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CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley
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December 1, 2019 3:13 pm

CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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December 1, 2019 3:13 pm

Originally developed by the U.S. military, the Global Positioning System -- which is now vital to nearly every facet of modern life -- is being upgraded to GPS III. CBS News Contributor David Pogue reports. Seth Doane introduces us to Ruth Coker Burks – who inherited a family cemetery in Hot Springs, Arkansas -- and became a mother of sorts to countless sons who were abandoned by families and churches because they suffering from AIDS. Lee Cowan gets to know Alec Cabacungan -- the leading spokesperson for Shriners Hospitals for Children. A new film -- starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce -- images what a conversation would have been like between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis. You Oughta Know -- there is a new Broadway show based on the music of Alanis Morissette.


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This is 5G built right. Good morning. Jane Pauley is off today.

I'm Lee Cowan, and this is Sunday morning. As the end of the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, the start of the drive home begins, and millions will be relying on their GPS to get them there. Now, we all know it involves satellites, but have you ever wondered just how GPS really works?

Well, our David Pogue certainly has. You might think of GPS as the satellite system that lets our cars navigate. All set.

Let's go. But GPS is behind much more than that. ATMs, credit card transactions. GPS is integrated into all of our systems. Well, great, but that makes GPS a big fat target too. The Chinese and the Russian are building anti-satellite capabilities so they could reach out and strike GPS satellites.

Coming up on Sunday morning, the efforts to protect GPS. We're in conversation with Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, stars of the new film, The Two Popes, brought to you by our one and only Tracy Smith. If you do this, you will damage the papacy forever. Oh, to be a fly on the Sistine Chapel wall.

What damage will I do if I remain? A new film lets us eavesdrop on two popes. You're mistaken.

You are. Played by Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins. But you did say to me, Jonathan, that you were nervous the first time you were on set with Tony. Later on Sunday morning. I cannot play this role anymore.

A matchup made in heaven. There is no shortage of charitable organizations asking for your good graces this time of year. Alec is the young face of one of those organizations and he's on a mission it's hard to forget. Hey, I'm Alec. If you're ever having a bad day and one of these commercials comes on, chances are Alec Kabukunen will make your problems feel, well, pretty small. I've always known that I was going to be different and I couldn't do anything about it.

So I might as well just deal with it and take this disability and turn it into a positive. Action. The story behind the face of Shriner's Hospitals for Children.

Later. Seth Doan has the tale of a miracle worker and all her sons. We're heading to Broadway with Luke Burbank to take in a new show based on the music of Alanis Morissette.

Faith Thaley lowers the boom on Baby Boomers and more. All coming up when our Sunday Morning podcast continues. Tens of millions of us are traveling home today. No maps needed. Our GPS knows the way, we hope. We rely on it so much we hardly ever question just what's behind it all.

But our David Pogue did. Head southeast on West 57th Street for 10th Avenue. GPS man, your car, your phone, even your watch knows exactly where you are on the planet by listening to satellites 12,000 miles over your head. GPS is always on, you don't have to pay anything for it, you don't need to know anything about how it works, but don't you kind of wonder? We're very proud of it, we enjoy providing that utility to the planet on behalf of the United States Air Force for free. That's true. That's right, the Air Force runs the American GPS system. Overseeing it all is Brigadier General Deanna Burt, the Director of Operations at Air Force Space Command. A lot of people think, oh it's that navigation thing on my phone, is that about it?

Oh yes sir. So think about your ATMs at the gas pump, the New York Stock Exchange, the internet, your power grid. Wait, are you telling me that the internet and the electrical grid need GPS?

They need a timing standard to link it up around the world. We have a constellation of 31 GPS satellites, each beaming a one-way radio signal towards Earth. Those signals are being broadcast continuously and when you are in view of that satellite, your receiver will pick the four best satellites in view. So you want one directly overhead and three on the horizon, that gives you the best position.

Of course those critical satellites don't fly themselves. What's the full name of this room? This is the GPS master control station. It seems to be a very secure room as well.

