Had 8 degrees where he dressed, where he lived, who his friends were, everything was about living up to this spiritual ideal of what it means to be an american. Rose and we conclude with director tom hooper, his new film is called the danish girl. To not identify with the gender youre assigned at birth, i cannot imagine a more profound block a human being can experience and can be the cause of such distress. Rose concussion and the danish girl when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose concussion is the new film starring will smith. He takes on the role of dr. Bennet omalu, the real life neuropathologist who discovered footballs specific head trauma and brought ut it to the publics attention. The attention is on and off the film. While the n. F. L. Declines to comment, players like tom brady say they plan on seeing the film when it is released christmas day. Heres a look. When i was a boy, heaven was here and america was here. You could be anything, you could do anything. I never wanted anything as much as i wanted to be an american. Hearts here in pittsburgh are broken over hall of Famer Mike Webster who in recent years suffered from Mental Illness and slipped into financial ruin. Died of disgrace at 50. I can tell something is wrong. In 25 years, ive never requested a test like this. What are you looking for . I am the wrong to discover this. If you dont speak for them, who will . Repetitive head trauma chokes the brain, it turns you into someone else. Needles, vicodin, torodol, whatever it takes to keep them in the game. Get me to the commissioner. They dont want to talk to you. The n. F. L. Has known about concussion for years. Theyre terrified of you. Youre going to war with a corporation that owns the day of the week. Its as bigwq they have to listen now. Where is the science coming from . From nowhere you continue to deny our work, your men continue to die they want you to say you made it all up. Theyre accusing you of fraud. Drop it or they will be doing your autopsy, mr. Omalu. You have no idea how bad this could get. I have to keep going. Men are not machines. We must honor our warrior. Do you understand the impact of what you are doing . Tell the truth tell the truth. I think youre going to be an american hero. Im not even an american. Thats even better. Rose joining me is writer and director peter landesman, and two of the stars will smith and gugu mbatharaw. What brought this together for you and you and you . There was a silent epidemic of Football Players committing suicide, disappearing, falling into financial ruin over the years. An 2009g. Q. Article is how the film came to be. Its a Critical Mass at the right time, the right place, the right story. Rose did you reach out to talk to dr. Omalu . He was involved from the very beginning. Hes such a fabric of our families as filmmakers. Im an old journalist. I immerse midself completely. It was the first and last stop. Rose and casting will smith . Whats great about will m things, is wills joy and preciousness and professionalism matches bennets. The two of them were like opposite sides of the coin. Rose tell us how you choose and why did you choose this . Well, this one, in particular, was very different from my normal process of choosing. How it happened, you get a screenplay on a friday night, in hollywood everybody sends a screenplay friday night so you can read it over the weekend so they can know by monday if theyre going to somebody else. So i get a phone call and my daughter says, daddy, some man on the phone named ridley scott i said, girl, thats not no some man, that is sir ridley scott. laughter and ridley said, i have a gift for you. Rose a gift. A gift. He sent me the screenplay, and i remember reading it and thinking to myself, this aint no damn gift. I was, like, i mean, im a football dad. My son plays football for four years. I grew up in philadelphia with my philadelphia eagles, and i was deeply conflicted about being the person to bring this film to life. Rose conflicted because you love football, your son played football . Yes, its a very inconvenient truth, you know. A part of me was like, well, would i be being hypocritical . How do i really feel . So i met with dr. Omalu. Theres a line that was in the trailer and in our first meeting, that was the line he said to me that, when he was growing up in nigeria, heaven was here and america was here, and he said it was the place that got sent all his favorite people, you know. And i was just so moved by his life and his story, and i became deeply impedal as a parent deeply impelled as a parent because i didnt know this information. I didnt know. And if i didnt know, i newtons of other parents i knew tons of other parents didnt know and i had to do it as a parent. As a human being, they had to hear his story. Rose the message is human beings shouldnt play football. That wasnt the part of the message that i connected to. The part i connected to is that for the elevation and the evolution and the advancement of humankind, we cant discard scientific truth. Rose right. And the idea that repetitive head trauma can potentially cause longterm brain damage shouldnt be something we have a hard time accepting, yet we did. Rose so peter and gugu, why were you insisting on being a part of we have the to do this right now, right here laughter rose its time. A large part of bennets journey is his journey as a man. Rose right. He was a man about revelation, exposure and spiritual simplicity of truth, but he was incomplete as a man and he knew that he could not fulfill his mission unless he had the right partner. Gugus character prima who would later become his wife were like two puzzle pieces and together they were a whole. So we wrote the part, went after actresses, and the moment i laid eyes on her, it was a no brainer. Rose tell me what the film is about. In a strange way, about joy and discovery. Bennet is living in pittsburgh from nigeria. I cant he disassembles bodies and body part. His job isish to sure these people to heaven by solving the riddle of their deaths. In other words, our cycle cannot be complete until we answer the question how did we get here, meaning the slab, and, one day, unlikely, he got the body of one of the most mythological Football Players who ever