Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. 'Good Night, and Good Luck' was the way that journalist Edward R. Murrow would sign off on his broadcast. Take this example from March 9, 1954, when Murrow was telling viewers about the behavior of Senator Joseph McCarthy when he was pursuing people he was accusing of being communists.

Edward R. Murrow: The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. Whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it and rather successfully. Cassius was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. 'Good Night, and Good Luck'.

Alison Stewart: Good Night, and Good Luck is a Tony-nominated Broadway show that is a box office hit. Based on the movie of the same name, it follows a newsroom caught between the truth, the sponsors, and the future of television. Using real footage from Senator McCarthy's anti-communist rants, the actors play real news people who want to expose him and expose what happens when we let fear enter the room. George Clooney plays Murrow. His partner, producer Fred Friendly, is played by my next guest, Glenn Fleshler, who the New York Times called terrific.

Set on an extraordinary set, director David Cromer brings us into the newsroom as we watch it unfold. Good Night, and Good Luck is playing at the Winter Garden Theater. Glenn and David, welcome to WNYC.

Glenn Fleshler: Thank you.

David Cromer: Great to be here.

Alison Stewart: David, first of all, congratulations on two Tony-nominated shows.

David Cromer: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Dead Outlaw, Good Night, and Good Luck. One's a musical, one's a play.

David Cromer: The play's built like a musical, and the musical's built like a play.

Alison Stewart: Aside from the obvious that there's music involved, what's the difference between directing a musical and a play?

David Cromer: Oh, there really isn't one. I don't think. There isn't for me. Maybe that's the problem, but there isn't for me. It's just a process of we have to get the people in the seats. We need to be giving the right amount of aural and visual information from curtain time to closing. The processes are similar. There's a little more you can say, "Oh, music's going to rehearse now," or, "Choreo's going to rehearse, and you can leave the room." You can do that in a musical? Yes.

Alison Stewart: Glenn, you've been on film, TV, of course, theater as well. For the stage, what's the first thing you do when you launch into creating a character?

Glenn Fleshler: It's similar to those other media. You do the research, you do the homework. This one came with a whopping ton of it because these are all real people we're playing. When you do that, you want to honor that person. You want to really be thorough in learning who that person is. You're never going to completely recreate that person, but you look for your own way and to the person so that it's unique to you, but it's also honoring the life, and this was an incredible life that Fred Friendly lived. One of the-- although most-- Maybe he's not a household name, but one of the great journalistic careers of the 20th century. He had many different lives, so it was fascinating to dive into that.

Alison Stewart: Yes, he was a substantial person. Did you watch footage of him?

Glenn Fleshler: There was a good amount of footage, mostly later in his life after the events of our show. There's even early radio broadcasts from the beginnings of his career. Very little bits. Yes, there's all kinds of things. Plus, he wrote books, and there's books written about him. I also dove into some of the Murrow material to really understand that, and that was very useful.

Alison Stewart: David, of your two shows that are playing now, you have one that started as an off-Broadway upstart, Dead Outlaw, and the other one has worldwide talent at the helm. George Clooney-

David Cromer: Glenn Fleshler.

Alison Stewart: -and Glenn Fleshler.

Glenn Fleshler: Thank you. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: What were the pros and the cons of each?

David Cromer: Oh, boy, almost no cons. I'm not trying to be cute about it. They're both great pieces. They're great stories. They are useful to hear. Look, finally, we're wanting to give value to the heart and the mind when you go to the theater, and to articulate something beautiful and useful to people when we don't always have the words. I find inspiration in the "Good Night, Good Luck" story, in that he-- The clip you played at the beginning, where he said, "Whose fault is that? Not really his. He merely exploited it."

We have responsibilities, and we have to find out why things are happening so we can take some action if action is required. That was the pro of this. The pro of this was-- I'm going to sound like an idiot here, but I'll say it anyway. The mission of doing this play, and because of the notoriety of the film, because of the scale of George's notoriety, his fame, we were able to get a big megaphone for it.

