Sundance Film Festival, Idina Menzel, The Bronx with Susie Essman

Good morning.

I'm Jane Pauley and this is Truth Network. This Sunday morning, President Trump's first week back in the White House was certainly an eventful one. More than 100 executive orders, tariff proposals, presidential pardons, changes in civil service and more. Plenty of activity. Plenty of controversy as well.

Our Robert Costa helps us keep track of it all. Okay, that's a big one. President Trump has wasted no time bending Washington to his will. As historians remind us, the presidency is always a showcase for power. To quote Faulkner, the past has never really passed in American politics.

Or as historians like to say, the past doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. We're going to win like never before. A turbulent week in Washington with echoes of history coming up on Sunday morning. While Los Angeles grapples with the impact of those devastating wildfires, its most famous industry, the movie business, rolls on. And this week, as Lee Cowan will tell us, the entertainment world's attention is focused on a famous film festival some 700 miles away. Are we ready for some nominees? The guessing game is officially underway now for who will take home an Oscar at this year's Academy Awards. One path has been through the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, where for more than four decades, Robert Redford's Sundance Institute has been giving independent filmmakers a leg up.

My definition of an independent film is a movie that almost doesn't get made. The Snow and Stars at Sundance, later on Sunday morning. When it comes to hurling insults at Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Suze Essman is famously loud and proud. This morning, Essman's assignment finds her very much closer to home, back in the place where it all began. This is Arthur Avenue back here, which is the famous. I was born a block down. If you ask me, and you should, there's no place like the Bronx. I honestly believe that you could make it here, you could make it anywhere.

I've heard that before. It's big, beautiful, complicated. So move over, Manhattan. Let's show some love to my hometown. This is just amazing.

I mean, look at these homes. I'm Suze Essman, and this is The Bronx, ahead on Sunday morning. With President Trump planning radical changes to the federal workforce, Mo Rocca goes back to the time of Mark Twain to explore the roots of civil service. Seth Doan visits with the renowned English fashion designer Paul Smith, truly a cut above. Tracey Smith talks with Tony-winning actress and singer Idina Menzel on her return to Broadway. Rita Braver catches up with Dave Pilkey, the author-illustrator behind the best-selling Dog Man series, now the subject of a movie starring Pete Davidson, plus Ben Tracy finding signs of hope in paradise, the California town ravaged by wildfires some seven years ago. A story from Steve Hartman and more, this Sunday morning for the 26th of January, 2025. We'll return in a minute. We begin this Sunday morning with the week that was in Washington, as President Trump began his second term with a flurry of activity.

Robert Costa gets us up to speed. Ladies and gentlemen, the President-elect of the United States. President Donald Trump descended on Washington last week, weathering a cold front that pushed his inauguration indoors. I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do.

In America, the impossible is what we do best. But the winter winds were no match for the flurry of executive orders, pardons, and pens he let fly. Trump swept away Biden administration policies with each jagged stroke. So many people in Washington this week, they say it seems like history is unfolding before us.

Absolutely. The thing that's really interesting about studying history is when people are living through historic moments, they know it. Lindsey Czerwinski is a presidential historian and executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library in Mount Vernon, Virginia. There's no doubt that seeing a president come back after being defeated in an election that's only happened one other time and came back after being indicted on dozens of felony charges and was involved in an insurrection to overthrow the previous election. These are just not things we've seen before.

And so there's no doubt that we are living in a historic moment. So this is January 6th. These are the hostages, approximately 1,500 for a pardon. On his first day, Trump pardoned some 1,500 January 6th defendants and broke the record for signing executive orders, issuing even more in the days that followed. They range from renaming the Gulf of Mexico to ending diversity efforts in the federal workforce to exiting the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization and reinstating anti-abortion policies from his first term.

He has also tried to upend the constitutional right to citizenship for all children born on American soil. But a federal judge already put that change on hold. We are in a system that has separation of powers. There are supposed to be checks and balances. And it is essential that both Congress and the court do their job to check the president as the president checks them.

That is how the system was designed to work. And I think that that should give Americans comfort that they occasionally still want to actually do that role. Executive orders have often been pivotal and controversial. Think of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, FDR's funding of the Manhattan Project.

Upon arrival at their new quarters, the evacuees voluntarily registered. And his internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. Recall Eisenhower's deployment of troops to desegregate southern schools.

I have today signed an executive order providing for the establishment of a Peace Corps. And Kennedy's creation of the Peace Corps. In the past decade, there has been a back and forth with Obama, Trump and Biden reversing each other's policies. What does it say to you to see a president use executive orders instead of going to Capitol Hill and trying to get Congress to enact their agenda? Well, when a president needs to use executive orders to get most of their agenda done, it means either that the agenda is not particularly popular or it is a reflection of the ills in our current political system. Congress doesn't do much. They don't pass that much legislation. They're kind of a broken institution. So what we see is that a president is trying to go around that.

