Art of Doc Ken Burns

8/3/2019 Art of Doc Ken Burns

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In 1976, aer graduating rom Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts,

Burns ounded Florentine Films in his New York apartment with Buddy Squires,

Roger Sherman, and Larry Hott. Burns led the way in bringing archival material to

lie by using narration rom diverse sources: juxtaposing everyday citizenss diaries

and letters with traditional interviews o historical experts. ogether with editor

and coproducer Paul Barnes, Burns combines these careully recorded voiceovers,

interviews, and sound eects to dramatize historical events in rich, emotionally

charged ashion. Tis oral history technique o incorporating a chorus o voices

with diverse relationships to the topic at hand displays a rich tapestry o American

history that deepens viewerss appreciation o the subject, be it a time period, a

president, a sport, a war, or a statue.

I I have any skill in the editing room, Burns says, its to be just a regular person

looking at this thing going, wait a second, I dont understand that, why are they

assuming this? And thats how I x the lms in the editing. Trough Burnss eyes,

America, one o the worlds youngest countries, is shown its own dramatic, com-

plex history, mined rom visual and audio archives, revealed through beautiul

cinematography and the voices o everyday people.

Burnss research processamous within the lm worldis driven by his knack

or uncovering intriguing correspondence, diminutive but revealing histori-cal details, and uncommon artiacts. Tese particulars are careully craed into

large-scale television series, but they give his lms a visual texture, depth, and

emotional authenticity that more closely resembles an independent lm than

the traditional documentary born out o news journalism. Burnss dedication to

research is inspired, in part, by an awareness o the accountability he has in popu-

larizing history. Te subjects o these lms have been an opportunity to practice

and improve my cra o lmmaking. Tat in their totality they represent a airly

diverse and complicated view o American history is secondary, but not insig-

nicant. I know that. And I know that people get a lot o their history rom me.

So theres a responsibility or me, always, to do the very best I can each time out.

Everybody with a video camera is going to look to people who know how to tell

stories as a mentor.

Ken Burns filmography

Director

Unforgivable Blackness:The Rise and

Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)

Horatios Drive: Americas First Road

Trip (2003)

Mark Twain (2001)

Jazz(2001)

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan

B. Anthony(1999)

Frank Lloyd Wright(1998)

Thomas Jefferson (1997)

Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the

Corps of Discovery(1997)

Baseball(1994)

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made

Radio (1991)

The Civil War(1990)

The Congress (1988)

Thomas Hart Benton (1988)

The Statue of Liberty (1985)

Huey Long (1985)

The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts

to God(1984)

Brooklyn Bridge (1981)


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He is best known or his trilogy o epic documentary series: TeCivil War,Jazz,

and Baseball. However, dozens o Burnss historical lms have played at lm es-

tivals and aired on PBS, including Brooklyn Bridge; Lewis and Clark: Te Journey

o the Corps o Discovery; Frank Lloyd Wright; Mark wain; Tomas Jeerson;

Unorgivable Blackness: Te Rise and Fall o Jack Johnson; Empire o the Air: Te

Men Who Made Radio; Te West, and numerous others.

Burns has earned his home on PBS through persistent und-raising rom private

and public oundations. And though his projects ocus on topics with broad

appeal, Burnss approach oen results in revitalizing interest in individuals, such

as boxer Jack Johnson, or phenomena, such as the development o radio, that long

ago dried rom the center o popular culture. Race relations, or example, are

explored throughout most o his lmsnot in a dry, academic way, but in a man-

ner that exposes the impact prejudice has had on real peoples lives, and how that

impact has aected the course o history.

Well beore his programs are broadcast, Burns sings about his work through an

active public relations and marketing campaign that is not unlike those employed

or major Hollywood lm releases. Evangelism is a very important and oen

neglected part o making documentaries, he says. With so many channels you

can make a great lm that nobody sees. So you have to go out and sing about it.

When did you rst develop an interest in lm?

