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Amanpour
French Prime Minister on Refugee Crisis; Robert Redford: A Rebel with a Cause; Imagine a World. Aired 2-2:30p ET
Aired September 11, 2015 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): As more countries open their doors to refugees this week, Europe's chief calls for unity and bold
action, setting out a new plan and criticizing a continent in crisis.
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JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER, PRESIDENT, EUROPEAN COMMISSION: There's a lack of Europe in the European Union. And there's a lack of union in this European
Union.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): But what will member states make of the new proposals?
Tonight, my interview with the French prime minister, Manuel Valls.
Also ahead, a walk in the woods with Robert Redford. His career, his co- stars and refusing to put on his retirement slippers.
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ROBERT REDFORD, ACTOR AND ACTIVIST: I want to make the most of what I've been given. And you keep pushing yourself forward. You try new things.
And that's invigorating.
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AMANPOUR: Good evening and welcome to the weekend edition of our program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
The number of refugees flooding across Europe's borders shows no sign of abating. A record crossed into Hungary this week as the army there
fortifies its borders and the right-wing government continues its hardline stance. Many are trying to reach a more welcoming Germany, which has
registered nearly half a million refugees so far this year.
And this week, the European Commission chief called again for mandatory quotas for E.U. nations, to share the burden of an initial 120,000
refugees.
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JUNCKER: Pushing back boats from piers, setting fire to refugee camps or turning a blind eye to poor and helpless people, that is not Europe.
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AMANPOUR: Let's not forget that many of these refugees are escaping 4.5 years of Syria's bloody, brutal war that no country has yet seriously tried
to halt.
As European leaders ponder the E.C. chief's mandate, France said it would take in 24,000 over two years. And I asked Prime Minister Manuel Valls
about it as a poll shows that 55 percent of the French people don't want to do that. And support is rising for the extreme right wing National Front
party.
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AMANPOUR: Mr. Prime Minister, welcome back to the program.
Let me start by asking you what your reaction is to the very serious and quite hard statements that Jean-Claude Juncker made today, saying this
crisis and Europe's reaction to it threatens Europe's very character.
MANUEL VALLS, FRENCH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): I already had the opportunity, as far as I'm concerned, to speak similarly with the same
degree of seriousness.
If Europe is unable -- look, another subject (ph) -- to keep Greece in the euro or if Europe, working together, can't deal with the terrorist threat,
if Europe can't -- if it does, it can't prepare the climate problem and especially if Europe can't deal with this --
[14:05:00]
VALLS (through translator): -- significant challenge, the refugees arriving, yes. It may move out of history and therefore there is a
challenge here for Europe.
But Europe is not a vague entity. Europe is a federation of nation states. Each state, each nation, each country must play its full role.
AMANPOUR: Well, do you think each state will play its full role?
This has been the crisis from the beginning: some states taking in a lot of refugees; others not letting any in.
Do you think what Jean-Claude Juncker has called for today, an equal and fair sharing of the burden, will actually be agreed to by you and your
other counterparts?
VALLS (through translator): France, with Germany, has already taken some initiatives. I would remind you, for example, France, for a year now, is
seeking to convince other member states to find, to look for a solution to the refugee crisis, which, a few months ago, was more to do with Italy and
there was no solution found in June.
France has already received several thousand Syrians during the last few years.
And I hope that the council of the interior ministers or home office ministers next Monday will be able to find common solutions.
AMANPOUR: What do you say to countries like Hungary or even the Czech Republic, who've never seen immigration, unlike France, unlike Germany,
unlike other Western European nations and who, frankly, are worried about, hard as it is to say, non-Christians coming to their country?
You have had, you know, experience with changing demographics.
Do you understand their fears?
VALLS (through translator): I understand the anxieties of various parties.
But one cannot choose on the basis of religion. We can't choose to receive people just -- who are just Christian. We had in France one of these young
girls who was tortured, raped.
We couldn't receive her because she's not Christian?
It has no meaning.
And also I'd remind you, Hungary and the Czech Republic, all those countries which have lived under Soviet dictatorship, Western Europe also
received refugees and asylum seekers, those who were threatened by Communist dictatorships.
So then -- and Poland, I think, is, at the moment, making a proposal which is on the right lines. We each have to take our share.
AMANPOUR: Could you just briefly tell me when France will start striking ISIS targets in Syria?
And what do you make of Russia confirming that it is sending more equipment basically to help the Assad regime?
VALLS (through translator): Next Tuesday at the national assembly, at French parliament, I will be informing the representatives of the
objectives of France and that there will be strikes.
I'm not going to give very precise information on your channel or other channels. But I will advise when decisions have been taken on the basis of
objectives by the president.
And finally, we are having talks with Russia. Russia supports the regime of Bashar al-Assad but it also wants to find a political solution.