And until Congress tells them not to, they're going to continue doing it. There have always been periods of fighting, to be sure. And American politics is messy. American politics is messy. You could even call it vicious.

That would be an accurate description. It all recalls Benjamin Franklin's answer when asked whether America was a monarchy or a republic. Franklin said a republic if you can keep it. We've been through all of this in the past and here we are today carrying on. So far, one of the things that's great about history is it reminds us that we can be in really bad periods, but come out of it. What I think about our current moment perhaps is different is that we have forgotten that nothing is absolute and nothing is permanent. The founding generation, they had skin in the game because they had fought in the war or they had been in Congress when this government was founded. And so no matter how terrible it was, they never wanted to throw it out completely because they had tried to build this thing from scratch.

I think a lot of Americans today take for granted that we will always be here. As names go, Paul Smith may not initially conjure thoughts of individuality, creativity or color, but as Seth Doan discovered, there's nothing ordinary about the fashion designer who goes by the name Paul Smith. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Hiya. There's a salesman at London's flagship Paul Smith store. Lovely to see you.

Such a pleasure. I've got the very same shoe. He sets his own hours and pretty much does what he wants. How often do you go into the shops and work? Oh, I'm the Saturday boy. He's not just the Saturday boy, that's his name on the label.

Sir Paul Smith is one of Britain's most successful independent designers with 130 stores in more than 60 countries. Do people recognize you? Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes it's a bit embarrassing when I'm pinning somebody's trousers up and then they start talking about this person called Paul Smith. What do you say? I have to slope off and go, yeah, it's like, oh, he's supposed to be a nice guy. Yes. Sneak off.

Is somebody actually serving? He's been working the shop floor for more than 50 years, starting with a tiny windowless retail space in Nottingham, England. It was not the career he'd envisioned. I mean, I left school at 15 and wanted to be a bike rider. So, you know, I don't have any skills, really. I'm not very bright. I said I wanted to be a racing cyclist.

And my dad said that's not a real job. So Smith has found a way to incorporate cycling into this specialty, whether motifs in his collections, designing bikes and gear, or just riding to work. You wanted to be a professional cyclist.

Yes. That was the dream. Yeah, but I finished very abruptly at 18 and after a bad crash, but I ended up being in something called fashion. It worked out for you.

Yes, it worked out. I fell into fashion. He's become known for sartorial simplicity.

His clothing designs often give a creative twist to the classics. It was his wife, Pauline, who taught him to sew. How do you go from learning how to sew and make a suit at the kitchen table to opening your first store?

Very difficult, I suppose. But the joy then, and absolutely not now, is that you weren't in a hurry. You're in a hurry now? Well, no, the world is in a hurry.

I'm not in a hurry at all. Smith used savings to open that first shop in 1970, and within six years was hosting a fashion show in Paris at a friend's apartment. Pauline and I sewed all the trousers, and the models were just people we knew. The music was on a cassette.

Do you remember the cassette? But you can do things in a more humble way. It is possible. And in a way, it's more charming.

And right now, I'm really in the mood to start going back to doing things like that again. Is it young Michael Jackson? The 78-year-old designer's approach is a contrast to the flashy, ego-driven world of fashion, and it carries through to his art-filled London headquarters. This is my executive minimal office. Welcome.

And as you can see, I've tidied up specially for you. He admits he does not know exactly how this started. One person from Japan who just sent us fish to me. But people around the world have been sending him things for years. Angel Gabriel's lost a wing, everybody. He keeps pretty much all of it and starts each workday around 6 a.m., showing his appreciation.

If they send me something and it's got an address, then I'll write a little postcard to say thank you. These are all matchboxes. It's all part of his creative process. This is a gorgeous one, this one. Obviously, we're famous for our stripes.

Ideas can come from anywhere. His signature stripes happened by chance. I did a stripe in, I think it was the 1990s, with many, many colors in it.

And it was just really popular. It would just be under a cuff. Sometimes it's a sock. These are your stripes. As a fashion designer, you have to have things that are very seasonal. But also, you know that the bulk of the world will wear classical clothes.

So it's all about having the balance. He focuses on staples, tailored shirts and suits, but does not shy away from a bold print when inspiration strikes. This is what you're seeing while you're on the vacation. Yeah. Coming back with photographs and then the team painting from the photograph and then that turning into a fabric.

