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Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. For the past few months, we've been looking ahead to America's 250th birthday by looking back at the milestone moments that helped make America America. This morning, David Pogue looks at ingenuity on the cutting edge, exploring why, when it comes to modern innovation, there's truly no place as inventive. as these United States.
From the time of Thomas Edison, he's not just the skilled. inventor. He is that. But he's also the savvy entrepreneur. The US has led the world in inventions.
electricity, the personal computer, the internet. It's all American stuff.
So Why?
So we got the cream of the crop of the world. Everybody's got an idea. But building a business, not many people can do it. America The Invention Factory Ahead on Sunday morning. The Simpsons, with 800 episodes and counting, remains the standard-bearer for an animation boom that's helped turn TV cartoons into big business.
Our Seth Stone caught up with the show's creator, Matt Groening, at the animation world's biggest international film festival. Who do you like to draw? You know, my favorite character to draw is Homer. Why? Because, well, I'm going to show you.
Here we go. Creating Homer and family made him a starring character in this magical world. I come here to be inspired. Matt Groening on his groundbreaking sitcom and the now booming craft of animation. Later.
this Sunday morning. From the bear to the boss, award-winning actor Jeremy Allen White rocketed to stardom, portraying a brilliant but tormented chef.
Now he's tackling another talented yet somewhat tormented artist, the great Bruce Springsteen. He'll talk with Lee Cowan. Trying to find something real in all the noise. As an actor, it's a risky thing to play a real person, especially if that real person. is a rock gull.
And you'd never played guitar before? No, I'd never played guitar before. You think you'll keep it up? No, I don't know. Jeremy Allen White.
His journey from a Chicago kitchen to a Jersey icon. Coming up. And then we're going to Los Angeles. David Martin this morning explores the real-world implications raised by the new movie, A House of Dynamite, a thriller about the unthinkable. A Nuclear War, directed by Oscar winner Catherine Bigelow.
From the mean streets of Boston to show business success, Mo Raka traces the unlikely career of actor Donnie Wahlberg. With Aaron Moriarty, former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy looks back on his life and legacy. and more. This Sunday morning, October 12th, 2025. And we'll be back after this.
When it comes to bright ideas, why do these United States have the rest of the world beat? Our very bright David Pogue is looking for answers. If you plot the origins of the greatest inventions in history, you start to notice a pattern. The light bulb. The phonograph The airplane, air conditioning, the zipper, The microwave, lasers, transistors, the personal computer, the internet, GPS, the smartphone.
No country on earth has as rich a history of modern invention as this one. But my question is Why is that?
Well, the answer may start with a guy from Ohio. We all know Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Kind of. What we like to say is, Thomas Edison invented a commercially practical. Light bulb.
Cal Wallace is a curator at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History. Light bulb was just one component. He was inventing new dynamos. Cables, switches, sockets, meters. If you're going to sell electricity, you've got to have a meter.
So it's a systems approach. On New Year's Eve, 1879, Edison gave an unforgettable demo in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He lit up the grounds, he lit up the laboratory, he lit up the office building with about 100 of these light bulbs and invited the press to come out to Menlo Park and see what we've done. He especially invited his investors. That must have been mind-blowing for a world who had not seen these.
When the lights come on, it's almost a mystical experience because. These are not candles, they're not gaslights, they don't hiss, they don't smoke, they don't create noxious odors. You turn it on, it just sits and it glows.
So we know him for the phonograph and for the light bulb. What else was there in his portfolio? Quite a lot. Motion pictures. Portland Cement.
Occasionally, we also have on display one of Edison's talking dolls. which is one of his famous flops. The inventive genius whose fantastic mind had formulated the magic of the inconvenience. There are these two archetypes that people use all the time that are almost always wrong. And they are the kind of lone genius coming up with a brilliant idea and having that idea in a moment of sudden inspiration.
That is almost never the case. Stephen Johnson has written 14 books about innovation. I'm just wondering, what do you all think? He also co-founded a new Google AI tool for research called Notebook LM. Edison gave a lot of credit to the crew.
He has a famous line where he's like, I'm not so much a generator of ideas as I am a sponge. Edison called Menlo Park the invention factory. he employed engineers, chemists, glass blowers, and mathematicians. He came up with this idea that if you got these interesting people together and put them in the same room together. that you could create a kind of a factory for new ideas.
And that's what Menlo Park became. Today, Americans come up with more inventions than ever. Introducing the dingle dangle. Genius Litter is a super smart, health-indicating cat litter. I'm known as the daddy.