And anyway, there will not be any political solution without a dialogue with all the parties, who, directly or indirectly, are involved with Syria.
AMANPOUR: Prime Minister Manuel Valls, thank you so much indeed for joining us from Paris tonight.
VALLS (through translator): Thank you very much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: You are watching the weekend edition of our program. And coming up, you will know him as a veteran Hollywood heartthrob. But Robert
Redford's pretty pleased that he's shrugged off that title. My interview just ahead as we take a walk in the woods. That's next.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. Now it's hard to believe that the Hollywood movie star, Robert Redford, celebrated his 79th birthday this
year.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): His truly breakout role was the Kid, the Sundance Kid, alongside Paul Newman's Butch Cassidy all the way back in 1969.
But he has always refused to be just a Hollywood pretty boy. Acting, directing and supporting causes close to his heart, like founding the
famous independent Sundance Festival, now 20 years old, and struggling against climate change.
His latest film, "A Walk in the Woods," about an unlikely pair, who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail, is coming out in Europe now and several
weeks later another film called "Truth," about the news network, CBS, will be released.
In the second part of our interview this week in Paris, he now discusses the great women he has worked with and how he likes to explore the gray
zones in red, white and blue America.
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AMANPOUR: Robert Redford, welcome to the program.
REDFORD: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: I was surprised to learn that you, who do not have a reputation as being the bad boy of cinema, had a pretty well-earned misspent youth
that landed you here in Paris as a young man.
REDFORD: Yes. That's right.
AMANPOUR: What was that all about?
REDFORD: I wouldn't consider that my bad time. That came just a little bit before.
Up to that point, my life had been constricted by growing up in Los Angeles and I was not inspired by that. I felt like my life had not really begun.
And then when I went to Europe to study art, I came to Paris. Once I came to Paris, that's where my real education began.
AMANPOUR: What was it that you were rebelling against?
I read that you just didn't want to do what your father wanted you to do.
REDFORD: Well, I think in terms of my dad, I mean, my dad was a good man. But he grew up in poverty. And so he was kind of saddled with what that
brings about; you know, poverty makes you afraid to try things. You want to grab a hold of something and hang onto it for security.
Because I was very different and because I guess I was very rebellious and I wanted to be out of the box, so to speak, it made him nervous,
understandably.
So he wanted me to be more straight and narrow. He wanted me to be able to go to Stanford or Dartmouth and get a job and be in the mainstream and be
successful.
And I think I was just born not to be.
AMANPOUR: So I ask all that because it leads to me perfectly into your new film, "A Walk in the Woods," which is open in the U.S., which is opening
here around the world. And you and your sort of wild man friend, Katz, in the movie, are talking about your wild years.
REDFORD: Right.
AMANPOUR: What is it?
Why did you want to do this particular film?
Was it about nature?
Was it about midlife crisis?
REDFORD: Well, kind of both.
First of all, it was a comedy and I -- it had been many, many years since I had done a comedy. And I wanted to do a film that had comedy in it.
But this was a comedy that also had pathos and it had that other level to it that I was drawn to.
And that had to do with friendship. I felt that friendship was a valuable topic to explore, friendship that started when you were young; you became
very close friends and then something happened, you fell out. You fell out with each other.
And 30 years later, you come back and you find -- you revive that friendship. I just thought that was a nice theme, friendship. And then
the idea of being in nature, developing that in nature in a way that neither character knew what they were getting into.
AMANPOUR: You have said that your country, the United States, is obsessed by winning, winning at all costs, that it's all red, white and blue. And
you have done a lot of films that explore the gray zone.
What is the gray that you are trying to tell people about?
REDFORD: The gray is in the more complex zone. In other words, when I grew up as a kid, there was a lot of red, white and blue propaganda about
America. And it was justified. America is a great country. And it had done wonderful things, particularly around the Second World War, the people
it liberated and so forth. That was very special. And I thought, we deserve that.
But that's not all there is. And what I was -- experienced as a kid growing up -- I grew up in a lower working class neighborhood. And one of
the ways that got me out of a bad situation was sports. But I was told when I was playing sports, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose. It's
how you play the game.
And I found that out to be a lie. And the more I experienced life in America, I realized, it's very much about winning. It's all about winning.
I don't think anything has really changed because if you look -- if you go today and you look at the political landscape, you see is so much about
winning. Whether you are talking about Hillary Clinton or --
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REDFORD: -- whether you're talking about Jeb Bush, you keep finding out -- or Trump, it's about winning.
And I said, well, nothing has really changed. It's all about winning.
But what about that area in between, where things are more complex?
AMANPOUR: And this is about the next stage of life. And I don't know. You are 79 years old.
