The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode 9: Christmas Skies Full of Drones, and Donald Trump's Ultimate Luxury

Episode Date: December 18, 2015

Mark Singer had the temerity to write about Donald Trump, and Trump wanted revenge -- but just who came out on top? Sofia Coppola talks about working with Bill Murray on a Christmas special. And we offer safety tips on how to operate your new drone.   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. My Living Will. If I should remain in a persistent, vegetative state for more than 15 years, I would like someone to turn off the TV. If I am unable to feed, clean, or dress myself, I would like to be referred to as Mr. Trump. Do not resuscitate me before noon. Assume that even in a coma, I can stand. I still hear discussions about my apartment. If there is any family dispute over my medical condition,

it must be settled with a dreidel. Even if I remain in a persistent, vegetative state for more than 15 years, that still doesn't mean bangs. If my doctor pronounces me brain dead, I would like to see the new Ashton Coochor movie. I do not wish to be kept alive by any machine that has a popcorn set of. popcorn setting. I would like to die at home, surrounded by my attorneys. In the event of an open coffin, I would like smoky evening eyes. In lieu of flowers or donations, I would prefer rioting.

Paul Rudnick, the playwright and novelist and screenwriter with a piece called My Living Will. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for joining us. Later on in the hour, director Sophia Coppola talks about working with Bill Murray. But we're going to start with a story about a businessman, a real estate tycoon born and raised in New York with incredible hair and a pension for making headlines. His name, you already know, is Donald Trump. Years ago, long before the outrageous pronouncements about Muslims and Mexicans and women, Donald Trump's outrageous remarks were generally found in the New York tabloids, which seemed to adore him. Back in those days, Mark Singer, who's a staff writer for the New Yorker,

got the assignment to write a profile of Trump for the magazine. And he told the story on stage at an event put together by the moth. Here's Mark Singer. So it's 1996. It's the fall. And I've been at the New Yorker since 1974. Work for a number of editors at this point. Tina Brown is the editor. Tina and I have a really good working understanding at this point.

I have just spent four years, more or less, writing a book that was supposed to take me a year and a half, during which I wasn't available to write many pieces for the magazine. So our understanding is that in Tina's office, in her desk, there is a special drawer, and in that drawer is a special jar, and in that jar, are my testicles. And one morning my phone rings and she says, Trump, Donald Trump.

I've just had breakfast with him to the plaza. You're going to write a profile of him. You're absolutely going to love him. He's totally full of shit. You'll love him. I've told him he'll love you. You're doing it. Which indicates that I am doing it.

So I go out and I go to work and I spend several months. at this. I go places with Trump. I try to understand his way of doing business. Early on, we reach an agreement. I exceed, at least, to his assumption, that I am his tool. Now, I have to read everything that's been written about him, and I have to read a lot of books that have his byline on him. A lot of ghost-written books, say they were written by Donald Trump, and I read them. And the overarching theme of these books

is actually the same theme that emerged later in The Apprentice, which is, we know that you're a complete putts, but you're at least allowed to fantasize about what my life is like. And that is, in fact, what I want to do. I'm trying to understand

it's hard. When you're writing about a well-known person, it's very hard to ask a question that hasn't been previously asked or to get an answer that you have in previous. received. And he says a couple of things that are quite baffling to me. He says, early on, he starts saying to me, off the record, but you can use it. If we were on speaking terms today, I would ask him

what he meant by that. But he says other baffling things. I never understood quite what he meant when he described the kind of real estate that he sold. He described it as existing in three categories. Luxury, super luxury, and super, super luxury. So I write the piece, and I have everything but an ending.

I really haven't figured it. And I've spent a lot of time with him. I've traveled with him. I've met his wife. I've met a couple of his kids. And along the way, I really got the question that I was trying to figure out all along, which was, what is Donald Trump's interior

life? I'd worked hard to come up with this. And the closest I came was when a security analyst told me, deep down, he wants to be Madonna. So I go with that. And I end the piece by concluding that he does not have an interior life. And I'd say that he had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.

Shockingly, he does not like the piece. He writes a sort of spurned lovers complaint to Tina in which he said, you know, you told me I would love it. I don't. You lied. Which might strike some people ironically, being ironic, considering it was a deputy mayor of New York who once said, I wouldn't believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized. I don't hear from him directly.

But later, I do get a pretty clear sense of his feelings toward me. he publishes a book called The Art of the Comeback, and in it he devotes a few pages to both Tina and me. He describes how years earlier, when Tina was editing Vanity Fair, she had assigned a writer who describes as an unattractive reporter named Marie Brenner to write about him. And he'll miss from the book what he told me about how he got revenge on Marie, which was at a charity dinner.

