A Closer Look With Arthur Levitt: Frank Rich

Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, interviews Frank Rich, executive producer of HBO’s Veep and Succession, on "A Closer Look With Arthur Levitt." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a closer look with Arthur Levitt. Arthur Levitt
is a former chairman of the u S Securities and
Exchange Commission, a Bloomberg LP board member, a senior advisor
to the Promontory Financial Group, and a policy adviser to
Goldman Sachs. Frank Rich had a distinguished career at The

(00:20):
New York Times as the chief drama critic, op ed
columnist and senior writer for The New York Times magazine.
Since two thousand and eight, he's been a creative consultant
at HBO and the executive producer of three time Emmy
winning series VP and HBO's news series about the members

(00:45):
of a family media dynasty, Succession. He's also a writer
at large for New York Magazine, where he covers politics
and culture. He joins me now for a closer look. Frank,
you are a TV producer now and you still write
about politics for New York Magazine. But let's start with

(01:06):
show biz and your latest career as producer. How did
you get into business with HBO? What happened was that
in two thousand and eight there was a change in
management at HBO and two new executives who had had
other positions in the company took over, and they were
discovering as they took over, the covered was sort of bare.

(01:28):
The network had a lot of big hits like Sopranos
and Sex in the City that were either about to
be off the air soon would be there nearing the
end of their runs. And they cast about to a
number of people of whom I was one, who were
not necessarily in television to sort of pick their brains,
and it led to them suggesting that I come along

(01:50):
as a sort of creative consultants as as a side
activity extracurricular activity to my journalism career. At the time,
I was also told if I wanted to try to
produce anything, I could, and almost immediately I produced a
documentary for HBO about Stephen Sondheim, the songwriter. Also at
that time, they said they were very much looking for

(02:13):
a smart show about Washington and politics. They had aired
a show called k Street that had not been successful.
It's already gone by the time I arrived, and I
started a search that ultimately led me to Armando Unucci
and what would become Veep. And then I was sort
of off to the races learning how to be a

(02:33):
serious producer. How much fun are you having producing shows
like Veep and and and now Succession? Is your new
career The best way to combine your two love show
biz and political analysis, I think it is. I I

(02:54):
as a as a former theater critic, I grew up
loving the theater and and and show business, um, but
weirdly never thought of going into it, just writing about it,
which I did versus a TV and film critic at time,
even before I became drama critic at the Times, and
so I sort of fell into this relatively late in life. Uh,

(03:15):
but I found I loved it. And what's great about
working on it. Shows like Succession and Veep is that
they have a lot of social and arguably political commentary,
but they're still about telling a story about sort of
there Mickey and Judy putting on a show. It's about
dealing with actors, and it's an alternative reality, uh from

(03:36):
the real world, which particularly these days, I feel very
glad to have because even in a show like Veep,
we never mentioned Donald Trump or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
We never refer to contemporary politicians at all. So it's
great to be able to work out ideas, uh, have
some laughs. Build something that's completely alternative reality, the one

(04:00):
that I have to cover as a journalist and that
we live in every day in real life. How's HBO
as a partner? HBO is is terrific. And I say
that not just because I work there. I've really learned
this a lot from listening to my colleagues on both shows,
all of them from Julia Lee Dreyfuss, a star of

(04:20):
viep On Down have had scarring experiences working for conventional
network television, where executives sensor things are they what are
things down? Or they have their own terrible ideas HBO
and I've worked with a number of executives there on
a number of projects, including ones that have failed. Never

(04:42):
intrude in that way. The whole idea of it is
to give artists that they back, and it's very competitive
to get on HBO their freedom, even if it's the
freedom to hang themselves at times. And so they make suggestions.
They're they're smart ones. Usually you can take them or
leave them, and and they're not about office politics or sponsors,

(05:02):
for instance, because there are no sponsors at HBO. Are
you comfortable with the new ownership, Yeah, so far, it's
impossible to tell, but the theory of the case is
that A T and T does a want to uh
fix something that isn't broken, and that they need HBO
to continue to be successful as it has been and

