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- [00:01]
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Stephen Colbert
Or your money back.
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Stephen Colbert
Welcome, welcome.
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One and all out there, all around.
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Stephen Colbert
The world to the Late Show. I'm your host, Stephen Colbert. I just want to start off. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas my friends. Happy holidays everybody. This is our last show of the year before we take our Christmas vacation. And if you're let's make it count. Now, if you're a federal worker, you might get an unexpectedly extended vacation because yesterday Republicans rejected a three month stopgap funding extension, which means unless they come up with a deal tonight, the government would shut down at midnight tomorrow. Which would be terrible. We need the government. Who else is not going to tell us anything about the drones? Here's how we got here, okay? Speaker Mike Johnson had painstakingly negotiated a compromise with the Democrats to fund the government through March. But then that was all upended at the last minute by Elon Musk, who tweeted at 4:15am yesterday, this bill should not pass. I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense that Musk would kill this at the last minute because he's an expert at blowing things up on the launchpad. Plus plus and I'm sure the founders are spinning in their graves with Jo at the way all of this is playing out. After all, the Constitution does start with we the people do whatever rich boy tells us. Rich boy makes the big square truck car. Lol. And we obey. We the people obey rich boy. Trump didn't weigh in for a few hours, but when he did, it was just to echo what Musk had already said. Which is why now some folks are calling Elon Musk President. Well, if he's going to be the guy running everything, I'm going to have to work on my Elon Musk impression. Here goes. Okay, okay. All right. This situation is not only bad for the country, it is real bad for Speaker Johnson because the chaos has. Has cast doubt on his ability to maintain the speaker's gavel. So Johnson might have to move on to a new job, and hopefully one that's more pleasant than trying to wrangle the House Republican caucus like septic tank snorkeler. So a government shutdown, it paints a picture. So a government shutdown could happen in the next 24 hours. What does that mean for you? Well, in previous shutdowns, inspection of chemical and water treatment plants halted, as did routine food safety inspections. But you have nothing to worry about unless you're one of those rare people who needs food or water. We know the first things to be impacted by shutdown include federally run museums and the country's national parks. In fact, some park workers are already preparing for the shutdown.
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Hi, I'm Smoldery the Bear. Proud government employee. My rent is due and I'm about to be laid off. Only you can subscribe to my only fans. I start fires down below. Link in bio.
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Stephen Colbert
Good for you, small Drake. Good for you. Oh, hey, there's some breaking news about former Florida House member and Bob's big Botox boy, Matt Gaetz. You may remember that Gaetz was nominated to be Attorney General until it came to light that he's awful and everyone hates him. Also, there's that nitpick that he might be a sex criminal. Well, the House ethics committee investigated Gaetz and reportedly found evidence of, among other things, illicit drug use and sex trafficking. And sex trafficking is terrible. That's why I don't do orgies. I can't stand the bumper to bumper after Gaetz. After Gaetz withdrew his nomination, the House voted not to release the report. But we just found out yesterday that they held another vote in Seattle. And in the second one, they voted to release the Matt Gaetz ethics report. When is this?
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Edward Norton
Tomorrow.
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Stephen Colbert
Okay, so the release is expected to drop tomorrow. So I will have some hot, fresh jokes on that in January. Speaking of diseases, the US has now reported the first severe human case of bird flu. Now, before anyone freaks out, are we sure this is severe, or is it just a guy that got it? Oh, babe, My temperature is 99.8. I don't think I'm going to be able to make it to your sister's baby shower. I love you. Could you hand me the Nintendo Switch? Now, officials stress that the risk to the general public is Low. The real danger is for people who work with birds, poultry or cows, or have recreational exposure to them. No recreational contact. Damn, that really throws a wrench in my all goose pickleball league. They're tough. They're tough. The bird flu has already jumped to another of our most delicious animals. Yesterday, California declared an emergency over bird flu in cattle. So far it appears that everyone who's gotten sick with the bird flu got it from an animal. But infectious disease experts warn that if this thing develops human to human transmission, it could trigger a pandemic. No, no. No one wants a reboot. Unless it's Lady Matlock. Lady Matlock? It's not really called that. The Charlotte Hornets. We love Lady Matlock. Long may she wave. The Charlotte Hornets are celebrating the holiday season by doing their best Ebenezer Scrooge impression. Because the Charlotte Hornets apologized for giving a PlayStation 5 to a 13 year old fan in an on court skit. Only to take it from him once the cameras stop rolling. Wait, wait a second. All those halftime skits are a lie. Thank God. That means this cheerleader is still alive. I was worried, but the young fan did not