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Find your dietitian at usenourish.com. That's usenourish.com. This episode is brought to you by PDS Debt. Struggling with credit cards, personal loans, medical bills, or collections? It's time to stop worrying about that high-interest debt you've got piling up. PDS Debt can help you start saving money immediately. Their platform can analyze your unique situation and create a plan to get you out of debt. There's no minimum credit score required and it takes 30 seconds to get your results. With PDS Debt, you'll take back control of your finances.
Get a free debt analysis in just 30 seconds at pdsdebt.com slash Spotify. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. In just a few hours, the movie world's biggest night gets underway in Hollywood. The 97th Academy Awards hosted for the first time by comedian Conan O'Brien. And featuring some real intrigue among the major categories. This morning, we'll be looking at the Oscars and movies in general from a number of perspectives. So grab some popcorn and settle in with Lee Cowan. I'm going to make them an offer they can't refuse. Every year, about this time, comes the great Oscar debate. You're talking to me? Is it really fair to say... Ditto. It'll make them like they used to. Ben Mankiewicz asks that very question. How would you characterize the change in this business?
I hate to be cliche, but how much time do you have? Before tonight's Academy Awards, we'll look at the romance, the nostalgia, and the staying power of the silver screen later on Sunday morning. Johnny Carson hosted the Academy Awards five times. But he was best known for The Tonight Show, which made him one of the most famous and influential people in America. Jim Axelrod examines the seismic impact Carson had on pop culture. Here's Johnny! For 30 years, Johnny Carson ruled late nights in America. What was going on there? Well, you will never know.
Smooth as silk on camera, it could be quite another story off. Did you ever see any of the cold, aloof Carson? Oh, yeah. 20 years after his death, why Johnny Carson still matters.
Coming up on Sunday morning. Together, Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow lay claim to six Oscar nods, with Rush winning the Oscar for Best Actor in 1997. Now they're teaming up in a new film and talking about it with Tracey Smith. They've each made movie history. Geoffrey Rush in Shine. No!
I can never let up! And John Lithgow. Christ, they call me Jabba the Hutt. In everything else.
There's only one word for John as an actor. Ubiquitous. A little of me goes a long way, I might add. Just wait till you see what they're into now. Here I am. Two film legends, one creepy new movie.
Later on Sunday morning. Also ahead, David Pogue gives a listen to a few of the exotic languages you'll hear, only in the movies. From our colleague, Nora O'Donnell, an interview with the legendary investor Warren Buffett. Not just about money, but also an unlikely friendship with the label. A friendship with the late Washington Post publisher, Katharine Graham. Plus, Mo Rocca on the life of Hollywood great, Gene Hackman. And more on this Oscar Sunday morning for the 2nd of March, 2025.
We'll be back in a moment. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha-ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are.
Visit Shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. Advances like smartphones and streaming have had a profound impact on entertainment in recent years, especially when it comes to the movies we watch and how we watch them. But has it all been for the better?
We asked Ben Mankiewicz to take a closer look. Hollywood has been reinventing itself for more than 100 years. Change is part of the culture. You're Norma Desmond. Used to be in silent pictures, used to be big.
I am big. It's the pictures that got small. But a pocket-sized Sunset Boulevard? All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
That's not a close-up. Tell everybody where we are. Well, we're at the Egyptian Theater. Ted Sarandos is the co-CEO of Netflix, the world's largest streaming service. This is the home of the very first Hollywood premiere.
Built in 1922, Douglas Fairbanks premiered Robin Hood here. It was a big, spectacular night in Hollywood. Today, Netflix owns the Egyptian Theater. The cost to renovate?
$70 million. Why did you do that? Seeing a movie, I mean, it has so many different aspects in people's lives. It inspires people. I can think back to my first time being in a movie theater, watching Jaws at 11 years old. And I remember like it was yesterday. Popcorn went this way, the soda went this way, the audience screamed.
Audience screamed. And that's a very unique and different experience. And an increasingly distant one.