I mean, this is mad. Things that arrive in the mail can end up in stores. One time we got 400 cell phones.

I think it just said, I know Paul Smith likes things. And we made a whole wall out of them in one of the shops. Here are your dominoes.

Yeah. There's a wall of 26,000 dominoes in London. We design all our own shops around the world because I am passionate about individuality. His shop in Los Angeles is bright pink.

L.A. is big. Most people don't walk. So I just thought you've got to build something a sore thumb. You've got to build something that really goes. But what's the thinking behind all of this?

Because this costs money to do to spend time because in this homogenized world where everything is the same, same, same, where everybody looks at the screen. I want people to get goosebumps and they want to walk into somewhere and they think, oh, wow. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, my gosh. Oh, I never thought about that. He sees value in making that extra effort while injecting a bit of humor and humility along the way.

I didn't quite make it. You can make people look more important, more sexy, more famous, whatever. But it's not heart surgery. It's just fashion. And I love it. And it's important. But it don't don't get too big ahead. A different sort of postcard for you this Sunday from the storied New York City borough of the Bronx, as seen through the eyes of special contributor and Bronx native Susie Essman.

That is really, really weird. Before I was an actress, before I was a comedian, before I was busting Larry David's chops on Curb Your Enthusiasm, I was a kid from the Bronx. A monumental, magical and at times maligned slice of the Big Apple. The home of the Yankees. It has more people than Dallas. It's also the most diverse place in America. Marvel creator Stan Lee grew up here and Al Pacino, Ralph Lauren, Tracy Morgan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and of course, J.Lo. It's the only part of Gotham that's not on an island.

See? And it's where hip hop began. What makes it so special? I went on a fact-finding mission, starting with the author who spent 15 years walking.

Yes, walking across its 71 neighborhoods. And who are we here with? My name is Ian Frazier. I'm known as Sandy to my friends, but I write- But we're not friends. Sandy wrote about his journey in the book Paradise Bronx, the life and times of New York's greatest borough. You're from Cleveland.

You're a writer. You've written about places all over the world. Why the Bronx? I just consider it a kind of blessed place where all kinds of different things have happened. The feeling in the Bronx is kind of underdogs that won't be underdog, you know, that won't accept it. As for the name, it first flowed from the oldest forest in the city. Jonas Bronk owned a farm backed up upon this river. And so the river was called Bronx River. And then that became Bronx land. Which eventually became the Bronx. Once a country retreat for the rich, the Bronx was built by the subways, only to be nearly destroyed by highways.

The Cross Bronx Expressway, it's beautiful this time of year. America decided we were going to be a country of the automobile. And those highways damaged communities in the Bronx. By the 1970s, urban decay and neglect fueled fires that reduced block after block to rubble. There were 33,000 some fires.

They closed fire stations at the time that these fires were burning because it was a way of saving money. That was then. This is just amazing. I mean, look at these homes.

This is now. We are in a beautiful residential community of homeowners called Charlotte Gardens. Vanessa Gibson is the Bronx borough president. This area was a site of light, of devastation. It was incredible organizations who are still around today that really started developing the community and building homes for people so they could live and have stability. Tell me why the Bronx matters in this country. It is a borough of resilience and strength.

It has often been counted out and left behind and isolated and ignored. And even from the rubbles of dirt, we have sought promise and potential. That promise and potential runs deep for Bronx native Neil deGrasse Tyson.

So Neil, so you are dealing with the cosmos. How does the Bronx fit in to the universe? In the Bronx, it has got it all.

And the fact that it has it all can make for a highly enriched experience. The renowned astrophysicist remembers gazing up at the cosmos as a child from the top of his apartment building. I would leave the rest of the world behind. Just me, my telescope, the sun, moon and stars. I credit the New York City light-polluted skies for me being an astrophysicist because it hit me at just the right age, at age nine. And I never looked back. I have always kept looking up. Looking up is easy when strolling through the Bronx's Little Italy section with Chaz Pomontari. This is Arthur Avenue back here, which is the famous... Arthur Avenue is right there, the famous Arthur Avenue.

I was born a block down. Where are we going now? Right now, we're going to Gino's Pastry Shop right here. They made my wedding cake.

An actor and writer, Pomontari's one-man play, A Bronx Tale, was turned into a movie directed by Robert De Niro. Now you just can't leave. You travel all over the world. Yes, I do. And you tell people, you know, where are you from?

And you say, I'm from the Bronx. Right. And it's always like, whoa. Like, oh my God. They think it's dangerous, right?

They think it's dangerous. Yeah. And I say, no, I love them. People keep thinking I was really a wise guy. Not a wise guy, but wise in a different way. The Bronx gave me my soul. The Bronx gave me my character.