Alison Stewart: We know the script is based on Murrow's taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusade. That's what propels the action. David, when you describe what the show is about, what do you say it's about?

David Cromer: Oh, I'm so bad at that part of it. I say different things on different days, and then sometimes I don't say anything. The thing that comes to my mind when say that is I think it is about managing fear. I think that I find myself as things become increasingly dangerous in our world, not that anyone cares what I think or say, but when I hear that someone gets stopped at the airport because they complained about the President on Facebook-- you know what I mean? It's not going to happen to me, but I think about when I go to the airport and I find that.

I can look at this play and think, "Oh, these people were--" We spent a good amount of time talking about you actually are scared. You're scared you're going to lose your house. You're scared you're going to lose your job. You're scared you're going to get even sued. Even for these people who have it pretty good, they have this great cushy job at CBS. They're working very hard. They're at the Tiffany Network. They work for Murrow. You think you're going to be protected.

There's a point where a CBS executive says, if they come after you, no one could protect you. Not CBS, not Murrow, nobody. I think it has to do with managing fear and how we get past that. We have to get past that occasionally, or I don't know what. Hide in the country.

Alison Stewart: What do you say Good Night, and Good Luck is about?

Glenn Fleshler: We have talked a lot about fear, but it manifests in these very subtle ways. It's about people who are very good at their job trying to do the right thing, trying to muddle through while they're also taking this big leap to speak truth to power at a time when that is very scary. One of the things when David first started talking to us about the fear that I remember talking to George's playwriting partner and producing partner, Grant Heslov, about the fact that we don't see the people who drank the Kool-Aid in our play. We think like, "Oh, yes, these are the good guys. They're fighting the good fight."

We don't see the rest of the country that is buying all of this, that McCarthy is having such sway that people are just practically being disappeared. Your career could end in a heartbeat. Particularly, people in the media and people in show business, we know what happened in Hollywood during that era. That's just one of those things that you just have to keep alive for yourself all the time. That even though sometimes we're being brave or sometimes we're getting stressed out, what's going on outside of this little bubble of the CBS studio we're in is terrifying, and it's very real. That's our job. I didn't answer your question about what it's about, but I think it is about speaking truth to power in dangerous times.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to director David Cromer and actor Glenn Fleshler. We're talking about Good Night, and Good Luck at the Winter Garden Theater. We have a clip of Fred Friendly from the WNYC archives. He, before he was president-- after he was president of CBS News, I should say. Let's hear how radio host Lloyd Moss introduces his guest.

Lloyd Moss: Fred W. Friendly has always been smack in the thick of things, a name known and respected in the world at large, but especially via broadcasting and journalism. He was a partner of the late Edward R. Murrow, the two of them reaping prize after prize for their distinguished work. Professor Friendly, I suppose your name is inextricably interwoven with that of Murrow's, isn't it?

Fred Friendly: I like to think that we were a great partnership. I was the junior partner. I'll live in the afterglow of his spirit for the rest of my life.

Alison Stewart: Glenn, what does Fred Friendly, what is the role between him and Murrow at this moment in this play?

Glenn Fleshler: They're opposite sides of a coin, even at this point. By this point, they got together collaborating on some record albums called I Can Hear It Now, recreating some great moments in history.

Alison Stewart: That's what that show is all about. They're making those records.

Glenn Fleshler: Yes, they make those records, and then they end up transforming that into a radio show. Then the radio show becomes, See It Now, a television show. They're on the cutting edge of the technology of the changing of the times. What they're doing, and I tried to bring that up a lot when we were sitting around the table preparing, to remember that this is all brand new, this medium is brand new. They were the first ones to do documentary on television. By the end of the events of our play, every network would have a documentary series. The way we come to know them today, everyone does news magazine shows, but it did not exist before this. That's an interesting thing to remember.

As far as Murrow and Friendly, they completely depended on each other and built a pretty extreme trust. I don't think the personal relationship spilled over into their personal lives. I think there were a lot of Murrow's boys from World War II, these other journalists that he maintained a closer relationship with. I think there's an interesting tension there between the professional and the personal, but they completely depended on each other. They trusted each other, and they were tested over and over again.