I have to go back a pretty long way to think o a time

when I didnt want to be a lmmaker. I suppose I

went through the reman and the astronaut stages asa little boy, but almost rom the beginning o my lie I

wanted to be a lmmaker.

Producer

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and

Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)


Trip (2003)

Mark Twain (2001)

Jazz(2001)

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.

Anthony(1999)





The West(1996)

Baseball(1994)

Empire of the Air: The Men Who

Made Radio (1991)

The Civil War(1990)

Lindbergh (1990)

The Congress (1988)

Thomas Hart Benton (1988)


Huey Long (1985)

The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts

to God(1984)


Director Ken Burns. Through

Burnss eyes, America, oneof the worlds youngest

countries, is shown its own

dramatic, complex history,

mined from visual and

audio archives, and revealed

through beautiful cinematog-

raphy and the voices of every-

day people.

Photo courtesy of Florentine Films.


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What attracted you to lm at such an early age?

My ather had an extremely strict curew aer my mother died, and yet he or-

gave it generously. I there was a lm playing at the local cinema in Ann Arbor,

Michigan, where I grew up, or i there was something on television that might last,on a school night, until 2 a.m., I could stay up. Te rst time I ever saw my ather

cry was when he was watching a lm. So I knew there was some power in this

medium, and I was absolutely convinced by the time I was done with high school

having digested thousands o lms, written many capsule reviews o thousands o

lms I had seen, and devoured lm booksthat I wanted to be the next Howard

Hawkes or Alred Hitchcock or, most o all, John Ford, who is my idol.

When did your interest change rom Hollywood movies to documentary

lmmaking?

I ended up at Hampshire College, where all the lm and photography teachers

were mostly social documentary still photographers. Tey disabused me o this

interest in the Hollywood lm, and reminded me o what power there is in the

things that are and were. rue things.

Did you receive ormal training in lmmaking?

None o this stu is teachable in a real way. You can have great teachers who are,

by their example, helpul. And I had two tremendous mentorsJerome Liebling

at Hampshire College and Elaine Mays, also a still photographer, at Hampshire

College. And the stu they imparted didnt happen in the classroom. It wasnt

didactic. It was something else. And I really treasure what they gave me.

Film wasnt an aerthought, but it wasnt their primary thing. My teachers weresocial documentary still photographers, and they combined this with a heavy

respect or the power o the individual to convey complex inormation. I ound

mysel totally turned around, disinterested in Hollywood eature lms. But I was

still passionate about narrative, combined with a completely untrained and untu-

tored interest in American history, which Id always had.

Cinematographer


Trip (2003)

Mark Twain (2001)

Jazz(2001)

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story ofElizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan

B. Anthony(1999)





Baseball(1994)

Empire of the Air: The Men Who MadeRadio (1991)

The Civil War(1990)


Huey Long (1985)

The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to

God(1984)


Writer



Baseball(1994)

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made

Radio (1991)The Civil War(1990)


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Did you know right away that you would be making historical lms?

I had not taken any courses in American history since 11th grade, when they hold

a gun to your head and tell you that you have to take it. And I ound, in one o

these incredibly ortuitous moments, not only what I wanted to do but who I was;

I consider it really lucky. Tere was some moment at the end o my experience

at Hampshire College, when I did not recognize the person who went in and the

person who went out. I was already working on a history project that had got-

ten under my skin, and I was making a lm in school or Old Sturbridge Village,

which was the Colonial Williamsburg o New England. And I suddenly realized

every cell in my body was ring, and it was great. I knew I was going to make

documentaries, and I knew I would make historical documentaries.

Why did you gravitate toward history as your subject matter?

Ive chosen history, but Im not interested in history per se. Its what I work in. Its

where I practice my cra. Te word history is mostly made up o the word story.

Im interested in telling stories.