(05:24):
suddenly not. They don't need to go to Hollywood and
tell HBO what to do. The new show for HBO,
Succession is about the business world and the personal dynamics
of the media conglamerate family. Is there any history behind

(05:45):
this to interest you in this particular subject, Well, yes,
I mean, first of all, I am working for the
New York Times for the years I did. Although it's
not a rapacious international organization like the one in Succession,
it still is wasn't is a family owned media company

(06:07):
where there are battles for succession with each generation. Incredibly enough,
this is not the like in the roy family of
Succession to the Salzburgers. They're very different animals. Also, just
as a journalist and seeing what's happened um to journalism
in my time, the way these big families, uh, whether
it be you know, the Murdocks or the red Stones, whatever,

(06:30):
can can control media change, change and have huge impact
on it over succeeding generations has been a great interest
to me as a writer. You know, as a journalist,
it's it's it's my business, so I've been very attentive
to it. You wrote about seeing Angels in America again recently,

(06:50):
and you say the new production doesn't radically depart in
tone or quality, but the play center of gravity has shifted.
When you talk about that, are you talking about our
society has shifted since then? Or exactly what good question
I mean? I was. I saw this new production of

(07:12):
Angels in America, uh last year when it began in
London before it transferred to Broadway, and what struck me is,
first of all, a big part of the backdrop of
of the play is the height of the AIDS crisis,
which was still going on when it had its premier
years ago. Obviously, while AIDS is still a plague, it's

(07:34):
the ramifications of it in the scope of it have
changed over the ensuing a couple of generations. But also
what I was struck by was particularly watching Nathan Lane's
performance in the role Roy Cone, who is seen in
the play basically in his nineteen eighties role as a
New York legal fixer, not their allusions to the mccarthyerra,

(07:56):
it's not really about that sounded to me exactly like
Donald Trump, and it wasn't because Lane was in any
way impersonating Trump, and and certainly no lines have been
rewritten over twenty five years. But there was a kind
of brutality, a win it all costs, a kind of
extra legal mentality from this lawyer that seemed very contemporary

(08:19):
to me, even as the other parts of the play
also remained strong, And that led me to think about
it further and ultimately write a piece for New York
about Roy Cone. You mentioned Donald Trump, and I know
that you're not a fan, but I have to ask
you whether there are any of the things that Trump

(08:41):
has done politically since taking office that you can live
with that you think may not have been a bad idea.
I think it's too early to tell, I honestly do.
And it's also heart He's so inconsistent in that he
can say one day I want to help the Dreamers

(09:02):
and the next day be obdurate about any kind of
immigration reform that you don't even know which Donald Trump
you're dealing with. What I would say is, and I've
written this um the Donald Trump of the campaign did
do some good things, including, um, in my view, demolishing
a lot of myths about how political campaigns, particularly at

(09:25):
the national level, should work. I mean, one of the
reasons he won or or got it, particularly the nomination,
was he said, well, you don't have to uh be
polite and uh curb every answer the way most politicians
do when you're in a debate. You can let it
all hang out and say whatever you really mean, which

(09:47):
was anathema to a candidate like Jeb Bush or to
Hillary Clinton for instance. He didn't listen to political strategists
who have sort of owned the process in both parties
for years of how to strategize campaigns. He was his
own strategist and sort of said, the heck with it,
you know, for all these so called experts. Uh. He

(10:10):
also didn't raise tons of money, and ultimately raised a
lot of money, but he didn't rely on corporate contributions. Granted,
he's rich, although how rich remains a subject for some debate. Um,
but he he he didn't take a ton of polls,
at least until maybe some stuff at the end involving
Cambridge analytic if that can be called a form of

(10:32):
polling or data consumption analysis. So he broke he you know,
he said, you don't have to cater to every farmer
in Iowa during the caucus process. So basically he exposed,
in my view, the sham of sort of the political
establishment in both parties, uh that has been running things,