He poured a bottle of red wine down her dress. rest. And the passage about me begins on page 180. Now, in order to do justice to his prose, I want to read what he wrote. Tina Brown was at it again, asking me to agree to a profile. She's a very persuasive woman.

She told me you will love the piece, she'll absolutely love it. After listening a while, I agreed. I thought, how many editors call someone for breakfast in order to convince him to do a story that they could write without him anyway? The next day I got a call from a New Yorker reporter

Mark Singer. When he came into the office, I immediately sensed that he was not much of anything. Non-descript, with a faint, wise guy sneer, and some kind of chip on his shoulder. Singer reminded me a bit of Harry Hurt, a guy who wrote an inaccurate book about me.

While Singer was slightly more physically attractive than Harry Hurt, which, by the way, wasn't difficult, singer had scar written all over him. Now it occurs to me that this is far and away the most wonderful thing that has happened in my life other than the birth of my children. And I don't hear any more from him, but I've got that going for me. If everything else falls through, I'll always have the art of the comeback. Now, fast forward 2005, I publish a book in which this piece about Trump is collected.

It's a collection of profiles. And it's reviewed in the Sunday Times book review by a writer named Jeff McGregor, someone I don't know, but based upon this single review, he strikes me as a terrifically perceptive fellow. He has one quibble. He says that the only time I throw and land a sucker punch is in the piece about Trump

because Trump is too easy a target with neither the wit nor the footspeed to defend himself. Think again, Mr. McGregor. Three weeks later, the New York Times Book Review publishes a letter from Trump about this review. The New York Times Book Review, you can get it on a Wednesday before the Sunday when people get it at home. And so I happened to see it that Wednesday. I knew the letter was coming. and I decided to check my Amazon numbers for this book on Friday, and the book was 73,149.

Now the letter. He's unhappy with both McGregor and me. He says, we belong together. Some people cast shadows, and other people choose to live in those shadows. To each his own, they are entitled to their choices. Most writers want to be successful. Some writers even want to be good writers.

I've read John Updike. I've read Orhan Pommick. I've read Philip Roth. When Mark Singer enters Dell League, maybe I'll read one of his books, but it will be a long time. He was not born with great writing ability. Then,

I've been a best-selling author for close. to 20 years. Whether you like it or not, facts are facts. And then he proceeds to quote from Joe Queenin, who many of you might know, his work. He works heavily in irony. And he quotes Queenin saying about Trump that he has ridden, quote, a steady stream of classics with a stylistic seamlessness and voice, an astonishing achievement. And then Donald elaborates. He says, it's a simple thing called talent. I have no doubt the McGregors and Singers books will do badly. They just don't have what it takes.

Now, actually, within 48 hours, my book is up to 385 on the Amazon. So I think I've got to thank Trump. Absolutely. My mother taught me always write a thank you letter. And what can I send him? what is he like? And I realized money. I'm going to send him some money.

I decided to send him $1,000. And then it occurs to me, I don't have $1,000. So I came up with another figure, and I wrote him a letter. I said, Dear Donald, thank you so much for that wonderful letter

to the New York Times book review. Several friends have called or written to say that it's the funniest thing they've read in a long time. As I'm sure you're well aware, it's considered bad form to pay the people who review one's books. Nevertheless, I enclose a check for $37 and $82. A small token of my gratitude. You're special to me.

Also, I enclose two band-aids because you seem unable to stop picking at this particular scab. These should come in handy. cheerfully, Mark. I suspect that that's not going to be the end of it. And sure enough, ten days later, I get a letter, Trump Organization's envelope,

inside is my letter. He's returned to it. And across the bottom, he has written, Mark, you are a total loser and your book and writing, sucks. Best wishes, Donald. P.S. And I hear it is doing very poorly.

