E-mail a friendWillem Dafoe
original airdate June 30, 2004
Willem Dafoe is one of Hollywood's more provocative and engaging actors. He began acting as a teenager, joining Milwaukee's experimental Theater X troupe. He moved to New York where he was a founding member of The Wooster Group theater company. His breakthrough film role in Platoon earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Dafoe has four films coming out this year; first up is Fox Searchlight's, The Clearing.
Willem Dafoe
Tavis: I was gonna say congratulations. I think that's appropriate. Congratulations on the new job at the L.A. Times.
Kinsley: It's absolutely appropriate. It's a great job.
Tavis: It is a great job. It's a big job though. It's a lot of work, man.
Kinsley: Yeah. I actually got it because the editor of the paper, John Carroll, called me up and asked me who would I recommend for this job. And I thought about it and I thought of some people who'd be good, and everyone I thought of I got incredibly jealous. And I thought, well, why should they have this job? So, then I thought of my idol Dick Cheney, and what he did when he was asked to find someone, i.e. to run for vice president with George W. Bush. He nominated himself. So I did that.
Tavis: Well, I hope you won't be running around telling people at the L.A. Times to go 'f' themselves like Mr. Cheney did.
Kinsley: Oh, well, don't you think that was sort of a silly fuss? As if no Democrat had ever heard that word?
Tavis: But do you think--well, let's go there since we're there. I'm not so sure it's a silly fuss. And the reason why, this guy happens to be on a ticket with a guy who invokes the name of God every third word in a sentence. He's on a ticket that's endorsed by the Christian right in this country. He's the vice president of the country. He's on the news telling somebody, in the media, telling somebody, a senator, Patrick Leahy in this case, Democrat from Vermont, to go 'f' himself. He denies that he said it initially, then he admits that he said it. He won't apologize for it and you think that's silly?
Kinsley: Did he deny it?
Tavis: Yes, his staff denied it. They first denied that he said it.
Kinsley: Well, that is bad. Look, I am a hair-trigger accuser of hypocrisy wherever I see it, but that seems to me to be a pretty minor hypocrisy.
Tavis: You have kids?
Kinsley: I have stepkids.
Tavis: OK, do you want--is it appropriate for your stepkids to see the president or the vice president of the country say something like that and then not apologize for it? Not retract it, not apologize for it? 'I said it. Yeah, I said it.'
Kinsley: On the list of things that I don't wish my stepkids or anybody's kids to have to hear or see from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that little remark is very low on the list.
Tavis: All right, I'll leave that alone. All right, all right. Let me jump on--
Kinsley: I mean, I would rather see them not have to see us killing people and sending our soldiers to die in a cause that is not worth it. For example, that to me is something to concentrate on and not this.
Tavis: That's why I love you. See, you know how to do this and you know how to set the host up to segue to the next issue. So thank you for that brilliant segue.
Kinsley: My pleasure.
Tavis: Let's jump to Iraq then. How about that? What do you make of the fact that we now are a few days removed from the early hand-over of control, the end of the occupation as it were in Iraq. Was it worth it? Did the White House gain anything by that? Let's assess it now a few days after the fact.
Kinsley: Yeah, I think they did gain from this early thing. We had an editorial in the Los Angeles Times--I almost said the New Republic--
Tavis: Better than saying the New York Times, when you at the L.A. Times. Yeah.
Kinsley: ...the Los Angeles Times saying, 'At last he's done something right.' It's pretty minor, but, you know, if they had waited and had a big ceremony, it would've been very tempting for someone to do something there, have a terrorist incident. So, sure, that was smart. But it's--it doesn't solve any of the real serious problems.
Tavis: How harshly should the president be judged on his behavior--misbehavior, as it were--on the Iraq question by American voters come November?
Kinsley: Well, I think the most important test of a president, the most important duty of a president--I don't think anyone would disagree with this, even Bush--is the security of the country and the decision to send young men and women to fight and die abroad. And he did it and actually, although I disagreed with it from the beginning, I thought that he deserved some credit for--this was a totally voluntary thing. We didn't have to go to war with Iraq. He decided it was important to do. He persuaded the Congress--he persuaded the country initially--and we went. And he persuaded us by saying A, B, C, D, E, weapons of mass destruction, and so on. And they've all turned out to be nonexistent or nearly nonexistent. And the war has not been as successful as we first thought. So, yes, I think that that is the major thing to judge him on and in my opinion, you should judge him negatively.