leave empty handed. After the Hornicks took away the PS5, a staffer replaced it with a jersey. Cause sure, that's a perfectly adequate replacement. Honey, will you marry me? Did you get the shot? Alright, give me the ring back. And here is a commemorative beer koozie. As I believe I might have mentioned earlier, the holidays are here. And it turns out, and I did not know this, they also celebrate Christmas in not America. And they do it wrong. Like over in Iceland where they have a mythical Yule cat who prowls the snowy countryside looking for anyone who hasn't received new clothes before Christmas. I gotta say, the more I learn about Iceland, the more normal Bjork seems. Okay, a Yule cat, mythical or not, sounds kind of cute. Pretty adorable. Let's take a look. Okay. Iceland is terrifying. Twas the night before Christmas and outside the house, a big cat ate Helga. She should have worn her new blouse. Over in Italy, children wait for presents from a gift giving crone named Befana, a broomstick riding witch. And legend has it Bafana leaves treats for kids as a sort of cosmic apology because she missed the birth of Jesus. Even worse, when she sent a baby gift, she went off registry. Ugh. Mary, we need a new car seat. Not more mercy. Now we move over to Spain, AKA Italy with smaller plates. Over there. Over there in the province of Catalonia, kids celebrate Christmas with the pooping log, this is true, which is a painted wooden log that children beat with sticks and sing traditional songs to make it poop gifts. Whereas here in America, children sing traditional songs and beat on the bathroom door to stop you from pooping. Kids, I don't want to freak you out, but if daddy doesn't get some quiet time in here with his Dave Barry book, someone's going to kill Santa. Over in Wales they keep things joyful. I'm sorry, I meant terrifying. Because there they celebrate with a centuries old tradition called the Mariluid which is a horse skull dressed up with ribbons and mounted on a pole. It's beginning to look a lot like horse skull. The Marie Louid is accompanied by a group of singers and visits homes, pubs and other gathering places. And just by looking at her you can tell she has a gorgeous voice.
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Edward Norton
Jacobus, Jacobus, Jacob away.
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Stephen Colbert
We got a great show for you tonight.
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Stephen Colbert
But we couldn't leave it at that.
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Stephen Colbert
New cumulative limited registrations for all vehicles identified as SUVs.
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Stephen Colbert
You have loved my guests tonight in such films as Fight Club Birdman and Glass Onion. His new film is a complete unknown. Please welcome Edward Norton.
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Edward Norton
Great.
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Stephen Colbert
There you go.
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Advertisement Voice
Great.
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Edward Norton
So nice to meet you finally.
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Stephen Colbert
Nice to meet you finally, too. I've wanted to talk to you for a long time. Especially. It's nice to talk to you about this film.
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Edward Norton
Yeah.
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Stephen Colbert
A Complete Unknown is beautiful. Incredibly moving. A great reminder of the power of art, artist artistry. Dedicating yourself to a life of the arts. Discovering what you have to give to the world and how to make the world a better place. Whether it's through your focus of your art or the art itself. You play Pete Seeger, a true artist. This is a picture of Seeger and Dylan in 1963. The real Pete Seeger.
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Edward Norton
I love that picture in particular, I think the way Dylan's looking at him. And that guitar that's in the shot is one I got to use in the film.
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Stephen Colbert
Oh, my God.
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Edward Norton
Yeah.
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Stephen Colbert
Oh, my God. Well, I am the. We had Timothy on the show. And it's a brilliant performance as Dylan.
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Edward Norton
I'm gonna go a little further. I've been doing this almost 30 years, making films, and I've given a couple performances I'm pretty happy with. I've seen some really great ones and been around great actors. And Timothy's. Timothy is in the deepest of places in this performance. It's an impossible thing. Nobody should play Bob Dylan. And I think that he was meant to play this role. And he went to a place that was so inspiring to be around. It radiated outward into everybody else and took everybody else to the level we want to be at. And he. I can't say enough about it. Like, don't look at behind the scenes things. Don't look at. Just go and see this and get lost in it. Because when we were growing up and we saw films like Raging Bull, you know, you. Nobody talked about De Niro gaining the weight. Nobody unpacked it and ruined it before we saw it. You know what I mean? And this is like that. You should see this because he pulls off a high wire act that is truly extraordinary. And it was great to be there in support of it and mixing it up with him in it. It was very deep. Very deep and very special.
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Stephen Colbert
And it's so contiguous. It's not like you fall out of the film and go, wow, he's doing a great job as Dylan. You look like you're watching Bob Dylan become this extraordinary artist.