Which is absolutely correct. It's 62,000 something at this point. And then one more thing happens. I get a letter from Citibank. And it's my bank statement. And I open it up. And it seems that my bank account is $37 and 82 cents lighter. He has cashed the check. Mark Singer performing at a Moth storytelling event in 2009. You can find his profile of Donald Trump,

a classic in the history of the magazine, in my humble opinion, at New YorkerRadio.org. In a moment, the writer Claudia Rankin joins us. That's just ahead on the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio, radio hour. In a year when racism has been front and center in the national conversation, everywhere from Ferguson to Charleston, acts of bigotry on campuses to police violence, it's illuminating, it's shattering to pick up Claudia Rankin's book, Citizen. It's not a work

of activism or outrage exactly. It's a book of poetry, prose poetry. It's quiet, insinuating, powerful. I've never read anything that gives a more visceral and unsalely. It's a more visceral and unsal of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of prejudice. When a woman you work with calls you by the name of another woman you work with, it is too much of a cliche not to laugh out loud with the friend beside you who says, oh no, she didn't. Still, in the end, so what? Who cares? She had a 50-50 chance of getting it right. Yes, and in your mail, the apology note appeared, is referring to, our mistake. Apparently, your own invisibility is the real problem causing her

confusion. This is how the apparatus she propels you into begins to multiply its meaning. What did you say? At the end of a brief phone conversation, you tell the manager you are speaking with that you will come by his office to sign the form. When you arrive and announce yourself, he blurts out, I didn't know you were black. I didn't mean to say that, he then says, aloud you say. What he says, you didn't mean to say that aloud. Your transaction goes swiftly after that.

Well, as anybody who has been alive and thinking about poetry in the last year knows, your great book, Citizen, is filled with a collection of microaggressions, a term that I think was coined in about 1970, ways that speech reveals racism and injures and how it's received. Those who aren't on the receiving end might find some of these that are recounted in citizen unbelievable in all senses of the word. You spent years collecting them, both through your own personal experience and talking with others.

Is that right? Yes. You know, it's funny to think of collecting them as what it would mean to live your life, you know. Fair enough. But I spent years living my life and experiencing these statements coming at me and negotiating them and learning how to respond to them. And also interviewing friends and asking them, can you tell me these moments? Can you remember them? And often, it was funny.

Often when I ask people, they would say, I can't remember any. But then a day or two later, the phone would ring and that same person would call back and have hundreds of stories. I'm exaggerating a little bit. What accounts for the delay? Because I think you had to press them down. You had to, in order to get through the day, you had to put them away. And what is the accumulative effect, which is what this book is also about? It changes the way in which you negotiate a space, places where you work, interaction with friends.

So I think you develop a kind of sensitivity, a distrust. an inability to completely relax around people of a different race. You know, there are binaries that I think about all the time when it comes to these issues. One binary is race as a construct, and at the same time, race is as real as the table that's right here between the two of us. When you hear someone say race is a construct, which is much in the conversation now as anything else, How do you react to that? Well, it's probably the most optimistic statement there is because it means it can be reconstructed.

But I believe it is a construct. But it's so integral at this point to who we are that it's hard to pull it apart. You know, one of my pet peeves is why when white people are named in the press they're not labeled as white, how they get to hold the space of the man or the woman rather than the black men or the Arab man. And so I think we need to start thinking about whiteness as something to be labeled so that we begin to understand what that construction really means.

You also use the metaphor of the body, which has become certainly not only yours at the moment, the black body absorbing aggressions macro and micro. and catastrophic, is very much in the conversation. Now, how did that happen? You see it in Ta-Nehisi, Coates' essay, see it in your work. I think people are beginning to think about the ways in which black health is related to social circumstances. You know, I was reading your peace blood at the root. Right, the article I wrote about Charleston after the killings there. In that piece, there's so much about spirituality. And that doesn't account for all that's happening in the body.

I mean, you can't actually give it to the Lord. All the stresses are then having to be negotiated in terms of your blood pressure, in terms of comfort eating, you know, all those kinds of weird things that you think are just random are actually in response to something. If you are worried that your child won't make it home from school, what do you do? with that worry? How does it play itself out in terms of your own habits? The fact that it sits like a rock on your heart is not without a physical concept. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. You've traveled around the country quite a lot, giving readings,

doing what poets and authors do. What have you learned about the feedback that you've gotten back from readers, particularly on what we were just talking about? The most heartening thing that I have learned is that despite the specificity of the book as it focuses in on anti-black racism, everyone owns the book. Many, many Asian women have come up to me and said, this is my life. I didn't know I could speak up. I suddenly don't feel so alone. This is also true in the black community. I'm often approached by older black men. I think it's a lot of people. I think generation of men who have negotiated racism privately for their entire lives and suddenly see themselves reflected in the pages.

And I think feel the empathy that the book addressed to them, you know, in a sense. You've worked also as a collaborative artist, in particular with your husband on videos. We're going to play a... clip from Stop and Frisk. Before we talk about this video, maybe you should describe what we're seeing on the screen at the same time. The video was done actually at Pomona College,

and we have a sneaker store called Authentics. It has amazing sneakers in it. Some students came, and I said you can actually just go through and see if you want to buy anything. They started trying on the hoodies, and we were filming them the whole time. So you're basically seeing an edited version

of their interaction with the sneakers, the hoodies, and the mirror. I felt whatever is happening is happening in front of me, but the police vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of me like they were setting up a blockade. Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding, and a stretched-out roar. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.