Who would know you are nearly 80, really?
REDFORD: Suddenly I'm feeling very old.
(LAUGHTER)
AMANPOUR: What has it done?
Has that liberated you, sort of the pretty boy but very good actor, but you were getting certain roles for a long time.
Can you -- do you have more choice now, more freedom?
REDFORD: Yes, you're right. I mean, you said it. I think I got -- I wasn't prepared for being locked into a box. I didn't see myself the way
others saw me. And so therefore it was hard for me to accept it.
And then I realized I was kind of feeling trapped because I couldn't go outside the box of leading man or good-looking leading man. It was very
flattering but it was feeling restrictive because I started out in the business to be an actor, to play all kinds of roles.
So it took many years to break loose of that. And I think finally that's happened. And that feels good.
AMANPOUR: You have taken on roles that dissect the media. Woodward and Bernstein in "All the President's Men," which was one of the most famous
media stories of all time, about Watergate and now soon a film called "Truth" will come out, about CBS' "60 Minutes" and Dan Rather right before
the last Bush election.
Why did you choose that film?
Dan Rather was obviously fired for a story that CBS said they couldn't stand up because of the lack of documents.
REDFORD: As it turned out, when you look deeply into that whole story, that's a very, very small part of what I thought was the real story.
To me, the real story was the story that I wanted to tell, which is related to something that I've always been interested in, which is what happens to
the individual when the individual is controlled by corporate power?
AMANPOUR: This is the theme?
REDFORD: It is.
AMANPOUR: It's power, corporate power.
REDFORD: And the individual.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And that's your theme.
REDFORD: It is. I guess you can say that, yes.
And here was Dan, the top of his game, probably the top of the three at that time, and a champion for CBS. The ratings from CBS went sky high
because of him.
And then suddenly, like that, he was fired. And I remember when that happened in 2004.
I thought, whoa, you know, what's going on here?
What came to me was, here was a guy -- and it was about loyalty, about loyalty between him and his producing partner, Mary Mapes.
And when I called Dan, I called him on the phone and I said, look, this script has come to me. It's a very interesting story about your fall from
grace and what's the circumstances behind it.
And he said, Bob, to me it was a question -- it's about loyalty.
He said, I was loyal to my producing partner. She was loyal to me. We were completely loyal to each other.
And I was also loyal -- it was like a triangle of loyalty. I was also loyal to my bosses, which was CBS.
But what happened, they began to get nervous because they needed favors from the administration, which was George Bush at that time. And Dan and
Mary were going after the story that was highlighting gaps in his history with the Air National Guard and that he hadn't done some of the things he
was purported to have done.
So they were just working on that story to expose it. And so what happened, there was some small incident involving some type script that was
blown up to be a bigger incident to justify his being let go.
That was the story that came to me. Now by the way, Christiane, how true all that is, I don't know because I wasn't there.
But looking at the documentation, I'm thinking, this is really a good story. And I would like to film this. I would like to -- but me playing
Dan Rather? That's not an easy, fun thing to do because everybody knows what he looks like.
AMANPOUR: How did you try to channel him?
REDFORD: Yes, how do that, I thought, this is very uneasy because I can't do a caricature of Dan Rather. That would be wrong. But I have to find
the essence of the man. So that, to me, was the biggest test of all.
AMANPOUR: You have worked with some extraordinary women throughout your career. But let's just take Cate Blanchett in "Truth," let's take Emma
Thompson in "Walk in the Woods," let's take Meryl Streep in the number of films, including "Out of Africa" that you've played together.
They also have something in common, certainly Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep. They have loudly put their voice in activism behind the injustice
that Hollywood does to women in terms of pay, in terms of representation, in terms of how they are respected and given roles when they hit, you know,
post 50.
REDFORD: Yes. And sometimes that's when it gets really good.
In my mind, maybe I'm saying that because I'm the age I'm at, but to me that's when it really gets interesting. Once you pass 40, get towards 50,
to me that's where real beauty sets in. And that's how I feel about these women.
I think that I've been really blessed going all the way back to Natalie Wood --
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REDFORD: -- Jane Fonda, who are real women, you know.
And so when you talk about Meryl, when you talk about Cate, for example, working with Cate was pure joy because she can do anything. She can do
anything she wants to do. Same with Meryl. They both have the ability to play any kind of a character and have you totally believe in them. So it's
a joy to work with people like that.
AMANPOUR: Do you think Hollywood is losing out -- are people, are viewers losing out when they don't put women of a certain age, except those with
massive names -- on screen, when they don't tell those stories and also when they don't pay them equally?
REDFORD: I agree with you. I think it's tragic. I think that the role women play not only in film should be stronger, not only in film, but in
politics, in social affairs. I think that the role of women needs to be enhanced because I think it's so nurturing and has a perspective I think
that the male side doesn't always have.