Ken Burns and Roger

Sherman during the shooting

ofBrooklyn Bridge. Burns and

Sherman were classmates at

Hampshire College, In 1976they cofounded Florentine

Films with Buddy Squires and

Larry Hott.



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Style and Storytelling

Over the past two decades, you and your collaborators at Florentine Films have

developed a style o making history lms that has dominated PBS nonctionprogramming and has been imitated by many lmmakers. Its become so recog-

nizable, Apple Computer even named an eect aer youthe Ken Burns eect

which allows users o its iMovie soware to pan-and-scan a photograph. Many

call it the Ken Burns brand o lmmaking. Do you eel youve created a genre?

Te PBS people talk to me about brand all the time, and I just shiver as i Ive

walked past a graveyard. But I understand what you mean.

When you mention the words Ken Burns lm, its really important to know thatIm the cipher who stands in or a great number o very talented people who also

make up this style: writers like Dayton Duncan and Georey Ward, cinematogra-

phers like Buddy Squires and Alan Moore, editors like Paul Barnes, Patricia Reidy,

and Eric Ewres, and coproducers like Lynn Novick, Dayton Duncan, and Paul

Barnes. Its a amily.

Getting back to your question about genre, any production is a series o literally

a million problems or more. And I dont say problems in a negative sense. Eachtime you set out to create something youre aced with resistance and obstacles

and thats a problem. And you have to decide each time how youre going to

handle these million, million problems. In this particular area, how you generally

respond to the larger, theoretical problems can vaguely be called style. Te tech-

nique that you employ to solve problems, i its organic and true to you, becomes

your style. Its not a xed thing, its always evolving.

Do you disagree with the critics who say you have a recurring style?

It is true that i my lms were like photographs in a gallery, you could line them

up on a wall and say they look more or less the same, but each individual lm is so

uniquely dierent rom the others that style, in the end, just becomes a description

o how one solves the problems o production.


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The Florentine Films family. Ken Burns and longtime coproducerDayton Duncan with the Mark Twain production crew, in 1991.

Burns says, We have less of a civilized circumstance, the model

of a corporation, and more of a heroic onethat is to say, were

grabbing from the filmmaking family that weve worked with

for years.

Photo by Robert Sargent Fay. Courtesy of Florentine Films.


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We also see that people adopt technique withoutit being organic, in the sense that

it doesnt originate rom the material theyre working with. People say, Oh, people

are copying your style all the time on the History Channel. But I say, Its doesnt

matter. Teres no copyright on how you solve a problem. Its just whether its

authentic to your process, and to you as an artist or a crasperson, and whether

it works.

In a way, style becomes the stepping-stone or larger

artistic, psychological, spiritual, historical, and

metaphorical issues that any production inevitably

brings upwhether its a lm, a photograph, a paint-

ing, theater, whatever it is. I understand that there

are wonderul parodies that make un o my quoteunquote style. Jay Leno spooed it, and David Letterman spooed it. Its great.

For me, its employed only in the service o trying to authentically work out the

problems o the project Im working on at that moment. And i you have to jet-

tison a traditional approach to prove that it is an aspect o your style, because the

particular project demands it in a moment, so be it. I, in the ace o criticism that

this is the way you always do it, too bad. Im not hoping to satisy a critics view o

what I should be doing but, in act, trying to work it out. I mean, Czanne paintedthe same mountain over and over and over and over again, trying to work out

something. Its very, very personalvery personal. I think that style is the stepping-

stone to the larger questions about being, and art, and storytelling.

Your aesthetic approach relies heavily on archival photographs, documents,

and paintings. What happens when you tackle a project where there is not a

large archive o images to draw rom?

Well, weve never abandoned a project because there wasnt enough stu. We just

sort o try to gure out how to use what is a disadvantage to our advantage. So, in

the lms that weve done that are prephotographicTe Shakers, a good deal o it,

and certainlyTomas Jeerson, and Lewis and Clark, we had to nd new ways to

tell stories, relying more and more on live cinematography.