Screens are smaller and ticket prices higher. It all leads to a common refrain. They don't make them like they used to.
How do you respond to that when you hear it? It's probably like everything else. The thing we grew up on is what we want. And oftentimes, the art forms move on and move in advance in ways that we kind of miss the old version of it. But they do make movies like they used to. And I think they're better than ever.
That, of course, is debatable. What's not in doubt is that the big movies are far more predictable than ever. In 2024, the top 15 films at the box office were all franchises, sequels, or reboots. The business has become very stratified. Either movies are gigantic spectaculars built to make billions of dollars, or they're very small, independent film.
And there's not much in the middle anymore. Movies still do really well, and big movies are still really big, right? But what's missing at the moment, I believe, is a range and a breadth of originality. Tom Rothman, like Ted Sarandos, is among the most powerful people in this business. Rothman runs Sony's Motion Picture Group.
His films do air on Netflix, but only after they play in theaters. You can have quality, or you can have quantity. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have both quality and quantity together. What does streaming have? It has quantity. Okay, so that's a very broad, wide net. And if it's not this, it's not this, and I'll watch it for 10 minutes while I'm, you know, feeding the cat. It's a very low bar. How would you characterize the change in this business?
I hate to be cliche, but how much time do you have? Nancy Meyers has made films that have earned more than one and a half billion dollars. Bet you're glad you knocked on this door. She's the writer and director of hit romantic comedies like The Holiday. You're dating my daughter? Something's gotta give, and it's complicated.
Not a great time to be feeling groovy. Meyers believes the shift to, let's call it the superhero formula, has killed off the types of movies many of us have loved for generations. There is an enormous difference. I felt in the 90s a freedom to have ideas that people would want to make. You know, I wasn't worried that they wouldn't be open to the kind of movies that I make. Creativity and originality you saw as an asset.
Yes, I did. Character, wit, comedy, heart, big screen. I had no crystal ball. I couldn't see into the future of how movies were going to change. The change, says Meyers, means films like Chinatown, The Shawshank Redemption, even Dirty Dancing might not get made today.
Movies, it's always been a business to make money, always. But there was also a, they were less afraid, I think. They were less afraid.
They took more chances. I would love for the movies to be a little bit less like they used to. Michael Schulman writes about movies and culture for The New Yorker. He's the author of the book, Oscar Wars. Every two seconds, there is a new Superman, Beetlejuice, Lion King, Alien, Mission Impossible, Bridget Jones, Indiana Jones.
The goal is to not come up with the next great idea, but to excite, you know, the shareholders about a sure bet for the next quarter. Schulman says the movies we grew up on are still out there. Produced by the independent studios behind Anora, The Brutalist.
This isn't the fight. And other Best Picture nominees. You know, I often hear people say when the list comes out for the Academy Awards, well, I haven't heard half these movies. If you go to the movie theater and they have 10 screens showing Captain America, Brave New World, and no Brutalist, then there's your problem. Even now, the average American goes to the movie theaters twice a year. The average Netflix member watches seven movies a month.
So I feel like that's got to be good for the business. It's got to be good for the art of storytelling. To have a platform and an audience of 700 million people who still watch movies. When they could watch TikTok videos, they could watch YouTube, you know, clips. It could be watched listening to podcasts, but they still watch movies.
What Ted Sarandos knows and what many of us may be trying to avoid admitting is this. If they don't make movies like they used to, it might be because we don't watch them like we used to. There's all this opportunity, I think, to get the history of this art form, the history of storytelling, the history of humans on the screen.
If the screen is, you know, gigantic here or good size at home or even small on your phone. I don't think it's sacrilege for someone to watch a great movie on their phone. If they're, I'd much rather them do that than not watch movies at all. Tom Rothman and Nancy Meyers concede there's value in streaming movies at home, but what they want and what they believe the audience wants is something cinematic. A movie experience is not on your phone. A movie experience is a collective, big screen experience.
You're there, you're in the dark. It used to be called a dream factory, Hollywood, right? And somebody's dream is up on the screen.