Of the Scrub Daddy, the cutest but most high-tech scrubbing tool in the world. Over the years, hundreds of entrepreneurs have appeared on ABC's Shark Tank. Two sharks are out. Ryan and Doug have two offers on the table from Laurie and Kevin for their own. They think their idea is always terrific, very often isn't.
Including real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran, Kind Bar founder Daniel Lebetsky, fashion pioneer Damon John, and venture capitalist Rashawn Williams. Couple more. We met them at the Empire State Building as they were promoting the show's 17th season. Yeah. As Thomas Edison Might have said genius is 1% inspiration and 99%.
Perspiration. Anybody could come up with an idea. Everybody has at least a dozen. Really, everybody's got an idea. But building a business, not many people can do it.
Do you think anyone comes in not appreciating that? That the hard part is still ahead? Most people don't. But David, it's not necessarily bad. That entrepreneurs don't know how hard it'll be.
I would have never done what I've done. Never. That's a deal. Oh, jump C D. This really is the big one.
If you think about electricity, the personal computer, the internet. It's all American stuff.
So Why?
Why this country? The people that founded the country went against all odds to come. come here.
So we got the cream of the crop of the world. And you're seeing also the pioneering spirit of all the immigrants and all the people who try things out and bring that spirit on. And they bring that spirit on. And then you have the top people around the world who left for either famine, atrocities, what they made it over here. Yep.
And they had a goal to make it over here.
So they have, first of all, 1% of where they're from. I think we have to give this government a lot of credit too because a lot of the original venture capital funds were funded by government entities. Marketplace where the financial ecosystem has to be financed. Venture capital is much, much less developed in most other countries. And we also glamorize the successful entrepreneur in this country.
Yes, we do. Just like we glamorize the professional athlete or entertainer. If you start a company, you sell it for a billion dollars, you scale it, you want a cover of every magazine, you're a superstar in this country. And as for failure, There's only one answer to this. I have to hire you both so I can fire you.
This is so horrible. In most of the world, If you fail, it's a negative mark on your family and you are You know, it's horrible. You're the outcast. In the United States, Screw it off and you try again. The real question is what do the successful entrepreneurs have in common?
And I say what they have in common is the ability to get back up. Yeah. Take a rejection. According to Google's Steven Johnson, History is periodically upended by huge foundational technological breakthroughs. Edison realized that for the light bulb to work, he had to build an electrical grid.
But it was the grid that really changed everything. Because once you had power to your homes, like, yeah, you could turn on the light, but you could also build a dishwasher. And you could have a television and you could have a radio. The personal computer launched another huge round of innovation. And then the internet.
And now artificial intelligence. All of it. Invented in America. Openness to new ideas, willingness for consumers to experiment, that mix of A capitalist model with venture capital, but government support and academic support, put all those things together and. It's a pretty powerful combination.
He started out as one of the new kids on the block, but now Donnie Wahlberg is also a bona fide TV star and subject of our Sunday profile from Mo Raka. I was stopped on airplanes, on trains, on the street, at basketball, you name it, wherever I was, somebody would tell me. They love blue bloods. Why am I being picked on here? Because of fun.
Yeah, for 14 years, Donnie Wahlberg starred on the CBS police procedural Blue Bloods.
Well, I'm Detective Reagan. You need to get your ass outside. The hit drama about the Reagan, the fictional first family of the New York Police Department, had a loyal following.
Now 56, Wahlberg is sitting at a new family's dinner table in Boston Blue. Talking shop at the table. It really is starting to feel like home. A Blue Bloods spin-off set in a city the actor knows well. Is this a Boston dining room that you remember from growing up?
No. We did have a dining room and it had a low hanging, it wasn't a chandelier. My dad always hit his head on it and he'd always go clank. You'd hear the clank and you'd hear ooh. The same ooh every time.
Light moments like this were scarce while Wahlberg was growing up, the eighth of nine kids in the working-class neighborhood of Dorchester. We were. Poor. There were nine kids, a dog, a cat, my grandma in the basement, and my mom and dad. For a while, there were kids coming and going, running away.
Being arrested, there were arguments, fights, alcohol. I definitely learned from some of my older siblings that. Here's a clear path of what not to do. Wahlberg says he was the family peacemaker. I don't like to use the term because I don't want to insult my other siblings, but one of the adults.
Your role was sort of smooth things over? My role was to get everyone together. and be happy. by any means necessary. The Discord wasn't just inside the house.
