The Real Stanley Bing.

DATE December 4, 2000 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Michael Patrick Hearn talks about the history behind
L. Frank Baum's book "The Wizard of Oz"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli sitting in for Terry Gross.

L. Frank Baum was 44 when "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was published 100
years ago. Michael Patrick Hearn was only 20 years old and still a college
student when he published his "Annotated Wizard of Oz" book back in 1973.
Since then, Hearn has written many other books, including annotated versions
of "A Christmas Carol" and "Huckleberry Finn." But now, in honor of the
centennial of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Hearn has returned to the book he
first annotated 27 years ago and analyzed it all over again in a deluxe new
edition published by W.W. Norton. I asked Michael Patrick Hearn what some of
his favorite discoveries were while annotating this new edition.

Mr. SAMUEL PATRICK HEARN: Well, I think finding out who the possible model
for Dorothy was. And this came from Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner, who is doing a
book on Baum's mother-in-law, Matilda Joslyn Gage, who's one of the great
19th century feminists. She worked with Anthony in Stanton and turned
out to be too radical for them, so she's been written out of feminist
history. But she had enormous impact on L. Frank Baum. But Sally and I knew
Baum's niece, Matilda Jewel Gage(ph), named after her grandmother.

BIANCULLI: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HEARN: And in 1898, the last child in that generation was named Dorothy.
She was Mathilda's little sister and she died that year. And Mathilda always
felt that the child that died was the Dorothy in "Wizard of Oz." There's even
a letter that Maude wrote to Dorothy's parents saying that she wished she had
that daughter herself. And, of course, Maude Baum, L. Frank Baum's
wife--Frank and Maude Baum never had any daughters of their own. They had
four sons. So, in a sense, this was the little girl that Baum gave his wife
in "The Wizard of Oz," and he dedicated it to his wife, Maude.

BIANCULLI: I don't mean this to be a pop quiz, but I'm sure that you're
familiar enough with some of your notations to be able to give us thumbnails
on some of the things that strike out, in terms of what you were able to
research, both the first time you annotated the book and then this new time,
on derivations of certain words and characters in the book.

Mr. HEARN: Well, such as the word `Oz.'

BIANCULLI: Yes.

Mr. HEARN: The story that Baum gave--he gave it to Publisher's Weekly--this
is a couple years after "The Wizard of Oz" came out. And he said that he was
writing the story and he needed a name. And nothing seemed to come to him.
So he was looking around his study, his library, and his eye fell on his
filing cabinet. And there were three drawers; A to G, H to N, and O to Z.
And that's where Oz came from.

BIANCULLI: Talk about the origin of the Munchkins.

Mr. HEARN: The Munchkins. My suspicion--well, Baum was of, in part, German
descent. And I think he was--he may have been thinking of Baron Munchausen,
who created, you know, all these wild stories, very Ozlike tales. Also, Brian
Adderbury(ph), who's an Oz scholar, suggested that Baum may have been thinking
of Munchkind(ph), which is a statue in Munich. And he may have been thinking
of that when he created the Munchkins.

And the other thing is that--Adderbury states that blue is the color of
Munich, which, of course, is also the color of the Munchkins--favorite color
of the Munchkins.

BIANCULLI: You do an awful lot with color in your notations.

Mr. HEARN: Well, Baum did, you know, certainly in the first edition because
Baum and Denslow paid for the publication of the book; for the making of the
color plates. And they were very concerned that there were color
illustrations. And so Baum and Denslow worked out a color scheme in the story
and in the illustrations so that, as Dorothy goes from one place to another,
the color scheme changes, so that she starts off in gray Kansas; goes to
Munchkinland, where blue is the favorite color; goes to the deadly poppy
field, where the illustrations are in red; then the green Emerald City; then
on to the Winkies in the West, where yellow is the favorite color. So you've
got this sort of rainbow effect from illustration to--from signature to
signature.

BIANCULLI: And another color question: the Yellow Brick Road?

Mr. HEARN: Well, my suspicion is that Baum was thinking what is a better way
to go from a blue country, the Munchkinland, to the green Emerald City than
through a yellow--on Yellow Brick Road? Because, of course, blue and yellow
make green.

BIANCULLI: It's been 100 years.

Mr. HEARN: Mm-hmm.

BIANCULLI: Why do you think the book has lasted so long? It can't just be
the movie because the movie didn't come out until '39.

Mr. HEARN: And, of course, MGM wouldn't have made the movie if the book
hadn't been a big success before that. But I think it's just--first of all,
it's a great story. I think everybody--the idea of going to another country,
leaving your drab life in Kansas or wherever and going on to this
extraordinary land full of danger, but also full of wonders, and then coming
back home again, I think that appeals to everyone. I think, also, the
creation of Dorothy is a very distinctive character in American literature.
In fact, feminist writers have embraced Dorothy, claiming that she's probably
the first, true feminist heroine in American children's literature. They
don't even accept "Little Women" because Jo March marries Professor Bhaer at
the end. And, of course, Dorothy does not wait for her prince to come. She
goes out. She goes--nothing's going to keep this girl from getting back to
Kansas. So she has this determination; this self-resolve to go out and get
what she wants and then return to her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

BIANCULLI: Actually, if you go back 100 years, you don't even have to have
the disclaimer of children's literature. She would be one of the first in
literature, period, wouldn't she?

