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CNN NEWSROOM

Academy Award Nominations Out; Teen Dies of Flu in Few Days; New Rules to Protect Borrowers. Gun Stocks Drop; Warrentless Blood Tests Divide Supreme Court.

Aired January 10, 2013 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL DAY LEWIS, ACTOR, "LINCOLN": The fate of human dignity in our hands. This moment, now, now, now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Daniel Day Lewis is the 16th president fighting to end slavery during the dark days of the civil war. That is, of course, the movie "Lincoln." Wow. It really topped the nominations for the 85th Annual Academy Awards that were announced not long ago. Daniel Day Lewis was one of five people nominated for best actor. Steven Spielberg nominated as best director for "Lincoln" as well, and all nine movies nominated in the best picture category, which makes it more fun, doesn't it. Maybe you saw one of the movies. It is no secret they expanded that group of movies in the running.

Best in the business at picking the winners is Tom O'Neil. He is here with me now.

The reason you are the best in the business at picking the winners, you do goldderby.com. I don't know if it is a science or just running the data, whatever it is, I want to talk about it after you talk about the film.

(LAUGHTER)

I had no idea you were bringing this in. It's the real thing.

TOM O'NEIL, GOLDDERBY.COM: It is the real thing. They rarely go up for sale. Only Oscars made before 1950 can be bought and sold. This is from 1946. It is "Anna and the King of Siam," best set decoration. It was a movie up for best picture and wind on to inspire "The King and I," the musical version.

BANFIELD: How many of these -- first, why would anyone want to sell the Oscar?

O'NEIL: In this case, it was the grandson. His grandfather had won several and he wanted to dispose of one of them. I was very lucky.

BANFIELD: I know why people want to win them. (LAUGHTER)

And today -- can I just tell you, Bill Murray -- I was very upset there was no mention of Bill Murray. I just saw "Hyde Park" --

(CROSSTALK)

O'NEIL: It is delightful.

BANFIELD: He is amazing. Am I out of it? Did I expect he was going to be nominated?

O'NEIL: No. A lot of jaw-dropping snubs today, a lot of A-listers like that. There was no Leo DeCaprio. There was no Nicole Kidman. We see a lot more obscure stars like Quvenzhane, who I think is the big star today.

BANFIELD: How adorable was she just on the air -- she was asked, was this a big deal for you. Was it ever?

O'NEIL: I asked her a few weeks ago, do you have your acceptance speech ready for the Oscars. She said, I'm still working on it.

BANFIELD: Did she really say that, nine years old?

(LAUGHTER)

BANFIELD: 9 years old. I love it. She is going to be a big hit.

Apart from the snubs, no real surprise that "Lincoln" scored as many nominations as it did.

O'NEIL: No, we expected 12. By the way, that's a lot. The record, historically, is 14 from --

(CROSSTALK)

BANFIELD: We expected 12. We got how many?

O'NEIL: And we got 12.

BANFIELD: We got 12. All right. You are --

(CROSSTALK)

BANFIELD: -- that accurate? Good lord.

O'NEIL: Here is where we blew it this year. We have 28 of the top experts in America from Yahoo! and "USA Today" and "Entertainment Weekly," all crystal balling this. We thought yesterday it was a race for best picture between "Lincoln," "Argo" and "Silver Lining's Playbook" but "Argo and "Silver Linings" did not get nominated for best director. You almost always have to have that key nomination. You have to also be nominated for screen play and best editing. This is where it gets down to science.

BANFIELD: It's very strategic.

O'NEIL: Very strategic. Only three movies pulled that off today, "Life of Pi, "Silver Lining's Playbook" and "Lincoln."

BANFIELD: Another big story people talk about, Ben Affleck. I think a lot of people expected he would be nominated for "Argo" as best director, but not.

O'NEIL: Yes, that was really surprising. I thought he was going to win this year --

BANFIELD: Really?

O'NEIL: -- because they love actors-turned-directors. It is all about "Lincoln." That's the big story today and every which way.

BANFIELD: And the director of "Les Mis."

O'NEIL: And Quinton Tarantino was snubbed, even thought it was up for best picture. The veterans were snubbed.

BANFIELD: I am curious about the art films that no one has ever heard about that become a huge hit because of their nominations. That doesn't necessarily translate into a big Oscars night in television for television viewers. It seems to me that the academy is working very hard to try to get viewership. Seth MacFarlane, are you kidding me?

(LAUGHTER)

This is going to be the best thing ever. "Family Guy" for three hours.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

O'NEIL: I love the Oscars this year. They are saying, we are not going to pander to the masses and try to get a big name. We are going to do this right. They have a lot of these little art house movies that are nominated now. The reason for that is, in the old days, the big blockbusters like "Jaws" and "Towering Inferno" and "Airport" would get nominated. Not anymore. Notice today on the list, there were no "Skyfall," "Dark Knight," and expanded the list to get those in, and the little art-house movies got in.