And you were not the guy. But still you fit the description. because there is only one guy who was always the guy fitting the description. I left my client's house knowing I would be pulled over. I knew, I just knew. I opened my briefcase on the passenger seat just so they could see. Yes, officer rolled around on my tongue, which felt like it grew out of a bell that could never ring its emergency,

because its emergency was a tolling I would have to swallow. in a landscape that was once an ocean bed, you can't drive yourself to sane. So angry you are crying. You can't drive yourself to sane. This motion wears a guy out. Our motion is wearing you out. And still you're not that guy. Essentially, you're doing a work of art twice.

I wonder who you're trying to reach or what you're trying to do by doing it in this way, as opposed to on the page. Because I think that race issues have to do with visual coding. And so I wanted to show that no matter what you're hearing, as you're seeing these guys, you're projecting onto them all kinds of narratives. And we had the police siren going. So one of the things that I think viewers have said to me is that the amount of tension that's in their body when they first see the video has to do with what they know of the real world.

And so they're expecting it to be replicated in the video, even though it doesn't happen, the encounter between the black men and the police. Citizen is set at least implicitly in communities like Pomona. Its speakers tend to come from worlds of at least middle class privilege or universities or professionals. you've made a journey to Ferguson in the wake of the killing there. And I wonder what was your experience in Ferguson, which is certainly not Pomona, California? Well, you know, one of the things that happened to me when I went to Ferguson was I realized how naive I was.

I thought that I was going to go to Ferguson and kind of hang out in a coffee shop and talk to people. And then as we were driving there, there were no coffee shops. And instead, we ended up walking the streets. You know, I had two of the most moving interactions I've had in recent memory. A woman came up to me and she said to me, do you want to take a picture of my son? And she pulled his hands up in the air. And I panic.

I was like, no, I don't want to take a picture of her. son and do not put his hands in the air like somebody's about to shoot him. Why are you doing that? And so I immediately got down on my knees because this was a small child and started talking to him and was in fact kind of rude to the mother, but I felt like I needed to stop the moment. She offered this up because this is what all the other news photographers and sort of crisis tourists wanted to see? I think so. I think she thought you're here for this. You're here literally for the death of my son. And then later I'm standing and a guy comes out, two guys come out,

and they say, you know, we heard that there's food somewhere. And I see there's a pastor handing out food and I said it's across the street. But I'm standing next to the memorial and there's a picture of Michael Brown and one of the guys, the younger one, says he looks just like me. And he's not exactly talking to me. He's just standing next to me. So I don't say anything. And he says it again.

He says he looks just like me. At which point, you know, I want to say, no, he doesn't. He doesn't look just like you because he's passed away and you're still here. And so instead I say, the food's across the street. So again, there was this moment that I just wanted to break. So it was an interesting... But his insistence meant something. An insistent meant that he was, he recognized.

that he was as vulnerable as Michael Brown. How does humanity develop? How does it improve? How does racism, if it can, recede despite the overwhelming power of history? Well, I think that what's difficult to understand is how it's kept going, how it has stayed so firm for centuries.

I mean, we've seen improvements in the way people think about gay Americans, for example. And I think that had to do with understanding that this could happen in your own family. You can actually have a gay son or a gay daughter, and these people were people, as you understand people to be. But because white Americans can keep themselves separate from black Americans, there is a sense that this other will never be who I am. So if there is a way to get people to understand, I don't know. I don't know. I can't answer that question.

I don't know. You know, Robin Kelly says that we're going to need a surrealist moment. There's going to have to be something that breaks the continuum. because until white women start giving birth to black babies, I think we are going to stay living in these incommensurable experiences. You know, I don't know. I don't understand why he keeps going. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Claudia Rankin is the author of Citizen. You can watch the video that we talked about at new yorkeradio.org. I'm David Remnick, and coming up, we'll try to get you ready for the holiday. Something is missing, though. We've got food, we get booze, we've got attractive people. We need music. Director Sophia Coppola talks about a new movie with Bill Murray. That's coming up on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Stick around. I'm David Remnick. Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm going to make a confession. I'm not a huge fan of what's called holiday movies, the stock movies that get cycled out on Christmas Day. But a Christmas movie starring Bill Murray, written by Bill Murray and directed by Sophia Coppola,