Weve never abandoned a project

because there wasnt enough stuf.


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Is your style o lmmakingwith voiceovers, studio shoots, archival material,

and interviewsa response to cinema verit lms?

No, not at all. In act, the lms that made the biggest impression on me were these

unstructured, wild verit moments that we looked at in school. Its a very nobleidea to capture the story on the y without narration and without interviews, but

I believe theres an inherent limitation to it. Its just not my style. I see really great

verit lms, but I have to work in a much more structured environment, and, I

dont think, any less true.

But, you wouldnt disagree that your lms are worlds apart rom a cinema

verit lm?

Well, I remember Frederick Wiseman came to Hampshire College when I was just

a snotty-nosed sophomore. I elt, he was incorrectly suggesting an objectivity to

cinema verit lms, and I objected. Now, Im riends with Fred, and I dont think

he remembers that I was this arrogant punk who was saying, these lms arent

objective.

Te bookend o this was being on a panel at the elluride Film Festival a couple

o years ago, about 2002, with D A Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Michael Moore,Steven Cantor, who just made a lovely lm on Willie Nelson, Werner Herzog, and

mysel. At one point Michael Moore was talking and Werner interrupted him

and said, Im interested in an ecstatic truth in my documentaries, in my lms.

Ken, here, is interested in an emotional truth. And you, with your big belly, are

interested in a physical truth. And then he turned to D A and he said, And you, I

think we are enemies. Cinema verit is the cinema o accountants. o me, it was

one o these stunning moments.

What happened next?

Everyone was so diplomatic. But Ill always remember that. And Werner is inter-

ested in an ecstatic, kind o poetic, operatic truth. I always describe mysel as an

emotional archeologist, uninterested in the dry dates and acts o the past. And


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or Michael Moores cinema to be eective he injects himsel into it with the same

presence as a slapstick artist o eature lms. Hes in there, in your ace, and its all

very much a part o his physical presence. Its very interesting. As to the cinema o

accountants, I dont want to touch that with a ten-oot pole.

Choosing an Awkward Process

Has your process changed over the years, as both research technology and your

style have evolved?

In the beginning I did everything. Pre-Internet, I went to every archive, I shot

every shot. I didnt do the interviews; cinematographer/coproducer Buddy Squires

did the interviews. I wrote, and worked very closely with the writer.

Now, as I work with the same people over and over again, Im obligated to give

them more rope. So Im sending people out. Te Internet permits us to go out and

collect the stu where we are, so were not going out and doing these mammoth

road trips where were visiting 160 archives o the Civil War, and putting up each

image and shooting it individually.

You seem to preer the old days, where you were more hands-on.

Well, theres a loss there, because youre not asking the curator, What else do you

have? Youve spent two days there, hanging out, and theyre willing to bring out

their avorites. Or you see something on the wall thats not germane, but its just

antastic. Were not getting that many surprises, the way we used to, but were get-

ting access to the archives a lot quicker, through the Internet and through being

able to download photographs, crudely digitize them, and work with them beore

we actually go and lm originals.

But I think, or me, the process has gotten better now that Ive allowed others to

do so much more in producing. I mean, Id love to do it, but it corresponds with


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a time in my lie when Im busy doing many, many other things, including raising

money and promoting. Not that we never did that beore, but its really good to

have a amily.

A Film by Ken Burns is a collaboration, but youre making the nal decisions.

Te thing is, its autocratic: Somebody has to be responsible or making the deci-

sion at the end o the day, and that person is me. But until that moment that you

have to do it, it behooves me, and its a better process, to be open to anybody. So,

you can come in and sit in the editing room, and your opinion is as valued as any-

bodys. And i youre conused, thats hugely important to us. We love that sense o

participation.

Beore, I used to sit in the editing room every single day and choose the shots, but

now I can trust others. Tey know how I think. And nobodys got a monopoly on

the right decision. Im the rst to say, Oh, that wasnt a good idea, let me try it

this way. I think weve created an atmosphere where everybody eels that.