Mr. HEARN: Very likely, very likely. And I certainly think that's the
influence of Baum's mother. Another think you have to recognize, too, is
power in Oz resides in women, not in men. Whether it's the Wicked Witch or
the Good Witch, it certainly isn't in the Wizard, who turns out to be a
fraud.

BIANCULLI: Tell us a little bit about Baum. He was--What?--44 when...

Mr. HEARN: He was 44 when he published "The Wizard of Oz," yes. And he was
born in central New York, 1856. He grew up in Syracuse, New York. His father
made his fortune in oil--Pennsylvania oil industry. And Baum tried all
sorts of things. He grew up in a very, you know, wealthy family. His sisters
and brothers did well on their own. And he tried so many different things.
He was pretty much a rainbow-chaser, so to speak. He was always looking for
the next, big project or something that would make his fortune. And so he
was--he sold--he raised chickens. He sold axle grease. He had a store in
South Dakota that failed. He had a newspaper in South Dakota that failed. He
sold crockery on the road. He did everything he could. And it wasn't until
he finally realized the power in himself as a storyteller that he began, you
know, making a name for himself as a writer.

BIANCULLI: My guest is Michael Patrick Hearn, author of the newly revised
"Annotated Wizard of Oz."

Let's really look at the book and the movie.

Mr. HEARN: Mm-hmm.

BIANCULLI: And when I say `the movie,' I mean, there have been so many
adaptations of Oz...

Mr. HEARN: Mm-hmm.

BIANCULLI: ...that Hollywood has made, but this is `the one' that has sort of
crystallized everything. So I wonder where you stand...

Mr. HEARN: You mean that one with Judy Garland?

BIANCULLI: That one with Judy Garland. So I've seen a quote from you that
said it was unforgivable that Oz...

Mr. HEARN: Unforgivable.

BIANCULLI: Unforgivable that, in the movie--in that movie--that Oz was
bookended as a dream. So let's start there. Why is it unforgivable?

Mr. HEARN: Well, in the--in, you know, Baum's story, Dorothy actually goes
to Oz. It's a real, truly live place. As Judy Garland says at the end, it's
not a dream. It's not a fantasy. Baum's Dorothy does not have to get hit on
the head to think--to enter this wonderful country. And I think with kids,
they don't want Oz to end when Dorothy wakes up. They want it to continue
forever. And it really--in the book, it really does have this
three-dimensionality. It seems to be a real place where you could visit if
you just happened to be picked up by a cyclone and taken there.

BIANCULLI: So in the movie, what were the things that they adapted and
changed that you felt were loyal to Baum's spirit and that pleased you the
most? And which were the things by which you were most offended?

Mr. HEARN: Oh, well, let's see. Of course, in the book, Dorothy wears
silver shoes rather than ruby slippers.

BIANCULLI: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HEARN: And I asked Margaret Hamilton about that one time. You know,
Margaret Hamilton was the Wicked Witch. And she said that she had grown up in
the Oz books, and she loved the silver shoes, so she asked Mervyn LeRoy why
they made the change. And he said, `Well, red looks much better against
yellow in Technicolor'--completely practical reason, which is so typical
Hollywood.

And you don't have the farm hands in the beginning who become the characters
in Dorothy's delusion. That was an invention of the first screenwriter. And
you don't have this long prologue. I think it's only--only a few pages are
spent in Kansas. Baum can't wait to get to Oz, as Dorothy can't either.

BIANCULLI: Was there anything in the movie you like--I mean, really liked?

Mr. HEARN: Oh, I really enjoyed the movie. I'm not...

BIANCULLI: I didn't frame that--I framed that question a little too
accusatorily. I'm sorry. But I mean...

Mr. HEARN: Well, I mean, it is a different experience. But I think they
really captured the spirit of Baum. I also edited the screenplay--the first
publication screenplay. This was in 1989. And I read through all the
different scripts and was able to check all the different script changes.
And it's remarkable how different the original script was and how slowly
they were working through all these awful drafts and complicated plot devices
until they finally came back and made it simpler and closer to the book. And
I really do feel it did capture the spirit of Baum, even if it didn't adapt
every single episode from the story itself.

BIANCULLI: I don't know if it seems sacrilegious to you, but I feel that the
death scene of the Wicked Witch of the West was infinitely better written in
the movie than it was in Baum's original book, simply because the witch's last
words in the book are, like, `Look out. Here I go,' rather than `What a
world. What a world,' which, to me, is so much more fun, so...