Somebody's version of a world that you get pulled into and you get sucked into. The lights come up at the end and you know, you've been somewhere and you've had an experience when we're in a movie theater. That's what a movie is. There are movies being made that meet the standard of bold originality, but there aren't many. Nope. And it feels, and maybe it always felt this at all moments where there was a sea change in Hollywood, but it feels like it is, the hill is too steep to climb.
I love that question. The hill is steep and the climb is hard, but it is not too steep and it's not too hard if you're tough and bold enough, right? And if it were easy, anybody could do it. And it's not easy. And you have to be willing to risk and you have to be willing to fail.
Tighten up your boots and climb. Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive.
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Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. Actress John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush aren't up for any awards tonight, but between them, they've got plenty of Emmys, Tonys and Golden Globes, plus an Oscar win for Rush back in 1997. They're appearing together in a new movie out this week and in conversation with Tracy Smith. It might be known as winter elsewhere, but here in Hollywood, they call it award season and just about everyone's in town for tonight's grand finale. Are you looking forward to the Oscars? Yes, I haven't been to the Oscars in years. John Lithgow is in the Oscar nominated film Conclave.
This report is entirely mendacious. It would never have seen the light of day if you had not broken into the Holy Father's apartment to remove it. Lithgow says he really likes playing the bad guy. Everything you do seems like it's a lot of fun for you. Well, I try to find things that are fun. I don't go looking for them. They come to me. By now, I'm on a short list of actors who is well known for being ready, willing and able to do just about anything. So wild rolls come my way. Nothing normal.
Also in town, esteemed actor Jeffrey Rush. So I figure you just got off a long flight from Australia. We should have a good coffee. Yes. Yes. That's a good idea.
My body clock is now four in the morning or something like that. Oh, goodness gracious. Rush might live down under, but he's picked up a few awards, a few awards for his career. But he's picked up a few awards up here.
So you have, what is it called? The triple crown, a Tony, an Oscar. Oh, yeah. A toe. A toe.
Toe, Oscar, Emmy. I like that. We got both Rush and Lithgow in the same room. Well, this is fun to have the two of you here together. Yeah. It's fun for us too.
To talk about something they've done together. What's going to happen is you'll get worse and worse if you can't speak or even lift a finger. That's if you can still think straight enough to know what kind of hell you're in. In The Rule of Jenny Penn, Jeffrey Rush is a wheelchair-bound stroke patient recovering in a nursing home. And John Lithgow is the merciless bully who terrorizes his fellow residents, often with a sinister doll puppet named Jenny Penn.
Who rules Jenny Penn? That's right. If it looks like a low-budget horror film, that's because it is. A lot of times, this is how people get their start in the business.
They do a low-budget horror movie. You two chose to do this. This is where we ended up. Jeffrey's just one of the great actors, and you just read the script and thought, this is a hell of a double act. I thought I was reading for the doll. Lithgow's character starts out as merely sinister and quickly graduates to terrifying. It's the classic horror film villain, and for Lithgow, a role with teeth. A typical John, he said, I've had some teeth made. And I thought, you're my kind of actor. Because really, you know, the first time I saw the face, I just went, this guy is creepy. Look, we're in the impact business. You're either after making people laugh, cry, or scream out in terror.
And this was scream out in terror time. With deep feelings, sort of invested in it. I was a tight end with the Philadelphia Eagles. Number 90, Robert Muldoon. I had a great pair of hands.
Yes, you did. John Lithgow's been evoking deep feelings for more than half a century. But before he was the acclaimed movie star, he was the acclaimed stage actor. The guy in David Storey's play, The Changing Room, who made winning a Tony Award look easy. It's your Broadway debut.
Yeah. And two weeks in, you win a Tony. I think I must have the record for the quickest wind sprint from Broadway debut to a Tony Award.
Jeffrey Rush has a similar story. He also won a Tony for his Broadway debut, 2009's Exit the King. And the movie Shine, about a real life pianist, David Helfgott, was only his second feature film. And the Oscar goes to Jeffrey Rush and Shine. And he still can't believe he took home the Oscar for best actor.
