[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now the life of Bill Bradley according to Bill Bradley, the former Knicks and Princeton basketball star, US Senator from New Jersey, and one-time presidential hopeful, joins us to talk about the film he just made about his life called Rolling Along, now playing on Max. We'll set this up before bringing him on with one clip from early in the film, then play a few more later as we talk. This is Bradley recalling falling in love with basketball as a kid, in part because of the feel of the game.

Bill Bradley: Then there were the sounds, thud, thud. The ball hit the gym floor, thud, thud, squeak, the squeak of your sneakers against the floor, followed by the jump and the shot, swish, sounds sweeter than the roar of the crowd, the ball going through the net. Swish, swish, swish.

Brian Lehrer: With that, made for radio excerpt glorifying sound, we will talk with Bill Bradley, now 80 years old. We'll talk about basketball but more about what he learned about America as a kid originally from a small town in Missouri who broadened and broadened his perspective. Senator, I enjoyed the film, and I fondly remember our talks when you were in office as one of the deep thinkers in national political life. Welcome back to WNYC.

Bill Bradley: Well, Brian, it's great to be back with a great interviewer.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. I never thought about your background in those days, to be honest, just about your representation of New Jersey and your views on the issues. Tell us a little bit about Crystal City, Missouri, and how you got interested in the wider world.

Bill Bradley: Well, I grew up in a small town, 3,000 people-- 3,492, in Crystal City, Missouri. I had a father who was a small-town banker and a mother who was a college graduate teacher who poured all of her attention into her only child. It was actually a kind of idyllic place to grow up. It was small, and a lot of attention could be given to you by teachers and by townspeople. At the same time, I dreamed of a wider world.

I think one of the key moments-- there were two key moments. One was [chuckles] when my father and mother decided that I should go to a prep school in Pennsylvania. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay in Missouri and play basketball, but I said, "Okay, I'll take a look, but I got to go to American Bandstand in Philadelphia." That was the payoff. Yes, I went to--

Brian Lehrer: You mean to be in the audience for that music show?

Bill Bradley: No, no, to dance on the show.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, wow.

Bill Bradley: I went to American Bandstand, and I had my heart throbbed by Pat Molittieri itting on the bleachers. I walked over to her, and I said, "Would you like to dance?" She said in her Philadelphia accent, "No, you're too tall."

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Bill Bradley: The wider world was then presented to me by my father, who I signed an athletic scholarship to go to Duke. My mother was pleased with that. My father was quiet and he never graduated from high school, but he said, "I want to give you a trip to Europe." I went on a trip to Europe with 13 women and me, and they couldn't figure out why I was going to Duke when I could've gone to Princeton or Yale, came back, broke my foot, contemplated the world without basketball, and then decided, well, I want go to Princeton. If I couldn't play basketball, that's where I'd want to go. I went to Princeton. It was that trip that broadened my horizon to the point that I actually ended up at Princeton.

Brian Lehrer: That girl who wouldn't dance with you because you were too tall, the clip I played, if you're thinking about the sounds of basketball as attractive to you, you were 6'7", same as Aaron Judge of the Yankees, who people think of today as a giant. Was it inevitable that you'd get into basketball at that height?

Bill Bradley: Well, I was 6"5, not 6"7.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, sorry.

Bill Bradley: Pretty tall for asking girls to dance. [chuckles]. Early on I played baseball, but I did-- I was tall, and so basketball became something I would do. My parents built a hoop in the backyard or they had a slab of blacktop, and I practiced there. The key moment came for me when I was 14, when I went to a basketball camp given by a professional named "Easy Ed" Macauley, who used to play with the St. Louis Hawks.

He told the assembled campers one day, "Remember, if you're not practicing, somebody somewhere is practicing and given a roughly equal ability, that person's going to win." That was the origin of my workaholism. I never wanted to lose because I didn't do the work, whether it was basketball or whether it was politics, or whether it was business, or whether it was memorizing a show. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I'm going to ask you about memorizing a show later because it's so-- Well, I'll ask you about it now. It's so different from anything you've ever done in sports or in politics. I couldn't tell how many edits there were in the film, but I'm thinking of standup comedians who do these comedy specials, and they have to memorize an hour and a half of material and get the timing just right for every laugh and every point of the story to have it land, and you did that. What was it like?