Mr. HEARN: Well, I think it's also Margaret Hamilton, too. I also heard her
read that episode once. And I think she brought to it a lot that she had also
brought to the character in the movie. And I think one important thing about
that whole destruction of the Wicked Witch of the West is that, in the book,
Dorothy is mad. She loses her temper with the Wicked Witch. The Wicked Witch
tries to steal one of her silver shoes, and she's so angry she douses her with
a bucket of water. In the movie, it's Judy Garland trying to save the
Scarecrow, who then just hits Margaret Hamilton smack in the face with that
bucket of water. The movie sort of resolves Dorothy. It's an accident the
Wicked Witch of the West is destroyed. But in the book, Dorothy is really mad
and that's how she gets rid of the Wicked Witch.

BIANCULLI: If there's something in a source material...

Mr. HEARN: Yes.

BIANCULLI: And let's just use something from "The Wizard of Oz"...

Mr. HEARN: Mm-hmm.

BIANCULLI: ...that you wanted to get to the bottom of--you knew it meant
something, but you didn't know what. Where do you go to find that out?

Mr. HEARN: It really depends. Sometimes I go to contemporary reviews.
Sometimes things are revealed there. Going through Baum's letters. I mean,
this is what a biographer does. I mean, you have to love to read other
people's mail to be a biographer. And Baum was--did not talk a great deal
about his writing. And I think that's also significant. I don't think he
thought a great deal about it once he put it on the page and once it came out.
But you do find little indications here and there. I've also, you know,
interviewed members of the family and some people, you know--people who
actually new L. Frank Baum when they were growing up. And then just, you
know, contemporary sources, you know. You know, just checking--if I'm doing
something on Baum as an axle-grease manufacturer, I look in the various trade
magazines. I found out, you know, color theory through articles that were in
his window-trimmers magazine.

BIANCULLI: That was probably--if you can spend a little bit of time on it,
that's probably the most impressive thing, to me, in this new notation--was
your design, your color theory drawings that had all of these lands
overlapping, as colors would overlap. And you would have primary colors that
would turn into secondary ones.

Mr. HEARN: Yes. Well, that's the traditional color wheel. And Baum
published a series of articles. Yeah, his journal The Show Window--he was
editing a win--a magazine for window trimmers when he was writing "The Wizard
of Oz." And they're very interested in color coordination and color harmony
in design. And so he published this series. So I'm sure he was conscious of,
you know, just the basics of color theory through these articles. And, of
course, this is concurrent. He was publishing concurrently while he was
writing the book. And, you know, that is the, you know, traditional color
wheel. And it does seem to fit the pattern of the Land of Oz.

BIANCULLI: Michael Patrick Hearn is the author of "The Annotated Wizard of
Oz."

Coming up, the collected letters of Oscar Wilde. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Complete Letters of Oscar
Wilde"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

November 30th was the centenary of Oscar Wilde's death. For the past few
years leading up to this date, Wilde and his work have been the subject of
films and plays, making him a popular, cultural rival to Jane Austen, Henry
James and Shakespeare. Now the long-awaited complete letters of Oscar Wilde
have been published. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says this volume will make
readers even more wild about Wilde.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN:

Further proof that life is unfair. Instead of the one, clear month I needed
to devote wholly and solely to savoring "The Complete Letters of Oscar
Wilde"--over 1,500 of them--I could only allow myself a few frenzied hours to
race through this garden of epistolary delights. Oh, well, even a brush with
Wilde elevates the spirits, educates the tongue and renews a reader's faith in
the evolution of the species.

This humongous edition of "The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde," accompanied
by his own pen-and-ink illustrations, was edited by his grandson and Wilde
scholar, Merlin Holland and by Rupert Hart-Davis, who edited the only other
and much, much slimmer, so-called complete collection of Wilde's letters in
1962. I'm sure other Wilde scholars will have their bones to pick with this
volume. I've already heard some inside-the-academy whispering about
publication pressure to put the collection together quickly to observe the
centenary of Wilde's death.

But to an informed, but non-expert Wilde admirer, this collection is a treat.
Like Dorothy Parker, Wildes' greatest attribute was his gift for brilliant
gab; the off-the-cuff remark that could stun listeners with its eloquence and
easy acrobatic wit. One of the most famous, if possibly apocryphal, instances
of Wilde's lightning-quick verbal reflexes occurred on his trip to America in
1881, where he was booked to give a series of lectures. Upon arriving in New
York, he supposedly said to a customs official, `I have nothing to declare but
my genius.' Ah, but only a fool would ever accuse Wilde of traveling light.
Wilde's poems, essays, novel and especially his plays give us flashes of that
genius. But his letters, often dashed off and scattered, probably offer a
reader the closest virtual reality experience of being in Wilde's company and
listening to him as one of his zingers floats out of his mouth.