Very much so, just getting in this building is difficult. Active now, 58 out of Ascension. At Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, a team of young technicians works in this room 24 hours a day, watching over the satellites. The commands they send can adjust the satellites positions or check their health.

You got a good step nine for 58. Is there ever trouble? I was on duty as a crew commander a couple of years ago when we had a satellite and it turned out that the satellite antenna was just heartbroken. Captain Josh Harnish is the operations flight commander.

Do you have a spare? So we actually have about four on-orbit spares because you can't just send a fix-it man up to space, right? And how old is the oldest one still up there? The oldest one that is active to you as a user is about 26 years old. That's, I dare say, older than some of the people controlling it.

Absolutely. So the operators, they're generally fresh out of high school. That's safe for something as important as the GPS is?

So they go through a very rigorous training program and then anytime we talk to the satellites, two people have to actually look and approve what's going to that satellite. So one person couldn't go rogue? That's correct. There is no self-destruct command.

Let's just put that to rest. Well it's nice to know that such an incredibly important system is in good hands and absolutely positively safe, right? Is there any way an enemy of our country could take out the whole system? Oh absolutely and they wouldn't necessarily have to attack the satellites.

It's much easier to attack the signals. Dana Goward is the president of the Resilient Navigation Timing Foundation, a group dedicated to protecting GPS. GPS is so integrated into all of our systems that any significant disruption would be catastrophic, almost an existential threat.

At the U.S. Naval Observatory, where a master clock synchronizes the satellite's clocks, he gave me a little history. With this system, a ship could determine its position on any ocean in the world within 30 feet. Originally, the GPS network was developed for one primary customer, the U.S. military. A tank unit could accurately determine local time for a coordinated attack. Additional applications include precise weapons delivery during inclement weather.

The mandate was to put five bombs in the same hole. About 10 years after GPS was deployed, some people in the military were astonished to find out that it was being used by civilians at all. The GPS system as we now know it became operational in 1995. Today only a tiny fraction of people that use GPS have anything to do with the military. Mostly it's the underpinnings of our network technological world. All right, but what about this business of vulnerability? So if you and I were writing a screenplay about North Korean bad guys, would it be plausible to think of a scenario where they could bring down the whole system?

Yes, it could happen. A suitcase size GPS jammer, for instance, could have a massive impact on a major metropolitan area, especially if it was located on an aerial platform. Jamming means drowning out the GPS signal here on Earth. If you're an evil doer, you don't have to build some expensive rocket to blow up our satellites. You can just broadcast so much radio gibberish that nearby receivers can't hear the satellites. General Burt says she's well aware of the threat.

What sorts of things could a bad actor do? For GPS the two that I'm most worried about as an operations officer is jamming. The second piece would be I'm most concerned also about cyber intrusion. So how do we fight back against the jamming? So GPS 3 will be three times more accurate and have eight times more jam resistance. As it turns out, GPS 3 is a new generation of satellites being built by Lockheed Martin.

So we have to put on these lovely hair smocks first. This is the first time Lockheed has ever allowed a network camera crew into its factory. The air is very clean. Yes, it's actually a clean room facility.

Tanya Ladwig is in charge of the GPS 3 program at Lockheed. It's actually a clean room environment where the air gets changed out at least 10 times per hour. Even a speck of dust could damage the satellite once it's in space. Think about a fleck of foil that might be tagging onto your clothing and it gets into the spacecraft.

We could actually short some of our electronics. Two of the new satellites are already in space. The next six are right here in this room in various stages of construction. And this is not a model, this is not a mock-up. This is the real thing. So this time next year my phone will be talking to this. Yes, your phone will be talking to this satellite. That is really freaky.

Each one is built by hand and takes 18 months to complete. By 2034, our entire constellation of GPS satellites will be GPS 3 models, which are better protected against jamming and cyber attacks. Even so, GPS watchdog Dana Gower would like to see a backup system on the ground too. Users will essentially be bulletproof to any kinds of disruption if they're using both systems. So a backup system that would be on the ground? A complementary end backup system, shall we say.

All set, let's go. In the meantime, Brigadier General Deanna Burt says she intends to keep right on worrying about protecting our GPS. My job is to make sure you don't have to worry.