played, mike webster. He didnt know football, who the center was or who the steelers were living in pittsburgh. So his idea was to find how did this man, 50 and homeless, die so mysteriously and strangely. Everyone wanted him buried, but bennet said how could you voluntarily not know something. Why would you not ever not know something. So he essentially spiritually stole the brain and found out webster died of a disease no one had ever seen before and had never been written in medical books and that was the repetitive blows, not necessarily concussions, but the thousands and thousands of sub concussive blows a Football Player takes to the head from youth, high school, college, through professional game, 70,000, 90,000 hits he calculated webster had taken unlocks a killer protein that moves through the brain like sludge. Rose is it any different than what might come from boxing . Completely different disease. Boxers, once they get hit, once they get the knockout blow and theyre down, they dont get back in the ring for weeks, months, sometimes longer than that. In the professional game, its three months before they can get back in the ring. In football, its not the knockout blow. Its the thousands of little one single play i played center in high school and college. In one play you can take six blows to the head, the knee, the ground, the ball, the face mask, and you add those up and its tens of thousands. Boxers are more like a. L. S. Or parkinsons, a very different biological mechanism. Rose why dont helmets protect you . They protect you from the outside. Were talking about the inside. The brain sits in a cavity surrounded by fluid. If we were to move our heads back and forth, it bounces the brain back and forth. And thousands of times, thats what were talking about, not blows from the outside. Something bennet said there t was very interesting, he feels that the helmet is part of the problem and he says that, you know, in american football, because the equipment is so good, the helmet is so seemingly protective, that the players feel comfortable using the head as a weapon when, in actuality, its not stopping your brain from slamming into your skull. Its the g force that the helmet doesnt assist with. Rose when you begin to make the film, any contradictions for you . Any pushback for you as you set out to make it . You know, we knew what we were walking into. You know, we know that football isnt a sport in this country. Its part of a social and cultural fabric. Alec baldwin says it in the movie. Otonon thanksgiving and christme think of football. We knew we were walking not into a sport but a cultural phenomenon. We stayed true to our mission which was character. The man who played beautifully on the film was one to have the most joyful whistle blowers, whistle blowers are complex people driven by complex things. You stay focused on character, the consequence of the cultural, the political, the sports, the continue vearks thats whats happening around us. Rose he did it because its the right thing to do . Yeah, he whats really interesting about bennet, how i try to understand a character, i start first and foremost with i try to figure out what do they want, you know. And we all want lots of things but we all have primary desires that most of our life is directed towards. And what i found with bennet is he wanted to be accepted as an american. From the time he was a little boy, he wanted to be accepted as an american because he thought that america was the place where god sent all of his favorite people. So everything in his life, he had 8 degrees. The way he dressed, where he lived, who his friends were, everything were about living up to this spiritual ideal of what it means to be an american. So when he was presented, very ironically, with the knowledge of c. T. E. , so this guy who loves america and is chasing the American Dream just happens to be the guy who discovers the disease that the players of americas greatest game gets. For me, when i connected to that idea, i could see how this was a Spiritual Mission for him, that he had to keep going, he couldnt stop. It became how he earned the spiritual right to have all of the gifts that he has in his life. So it was really complex, but deeply faithbased for him. Rose what role does his wife play . For me, as a foreigner to america and not growing up with football, you know, i wasnt really interested in doing a football movie, per se, because thats not really part of my personal cultural heritage. But for me, the film felt so much bigger than that in many ways, you know, in terms of this relationship, especially prema, you know, both to have the characters coming as immigrants to america and bonding over their sort of shared quest for the American Dream. And prema really sort of starting off as needing the support of bennet, but actually, then, you know, their relationship sort of evolves in this sort of delicate, eccentric way where she sort of breathes life and humanity into his very scientific world, and there is this line that alberts character has that you need to touch someone living for a while. And hes so confused by his science that she brings a warmth and human quality to him and its also she becomes the emotional and moral compass for this journey he goes on and eventually taking on the n. F. L. , she gave him courage. Rose this clip in which you were confessing to her you dont feel adequate to complete the mission. Here it is. When i was a boy growing up in nigeria, heaven was here, and america was here. I have never wanted anything as much as i wanted to be accepted as an american. A man goes mad and nobody asks why. They make fun of him. They insult him on tv. And now they want to pretend his disease does not exist. They want to bury me. I am the wrong person to have discovered this. Also to say her character, its almost more than that. The wife, he build her a dream house. Its like she was the intrinsic part of the American Dream. He needed her to unlock the dream. Not just the discovery, but family, they build a Beautiful House outside of pittsburgh that they have to abandon because he was exiled and destroyed as a whistleblower. Rose did you tone it down . Not for a moment. It was very surreal when we were accused of something that was in the