The letters here span the years 1868, when Wilde was a 14-year-old school
boy, to November 21st, 1900, about a week before his death. Given the
benefit of hindsight, I think even in that very first letter, Wilde's adult
persona is taking shape. He's thanking his mother for sending `a jolly
hamper of food,' but also taking her to task for mistakenly sending him two
of his younger brother's shirts. There it is, in its pubescent form; the
characteristic Wildean felicitous choice of words and the almost obsessive
concern with clothes and public presentation.

What follows is a postmarked, autobiographical narrative of Wilde's life and
career. He sends dozens of gracefully sycophantic letters to leading
actresses like Ellen Terry, as well as to literary father figures like Matthew
Arnold and Walt Whitman. The travelogue account of his lecture tour
throughout the United States is a hoot. Wilde enthuses about lecturing to
multi-wived Mormons in Salt Lake and smoking cigars down in a silver mine with
a rapt audience of miners in Leadville. In an 1882 letter written from
Topeka, he moans to a correspondent that `the local poet has just called on me
with his masterpiece, a sanguinary lyric of 3,000 lines on the Civil War.
What am I to do?'

The letters Wilde wrote to his future wife, Constance Lloyd, are impassioned
and touching. So are the letters he wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed
Bosie, the ninth-rate poet and feckless young man who would become Wilde's
lover and be the instrument of his downfall. By now, Wilde has become such a
popular figure that most people know at least the general aspects of his
tragic fall from grace. There was the public trial for homosexuality; two
years hard labor in prison; bankruptcy; the collapse of his marriage and the
loss of his two sons; and, after his release from prison, his sad exile to the
Continent.

Even in prison in 1895, Wilde is writing to the unworthy Douglas. `I shall be
eternally grateful to you for having always inspired me with adoration and
love. Never has any love been greater, more sacred, more beautiful.' Above
all, Wilde's flamboyant voice, the one that chats, quips and exalts through
the complete letters is the voice we now identify as gay. Every gay character
on stage or screen and many out gay men in life, knowingly or not, speak in
Oscar Wilde. It's a dialect that's self-deprecating, fussy, consciously
affected, breezy and very funny. I don't know if Wilde single-handedly
invented the language of modern male homosexuality, but he certainly perfected
it and carried it on through thick and thin.

According to a friend of Wilde's, who recorded the scene, when Wilde was
released from prison, he was taken to a private house where he greeted a
woman by saying, `How marvelous of you to know exactly the right hat to wear
at 7:00 in the morning to greet a friend who's been away.' As his letters
demonstrate, even in the worst straits, Wilde was never at a loss for words.

BIANCULLI: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University.
I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: Coming up, the true identity of corporate satirist Stanley Bing.
He's been poking fun at the corporate world for Fortune and Esquire magazines.
In real life, he's a media executive.

Also, we'll listen to the first album from singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado.
Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review.

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Interview: Gil Schwartz discusses his work at CBS and his writings
as Stanley Bing
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli.

Stanley Bing is a business humor writer. He's written several books,
including this year's "What Would Machiavelli Do?," a sort of how-to guide for
business executives who want to find and release their inner tyrants. For
five years, he's written a monthly column in Fortune magazine. Before that,
he wrote for Esquire. His Fortune columns end with the phrase `By day,
Stanley Bing is a real executive at a real Fortune 500 company he'd rather not
name,' but the secret has leaked in recent years. The company is CBS, and
Stanley Bing's real name is Gil Schwartz, the executive vice president of
communications for CBS Television.

It does seem when you look over this what is now more than a 15-year body of
work in terms of the columns, that you did go from, like, a sort of Dilbert
mentality, where you were on that level, to--you were the Mr. Burns from "The
Simpsons." I mean, you became the guy that most--your problems were not about
the guy that you worked for so much as the people who worked for you, and then
the big guy that you had to report to and all the other people that were--that
had made it to your level.

Mr. GIL SCHWARTZ ("Stanley Bing," Fortune Columnist): I see myself more like
Smithers, actually, but...

BIANCULLI: That's an awful thing to say for public consumption.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: You know, I mean, I don't think I'm actually ever going to make
it to the kind of Mr. Burns level, but I'm happy not to be working, you know,
in Homer Simpson's chair. I've always enjoyed Dilbert. I thought Dilbert
was very focused and very true about, you know, organizational life. A few
years ago a guy who was the head of human resources called me up and he said
to me, `Do you read Dilbert?' and I said, `Yeah, I do.' And he said, `You
know, this character Catbert, the evil human resources vice president, I think
it's a really unfair characterization, don't you?' And the guy really was
pretty much Catbert, so it was amusing and kind of illustrated a point that
I've felt over the years, which is that very often you will describe someone
and they will read it and they will find it amusing because they think they're
writing about someone else, so that's sort of what's happened over the years.

