CBS Sunday Morning

Our CBS Sunday morning podcast is sponsored by Edward Jones. College tours with your oldest daughter. Updating the kitchen to the appropriate decade.

Retiring on the coast. Life is full of moments that matter, and Edward Jones helps you make the most of them. That's why every Edward Jones financial advisor works with you to build personalized strategies for now and down the road. So when your next moment arrives, big or small, you're ready for it. Life is for living.

Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. It's Oscar Sunday, Hollywood's biggest night, as we'll be noting throughout the morning. But over this evening's ceremony hangs a troubling question. How to judge the legacy of Hollywood greats, living and dead, who've been accused of sexual misconduct. A question Tracy Smith will consider in our Sunday Morning cover story. From there, it's on to critical mass, not the critical mass of nuclear physics, but rather the critical mass of movie critics whose verdicts are now being trumpeted by a popular and increasingly powerful website. Jim Axelrod will explain. On this Academy Awards Sunday, it's no longer just about the Oscar.

Don't worry, I won't win. It's now also about the tomato. Without a Rotten Tomatoes, I as an individual, I guess I'd have to go read 100 reviews. Right. The new force at the box office.

It's a very oversimplified system. Fresh, rotten. There's a lot more nuance in film criticism. Inside the world of Rotten Tomatoes, ahead on Sunday morning. It being Oscar Sunday, as always, David Edelstein will weigh in with his views and more.

All coming up when our Sunday Morning podcast continues. The legacy of some of Hollywood's biggest names is in doubt this Oscar Sunday, tarnished by charges of sexual misconduct. But should that taint extend to their most beloved works? A question pondered by Tracy Smith in our cover story. If you need to be reminded why they called Alfred Hitchcock the master of suspense, just take a look at his 1963 film The Birds. It was 31-year-old Tippi Hedren's first big movie role, and she was a natural as the blonde victim. But there was horror off-screen too.

Hitchcock, she says, made her life miserable. You can say me too. Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely.

And I did have those me too kinds of situations. Oh, yes. In her 2016 autobiography, Hedren says the director hounded her for sex and lashed out at her when she refused. He said, I'll ruin your career.

Yes. And it was because you. Because I turned him down. Why do you think there are biographers, people who've worked with Hitchcock who say, well, this wasn't the man that I knew. Aren't they lucky? And why would they know?

Why would they have the same relationship that I would have? For her, the movie will forever be clouded by what went on behind the scenes. Do you think that we can appreciate a groundbreaking work of art, even if we know that the man behind it might not be that great of a human being?

It might be difficult. It might be difficult to separate the fact that there is a great piece of art, but boy, you don't want to get be alone in the room with him. So do revelations about someone like Hitchcock change the way we think about his legacy?

How about Kevin Spacey? He was scrubbed from his TV and movie roles after apologizing for misconduct with a minor. But does that make his earlier work like American Beauty unwatchable?

Don't interrupt me, honey. And after a torrent of sexual assault allegations, all of which he's denied, Harvey Weinstein won't be at the Oscars tonight or any other. But the films his companies produced and distributed have won a total of 81 Academy Awards. Can't remember the titles? There's an easy way to find out. Rotten Apples is a database that'll tell you if anyone connected with a film or TV show has reportedly been accused of sexual harassment or assault. How about Psycho?

Paul Wagman and Becca Nutt are two of the site's creators. Are you saying don't watch these if there's a rotten apple in them? We're not saying that.

We're saying here's information for you for you to decide. Mrs. Bates. I mean, do you think that's even possible to separate the art from the artist? It's hard for me.

It's hard for me too. You might recognize these two. Uzo Aduba for her Emmy-winning role in Orange is the New Black.

You need to be on your way because she don't like talking to you not one bit. Can we maybe turn down the lights? And Amber Tamblyn for her work on this network and many others. Both are founding members of Time's Up. When you look at the Academy Awards, I mean, there are dozens, probably hundreds of movies that were either produced by, directed by, or starring someone who's now accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault. What do we do with all of that art?

How do we view it? No film, no TV show, no work of art is paramount or that genius or more important than the physical bodies or physical selves that have been harmed in the process of making that work. And I think that's really important to remember when we're thinking about people's legacies who are very problematic. I am less concerned with how and what sort of future they have and how their work gets to survive or not survive.

I am more interested in what are we doing to make it right. And in some cases, making it right means shunning certain shows and movies, even if it hurts. Are we allowed to mourn those things, that art that we loved that now is tainted?