As a community, it's Chairman Lamapart. 1970s Boston was a cauldron of racial tension. A controversial court-ordered desegregation program bust students. to schools outside their neighborhoods. As a first grader, Wahlberg was sent from Irish Catholic Dorchester to predominantly black Roxbury.
It Was probably the most important thing that ever happened in my life. Really? Absolutely. Because. Because I don't know what I would have not been exposed to.
Had I not been on those buses. In my neighborhood, if I would have said, Yeah, I wanna be a singer one day. I can Think of five kids and they would punch me in the face. Two of them lived in my house.
Now what you hear is not a test. I'm rapping to the beat. It was after hearing hip-hop in the fourth grade that Wahlberg caught the performing bug. I would listen to rappers' delight. I just would start writing my own raps and making up my own song.
That helped Wahlberg earn an audition at just 14 years old with Maurice Starr, the local impresario who founded New Audition. And was starting a new band. Maurice was looking for the equivalent of the Osmonds to the Jacksons. And what did your parents think? My mom was.
Super supportive when I said, Dad, I'm I'm going to start this music band. And he said.
Okay, well I'll tell you what. If you ever do make it big. And you come home. and you've changed. I'm gonna kick your ass.
In 1984, Donnie and his younger brother, Mark, became the first two members of New Kids on the Block. but the family affair was short lived. Mark quit. He didn't like singing. Couldn't sing.
There's a scene of him as Dirk Diggler in Boogey Knights singing horribly. That's actually better than he sang. as a member of New Kids. Did you know Donnie plays the drums? With four other members in place, including some of Wolverg's schoolmates, the group struggled at first to find its footing.
But by the late 1980s, they appeared to have... The right style. You got the right style. Who are these boys? Where do they come from?
And just what do they want with our daughters? While the band was popular, it was far from critics' choice. I really struggled with The criticism of the band. What was the criticism of the band? Oh my gosh.
We couldn't sing, we were. Puppets, we were fake. To feel better about himself, Wahlberg focused on writing and producing, not just for the new kids, but also for his brother Mark.
Soon enough? they had a number one hit. Marky Mark and my brother's career and His music was really when I started to get my head screwed on right of how. I can really prove myself. Prove himself and protect his kid brother.
My brother was getting in trouble, and my mom was like, You gotta help your brother and get him out of the streets. And I don't like to wear the marky mark in my brother's career as some kind of badge of honor. He's worked very hard for his career. But I really did, you know, help him in a big way and helped myself in a big way in doing that. After the new kids broke up in 1994, Wahlberg turned to acting.
You know why you're afraid when you're alone. breaking through in the sixth sense. What do you want? What'd he promise me? These people need care.
Give them water and any spare rations you can't. Other roles follow. along with reunions for new kids in the block. Waldberg now lives outside Chicago. In a home he shares with his second wife, T.
TV personality Jenny McCarthy. We have very similar upbringing, which really helps. How so? Um, I think we're both people pleasers, which could also be bad if you're not in therapy about it. But A lot of therapy we've each had, and together.
But we're caretakers of our family, which I think is something to be proud of. As my brother Paul's. They may now live in McCarthy's hometown, but Boston is never far from Wahlberg's heart. Witness his home office. Happy birthday from Bill Belichick.
Yeah. Coach. Bill Russell's the all-time goat, in my opinion. And Larry. I'll know about Boston.
Which he wasn't sure he wanted to do after Blue Blood's cancellation. I love Blue Bloods. I fought tooth and nail to keep it on the air, and here's an opportunity. To keep this character alive. And suddenly, when I started to look at it through that lens, it was like, how do I not do this?
If all those millions of Blue Bloods fans don't show up and love it, then. I know we put our best foot forward. Oh, hey, everyone. Between his TV work and concerts, it's a busy life for Donny Wahlberg. People say to me, Oh gosh, when do you sleep?
You want me to complain? Everything I ever wanted. I'm doing it. I want to work harder. I want to be worthy of.
The gift that so many people give me of their time. In their love, it's like how I ha how can I not work my ass off to repay that. But he says he's just doing what he's always done. My childhood was spent trying to bring joy and love. to a large group of people amidst chaos and confusion.
and pain. And it's what I do for a living right now. It's what I've grown up to do. It's the latest thriller directed by Oscar winner Catherine Bigelow, A House of Dynamite, a film about nuclear war. As David Martin explains, the movie asks some chillingly real questions about the unthinkable.