BIANCULLI: That's very funny. It reminds me of, actually, one of my favorite
columns of yours which is about marketing consultants, business consultants,
where you did a toss-away line insulting them, just warning young people not
to become them. And then when you got an outcry, you did a longer column that
said some of the reasons why. And I just--I want to read it and then I want
to ask you if it's really cathartic for Gil Schwartz, who can't say these
things necessarily to marketing consultants who come in to CBS, where you work
now, to be able to say it in print. So I'm going to read your words here from
a column from earlier this year in Fortune magazine.

`The boss likes you far too much. You're an institutionalized suck-up.
You're there to make him look good when he shouldn't. Does he listen to the
guys who are in the trenches every day? No, he does not. Instead, here comes
you. You hold meetings. You're looking into things. If anybody asks Mr.
Beanbag what he's doing about slow growth in sales, he can say, "Oh, I've
hired the McWiener Group(ph) to look into that. They'll be giving me a report
real soon, and if there's any resistance in implementing those goals, well,
you can bet that," blah, blah, blah. Boy, doesn't he look dynamic? And what
if it is, in fact, Mr. Beanbag who is the problem? Do you tell him that?
Well, do you?'

I love that.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Thank you. Thanks.

BIANCULLI: But, I mean, you are now--I mean, we haven't talked too much and I
want to spend a little bit of the interview talking about exactly the sort of
decisions and jobs and roles and everything that you have in CBS at that high
level, but CBS at that high level is not without its cadres of consultants.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Actually, we don't have that many. You know, I came up the
ranks when it was Westinghouse, and also it was the '80s and '90s and there
was a lot of McKinsey type stuff around and there were always these kind of
people that were in the system because there were problems that they didn't
want to fix by hiring people that knew anything about that stuff. And I
developed an aversion towards these expensive solutions. I mean, you know,
you go and you want to either yourself get a raise or give somebody a raise of
more than 3 percent, and you're told, `No, that's out of the guideline,' and
then you see a bill somewhere that says that a consultant has been paid to
put, like, you know, paper sheets up on a wall and write on them and has been
paid, you know, six figures and you start to feel resentful.

The consultant thing was a goad, you know. I'd written, you're right, a
sentence in something saying--it was basically a graduation speech saying,
`And by the day, don't be a consultant,' and I'd gotten, you know, hundreds of
e-mails from people not so much angry as curious, like, `Why? Why do you say
that?' So then I wrote this piece in which I've just basically, you know,
without any subtlety about it, took the gloves off and kind of just, you know,
ragged at consultants for a while, and it's--which I've always wanted to do.
And I got, again, you know, just a ton of e-mail, I would say 98 percent of it
very positive and most of it from consultants saying, `You're right. I don't
know what I'm doing. I come in, I don't have time to work right. Here are
the problems with my business. I'd like to get a real job. How does a person
go inside a corporation?' It was fascinating. I think it may be that, except
for very specific, you know, uses the generic 27-year-old consultant who
graduated from Harvard and went to McKinsey and makes a ton of money and, you
know, wears blue pinstripe suits and--that model may be fading, at least in
the part of the business that I'm in. They may be selling it somewhere in the
Midwest, but I don't see a lot of them around anymore.

BIANCULLI: Now that people at CBS are sort of aware of your other life, are
they comforted by your sense of humor or are they afraid of it?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Well, no, I think I've always been sort of, like, you know, the
combination of class clown and the fool and leer. I mean, you know, the job
for me has always been to kind of say stupid things and, you know, be funny
and, you know, not be too dangerous about it, but I've never really had to
muzzle myself that much. I came out as Stanley Bing in the middle '90s
because I had a book that was out called "Crazy Bosses" and I wanted to go on
talk shows and talk about the book. I mean, it had taken me four or five
years to write the book, and, you know, I thought it was pretty stupid to show
up on, like, "Good Morning America" with a blue dot in front of my face. So I
went and told my boss who has since said that he had two reactions. One was
to congratulate me and the other was to throttle me.

And since then, you know, I've felt that when Gil Schwartz says something
stupid and inadequate, it's possible that in people's minds they go, `He can't
be that stupid because he's also Stanley Bing, so he must be smarter than he
looks,' you know. So I think it's helped me in the long run.

BIANCULLI: But, I mean, here you are--I mean, really you are responsible for
the CBS corporate image. I mean, your job is at the top...

Mr. SCHWARTZ: I'm one of the people, one of the people responsible for that.

BIANCULLI: OK. But you're sort of responsible for all the other people who
are responsible for it, right?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Yeah.

BIANCULLI: OK. All right. So here you are. I mean, that is, as big sort of
a situation that you can get in that field, and yet you're also Stanley Bing
who has written endlessly about how much he hates meetings. And when he's in
meetings, he stretches out his feet and sort of pretends that he's still on a
lounge chair in the Bahamas or somewhere. And...

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Yeah, and has meeting narcolepsy. I have a big problem with
meeting narcolepsy.