BANFIELD: That's what made me wonder, do they worry at all when they do the art-house movies for nominations that they are doing so at the expense of a potential larger viewership on the night of the Oscars. But of course, those movies are going to do very, very well.

O'NEIL: You have no control over it. You're dealing with crazy people in Hollywood that will do whatever they want. There is $80 million online. That's how much advertising is done on Oscar night.

BANFIELD: 80 million, not quite Super Bowl -- (LAUGHTER)

-- but that's a lot of money.

OK, prediction-wise, best picture?

O'NEIL: "Lincoln" all the way. It locked it in today. Best actor is done. It's Daniel Day Lewis. Best supporting actress is finished. It's Anne Hathaway. But we have real suspense for actress. I think Quvenzhane can take on Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence. And supporting actors --

(CROSSTALK)

BANFIELD: Stand by. Don't move an inch, Tom. Hold on a second because live on the line, on the telephone line, Bruce Cohen, producer of "Silver Lining's Playbook."

Congratulations. You must be so thrilled.

BRUCE COHEN, PRODUCER (voice-over): Thrilled. It's an ecstatic morning in "Silver Lining's Playbook" land.

BANFIELD: I can imagine. Did you get together to wait for this to happen or call each other, e-mail and say, wow?

COHEN: We all called each other. People were at different places. My fellow producers, Donna Giladi (ph) and Don Jordan (ph) and I got on with our twice-nominated writer, director, David O. Russell, and we started calling all of our nominees. That is just one of the great joys of being in this business is when you get to do things like that on mornings like this.

BANFIELD: Jennifer Lawrence, that must have been terrific. Have you had a chance to talk to her about it?

O'NEIL: Jennifer and I have been texting. She is a great texter. She is just beyond thrilled. Jennifer is 23 years old. She has got such a phenomenal body of work already. We have only just begun to see what she is capable of.

BANFIELD: Hey, Bruce, I've got Tom O'Neil, who is here with me, who is one of the best predictors ever.

(LAUGHTER)

COHEN: How did you do, Tom?

O'NEIL: Not so well. I underestimated the strength of "Silver Linings Playbook." I think you made Oscar history today. I have to go back and check. The nominations you have in every single acting category --

BANFIELD: Bradley Cooper, too.

O'NEIL: Bradley Cooper as well. That is something for the history books. I could be wrong. It is exceptional.

COHEN: We heard the stats, because we are pretty excited about it. It is the first time in 31 years one has had acting nominations in all four categories. "Reds" was the last one. It happened about 12 other times through history. It's movies like "Network" and "Street Car Named Desire" and "Sunset Boulevard." So we are in heady extraordinary company with those four nominations.

BANFIELD: Bruce Cohen, congratulations. I'm sure you are about to go on a whirlwind odyssey that you will not soon forget. Good luck my friend.

COHEN: Thank you very much.

BANFIELD: I can hear him smiling on the telephone.

(LAUGHTER)

O'NEIL: He has a lot to smile about. He has a little movie with a lot of heart, and they love that.

BANFIELD: I remember a movie like that, "Little Miss Sunshine."

Lot and behold, Tom, guess who is on the line with me now?

O'NEIL: who is that?

BANFIELD: One of the guys who won, Alan Arkin.

Alan Arkin, I remember you in "Little Miss Sunshine." You won and now you are up against for best supporting actor for "Argo." Are you over the moon as well?

Alan, can you hear me?

ALAN ARKIN, ACTOR (voice-over): I can barely hear anybody.

BANFIELD: So I'll just say this. Congratulations!

ARKIN: Thank you.

BANFIELD: So tell me how you feel. This must be terrific for you and the cast of "Argo"?

ARKIN: I don't know how much the cast is excited, but I certainly am.

BANFIELD: One thing people are definitely talking about today is Ben Affleck and that he didn't get the nod for best director but certainly the movie is right in focus for people. That must feel good for many of you.

ARKIN: Yes. I was a little bit disappointed that he didn't get a nod for best director but the movie did get seven nominations and he is certainly at the helm for all of that. He is recognized by so many other contests in the country. And he has got 40 years ahead of him as a way of recouping whatever bad feelings he has this morning. He has got many, many great projects ahead of him yet. He is a great director.

BANFIELD: Well, congratulations to you, and to everyone on the team of your phenomenal movie. I can say this as Canadian. I think a lot of Canadians are thrilled you made the movie, because it highlighted something great about Canadians. And I think a lot of Americans really enjoyed it, because it was a terrific story about Americans too.

Good luck, Alan.

ARKIN: I'm really sorry, I didn't hear anything of what you just said.

(LAUGHTER)

BANFIELD: It's OK.