But I do think we need to be aware as a nation that there are threats, and there are people wanting to threaten our way of life, and we have to be prepared when they come. The draft lottery, a live report on tonight's picking of the birth dates for the draft. And now a page from our Sunday morning almanac, December 1, 1969, 50 years ago today, the night of America's first military draft lottery since 1942. With the war in Vietnam as a backdrop and the futures of some 850,000 young men on the line, the lottery featured a bin containing 366 capsules, one for each possible birthday. The order in which their birthdays were drawn from that bin would determine the order in which those young men would be drafted. First chosen, first to serve.

Congressman Alexander Purney of New York drew the first number. September 14th. Capsule by capsule, date by date, the board filled up. December 6th. Finally concluding with June 8th as number 366. Statisticians soon cried foul, arguing that birth dates near the end of the year had inadvertently been clustered toward the top of the bin, making them more likely to be drawn first. January 31st, February 16th, March 8th. Fair or not, as events played out, only men with birthdays numbered one through 195 were ultimately called to duty. Men with the remaining 171 birthdays were home free.

America ended the military draft in 1973 and has relied on voluntary enlistment ever since. But for many of the thousands who watched the drawing with bated breath, memories of that draft lottery telecast remain as vivid as ever. This is a very busy time of year for a boy named Alec and his very special mission. You've probably seen him a number of times on TV, but this morning we hope you'll get a chance to know him. There are few places both as hopeful and as heartbreaking as a children's hospital, especially around the holidays.

Hey, try not banging into everybody, okay? While there are many, chances are you may know Shriner's Hospitals for Children because of one very special patient. Imagine a kid who's told his disability will be a lifelong struggle.

Now imagine a place where that same kid is told he can do anything. I don't have to imagine because that kid is me. I used to be known as just that kid in a wheelchair and now I'm Alec on the commercials and that's special to me.

So what is love? If you've seen him, he's pretty hard to forget. Hey Ross. Hey Alec.

Chicago's Alec Kabukunen. He's one of the spokeskids for Shriner's. Since he started doing these ads five years ago.

With your monthly gift, we'll send you this adorable love to the rescue blanket as a thank you. Donations have skyrocketed right along with his bloopers. You support Johnny.

Do you feel like you've gotten better as you've done more of them? I know. Those kids see him as a mentor and that's who he's kind of become. Producer and director Tracy Trost hand-picked Alec for a reason. He's special.

Sorry. But just that I get emotional right now because he just grabs people without even having to try. He has this life force in him that not a lot of people have.

I don't know. I just fell in love with him. I am exceptionally impressed with you. Oh thank you. You are one of the greatest spokespersons that I've ever seen for the Shrine. Shriners known for their tall crimson hats is a fraternal brotherhood that's been doing charity work for more than 150 years. You're a big celebrity in our house. I appreciate that.

Thank you very much. Alec helped spread their mission but with 22 hospitals all around North America that means he's on the road about 80 days a year. It's a demanding job for anyone let alone this 17 year old whose bones are about as fragile as a teacup. I've broken over 60 bones in my lifetime. It'll be with me for my life. I'll live with it until I die. That's what brought Alec to Shriners in the first place.

A rare genetic disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta better known as brittle bone disease. His parents Alma and Gil got the news before he was born. What'd you guys think when the doctors first told you? Pretty scary. It was very emotional for us. We tried for our fourth child and hopefully it was going to be a son and when we learned it was a son and learned that he had a disability it was quite emotional.

All right very good. Brittle bone disease is just what it sounds like. Alec's bones are so delicate he could crack a rib even with something as simple as a sneeze. Physical therapy like this helps but there is no cure. And does it hurt? No. Your shoulder or your uh up in here where it was fathered?

No it's been feeling really good lately. He's a long-time physician at Shriners in Chicago. He's orthopedic surgeon Dr. Peter Smith, an expert in brittle bone disease. I'm healthy right now so right now we're staying away from Dr. Smith.