How did you arrive at your method o historical storytellingbringing a pho-

tograph to lie, with music, cinematography, narration, and sound eects?

We had adopted an approach in which we would treat an old photograph as i

it were a live shot, and we treat a live shot as i its a two-dimensional composed

image. So, you go to an archivesay youre working on Te Civil Warand youre

spending six weeks in the National Archives or the Library o Congress paper

print collectionand theres Matthew Bradys collection, and we bring in an easel

and two umbrella lights. We start at the beginning and we take photograph num-

ber one o thousands.

I put it up, and I look through the viewnder, and I shootve shots, ten shots,

two shots, whatever it is, looking, listening to the photographs. Listeningto the

photographs. Is that horse whinnying? Is that cannon ring? Are those trees

rustling? Are those troops tramping? Is that water lapping? Is that bird cawing?

Whatever it is. You trust it to come alive.

Nobodys got a monopoly

on the right decision.


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Ken Burns filming Lewis and Clarkat Fort Clatsop, Oregon. It

is true that if my films are like photographs in a gallery, you

could line them up on a wall and say they look more or less the

same, but each individual film is so uniquely different from the

others that style, in the end, just becomes a description of how

one solves the problems of production.

Photo by Karl Maadam oft Dal Aa. Courtesy of Florentine Films.


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What about when you need to convey something literal, like a historical act?

In another aspect o lming, were out shooting somethinga building, a bridge, a

landscapeand were trying to look or more ormal considerations. Te goal is to

show its plasticity, its two-dimensionality, its compositional qualities. Were askingsomething thats two-dimensional to become three-dimensional, and were asking

something thats three-dimensional to become two-dimensional.

Music seems to be central to your lms. Is that part o the research process?

We dont do the music at the end. We do the music at the beginning. We record,

we identiy many tunes beore editing starts, or early in editing, go into the studio,

and record dozens o versions o that tune. And then the rhythm and pacing o themusic is organic to the editing process. It is, in act, dictating the rhythm and pac-

ing o our writing, sometimes. So, were nding ourselves shortening a sentence or

lengthening it to reach the end o a musical phrase. Rather than lock the picture,

hand it over to somebody whos providing us not with jewels o tapestry, but wall-

to-wall carpeting, which is merely attempting to ampliy emotions we hope, we

pray, are there. We know i theyre there, because its an organic process.

Do you think about the history and the script when selecting images rom

these vast archives? ell me about your amous research process.

First o all, we never stop researching. Teres no preproduction phase. Research

goes on all the time. And its not done by a legion o researchers, who are tradi-

tionally the lowest rung on a production company ladder, but by us. Tat is to say,

the writers, the producers, the director, and maybe one or two other people closest

to us, whove worked with us on a number o projects. We dont want to send

somebody whos relatively uninitiated into a situation where theyre at an archive

with a 1000 photographs. And they may make a Xerox o 500 o them, but I wont

see the others. Its not so much what you say yes to, its what you say no to in the

business o lm; the negative space o creation.


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You must have a high shooting ratio.

When you speak about a shooting ratiothat is to say, ootage shot to ootage

usedyou have to honor what is not used. Tese are not bad scenes. Te prover-bial cutting room oor is not lled with rubble. Its lled with the negative space

o creation, that which you dont use. And there has to be a way to accurately

honor that. One o the ways is to notput the most signicant part o what you

do, the discovery, on the shoulders o the least important person in a production

hierarchy. Te researcher should be the most important person. We never stop

researching.

Why is that?

Because we wish to be incorrigible. Our process is dierent in many signicant

ways than what I can observe o that o my colleagueswith no pejorative impli-

cations. Others do preproduction, generate a script. Te script is the bible rom

which they shoot, and its the template rom which they edit, and then they nish.