BIANCULLI: Right. And has all these tricks to try to stay awake and pretend
to be interested when all he's doing is making fun of the other people in the
room. How do you as Gil maintain seriousness in a room when if I were in that
room with you I would be worried that you had all of the same opinions that
Stanley does.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: David, I don't know. No, it's true that it's two parts of my
personality. I mean, I believe that everybody sitting in a meeting that
extends more than hour is in horrible torment. I mean, I'm speaking for
everybody in the room there, and that includes the CEO of the company. If
he's sitting in the room and he's forced to listen to drivel for more than a
certain amount of time, he's sitting there, thinking, `Oh, man, I wish I were
at the beach. I wish I were having my hair cut. I mean, God, I have 87
things to do.' Nobody likes long meetings. And, you know, I don't think I
ever say anything about the organizations that anybody in his right mind would
disagree with. I mean, I get a lot of letters and I talk to a lot of people,
and nobody says to me, `What you mean meetings are boring? I don't
understand. Meetings are wonderful.'

Most people really feel that, you know, out of an eight-hour day, you know, at
least 20 percent of their day is wasted by nitwits bothering them about stuff
they have no desire to deal with. And, you know, not everybody agrees with me
about everything, but, for example, I'm annoyed by PalmPilots. I mean, I see
people instead of talking to you, like, you know, with their nose in a
PalmPilot poking at it with a little stick, you know? And I'm thinking, `This
is just some kind of a wacky fad. These people, you know, are trying to
create the illusion of controlling an uncontrollable universe.' And, you
know, I'm just annoyed and kind of intellectually and emotionally engaged by a
real lot of stuff that everybody, you, me, everybody goes through. And I think
that for the most people if I feel something deeply, if I feel, you know,
whether I'm enthusiastic about something or excited or annoyed that there's a
fair chance that if I describe it well that a lot of people are going to feel
the way I do.

And that's really where Bing is coming from. You know, when I'm sitting in
that meeting, if I'm falling asleep, I know I'm not the only one. And I look
around the table and I see...

BIANCULLI: At least you hope that.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: ...guys poking themselves with, you know, pens and stuff and,
you know, getting up to get a fourth muffin with great seriousness. And I
know they're trying to keep from falling asleep, you know? You know, I think
in a way Bing has always been a chance to try to be and to be the voice of my
peers, whether the peer is making more or less money, but people who work for
a living should recognize Stanley Bing's world.

BIANCULLI: Gil Schwartz, otherwise known as Stanley Bing, columnist for
Fortune magazine. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to our interview with Gil Schwartz, executive vice
president of communications for CBS. He writes a column for Fortune magazine
under the name Stanley Bing.

Well, as Stanley Bing you liken it to hardball when you do corporate stuff at
that level. So let me ask Gil Schwartz about some of the hardball games that
you've played in the last couple of years. The fortunes of CBS basically
turned around with "Survivor." And being the head of publicity for
"Survivor," somewhere along the line changed from getting out information
about the show to keeping a lid on information about the show and at times
even spreading or encouraging or not squelching disinformation about the show.
What was that like, especially in the weeks leading up to the big finale?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Well, you know, I should preface any comments about, you know,
the everyday world of the work is that I have, you know, unbelievably great
people that work at CBS that work with me. You know, I don't want people to
have this impression of me sitting and kind of like pulling strings all over
the place. I have a fantastic department of people. And they're very
involved in all of the decisions to the point where, you know, I have to ask
them what's going on a lot of the times. So, you know, that's sort of thing
one.

But, you know, the "Survivor" thing was and remains an enormous phenomenon. I
mean, it's like being part of Beatlemania. It's a great pleasure. And, you
know, I'm not going to say much more about it than that because there's a
little regulator inside me that is even more secretive about "Survivor" than
it is about my duel identity. I...

BIANCULLI: We can get past that. We can get...

Mr. SCHWARTZ: No. The thing is I spent several months saying nothing about
it at all. I mean, I knew...

BIANCULLI: `It.' You're using it as a pronoun.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Every word I'm been saying right now is going through a
synthesizer to make sure I'm not saying the wrong thing. We are really
clamped down tight about it. So I think we're very mindful of security as an
issue and...

BIANCULLI: But you knew the secret. You had to know the secret.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: I'm afraid I...

BIANCULLI: I mean, we're talking about the secret of "Survivor I," OK?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Yes, the secret of "Survivor I."

BIANCULLI: OK.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: It's the Hardy Boys book: "The Secret of Survivor I."

BIANCULLI: You knew that Richard had won long before those programs were
broadcast. How did you ever keep that secret?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: I can't even tell you that, except that we just were very
careful. We were very...

BIANCULLI: Was it hard for you personally?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: To this moment, where you just said to me that `you know who'
won, I have this psychotic constriction of, you know, my stomach where...