Except for social reasons. Right. I got you Lee. He's like any other kid. He's into video games and more recently cars. In fact he's going for his driver's license. My first right turn I drove into a ditch. So today's gonna be better?

Yeah today's gonna be better I promise you. Check your mirror, check your rear zone. There are pedal extensions so he can reach the accelerator and the brake but really that's about it. He's been doing so well with his lessons. You're joking with me. Stop. No, no you're joking.

Stop playing. That his parents surprised him with his very own car. Oh my gosh. Giving him the feeling of independence that any teen gets but for Alec infinitely more. He doesn't want to have any special treatment.

He wants to be treated like everyone else and I think that's probably one of the things that he has to fight for the most. Everything Alec does, he does with gusto. Including wheelchair basketball. It's the contact, it's the fast pace, it's everything that you have in sports but just in a wheelchair. No limits.

No limits right. Sports, just about any sport, is his escape. Alec plays so often here. Shriners even named the court after him. This place is very special to me. I took my first steps on this court, this is home.

Camera rolling, action. He thought of being a sports broadcaster in fact which explains the makeshift tv studio that's in Alec's bedroom. Years ago he started his own youtube channel called Smart Alec on Sports. Hey everybody welcome to Smart Alec on Sports. Turns out Alec is an encyclopedia of stats and trivia. Tiger Woods has gone through a lot of surgery but I think I'm beating him in that category.

He was so good TNT even welcomed him on its NBA halftime show. I really appreciate the bow tie you're sporting here today. Yeah thanks, thanks. I put it on for you. Thank you. I appreciate it. What about the rest of us?

Yeah will you do anything for us? I mean I was gonna shave my head but. He makes it all look so easy but of course none of it really is. There's a lot of tough days where I just I want to sometimes just give up and I just want to just just stop and it's hard to live with but there's a lot of kids who have more challenges in life and I'm pretty fortunate. But doing that every day isn't easy. It's not easy, it's not hard though. Hard is relative in Alec's life, always has been, but behind him every step of the way have been his parents.

The fact that during this shoot overwhelmed him. Hey everyone I'm Alec. I'm with my mom, my dad. Alec's grateful heart seemed like it was about to burst. You wanted the best care, the best doctors, nurses, and staff for your baby son. And I just wanted to tell you guys I love you mama and I love you dad. How could anything be more genuine than that? And we love you too.

In this season of giving we can all receive a little something from Alec Kabukunen, a lesson in what grace really looks like. I don't know too much about what will happen to me in the future but if something bad does happen I know that we'll get through it. I know tomorrow is going to be a better day and if it's not then I can make it a better day.

Today is World AIDS Day. Hi podcast peeps. It's me Drew Barrymore.

Oh my goodness. I want to tell you about our new show. It's the Drew's News podcast and in each episode me and a weekly guest are going to cover all the quirky, fun, inspiring, and informative stories that exist out in the world because well I need it and maybe you do too. From the newest interior design trend barbie core to the right and wrong way to wash your armpits. Also we're going to get into things that you just kind of won't believe and we're not able to do in daytime television so watch out. Listen to Drew's News wherever you get your podcasts.

It's your good news on the go. A day for stepping up the fight to prevent new infections and to support people living with HIV. Seth Doan has the story of a woman who devoted years of her life to comforting those in need. Men you might call all her sons. You inherited part of a cemetery? I did. What am I going to do as a cemetery?

You know a nice ring or a watch but. But it would wind up that you would need a cemetery. Who would have ever thought? Ruth Coker Burks told us this unusual inheritance of 262 cemetery plots was left to her after a family feud. My mother got in a huge argument with her brother when I was 10 and bought all the remaining spaces in the family cemetery so he and his family couldn't be buried with the rest of us.

That was the meanest thing she could think to settle the score. The plot set mostly unused until the AIDS crisis hit Hot Springs, Arkansas. You were with some of these guys as they took their last breath.

Death and I got to be old friends. Coker Burks, a self-described straight church lady, remembers when the disease went by another name. There are more lives claimed, victims claimed than toxic shock and legionnaires disease combined and yet most of the country doesn't know about this cancer.

