plays, let`s cart out the...
No. I was, you know -- having done "The Manchurian Candidate", I was a little
nervous about doing another remake. But I got to say that, you know, great
stories have a way of retelling themselves, you know. And it just happens. I
think "Omen" is actually a great story.
The movie performed really well financially. And I don`t think that`s a
coincidence. I think there are themes in that film that the original writer
tapped into that really resonate with people. It`s that -- and it`s the same
stuff in Shakespeare I think, which is that -- "The Book of Revelation" exists
in our collective conscience, so firmly embedded in our collective conscience
that, while the movie is not necessarily that horrific, the horror of what could
be and the horror of prophecy is very, very powerful, which oddly enough is the
same thing in "Macbeth".
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. Why did "Manchurian Candidate" not do so well at the box
office?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I don`t know. I was...
CHARLIE ROSE: It was you and...
LIEV SCHREIBER: I was surprised with Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, exactly.
LIEV SCHREIBER: And Jonathan Demme.
CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly. And a great director.
LIEV SCHREIBER: I thought it was a terrific film. But it didn`t do that well, as
well as some of his other films have done.
CHARLIE ROSE: What`s your favorite film role?
LIEV SCHREIBER: I love this movie, "A Walk on the Moon". I played -- I played a
kind of nebbishy Jewish guy from Brooklyn who was trying to keep his family
together, and his wife is having an affair with a very sexy, goyish blouse man
up in the Catskills.
And it`s -- for me it was my grandfather. And a surprising amount of the work
that I`ve done or that is close to me has been motivated by him.
CHARLIE ROSE: My impression is that family is deeply inside of you, and
especially your mother.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: You know, your experience in San Francisco, to the Lower East
Side. It wasn`t easy. Her aspirations.
LIEV SCHREIBER: I thought about that a lot, you know, because obviously in
making everything that is illuminated in a certain respect...
CHARLIE ROSE: About a grandfather.
LIEV SCHREIBER: About a grandfather. And to some degree about family history.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
LIEV SCHREIBER: And I think sometimes people are motivated maybe by what they
feel they need more of, or what they want. Or -- I think that my mother and I
moved so much as a child. And we were really sort of alone so much as a child,
that I was always looking for those places of bonding, particularly with men
like my grandfather and my older brothers, who we never lived with.
I think that there was a real -- that there was maybe a vacancy in me about
family, that I think as I got older and I watched other people and sort of read
books and watched plays, I saw that this was a this very powerful sort of
bonding element of human beings that I felt like I had missed out on. So I think
it`s good that we had that sense of solitude, my mother and I, because I think
it created in me a search for something more.
CHARLIE ROSE: It`s great to have you here.
LIEV SCHREIBER: Thanks again for having me.
CHARLIE ROSE: Say -- say hello to Naomi.
LIEV SCHREIBER: I will.
CHARLIE ROSE: I look forward to seeing "Macbeth".
You should, too, as well. I don`t know whether you get tickets, but it`s free
for Shakespeare in the Park, a wonderful thing started by Joseph Papp. And "The
Omen" is in theaters now. "Macbeth" is at the Delacourt Theater in Central Park
through July 9.
Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
END
COPYRIGHT 2006 Voxant, Inc.
Back to Top
CSI Tracks Down
Schreiber
by
N. Mendoza
When CSI star
William Petersen takes time off to revisit his theatrical roots this winter,
Liev Schreiber will help pick up the slack in the Vegas crime lab. The
Tony-winning actor has signed on to play a veteran investigator for several
episodes.
Schreiber, who starred in the 2004 remake of "The Manchurian Candidate'" will
first appear in the 12th episode of the season, set to air in January. His
initial "episodes coincide with Grissom's brief absence'" says a spokesperson.
It's uncertain exactly how long Schreiber will stay on CSI, which has
found itself behind ABC's Grey's Anatomy in the Thursday-night ratings
this season.
In a statement, executive producer Carol Mendelsohn acknowledged that nabbing
Schreiber was "a long shot" because "he really doesn't do television." But
producers "promised that we'd create a character for him that he couldn't refuse
to play." The as-yet-unnamed CSI has "established a strong reputation in various
police departments across the country."
Petersen will appear in the Providence-based Trinity Repertory Company's
production of "Dublin Carol" from November 30 to January 7. To explain his
absence from CSI, Grissom will be away on a teaching assignment.
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source for everything Liev. You'll always find it here.
A special thank you to Liev Schreiber for all he has contributed to this site.
© Copyright 1997-2007 The Liev Schreiber Site. All rights reserved.
LIEV
Schreiber made his directorial debut last year with the independent film
"Everything Is Illuminated." But as an actor, he's earning the
reputation as a go-to star of big-budget remakes. First there was his 2004 star
turn in "The Manchurian Candidate," and coming in the fall is
"The Painted Veil," a remake of a 1934 Greta Garbo movie in which
Schreiber's off-screen love, Naomi Watts, re-creates Garbo's role.