(10:53):
and that was a breath of fresh air. Now the
ends to which he's using it as a whole other issue,
but you know, taking example, um, the whole issue of
campaign contributions, he wasn't wrong when he said I've given
to all these politicians on the stage, or I've given
to Hillary Clinton and she, she and Bill came to

(11:14):
my wedding. He was right. And of course he's in
my view, is corrupt in many ways on his own,
but he and and it's sort of a hypocrite about that,
given what the kind of stuff that's going on in
his administration in terms of campaign donors getting paid for
play and government agencies. But be that as it may,
I don't think a political campaign will ever be as

(11:35):
canned again as it was up until his arrival on
the scene. Turning to your non political career back in
show biz, is there a show that you now regret
having given a great review too. You know, uh when

(11:57):
I uh twenty years ago. Yeah, not twenty years ago,
fifty fifteen, seventeen years ago I did. I did a
book called hot Seat. It was a collection of my
theater reviews from the Times, and at the end I
had a list of uh productions I'd both overrated and underrated.

(12:17):
One of the ones I overrated, I'm not gonna it's
something that's still it's a musical that's still revived, but
so I won't say what it is because it's been
it's been considered successful all these years. But one of them,
I had been a big smoker and um, in like
mid eighties, I decided to quit and did quit. The
last cigaret I had was at a dinner after I

(12:39):
saw the critics performance for the play. The next morning
I had to go in and write my review. I'd
go into the last preview and I was just chewing,
tried and gum. I was in this crazy post you know,
nicotine kind of state. So I overcompense that. I thought
I can't take this out on the on the show,
and I overpraised the show and now it was considered
a semi classic of America in theater. I wish. I

(13:02):
don't want to because some people who wrote it are
still around. And though on Frank you try to see
the bigger picture of our cultural narrative. So do you
see any changes in the stories or themes of film,
TV and theater in the age of Trump? And is
there any way to satirize the current White House. There's

(13:25):
certainly been a single minded devotion of late night comedy
on American television to the subject of Donald Trump, and
every network across the board, no matter who the host is. UM,
I feel it's a little early to see Trump fallout
in in you know, theater and movies. UM, it takes

(13:48):
longer to produce them fiction. I think we're starting to
see a little bit nothing significant yet, people of course
are finding Trump and everything they look at because like
him or hate him, and people are obsessed with him. Um.
The question about satirizing him is a a tricky one.
In v we have the luxury of we never satirize

(14:11):
actual real life politicians. In fact, we've never mentioned Trump,
we never mentioned Obama, we never mentioned Clinton. We have
a completely fictional alternative version of UH of Washington that said, um,
Trump is president, He's changed. What is the definition I

(14:32):
think of outrageous in the capital. And we have our
our hero or anti hero, Selena Meyer, who's been vice
president and president in our show, is despicable. She is
um completely vain, narcissistic, corrupt, ill informed, could care less
about our constituents, only cares about herself. Everything about her

(14:56):
is just awful. Well, now we have someone who uh,
who's the actual president, who, depending on some people's point
of view, including mine, might give her a run for
her money, and might, if anything, being somewhat more vulgar
than say, uh, she is. And so how do we

(15:16):
how do we take that into accountant in in in
constructing our own comedy. We're thinking about it now, we
have one more season to go. We're gonna start shooting
it late this summer. The writing process has begun. We
we have to recalibrate a bit because we don't want
to be too tame. On the other hand, we don't
want to be too stupid and broad and scattershot either.

