Cooper's Vacation Problem
The snow shower has turned into a blizzard. Cooper has consumed most of a filet mignon and two glasses of cranberry juice with soda.
Do you have favorite places that you dream about going back to?
Yes, absolutely. But I'm not sure I want to tell anybody.
Fess up.
I don't want people going.
Fess up.
Seeing the gorillas in Rwanda is something I really like.
That would be g-o-r—
Yes, g-o-r-i-l-l-a. I've done that six, seven, eight times now, going back to 1985. To be allowed to sit with them for an hour and have them brush by you or charge you or completely ignore you because they think you are so ridiculous. There's something about the intimacy that I find extraordinary... I also went along the coast of Croatia, which was just incredible.
This was when you got called back for Katrina.
Yeah, I didn't get to see as much as I wanted to. But I saw that Paris Hilton went last year, so I started to feel like maybe Croatia is done. And Brazil—I like Salvador a lot. Bahia is one of the remarkable places of the world. But I don't do well at resorts. I get bored very, very quickly.
Do you go on vacation?
No. Not really. It's a problem. My deal with 60 Minutes is I can only work for them on vacations and weekends. So if I take vacation time, I'd rather go somewhere for 60 Minutes.
That's your idea of a vacation?
Congo was my vacation. Being able to tell a story I couldn't otherwise tell—it just feels... worthwhile. It feels like the right thing to do. So I need to do it while I can. At some point they're going to decide I'm not that interesting. That's inevitable.
At some point you get to go on vacation.
Yes, and I will be very depressed about it.
Do Americans have an exaggerated sense of danger about the Third World?
Oh, yeah. But Americans have an exaggerated sense of danger about New York City. I'm also not a good person to ask, because my sense of what's dangerous is completely warped. People have stopped asking me for advice, because I encourage people to go anywhere. It really pissed me off, two summers ago, during the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, when Depeche Mode canceled their concert in Tel Aviv. For security reasons! I don't understand why more artists don't go and entertain the troops. I mean, hasn't Jessica Simpson been over there? I saw this documentary on Marlene Dietrich, and during World War II she was going out, right to the front lines. I think she was having sex with a lot of the troops, too. I'm not saying artists should do that. But she took supporting the troops to a level that few have since.
Take that, Hitler.
Exactly.
You're like Seamus Murphy, a war photographer I work with a lot. He was choosing a vacation spot to take his girlfriend, and he said to me, seriously, "Kabul."
I get that. There's a couple of nice little hotels there. I don't think going to places where there are kidnapping threats is wise. Kidnapping freaks me out. Bullets and mortars are horrific, obviously, but there's a randomness you can account for. Kidnapping? Being kept in a hole for seven years, chained to a radiator like Terry Anderson was? I can't imagine.
I had some bad times in Colombia, which is well known for its kidnapping.
That's my next vacation spot.
You're kidding.
No, I'm not. I heard it's OK now. So that's on my list of places I really want to go.