I might give that a look. It's called A Very Murray Christmas. Richard Brody, who writes about film for The New Yorker, is a huge fan of Sophia Coppola. She's one of his favorite directors, and he sat down recently to talk to her about this film and about other movies. It's a musical,

and music has always been important in your work, but this is your first full-up musical. Is it a form that has tempted you for a while? No, I never thought about doing a musical And it wasn't even until we started working on this That I realized we were making a musical But my dad always loves musicals and comes from theater And so he showed us a lot of musicals

And this project actually originated from me Just wanting to see Bill sing Somehow it morphed into a TV special That they were thinking about And it evolved into our holiday special But it came from me wanting to see Bill Kroon I'm sure that you'll forgive me If I don't enthuse

I've come down with those Christmas blues What was your favorite moment In filming A Very Merry Christmas? For me it was fun to do these musical numbers Because I never did that before I think that there's a scene when Phoenix plays the French chefs And they do a song

That we had to kind of segue from that idea into this party scene and it was a little bit awkward. And like Bill, can be in real life. He knows how to just get everyone together and make a party. So he improvised all of that in a way that I think comes off very seamless, but it wasn't scripted. And he just knows how to bring a party wherever he goes. And he has a Christmas party every year.

And he kind of mixes up all these people that you would never meet and make people sing and do things that they wouldn't normally do. And I think there's something really fun in that. We need music. Christmas music. Oh, music. All right. We're going to need someone to sing a Christmas carol.

We're going to need a volunteer, and that person is going to be you right over here, Dimitri. Please, no, no, no. Go to your childhood, your infancy, if necessary, and just bring us a Christmas carol. A one, two, one. On the first day of Christmas, my... Okay, you're not a singer, and we don't have time to find out if you're a dancer. Let's try. Come on, my little brandy angel, you've got, you've got, look at you.

I could... something. Good king, when Cislaus looked out on the feast of Stephen, when the... The snow lay round about cool and crisp and evening. I could watch you sing that all night long, but honestly no one knows the second verse. Am I right? No one? You're done with it, right? Sorry. Okay.

How about you fellas play something that nobody knows? Pardon? When you find for some sad reason, you're alone this Christmas season. Did you always know that you were going to make films? Not at all. I spent a lot of my 20s or my early 20s being really confused and stressed out about what I was going to do because I wanted to be an artist and I wanted to be creative, but it never occurred to me to be a filmmaker. I liked making stories and my dad always was explaining screenwriting to us and talking about things as if we're all in the family business. But I was always interested in fashion from an early age.

I wanted to be a magazine editor. I loved fashion photography and then photography. And I ended up making a short film, and that's when I realized that it combined all of my interests. And when I read the book of The Virgin Suicides, I heard some people were going to make it. And I kept thinking, I hope they do it this way. I hope they don't mess it up. And I started working on a screenplay because I had so many ideas of how I thought they should make it. And just my love of that book kind of pushed me in that direction.

What was it about the Virgin suicides that inspired you, that made you want to film that in particular? I just loved the book, and I could really see visually how it could be. And I wanted to show this kind of really girly aesthetic and feminine point of view that interested me, and I didn't feel like it was expressed so much in movies, or maybe growing up with macho filmmakers. I was into doing something that was really coming from this kind of girl's point of view. And the kind of sense of humor and playfulness,

and then the sadness that was mixed together. And I was into doing something that was really coming from this kind of girl's point of view, teenage girl point of view. And I just really connected to his right, Jeff Fuggenity's writing, and the kind of sense of humor and playfulness, and then the sadness that was mixed together. There's a remarkable combination of melancholy and playfulness in the movie. And it's something that you've come back to.

in all of your subsequent films. And something else that comes through in virgin suicides as well as in your other films is the sense of isolation. Girls cooped up, literally imprisoned in their family home, lost in translation to people trapped in effect in a hotel. Somewhere, a man trapped in a hotel. I know.

And I'm Marina Twinnett. She's trapped in her gold palace. Exactly. Yeah, I don't know why I go back to that. theme, but when we were shooting this show at the Carloth, oh no, here I am with Phil in a big fancy hotel again. I didn't mean to do that.

But I like the setting of a hotel for being this kind of insular world where certain people are all kind of thrown together and you keep meeting them and people kind of stuck in a part of their lives. And I guess moments of transition.