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Edward Norton
You know, it's funny. There's a lot. I mean, when I moved to New york in my 20s. Song for Woody which he plays to me in the film, in that first scene. That was the soundtrack. That was a mythology. I was trying to step into the idea of arriving and walking in the footsteps of the people who've inspired you and that you're gonna make yourself in a place, you know. And I think I held it almost too close. Like, I almost thought we should not be trying to pretend to be these people. Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan. These are too iconic, you know, and virtuosos. And what are we doing? And our director, Jim Mangold, who is a great director, directed Walk the Line, another great movie story, musical story. He said, look, I don't think. This isn't a biography. This is about how an emergent moment happens around an artist. And the collisions between people that create this delicate moment we had where art and youth and the culture of our country and the progressive, the attempts to advance the human cause were woven into each other so tightly. And just for a minute, they were affecting each other. And artists were really affecting what was happening. And a whole generation was voicing itself through this incredibly young person. Pete Seeger was. You had him on the show. I mean, you had him on your previous show.
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Stephen Colbert
Oh, my rapport. Yeah. I couldn't believe I had the privilege, I think he was 92 at the time or something like that, to talk to him, interview him and hear him play. And even at that age, he was leading everyone in song. He was creating the communal moment. And Seger saw the thing that you were talking about in Dylan. He saw this moment, the rarity of that moment, at least as portrayed by you in this.
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Edward Norton
Absolutely. And I also think a thing I learned, I knew a lot about Dylan. I knew less about Pete Seeger, although Even in the 90s in New York, if you were coming up as an artist, Pete Seeger was the paragon of an artist who cared about the environment and cared about. He cleaned up the Hudson river, you know, he really was. He was like the Druid. He was like. I sometimes say he was Gandalf to artists. You know, Folk Gandalf. Yes, he was folk Gandalf. And Dylan kind of was like Frodo given the ring of power and sent toward Mordor, you know?
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Stephen Colbert
Right.
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Edward Norton
I wish I had thought about that before we did the movie. That was a. That's a great way of putting it.
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Stephen Colbert
And then Frodo went electric.
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Edward Norton
Yeah, he went electric. Yeah.
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Stephen Colbert
It upset Gandalf and it upset Gandalf.
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Edward Norton
And send him to Mordor. The. But Pete Seeger had a kind of integrity he eschewed money. He eschewed fame for its own sake. And he held onto that over decades and decades and decades. You know, and he. I never knew how much he suffered in the 50s from the blacklist. He was blacklisted in the McCarthyite era. And he played summer camps and he played high schools. And he was the Johnny Appleseed of the idea of music, folk music, as a torch. And he kept it alive through years in the cold. And when this film starts, it was like Dylan and the others of this generation, Joan Baez in particular, they were taking up the torch from him. And you can see in the pictures that he felt that he had kept it alive. And now it was blooming. It was blooming. And it's a beautiful moment. It's something. It's almost like we have to ask ourselves, I think, what is preventing that kind of generational connectedness now? You know, I think the phones are a big problem. I think shrinking content into this, like, you know, atomization, where none of it really sticks. I think it's really worth immersing back in this world and seeing when people weren't distracted by all that stuff, when all they had was pen and paper and each other really looking at each other, talking to each other, colliding with each other.
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Stephen Colbert
Well, there might be something.
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Edward Norton
What they produced was so phenomenally important.
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Stephen Colbert
I'm hoping that in the birth of AI that people will actually put a higher value. Because so many things can be generated through AI and AI, however beautiful it might generate, it's not a human experience. And that people might actually put an extra value on live performance. Cause, you know, that's a real person releasing into other human beings, with other human beings, making, you know, by humans, for humans and of humans at the same time.
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Edward Norton
Yeah, I also don't. I just don't think an AI will write. To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free Silhouetted by the.
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Stephen Colbert
Sea My weariness amazes me.
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Edward Norton
I am branded on my feet, you know. And that song, Mr. Tambourine, it was never the one that got me. When I was young, you know, I. The romantic ones. Boots of Spanish Leather and Shelter from the Storm and you're in love with a girl, you're losing a girl. You go into Dylan's intensive, like, romantic capability. But the older I get, like, I listen to songs like Mr. Tambourine Man. And it's about wanting to be present in your own life, you know. It's about wanting to be available to what's happening and to enjoy real life. You Know, and I think, like, AI is not going to write that. AI. AI is. AI is not going to. You can run AI for a thousand years. It's not going to write Bob Dylan's songs.
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Stephen Colbert
We have to take a quick break, but we're going to be right back with more Edward Norton. Everybody stick around. We're back with one of the stars of a complete unknown, Edward Norton. Who today strikes you as Dylan or Seger, who has that same spirit.
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Edward Norton
Dylan was never the guy who was going to take up the baton from Pete Seeger. But I think, for my money, someone who had that role in my life was Bruce Springsteen.
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Stephen Colbert
Right.