It's a nightmare we've been living with all our lives. I grew up in an era when we had to hide under our desks in the case of an atomic bomb. I suppose I was sort of Imprinted early on with the prospect of nuclear war. Oh, we got a quick alert, sir. Quick alert.
Quick alert. From where? Pacific. SBX-1 detects a ballistic launch. In Catherine Bigelow's A House of Dynamite, the prospect of nuclear war suddenly becomes an insane reality.
Rate of ascent slowing? Inclination is buttoning. Velocity? A single missile is launched from an unknown location in the Pacific. Cheyenne Maui seems?
At first, it looks like a test. Let's keep working the phones, everyone. If it is another test, I want to know. But it keeps on coming. Current velocity in the The object will go.
Sub Current flight trajectory is consistent with impact somewhere in the continental United States. 19 minutes to impact. And the president, played by Idris Elba, has to make an impossible decision. This is insanity.
Okay? This is reality. The insanity of The insanity that we would expect a single human being with limited preparation to decide in a matter of minutes. the fate of all mankind. Noah Oppenheim, a former president of NBC News, wrote the script.
and Catherine Bigelow, whose previous movies include The Hurt Locker, an all-too-real look at the war in Iraq. And Zero Dark 30 about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. and you're gonna kill him for me. applied her trademark authenticity to the unthinkable. It's my responsibility as a filmmaker, if I'm presenting an environment that really exists, to be as authentic as possible.
Did you have the the cooperation of the Pentagon in doing this. No, we did not seek that out. Why not? I felt that we needed to be More independent. But that being said, we had multiple tech advisors who have worked in the Pentagon.
I mean they were with me. Every day was shot. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would have been in this position. Retired Lieutenant General Dan Carborough nailed his audition as a military consultant when he opened his first Zoom call with Bigelow like this. This is the DDO from the Pentagon convening a strategic conference.
This conference is top secret. Please bring the President in the conference. And I stopped there and I Click down my camera. And I said, ladies and gentlemen, that's how the worst day of America's history will begin. That doesn't sound like something you were ad-lipping.
I was not ad libbing that at all. That comes from a lot of practice. He was on a movie set. But Carbler took command of the actors just as he once did with the real soldiers at Fort Greely, Alaska. the front line of defense against an incoming missile.
How realistic. Or those scenes.
Okay. It was super realistic.
So I have a son and daughter. They're both missile defenders. And now I can think about my own kids and how these. Actors Totally nails it. The missile is tracked as it arcs toward the U.S.
How long do you have if you're going to try to shoot it down? Lesson 10 minutes to make those decisions and to get those interceptors airborne. Two interceptors launched. And how does it actually shoot down? The incoming missile.
We'll go and basically Run itself into the incoming missile. Bullet hitting a bullet. That is bullet hitting a bullet.
So that closing velocity can be in excess of 30,000 miles an hour. Three. Two One Confirm impact. Confirm impact. Stand by, stand by, confirm.
What are your odds? I think the movie has it pretty accurate. when they talk about 61% chance of killing it.
So is the f and coin to us. That's what $50 billion buys us? The Secretary of Defense, played by Jared Harris, can only sit and wait. Huh. Negative impact.
The watch officer in the White House Situation Room is played by Rebecca Ferguson. Add second definers to the call. This movie is going to give the American movie goer. A chance to feel what it's really like to work in a space like that. Larry Pfeiffer once ran the real White House Situation Room.
There are going to be things that happen in the world that require the immediate attention and action by the President of the United States. And You need to be as perfect as possible. That's not how this works. Ferguson has all the procedures down pat. Get in the car and just start driving.
But she also has a husband and young son who don't know about the incoming missile. Go west as fast as you can. In little more than seven minutes, we will lose the city of Chicago. The President is confronted with the one crisis he thought he would never face. Yeah.
Whenever somebody. And they told me that's the protocol. They told me the same thing. briefing on when a Supreme Court justice dies. Replacements.
Replacement for what happens. If the replacement drops out. What to do if the if the original guy crawls out of his grave and wants his job back? We focused on more likely. scenarios.
Things we might actually have to deal with. Yeah, well we're dealing with this. According to Dan Carbler, a real-world president is likely to be just as unprepared. Did you ever do a drill when the real president was involved? No.
No, sir.
So if it were the real thing. he wouldn't have a lot of practice. I believe the last president to have participated In one of the exercises was President Reagan. Just being ready is the point. I give people a check and Keeps the world straight.
If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war. Right? Like you said before. It's insanity. Your orders, Mr.
President.