(15:37):
So it's an interesting it's an interesting sort of literary
intellectual problem to have. I'd like to ask you about
the civility that they were having. Voters are urging the
Democrats to stop playing nice, but others warn that the
Democrats test camp play the same attack and outrage game

(15:58):
that Trump plays. Okay, I have to say I feel
a lot of this civility debate has been um, a
bit disingenuous and beside the point. I mean, these incidents
that have happened basically a restaurants, um, well, they're not pleasant.
I don't think they moved the needle one way or another.
I thought there was Uh. In a recent New York

(16:20):
Times op ed page, there was a fascinating peace arguing
that in the Civil rights movement, there was a lot
of in this. In the civil rights era, there was
a lot of the same discussion among Democrats and Republicans.
We should be more civil. Uh. We that's the way
to get things done, to not rock the boat, to

(16:40):
have compromise. But it didn't work, and ultimately Martin Luther
King and others said, you know what, we can't be
civilized all the time. So we'll see right now, what's happened.
I feel it's so tamed. If anyone who lived through
the late nineties, sixties and the Vietnam era, it's nothing really,
that's really I had an interesting conversation with Charlie Cook

(17:03):
recently who suggested to me that Trump could well be
beaten by a strong candidate in the next election. How
do you feel about that. I absolutely feel that's the case.
I really feel boils down to be dealing with the
Charlie Cook is the master of this. I'm not. But

(17:25):
the hard politics or the numerical politics are very simple.
If Democrats turn out, they can they can win both
both the next two elections. But they have to turn out.
The fact is that there was depressed turnout of the
Democratic base, not only in the last two midterm elections,
including you know the Tea Party shellacking of several cycles ago,

(17:49):
but in the Clinton campaign, a lot of young people,
a lot of African Americans were not excited without Barack
Obama on on the ballot, uh, and so that allowed
uh Trump to get in even and even then he
didn't win a majority obviously the popular vote. So it's
really um I think that's what it's about. And the

(18:09):
Trump this idea that the Trump base is going to
shift away from him, it's completely mistaken. That's a lost
battle for the Democrats. Trump had it right when he
said at the beginning, I could pull a gun out
in Fifth Avenue and shoot someone in my base would
be loyal. Look what they've been loyal through. I don't
have to recite it all the way here, but from

(18:30):
Stormy Daniels to you name it, to arguably selling out
to North Korea, they're not gonna change and they're gonna
turn out. So it's really incumbent on the Democrats to
have the right candidates, but also excitement and not get
sidetracked by you know, should someone ask someone to leave

(18:50):
a restaurant or not. This is exactly the last thing
that they should be worrying about now. Frank, we were
talking last about the right candidate to take Trump on.
Give me a couple of names that you think might
be the right candidate. I'd rather be shy about that
because I feel I want to want to you know,

(19:12):
they're interesting personalities, but I don't want to say they're
the right candidate. You know, from someone like a lot
of people like spending a lot of time in l
A working on television. A lot of people think very
highly of of Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles,
is not the usual person like Kamala Harris mentioned as
a California contender John Hick and Looper out in Colorado. UM,

(19:34):
I want to see more people that I don't. They
are not the same old, same old. Does that mean
that someone like Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden or Elizabeth
Warren couldn't galvanize people? Not necessarily? But i'm i'm I'm.
I really feel strongly the Democrats need a new generation

(19:55):
in Washington as well as on a presidential ballot. Wouldn't
another bernie' Sanders run doom Democratic candidate? The Bernie Sanders phenomenon,
I have to say I sort of missed. I don't
quite get it. Um, I feel, honestly, I feel he's
too old to run. Leave the politics aside. I feel

(20:15):
he's too old run, and I feel Biden's too old
to run. But if Bernie runs, it's not gonna help.
It's not. But I don't necessarily, I don't think it's
zero something. I don't think it's gonna hurt. I think
if if Bernie Sanders is beaten within the Democratic Party
by some vibrant UH candidate younger than he is, it

(20:36):
excites as fresh. Probably true, that's probably true. He'll he'll
fade the way people always fade when they come back
one time too often in politics. Now again in terms
of civility, you just wrote about the upset victory in
New York by twenty eight year old Alexandria Okagio Corte

(21:00):
over the ten term incumbent. You can say it's an
object lesson in what effective democratic politics can look like.
What did she do right? And wasn't it just that
Crowley just missed his his shot? He he he was last
the hero of the last ten years, not he wasn't