Absolutely, I did. Do you mind sharing specifically what you've mourned? Mine? Mine was The Cosby Show, you know. It's like almost makes me want to cry, like, you know, feeling that, you know, that I grew up on that show. I saw myself in that show. I recognize the power of that show, but I also recognize that is a show that was spearheaded by an individual who had lasting effects on a number of women. I am a woman. That is my tribe.

I stand with those women. Of course, history is littered with examples of artists behaving badly. Caravaggio, the brilliant renaissance artist, was wanted for murder. Composer Richard Wagner was a virulent anti-Semite. And Pablo Picasso, who called women machines for suffering, is said to have abused his wife and girlfriends. But villains or not, their art is hard to ignore. So we can separate the art from the artists? I think it's humanly possible, yes. And I think in some respects, it's important.

This is a transformative moment. Ted Braun, a documentary film maker, and professor of cinematic ethics at USC, says we could reject troublesome art, but we'd be poorer for it. It occurred to me that the American Western, which is one of, you know, our great traditions, might be viewed in certain respects, certainly by Native Americans in this country, as one long celebration of the extermination of Native Americans. And as such, you would look at it very differently than you would if you weren't aware of that. Would you want to remove all Westerns from the shelf?

I don't think so. I wouldn't want to live in a world where those films were not seen. I couldn't imagine.

We would be impoverished. I was just plain lucky. Now 88, Tippi Hedren, who lives on an animal preserve she founded north of Los Angeles, has quite a legacy of her own. Her daughter, Oscar nominee Melanie Griffith, and her granddaughter, Dakota Johnson, both followed her into the movie business. But she still has mixed feelings about her own time in Hollywood. Can you watch other Hitchcock films? Oh yes, yes I can.

And fully appreciate them. And they're two entirely different things. Two different things. What do you mean? You're separating.

Yes, totally separate. My feelings about him, my thoughts about him, but he was a very talented man. Did incredible things. You might say Alfred Hitchcock will always have a place in Tippi Hedren's life. Just outside her flat, she's a young woman who's a young woman. Just outside her front door, a miniature of the famous director sits today in an ornate cage, a monument to a complicated legacy. Thanks to the internet, views of movie critics nationwide are being forged into a single critical mass.

Jim Axelrod shows us how it's done. You've got seven different screens and they're each playing a slice of one movie. If the artwork in the lobby of this California tech company doesn't tip you off, it's a movie screen. Yeah, it's a movie screen.

Take a walk down the hall. So this room is called Casablanca. So we'll have a three o'clock in the Casablanca room. Exactly. Let's go, who wants to go first?

Still wonder what they do here? Our top movies are Black Panther and it's just Black Panther. Then try a few minutes at the morning meeting. Let's do it. Let's do it. Welcome to the headquarters of Rotten Tomatoes. Even as the entertainment industry gathers tonight to see which of this year's films the academy thought best. Don't worry, I won't win.

Let's go kids. This company may be reshaping the way we go to the movies and how we choose what we see. Without a Rotten Tomatoes, I as an individual, I guess I'd have to go read a hundred reviews. Paul Yanover is the president of Fandango, the online ticket company that acquired Rotten Tomatoes two years ago.

Perfect marriage here of a technology company and an entertainment company. More than a third of moviegoers now make checking Rotten Tomatoes the last thing they do before buying a ticket. The site aggregates dozens of reviews curated from thousands of company approved critics and calculates the percentage that are positive.

We're democratizing that research and then we're democratizing access to it through the internet. Jeff Forrest is a vice president at Rotten Tomatoes. A curator will go find a review, put it in the system, and then read it to determine is it fresh or rotten. If they're not sure, then our process is we send it to three other curators on the team who all read it independently. If there's real uncertainty, we'll go to the source and say you're not being clear.

Are you recommending this movie or are you not? Right. The world is changing. Here's how that works. If 75 percent or more of the critics post positive reviews, it is your time, like 97 percent did with Black Panther, the movie is certified fresh.

Let's go. 60 to 74 on the tomato meter, like Beauty and the Beast with 71, only gets you a fresh. What you're trying to avoid as a filmmaker is a number under 60. That gets a rotten thrown at it. Seriously? Seriously.

50 Shades Freed, for instance, had a tomato meter score of 12. You own this? We own this. This is Cisco and Ebert for the digital age.

Yep, absolutely. It's expensive. Ethan Tittleman works for the National Research Group, a polling firm that tracks industry trends. You have studios as clients. How wigged out are the studios by Rotten Tomatoes? I think they're scared because it's still that shortcut and you can agree or disagree with the reviewer, but really nothing beats seeing that score at the end to know, yeah, I want to spend my money or I don't want to spend my money on this movie.

