Somebodys there because they didnt care enough. If only they had some moral quality, they would be somewhere else. I hate that. Yes. Rose and you seem to have captured that idea or own that idea. Well i know a part of it was in my 20s no, thank you thats wonderful. I wint through a period in my 20s where i got that lesson from the other side. I had an engineering degree worked in asia for a couple years and did a jack kerouac. Just in a small way you get the feeling of being on the receiving end of sharp blades of capitalism. And it wasment in my situation it wasnt the gulag but just the taste of that and just to see, its not actually that interested in your feelings you know. So i think just a little bit of that, yes. Rose david who as you know is a guest on this program tell me about the friendship. Well weve you know we melt probably five or six seven times and each time was just a really deep deep communication. I just lover the guy and was kind of off in his energy and his work. I think we had kind of a professional friendship in that we didnt we werent emailing every day. When we got together it was sort of an occasion. And he always made me kind of, i have a bit of kind of a cheerful, a tendency to sort of make everything optimistic sort of ramp it up but he was very honest and so one thing he did for me was make me look a little closer at that tendency and say well if dave were here he would honestly say this food is terrible or he would say i dont like that book. In that way he was a wonderful influence. Rose when you read of his suicide, what did you think. Actually somebody email me what do you think about this and i thought it was a joke because i couldnt, his energy, it was so beautiful and vibrant and so all inclusive. You could be somewhere and if he was nervous that became part of the story, if he was happy, if there was some i remember enter viewing him on stage in a Public Theatre in new york and we were both of kind of nervous and we had a graded talk and he went out with a plastic fork in his hand and kept that the whole time and several times he would look down and kind of refer to it. Rose did he appreciate the talent, do you think. That he had . I think he did, yes. I mean, it was so interesting to watch a at that time like that. Saw they the talent and the man are the same. To see him talk in person, to see him relate with other people you really felt the book coming alive. Lets very little divide between the artist and the man and that was something i really learned. That kind of honesty that he had in person translated into the page and that beautiful mental convolution. Thats can cat foreally being hit by a truck. Rose couldnt handle it and they too couldnt negotiate. Right. I think that i had the feeling if he tweaked something in any brain of our brains, you could just get to a place where you couldnt go on. Rose what we dont appreciate is the pain. They all say to me its the pain, physical pain. Yes, because to go from the man that i knew who was so alive and so vibrant so incredibly generous and then you see just taking his own life, thats not a logical progression. So therefore something illogical and terrible intervene and thats it. Rose we talk about writing and then about fiction. You said i think there was a moment a Pivotal Moment where you realized that absurdism was actually real. Well, it was some time i worked for a company in rochester, an Engineering Company and i was a tech writer and it was kind of the feeling, there were meetings that we had that were quite crazy and you thought well if i represent this realistically, i would have to go over into what we call a post mud everyone mode. Its to crazy. If you look honestly at your emotional range the things that have moved you, and them you try to translate that into fiction you realize that you sometimes have to use extraordinary means to represent quote unquote ordinary circumstances, you know. So its something about when i try to get the language to overload, and try to do justice to the actual emotional trajectory that i experienced, it was necessary to go off into quote unquote nonrealistic turf but they are one and the same thing. Rose power of observation is that part of the talent. I think it is but ive done some nonfiction pieces that really helped achieve my world view but i think if it is its actually the power to observe language i think, to see when a paragraph is being sloughful. That kind of observation isnt unrelated to the observation of the real. If you get a sense it isnt doing its job. If you say jim wore a red sweater. Jim wore a dirty red sweater. Thats a little truncated. Jim wore a dirty red sweeter with a torn yellow pocket. Thats a better sounding sentence and jims a little bit of a slob. Hes coming into focus. Rose there is about you two things. You take on big subjects like mortality like capitalism, like morality and you do it without sin seizal cynicism and you see it in the small focus of every day life and thats how it defines yourself. Thats a question. Rose i think actually y ou i think in the course of your life rose i dont want you to agree with me. How do you encounterbig ideas. In that wivmentd story the guy wants to tell someone his son has died. No one listens so he tell his horse. The way to get to the big ideas is through the tiny moments of disrespect or pain or the crumpled piece of paper. The small details are the gateway to big ideas or if you say im going to write about patriarchy thats a recipe. Rose also theres this. Do you think arts essentially a moral function. I do but i think while youre doing it you better not think that. After the fact rose were all doing something that nobody else has ever thought of or that is so profound people will be thats right. Dont be too sure about the effect its going to have because my motto theres this thing a story thats kind of a black box. You lead the reader and he gets put out on the other end. On the creative side you dont want to be too sure what kind of state hes in. You want to do something its like a carnival ride. But the minute you start stage managing him you want to improve him. I think you become a comment a little bit so better you could just energize the person in some way. After you read you know the way youre lit up for a few days afterwards, thats true but when youre doing it you better rose but you also everybody says this. Everybody says this. You can get at truth through