Boom, done. Its no dierent rom a widget thats produced in any other kind o

industrial concern. Hollywood itsel works to a large degree in this way. And they

call it the industry. Im not involved in an industrial pursuit. I dont want to beinvolved in an industrial pursuit.

Can you give me an example o when youve continued the research well into

postproduction?

Ken Burnss epic trilogy, The Civil War, Baseball, andJazz,

collectively established him as the producer of the most

acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, according

to PBS. Burns drew connections between many of his early

films and the Civil War. Ultimately, he says, I had to take

on what was one of the greatest challenges of my life.



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Burns interviews the legendary baseball player Ted

Williams, from the 18-hour PBS series, Baseball. Baseball

tells you about immigration. Each wave of immigrant

groups sought this special status of citizenship conveyed

not by the State Department but by participation in the

national pastime. This is about the exclusion of women,

about the growth and decay and rebirth of cities. Its

about popular culture and advertising. Its about labor

and management. So, all of a sudden I realize, Oh my

God, Im working on the sequel to The Civil War.

Photo by Joe Gosen for General Motors. Courtesy of Florentine Films.

I took a day o one weekend last winter, aer wed locked the lm on Jack Johnson,

and I was in an antique show in Manhattan. Tis guy was selling urniture and still

photographs. One o them was a picture o white people who dressed up a baby in

a wagon that was made to look like a boxing ring, and it said Great White Hopeage 7 months. It was just these white people vibrating crazily about Jack Johnson.

I bought it and put it into the lm. Unlocked the lm and put it in.

I research is ongoing, when do you begin writing?

Well, we will research throughout; we will shoot almost immediately, shooting

what were drawn to visually. And at the same time, as i the le hand doesnt know

what the right hand is doing, were also writing, unconcerned with whether thereare images to, quote, illustrate, unquote, these scenesbecause we want to avoid

illustration.

Why?

Illustration is the thing that keeps it running at a rather supercial level. Were

looking orto borrow a term rom still photographyequivalencies that resonate

at many dierent levels. So we want to be able to write unettered by some visualconcern, and we want to shoot unettered by somebody saying, Well, thats not

in the script. It makes the reconciliation incredibly difcult, but thats what we

choose to do; an awkward process.


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When do you enter the cutting room?

Editing begins our or ve dras into a script.

Where does act-checking enter in?

Te dras get redone by historical consulting, by our own rewriting, by the discov-

ery o new materials, and by the addition o talking heads.

Youre shooting interviews at the same time that youre continuing archival

research, and the script is constantly being revised based on what suraces

rom the shoot?

Yes. Because we want to go and ask questions o a talking head, unconcernedwhether theyre trying to get us rom point A to point B on page 23 o a develop-

ing script. We dont want them to have to talk as i weve got images that we want

them to speak to. We want them, who theyare. Tey never see the questions

in advance, so every talking head in any lm Ive made is a happy accident o

trial and error. Tats signicantly dierent then most documentary approaches.

Wynton Marsalis, fromJazz.

In New Orleans, a band

would march down the street;

everybody heard the music.

If you were white, green,

red, it didnt make a differ-

ence. You were going to hear

some swinging jazz music.

The radio did that nationally

because the airwaves were

not segregated and could not

be segregated.



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K B 29

ypically, the entire script will be rewritten two, three, our, ve, or ten times dur-

ing the course o editing as we discover things. And we do discover things.

What is gained by this awkward process?

Rather than being that old orum, o a kind o didactic essayistic presentation o

what I know, this is a sharing with the audience o what Ive discovered. What

weve discovered. And that, I think, makes the dierence between how people

receive it and what the popularity o a lm is.

Ambitious HistoriesYouve produced three epic series or PBSTe Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz

that total more than 49 hours. Youve told me beore that they are all intercon-

nected. Can you explain how?