It's funny because I've always thought of Lost in Translation as a kind of Christmas movie. Really? Yeah, I always thought of it as not just alone in a hotel in a foreign country, but alone in a hotel at Christmastime. Even though there's nothing explicitly Christmassy about it at all. Yeah, I don't think of it as being at Christmastime or any decorations. Maybe it's the twinkly lights that remind you. That's funny. I never thought about that. Just the sense of particular sadness at being alone. Melancholy. Yeah. So what are you doing here?

A couple of things. Taking a break from my wife, forgetting my son's birthday. and can pay $2 million to endorse a whiskey when I could be doing a play somewhere. Oh. What are you doing? Um, my husband's a photographer, so he's here working, and I wasn't doing anything, so I came along, and we have some friends that live here.

I wish I could sleep. Me too. You mentioned your love of fashion and style, and that doesn't surprise me, because in your films you seem to take a tremendous pleasure in the way things look. In the actual visual texture, fabric, skin, wood, glass, metal, and the way that they play off against each other in a single frame, which to my way of thinking conveys tremendous emotional depth.

Forgive me, I think that there are critics who think otherwise, who think that the presence of exquisite style... Takes away from the depth. Gets in the way of emotional depth. Yeah, I feel like I've been criticized for... being style over substance. And I think you can have both. I just try to make something that I love, and I'm a visual person.

And what I like about the medium of film is to create a visual atmosphere and focus on things that you think are beautiful or interesting. And also, some of my films talk about superficiality, but I don't think it's a superficial topic to look at that. There's a quietness to the way that your characters express or rather suggest their emotions, which also, I think, leads to grotesque misunderstandings on the parts of critics who think that, as a result,

they're simply being unemotional. Yeah, I think I try to make things that feel real and naturalistic, and a lot of times in movies, people are saying all their feelings and how they feel, and my impression is that in real life, people a lot of times don't say what they're feeling, but you can get it from a gesture, and that can be more powerful. I loved that movie Brief Encounter, which I thought about when I was working on Lost in Translation,

and so much is conveyed by, you know, a gesture or a look, and you get so much of the feeling. A brief encounter, David Lean's film about a wartime romance taking place in a train station, in and around the train station. You're all right, darling? Yes, I'm all right. I wish I could think of something to say. It doesn't matter not saying anything I mean. I'll miss my train and wait to see you in the house.

No, please don't. I'll come over with you to your platform, I'd rather. That's a beautiful film, and it's very simple and touching between these two characters, so I was thinking about that when I was thinking about Lost in Translation, although it's very different. One of the constants in your film

is the liberating power of art, whether it's the records in Virgin suicides or whether it's karaoke in Lost in Translation. Somehow art brings people together, Is this something that you feel emerges from your own experience? Oh, that's nice if that comes through, because that's something that I believe in, if it's a painting that I connect to, that's someone else made, and they're thinking that way, or a film that I really relate to.

That's, of course, what Bill Murray experiences in a very Merry Christmas. His depressing moment in front of an empty stage is redeemed by singing with his newfound friends. Yeah, I love that there's a sweet spirit of people coming together and that you can find connection and joy in unexpected places and that you wouldn't think that he would have a warm Christmas with the people that are around the hotel and working at the hotel and it goes from some cheesy sell-out TV show to something really sincere, I hope.

I don't know, that's the part that I find joy in is when you connect with people and it's always nice when it's a surprise. Especially the moment where it goes from being individual singers to being the collective, when they bounce, I saw the light back and forth. That's a moment that gives me a catch in the throat. Oh, that's so nice. It's funny when we were watching it,

I forgot about that Maya and Buster starts singing. And actually, Bill mentioned Saw the Light for Murray Christmas, and I love that song, so I was happy that he wanted to include it. Richard Brody speaking with Sophia Coppola. Her film of Very Merry Christmas is out on next. Netflix. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm David Remnick. And I'm Nicholas Thompson, editor of New Yorker.com. And Nick is going to bring us up to speed on a big trend this holiday

season, drones. Not the ones that drop the bombs, the little ones that you can order online for a few hundred bucks or less. The Consumer Technology Association, an industry group, estimates that 400,000 drones will be sold this holiday season. And there's a reason for that. They're cool. They're exciting. The technology is evolving in much. But the fact also might keep you up at night if you're in charge of transportation safety. We fully appreciate the potential of unmanned aircraft to transform transportation, commerce, and quality of life. That's Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox at a press conference in October.