air. We had no interaction or connection with the n. F. L. I didnt want it, didnt need it. They had nothing to offer us. We were make ago story about this man, not national football. Rose but do you believe they want to do something about concussions and are aware of the danger of concussions and are prepared to take action . I believe in the n. F. L. As a corporation that wants to protect the bottom line and will do whatever they have to do. Rose does that mean trying to gloss over the confessions . Including doing as much as they can. I believe they are trying to do as much as they can to protect the players but the bigger question is the sport in general and whether you can do something about this or is it just baked into the sport and something to be taken for granted at this point. Rose the level of violence . Well, knowing what we know and, you know, information, and knowing as long as a Football Player knows this can happen, it is now incumbent upon them to make the choice and the adult decision, and the same with putting your children in peewee and football. This is in the tap industry to have the sport. Its upon you to decide if you want to engage in this. Rose this is a clip from our brain series you have been watching in our audience for years and this is dr. Kandel. The brain is a gelatinous organ protected by being encased in a rigid, bony skull. When we move about, there is minimum movement in the brain. But as a result of two kinds of forces impact forces or inertia forces it can be serious jarring of the brain as its moved rapidly back and forth in the enclosed space. Its only separated from this bony, inflexible skull by a fluid layer called the cerebral spinal fluid. Having had a prior concussion is particularly important for two reasons. One, it takes longer to recover but also one of the interesting and sad things of a prior concussion is if you had one concussion youre more likely to have a second concussion and if youve had two concussions, youre much more likely to have a i third or fourth one. So concussion is not only bad in itself, but what it does for the future of the athlete playing. Rose everything he said is exactly as the reality. Yes. Rose what do you hope comes out of the film, will . As pa parent as a parent, i didnt know when my son played football, and my son was on the field and i was concerned about h him breaking his leg. Rose how old was he . He played from 14 to 18. We were on the field and i was concerned about him breaking his leg. The big thing was final injury. So i had no idea. To i know that other people have and had no idea. So for me its strictly about the knowledge and the information so people can make informed decisions. Rose and if you had to make a decision now, and you know what you know now . Fortunately, this is just a hypothetical because h he was really into it. For a parent, it would be extremely difficult. What i would do is want him to have the information. Rose would you make the decision . We have to make the decision together. What im going to say is really weak, but i would just, you know, support him and then make his mother say no. laughter if were going to be really honest. Man, listen, you know. If it was just me and you, you know. But your mom, man. laughter rose tell me more about the story of dr. Omalu so we can understand, which is the spine of this story. It is about this concussion but its about him, about one man against a system. Yeah, you have a man who was born during an air raid in the jungle in nigeria, you know, so you know, so this is a man who came from as humble a beginning as possible, and he looked to america as a boy and what we stand for and, you know, what we have been to and in the world, and he comes to america and he gets eight degrees, he discovers this disease, and almost loses everything. Rose take a look at this. This is ray lewis on this program talking about how additional rules protecting players dilutes the game which is the argument made by some. Theyre taking the game and theyre diluting the game because they want to protect their claims. But if you leave the game alone, like always, the game will take care of itself. The biggest things right now thats disgusting to me gist disgusting in college football, now, theyve created a term thats called targeting, saying if a player launches his head, which is the first thing on his body, thats what you lead with, you launch your head into someone and you collide with their helmet, thats targeting, and theyre kicking them out of games, but the referee makes a mistake and theyre never punished. Whats the lesson were being taught . If you make the mistake thats why we have helmets and shoulder pads because if i turn my neck to the side i put myself in jeopardy of being hurt. You have the people sitting at the top of the food chain and the reason they dont care because the herds are so great, they dont care and its on to the next one and the next one and the next one. Rose what do you think about that . I would be curious to see him revisit that 20 years from now to see if hes in tact. Rose he may suffer . He may, and someone who plays as aggressively as he plays, thats rhetoric of someone who has not been inside the unbelievable tragic shakespearean suffering of a family who has a man whos a bread winner and father go through this disease. They become unrecognizable to themselves, to their children. Its a shocking clip to me. Rose heres a clip. I just think that we should be careful with that. There is a context to what he was talking about and what he was saying that were not aware of and, you know, i know ray, and rose so if you know him, you must know how he feels about this. Well, we havent discussed this. We havent discussed the movie or the science. Rose hes a very engaging guy. Yeah, you know, and as the science is evolving, he can make that decision, you know. He absolutely can make that decision for himself and for his family and for his kids, and i dont want us to appear to be in opposition to that. I want him to have more information so he can make whatever decision that he wants to make for himself. Rose in the end, in a sense, is that part of what you think as your mission here in making this film is to be a stimulus for making information let everybody underst