Pomontari might be the prince of Little Italy, but Fat Joe wears a weightier title. We're here with Fat Joe. You are the Bronx. I am. I'm the Frankfurter man.

I'm the cab driver. I'm everything in the Bronx. A rapper, entrepreneur, and the owner of a chain of sneaker stores, including this one in the South Bronx. Fat Joe will never shake the love for his hometown.

You have that Bronx hustle. How would you describe what that means to the rest of the country? It's relentless. It's working day and night.

It's putting family first. We never forget our community. We're always out here.

We're always giving back. I honestly believe that you can make it here. You can make it anywhere. I've heard that before.

So there it is. The Bronx. From the Botanical Garden and City Island to the zoo. It's worth a visit, but don't take my word for it. I leave that to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

After all, he's the one with dozens of honorary doctorates. To me, the Bronx was a microcosm of, at its best, what the world could be. Actor and singer Idina Menzel helped turn Wicked into a theatrical smash and won a Tony for her efforts. Now she's bringing a whole new meaning to the expression, going green. She's with our Tracey Smith on Broadway. Last fall, when superstar Idina Menzel wasn't in New York, she hung out in Oakland. Here at Bandaloop Studios, she was learning to dance suspended at the end of a rope. And this from a woman who says she isn't much of a dancer on the ground.

So if you don't consider yourself a dancer, what are you doing? I don't know what I'm doing. But when you see exactly why she was doing this, it suddenly all makes sense. This is Redwood, a new musical that transports the audience to the heart of the Redwood forest and seemingly into the trees themselves. It's loosely inspired by a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, who in the late 90s spent more than two years living in a thousand-year-old Redwood to save it from being cut down. Her effort worked.

The tree was saved. And now, Idina and writer-director Tina Landau are taking their own leap of faith with an idea they've been kicking around for more than a decade. Were you a little worried that this would never actually come to fruition or that this experiment would fail? Yes, I'm still worried.

But yes, I was. I didn't know, but it was one of those passion projects for both myself and Idina where it was just like, let's just trust that what is meant to happen will happen. Redwood is about a workaholic mom who runs away from it all and finds herself in the Redwood forest where her life is changed forever. One of the themes of the show is based on the fact that 300-foot Redwoods actually support each other. Their roots only go five or six feet into the ground. Their roots go sideways instead of down until they reach the roots of other trees, and they intertwine with those.

So all the trees end up holding each other up. The musical, which is running now in previews, is all new, but Idina Menzel is on familiar ground. You're in the Nederlander Theater, which is the same theater where you opened Rent. Yes. What is it?

Thirty years ago, anybody? Yeah, it's like a homecoming for me. It's full circle. It's very emotional for me. Oh, honey bear, are you still my, my, my baby?

Take me for what I am. When I did Rent, that was the first professional job I ever had, and it was a Broadway show, so I was super lucky. That was a beautiful time in my life.

It was beautiful, all right. She was 25 years old, and her performance in Rent put her squarely on the map. Rent is this huge hit musical. You're nominated for a Tony. Afterward, did you kind of have it made?

No. I got a record deal that I always wanted to get. I wanted to be signed to her record label so badly and make my own album, and I did, and that was a dream come true, but then I only sold like three albums. So then I got dropped from the label, and then by that time my whole kind of momentum of being this Tony nominated actress from the hit musical Rent had sort of dissipated, and then I had to kind of keep pounding the pavement again, and then it wasn't until Wicked that things started to really look up again. As the original Wicked Witch Elphaba in Broadway's Wicked, Menzel won a Tony and helped turn the show into a mega hit, though it wasn't always easy being green. What did Elphaba give you? Green ears for the rest of my life.

And then, of course, she was an animated princess in Disney's Frozen, singing the song that millions of kids and parents couldn't get out of their heads. What's your relationship with Let It Go? My relationship with Let It Go is fabulous. I mean, it's one of the best things that's ever happened to me. People always say, do you get sick of a song like that? And maybe they think I'm lying to you, but I really don't. When I was a little girl, if I would have dreamt that I'd be up there singing a song like this, I wouldn't have believed it.

Or, no, I would have, because I really was very cocky when I was little, and I actually, you know, believed in myself and thought, definitely going to, it's definitely going to happen for me. But the task of writing Idina Menzel's next big song went to someone who'd never written for a big Broadway star, or for anyone. Redwood is composer Kate Diaz's very first show, but you never know it. From a songwriter's perspective, what's it like to write for the Idina Menzel?