If you were in theater until what, age 43, and it's your second feature film, is Shine, and you win the Oscar. Yeah. It still doesn't make sense. It doesn't? No.
But it was hardly beginner's luck. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to you, by what right? By divine right, if you must.
I'm your king. No, you're not. You told me so yourself. You said you didn't want it. Why should I waste my time listening to you? Because I have a right to be a voice.
Yes, you do. Both Rush and Lithgow have had once-in-a-lifetime roles. If I may, never let them see the real Elizabeth Windsor. Again and again. You made your founder. What was his name? Has there ever been a role that the guy sitting next to you had that you looked at and said either, wow, that was perfect, or, ooh, I wish I could have played that?
I don't know. I defer to an actor who does a much better job than I could possibly do in that role. I was the second choice for Hannibal Lecter.
If Tony Hopkins had turned it down, it was coming to me. And there's no way I could have played that part as well as he did. Wow, that's a bold, bold statement. Yeah, it's true.
That's good. And I feel that way about Geoffrey and Shine. That was his role. It belonged to him, and there's no point being... Well, John doesn't know, is it? I've got offered most of the roles that he's got first.
If our Lord wasn't testing us, why, he could take all these pornographic books and albums and turn them into one big, fiery cinder like that. Truth is, just about any role they play is iconic, and with director James Ashcroft's Jenny Penn, they get to do something extra special, act their age. You know, I said to James Ashcroft, how old is this judge in the film? He said, how old are you now? I said, I'm 73.
He said, let's make him 73. And that's the first time I've played my own age. Your own age.
All this stuff. You know, Geoffrey and I have the great advantage of having grown to a certain age where we are each other's only competition. You get these great, old man roles dealing with big issues like mortality and facing the loss of your own viability and loss of your own cognition. You know, it's just, it's been a blessing. I mean, my career has sort of aged along with me.
You know, who would have believed I would still be going strong at this point? From Star Trek to Game of Thrones to the Dune films, some of the characters we see on screen speak in tongues that, well, don't exist among us earthlings. So just where do those languages come from? We've asked David Pogue to translate.
Used to be, characters in movies somehow all spoke modern English, even in ancient Egypt. You will kneel. I will what? On your knees. Or other planets. What do we do?
We die. Today, viewers are more sophisticated. We can handle a few subtitles in Game of Thrones, or Avatar, or Oscar Best Picture Nominee, Dune Part 2. All of those actors are speaking made-up languages, but don't call them fake languages. It's everything a language is.
It's got a sound system, it's got regular patterns that it follows, it's got a grammar in place, and it's just that we're the ones making the decision. These days, when Hollywood needs languages that don't exist, the first people they call are David and Jesse Pogue. They married in 2023, but they'd both been language nerds for a very long time. We both were language creators just for fun, long before we ever did anything for professional work.
In 2009, when HBO was preparing its Game of Thrones TV show, the producers approached a language creators club that David had co-founded and announced a Dothraki show. I beefed it up and produced just over 300 pages of material. You won? Yeah, I did. Aha! And was the prize, you get to make the language for the movie?
Yeah, pretty much. The other prize was seeing his language mastered by actors like Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke. Some seasons I found it very, very, very difficult, and other seasons they're just a little bit like, throw some stuff in there at the last minute and you're like, guys, it takes me weeks to learn the fake language. After Game of Thrones, David became Hollywood's most coveted creator of constructed languages.
Should we make that move or should we bring the W down and make it into a consonant cluster? These days, he and Jesse create languages together, including the Dothraki show. These days, he and Jesse create languages together, including Chkobzka from the Dune movies. Characterize Chkobzka. What's the sound?
I would say it's a head initial lightly inflectional language. I was going to say that. Yeah, there you go. This is a really nerdy skill. Yeah.
It's good stuff, man. It is, yes. For each language, they create a sort of grammar Bible. This would be an example of how cases work.