AMANPOUR: Apparently, you don't like to watch your own movies.
Is that true?
Why?
REDFORD: I don't have a good answer for it. I wish I did. I don't know why. I just don't like it. I've never liked looking at myself. It
sometimes embarrasses me. You know, I don't want to be embarrassed.
AMANPOUR: I read that it kind of goes back to your childhood.
Did you used to go to movie theaters and laugh at everybody on screen?
(CROSSTALK)
REDFORD: It could be; yes, it could be that I grew up in a rough neighborhood as a kid and we would go to matinees. You know, we'd go to
matinees -- basically we would go to see the cartoons or the serials, you know, Wonder Woman, Flash Gordon, Tarzan.
And when the films would come up, we would be in this mood, where we would not take them seriously. And so sometimes we'd make comments to the screen
-- I'm embarrassed to say that -- that had to do with growing up the wrong -- and --
(LAUGHTER)
REDFORD: -- in a weird neighborhood. And so maybe that was in my head when I became an actor. I said, boy, I'm up there and I can imagine myself
sitting in the audience, saying, oh, come on, you know.
AMANPOUR: Be real.
REDFORD: Yes, yes.
AMANPOUR: And what about retiring?
And not so many years ago, you talked about kicking back, but there is no sign of that.
REDFORD: It seems perverse. I mean, I say I want to kick back and I do twice as much as I've done. I think probably, as I really look back on it,
I don't really mean it. I think the idea seemed good.
But when you get right down to it, I don't think that's who I am. I think the idea is, when you're born, you -- when you're being raised, you want to
make the most of your life. I mean, I guess that's what I decided. I want to make the most of what I've been given.
And you keep pushing yourself forward; you try new things and that's invigorating. And I guess I found out that rather than retiring, that just
feels better. Just keep moving as long as you can keep moving.
AMANPOUR: Well, you're still moving. Robert Redford, always a pleasure.
REDFORD: And for me, too.
AMANPOUR: Thank you very much.
REDFORD: Yes, thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Robert Redford, actor, activist and art lover.
And sticking with the beautiful, coming up next, I take a walk in the Louvre museum, home to so many of the world's greatest treasures, including
spectacular relics from Palmyra, the ones that ISIS can't get to. Imagine saving our shared world heritage before more memory is wiped out. The head
of UNESCO joins me next.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, the horrors ISIS has wrought on our heritage such as the destruction of Palmyra is cultural cleansing, says the
UNESCO chief, Irina Bokova. Imagine our shared history disappearing. Thousands of years of memory and identity simply wiped out as ISIS wants.
Museums such as the Louvre in Paris are home to the richest collections of Islamic and pre-Islamic art.
I got Bokova's take on the significance of all the loss at the Louvre museum where she joined me, just weeks after two of the oldest and most
important temples were blown up at the actual site in Palmyra, Syria.
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IRINA BOKOVA, UNESCO: I think it's a tragedy that Baalshamin, you see the beauty of (INAUDIBLE) the biggest temple, most important temple in the
antiquities.
I think Palmyra, like no other city in the antiquities, represented the diversity of culture.
AMANPOUR: You know, it's not an accident that these -- the totalitarians who attack art, whether it's the Taliban who blew up the 1,500-year-old
Bamiyan sculptures, whether it's the Nazis, who plundered the art during -- in Europe during World War II and now whether it's these, it's dangerous
when people start attacking art. It gives a signal of what they're going to do to people.
BOKOVA: Yes. I think really that I'm convinced that this is part and parcel of this humanitarian crisis. People, we are human beings. People
have identities. They have memories. They have history. They have pride. They just want to believe this as if it did not exist, as if there was no
history, there was culture. There are no lessons given to learn from history.
So I think all this extraordinary achievement of humanity has to be preserved. And that is why I think that what we call cultural cleansing at
UNESCO, it's something really --
AMANPOUR: Cultural cleansing?
BOKOVA: -- cultural cleansing --
AMANPOUR: -- which evokes ethnic cleansing --
BOKOVA: Exactly, to persecute people, you persecute minorities. You persecute Yazidis, the Christians, the Syrians, the Turkmens, the Chiboks,
all these extraordinary diversity of the Middle East. You persecute them. You physically want to destroy them. You chase them, disgrace them.
And at the same time, you want to deprive them of their history, of their memories, as if it did not exist. So this is cultural cleansing. And
we've had to stand up against it.
AMANPOUR: Irina Bokova, thank you very much indeed.
BOKOVA: Thank you very much, Christiane.
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AMANPOUR: That's it for our program tonight. And remember you can always see the whole show online at amanpour.com and follow me on Facebook and
Twitter. Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.
END