It's amazing. Yeah, I'd never written for anybody else before, so a great place to start, for sure. What an incredible voice to write for. Is there a little part of you that's like, let me just see if she can do this? I mean, she usually can, so not really. And she can do it on demand, as she demonstrated in the new Wicked film, where she brought back her classic riff. Her new show offers a different way to go green, an immersion in a leafy redwood forest. Even the seats in the newly remodeled Nederlander Theater are green. For Idina Menzel, it's almost hard to believe. It's just so rare that you get to see it come to fruition after so many years, and they're literally loading things into the Nederlander as we speak. That accomplishment isn't lost on me, and I just feel really emotional about it. And now she's hoping to defy gravity again.

But I think green and being high, flying, literally or figuratively, is just something that I must respond to or attract to end my life, end my characters. And I'm kind of happy with that. With President Trump's return to the White House, the role and rights of federal workers is under scrutiny, perhaps like never before. But you may be surprised to learn the debate over who should get government jobs is an old one. Our history lesson is from Mo Rocca. To the victor belong the spoils. For decades in the 1800s, that phrase was more than a slogan. It was the official hiring policy of the U.S. government. You win the election, you're entitled to put all your own people in there. So with the White House changed parties, everyone cleared out, basically.

That's right. Journalist and historian Scott Greenberger says that under that spoil system, the main job requirement for most federal employees was loyalty. It was a system inaugurated by Democratic President Andrew Jackson. When he came in, he was, and this will sound familiar, he was afraid that sort of entrenched bureaucrats would resist his policies.

And so he cleaned everybody out. Were people aghast at this? I don't think they were aghast when it began. But by the time we get to the 1870s and the 1880s, it was one of the top issues on the national agenda. This was a period of abundant facial hair and abundant wealth and corruption in American politics. It's a fascinating period with so many parallels to our own time. But says Greenberger, a fight was underway to replace the spoil system with the hiring of qualified government workers, regardless of their political views, whose job security didn't depend on whoever was president.

Civil service reform, as it was known, may not sound sexy, but it was one of the hottest political issues of the Gilded Age, even attracting the attention of America's foremost author. They started just down there. In 1876, the same year he published Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain participated in his first political rally right here in Hartford, Connecticut, says a local historian, Jason Scappatici. And this was a very big deal for Twain to be here, yes?

Yeah. He had voted, but he had never campaigned for anybody. After marching through downtown in support of Republican presidential nominee Rutherford B. Hayes, the legendary humorist called for an end to the spoil system. We will not hire a blacksmith who never lifted a sledge, he said.

We will not hire a school teacher who does not know the alphabet. But when you come to our civil service, we serenely fill great numbers of our minor public offices with ignoramuses. During this period, Twain's fame is really starting to take off. And this speech he delivers in Hartford is on the front page of The New York Times. That just goes to show how vital he is, how big his name is. As you can see, it's beautiful. Mallory Howard is the assistant curator at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford.

What a stash. He was a handsome younger man. She's not surprised that Twain would have been mortified by the spoil system. I think he felt it was embarrassing putting people in office who are not prepared. I think it doesn't make sense to him. It's anti-meritocratic.

Exactly. Hayes made it to the White House, but little progress was made on civil service reform during his single term. Hayes was succeeded by President James Garfield, who ran on reform. But only months after being sworn in, the spoil system exacted its most horrifying toll. Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled and delusional office seeker named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau had campaigned for Garfield and believed the president owed him. Worse still for reformers, Garfield's vice president, Chester Alan Arthur, suddenly elevated to the top job, had climbed the ranks of dirty machine politics, enjoying the fruits of the spoil system along the way.

This was a nightmare scenario for the reformers. And then all of a sudden, here he is, he's president of the United States, and he expresses support for civil service reform, which shocked everybody. Perhaps in a surprising about face, in 1883, President Chester A. Arthur, contrite by some accounts over the murder of Garfield, signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, the first of its kind in U.S. history. The law was strengthened over time. Civil service reform will help taxpayers get what they have been paying for.

But it lay the groundwork for a professional bureaucracy responsible for everything from food safety to financial regulation. It really paved the way for a more active federal government. Of course, the federal government of the late 1800s, with about 50,000 employees, looked a lot different than today's workforce of more than two million.

With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. And critics, including President Donald Trump, believe the numbers and the protections afforded those civil service workers have gone too far. Hence President Trump's executive order this past week, aiming to make it easier to fire some federal workers.

We're getting rid of all of the cancer. Scott Greenberger says maybe the time has come for another debate about the role of the civil service. Yes, you should be able to fire people who aren't doing their jobs and the protection shouldn't be such that someone who's incompetent is allowed to stay in a job. At the same time, if you eliminate those protections entirely, then you go back to the sort of system that we had in the 19th century where only political loyalists are serving these positions. A system undone by an unlikely hero who most people don't even remember was president. And Chester Arthur regularly wins the most obscure president. One that Mark Twain himself put on a pedestal.