A linguistics professor would know exactly what you're doing here. Absolutely. They also prepare a script with four versions of each line. This one is from Dune Part Two. So this is what the actor gets. Right. And he says, Green Paradise, which in the language comes out as, shid gim shari, so what the screenwriter wrote, how you translated it, how he should say it. And this helps him understand what he's saying. That's right. So let's see how I do.
Shid gim shari. Peterson also records each line for the actors, including Dune co-star Zendaya. And then I just practiced the sounds as much as I could until it just flowed so easily. Her co-star, Timothée Chalamet, had to learn huge chunks of Jacobsa.
Learning Jacobsa, it's so humbling and at first can feel so futile. ... Including a climactic monologue that's two minutes long. That speech was supposed to be in English. What? I said, we have this idea. You know it's tagged for English.
It just feels like it could be in Jacobsa if you want to give it a shot. And yeah, they went with it. Are there things that got recorded wrong? Oh, you bet. Oh, you bet.
There's always mistakes. Does it make you crazy? Yeah. Yeah, I hate it. But like, you know, what can you do? Is there not some production assistant who says to you, David, for God's sake, the public hears it as gibberish anyway. What difference does it make? Everybody says that all the time. But like, here's the thing.
Something like High Valyrian has now been regularly on screen since 2013. People have an ear for it now. For fans, it definitely matters. And it matters that they know that what they're digging into actually has meat behind it. It seems like you guys are really academically rigorous about these languages being real and plausible.
Why is that so important to you? Unlike other props, you'll never interact with the real thing. And so if a sword looks like it's steel on screen, that's fine. It doesn't matter if it's actually plastic.
It doesn't matter if it's actually sharp. A language doesn't exist beyond speaking it. That is the actual prop.
You can't reach into the screen and grab a fake sword, but you can get the language. And so it must be real. You people who just tuned in at home, this is the Academy Awards warning. Contents may cause drowsiness.
Do not drive or operate heavy machinery. In the history of the Oscars, only Bob Hope and Billy Crystal have emceed more often than the legendary Johnny Carson. Of course, Johnny Carson's true impact on pop culture came through hosting The Tonight Show for nearly three decades. Jim Axelrod looks back on this fabled entertainer's influential life. It may not look like much now, but once upon a time, this was where the king of comedy held court. Here's Johnny.
Addressing his subjects at the end of each day. I think it's time we got off the president's back. I think everybody's entitled to make five to nine mistakes in a row. I think everybody's entitled to make five to nine mistakes in a row as Johnny Carson presided over not just late night, but American popular culture. Why were you late again? Not Tarzan's fault. Fine controller strike. It's amazing to be in here.
You can almost hear the sounds. Author Mike Thomas's new book is Carson the Magnificent, a biography of Carson his late friend Bill Zamey started. Johnny Carson was the biggest star in America. Movie stars, rock stars, I don't think anybody was bigger than Johnny because he was on night after night after night. Everybody who was anybody appeared on The Tonight Show and 17 million Americans tuned in, many from their beds. It was Johnny Carson versus sleep and sleep usually lost. It did, I think Johnny brought a lot of people peace at the end of the day. People love to laugh, but I think he gave them hope that the world would go on the next day no matter what was happening. His audience, more than triple the size of all three current network late night shows combined, made him the national agenda setter of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Johnny would say things and do things that became water cooler conversation the next morning. It also made Johnny the preeminent Hollywood talent broker for several generations.
He's one of the most important people in my life and we were not personal friends. 57 years after comedian Robert Klein made the first of his 97 Tonight Show appearances. Do you realize in this age of this kind of dishonesty what that man could have made from being the first man on the moon?
I mean a little backstage deal and he sets himself up for 26 lifetimes, puts his foot on the moon and goes coca-cola. He is still grateful for the rocket fuel career boost Carson's imprimatur provided. How important was Johnny Carson?
Johnny was the most important. Appearances on that show were everything. I am a creature of the Tonight Show.
That was the the vertebra of my my career. Would you welcome George Wallace? Comedian George Wallace knew what was on the line when he did Carson.