Why? Well I think it's because it's a gay cancer. Scientists scrambled to learn more. By 1984 researchers identified that the HIV virus, as it would come to be known, caused AIDS. By 1985 there were more than 20,000 reported AIDS cases worldwide. See people think that the AIDS epidemic happened in San Francisco or it happened in New York.

It didn't happen in the center of the country but it did. As is the case with so many aspects of AIDS, the enemy isn't just disease it is fear. And as fear swirled Ruth Coker Burks then in her mid-20s found herself face to face with the disease while visiting a friend at an Arkansas hospital. She noticed a room no one was entering. An AIDS patient was inside. He was so frail and so pale and so near death and he weighed less than a hundred pounds and you couldn't really tell him from the sheets on the bed. The young man in 6H, did you go in that room? What happened next was dramatized in a short film when the patient, known as Jimmy, asked to speak with his mother. I'd like his mother's phone number please. He wants his mother. Honey his mother is not coming?

He's been in that room six weeks and nobody is coming. But Ruth Coker Burks returned to Jimmy's room and says she sat with him for the next 13 hours. What made you stay with him until he passed away? He needed me.

His mother had already abandoned him. Nobody wanted his remains so Coker Burks says she paid for his cremation and then put his ashes in a cookie jar and brought them up to that cemetery. She thinks she ended up helping maybe hundreds with AIDS, mostly men abandoned by families and churches. It sounds like it wasn't always love thy neighbor. No it wasn't. After helping Jimmy, what made you think I'm going to help others?

Well I didn't. They just kept coming. I couldn't turn anybody down. There was no one else to take care of them. There were just no other options.

There was none. The KKK burned crosses in my yard three different times. Really? Yes. You must have felt threatened.

No. I had a killer on my hands. I was dealing with AIDS.

Why was I going to be afraid of somebody burning a cross in my yard? Coker Burks became a one-woman AIDS help center, driving patients to appointments, trying to find doctors, drugs, or filling out death certificates. John Anderson's gone, Owen's gone, Danny, Neil, they're all people who died. Here we were pretty much left on our own. I had Ruth.

That was about it. How'd you meet Ruth? I met her at work. I managed a bar and she came in one night trying to raise some funds to bury someone that had died of AIDS.

Paul Wineland says they'd spin up drag show fundraisers to support Coker Burks work. One of the performers was his own partner of 10 years, Billy, stage name Marilyn Morrell. I thought it was really great the things that she was doing for people and then it turned out that I needed her because of Billy, you know. Billy was diagnosed with AIDS. Before dying, he left Ruth his favorite red dress.

Just to know that someone cares for you can prolong your time. You look gorgeous. Oh, look at you. Jamie Neuwirth's younger brother, Joe Ross, was buried here too. You have just been our savior angel, you know that. You just like melted all the fear and all that panic and anxiety. Neuwirth and her family had little money and were struggling in those final days of her brother's life until a nun gave her Coker Burks number. She did everything for us and all we had to do is come out here and and pick a spot.

She was a saint. Jimmy's right here. Do you have any idea how many people you buried here? There's over 40. She admits her memories are a little fuzzy. There's Tim and Jim.

And maybe that's not so bad. You know, back then it was just incomprehensible that this would go on and on and on, but it did. She says she found solace out on the waters of Arkansas's Lake Hamilton. No one was dying on the lake. No one was sick on the lake.

You could catch a fish and throw him back in and he'd swim away to live another day and it wasn't that way on dry land. Coker Burks took on an informal advisory role on AIDS in the Clinton administration and would eventually be recognized for her work. That was a good man right there. That's a good man.

In 2010, she had a stroke, which in part she blames on the stress of that era. And I forgot to point out this is Miss Misty McCall's grave. She has one biological daughter, but during that crisis, Ruth Coker Burks became a mother of sorts to countless sons. I didn't have the honor of giving birth to them, but I had the honor of being with them and the moment that they needed somebody the most. And I would take them in my arms and I would carry them across the river of death and there would be on the other side waiting all of the people who loved them and didn't judge them. And I had that honor of handing them birth. The honor of handing them back to their friends and to God. They were lucky to have you.