I see them as a trilogy. As much as Id like to claim that it had some sort o inten-

tionality to its order, it was completely random. Te rst several lms that I made,

on the Brooklyn Bridge, the history o the Shakers religious sect, the Statue o

Liberty, Huey Long, and the Congress, were all just chosen, as most o the proj-

ects are, randomly and haphazardly, without a game plan. Aer they were made, I

began to notice that each o these subjects, as diverse as they are, seem to have as

one determining actor hanging over them, the Civil War:

P Te Brooklyn Bridge would not have been built without this new metal called

steel, which the Civil War helped to promote. Te man who built the Brooklyn

Bridge, Washington Roebling, got his practical training as a bridge builder dur-

ing the Civil War.

P Te Shakers would not have declined so precipitously, not just or the eco-

nomic and social changes that took place in America aer the Civil War, but

because o the psychic changes that took place in a country that had just mur-

dered 630,000 o its own people.


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30 t A Da

P Te Statue o Liberty was originally intended as a gi rom the French to Mrs.

Lincoln to commemorate the survival o the Union despite her husbands ulti-

mate sacrice, and only later became the symbol o immigration that we iden-

tity it with today.

P Huey Long came rom a dirt poor North Louisiana parish that reused to

secede rom the Union. Tey thought the Conederacy was a rich mans cause.

And so Winn Parish became this hotbed o radicalism and populism and

socialism that eventually spawned Huey Long.

P And the Congress had its greatest test when there were two Congressesone

in Washington, D.C., and the other in Montgomery, Alabama, and later

Richmond, Virginia.

So, everywhere I turned, the Civil War was there. I elt, I now have to do it. And

since Id been practicing and practicing on still photographs and rst-person

voices, in addition to the third-person narration, I had to take on what was one o

the greatest challenges o my lie.

Te Civil Warwas the highest rated series in the history o PBS. It attracted

an audience o 40 million during its premiere alone. Columnist George Willsaid, I better use has ever been made o television, I have not seen it and do

not expect to see better until Ken Burns turns his prodigious talents to his next

project.

You won more than 40 major lm and television awards or that series. So,

based on that success, you went right into the 18-hour series, Baseball?

Well, even as I began it, I knew that aer the Civil War I was going to do a short

little valentine to baseball.

An 18-hour valentine?

When we started, I thought I knew a little bit about baseball. But I quickly ound

out how little I knew.


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K B 31

Why make a series about baseball?

Well, I had no idea, until I began it, that it was the sequel to Te Civil War, insoar

as everything you want to know about what the Civil War made us, describes the

Civil War as the crossroads o our being. So the question is, what did we become?

You can learn not just rom the age-old, amiliar, political military narrative but

by this so-called national pastime. Te rst progress in civil rights aer the Civil

War? Jackie Robinson. Why did the Civil War happen? Race. So theyre connected.

Baseball tells you about immigration. Each wave o immigrant groups sought this

special status o citizenship conveyed not by the State Department but by par-

ticipation in the national pastime. Tis is about the

exclusion o women, about the growth and decay andrebirth o cities. Its about popular culture and adver-

tising. Its about labor and management. So, all o a

sudden I realize, Oh my God, Im working on the

sequel to Te Civil War.

It didnt start out as a series?

I think originally we were talking about two hours, but very quickly its going to beve one-hours, then its going to be nine one-hours, and all o a sudden it was 18

and a hal hours long. It was longer than the Civil War series, because it was cover-

ing so much territory.

At what point did you draw all these connections between the subjects o your

lms?

One o the interviews that we did or the baseball series was with a man namedGerald Early, who is an Arican American scholar and writer in St. Louis. And he

says that when they study our American civilization 2000 years rom nowand

2000 years is a long, long timeAmericans will be known or only three things:

the Constitution, baseball, and jazz music. He said theyre the three most beautiul

things Americans have ever invented.

I had to take on what was one o the

greatest challenges o my lie.


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32 t A Da

And I realized Id just made a lm on the Constitutions greatest test, the Civil War,

and it suused every lm I worked on. I was in the middle o working on the his-

tory o baseball. I was obligated to go into something I knew nothing about. I had

to take on jazz.