Bill Bradley: It was great. I had the time of my life doing it. I walked around Central Park memorizing it. Then once I had it memorized, I did it every day in the rec room of the apartment building I lived in in New York. It got around and sometimes 2 people showed up, sometimes 7, sometimes 0, sometimes 10. I'd do it every day at 3:30. I grooved it. As they say, I grooved my shot. Well, I grooved the script, which was then about an hour and 50 minutes. Then we were going to do it.

The way this started was, I was going to do-- I gave my papers to Princeton and did oral history, and I invited all 70 people who participated in oral history. 40 showed up. I stood up and told stories about each one of the 40. One of them, Manny Azenberg, a Broadway producer of 72 shows, came up afterwards, and he said, "It sounds a little bit like Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain. You ought to work something up." He was the first angel. He suggested the idea. It appealed to me. I took a year to write--

Brian Lehrer: That's a high compliment, by the way.

Bill Bradley: Yes. I totally know that. That's why I was taken aback. I had no frame of reference. I love telling stories always, but that was quite a compliment. I took a year to write it, and I workshopped it in 20 cities all across the country. I'd read it and then ask the audience of 10 or 50 or 80, what do you think? They'd give me their thoughts and I'd write their suggestions and make changes. Then COVID hit. It was actually not a bad thing because it forced me to go deeper into the material.

At the end of COVID, I knew that we were not going to go into theaters and do it in theaters. I rented a theater on 42nd Street, the Jewel Box Theater at Signature Theater, and we did it four nights, five cameras, and the idea was to make it into a film.

Brian Lehrer: You did. Listeners, if you're just joining us, Bill Bradley, if you recognize the voice, former US Senator from New Jersey, former Knicks and Princeton basketball star, one time presidential hopeful, we'll look back on that race as well, joining us about the film he just made about his life called Rolling Along, now playing on Max. Half our lines are already filled with people who want to ask you questions. Let me give the number to everybody else. Anything you always wanted to ask Bill Bradley but never had him over for dinner, 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. I'm going to jump way ahead--

Bill Bradley: Brian, the other thing is that angels appeared along the way as I was doing this. The first angel was obviously Manny who suggested it, but one of the stops in those 20 cities was the commissary on the Warner Brothers lot. After I read it and took comments, the guy came up and said, "I think this could be a film." His name was Mike Tolan, who did The Last Dance, this great documentary of Michael Jordan. Then I ran into my buddy, Spike Lee, at Wal Frazier's restaurant one night and told him I'd done this. He said, "Come do it for me." I went over to Brooklyn to his office and he said, "What do you need?" I said, "How about a glass of water and a stool."

I did it for him for an hour and 50 minutes. When I finished, he had tears in his eyes, and that's the first time I thought, "Maybe I have something." Then when I was doing those rehearsals every day at 3:30 in the rec room of the apartment building here in New York, one day two people came in, one of whom was Frank Oz, who'd heard about it. Frank Oz, being the director of Jim Henson movies and the Muppets and [inaudible 00:10:25]. He said, "Gee, I want to help you." He was another angel that came along and offered editing advice and other things. Then the last angel was two weeks before the Tribeca Film Festival. I began the show with a song by Van Morrison called, And the Healing Has Begun.

Then two weeks before Tribeca, Van Morrison, his agent called and said, "We don't give you permission to use it." I was stuck, what am I going to do? I called my buddy Steve Van Zandt of B Street Band, who I'd sent a version of the show six months earlier, and I said, "I need a song." He said, "Bruce did a song in the early '80s for Clarence and me called Summer at Signal Hill. Try that one. It worked." I said, "Now I have your permission to use it?" He said, "Oh, we sold our catalog to Sony two years ago." Sony was cooperative, and I managed to get it two days before Tribeca. All of these were angels along the way that helped me do this.

Brian Lehrer: I see that Spike Lee is listed in the credits as the executive producer. What role did he play?

Bill Bradley: Spike and Frank are executive producers. Frank Oz and Spike Lee are the executive producers. Mike Tolan is the director. Spike offered ideas, suggestions. He sometimes reacted to parts of the play. I remember at one point I did a first big read-through at a rehearsal studio on 37th Street and 8th Avenue. I asked Spike to come. At that point, I had a lot of music in the show. My favorite songs, Everyday People, all of my life. At the end, he said, "Lose the music." [laughs] "I don't need the music"

Brian Lehrer: All you kept, if I am recalling it, and I saw the whole thing, was one little moment where you broke into song to exemplify something, and it was pretty bad. Then you come out and you say, "Don't worry, this isn't a musical."