Tavis: Let me switch gears somewhat dramatically just for a second, because I'm sitting here listening to you and looking at you as you make this particular set of points here and I'm thinking in my mind, 'This guy's the editorial page editor for the L.A. Times.' And this is not to cast aspersion on you but to get to a larger question here. When we see people on television, on a show like mine, who are running the editorial pages, and we hear the constant drumbeat of 'the liberal media bias,' it seems to me that when the L.A. Times decides to name one Michael Kinsley--I made the reference earlier to your 'Crossfire' days, sitting on the left, as it were--how should it be interpreted that a guy of your ilk, with your record, is the editorial page of the L.A. Times? If I'm a conservative, should I dismiss anything that Michael Kinsley and his crew write on the editorial pages of the L.A. Times?
Kinsley: I don't think so. I hope not. First of all, the editorial page is the place where you're supposed to have an opinion. And the L.A. Times does not have opinions, it tries to be as objective as it can be, in its news pages. Critics point out times it succeeds, times it fails, just like every other newspaper. The editorial page of the Los Angeles Times is, I would say, mildly liberal, when you average out all its positions. And I would say if you average out all of my positions, I'm sort of mildly liberal. When I did 'Crossfire,' liberals used to complain, 'You have this real hard-core right-winger, Pat Buchanan, and you've got--'
Tavis: 'Michael's Mr. Softie.'
Kinsley: Yeah. And I thought that that was not reasonable because, you know, when you're running for Congress, you try to get to the middle. That's the whole strategy. You don't want to be on the extremes. But I read the Wall Street Journal editorial page for analysis and to see what the arguments on the other side are, to test my own arguments to make sure they're convincing. So I would hope that conservatives would read the Los Angeles Times editorial page and would find it a place where they can get informed about how to think about an issue. A good editorial is one where--reaches a conclusion and gives people the information and analysis they need to disagree with it intelligently, and that's what we aim to do.
Tavis: OK, now I gotta act like we're on 'Crossfire' and do some rapid-fire throwing of issues at you 'cause my time is running real quickly here. 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' You seen it?
Kinsley: Have not seen it.
Tavis: What do you make of the furor about it, though, the success that it's having?
Kinsley: It's--it's inspiring, because I'm sure it's an unfair, demagogic movie. That's what people I respect say, and I believe that. But it's nice that there's a bit of unfair demagoguery on the left that seems to be so popular, 'cause there's a lot of unfair demagoguery on the right that's very popular.
Tavis: What do you make of Kerry's chances to unseat President Bush?
Kinsley: My first day, I asked everyone in the editorial page that question-- not who are you for, but what do you think? And I won't tell you what they said. I would put my money on Bush if--at even odds. But less and less every day. I think this 'Fahrenheit 9/11' thing is a straw in the wind.
Tavis: You think it might have an impact on the elections in November?
Kinsley: Well, it might have an impact, but more than that, the fact that everybody--not everybody, but that so many people are going to see it indicates that there might be something going on in the country which I didn't realize.
Tavis: Tell me if you think--I'm trying to juxtapose two comments you've made. If earlier you suggested to me, as you did, that Bush should be judged on Iraq--it's the most important issue. A commander-in-chief-- That's the most important thing we ought to judge a president by. You say--I'm not quoting, but paraphrasing here--he's failed miserably on that front, and it's the most important issue, according to Kinsley, and yet you still put your money on the guy for winning slightly over John Kerry. So on what issue is the guy gonna win?
Kinsley: Well, basically, people don't do what I tell them to.
Tavis: Ha ha!
Kinsley: I mean, you know, that--
Tavis: I thought that was just your wife. I didn't know--
Kinsley: This is my analysis, but everybody doesn't buy it. Some people think that this war was justified and even with the limited success we've had, and then there's the economy, you know. Even though we've lost all these jobs, what matters politically is the direction it's going in at the time of the election or as you approach the election, and things seem to be going well, and then that will help him.
Tavis: Two other things right quick in about 30 seconds. The Saddam transfer. What should happen to this guy?
Kinsley: Well, I don't care. I hope they ought to--I mean, if there was ever a cause for the death penalty, this would be it. But, um, you know...
Tavis: You don't care.
Kinsley: Yeah.
Tavis: All right. The rights of detainees to now be heard in court.
Kinsley: Oh. It is shocking. I think the thing that bothers me most about the Bush administration--it's not the biggest deal--is the idea that we can--that the government can go arrest you, even an American citizen, give you no reason, put you in jail indefinitely, don't even admit you're there, don't let you have a lawyer, and defend that. And the Supreme Court knocked down most of that, thank goodness.
Tavis: Congratulations on your new gig at the L.A. Times. Nice to see you. We'll do this again sometime.
Kinsley: I hope so.
Tavis: Regularly, I hope, now that you're here in L.A.
Kinsley: I hope so. Thanks.
Tavis: Michael Kinsley, the new editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times. Now, in a second at least, talented actor Willem Dafoe, starring alongside Robert Redford in a new movie called 'The Clearing.' Willem Dafoe in just a moment.
Back to June 30, 2004