It's funny that we hardly remember the guy today, but when he died, people including Mark Twain said, wow, that guy was the greatest president we'd ever had. Steve Hartman has the portrait of a most unlikely brotherhood. Number 22, Buffalo Bills rookie running back sensation Ray Davis took to the field last month and made a beeline for this man. How you doing, baby? Patrick Dowley. Yeah. A man so near and dear to Ray that for this game on his cleats, he wore a picture taken the day it all began. Do you remember the first time you met Ray?

I do. He looked right at me and he pointed and said, are you Patrick? I said, yes, I am.

He's like, man, you don't even know how long I've been waiting to meet you. In 2007, Ray was eight years old and in San Francisco's Tenderloin district when he saw a flyer for the big brothers, big sisters program. Were you actually homeless at times? Yeah. Ray says his parents were in and out of his life and he was craving stability.

So he signed up for a big brother. I need it. I just needed love, man. I needed consistency. I needed somebody who was going to be there and teach me, you know, right from wrong. And that person was Patrick.

Yeah. That will forever be my, my big brother. They spent countless Sundays together. From those early pop Warner football games through Patrick's wedding, Ray became like part of the family. And although he has always been grateful until this game, Ray hadn't been in a position to show his gratitude quite like this. This is it. This is the moment. And that's something that I wanted to give back to him.

The team honored Patrick during the pregame and later Ray even scored a touchdown for his big the cherry on top of all those Sundays to all the people out there that have ever considered doing it. It's not that difficult. You know, don't overthink what it takes to make a difference in a kid's life. And he says, don't underestimate the effect you can have. I love you, dude.

See ya. That's from Little Miss Sunshine, which thrilled audiences when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival nearly 20 years ago. As Lee Cowan tells us, that's just one of the many independent films and filmmakers Sundance has launched into the cinematic stratosphere. Park City, Utah.

It's a snow globe kind of place. It sparkles and glitters like a fairytale, especially at this time of year when the silver screens of Sundance come to this silver mining town and young filmmakers start thinking of the moment. And the Oscar goes to Sean Hader.

They might see some glitter of their own. I want to thank Sundance for starting this journey. Sean Hader's film Koda appeared at Sundance in 2021.

It went on to win three Oscars the following year, including Best Picture. Now, it doesn't always happen that way, of course, but the Sundance Film Festival does have a pretty good track record of catapulting independent filmmakers into a career. Its alumni include the likes of Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Lulu Wong.

All right, welcome. They were all introduced not only to audiences, but to powerful film distribution companies right here, high in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. I think that was the big breakthrough with Sundance is that finally these new voices, these exciting new filmmakers had a place where they could actually show what they had done and potentially sell them. Eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close first heard about Sundance from its famous founder, Robert Redford, on the set of The Natural.

His idea, then just in its infancy, was in some ways just as pure as baseball itself. I said, wait a minute, there are other stories out there, there are other voices to be heard that are not being given a chance. What if we created something, an opportunity for those people to get their films made and have them distributed? The smaller stories?

Yeah, the smaller stories, the more offbeat stories, the more controversial. Which is why he wanted his non-profit, Sundance Institute, to be held as far away from profit-focused Hollywood as possible. So he set it up here, amid the pines and aspens of Utah's Provo Canyon, on land that he bought. I'll jump first. Nope.

After the success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I can't swim! You are surrounded by nature in a way that, if you're from a city, it's undeniable. It's almost a spiritual thing. It's a spiritual thing, and I think that was very important for Bob.

Hi, how are you? I didn't think it would last past two or three years. You really didn't? No, I didn't. Let's roll sound.

But his institute has lasted 44 years and counting. Yeah, let's just pick up the speed and see how it feels. It's become for film what Michelin stars are to fine dining. You don't choose Sundance, Sundance chooses you. We'll get 3,000 scripts, we'll select 12. That's a tiny number.

She's been ignoring him. But there are a lot of people globally who want to tell stories, and we believe in the power of storytelling. So tell me about the Oscar. Michelle Satter, she's the institute's founding senior director. I know, I'm still surprised by it. The film is not complete until it reaches an audience and engages with an audience.

She's been by Redford's side since 1981. How do you know when you've found a unique story or a unique talent? Yeah, I love that question.

You probably get it all the time. It speaks to me. If they don't have a voice that is unique, we're not interested.

