If not for the coronavirus, this would have been Final Four weekend.
So, for you basketball-starved fans, let me share with you an intrerview I did some 20 years ago with the coach who took his team to the Final Four eleven times during his 36 seasons with the University of North Carolina.
Dean Smith was one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history, including:
.. 22 seasons with at least 25 wins
.. 35 consecutive seasons with a 50% or better record.[3]
.. and two national championships.
Smith was also Michael Jordan’s college coach.
Here now, from 1999, my interview with Dean Smith:
Dean Smith died in 2015, just days before his 84th birthday.
Since 1985, I’ve done over 10,000 interviews, with notable people, not-so-notable folks, some you’ve never heard of, some downright infamous.
In most cases, I had anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes with my interview subject. Time to have a cup of coffee, make some small talk, do the interview, and sign some autographs, and say our goodbyes.
But every now and then, I would have a lot less time for the interview. In some cases, only a minute. So today, some short takes.
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How would you prepare, if you were told you could interview Jay Leno, about his new children’s book — but for only exactly 90 seconds? Here’s the entire tape from 2004 — I brought my wife Hillary with me that day.
Photo: Georges Biard
In 2011, another celebrity children’s book author — actress Julianne Moore, at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.
In 2006, another book, another celebrity — this time, I got 26 seconds with the great former NFL quarterback Warren Moon.
And then, at the 2008 National Book Festival, former NFL running back Tiki Barber.
Also in 2008: legendary CBS newsman Daniel Schorr.
I got almost a minute and a half in 2006 with Apple co-founde Steve Wozniak.
I’ve saved my favorite short-take interview for last.
Photo: Garry Knight from Bromley, Kent, England
It, too, happened at a National Book Festival in Washington in 2008. As I was standing in the Media tent, looking out at the crowds, I spotted a familiar face. Actually, I saw the smile first, and recognized it — and knew I had to try to get a minute with .. Dustin Hoffman.
I hurried over to him, and said the stupidest thing anyone can ever say to a celebrity.
“Are you who I think you are?”
Luckily he was very gracious, very kind. And he agreed to a quick interview, on the condition that I talk to him like just a festival-goer, not a celebrity. That’s why he adopted a bit of a different voice. But here’s my sixty seconds with Dustin Hoffman.
Years before he became head of Fox News — way before there even was a Fox News — Roger Ailes was a media consultant. Most prominent among his many clients, perhaps, was President Ronald Reagan. Ailes was an adviser to the President in his 1984 reelection bid, and was indirectly responsible for one of that campaign’s most memorable, and decisive, moments.
I met Roger Ailes in the fall of 1987. He’d written a book to help coach people in the art of public speaking and dealing with the media. The books promised to reveal the “secrets of the master communicators.”
So here now, from 1987, Roger Ailes:
Roger Ailes went on to become CEO of the fledgling Fox News in 1996. He held that post until 2016 when allegations of sexual harassment forced him out.
Roger Ailes died in 2017, thee days after his 77th birthday.
Have you ever seen the 1997 movie “Donnie Brasco” with Johnny Depp?
Donnie Brasco was a real person. Well, no, Donnie was an identity created by the FBI, back in the 1980s, when they assigned an agent named Joseph Pistone to go undercover, as Donnie Brasco, and infiltrate some of America’s most notorious organized crime familiies.
By the late ’80s, his assignment complete, Pistone wrote a bestselling book about it. I met him in 1989 when he was on a publicity tour for the book — a fact that I had to ask about…..
Here now, from 1989, Joseph Pistone:
Joe Pistone has since written two more books about his undercover experience. He is now 80 years old,
Janine Turner is best known for her roles on TV’s “Northern Exposure” and “Friday Night Lights,” and in the movie “Cliffhanger.”
Photo: Alan Light
But until 2014, much of her private life — how she prevailed over heartbreak, alcoholism, and the death of her father — had remained out of public view.
That was the year she wrote an autobiographjy, a booked she called ““A Little Bit Vulnerable.”
And that’s when I spoke with her.
Here now, from 2014, actress Janine Turner:
Today Janine Turner is 57. She hasn’t been on TV in a few years, but appears in film from time to time. and she remains politically active.
There have been many authors I’ve interviewed year after year, and one of my favorites — a guy I always looked forward to talking to — was this guy, Robert B. Parker.
A gruff-sounding, but actually very charming and likeable man, Robert B. Parker was best known for his series of books featuring a sardonic private eye named Spenser.
There were 40 Spenser novels — ABC-TV based the series “Spenser: For Hire” on Paker’s books.
The first time I met him was in 1989. So here now, from 1989, Robert B. Parker.
In the first season of Donald Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice,” which premiered in 2004, one contestant quickly became the one viewers loved to hate.
She was known simply as Omarosa.
I met her in the summer of 2008, after she’d written a book aimed at helping women be more assertive.
Here now, Omarosa, from 2008:
Several years after our interview, Donald Trump was elected president, and Omarosa went to work for him in the White House. But she left in January 2018. It’s not clear whether she was fired, or resigned.
Art Buchwald may be the first modern-day American journalist to be accused of producing “fake news.” After he wrote a satirical piece about President Dwight Eisenhower’s breakfast habits, Ike’s press secretary actually held a news conference to denounce Buchwald’s column and offer the real facts about the President’s breakfasts.
For decades to follow, Art Buchwald wrote about Washington politics, but also daily life in America, but always with a sharp satirical wit.
I interviewed him several times, including the interview you’re about to hear, from 1991, when
America was still in the recession that started in 1987, when Anita Hill and Iran-Contra were still fresh in everyone’s mind, and the “George Bush” he’s talking about is George H.W. Bush.
Here now, Art Buchwald, from 1991:
The last time I talked with Art Buchwald was in 2005 — he died a little over a year later, at age 81.
Forty years ago this month, two young animal rights activists formed an organization to advocate for animals.
Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco called it “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” often known simply as PETA.
In the years since, PETA has made a name for itself by its controversial, sometimes outrageous, tactics, aimed at protecting the rights of animals.
I’ve interviewed Ingrid Newkirk a number of times over the years, including the interview you’re about to hear, from 1991.
And speaking of controversy .. the day I talked with her,i in 1991, PETA was under fire for a newspaper ad they had just published.
The ad compared meatpackers to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed and dismembered 17 victims. Near the end of this interview, I talked with Newkirk about that ad, and the response to it.