So at the end of this movie, when people are catching their breath. What do you want them to be thinking? I want people to be reminded that even though the Cold War is long over, The nuclear era is not. and that we live, as the title says, in a house full of dynamite. My question is, how do we take the dynamite out of the walls?
Mm. without tearing down the house. Without tearing down the house, exactly. What we used to call cartoons are now sophisticated, not to mention lucrative, works of animation. With Seth Doan, let's tune in.
The line stretched for hours as the man who dreamed up these most memorable characters drew them, giving fans the chance to take home their own piece of TV history. You have all these people here waiting to see you. What do you get? from being here. To be able to actually get contact with the people who really love the show and what we do.
What Matt Groening did was create The Simpsons, and it's still in production, America's longest-running sitcom. Program, are you watching? It's just begun its 37th season. Obviously, the jokes are great, but what I love is the storytelling. What do you think the secret to the show is?
It's a collaboration of all sorts of comedy styles. There's silly slapstick and physical mayhem and jokes that little kids laugh at. And then there are sophisticated jokes where we have references to great works of literature. To kill a mockingbird gave me no useful advice on killing mockingbirds. And films and music, there's something for everybody in there.
And also something to offend everybody. In the late 1980s, the pitch to do an animated sitcom for adults in prime time was novel. Raining told us the Fox Network originally wanted just one episode. Student body president. They're now going on nearly 800.
Now with each new episode it feels like a previous episode goes out and disappears and now when I drive my kids to school they're watching The Simpsons in the back seat and I'm completely surprised. You know, I don't remember the plot, I don't remember the jokes. There have been so many episodes you've heard. I feel like I'm watching it like a real audience. You know, I go, Oh, that's pretty funny.
Oh, yes, I thought of that one. Oh, I hate folding sheets. Aside from the jokes, they've seemingly made plenty of predictions, including this reference to a Trump presidency 17 years before it actually occurred. As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump. There are some things that we inadvertently predicted, and I think that comes from having done so many episodes that we're bound to get something right.
And we've got to admit that the world right now is completely insane.
So anything, any outlandish joke we make might end up. Coming true. It's all earned him headliner status here at the Annecy Animation Film Festival this past summer in southeastern France, founded in 1960. It's a networking heavy series of premieres and seminars. What does this festival mean for an animator?
Oh my gosh, this is paradise. I come here to be inspired. And perhaps to offer a little inspiration in return. Whatever project you're working on, even if you get discouraged, finish it. The industry is massive and growing.
Six of the top ten highest-grossing films last year included animation. This annual festival draws tens of thousands for the animation world's version of Cannes or Venice. complete with its own stunning backdrop. This lakeside town, Anne, is in the shadow of the Alps. This place is just so amazing.
It's like walking into an animated fairy tale in real life, you know. To appreciate it, we took a boat out with filmmaker Alex Wu. Who came to promote his new animated film, In Your Dreams? It worked. We're actually inside.
Our dreams. I mean, I've always been fascinated by dreams. I just felt like. A really ripe world for the medium of animation because animation you can kind of do anything, and in your dreams, anything kind of happens. Wu was with Powerhouse Pixar.
working on hits, finding Dory. What? Did you remember? Ben Wally. Before founding his own cuckoo studios.
This dream. Is there a way that you consciously try to Grab. Audiences, people who might not initially think they want to see an animated film? Yeah, I think in a couple of ways. I mean, the film itself, the subject matter is about dreams, right?
And everybody dreams. The other aspect to the film is the aesthetic and the look of it. Naked dream. What's so scary about this? Absolutely nothing.
Hopefully when people look at the the film they'll be drawn in by the sophistication of the artistry and the design. Was there any doubt that you wanted the premier of Animal Farm to be here? No, this is the perfect place for it. Andy Serkis' adaptation of George Orwell's 1940s story was more than a decade in the making. It was Serkis' first time directing an animated film.
The actor is better known for portraying Gollum in Lord of the Rings. And Caesar in Planet of the Apes. Caesar is home. He's a trailblazer in using performance capture. Precious, in which electrodes help transfer an actor's finest movements and expressions to computers.
But he had a different vision for Animal Farm. We were originally going to make it as a live-action movie with uh performance capture, but we decided that to retain its innocence more that we wanted to turn it into more of a classic animated feature film. Is it? Pretty amazing. One with some very recognizable voices.
Glenn Close, Woody Harrelson, Kieran Culkin, and Seth Rogan among them. But, you know, ultimately. Yeah, pigs kind of gotta stick with pigs.