If you did the Tonight Show and you got applause and people were laughing or your confidence. Oh my God. In front of Johnny and a freak came up to me last week in Central Park and put a gun right to my head.
He says who are you for rigging a car? I thought about it for a minute. I said go ahead and shoot the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Are you kidding me? If you're a comedian, you need that bullet point on your resume. I did the Tonight Show.
Say it again. I did the Tonight Show. Each appearance was a climb up comedies Everest.
When the routine would end, comedians would look nervously at the desk and waiting to see if Johnny gave him the OK. Always got that. Always got that. Were you looking for it? Hell yeah, I was looking for it.
But what I was looking for was. Did you get that? I didn't get that.
40 years later, this big time comedy headliner still feels he didn't quite make the Tonight Show Summit getting called over to the couch. What did that mean to get called over? That meant that you're in. You're in. You got called over.
You're in the club. So would have it been possible for you to go out on the Tonight Show stage and kill, still not get called over. And as you were driving away from the studio feeling like what happened? That that kind of hurts today. That kind of hurts today. All that power rested in the hands of a complicated man.
Master connector at work. Cold and aloof at home. Were there two Johnny's? Yeah, I think there were two Johnny's to a certain degree on screen and possibly cool guy. But there was also the side to Johnny that was introverted off screen. I think some of the aloofness may have been introversion.
In Mike Wallace's classic 1979 60 Minutes profile, Carson acknowledged the dichotomy. If I pulled out my old high school annual book and read some of the things, people might say, oh, he's conceited. He's aloof. Actually, that was more shy.
So when I'm in front of an audience, it's a different thing. Life with no audience was challenging for Carson. He was married four times. Johnny needed to be married for some reason. He needed to be with someone. He didn't need to stay married. He didn't need to stay married and they would fall out. Johnny's behavior would try them apart.
They just never lasted. Aloof and cold, never warm, open, willing. But actress Diane Cannon has a different story to tell. I've never known anyone like him. I've never known anyone like Johnny. And this is a woman who was married to Cary Grant.
Cary was more of an enigma, more of a, oh, can I approach him or can't I? But people would approach Johnny as if he was family. So he was a different kind of star. There was nobody as big a star as Johnny. The merger of an on-screen and off-screen relationship.
This is from October of 1985. Would you welcome, please, Diane Cannon. Seemed to fluster the normally unflappable Carson just a bit in this memorable exchange. Hi, sweetheart.
Hi, sure, sweetheart. Now, I mean, we've gone out a couple of times, right? It still makes me laugh. Why should we get married and change anything?
Because I think if you've gone through divorce once, I don't know how people go through it more than once. I'd really. What was going on there? Well. You will never know. You will never, never know. You got to give me a little something here.
Oh, no, I don't. To hear her tell it, this was not a man who had trouble understanding women. How do I describe a relationship where you're so intimate with somebody and yet you haven't been intimate physically?
We were we were closer than that. Would you describe it as a love affair? Yes, absolutely. A love affair.
Absolutely. Real love. Physically, we were never together, but. Spiritually, we were.
In some ways, it sounds like you're describing the love of your life. Isn't that interesting? Wow. Hope you're hearing this, Johnny.
Wow. Maybe Carson was just like so many of us, full of contradictions. Only ours aren't examined by millions under the brightest lights our culture has to offer. Whoever Johnny Carson was, safe to say, in our deeply fragmented culture, there will never be another.
We're all siloed. We're all watching things that either confirm our own biases or that are attuned to our own specific sense of humor. There will never be that communal experience again, where people watch the show at the same time and then talk about the show the next day. Communal experience. He had a national community.
That was part of the magic of Carson, community. He's known as the Oracle of Omaha. Famed investor Warren Buffet is talking with Nora O'Donnell about a new documentary based on a somewhat unlikely friendship. If there's any story that should be told, it should be her story. If I was a young girl, I'd want to hear that story.