Our team is the elite of the elite. And that's exactly what spooks the studios. The idea their marketing machines may not be as able to overcome bad reviews in the age of Rotten Tomatoes.

Michael Linton is the former CEO of Sony Entertainment. Rotten Tomatoes came on the scene and it wasn't the voice of individual reviewers that mattered. It was a collective voice of Rotten Tomatoes. I do know people pay a lot of attention to it and I do think it does have an effect on how a movie opens and it certainly has an effect on what the legs of a picture are. Perhaps that's why director Martin Scorsese recently called Rotten Tomatoes hostile to serious filmmakers in a column for The Hollywood Reporter.

They rate a picture the way you'd rate a horse at the racetrack, he wrote. They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film. Rotten Tomatoes, at the end of the day, net positive?

I'm a little closer to the negative side. You might want to see it for Daniel Day-Lewis' performance. On a Hollywood sound stage, we caught up with Claudia Puig, the president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. It's a very oversimplified system, fresh, rotten, and there's a lot more nuance in film criticism. There's a lot more nuance in people's appreciation of film.

I wish that there were more categories, that there was, you know, a slightly overcooked tomato, a slightly raw tomato, you know. Even with her issues with Rotten Tomatoes, Puig is still one of their top reviewers. It seems there's no disputing Rotten Tomatoes influence these days. Certainly studios are thinking how are we going to reach the largest amount of people?

How are we going to make the most money? And to do that in this day and age, you got to get a good score on Rotten Tomatoes. Do you dispute the notion that Rotten Tomatoes has now almost achieved make or break status for movies being released? I think that's too strong a statement.

I don't think it's make or break. We don't think that at all. We believe that, if anything, we help shine a light, often on films and TV shows that you might not know a lot about otherwise. I guess the school of thought there is, if you want to make a successful movie now, you've got to thread this Rotten Tomatoes needle. Do the movie makers, the producers, the studios, do they have a point?

I look at it this way. Right now, there are nine Oscar-nominated movies. I believe every single one, for Best Picture, I think every single one of them is certified fresh. Glenda Jackson has not one, but two Oscars she can boast about. Not that she'd ever do that. One of those trophies is for the movie A Touch of Class, a film whose title aptly describes the woman in question.

Mark Phillips has our Sunday profile. I'm 91. She's 81 years old, actually. Glenda Jackson is.

I was very good. Not the character she's been rehearsing in the Broadway production of Edward Albee's classic Three Tall Women. You're hurting me. You're hurting me.

All right, I'm being careful. A two-time Oscar winner with a reputation for strongly held views, Jackson plays a difficult to deal with matron. So here you have a play which is entirely dependent upon three females, and that of itself is fascinating.

A person could die. It's a perfect part for her to return to a world where she has long and famously complained about the lack of good parts for women. I mean, I can remember when I was still doing films, and I'm going back a long way now. It was not infrequent to have a woman in a film to prove that the hero wasn't gay.

I mean, you saw that was the kind of reason for being. I mean, we've still got a long, long way to go. Glenda Jackson has already come a long, long way. Her American audience can be forgiven for having lost track of her from the days when she was one of the dominant faces of British acting on American TV. I want no husband. I am married to my country. I don't want my subjects to feel jealous. Her 1970s role as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth R was one of the series that defined Masterpiece Theatre on PBS. You're all the same, this obsession with male sexual prowess.

It is so typically American. Her forays into the movies not only proved she was a bankable star who could do anything, but won her those two Oscars. One for 1973's A Touch of Class.

One does not have to go where the ticket sits. And another before that for Women in Love. But her route back to Broadway has followed some unprecedented twists and turns that had taken her far from the bright lights of the great white way to which she has now returned. It's a process of constantly relearning, rediscovering. You can't really bring the past with you in that sense.

Hold on to me. For more than two decades her life had nothing to do with this world. Some might say she spent those years on that other kind of stage, the political one. Glenda Jackson. She was a member of parliament for the Labour Party for 23 years.

And we serve and work for our people. Drawn into that world she says by what she considered to be the socially destructive policies of the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. For me the final straw was when she said there's no such thing as a society and I was so enraged by that I walked into my closed French windows and almost broke my nose which I didn't, I'm happy to say, do. But I've always been a supporter of the Labour Party. Born into a working class family, her father a construction worker, her mother a cleaner, Jackson came by her socialism naturally and her principles were never compromised by the niceties of parliamentary tradition. When Margaret Thatcher died and other MPs paid tribute she didn't. Everything I had been taught to regard as a vice and I still regard them as vices. Under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue.

Greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows sharp knees. I think they were surprised because up until that point practically everything had been praised. I mean talk about rewriting history I mean it was astonishing but then they calmed down actually and now it was okay. Just let Glenda have her say and move on. She wasn't going to stop so there we are. Glenda Jackson decided to draw a line under her political career three years ago and it wasn't long before her old life came calling.

I do confess I am old. If you were to choose a gentle re-entry into theatre in your 81st year you wouldn't choose to play one of the most artistic and physically demanding roles ever written. Shakespeare's King Lear. I was blessed by my parents and my antecedents by a very strong work ethic and I mean being a member of parliament was 24 7 just as much as when you're actually doing a play it's not quite 24 7 but it's the work that counts. The production was a triumph. To the incomparable Glenda Jackson.

Jackson won the prestigious London Evening Standard Prize for best actress an award she received in typically barbed style. When I was feeding myself by being a professional actress I never got a good notice in the Evening Standard and when I changed direction and became a Labour MP I was the wrong political party for the Evening Standard. So it has come something of a surprise. You just say what you think and say what you feel.

So I'm left wondering what did I do wrong. They've given you this great award. It's not like gratitude is your first reaction.

Oh no I think that's a little harsh. I mean I think obviously one is in that sense grateful because you're being given a gift but it doesn't make you any better. I mean no awards make you more talented. At least Jackson showed up for this one. She didn't bother turning up for either of her Oscar wins. I'd completely forgotten they were last night. It came as a total surprise. It never occurred to me that I'd actually get it. Oh come on now you couldn't have forgot. No I had forgotten. I was very fortunate I was filming so I couldn't go.

Perfect excuse. For the two other actors in the current play Laurie Metcalf and Alison Pill working with Jackson was the main attraction. My arm my arm the pillow. So what do they say do you want to be in this with Glenda? Do you want to work with Glenda Jackson?

Yes that's how I heard about it and that's the reason that I'm sitting in this room right now. Okay I hesitate to ask what you've learned but you can tell me if you like. Terrible language. How you can get away with bad acting in two easy lessons. As it happens Laurie Metcalf has herself been nominated for an Oscar this year.

You should just go to City College you know with your work ethic just go to City College and then to jail. For her role in Lady Bird. Learn to pull yourself up. You're aware of Glenda's history with uh with the Oscars are you considering emulating her graciousness? Yes I think I won't go. Are you serious?

What do you mean emulating her? I had absolutely nothing to do with that. Nothing. One of the things you quickly learn in an encounter with Glenda Jackson is that you'd better be able to back up what you say. Is the very fact that this play is about three women. If a question gets a little fuzzy. That it has to be this play about these three women. This kind of thing happens. I don't know what you're talking about. Me neither. I mean I mean what are you talking about?

Three Tall Women is currently scheduled to run into June. After that. It would be lovely if there were things that came along that that I wanted to do yes. Just in terms of your own career and what have you. Can we stop talking about my career in that sense? Can we talk about my life?

I'm extremely extremely fortunate that at my age I have these opportunities and I'm extremely grateful for that. Ahead steady as she goes. Now Michelle Miller with the story of a smooth operator. Sylvester Stallone had the muscle but some of the best moves in Rocky belonged to a behind the scenes cinematic champ. The same guy who gave us chills with every hotel hallway turn in The Shining and also made sure audiences had a forest chase to remember in Return of the Jedi.

It consists of four things that make it work. Meet Garrett Brown a one-time folk singer who revolutionized movies with the steady cam. How would you describe yourself? I'm an inventor. I think I'm a better inventor than I ever was cameraman or director. You single-handedly changed the way the world views film. Well. Wow but true before his creation this is how Hollywood would get those smooth moving shots with cameras put on platforms called dollies or rolled on rails. Anything handheld would shake and bounce. Garrett Brown figured out a better way.

In 1974 this was his solution. The camera stabilizing system or steady cam where no matter how you would tilt the camera the picture would always remain level. When you walk around you know you're shot what you see doesn't jerk around doesn't jump you know does it. We have this wonderful little stabilizer in our heads the inner ear tells your eye muscles what to do so I mean if you do this move your head up and down looking at me you know that's stable right.

This is handheld and that's why we don't love hand you don't like that. Action. Brown paved the way for steady cam operators like Michael Craven. Garrett's invention has given me the ability to express myself through a moving image in a way that has never been possible before.

It's really quite incredible. In the mid-1970s Garrett made a steady cam demo film of his girlfriend now wife running in Philadelphia. Producers took notice so did the director of a low-budget boxing film. If you had never used the steps for the Philadelphia Art Museum in your demo chances are Rocky would never have used the steps or never run the steps. Possibly yeah probably. That most iconic scene might not be there. How do you feel about that?