BIANCULLI: Good choice.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: ...I'm wondering whether, you know, we've just blown some
secret wide open. It's been so programmed into me not to say anything about
this subject that right now, you know, I'm sweating bullets here. Sorry,
I'm...

BIANCULLI: OK. I don't meet to make you uncomfortable.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Let me say it's the most pleasant problem that any of us have
ever had. It's total fun.

BIANCULLI: What we do know about "Survivor 2," which I'm free to talk about
and I think you are, too, is that CBS has chosen to launch it after the Super
Bowl.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Yes, we can say that.

BIANCULLI: OK. And that I think that the eventual broadcast of it on a
weekly basis past that at this point has been narrowed down to Thursday as one
of the possible days, Wednesday, where it was last year, as one of the
possible days. Is that fair, or does that make your stomach nervous?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Both.

BIANCULLI: OK. All right. I recognize that as close as I'm going to get.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: We had a call last week where Leslie basically indicated that
the possibility of the show being on some time in midweek was significant.
That was a significant possibility. He narrowed it down to a couple of days,
or three. And those were among those that he talked about.

BIANCULLI: Painful as this is, I do have one more "Survivor" question, and
this is: How did people, both reporters who wanted to get the answer and just
everyday friends or family that may have known or suspected or hoped that you
knew it, how did they try to get the name out of you?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Well, you know, the problem was never with reporters because
reporters after a while knew that we just weren't going to talk about it, and
after a while, you know, even the best reporter will just move on. It was
family members and friends who would say things like, `So you know, right?'
And I'd say, `Nah, I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I might. I don't
know.' And they go, `Well, so who was it? It was Rudy, right?' I'd go,
`Huh, maybe. Could have been Rudy. That's a pretty good guess.' `No,' my
daughter would say, `Is it Rudy?' And I'd say, `Well, I'm not going to tell
you,' you know? And they wouldn't stop, you know? It would be every day over
breakfast. `So what are you going to do at school today?' `Nothing much. So
it's Gervase, right?' You know, so it was pretty relentless.

And, you know, the problem for me as for anybody who has a secret is there's a
part of the human mind that's always--and for some reason wants to blurt, and
anybody's who's tried to keep a secret like a surprise party, for instance,
from their nearest and dearest knows that there's a part of you that wants to
just blurt it out. So that's why to this day I don't even say the names of
the survivors in "Survivor I" without, you know, kind of going through the
central computer system and finding out if I need to shut down.

BIANCULLI: So as we speak, where are we are in "Survivor II"? I mean, a lot
of them are off the island already. I'm not asking you whom, but, I mean, in
the process, aren't we about halfway through that?

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Of what?

BIANCULLI: Of "Survivor II." I don't know how far in advance the filming has
gone on that frankly.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Which?

BIANCULLI: The "Survivor II." Now there is a show called "Survivor II." You
can't deny the existence of it. It's premiering...

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Yes. After the Super Bowl.

BIANCULLI: So...

Mr. SCHWARTZ: And it's in the Australian Outback.

BIANCULLI: It's in the Australian Outback and it is taped ahead of time. And
it is...

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Well, no, at this point we just go off and kind of have a drink
somewhere.

BIANCULLI: OK.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: We're done.

BIANCULLI: OK.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: That's basically all that anyone knows: where it is, what its
name is and when it's premiering.

BIANCULLI: OK. So you're good at secrets.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: Yeah, I'm good at secrets. I mean, I kept the secret of my
pseudonym for 10 years and, you know, I basically let it out when it was to my
benefit to do so, although I was busted a couple times by some friends. I was
not careful enough in some columns and mentioned some things that got me
caught. But for a while, it was pretty entertaining. I mean, people in my
corporation used to circulate me my own column. They would send me my column
with a little note on it that says, `Think you'll find this amusing.'

BIANCULLI: That's funny.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: And I would send it back to them, going, `You're right. It's
hilarious,' you know?

BIANCULLI: Well, thanks so much, Gil. I know that part of this was sort of
tricky with the two different people and some of the tricky "Survivor" issues
and survival issues, but thanks a lot for talking with us.

Mr. SCHWARTZ: It's my pleasure. Really, it was a lot of fun.

BIANCULLI: Gil Schwartz. He's otherwise known as Stanley Bing, columnist for
Fortune magazine.

(Soundbite of "The Simpsons")

Mr. BURNS: Smithers, turn on the surveillance monitors.

SMITHERS: Yes, sir.

Mr. BURNS: It's worse than I thought.

(Singing) Each morning at 9 they trickle through the gate. They go home
early, they come in late. Reeking of cheep liquor, they stumble through the
day, never give a thought to honest work for honest pay. I know it shouldn't
vex me, I shouldn't take it hard. I should ignore their capering with a
kingly disregard. But...

Mr. BURNS and Backup Singers: Look at all those idiots.

Mr. BURNS: Oh, look at all those fools.