It would change my self-image. Warren Buffet rarely gives interviews, but he's the one who's the one who's the one who's the one that rarely gives interviews, but also rare, his friendship with the late trailblazing publisher of the Washington Post. Why did you want to talk about Katharine Graham? Well, she was one of a kind and she was terrified of the job. She knew she could do things, but she'd been told all her life that she wasn't and that females didn't do things. I mean, her mother told her, nobody's interested in listening to you. And so all of a sudden, here she is and she had an all-male board that was waiting for her and all they wanted was her to stay home and cast the dividend checks.
Graham was thrust into the role, taking over the company after her husband, Philip Graham, died by suicide. She was then at the center of some of the century's biggest stories. The much-discussed and apparently widely read, but still classified, Pentagon documents were turned over to Congress today. She made the decision to publish the Pentagon papers that helped lead to the end of the Vietnam War. Five men with bugging gear were found in Democratic headquarters here in the Watergate building. It was Katharine Graham who supported the investigative journalism that led to President Nixon's resignation after Watergate.
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. It was such an extraordinary time. Oh, everything, everything. And she had been drummed into her head, only men can succeed at business. The worst handicap women work under is the self-inflicted one that if you've grown up thinking of yourself as a second-class citizen, that you tend to always put yourself down.
Graham's journey from housewife to the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company is laid out in a new documentary, Becoming Katharine Graham, now streaming on Amazon Prime. I said, Mrs. Graham, you control this company Lock, Stock & Barrel, but you're still worried about me. At the center of the story is an unlikely friendship that began on June 4, 1973. Ah, this is the letter. That's the famous letter. The famous letter. When Buffett sent Graham a letter after buying a significant amount of the Washington Post Company's stock.
I said, I'll never buy another share unless you personally okay it. And I signed a document and we became friends. He used to come to board meetings with about 20 annual reports and he would take me through these annual reports. I mean, it was like going to business school with Warren Buffett. Why did you invest in the Washington Post in the first place? Well, it was ridiculously cheap. You saw a bargain. It was a super bargain. It was worth at least $500 million and was selling for $100 million. She was beyond lucky. Thank God our stock got so cheap that it attracted Warren's attention in 1973. Don Graham is Catherine's son and a former publisher of the Post.
Don Graham says that Warren Buffett is the greatest thing in business that ever happened to Catherine Graham. She needed somebody to reassure her. What were the things you would say to her to boost her confidence? The biggest thing I said is, I said, when you look in the mirror, you know, it's a funhouse mirror because you're seeing it through the eyes of what the mails are telling you about it.
So my job is to turn that funhouse mirror into a regular mirror. And she knew I was on her side and I admired her enormously and she was torturing herself and she couldn't help doing that. Nixon hated the Post and us personally through his dying day. The documentary, for the first time, shows the public the full extent of President Richard Nixon's feud with Catherine Graham. Did she talk about facing that kind of sexism and those kind of taunts from even the President of the United States?
Well, Nixon didn't scare her at all. What did scare her was the idea of losing the paper. The Washington Post, its presses crippled in a violent strike by... Never did that feel more real to Graham than in 1975, when the Post's printers damaged the presses and went on a bitter strike for more than four months, limiting the paper's circulation.
How challenging was that? Well, that tore apart. She was suffering in that way at that time, more than she ever suffered during Watergate or during the Pentagon Papers or anything. But she thought she might be blowing everything. Buffett told us Catherine Graham prevailed because she was brave.
And it's because of her that the Washington Post company's stock price went up more than 3,000% while she was publisher. But she didn't just make Buffett a lot of money. She said, my effect on Warren has mostly been limited to his lifestyle. I introduced him to the possibility that a steady diet of fast food and cherry cokes might not be the best for him.
Yeah, but she didn't convert me. So your favorite foods are? Whatever I was eating when I was six.
Which was? Hot dogs and hamburgers and coke and ice cream sundaes. Red bear floats are my favorite. I frequently have a dinner of a red bear float. And so you're at Catherine Graham's house at this fancy, you know, her very fancy... Yeah, and she's got a chef and a French. Her French chef. And you get served a lobster. And what did you do with the lobster?