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Edward Norton
Bruce. Bruce actually really is the Pete Seeger. He took up the torch from Pete Seeger in terms of. He sang the song of Working people, the American Troubadour. Yeah. And he was never afraid to. To say what he feels about politics, about the American experiment, about a cause. He. And I think that. And I think it's fitting if you think about it like, 2008, like Pete Seeger, who was born in 1919 and was at the march to Selma. You know, only Pete Seeger and John Lewis lived through it all to see Barack Obama's nomination election. And Pete Seeger sings the song his friend wrote in the Depression. He sings that song in 2009 at Obama's inauguration, this Land Is Yours.
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Stephen Colbert
Yeah.
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Edward Norton
With Bruce Springsteen. You know, together they sang that song. And I think that's fitting. I think that Bruce. I think that Bruce is the person in my life who, as an artist, made me think about people and about what's going on in our country. And in fact, even this Land Is yous Land is a slightly subversive song. It's a. It sounds like a patriotic song, but it is questioning a lot. And so is Born in the USA Born in the USA is to me very much like this Land Is yous Land.
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Stephen Colbert
This yous Land Is yous Land is great because there's one. Was one of the verses is great about. He goes. He came upon the sign and it said no trespassing or something. Or private property or something like that. But I looked around the other back of the back of the sign, nothing on it.
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Edward Norton
Yeah.
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Stephen Colbert
And he kept on walking.
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Edward Norton
Yeah, it's. It's.
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Stephen Colbert
And also his banjo. I love what it said around the outside of his banjo. Famously, Woody Guthrie's guitar said.
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Edward Norton
Woody Guthrie's guitar said, this machine kills fascists. And. But you know, what's really interesting is Pete. Pete didn't. He wouldn't write anything on his banjo. Until Woody Guthrie had passed. When Woody Guthrie passed, Pete Seeger wrote on his banjo, this machine surrounds hate with love and forces it to surrender.
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Stephen Colbert
That would be nice. Yeah, that would be nice.
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Edward Norton
We need. Yeah, we need more Pete Seegers.
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Stephen Colbert
We have to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Edward Norton, everybody. Hey, we're back here with one of the stars of A Complete Unknown, Edward Norton. Before you go, we have a clip here of. It's you and Timothy as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. You're at a party together. What's happening in this scene?
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Edward Norton
There were rumors in some of the stuff we read that they had played together at a fundraiser, but no one knows what they played. And so we decided to play this song when the Ship Comes in, which is one of Dylan's great ones. And I don't want to say too much, it was incredibly joyful, even on the day we had tears in our eyes.
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Stephen Colbert
And again, y'all are playing live to the camera. This is not a pre recording. Everything you guys do, you're really telling.
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Edward Norton
Remember what I said about the magic trick? We're just. We're going to leave it alone. I'm not going to unpack it.
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Stephen Colbert
But that's the anti magic trick, in my opinion. The fact that it's real doesn't make it magic. And you don't have to pull that back. The curtain. To me, that actually skirts that danger that you're talking about.
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Edward Norton
Yeah, you can. When you do things, live in front of other people, as you know, there's nothing like it. There's nothing like it. There's a reciprocal energy we're getting from each other here right now even. And you get. It's something totally different.
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Stephen Colbert
All right, let's take a look. Jim, want to use this beauty? They always keep it handy, don't you?
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Edward Norton
He's like a gunfighter with a six. Keeping it close.
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Stephen Colbert
Oh, the time will come up when the winds will stop and the breeze will cease to be breathing like the stillness in the wind for the hurricane begins the hour that the ship comes in and the seas well split and the ship will hit Then the sands.
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Advertisement Voice
On the shoreline will be shaking Then.
- [25:09]
Stephen Colbert
The tide will sound and the wind will pound and the morning will be breaking.
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Edward Norton
Thank you.
- [25:26]
Stephen Colbert
A Complete Unknown is in theaters nationwide on Christmas Day. Edward Norton, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Late Show Pod show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing.
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Edward Norton
If you want to see more of.
- [25:39]
Stephen Colbert
Me, come to the late show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives.
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The NFL on CBS streams live on.
- [25:49]
Stephen Colbert
Paramount plus all season long.
- [25:51]
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- [25:52]
Stephen Colbert
Catch your local CBS game every Sunday.
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- [25:58]
Stephen Colbert
You can't do it any better. Your Paramount subscription also gives you an.
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- [26:08]
Stephen Colbert
Oh, incredible is right.
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Another great season of the NFL on CBS is here. Streaming live on Paramount. Now streaming on Paramount.
- [26:18]
Edward Norton
You do have a lot going on.
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Advertisement Voice
I'm fine. You got a brand new baby, an unemployed wife. You got no money.
- [26:23]
Stephen Colbert
Okay, okay.
- [26:24]
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