Okay, first he got the giant eyes. Matt Groening says animators are the gods of whatever universe they create. And by the way, I don't usually draw. standing up and can have their characters do well anything and then you do this you can homer is his favorite to draw it's the name of his real-life dad homer has this head like this his mom is marge and he has siblings maggie and lisa but then here's the secret that i did at the very beginning i did a g and an m so my initials i hid in the character Today, he's the father of his own large family, a continuing source of storylines, like when his three-year-old granddaughter wanted a toy. And my granddaughter.
had shoplifted One of the dolls. And I don't know how she did it. And I thought, that's a great episode of The Simpsons: Maggie the Thief. That's an episode to come. From a man who finds humor everywhere.
Okay, so the walk and talk. is a real thing. Yeah. With CBS Sunday Morning. And is a constant observer.
I get that it's sort of an artificial thing, but it's so satisfying. His creativity most certainly resonates. Do you understand? Yes. And endures.
I did not expect the show to go on this long. I thought it was going to be success. But I did not know how that success was going to manifest itself, and I certainly didn't think we were going to be on the air after all these years. This is crazy. This is like...
some kind of dream. I don't know if it's A nightmare. Yeah. or the American Dream, I don't know. Jeffs, go to the walk and get all the cooked beef, slice it, 13 juice, get it now, get all 32 chicks.
Jeremy Allen White earned a spot on Hollywood's A-list with his role on the hit series The Bear.
Now, as he tells our Lee Cowan, he's showing the world that... He's the boss. Asbury Park is a Jersey beach town with heart. History and harmony. Not to mention a voice.
My soul stay near. I'm aware of this friend. Bruce Springsteen. His presence can still be felt in all his old haunts. The stone pony.
Wonderbar. Madame Marie's. The town's welcome met is its storied boardwalk. Where we found Jeremy Allen White. thinking about his own hometown.
There's a lot of romance here still, I feel like. And do you feel that way a little bit about Brooklyn? I do. Yeah, I always feel at home there. Had the Brooklyn boy come out here say I don't know, three years ago?
Sweet, nice to see you. He might have been just another tourist. My family's got freaked out. But not anymore. Did you take my knife, Jeff?
Did you take my His turn as the talented but tormented chef on the award-winning FX series The Bear? Has made the 34-year-old one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood. No, no, no, no, no, no, it needs to be a demi. You need to strain it, add more onions, add more veal spices. Yes, reduce.
I know how to make a stock hook. It'll take 30 minutes, let's go. Early on, it strikes me that if you were just to read the script, it was kind of... Just a story about a sandwich shop. It was a hard thing to explain.
And it sounded something like that, you know. Yes, this like kid he comes back. He's a chef and he's like opening a sandwich shop. And I saw my friends trying to be nice and say, oh, that sounds great, you know. He ended up sweeping nearly all of the awards.
Emmys, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, Critics' Choice. His two young daughters, they call him his Trophy Winner's Cups. They like them, they get a kick out of it, but they also are very honest and they're just like, why do you why do you get all these things? You know? I can't wait for the movie.
Back out here at the Jersey Shore, it's not those past awards that matter, though, as much as what might be coming down the New Jersey Turnpike. for this. Get away. Jeremy Allen White's performance as one of their own. Springsteen himself.
Someday come, I don't know where And yep. That is really his voice. Walk in the sun, but still it drams like us Maybe we're a boy, you're right. If you're gonna do one thing to get it right, you have to perform to the point of exhaustion, because he continues until he cannot go any longer. Let me miracle to earth.
Everybody's got their own idea of Bruce Springsteen. And I think at the beginning, I was approaching it like How am I going to make everybody happy? That's a fool's errand. It's an impossibility. Was there a moment that you thought to yourself, yeah, I got this.
I can do this. No, I don't think so. You know, I mean, it was, yeah, like there were moments where I found confidence. But. I always wanted more.
I wanted more time. I wanted to go deeper. Never owned a new car before. Yeah, it's awfully fitting for a handsome devil rock star. I don't know who you are.
Well that makes one of us. Springsteen was aware of White before the film. He'd seen and admired the emotional complexity in his work. and that's a well Springsteen knew whoever played him. needed to have.
Bruce has gone on record and said, you know, I have no problem performing for three hours on stage. That's easy for me. I know exactly who I am on stage. You know, it's the other 21 hours that I have trouble with. Did you know any of that before you really took a deep dive?
I mean, I was familiar enough with his music that You know, I understood his depth. Um And I understood, you know, we're dealing with a man who's looked over the edge before, absolutely. Um. But no. Mm-hmm.