I was lucky to have them. Fair warning, if you were born between 1946 and 1964, Faith Salie is about to be talking to you. The phrase, okay, boomer has become the generational shot heard around the world. It's deployed mainly by Gen Z kids, those born between 1995 through 2010, and it's all over social media.

When I was a kid, I had my parents' phone number memorized and my friends and my grandparents and the entire city. The term okay boomer only came around because you have been identifying millennials as lazy and unmotivated for years. It's fashionable, it's political. Here's a 25-year-old lawmaker shutting down an elderly colleague who heckled her in the New Zealand parliament. And it's usually fired in all caps because it's aimed at folks who need to squint to get the message, baby boomers. In the 90s, my Gen Xers born between 1965 and 1980 had talked to the hand and whatever, whatever, which demonstrated indifference in a benign sitcommy way. But it wasn't aimed at a specific demo, which is why okay boomer is so devastating. Instead of saying shut up, which at least has a whiff of engagement, these kids are saying, oh, you just keep talking, old person.

We don't even roll our eyes at you. We look right past you to a future we're going to have to fix ourselves. And I think that's why I find okay boomer delightful. I shouldn't because even though I'm not a boomer, this meme can maim anyone over 30, but the okay boomer kids are not voicing indifference. They're making a difference.

Like these climate change activists who delayed last week's Harvard-Yale football game. These young people have inherited a world full of rising waters, disappearing species, crippling debt, and crumbling democracies. Gen Z is not catching Zs. They've come a long way from the silent generation. Look, we all know you're not right just because you're young, but likewise, boomers don't always deserve respect just because they're old.

I want to say I'm okay. And if being okay boomer hurts your feelings, remember, if you can't beat them, join them. How about a reality show called Okay Boomer in which old folks compete to figure out how to turn off the flashlight on their iPhones and reset their passwords without help from anyone under 55. Now that's something that could bring generations together.

You use Evian skin cream. And sometimes you wear L'Etatone. But not today. It's Sunday morning on CBS. Here again is Lee Cowan. The name Anthony Hopkins is almost synonymous with Hannibal Lecter, that chilling character that he played in the Silence of the Lambs.

Well, this morning, he and fellow actor Jonathan Price are in conversation with Tracy Smith about their latest roles. Something that just doesn't happen, just did. A pope resigned.

This is what the unthinkable looked like back in 2013. Benedict has been in failing health for some time. 85-year-old Pope Benedict, saying that he was too old and frail to continue in the job, resigned and flew off to retirement. And a few days later, something else that was once unthinkable rocked the Vatican. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina became Francis, the first pope ever from the New World. For the first time in six centuries, the Catholic Church had two living popes.

Your style and your methods are entirely different to mine. It's anyone's guess if the two men hung out or what they might have talked about when it was all happening. But a new Netflix film is filling in the blanks. Now I can see a necessity for Bergoglio. In The Two Popes, we hear what those conversations might have been based on both men's speeches and writings. It could never be me.

And since they disagreed on almost everything, not all of that conversation is polite. Jonathan Price, who's been said to look a lot like the real Pope Francis, plays him in the movie. If you do this, you will damage the papacy forever. And Sir Anthony Hopkins is Benedict.

What damage will I do if I remain? You did say to me, Jonathan, that you were nervous the first time you were on set with Tony. Don't let him know that I was nervous of him. Okay.

All right. No, I was. I mean, there was a, you know, you're nervous about any actor you're working with. I was especially, you know, I've been a fan of Tony's for a long time. Did you go to church when you were a kid?

Uh, yes, yeah. Truth is, Price slipped rather easily into the role, as we learned when we met up at the Met Cloisters, a medieval arts museum in New York. Of course, it's not quite the Vatican, but the Fuente Duena Chapel there has a certain celestial majesty all its own. So when you were first asked to play the Pope, what'd you think? Well, um, the day he was created Pope, the internet was full of images of the, both of us next to each other, recognizing the likeness. And, uh, even my, one of my sons called and said, uh, daddy, are you the Pope? Forgive me.