And what does that mean to your voice? There's something about the way they tell the story that does not feel generic, like anybody could tell the story, but they're bringing something from their own experience, from their own connection to storytelling that uplifts it. At 5.30, last day of shooting. Last spring, Satter allowed us into Sundance's story directors and screenwriters' lab.

This time held in Estes Park, Colorado. It's not about ego. It's not about anything other than learning, making mistakes. One of the lab's advisors?

Four-time Oscar nominee, actor Ed Harris. I love the work. It's all about the work. And I learn as much as I probably help anybody.

This is once in a lifetime. All the Sundance Fellows, as they're called, bring projects already in the works. Did you say, where do we go from here? Yeah.

That's a good question. And there's Deidre Urganski, polishing up her upcoming feature film. There's tough feedback, like feedback that's good. And to have that at the phase where you can really be deepening and honing the characters and story, it feels lucky. And Carmen, action.

Casey Moderno, who was fine-tuning her rom-com. The questions I think that you're normally asked as a filmmaker is like about budget, about accessibility, about market response. And so to be asked questions about like the feeling of the film and the aesthetics of the film and the texture and just go deep and craft, it's like super special.

I'm definitely less stressed this year. And then there's Sean Wong. This experience has just like changed my DNA as a filmmaker. What got him accepted to Sundance was his screenplay for his first feature film. Deidre, he'd been toiling away on the film pretty much by himself with his crew for six years. I was just obsessed with who won Sundance this year, who, who won the audience award, who won the jury prize? Like what's, what's the next filmmaker that is coming out of Sundance? Turns out he was one of those Sundance filmmakers.

Last year, Deidre not only won two of the Sundance Film Festival's top prizes, it also got him a distribution deal. They don't finance your movie. They have no financial stake in your movie. When we sell the movie, they're not like, great, where's our 10%?

It's a very giving environment, but obviously they have, they want your films to succeed. This year, the California wildfires have cast a long shadow of the festival. Michelle Satter's home, where we did our interview, is now gone, as are so many others. She is tough and resilient as only a woman can be. None of those victims were forgotten here this past week. We lost our village, but the end of the day, we are the village. As for Robert Redford, the visionary who started it all, well, he's now 88. He hasn't been here in person for the last three years, but his spirit remains. Independent film has forever been changed, a legacy that he and others have taken to the box office bank.

He put his money where his mouth is, and I'm in awe of that, and I salute him for it. From Rita Braver, the story of a part man, part dog, crime fighting super cop, finally ready for his close up. It's hard to believe, but his author and illustrator, Dave Pilkey, told these students of voice prep in the Bronx. I made dog man up when I was in the second grade. He looks a little bit different. And the kids love hearing how someone with learning disabilities.

Like I had ADHD, and I was dyslexic, and I was a class con, and I couldn't sit still, and I was disorganized. Could go on to be so successful. Every book in Pilkey's Dog Man series has been the best selling children's book for the year it came out. That's one of the great things about Dog Man. He's part man, but all dog, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the man part doesn't really come out that much. Dog Man, listen up. You're the only one that can stop him with all your kung fu skills and your K-9 fortitude or whatnot. And as a new film out next week reminds us, it all started with a police officer and his dog who got into a bad accident. I'm sorry to say, Mr. Cop, that your head is just no good anymore. And your body is no good either, cop doggy. What if we sew the dog's head onto the man's body? Dog Man! But in addition to all the fun, Pilkey tries to layer meaning into the Dog Man books, even in their titles.

Like the scarlet sheather for the scarlet leather, and instead of catch 22, fetch 22. Yeah. So I was looking at Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, which is such a wonderful book.

It talks about sacrifice, self-sacrifice, and the value of that. And you hope that children will be moved to read these classics? I hope so, yeah. I hope they don't think, oh, that Charles Dickens stole an idea from Dave Pilkey.

That wouldn't be so good. This super cop made friends, solved crimes, and even played piano for the old folks. Pilkey's sense of humor is what made director Peter Hastings want to make the Dog Man movie. He also directed a TV series based on Pilkey's Captain Underpants books.

And I just love his sensibility, this playful, you know, anarchy of his work. I'm a huge Dave Pilkey fan. I grew up reading all the Captain Underpants books.

My mom got them for me. I need another me. Pete Davidson gets top billing in the film. It's time to stop this super cop. All the young kids in my family, they all read Dog Man, and they're obsessed with Dog Man.

And then right around the time I started noticing that, we got the offer. At last, the final showdown. It's an offer, Davidson says, to play Dog Man's nemesis, Petey the Cat. How evil can one cat be? Pretty evil. Ha ha ha. It's fun to play a villain. It's fun. It's a really fun, loud, layered character.