How's that sound? Looks about right. Don't need to be perfect. I want it to feel like I'm in the room by myself. Yeah.
Let's try one. The film Springsteen, Deliver Me from Nowhere, based on the book of the same name. follows the making of the nineteen eighty two album, Nebraska.
Some say it's Springsteen at his best. But he himself. may have been at his worst. In his autobiography, he describes an emotional breakdown while at a Texas County fair. not long after Nebraska was finished.
I've just pulled a perfect swan dive into my abyss. My stomach is on rinse cycle and I'm going down, down, down. I just feel a need to get rooted somewhere. before I drift into ether. And I asked him, what's that panic about?
You know, what is that fear inside of you? And he said, um.
Now I I had this moment where I felt like an outsider and an observer. you know, in my own life. Have you ever struggled with mental illness yourself? Yeah, of course. When he told me about that.
that feeling of being an observer of your own life, that was very familiar to me. I remember when I found acting, there was a lot of like, I think like chaos and confusion, just a lot going on. I couldn't focus myself. And I found acting and I found some peace and I found some focus. He's drawn from that emotional trough as early as he can remember.
Are you a cop? Call me the detective. Hey, even during his days doing crime dramas on TV. You were kind of looking for certain things. You weren't just looking for a job.
Yeah, you know, I was very lucky. You know, I was a kid, so my first agents were kind of confused and upset with me for kind of like having a standard for what I would go audition for. You know, I'd never done anything before, and I was 13, and they were like, just go on the audition, you know. You know, it's not my fault. Yeah, I was born first or More handsomer.
Smarter. One of those auditions landed him on Shameless. For 11 seasons, he played bad boy Big Brother and Brainiac Lip Gallagher. You don't give a sh ⁇ . about me because you don't have to.
Right? You're just sitting pretty in your ivory tower and I'm a f ⁇ ing insect crawling on the wall until you've squashed it, right? What, cause that makes you feel f ⁇ ing powerful? Cause you f ⁇ ed up your own life and you f ⁇ ing ate yourself for it. His unruly hair and blue eyes got him counted among the so-called rodent men.
It's a term used to describe a few of the most physically desirable things that a man can be these days. His Calvin Klein underwear add Certainly helped. I'm just gonna pop into whatever he's doing. Before we left the shore, we stopped by the stone pony. where Jeremy Allen White tried to recreate on film Springsteen's early glory days.
And Bruce was there like he was a lot of days and he came out and he kind of introduced me to the audience.
So he gave them to me all warmed up. They made me feel like a star for three and a half minutes. And then our first AD would say cut and they would go silent. And I remembered, I am not Bruce Springsteen. I am just an actor.
A guy from Brooklyn playing a guy from Jersey. They both seem to understand one another. And neither would change a thing. Uh the ride is fun, but I'm, you know. I'm filled up.
I just want to work with people I admire and be able to keep doing what I love to do. That's what's important to me.
So, if all the fame and success ended? After this film You'd feel like Can I still work? Yeah. Then yeah, I'm okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. He casts the deciding vote in some of the most consequential Supreme Court cases of modern times.
So, seven years after stepping down, what does former Justice Anthony Kennedy think of today's court? He talks with correspondent Aaron Moriarty.
Well it's so nice of you to To come down to the court. You've been to the court before. No, this is my first time. Oh, you're right. Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Just a picture of. Alexander Hamilton loves to show guests around his art-filled chambers. This is a painting by Berth Morisau. But beneath that gentlemanly charm, there's a statue of the Pony Express, is the steel that once made him a force on the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Ronald Reagan was governor, he saw it. And he loved it. And I said, you're not Queen Mary. I don't have to give it to you. Justice Kennedy, now 89 years old, no longer hears Supreme Court cases.
Anthony Kennedy has just announced he is retiring. He formally stepped down seven years ago during the first Trump administration. I love sitting on the bench. Would you want to be there today? Uh Well, the only reason I left I love the court.
But I left for something that I loved more, which was my wife Mary. Justice Kennedy now has time for his wife and family. and time to look back. I was born in the West. and embraced that Western spirit.
In a new memoir, Justice Kennedy details how growing up in the West shaped his remarkable legal career, from private practice and teaching law in Sacramento, California, to sitting on the highest court in the country. Sacramento is where my thinking began about equality. liberty and freedom. Did you ever even imagine that you would someday sit on the Supreme Court? No, or on any court, in fact.