David Cromer: The physical production and the text tie them together constantly. I mean, this was clearly George and Grant's position. I mean, it's the historical record, it's George and Grant's position about it that he is almost never doing anything in the show without you. You are by his side every moment. You get him onto the air, you take him off the air. You know what I mean?

Glenn Fleshler: Every time George says, as Murrow, says sometimes in the broadcast, he says, "Friendly and I have made this decision," or, "Friendly and I wanted to say this," and I think, is that a blessing or a curse? Is he tying me to him, and that could be like an anchor around my neck, or is he elevating my status? I think it's both things. I think they're always, as you read the history of it and you hear different people's opinion on it, who was propping up whom changed over the course of time. The nice thing is that my feelings for George filter into our relationship on stage because I have such great admiration for him and depend on him. That's how Friendly felt about Murrow.

Murrow was the big star. He was the face of this whole thing. Friendly completely knew it, depended on it, thrived on it. It made his career. Then an interesting thing happens where Murrow starts to become persona non grata, his career. As we start to see the beginnings of that at the end of our show, the cost that this takes on everyone's career. Then things switch around a little in their relationship as it goes forward.

Alison Stewart: You have the relationship between these two men, but you also have this incredible set, David. The set is by Scott Pask. It's beautiful. It's got the tenor of a newsroom, all that's going on. You have this relationship between these two. You also have the newsroom for people to experience. Tell us about how to balance those two. What's happening in the play, and then what's happening in the newsroom.

David Cromer: The big picture and little picture. There's actually a term that Murrow and Friendly used that the reporters would say at various times, "You're looking for the little picture." We need the little picture. We're going to look at Milo Radulovich. Milo Radulovich is a little picture of one person who these things happen to. It's one of the early broadcasts where he starts to poke the bear, he starts to poke McCarthy. People can look up Milo Radulovich.

That's the little picture. It's going to lead us to the big picture. We had a lot of that very obvious big picture, little picture. A television screen is an intimate thing. Just Murrow's face in the camera is an intimate thing. We also have this giant theater with 1,600 seats, and we have this enormous aperture of a stage. We were literally dealing with the concept of big picture and little picture. That had to be manifested both in the writing, in the story of these people, and in the physical production. That was nice because those things all rhymed and spoke to each other.

It was a matter of not-- People say, "Oh, how are you going to fill that theater?" I'm like, "That's actually the great part." The first piece of research is their studio was this enormous cavern above the Grand Central Terminal, which was, looks to be in the photographs I've seen, comparable in scale to at least our stage, if not the whole space. Then it just became a system of big picture, medium picture, little picture. The whole story is that, which is that we have, they've written these enormous scenes of things going on everywhere, and then we've got to be pulling down.

Then the job is just figuring out where George and Grant, where their script is asking us to look at various times. We go from-- The show works-- This was self-congratulatory beyond reason. I was shocked to find out that the physical production works very well from extreme seats.

Alison Stewart: Why do you say that?

David Cromer: Works very well from the back of the house in a way that you hope you're doing when you're charging a lot of money for a Broadway ticket.

Alison Stewart: Because there's TVs everywhere.

David Cromer: There are TVs everywhere, yes, but then also there's times when you get to the big picture is worth it because you get a lot of information from the big picture, and you can choose to look a lot of different places. Ideally, design and conceiving of a production is as closely linked to the themes of the thing as possible or to some guiding principle, which is that we're going to take all of these people and all of their energy is going to-- When you were asking about the newsroom, there's 25 people on stage, and there are scenes where almost all of them are completely physically focused, are completing tasks that get smaller and smaller and smaller.

Then it comes down to Glenn and George and Joe Forbrich, who plays the cameraman, and the three of them hunkered down, and Will Dagger, who plays Don Hewitt. It goes on the air, and then the last thing that happens is Edward R. Murrow's face goes into the camera and out into people's homes. That was the idea of the newsroom, the idea of the physical production, the idea that we're going to see how the sausage was made. We were going to look at all the people behind. Obviously, we were saying what the partnership between Murrow and Friendly is. Yes, he always said "Fred Friendly and myself." That was the idea. How to make the newsroom into the theater, how to make the rehearsal into the broadcast.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Good Night, and Good Luck with director David Cromer and actor Glenn Fleshler, he plays Fred Friendly. You're playing the role that George Clooney played in the movie.