I don't get a lot of opportunities to stretch like that. Help has arrived. Step one, insert DNA into the DNA shoot. In fact, as readers of the Dog Man books know, step two, press start button. Things start to change when Petey tries to clone himself. Step three, open door to retrieve your clone.

And instead, create an adorable kitten. What? His character has a really great arc in the story.

It's the best arc I've ever been given. Really? What?

Why? We usually have him in the movie for like nine minutes and then shot in the face, so it was nice to have a full, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In addition to directing and writing the film, Peter Hastings voices Dog Man. Dog Man. I mean, can you do a little Dog Man for us? Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, it's barking. You gotta bark with emotion, which is not easy. So get down here ASAP. Is it hard to let someone else be in control of these characters that you have worked so hard to create?

No, no, not at all, actually. I'm just so honored that they wanted to do something with my characters. And so I was like, yes, yes, jumping up and down. High five. There you go.

Thank you very much. With Dave Pilkey says what really matters to him is seeing how much kids appreciate all the work he puts into his books. Do you ever worry about running out of ideas?

No, no, I think I worry about running out of time to get all my ideas down on paper. Go Dog Man! Go Dog Man! Even as more fires threaten Los Angeles, many are asking and imagining what recovery could look like for communities destroyed by the flames. For a hint of what the future might hold, we've asked our Ben Tracy to revisit a recent story from the fire-devastated California town they call Paradise. On the road to Paradise, you can see signs of a comeback. And if you want to hear what that sounds like, all you have to do is visit the only hardware store in town, the source of supplies and ideas for people hoping to rebuild their lives.

If I ever get a house, I'm going to have these. Mike Peterson manages this ace hardware store that somehow survived the deadliest fire in California history. But like most people here, Peterson lost his home. A year ago, these three homes here weren't there. When we met him a few years ago, his neighborhood was just beginning to recover. I think a lot of people had their doubts about how many people would rebuild.

It's nice to see the progress, for sure. Rebuilding this town nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada was far from certain after Paradise was lost to the inferno known as the Camp Fire. The 2018 blaze killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 20,000 homes and businesses. So the old house sat here.

Peterson didn't just rebuild. He built something meant to survive future fires. Do you feel like you're going to worry less about your home?

Yes. And my insurance company loves it. He and his wife now live in this two-bedroom home that looks a bit like a modern barn. They like the architecture, but the real selling point is that it's built not to burn, a choice many in the neighborhoods lost in the Los Angeles fires may face in the coming years. It's noncombustible. It's a product that you can't really light on fire. Vern Sneed is the owner of Design Horizons, a company building what it calls the Q-Cabin, short for Quonset Hut. It takes its name from Quonset Point, a naval facility in Rhode Island where these corrugated metal-roofed buildings were first made during World War II.

Sneed says today's version costs about the same as a house built with conventional two-by-fours. So none of this can burn. Correct. So we would have a noncombustible siding out here, then we've got our noncombustible sheathing, then we've got our noncombustible structure. So you would have to get through all of these noncombustible layers before you got to the inside. Scientists say most homes ignite in wildfires because embers get into window frames or in-between roof shingles. With the Q-Cabin, those entry points don't exist. And so I understand why you won't call this fireproof because you can never guarantee that, but this is about as close as you're going to get.

This is about as close as you can get. Of course, getting too close to nature is part of the problem. Communities like Paradise are known as the wildland-urban interface, where the great outdoors collides with someone's front door. Nearly 50 million U.S. homes are now in these areas, which are prone to wildfires. When you see all of the natural disasters, especially a state like this, is facing and what we know is coming as climate change accelerates, is this the future of homebuilding?

I think noncombustible housing is the future. The campfire left behind more than burned trees and empty lots. It also transformed a lot of the people here.

I think people just let go of their need to control because we all learned that there is no such thing. It's so exciting. Gwen Nordgren is president of Paradise Lutheran Church. It's rebuilding, too. So, this is our gorgeous building. A four-plex Q-cabin will eventually replace the Parsonage Building that once housed their pastor and was lost in the fire. Given what you have gone through, what is it like for people to see something being built out there? Well, it isn't just something.

It's something like this. We're so excited about it because, you know, it's all going to be new and beautiful and fire-resistant, which is on most people's minds. It's really happening. Everybody's so excited.

They plan to rent it out to four families to generate income for the church, which lost nearly half its members after the fire. But now people are flooding back, businesses, too. Paradise, once lost, is being found again. Nobody who's here gave up. This is Paradise, brother. Nobody gives up. There's a spirit in this town that was here before the fire, and it's here now, and it never went away. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.