But we've also seen unmanned aircraft interfere, not help with our lives. This year, pilots have reported seeing unmanned aircraft twice as frequently as as they did in 2014. And the number of unmanned aircraft in our airspace continues to grow at astounding rates. Drone hobby groups, like the Academy of Model Aeronautics, are trying to do their part. They put out a video backed by the FAA called No Before You Fly,

which features the comedian Jeff Dunham doing a ventriloquist bit with a poppet. And you shouldn't fly over vehicles. Oh, why not? What if you crash into the vehicle? Oh, well, make sure you crash into a cheap one or not an extensive one. Yeah, you can hit a U-gold, but not a Ferrari. No, you don't crash into any vehicles. Okay.

And also, Bubba J, you can't fly over personal property. What does that mean? You can't fly over somebody's house without their permission. Oh, so I got a knock on the door and ask them, okay, if I fly on them in their pool. Also, you need to stay clear of real aircraft because it's dangerous. That's right, you could cause a big accident. The FAA is trying to get a handle on drones as toys, and last month it announced a new registration process that owners need to follow.

We're joined now by Greg McNeil, a professor of law and public policy at Pepperdine University, who specializes in issues surrounding flying robots. He also is on the FAA Advisory Rule Committee for Drone Registration, and he's the co-founder of AirMAP, a drone software startup. Hi, Greg. Hey, thanks for having me. Delighted to have you here. So let's start with this.

What are the proposed guidelines from the FAA, and how will they affect an amateur drone pilot? Sure. Sure. So the Secretary of Transportation at the end of October issued an order that said that all unmanned aircraft under 55 pounds need to be registered with the federal government, which set in motion of industry representatives and others from various groups. I was on the task force where we sat for three days, locked in FAA headquarters, trying to hash out exactly what a registration system would look like. It was pretty fascinating because that's a very rapid

timeline. It was only about a week and a half after the order was issued that we got together, and the secretary is hoping to have all this stuff wrapped up before Christmas. The task force recommendations for the process can be summarized in really three simple steps. First, fill out an electronic registration form on the web or through an app. Second, you'll immediately receive an electronic certificate of registration, and you'll also get a personal registration number. and then the third step, take that registration number and put it on all of your drones. That's the entire accountability system subject to some additional details.

Is it your sense that the FAA was nervous about the number of drones being given as Christmas presents? I think so. I mean, I think more so than the FAA was the Secretary of Transportation and a need to somehow make sure that those individuals operating them understood that they were operating something that was more than a toy, that it was something that was in the National Air space is operating. And the FAA also has a one-sheet, I Fly Safe list of guidelines, which, among other things, recommends flying below 400 feet, not within five miles of an airport. And it says not to pilot a drone while drunk. Are recreational drones actually dangerous? I don't believe they're dangerous,

although any device can be dangerous when operated in an unsafe way. And so, you know, one of the things that the task force had to look at was which devices should be registered. And what you start to realize is that even something as small as two or three pounds, when it gets up in the air at 400 feet, becomes rather deadly. And in many ways, these devices are safer than aircraft. They're replacing helicopters flying between buildings by having drones fly between buildings to get the same type of footage that CNN or an artist or a movie maker might want to get. And so it really comes down to how the device is being used. All right. Thank you very much. Greg McNeil. It's a pleasure to talk with you. I'm here with our friend Nick Palmgarten. He wrote a piece for

then in New Yorker magazine a couple of years ago called Here's Looking at You. Should we worry about the rise of the drones? Nick, how are you? Um, well, thanks, Nick. So as you think about the skies above over Christmas and after Christmas, does it make you feel good to think about millions of Americans opening drones and sending them out in the air? I can hear it now. It's a sort of collisions, cartoon collisions all over town. The other thing I can imagine is by New years, thousands and thousands of drones stranded in trees. You know, like the way New York or cities have sneakers hanging from trees, these are going to be the new sneakers. But I think one of the things that's so interesting about this subject is that there's so much utility, there's so many things

drones could do, but the whole prospect is a little eerie for a lot of people. Well, you know, I have to allow for the fact that drones are pretty awesome. They are cool. Drones can do so many wonderful things. They're great for, you know, inspecting pipelines, great for farm use, great for, you know, traffic accidents and traffic jams, great for wildlife monitoring. And now we hear it's great for, you know, delivering burritos or sneakers or whatever. That's all, that's all well and good. But I have misgivings about any machines that could one day have some kind of intelligence, especially if these machines are in the air. You know, they're basically, we're talking about flying robots.

