Court years installed on his own Supreme Court and royal beheadings, if only for sport. He craved the occasional royal procession and gas, the eventual royal succession. Trumpty dumpty its his way, unless the public has something to say. If we let him have all of his favorite things, the divine right of kings. Hello, everyone and welcome to todays Virtual Program at the Commonwealth Club of california. My name is linda mendoza, a senior partner in there does of Mckinsey Company a member of the Commonwealth Club board of directors. Today i will be moderating the program. We would like to thank our members, donors and supporters from making this and all of the programs available. We are grateful for your support and hope others will follow their example to support the club particularly during these uncertain times. Today im particularly pleased to be joined by john lithgow, an awardwinning actor and author of a new book, Trumpty Dumpty wanted a crown verses for a despotic age. He is best known as im sure you all know or his contributions in the theater, television and Film Industries throughout the years, with roles and things have been read as the crown, my personal favorite, the world according to garp. After receiving degrees in history and literature from harvard, john wood on to study the performing arts at the London Academy of music and dramatic art on a fulbright scholarship. From there he went on to become a notable awardwinning act with two tonys, two Golden Globes and six in these under his belt. In recent years john is taken a public stance on political commentary and is known for his critiques of the Trump Administration or satirical art. Trumpty dumpty wanted a crown uses the traditional childrens rhyme to criticize president ial decisions made in the last year and covers recent events such as trumps impeachment, the covid19 pandemic, the black lives matter protests, and much more. We will be discussing about in the next hour and a want ask your questions as well. If youre watching along with us please put your questions in the text chat on youtube and we will be getting them a little bit later in the program. Thank you, john lithgow, for joining us tonight. A pleasure to see you. I nice to meet you. Really nice to talk to you. We are especially happy to have you right after your newest book came out, and was at this week in. I had the pleasure reading it. Also had the pleasure of watching you on Stephen Colbert last night. Did i sufficiently make a fool of myself . It was fantastic. Appreciate you joining us here today and talking a little bit about the book and more of a chance to get a feeling for it including what we just saw to kick off the program with your reading of one of the poems. But before we get into that cau just tell us a little bit about why poetry . We all know you as an amazing actor and all kinds of wonderful things as i mentioned earlier, and this recent, relatively recent foray into poetry and art. What made you do that . I sort of back into it. I certainly didnt set out to write political satire in verse. I have always written first, just occasional verse. Ive written funny poems that include everybodys name in the cast of a play on closing night. I have actually done two commencement speeches at private schools for small graduating classes in which i used the names of every single one of the graduates in poems, completely to their surprise. Finding out, talking to the dean of the school about all the scandals that have been involved in within the last couple of weeks. Little things like that. Been around about the late 1990s, ive been doing a lot of entertaining of children, concerts with orchestras. Even one with the San Francisco symphony, and doing videos for kids and albums for kids. I began writing rhyming verse stories and picture books, and i wrote nine of them. Some of them times bestselling picture books. But in all of that i was never serious about it. I am still not serious about it but im at least viewing very serious subjects now. What happened was another one of these occasional poetry events i rewrote the third verse of gilbert and sullivan i am the very model of a modern Major General for new york Public Theatre gala outdoors in central park a couple of years ago, and it was just after mike flynn had been charged and apprehended and fired. He was very much in the news, and i sing the entire gilbert and sullivan song in the character of michael flynn. When i unleashed my own verse, when president obama made me head of all things and he realized he brought to life by governmental frankenstein, but then i made a killing in the case of public hillary by shouting locker up, et cetera. When i told my literary agent about this, it was like, it was like the sun coming up. He immediately saw a book. We had gotten together to discuss, youve got to write something, john. What are you going to write . Suddenly he knew exactly what i was going to write and he said i could sell this book tomorrow. That was two years ago. I set off to write my first book called simply dump tea, the trump of the age of trump infers that there was such a smash hit covering the first of his administration, that my pleasure, chronicle prison come right there is some for cisco, they begged me to write another one. I said i just cant. So hard thinking about all those meters and rhymes. And besides which im working. Im working on that. I just will time to do it. Once again my agent, they guy who thought of the first book, david, a fantastic literary agent, said you have got to do this. Theres going to be an election in november. If you get this book out before that election, you can discharge your political duties. And he was absolutely right. So i i said yes, and i thoughtm never going to be able to do this. Along comes to all of our grief the pandemic and sheltering in place and lockdown with nothing to do, except i had something to do. Thats when they wrote all