Good luck, Alan.

Tom O'Neil is still with me.

Wrap it up for me really quickly. This is a big, big challenge. It's going to be hard to call someone other than Daniel Day Lewis and "Lincoln." It is going to be hard to call some of these winners.

O'NEIL: It is. Supporting actor -- we just talked to Alan Arkin. That race has five veterans in it. It is a toss-up. I don't know what to think. Lead actress is suspenseful. There's a lot to be excited about.

BANFIELD: It sounds like he is somewhere back over in the Middle East.

(LAUGHTER)

That phone line was either brutal or he is actually traveling on his next movie.

Nice to see you. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for bringing this friend.

O'NEIL: I'm going to take it away. You can't keep it.

BANFIELD: Oh, come on. I need it as a prop.

(LAUGHTER)

We are back right after this.

(LAUGHTER)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: We have been telling you about the deadly flu virus. 18 children have died so far. Our Elizabeth Cohen, our senior medical correspondent, is in Texas. She's been following this story. She spoke to the family of one teenager who went from being the vision of health, really, honestly, a smiling, healthy young man, to dying of the flu in just a couple of days.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Schwolert family was getting ready for a joyful Chrisman when, on the 21st, 17-year-old son, Max, started feeling sick, tired, fever.

TOM SCHWOLERT, FATHER OF MAX: He never got super sick.

COHEN: Two days later, he was feeling better, played in the snow, celebrated Christmas with his family. Christmas night, Max felt sick again.

MELANIE SCHWOLERT, MOTHER OF MAX: He had excessive, like 104.9 fever and we could not break it.

COHEN: The next morning, his parents took Max to the hospital where he was diagnosed with the flu.

TOM SCHWOLERT: Within 30 minutes, the doctor was like, something really wrong here. His kidneys are starting to fail.

COHEN: Max was rushed by helicopter to a larger hospital.

MELANIE SCHWOLERT: One of the last coherent things he said, he looked at me. There were some tears rolling down his face.

TOM SCHWOLERT: He was scared.

MELANIE SCHWOLERT: He was scared. He said, mom, I'm scared. I said, I know, buddy, I am too. Then, he saw me crying. He said, mom, it is going to be OK. You are going to be OK. I love you. And that's really the last really coherent things he said to me.

COHEN: Within 24 hours, he went from feeling OK to intensive care.

MELANIE SCHWOLERT: His organs were shutting down and they were completely baffled what was happening, what would attack him so quickly.

COHEN: His parents prayed for a miracle.

MELANIE SCHWOLERT: I remember putting my hands on his heart and I would feel his heart beat. I knew how big it was, you know.

COHEN: Four days later, Max died, a young man whose nickname was Panda, 6'4", big and gentle, played golf, goofed on his sisters, taught Sunday school.

After Max died, they drove home to Lewisville, Texas. Waiting in their mailbox, an acceptance letter to Max's first college choice. They want him to be remembered for how he loved God, life and the people around him. They have sold more than 1,000 "Love to the Max" T-shirts. The money will go to a charity in Max's memory and the memory of his huge, loving heart.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: Elizabeth is live with me from Flower Mound, Texas.

Elizabeth, for a lot of people watching this story, it is not only heartbreaking but really frightening. This boy could not have been a healthier young American. We all wonder, why couldn't his immune system have fought this off?

COHEN: It is a mystery why some kids get the flu and they are completely fine and others are not. What happened to Max was he got a bacterial infection. Remember, in the story I said he got better and then worse?

BANFIELD: Yes.

COHEN: That was the flu going away but then this bacterial infection set in. It is a really bad sign. No one knows why some kids are more vulnerable to that than others. A lot of doctors are doing research in this area.

BANFIELD: I go to wrap up, but I guess you and I have said it a few times, and it is get the flu shot anyway. Even right now, it is not too late. I know that some in his house had the flu shot. But it can help. It can help if we can say one thing.

Elizabeth Cohen, thank you. I appreciate that.

COHEN: Thanks.

BANFIELD: For more information on this, make sure you head of to the CDC.gov. There is a lot of information on how you can protect your family.

Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Buying a house you cannot afford just got tougher. Does that sound like a no-brainer? We haven't always been so tough on people buying houses beyond their budget, hence, the housing crash in '08 and the ensuing financial crisis. But now the feds are doing something about it. They are rolling out a whole new set of rules, one that clearly should have already been in place.

Christine Romans is here to lay it out for me.

All right, we didn't have it in place. That was stupid. We do now. What are they?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Right. It's not necessarily to keep people from getting mortgages. It's to prevent lenders from taking advantage of people who get mortgages they don't understand and they'll never be able to pay for.