Glenn Fleshler: Oh, is that right?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Glenn Fleshler: Yes. Did that ever--

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: You play the role differently, I think.

Glenn Fleshler: I think, yes. Didn't have to work hard to be different from George. It's not like we play all the same parts.

Alison Stewart: What conversations did you have with George? What did you have with David about your version of Fred Friendly?

Glenn Fleshler: Interestingly, George-- I always wondered why George did not play Murrow in the movie. He had done some reading with Grant and some people of it, and felt when he was 40 or so that he didn't have the gravitas yet or the sadness Murrow had reported during the bombings in London and been through World War II and--

David Cromer: The camps. He opened the concentration camps.

Glenn Fleshler: George played the other part. For me, the weird thing is I-- You go through this thing when you play a real person, and I am somewhat of a mimic, so sometimes I like to work with my voice and alter it or do accents. The thing was, when I-- You could hear Fred a little bit ago talk like this later in his life, and I said, "He's close enough. He's close enough to me that I don't have to make some transformation. I think it's just going to be me as Fred."

I think the difference between George and I, we're just very different people. Although we get along very well, takes care of that. I also did not watch the film. I saw it when it came out, and I remember loving it, but I haven't seen it. That's what? 21 years ago or so. I did not want to have that as a reference. I just wanted to delve into the history.

David Cromer: There's such a beautiful bridge between you and Fred. I just wanted to say, listening to his voice again, listening. That you do sound like you. You sound like you as Fred. You also sound like Fred. It's not that they're already similar. It's that great thing where an actor of enormous personality like Glenn has is then playing a famous person. There's just a real sweet spot in there, like Hopkins is Nixon or somebody like that.

Alison Stewart: There's a certain gallows of humor that takes place in a newsroom that Fred Friendly has.

Glenn Fleshler: Absolutely. Yes, George loves that kind of humor, and I think that's very human, that when times get worse, particularly very-- These are very intelligent people, all the people who are depicted on our stage, for the most part, very, very bright people. The idea that that humor would emerge in these times of incredible pressure and even beyond the McCarthy of it all. Just doing live television, we were talking months ago, they did a thing on the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary about how everyone who's ever been on the show has anxiety, and it was like a musical number they did.

We were talking about, what does it take to do this live? Because we don't have that very much in our television landscape anymore. It is intense pressure. Of course, it's not dissimilar to doing a play live, but you're going out to millions of people.

Alison Stewart: This is live radio, by the way.

Glenn Fleshler: Exactly. Exactly. You know-

David Cromer: What's this now?

Glenn Fleshler: -of where I--

David Cromer: This is what now?

Alison Stewart: This is what now?

Glenn Fleshler: We're not going to edit this? Anyway, that's just also been a good thing for us to keep in mind. It is fun to play the-- David has intentionally left us with these silent moments before the broadcasts begin, where they're counting down and we're just all getting ready and Murrow's there with his thoughts, and I'm getting my equipment together or whatever, and it's fun to try to approximate that.

Also, I remember reading Fred talking about the day Murrow did the first McCarthy broadcast and how he would always time the episodes, and how his stopwatch was shaking that day. That's something I worked in, and it made-- I don't know, it was an interesting portal into what that life is. Suddenly, I'm like, "Oh, this stopwatch is going to be an important prop for me." I wouldn't maybe have come up with that ahead of time, but once I read that that was his main memory of that night, was that he noticed his hand shaking while he was starting the stopwatch.

Alison Stewart: Good Night, and Good Luck is at the Winter Garden Theater. My guests have been director David Cromer and Glenn Fleshler. He's playing Fred Friendly. Thanks for coming by the studio.

Glenn Fleshler: Great pleasure. Thank you.

David Cromer: Thank you for having us.