Bill Bradley: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: I want to ask you one more question and play one more clip before we take some phone calls. The heart of the film for me was how you, as a white kid from a tiny Midwest town, came to experience racism in America working in the integrated environment of professional basketball in the 1960s and '70s. Here's a clip from the film when you talk about traveling with your Black teammates when the Knicks were on the road.

Bill Bradley: I came to understand the distrust and suspicion that my Black teammates had for white Americans. I came to recognize certain looks that said, "Did you see what that honky just did?" Or, certain code words? "Did he say Roy or boy?" I sensed the tension in them of always being on guard, never totally relaxing. Through them, I saw how far we have to go and still do before our racial reality will match our ideals. I saw the privilege I had in the system that made it easier for me simply because of the color of my skin. Above all, what I came to understand was how much I will never know about what it is to be Black in America.

Brian Lehrer: Would you just pick up from there, Bill, and talk about the experience of being in that, I think it's fair to call it an integrated environment, an NBA basketball team, and what you learned as a result?

Bill Bradley: I learned that a common humanity is something that should be cherished. I learned a lot more from my Black teammates than they learned from me. It makes me feel like today, for example, the country is so divided. I think of those days in our team, and you won because no one player was as good as all five could be playing together. You sacrificed unselfishness. The game of basketball is about maximum movement of player and a ball and unselfishness should be rewarded, and with our team, it was.

I remember about all those things in the context of where we are in the country today and how divided we are. I think we could learn a lot from what made our Knicks team successful so many years ago, which is take responsibility for yourself, respect your fellow human being, disagree with them honestly, and civilly, enjoy their humanity, and then as my old grandmother used to say, never look down on people you don't understand.

Brian Lehrer: You recall in the film, the time in the Senate after the Rodney King beating that you banged on a podium 56 times in 81 seconds to replicate the beating on the Senate floor. Was that after the four white officers were acquitted by an all-white jury?

Bill Bradley: Yes, it was after they were acquitted. It had an impact, and it was spontaneous. I didn't plan. I didn't say, "I'm taking this pin and going over the Senate floor and hitting the podium." I was in the emotion of how I felt about what I'd just seen on the videotape of Rodney King being beaten. It was before they were convicted. I saw that and I just said I have to do something. I went over and just spoke. Partway through, I picked up that pin and hit the podium 56 times in 81 seconds so people could have an idea of what it was to be hit by batons 56 times in 81 seconds, an unarmed person.

Brian Lehrer: The film, I think, effectively intersperses some snippets of the Rodney King video with the snippets of you on the Senate floor. Anastasia in West Orange, you're on WNYC with former Senator Bill Bradley. Hi, Anastasia.

Anastasia: Hi, there. Thank you so much for taking my call. I don't have a question for the senator, but I did want to share that after my freshman year in college, I had a summer internship working on his reelection campaign, 1984. It was campaign headquarters in Union. It was such a great experience. It was a really young and energetic office, and it was really my first foray into thinking about politics. I was going to be ahead of my first election where I'd be voting. As I told your screener, it was just such a rewarding experience. I even got to meet the senator one time.

Bill Bradley: You made my day, Anastasia. You really did. This is what you hope. You hope that interns come in and they have an experience that shifts their view of what's possible in life and lets them understand that politics can do wonderful things. I'm glad you had that experience.

Brian Lehrer: Marcus in Bay Ridge, you're on WNYC with Bill Bradley. Hi, Marcus.

Marcus: Hi. Thanks very much. Two quick things. Senator, I heard that when you were with the Knicks, your nickname was Dollar Bill because you were rather frugal, I guess, in comparison to Walt Frazier who was spending a lot of money on clothing. Also one of my regrets, Brian did a segment on regret yesterday, is I regret that I didn't do more to support you in the 2000 when you challenged Al Gore.

Even though I respect Al Gore so much, I think you would've been a stronger candidate because you were a professional athlete. I think there would've been so many male swing voters that would've been thought, "Wow, it'd be really cool to have a former NBA guy as a president." That's a real regret of mine. Thank you.