So, January 21st, it starts, a year the lenders have to comply. They have to prove that before writing a mortgage, they have to prove the lender has a job, money, a decent credit history. They have to prove the borrower can afford all the costs associated with owning a house.

BANFIELD: No-brainer.

ROMANS: That they can pay for property taxes. And they cannot saddle the borrower with monthly debt payments. Overall the debt, it's your property taxes, your mortgage, all your other debt, more than 43 percent of their income.

BANFIELD: We say, shame on those people for buying houses out of their means. But many say the bank convinced me I could do it. They convinced me I could do it.

ROMANS: And no more teaser rates. No more deceptive teaser rates where you lure somebody into a mortgage and, say, 3 percent, 6 percent, and suddenly it goes up to double digits. They can't do that any more. No big up-front fees and points. They have to be clear to the lender -- the lender and borrower have to be clear what somebody can afford.

BANFIELD: I want to switch gears. The gun debate is huge. Joe Biden is meeting on Capitol Hill with a lot of people, meeting at the White House, the old executive office building. All of a sudden that has had an impact on the people who sell guns.

ROMANS: It absolutely has. Eric Holder, attorney general, also involved in these meeting. You're looking at the gun stocks on the street today, on Wall Street. They're down. They're all down because, look, investors are saying this is serious. We're talking about serious attention to gun violence. When you have people die from guns, there's a legal product that has a stock associated with that that makes that gun. A teacher's retirement group today said they'll be selling their gun shares. They say there could be financial pressure on this industry going forward. When you had Joe Biden use the words "executive order," that's when you saw investors start to jump out of the gun stocks.

BANFIELD: What's interesting is, after an incident like the one we saw in Connecticut, you see a spike in purchases. People panic because maybe they won't be able to purchase them much longer. But clearly after what was said and that small line executive order, that had an impact.

Christine Romans, thank you.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

BANFIELD: We'll talk soon.

Back after this. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: So police have to get a judge's OK in order to search your house. It's called a warrant, right? You might be surprised that, in many states, they don't need such a warrant to stick a needle in you and take your blood. I'm not kidding. This is, if they suspect you of driving drunk. In a lot of states, they do, by all means, need a warrant to stick a needle in your arm and take your blood. All of this could change summer after the Supreme Court rules in a case out of Missouri, a case that was argued this week.

Joining me to weigh in on this, both sides, noted defense attorney and former prosecutor, Randy Zellin.

I think people would be surprised, Randy, to know that in a lot of states you can get a need in your arm, right there, roadside.

RANDY ZELLIN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY & FORMER PROSECUTOR: Oh, it's an amazing thing. If you think about it, on one hand, if I said, look, do you think it's OK for a cop to come up, stick a needle in you, take your blood, you would be like absolutely not.

BANFIELD: No.

ZELLIN: However, if somebody said, is it OK to stick the needle in Randy's arm because he killed a family and we think he's drunk, you might be like, definitely, we need the evidence.

BANFIELD: I see.

ZELLIN: The challenge is about, my right, your right to be left alone against law enforcement's right to get the evidence they need to prosecute a case.

BANFIELD: And to have a bad guy leave me alone, right? That's really what it comes down to.

When I say roadside, it's not a roadside. Sometimes they haul you into the station, they give you the blood test there. For people who say you need a warrant, those take time, blood alcohol dissipates. But they have science, called extrapolation. And that takes your blood at the time. It's legal to take your blood. Then imagines backwards how drunk you would have been at the time we wanted to take your blood.

ZELLIN: It's actually reverse extrapolation where a prosecutor tries to go back in time and says, I don't care what your reading is now. Back then, an hour before, an hour and a half before, it was higher.

BANFIELD: It's good science when they do that?

ZELLIN: Look, I'm a defense lawyer. I argue that it's junk science.

BANFIELD: You hate it.

(LAUGHTER) ZELLIN: As a prosecutor, you argue it's perfectly valid science.

BANFIELD: Right. Can I read for you something that the chief justice said about this? It might give a window into where the justices are thinking. He says, "It's a pretty scary image of somebody restrained and a representative of the state approaching them with a needle."

And if you want the other side, Sonia Sotomayor, considered less conservative, "How can it be reasonable to forego the Fourth Amendment in a procedure as intrusive as a needle going into someone's body."

That tells me that this doesn't really stand a great chance of being upheld.

ZELLIN: I don't think it does. Remember something. Without a warrant, a search and seizure is per se unreasonable. That's what the Constitution says. We don't want to leave it up to law enforcement. A judge should decide whether or not this is sufficiently good reason to go kicking your door down, hauling out of a car, or sticking a needle in your arm.

BANFIELD: Unreasonable search and seizure.

Randy Zellin, great to see you. Thanks for coming in.

Lots of breaking news today. We're fresh out of time. Thanks for watching.

NEWSROOM INTERNATIONAL starts right after this break.

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