My father was a solo practitioner, so and I took over his solo practice. Actually, it took over me, and I had no time to see the kids growing up.
So when then Governor Ronald Reagan asked if he would be interested in a federal judgeship, He said yes. President Ford had asked him who his recommendation might be. And uh It it seemed to me a good way to be able to spend more time with my family. At just thirty eight years of age, Kennedy became the youngest judge on the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, but soon discovered that sitting on the bench had its own challenges. Good evening.
As most of you know, there was an attempt on the life of President Ford in San Francisco today. Just months after Kennedy was sworn in, Lynette Squeaky Frome was charged with the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford. Judge Kennedy presided over her bail hearing. Because I was a circuit judge and happened to be in Sacramento that day or that week. Should Squeaky Frome be allowed bail?
Well, it took me probably 10 seconds to decide no. But just days later, Kennedy says, his home in Sacramento was broken into and vandalized. It was terrifying. Fortunately, our U.S. Marshals are very good and nothing happened.
More than a decade later, Reagan, now President Reagan, reached out again, this time with a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. My intention. To nominate United States Circuit Judge Anthony Kennedy. to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Reagan's first pick, Robert Bork, had been rejected by the Senate and his second, Douglas Ginsburg, had dropped out. Kennedy, the third choice, said yes. and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. I think you could make an argument for saying that Justice Kennedy in his time. was the most influential justice Maybe even in the history of the court.
I think of him as independent. Professor Jamal Green teaches constitutional law at Columbia. He got to know Justice Kennedy in 2006 while clerking for another justice on the court, John Paul Stevens. He definitely was a bit of an iconoclast in the sense that he sometimes went with the conservatives, but very often went with the liberal bloc as well. And as the swing justice on the court, says Greene, Kennedy's vote was often a deciding factor on some of the most consequential decisions on both sides of the political spectrum.
The 2000 presidential election, gun ownership, abortion rights, and same-sex marriage. One way of measuring that is the year I was on the court. There were 25. five to four decisions. And Justice Kennedy was in the majority in every single one.
And there's certainly no one else who came close to that. Justice Kennedy did not take his power lightly. A devout Catholic, he considered resigning from the court in 1992 while deciding Planned Parenthood versus Casey, but ultimately joined with liberal justices to uphold a woman's right to an abortion. It appears that the court has upheld the essential section of Roe v. Wade.
It seemed to me that this was a woman's right and that what People of my belief should do is to convince her not to have the abortion, to convince her. But that she should have the right. But that she should have the right. This is a moment that supporters of gay rights have fought for for a generation. Justice Kennedy also wrote the decision in 2015.
No union is more profound than marriage. That recognizes same-sex marriage, Obergerfeld versus Hodges. For it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity. Devotion. sacrifice and family.
Somebody told me that it passed the refrigerator test. And what does that mean? The refrigerator test is if there's something that's interesting and well written. You put it on your refrigerator. All of Justice Kennedy's opinions, says Professor Green, reflect a common theme.
If you saw a Supreme Court opinion and saw the words freedom and liberty in the first paragraph, you could be pretty sure that Justice Kennedy was the person who had written that. But since Justice Kennedy stepped down, Greene says, his legacy has begun to fade. In twenty twenty two, the Supreme Court, including two of his former clerks, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, reversed Roe v. Wade, ending the federal right to abortion. And in that decision.
Justice Alito says that both Roe v. Wade and the opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which you would co-wrote. was egregiously wrong. Was it?
Five. Oops. Stand by what I've what We wrote in what we decided, but It's a difficult issue. Was that one of the rare times? that the Supreme Court would take away a right that Americans had had for 50 years.
Uh yes, it's it's uh quite infrequent. for the court to overrule its decision. It may not be the last Kennedy opinion that's reversed. A petition has already been filed asking the court to reconsider the case that legalized same sex marriage. Today, Justice Kennedy spends a lot of time with his own nine, his grandchildren.
And while he is careful not to criticize the current justices, he admits he worries that some members may be too public with their differences. Um actually somewhat concerned Uh about The court, it's a uh a little bit too Personal and confrontational, some of the opinions. I'm hoping that will settle down a little bit. You do write a lot about how important stability is and ethics. Do you think?
We've lost sight of that today. Is that another reason why you wrote this book? Yes. Yeah. Uh I'm concerned.
Democracy presumes an open, rational, thoughtful. decent discussion. where you respect the dignity of the person with whom you disagree. And if it doesn't have that, then democracy as we know it is in in danger. Thank you for listening.
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