Bill Bradley: You never know. It didn't happen and life went on. I appreciate your sentiment and your support.

Brian Lehrer: Marcus, thank you. Another thing that struck me from the film was when you were describing how after that presidential run in which you did not get the Democratic nomination, Al Gore did, you really felt at a loss and you felt like politics was over for you. I guess politics was over for you because we haven't heard you in that context since. How come because there are many ways to contribute politically, contribute to improving the world in an issue-oriented way other than being in elected office?

Bill Bradley: I left politics, but I didn't leave concern about the country. I've been involved with a lot of things relating to education for kids and environment and whoke series of other things. My primary job was not politics anymore. I had to think about what I wanted to do. I realized that I wanted to claim the idea that I was no longer the senator or a presidential candidate, I was just a human being, and celebrate that. That meant I had to find fulfillment in something other than presidential aspiration. That meant on a personal level, I had to come to understand the emotional level as well as the rational level, the feeling as well as thinking.

I discovered a rich inner life that I would never have discovered had that trauma not occurred to me. The first year with the Knicks, when people were booing me and spitting on me and throwing coins at me was one thing, and it was distantly similar, but it was a more profound thing because it was a rejection of what you had tried to be for 30 years. Then to be able to go and go to a deeper level within yourself and find a level of fulfillment that was, or is meaningful, was a gift. The defeat was in many ways painful. It also was the beginning of something new.

I work at Allen & Company. I love young companies. I'm working with a company now that might have a cure to diabetes. Life goes on. I have my radio show on SiriusXM Radio where I interview people about their lives called American Voices. Life goes on. I think running for president is an experience unparalleled. People you can feel, but people are asking themselves as you're standing in front on a town meeting, "Now, do I trust this guy in my job? Do I trust this guy in my life? Does he have a view of life that's similar to my own?" That's a tremendous responsibility and also a great gift. I had a chance to experience it.

Brian Lehrer: One more clip from the film in which you compare the thrill of being on a world championship basketball team three times, to being elected senator three times.

Bill Bradley: People always asked me, "What was the bigger thrill, winning two NBA championships or being elected to Senate three times?" I said, "Well, being elected to the Senate three times, all I did was, it's the greatest honor, but all it did was give me an opportunity to work 14 hours a day for 6 years to prove that the people weren't wrong in electing me." Standing at center court with your fist raised in the air, chills going up and down your spine, a smile frozen on your face, knowing you are the best in the world, now, that's a thrill.

[laughter]

Bill Bradley: It lasted about 48 hours.

[laughter]

Bill Bradley: Then you had to go back to practice and try to do it all again the following year.

Brian Lehrer: I felt like that lasted 48 hours. This will be my last question because we're out of time, that it wasn't just then you had to go back to practice, somehow it was more fleeting than the satisfaction you'd get introducing a successful Bill, something that changed the world.

Bill Bradley: Yes, I think introducing a Bill that changes the world was a tremendous accomplishment. It was an honor to have the people of New Jersey give me that opportunity. If we're talking about just thrill as thrill, those 48 hours were unparalleled. Because with politics, politics is a continuum. It goes on. They're all going to be health issues, tax issues, crime issues, foreign policy issues, but a season is a season.

When you're at the top and you win the championship, it is over. You had that experience of finally a release at a release at the top. With the politics, I passed the Tax Reform Bill in 1986 back in the Paleolithic era. It reformed the whole income tax system. Within two years, there were interests trying to eat away at it. It was never permanent. The record is a record, you were the champion in '70 and '73, and you had that experience.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I have to throw in one more question then that a listener piped up with, and that is, what do the improving Knicks need right now to win the championship this year?

Bill Bradley: They need to make February and March as good as January. 13 and 2 was pretty good in January. I think they've begun to realize unselfishness is the ticket to success. I like Jalen Brunson as the point guard. I think they have a good mesh of talents. We'll see. Season's a long time. It has a lot of different ups and downs and coming out of this all-star break, they have to be able to regain where they were before. They have a few injuries, but they're not significant. I'm hopeful once a Knicks fan, always a Knicks fan. Once a Knicks player, always a Knick fan.

Brian Lehrer: Bill Bradley, the film that he wrote and presented about his life is called Rolling Along, now playing on Max. Great to talk to you again. Thank you for coming on.

Bill Bradley: Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate the chance to come by and once again, have a conversation with you.

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