Mr. BURNS and Backup Singers: An office full of morons...

Mr. BURNS: ...a factory full of fools.

Mr. BURNS and Backup Singers: Is it any wonder...

Mr. BURNS: ...that I'm singing, singing the blues.

SMITHERS: Yours is a heavy burden, though, sir.

Mr. BURNS: I'm just getting started.

(Singing) They make personal phone calls on company time. They Xerox their
buttocks and guess who pays the dime. They're blatant fervory wounds me,
their ingratitude astounds. I long to lure them to my home and then release
the hounds. I shouldn't grow unsettled when faced with such abuse. I
shouldn't let it plague me. I shouldn't blow a fuse but...

Mr. BURNS and Backup Singers: ...look at all those idiots.

Mr. BURNS: Oh, look at all those boobs.

Mr. BURNS and Backup Singers: An office full of morons...

Mr. BURNS: ...a factory full of fools...

Mr. BURNS and Backup Singers: Is it any wonder...

Mr. BURNS: ...I'm singing, singing the blues.

BIANCULLI: That's Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons."

Coming up, a review of the first CD by Nelly Furtado. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Nelly Furtado's new CD "Whoa, Nelly!"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Nelly Furtado has just released her first CD called "Whoa, Nelly!" She's 21
and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, the daughter of Portuguese parents.
Rock critic Ken Tucker says her music shows a diversity of influences using
novel ways that make her a new artist to pay attention to.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. NELLY FURTADO: (Singing) Come here, baby girl. I seen a man cry. I
seen a man die inside. I seen him say to me, `She is only mine.'

KEN TUCKER reporting:

Nelly Furtado announces early on that she doesn't want to be your baby girl,
and when you title your album "Whoa, Nelly!," you better be wild and strong
enough to back it up. Furtado is. She displays an almost effortless command
of a wide variety of styles as when she moves her melody to a salsa beat on
"Legend."

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. FURTADO: (Singing) He wants to be, he wants to be with everything under
the sun. He wants to be, he wants to be with everything under the sun. And
like a legend who rises and then falls, I cannot be his only woman. He makes
me feel...

TUCKER: Elsewhere, Furtado applies herself to hip-hop with a cut called "On
The Radio." You might wonder what a Portuguese girl from up in British
Columbia makes of such rhythms. This is the answer.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. FURTADO: (Singing) Say your best is to bring it higher. Well, I never
see you change without a fire. But from your mouth I've seen a lot burning,
but underneath I think there's a lot of yearning. Your faced with jealousy,
from green to yellow, to the point where you can't even say hello. You tell
me you'd kill me if I ever snobbed you out if that's what you expect from me
like that's what I'm about. I remember the day when I was so eager to satisfy
you. And I want to just to prove I could walk beside you. And when the wind
blows away, I see you chose to stay behind me until you the heard my name and
decided to ...(unintelligible).

TUCKER: Furtado cites influences as diverse as Jeff Buckley, the English art
rockers Radiohead and Billy Joel, and sometimes she curls her voice up into
that of a winsome wise woman, the sort of musical paradox Laura Nyro and the
early Joni Mitchell used to pull off.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. FURTADO: (Singing) You're beautiful, that's for sure. You're never ever
fake. You're lovely but it's not for sure. I won't ever change. And so my
love is way, and though my love was true. I'm like a bird, I only to fly
away. I don't know where my soul is, I don't know where my home is. Now,
baby, all I need for you is come like a bird. I'll only fly away. I don't
know where my soul is, I don't know where my home is. I need you to know is
faith in me.

TUCKER: It's rare to hear a new artist who's as fully formed as Nelly Furtado
seems to be, at least musically speaking. What she has to say in her lyrics
is nothing much. Her flat, declarative statements evince no interest in word
play and contain little more than statements of vague decisiveness. On the
song that leads off the CD, "Hey, Man," she says over and over, `I don't want
ambivalence no more.' Well, who does? There's so many interesting grooves
and corkscrew melodies on "Whoa, Nelly!" that it's easy to hear past the fact
that Furtado isn't revealing very much about herself, that she's content to
proclaim her need for love and her insistence upon independence. Maybe for
now, that's enough. She's made a debut album that's both an announcement of a
big new talent and an implicit promise of even better things to come.

BIANCULLI: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. FURTADO: (Singing) ...but I, I got what you need, boy. Baby, I will only
come out in the rain. So I prefer to run this road, wrap around the edge.
It's good for something but too good to give it to you. You're running your
course at your own pace but I just got impatient, see, I wanted to explore.
But thank you for ...(unintelligible) turn right around. I believe that was
sweet of you ...(unintelligible) believer in those ...(unintelligible) kiss
just blowin' to the wind. And I, I got what you need boy. I will only cause
you pain. Yeah. I promise I got what you need, boy, but I will only come out
in the rain. Dixie, cut, Dixie, cut the music.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.