fiction more than you can through nonfiction. Do you believe that. I do believe that, yes. Rose because . I think its because its, well for one thing youre not inhibited by what actually happened. So the excesses of your aesthetic term by whatever its bound it can present. Fiction offers a unique chance for the reader and writer to construct the world together. So if i say a man walked off a dusty road towards a whitehouse. Well you just supplied a man that worked toward a house. Theres a third thing were creating together. That makes intimacy and as a writer you can try not to ever condescend, make the participatory and then 80 pages down the road weve got a man we made together who is going through something hopefully major and who is making it. Not me, not you but the two of us together. Now that kind of happens in know fiction but the fact the fiction writer, for example, i dont rose let me just understand. Nonfiction the other persons not a part of making the character because the characters already been created. I suppose he is actually because even writing a nonfiction meese but its my projection. But i think somehow in fiction because youre free to invent youre free to exaggerate and compress that whole process is more vigorous. So for example i love writing nonfiction but i dont like writing about someones feelings. If i had a dark truce to tell about a Certain Group of people even if i didnt know them i would say i just cant do that. In fiction you make up the person, tell the dark truth and in a certain way the defects of your personality are excused because invented it anyway. Rose do you write some nonfiction. I did six pieces for gq, the editor andy ward i lived in homeless camp in fresno for a week, i went to dubai and traveled with president clinton. Being in situations and kind of going with an idea in mind and having a real world just watch over you and take your idea out, so refreshing especially for somebody in the middle of their live, it was really eye opening and i think a lot of of the kind of more positive qualities here are a effect of those getting out in the world and writing those stories. Rose you also stated at some point you started about the idea i was talking about earlier you said the absence of wealth was the erosion of grace. Meaning . Ill tell you the exaggerated version. I worked at a slaughterhouse in my 20s, young guy Pretty Healthy kind of a positive thinker. And just worked eight or ten hours as a knuckle it was called. And so there in the prime of my life i had come home, couldnt open my hands because there was a hook and a knife and i was 26 year old running them under hot water. I noticed with a little bit of shock at night i didnt want to do anything. I didnt want to go out, i didnt want to watch tv. If i could work up the nerve i had a beer meeting but the whole thing was bracing yourself for 6 00 the next morning going into the freeding cold room and starting again. I worked maybe a week andahalf. This was the first time i mean its child of an obvious thing but the way what you do in the later hours affects who you are when you come home. And if you have a wife you have a kid, your ability to respond generously and loving to them is going to be affected by work. That was maybe the hardest job but even in the other ones you could sort of see that that eight hires ten hours you spent has got a moral charge because it spits you out a different person than you want in. So thats always been on my mind and somebody whose worked my whole life and everybody i know whose worked i noticed that in fiction that stuff is often off stage. The characters are talk or out fishing or something and my life with them has always been eight hours of work and whatever crises was going on outside, you know, youve had to suppress it when you went to work. I think thats maybe a deep part of the american story. Rose absolutely. There are those of us and i assume you are and certainly i am even more so maybe so many people have the separation between work and the rest of their life. I dont have a separation. Its not because im crazied by work it is because what my work is about is something that is my ultimate curiosity. What a privilege. I remember when our kids were little and being in that first glow of fatherhood all you want to do is be with them. I got cept to a job at water town and we were doing some environmental sampling in the swamp. So were staying at the hotel and i remember thinking im feeling a pain here that i know is not very manly but i just want to get home and so that thing youre going to work eight or ten hours doing something that is not at all related to your hearts desire. Thats okay. It happens but i just think its sort of maybe an under narrated poker of life. Rose how do you write now. You know just kind of its almost, i think i train myself to be able to do it any time. I have a little writing shed at our house and i kind of go out there in the morning and just walk the dogs and get in there and sit for six or seven hours and see. Sometimes sit sometimes type frantically. Rose just sit and think and write and read. Its the first time, maybe the first time where ive had kind of those big blocks of time. Rose i was looking for something i wanted to read i thought i marked it but i didnt. There is also this. Your dad. I love this story. Wanted you to be a reader. Yes yes. My dad was when i was a kid first he sold coal for peterson coal south side chicago and he was great you always love superheroes. You always love villains and heroes. You put on that costume, black, tight. You lose 20 pounds right away, you look great. Meow. We used to say we put on our tights to put on the world. [ batman theme playing ] he liked the walls to pop out. Hed come in and they would pop. The generation of women my age that had mothers that were saying you can do whatever you set your mind to. That tells you something about our culture and what people really enjoy what people are more fixated on, what grabs them. Explore new worlds and new ideas through programs like this made available for everyone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Seacrest they put on a costume to entertain a nation. West it was easy to play batman. The moment i pulled on that cowl it was like, in my head, it was like, hey, you want to go out and play batman . Lets go, come on its a clue, all right. But what does it mean . To the batcave. Well analyze it. I