those poems. I had these extraordinary subjects. I had impeachment, the coronavirus pandemic, trumps incredibly inept handling of all that, and then the black lives matter movement. I was even, that was just about at the deadline but even got to address that. Why verse . I dont know. You dont come to me for political punditry. You come to me for entertainment, thats what you expect. And so i thought what better use of my entertainment skills than to skewer this man and to express my own anger and rage and pessimism and fear through lighthearted and very funny, witty poems. Inevitably they became, just as happy with the first book, the poems get more savage as the book goes along. Because you are dealing with some very, very dark subjects. But theres something fascinating about that. I love eating with dark subjects in a in a lighthearted manner. The irony of that, thomas nast and jonathan swift, great satirists, and so im not a great satirists. Im a total beginner at this, but it has struck a chord and im just delighted. That fantastic. Talk about the illustrations. Just the same as i dont really consider myself a professional poet or a professional humorist, im not a professional illustrator either. But my original ambition was to be an artist. I grew up in a theater family. Ive no intention to be an actor. I didnt want to go into the family business. Besides, for as long as i can remember ive had a certain facility with art. At age seven and eight years old people asked it what it wanted to be when i grew up. It was an artist. I was very serious about it, but being in a theater family, by osmosis i was becoming a very experienced actor. I acted, my father produced shakespeare festivals and i peered in about 20 shakespeare plays on the time i was 20, and arrived at college as a fully formed actor and became a campus star, and that was that. I mean, if you get a big enough response as an actor, you are doomed. Youre not going to do anything else with your life. Wonderful. You know, the wonderful thing about doing the poems is i would imagine the illustrations, even as i wrote them. Okay. By the time we finished, i will be reciting a poem, Joe Mccarthys lullaby, and i knew exactly the drawing i was going to make of that, joe mccarthy, you know, toddling a little baby donald trump and his lap in a rocking chair. Its wonderful to find a a visl joke to go along with a verbal joke. As all of us of been doing this under predark time, a serious topic and you through covert on top of it and youve got people come in many cases not very happy about the world. Is this cathartic for you . Does this feel part of your own release for dealing with these times . Does this just work or what is it for you . Thats a very good question. Im not sure that catharsis this is the exact word but its pretty close. There is a certain elation come welcome its to create a process. I can look at Something Like that, little video, i remember the moment when i the thought f every single one of those rhymes, to think of it as a kind of mini orgasm. Thats a fairly rude way of describing it. Like oh, yes. Its very, very hard work. Its a dogged drudgery because you sit, i sit in complete silence. I cant be if a pickup truck backs up and makes that little beep beep beep sound three blocks away, i go into a fit. You have to go into this trancelike state, which is why, why i was hesitant to do it again. Its just too darn hard. But boy, when you think of the last line of the last stanza of a poem, its just, well, its cathartic. Sure enough. And also the poems are very savage. I really take a few people completely to pieces, like erik prince, john machen t, elaine chao, people who really deserve it. But i myself am not the kind of person who would get on msnbc and hold force with my own anger and wrath like steve schmidt, a man who buy just absolutely love listening to what i couldnt do that. But i can be very perverse and subversive and get nothing in my own way. Which is with satire. Youve had a chance to both two readings of your poem and have full actors and actresses and friends read them as well. How did that come about for other engagement . What does it feel like . I was just so thrilled with that. Because it was covid, you couldnt do a proper book tour. When i was releasing the first book, dumpty, just a year ago i was right there in San Francisco at your city arts lecture being interviewed for an audience of a thousand people, maybe some of your listeners with her in the audience and they had a fantastic time doing book readings and book signings everywhere. I went to three different cities, all that was out this time. We arranged things like this, a lot of virtual interviews and appearances. The couple of months ago i thought, wait a minute, lets get creative about this. Why do i because ive been asked to do all sorts of things, just talking to my iphone and texting it to someone putting it on dropbox. I made a list of my favorite people and favorite actors and i mixed in some politicians and journalists and even an epidemiologist. And i asked them if they would be willing to simply record themselves in their own reading a few of my poems. I got in touch with a fabulous director, a good friend of mine. We working on perry mason at the time and i said what about this . What about making videos of my poems as a way of selling the book . He said yes immediately. He was a big thomas nast fame fd he loved what i was doing. I contacted my pals. They also just, and this is meryl streep, annette bening, glenn close, Whoopi Goldberg, sam jackson, on and on and on, mixing and steve schmidt, James Carville, laurie garrett, thats the epidemiologist, and they did a wonderful job. Jim works with these three delightful young men who have a Company Called tick tick studios and they and this but altogether. We have now released eight. We created our own Youtube Channel. It went up just the beginning of this week. Eight of