That's an invention. I love it. I love it. With Rocky offers started pouring in for Brown like from Stanley Kubrick who asked him to work on The Shining. The maze yeah. I actually shot almost all the moving shots in that film all the stuff in the corridors all the the moving and he had in his mind this eerie smoothness and that that we were able to deliver that almost turned it into the hotel's point of view. Next Martin Scorsese wanted him to shoot Raging Bull. I did the shot with you know with the DeNiro coming down and into the ring and all that that was great. As soon as I started shooting in the ring Scorsese had his guy pull me over and said you're you're fired.

I said what I said why and he says it looks too much like Rocky. The director would give him another chance with casino. Scorsese did hire me again that's true that's one of my favorite shots actually. The steady cam was a game changer says University of Pennsylvania film professor Peter DeCherney. For the first time you could have a smooth experience of moving through space much more closely to our natural experience. That was the cameraman's perspective. What was the audience's perspective? It allowed the audience member to feel really connected to the experience of the camera so you'd move through space in an almost embodied way. The 75 year old who won an Oscar for his technical achievement had big ideas beyond the big screen. His many innovations include the sky cam, the fly cam, the dive cam.

He even has a mini steady cam for a smartphone. And it all goes back to these steps where on this day kids couldn't resist them and in a corner and in a corner boxers sparred. Does this ever get old? No it's it's fantastic I love it up here.

And what better way to celebrate Garrett Brown and his creation than by recreating the shot he made famous all those years ago. Let's go. Are you doing it?

You're really doing it? With just hours to go before the Oscars our David Edelstein is finalizing his picks. Fair warning I'm going into this year's Oscars bursting with negativity because my favorite film is the Florida Project.

These are the rooms we're not supposed to go in but let's go anyway. About this imp of a girl and her druggy trick turning but otherwise loving single mom in a fleabag motel was ignored criminally except for Willem Dafoe who should win but won't with these genius voters. The academy did a little better by the rest of my 10 best list. My numbers two, three, four and ten were nominated for best picture and numbers five and seven for best documentary but the first four will lose.

You may think that thing looks human and stands on two legs right? To either the soft core fish porn The Shape of Water or the Tragicami Tragicami Tragicami mishmash Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. Why did you put up these billboards? My daughter Angela was murdered seven months ago.

It seems to me the police department is too busy torturing black folks and eating Krispy Kremes to solve actual crime. I'm rooting for Lady Bird's Saoirse Ronan. You are so infuriating. Will you stop yelling? I'm not yelling. Oh it's perfect.

Do you love it? Even though she's always blabbering about not reading movie reviews which hurts me like you wouldn't believe. Frances McDormand will probably win for Three Billboards. She is one of my favorite actors and I'm actively rooting against her as if she did steroids or deflated balls. That's what screwed up about award shows. You root against people you love.

There's only one morally valid reason to do that. You have money on someone else. The shows meanwhile are weird. You spend three hours watching.

You feel gross but starved. This is not a joke. Moonlight has won best picture. Last year's Screw Up with La La Land and Moonlight was a perfect storm of gross. So the first black gay movie ever to win has to come in through the back door.

No wait there's been an injustice. Idiots. So who'll win this year? Shape of Water or Three Billboards? McDormand, Gary Oldman and his makeup people, Sam Rockwell, Allison Janney, Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro who's a genuinely nice guy. The movie. I'd like to see Greta Gerwig for director, Timothee Chalamet, Defoe, Laurie Metcalf, and as I said Saoirse Ronan. No you know what? She doesn't read me. Let's go with Margot Robbie.

I was the best figure skater in the world at one point in time. The biggest suspense though is over what the Me Too movement will do to the ceremony. It's going to be so beautifully uncomfortable. A lot of really angry women victims of harassment. A lot of men who either harassed or looked the other way and want to pledge support but not trigger someone who knows something to scream you lousy hypocrite.

Rage, righteousness, guilty consciences primed by alcohol. You know what? It might be an amazing show. I'm Jane Pauley.

Thank you for listening and please join us again next Sunday morning. This is The Takeout with Major Garrett. This week Steven Law ally of Mitch McConnell and one of Washington's biggest midterm money men. List for me the two senate races where you think republicans have the best chance of taking a democratic seat away. Nevada, New Hampshire. Not Georgia. Well Georgia's right up there but New Hampshire is a surprise. In New Hampshire people really just kind of don't like Maggie Hassan. For more from this week's conversation follow The Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.