used to call them my python pants because they nearly strangled you to death. And, i mean, man was not built for tights, let me tell you. Under this garb, were perfectly ordinary americans. Sometimes if a costume is right. [ sighs ] you dont have to act. Au revoir, batman. Running around in spandex and a cape, you know. Thats going to be my hero. Who are you . im looking for the case file youre working on. [ bullet ricocheting ] i wore less on the beach. It was more than a bikini. It was the American Flag in a onepiece suit. Seacrest they played the characters that sparked our imaginations. I got beat up a lot as a kid. So i wanted to be like the hulk i wanted to be so strong so invincible. [ grunts ] the creator of wonder woman really felt that girls needed a hero, too and developed wonder woman. Women are the wave of the future. And sisterhood is. Stronger than anything. Seacrest they had fun and brought us along for the ride. I thought, yeah thats the kind of comedy id like to try, something absurd. Oh, i loved doing batman. It was huge fun. Holy strawberries, batman are we in a jam see, that one, i thought, was a little on the corny side. Holy popcorn maneating lilacs. Holy purple cannibals but they started giving jimmy a chance to be funny and do comedy and do comic bits. Well, ill be a sidewinding gopher whatever that is. You feel like a winner because no matter what the hulk always succeeds. He never fails. In our dreams, we can be anything we want to be. Seacrest together they gave new life to an established genre. Entertaining millions of every age. They are the pioneers of television. It may the most famous scene in the batman franchise. Adam west, as batman tries to get rid of a bomb thats about to explode. That long sequence with the bomb on the pier in Santa Barbara in which i couldnt get rid of the bomb. Batman discovers this bomb, okay. Of course, you know, its going to go off so hes gotta get rid of it. He runs over to this pier, and on one side, he starts to throw it, and theres a mother duck with her little ducklings down in the water. He cant throw it there. He runs in another direction heres the Salvation Army band playing. [ band playing bringing in the sheaves ] so the last line hes totally winded and frustrated and he says, what looking down at the water, some days, you just cant get rid of a bomb some days, you just cant get rid of a bomb. Seacrest the scene epitomized what made the batman tv series succeed. [ explosion ] the perfect combination of action and comedy. To make it funny and ludicrous absurd in a sense, but always kind of believable. Seacrest batman didnt start out as a comedy. The original comic books were darker, more serious. When the show came to television the producers wanted a lighter touch, but they couldnt find an actor who could pull it off until they saw this commercial for nestle quik. Man oh, captain q join me in a glass of delicious chocolate quik wont you . Thank you, doctor. I could use some energy. Incidentally one of those torpedoes you fired at me was circling and. [ explosion ] youre sunk. Toodleoo, captain q some people will do anything to get rich quik. Toodleoo. They saw them, and they said, kid, i think you can play batman, and they called me in. Seacrest the next step was casting robin. Despite looking at more than a thousand actors for the role no one seemed right. Then burt ward wandered in for his very first acting audition ever. Go for broke, you know. And thats what i did, all the way, right for the character. And they loved it. [ sighs ] listen, bruce, ive got an idea. Yes . Remember what the riddler said when he slipped you that summons . What is it that no one wants to have yet no one wants to lose . And you answered a lawsuit. Seacrest from the first day of production, almost nothing went right. Explosions misfired with regularity. Sending burt ward to the hospital four times in a week. These guys that are setting dynamite charges you do not want to smell liquor on their breath at 8 00 in the morning bad sign the signal i climb up, and as i get to the top just to get into position. The car unexpectedly blows up. Just excruciating pain. They said, look, burt we will get you right over to the Emergency Hospital as soon as we finish the shot. I said, what do you mean, im not going now . No, no, youve got to go back and shoot the shot. We got the whole crew, we got 80 guys in the crew here. Well, it was kind of chaos the first week or so of shooting in that burt kept getting in the way of bombs and speeding cars. Seacrest the chemistry between adam west and burt ward worked from the very beginning. Although the two did have a friendly sense of competition. If you noticed when he said his lines, adam spoke very slowly. Robins right. He has a strange artistic compulsion to artistic. Thats it. The meaning of the first clue the peel art gallery. Why did he do that . Well, he understood that if he spoke slowly and they had to be on him for the entire line it would take longer for him to say his lines. The camera would be, therefore on him longer, and less on the other actors he was very smart about that. The real crime . Precisely, inspector bash. The riddler contrives his plots like artichokes you have to strip off spiny leaves to reach the heart. Were talking, and then all of a sudden, he opens up his cape and walks right up to the camera and stands there blocking me out. And the director said, wait a minute burts in the shot, adam he said, i had to do it. I said, why did you have to do that, adam . He says, because i felt the moment. I felt it was necessary. I did occasionally kid burt, tease him a bit by holding up a cape in front of his face and in front of a take but only if he misunderstood something. If he was doing something he shouldnt do as my sidekick. Okay, take two, and it would come down. Seacrest in the first few weeks of production, adam west faced a more serious challenge from producer bill dozier over how to play the batman character. They wanted it very straight and lone ranger kind of thing and nothing behind the mask. I couldnt do that. I felt that batman is a very interesting character, but even comedically as the bright knight and not the dark knight you had to have fun with it. Seacrest adam west won the argument and his batman character became one of the biggest breakout hits of the decade. In the 60s, the three bs bond, beatles, and batman. And i thought, my god im a part of that trio