He's not, of course, but for two hours, he seems to get pretty close. Christ did not come down from the cross. Price, a respected stage actor, who's also been in more than five dozen films, says he still gets stopped on the street for this one. The 1985 cult classic, Brazil. I get people saying it changed their lives seeing that film. You know, I'm curious because you are widely seen as one of the finest Shakespearean actors of our time. How you reacted when Disney came to you and said, we'd like for you to be in a movie that's based on an amusement park ride? Oh, on that? Lower your weapons.

For goodness sake, put them down. The movie, of course, was Pirates of the Caribbean. And if you're wondering how Jonathan Price could be happy in a Disney franchise, wearing a wig, no less, it might be the advice he got years ago over lunch with legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg. So I said, uh, Mr. Strasberg, I'm doing this show on Broadway. I've never done anything for weeks and months on end.

What advice can you give me? And he had a sandwich in his hand and he said, you do it. It's your job. And now in the two popes, it's Price's job to face off against the intimidating Anthony Hopkins. God always corrects one pop by presenting the world with another pop.

I'd like to see my correction. Did you feel like you could relate to Benedict? Yes. In what sense? I'm old, like he is.

But he sure doesn't act old. It's astounding. It's something, isn't it? When he's not out shooting movies, Sir Anthony, who turns 82 this month, is an avid painter.

And you have several going at once. Yeah. You might say Hopkins has a knack for creating indelible images.

Not today. Did you do all these drawings, Doctor? Ah. That is the Duomo scene from The Belvedere. Do you know Florence? In a storied career, he's probably best known for his Oscar-winning role Doctor Hannibal Lecter. As an especially hungry villain. You knew Hannibal Lecter was the part of a lifetime when you read the script?

I knew it was, yeah, I knew it was one of the showy parts, yeah. I don't know how. What's your relationship with that character now? Nothing, I've forgotten all about it.

You've forgotten? But people must constantly... Oh, they want me to do the... I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

For him, the 1991 role seemed to come at just the right time. You fly back to school now, little Starling. Somebody said, why did you do that part? I said, well, it pays the bills. And I remember my mother had been very ill.

Paid for her hospital bills. Silence of the Lambstead. Yeah. You know, the hardest thing is to listen. To hear his voice. God's voice. On screen and off, it seems faith comes easy to Anthony Hopkins.

Or at least it does now. Did this affect how you see the Divine doing this movie? Did it make you look at religion differently?

Yes. I used to be, let's say, a non-believer. And nothing wrong with that.

I didn't believe in anything. Except I was in a lot of mental and emotional pain. Drinking too much and all that stuff. But Hopkins says he got sober in 1975 after a chat about God with someone from AA. And he now believes that his sobriety took more than just his own willpower.

A lot more. Suddenly the craving to drink vanished. It was vacuumed out of me.

It just vanished. And a very sense of well-being for the first time in my life. I was about to turn 38 years of age. 38, that was 44 years gone. So do you think that when you were 38 and you were able to just quit drinking, was that Divine intervention? It's a very, it's of a loaded word.

Yeah, I think it was. Do you know the Beatles? Yes, I know who they are.

Of course you do. Eleanor Rigby. Who? Eleanor Rigby.

I don't know her. Yellow Submarine. While the film does deal briefly with the abuse that's rocked the Catholic Church, at its heart, The Two Popes is about rivals hashing out their differences.

And maybe that's the point. Sometimes even the most unlikely partners can end up finding some kind of harmony. Is there anything else you want to touch on as a duo? Should we do the song? Yes. Okay. Underneath the arches, I dream my dreams away, underneath the arches, down half of every night. That's it. Cut.

Uh huh. You Oughta Know was a Grammy-winning song for Alanis Morissette back in 1995. Well, now that song is front and center in a new Broadway show based on her music.

Luke Burbank has saved us a seat. If you're a certain kind of person who came of age in the 1990s, and someone innocently asks you, isn't it ironic, isn't it ironic, your brain can only go to one place. The music of Alanis Nadine Morissette, whose 1995 album, Jagged Little Pill, became the unexpected soundtrack of a generation. A generation of young women who'd realized they didn't really fit into the box society was trying to put them in. And that was okay.