Well, I unfortunately attacked it from the wrong side. And funny. And of course, she was very reluctant to criticize me.
Finally, at some point, she said, you know, it might be hopeful or something. What did I know about lobsters? Graham died in 2001 and Buffett served as an usher at her funeral.
That's a good picture. As for the Oracle of Omaha, the legendary investor is now 94 years old, still chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and still making front page news. Every word he utters has the power to roil the financial markets. Can I just ask you a couple of questions about kind of how you see the state of the economy right now? Well, I think that's the most interesting subject in the world, but I won't talk... I can't talk about it now.
I really can't. How do you think tariffs will affect the economy? I mean, tariffs are actually... We've had a lot of experience with them. They're an act of war to some degree. How do you think tariffs will impact inflation? Over time, there are attacks on goods.
I mean, you know, the tooth fairy doesn't pay them. I mean, you always have to just... and then what? You always have to ask that question in economics. Always say, and then what? So is there an answer for that when people say, you know, inflation persists, consumer prices keep going up, when's the end in sight?
No, prices will be higher 10 years from now and 20 years from now and 30 years from now. And what do you think about what's happening in Washington right now about efforts? I think it's Washington. Yeah, it's, you know, technology changes things, all kinds of things. But Washington is Washington. And the problem with politics is that you tend to have to make tiny compromises as you go along.
And what do you think about Elon Musk's efforts to cut? Well, I better not get into that. Oh, do you talk to him at all? I've talked to him a few times.
And any thoughts about his current efforts in Washington? Hmm. You've always been bullish on American companies. Majority of any money I manage will always be in the United States. Why is that? It's the best place.
I was lucky to be born here. It's not a night at the Oscars without a little Sunday morning quarterbacking from Josh Seftel and his mom, Pat. Hello. Hi.
Should I hit camera or is it where it should be? Um. So the 97th Oscars are tonight. Are you excited? I've always loved the Oscars. I like to see the opening monologue and the clothing.
And I know there's one about the singer that I want to see. Bob Dylan? Yeah. Did you see Anora? It's kind of a Cinderella story about a stripper.
Oh, that sounds interesting. Did you see Wicked? No, and I really want to see that. So you're really not prepared for the Oscars. I haven't kept up with the movies. I wonder if that's true with a lot of people. I think it might be, unfortunately. People going to the movies is way down.
Most people only go two or three times a year. Did you see Conclave? Yes. And? Loved the ending.
Boy, that blew my mind. Well, don't tell people what happened. Oh, no.
No, I would never do that. Did you know that Conan O'Brien is hosting this year? He's OK. What? I don't have anything against him. Did you like Billy Crystal? Yeah, Bob Hope was terrific. What about Johnny Carson?
Yeah, they were all good. Would you ever want to host the Oscars? I don't think people know who I am.
I don't think I'm funny enough. But if somebody asked me to, I might consider it. And I could get a new dress. So what are you going to wear when you watch tonight? Probably I'll put on my pajamas before.
Uh-huh. So that when it ends, all I have to do is brush my teeth and go to bed. What are you going to have to eat? I'm trying to think if I want to go with salty and soda, or do I want to go, like, with ice cream. I mean, it's a long show. You could do both.
That wouldn't be so good for my diet. What advice do you have for all the nervous nominees? Just take it easy. It's only a few more hours.
You're already a winner because you've been nominated. Do you remember going to the movies with the family when we were younger? We used to go to the movies a lot. Do you think that movies are going to be OK?
I hope they will be. Maybe we need to start going to movies more and theaters. You think you will? If I can't get a ride there, yes. I'll drive you to the movies. Would you like to do that? Oh, I would like that. Might be fun. What should we go see? Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. The biggest moves, your burning questions. It's the only podcast that gives you inside access to Survivor that nobody else can. Listen to On Fire, the official Survivor podcast with me, Jeff Probst, every Wednesday after the show, wherever you get your podcasts.