(21:21):
on on target. Well, I think you sort of answered
the question in a way because but the thing about
Crowley we have to remember is that's everything you say
is true. But he was number four in the Democratic
leadership and representatives, which is incredibles. If he had been
a backbencher that no one ever heard of and didn't
wasn't a Democratic leadership, this would be meaningless. But the

(21:41):
fact is that he was at the top of the
party and and talked about as a possible Nancy Pelosi's successor.
So that tells you everything you need to know about
what she toppled and then she had a platform is
to me pretty much democratic mainstream. But more than that,
she actually organized and went to work and got people
excited rather than sitting back and and and she did

(22:05):
it in a way that was under the radar, so
under the radar that her campaign wasn't covered by the
New York Times, which has now become a subject of
much interest, and I think deservedly so, because it makes
you wonder what else isn't being covered. It's going to
the Democratic exactly. People so called liberal media has been
so obsessed with understanding the Trump voters since November of

(22:28):
two thousand sixteen, having failed to understand the Trump voter
before the election, that they're fighting the last war. And
to some extent, the Democratic Party is too. And I
think what she represents is almost more important than who
she is. Now you predicted that the shelf life of
the Korean mission accomplished, it will be about a week.

(22:51):
It looks like you were only off by a few days.
What do you think Trump will do now that North
Korea has reported to be enriched uranium and has a
secret third nuclear sight. Does that mean that Korea? North
Korea is off the radar, that Trump simply won't talk

(23:12):
about it again, or well he turn on them. My
guess is he won't turn on them. And you even
see someone like John Bolton, who was a hard liner
before we entered the White House, kind of half making
excuses for uh Kim John Loone. I think that Trump
will do. I think Trump's idea with North Korean the
first place, was to take everyone's mind off of the

(23:33):
Mueller investigation, to create quote peace in our time, do
a big stunt, a big reality shows stunt, and he
never really looked at the Fine brand anymore than he
does anything else. Already, I'm hearing there's already been published
talk that he's now thinking that the way to solve
this is to have a even bigger stunt, which is
to invite him to New York for another summit, which

(23:55):
is just hilarious or crazy or tragic or scary, depending
on how you want to look at it. But my
feeling is um he's very much looking for things to
distract from the Russian collision investigation. It's obsession, and so
the bad case scenario of courses, he decides to declare
war on North Korea, and that's what what happens next.

(24:17):
I find that unlikely. I find it more more likely
they'll do what he usually does with just a double
down and say I was right and I'm still right,
and we're in this. We're ending the nuclear threat of
North Korea. Don't you think he's been somewhat effective in
diminishing the impact of Mueller's probe? The general attitude is, well,

(24:39):
where where is it going? We've been at it and
at it and at it. When does it reach It's
that's the that's the intention, of course, as people know,
as people will point out, it's hardly been going on
at all if you look at the timeline compared to
Iran Contra, the Benghazi probe conducted by the Republicans, or
the US Ken starring investigation Clinton. But yes, it has

(25:03):
created It's created a kind of fog around the Muller investigation,
a kind of impatience. My own theory is, no one
knows what Mueller has found. Any leaks that we're hearing
are from people who testify before grand career, people who
want stuff, lawyers who want stuff out there. There's no
evidence that the Mueller investigation is leaking at all, and

(25:24):
has already secured more than a dozen indictments. And my
suspicion is that when he does give his report, even
if Trump tries to fire him. So when it's going
to get out, it's going to be compelling reading that
will command people's attention and make them maybe forget about
the smoke screen of the past few months. At The

(25:45):
New York Times, he was an award winning op ed
columnist and drama critics, and he currently writes about politics
and culture for New York Magazine. Since two thousand and eight,
he's been a creative director at HBO, producing the three
time Any winning stories Veep, and the news show about
the members of a family media dynasty called Succession. Frank Rich,

(26:08):
thank you for joining us. By the way, if any
of the audience have comments about the program or suggestions
for topics, please email me at a Closer Look at
Bloomberg dot net. That's a closer look one word at
Bloomberg dot net and follow me on Twitter at Arthur
Levitt A single word. This is a closer Look with

(26:30):
Arthur Levitt.