I was just writing about my human condition and perhaps the human condition, you know, the vulnerability, the rage, the betrayal. Jagged Little Pill won five Grammys and sold more than 33 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful albums of all time. And now 25 years later, Jagged Little Pill has made it to Broadway.

Like a lot of people had approached you, I guess you were resistant for a while. I was open to it, but I didn't want a jukebox musical or I just didn't want it to be an awkward, you know, square peg into a round hole thing. Morissette finally agreed. But on one condition, the musical couldn't be autobiographical, meaning it had to have its own story. So she turned to Diablo Cody, the Oscar-winning writer of the film Juno. Your little girlfriend gave me the stink eye in our class yesterday.

Katrina's not my girlfriend and I doubt that she gave you the stink eye, that's just the way her face looks, you know, that's just your face. Cody's job was to write a plot around Alanis' songs. A lot of them actually have a narrative. They have characters. They're about something. They're about meaningful things. Things like a seemingly perfect Connecticut family, the Healy's, trying to come to terms with just how imperfect real life actually is.

Speaking of real life, Diablo Cody, a mother of three, showed us the somewhat unglamorous spot in her LA home where she wrote the show's first draft. I actually wrote in a couple of weeks where I was just completely manic. Like I just was cranking it out. I would call and get food delivered through the garage door. Yeah, I'm eating burritos in here.

I'm in like a robe. The show tackles some very real issues. Race, addiction, sexual assault, things that could have been plucked directly from today's news headlines. There is a moment in our show that acknowledges mass shootings.

And the cast lays down to simulate that they've been shot and we project an image, and I hate to say it, mass shootings have become so common that I can say like, oh, that's going to be interesting tonight because there was a mass shooting today. There's some topics in there that some people involved in the musical were a little reticent. They were a little scared of it.

And my response to any apprehension on their part was, it's me, I'll back it up. Morissette's music has never shied away from confronting the big issues of life. Something that was apparent even on Jagged Little Pill, which Morissette co-wrote when she was just 19 years old. She says the fame from that record was immediate, intense, and disorienting. After Hannah, my pocket was released. I remember walking down the streets and I couldn't walk down the streets anymore. So life went from me watching people to all of a sudden I became the watch-ed.

I thought fame would afford me this hyper-connectivity with people. We'd be kumbaya-ing. Sharon Stone would be like, I'd be lying on her lap. She'd be petting my head. I've had that fantasy too.

Yeah, I mean, who hasn't? And so none of that was happening. And I was actually feeling quite isolated and alone. I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that you felt invisible while you were very, very famous. I'm not going to speak for everybody, but often there's a trauma that has us chase fame. Because if you think about what fame is, it's a lot of eyeballs looking at you. And my father very wisely said when I was younger, he said, honey in the public eye, people will love you, people will hate you, and people won't care.

And he's like, no matter what you do. Now, 45 years old, Morissette spends time these days at home in Northern California with her husband and three children. She's been open about her struggles with postpartum depression with all three children, including her four-month-old son Onyx. It was actually a saving grace to be able to write. I can write when I'm happy. I can write when I'm despondent.

Writing is always there for me. Smiling is one of the two new songs Morissette wrote for the musical, and she's not done yet. This is off the new album. It's called Reasons I Drink.

And these are the reasons I don't even think I would quit. She's currently working on a new album, which she'll support with a tour this spring. But the one thing she says she wouldn't write differently is her hit song, Ironic. Isn't it ironic?

Which is maybe her most well-known. A little too ironic. But which famously doesn't so much describe irony as much as just a bunch of bad things happening.

The traffic jam, when you're already late, and no smoking sign on your cigarette break. I'm aware that I'm really, really, really smart. And I'm aware that I'm really, really stupid.

So I find... Oh, that's ironic. There you go. I'm Lee Cowan. Thanks for joining us this Sunday morning. We'll see you again next week. Bye.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-28 02:06:39 / 2023-01-28 02:24:19 / 18

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