them will always been posted but there will be another 15, 16 of them right up until election eve. So thats how and you see they made use of my illustrations. They managed to animate the way you saw in that first come into a very simple way. I was just completely marvel. Ive lived in anything like that but you just have to get creative. Thats a wonderful way to bring something to life when you can get everybody around this thing a person, and you said it is on youtube. So i can people get you get on Youtube Channel, youtube, and look up our Youtube Channel which is called the Trumpty Dumpty cycle and there they are. We are going to about rolling them out. You can see eight of them. Have you gotten any reaction from the negative reaction or just ribbing from the right, from the administration at all . That have probably been some very critical things thrown up on the internet but it dont see them in any of the comment sections added dont work for them anyway. I am an actor. Most actors are scared to death of bad reviews come about who they come from. But secretly i think everybody was hoping we would get trumps goat and elicit a couple of the tweets from it. Hasnt happened yet but god, who is doing everything else. Hes a total lunatic these days, so im ready. Did you watch the debate . Yes, i did. Unbelievable. Unbelievable spectacle. Who would have dreamed that our politics would be so debased . Only thing that kind of threw me about it, not what was happening. While it was happening i wanted to vomit. As soon as it was over and i saw all the commentary, which was completely appalled by donald trump, i began to feel a certain elation as if we just watched him politically immolate himself. Weve been doing that for three or four years thinking hes done it now, theres no way he can recover from this, and we always been wrong. But i dont know, i remain optimistic. Good. Its almost as if he is doing our work for us. He is certainly give you a lot of material for the next poems. Not just that. Way back in december and january of last year when we were deciding, talking about what this book should be at how it should be different from the last one, i said this is bad. This book is got to be really tough and really dark. Hes now behaving like a king. Why dont i make up an opening poem, Trumpty Dumpty wanted a crown and make that the title of the book . Lookout prescient that was. Not to congratulate myself, but thats exactly how hes operating more now than ever. I wrote that lighthearted poem back in january. Its taken on such dark meanings when i say, for example, installed in his own Supreme Court and royal beheadings, if only for sport. Thats a much better line now than it was eight months ago. Well, i think it also, youre going to read another poem for us . Can you remember which both eyes going to read . Fake news. I urge you all to go to the Youtube Channel. I was talking about because i have this, i will read it all right but i will read as follows my friends Whoopi Goldberg and sam jackson. They are just completely wonderful. Taking the a moment. Im not sure where it is in my own book. You see, this is, explains why my career is faltered. Lets see now, fake news, fake news. Yes, its one of the first. Page 15. Ill show you the illustration for it just for the fun of it. You had the illustration. Thats our clever little tech people. Nick by name. Its called fake news and this by the way is herodotus. Trump as herodotus on his pedestal. People say that heretofore i cant black tenants from my door using legal trickery. But fake news doesnt bother me. They say that falsifying fact is how i scolded all my taxes. People call it larceny, but fake news doesnt bother me. Constantly im found at fault charged with sexual assault, harassment and adultery, but fake news doesnt bother me. Starving students, people say, have their futures ripped away by dumpty university, fake news doesnt bother me. They spend me with the vile things like payoffs for my casual things from the campaign treasury, but fake news doesnt bother me. People say i am monetized. All my president ial ties boosting my prosperity, but fake news doesnt bother me. They say my meddling in ukraine left an ignominious stain tantamount to treachery, but fake news doesnt bother me. They say in days coronavirus i propelled our downward spiral to my imbecility, but fake news doesnt bother me. Not withstanding crimes like these, i will continue as i please. Fake news doesnt bother me. I will just rewrite history. Thats fantastic. If we had a Live Audience who would be lot of flaws going on. Right here. Very fun. And prescient as well. Had you seen his income taxes . No. Thats what i mean. I wrote that early on, again come in january. It was one of the first ones i wrote. Coronavirus had never even been heard of but i but i was able k that last stands in, about days coronavirus. By the way, it was a wonderful event that i can tell you about. I had written three or four of these poems, one about roger stone, one about fake news of course. It was one called twinkle twinkle caniff Kenneth Starr al the defense team in the impeachment trial. I was invited by senator Debbie Stabenow from michigan to be the after dinner entertainment at a retreat of the Democratic Senate caucus in baltimore in the Johns Hopkins rare books library. I flew to baltimore, and i read my first four poems from this book. It was the first time i had ever read them aloud for anybody, and i was reading down to United States democratic senators. [laughing] and they laughed and applauded. They gave me a standing ovation. It was just one of those, for me, personally it was just a historic night. Thats fantastic. That wouldve been great after dinner entertainment. Unfortunately we didnt have Kamala Harris or Dianne Feinstein switch another california speed is im sure look up the book on youtube. Ive already sent the book to all my democratic friends. Great. So in the co