That gives me some pause. So one of the things that I've always found disquieting about drones, and one of the things that I think has framed the conversation about drones is, of course, the way that we've thought about drones for the last 10 years. So, you know, when I think about the drones coming in the air after Christmas, it's hard to disentangle it from the drones flying over Pakistan and the way we've thought about drones for the last 15 years. They've been these weapons of war, and you see drone footage,

and you're almost in expecting an explosion to come on it. Well, that's true. I mean, this is initially really, it's a military technology. And the drone boom was a result of our being at war. You know, in a way, the sort of drone boom back home is a swords into plowshares thing. It's sort of the flying robot soldiers are looking for jobs. They're coming home. They're looking for something to do.

They're looking for a market. And to some extent, you know, the commercial applications, the way the company's making these drones have pushed the commercial applications is an example of them trying to make a market for themselves. So we do think of even these great little quadcopters that people are getting for Christmas, there's sort of an element of death from above, still attached to that wrapping paper. Right. And so, you know, when I think of these things being everywhere,

there's something, you know, the air will be slightly tinged with some kind of futuristic menace. Early this year, the Department of Homeland Security hosted a summit on the dangers of consumer drones being used for terrorism. Should we be worried about that possibility? I suppose it's inevitable that an act of terrorism will be committed using a drone.

But I think the bigger worry that we have is that an act of terrorism itself is inevitable, regardless of whether it's a drone or an airplane or a train or a box cutter. But the thing about a drone is that unlike a box cutter, you don't have to have a man carrying it. They're separate from the individual.

So doesn't it open up all kinds of possibilities? Like the same reason they're so useful for us in our war in Pakistan could conceivably be useful for a terrorist in wherever. I don't think we should be worried about drones as terrorist tools. I mean, frankly, putting on my tinfoil hat here, I'm more afraid of drones in the hands of the authorities. Well, that ties into some news that's happened recently.

In Oklahoma City, there's a guy who's very anti-prostitution. And so he follows prostitutes. And recently, or I guess it was this summer, followed a prostitute in the John and followed them with a drone. And then the drone flew to sort of a secluded area where the man had parked and flew up to the windshield and filmed them in action. And he took that video and gave it to the police

and now both of them are being prosecuted. What do you think of that? The drone vigilante. I don't feel too good about it. I just don't like the idea of people running around videotaping, other people doing things, even if it's against a law. But it's also surveillance of people inside a truck

in a secluded area where, presumably I thought it was quite, private. Right. I mean, if that were someone having an affair or if it were if it were someone's, you know, enemy that was happening, you just, there's so many scenarios you can think of where that is not an innocent act of drone vigilanteism. So Amazon recently got a lot of attention. They played a video, came right out after Black Friday and it showed a guy who ordered a soccer shoe or a pair of soccer shoes for his daughter and they were delivered by drone and Amazon made a big deal about it as though this is the near future. Now, of course, there are a bunch of technical problems before you can deliver soccer shoes. For example, the drones need to have a place to land. The drones need enough battery power. The drones need to be able to carry stuff. The drones need to be able to not crash into each other. How far away are we from a future where you get something delivered by drone, Nick? I saw an article, I think it was called Dubious Drone, and I think they thought that it may have, that whole video may have been fake. It was one of those theories that because of the way that the

sort of angles of the drone weren't right. It looked real to me, and it looked like fun. I mean, one of the things that I am interested by with drones is the notion that they're going to make delivery faster, which is a little bit dispiriting because delivery is really good. Amazon has kind of already solved the problem of how to get you what you want really quickly. It's not clear to me that there's a parachute that I really need a day sooner. Like, there's nothing wrong with it. But if that's the revolution, the revolution's kind of boring. Yeah, it's strange.

You know, I talked to this guy who likened the development of the drone to, like, gunpowder and the computer and all these sort of real game-changing things. But if it's really just, you know, getting a soccer cleat in half an hour as opposed to 24 hours, you know, I'm not sure that's a game changer. Looking into the future, what do you think is the first time a drone will be actually useful in Nick Palmgarten's life? I imagine myself stranded on the side of the road, you know, with a flat tire in some newfangled car I can't figure out. and I'm going to be cursing and kicking and feeling miserable and inadequate. And along will come some drone and it'll just hover right in front of me and some really kind voice say,

excuse me, sir, can we help you? Or we'll film you, frustrated and feeling inadequate and put it on YouTube automatically. Well, maybe both can happen. You can coexist, shame and help. All right, thank you, Nick Baumgarten. It's a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you, Nick. Staff writer Nick Poundgarten and editor Nick Thompson talking about unmanned aircraft systems, better known as drones.

If you open one next week, remember, stay safe, don't spy on your neighbors, and don't operate your drone under the influence. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, Special thanks this week goes to the Moth Radio Hour.