Do you eel the same way about the biographies youve directed? Compelled to

do them?

Well, all biographies, all eorts, are essentially ailures in this way. You can only

still show, in the end, what you dont know. I mean, biography is a constituent

building log o all o the major lms. It is ultimately, i youre honest, a ailing

enterprisebecause we dont even know the people closest to us, our amily mem-

bers, our loved ones. Its impossible to know anybody. But the eort is what pro-pels the human adventure, whether its lmmaking or art or politics or religion.

What motivates you to take on these enormous, ambitious series?

Essentially all o the projects are born out o a deep enthusiasm or the subject

matter, and the mystery o the subject matter. Not the act that I get it, but that I

want to get it, or that Im trying to get it.

First-Person, Bottom-Up HistoryTe sources you use to tell the story in your lms range rom historical experts

to everyday citizens diaries and letters. How does drawing rom a diverse

range o voices contribute to the authenticity o your lms?

Well, I think you almost have to take a step back rom that question and addressthe one o objectivity and subjectivity. I think in the rst day o lm class every-

body ought to just completely orget about objectivity. God is objective, and She is

not telling us.

So each orm o lm is an attempt to organize the chaos that is lie: the universe. I

think we come to a kind o shorthand that ction is narrative and untrue, and that


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34 t A Da

you knew was Abraham Lincoln? Now, I happen to think Abraham Lincoln was

the most important person in American history, and I will deend that view until

I run out o breath. But at the same time, I think Abraham Lincoln is set in even

more spectacular relie by (A) knowing ordinary people rom that time were doing

extraordinary things, like ghting in his war, and (B) knowing his aults as well,which is another very important part o the questiondo you accept a sanitized

Madison Avenue version o history, or do you manipulate history to make it serve

your propagandistic intent, or do you take a much more risky stance, it seems to

me, and embrace whatever it is that you nd? How do you do that, without lter-

ing out stu? Bottom-up as well as top-down history, and history with all its warts.

Tats really important to me.

You discover unconventional history rom everyday people, and then you oencast celebrities to read the voiceover o everyday citizens diaries and letters.

Why?

First o all, I dont cast celebrity, I cast talent. So there are people in my lms that

are rom our little village in New Hampshire, where I live, and riends, and voices

that I like. People who are in my lms are extremely talented people who also

happen to be, in many cases, celebrities. So that poses a problem. We all know the

documentary lms where theres a cast that youre totally distracted by, Oh, isntthat Arnold Schwarzenegger reading the thing? I dont choose people that way. I

choose them so i youre sort o hyperaware you might say, Oh, thats Ed Harris,

or Tats Samuel L. Jackson. But mostly, youre struggling to hear what they say.

Tese people are so good they inhabit the words.

A hallmark o my style is not just a third-person narrator, but something I

pioneered, which is a chorus o voices speaking many dierent things rom the

pastrst-person voices. And its very important to me that i Im going to usethem, they cant call attention to themselves. Teyve got to inhabit the love letter,

the newspaper dispatch, the military account, whatever it is.

When do you start thinking about character development? How does that t

into the construction o the narrative?

You cannot manipulate

character development to ft into


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K B 35

Tat is a great question. I start thinking about characters right away, because bio-

graphy is the constituent building block, I believe, o narrative. Tats just a choice

Ive made. You need to be communicating about the lives o other people all the

time, and that becomes the bricks. Teres other mortar, but characters are the

bricks o making a narrative. Development is another thing altogether, because thehardest thing to do well in narrative lm is character development. So theyre not

just one-dimensional. And in history, you have both an advantage and a disadvan-

tage. Tat is to say, you cannot manipulate character development to t into the

arc o your narrative, but at the same time, the character development is a given

because you know what happens to that person.

So what you look or becomes a question o how you investigate history. What are

the questions you ask? Are you interested, say, in an artist like Frank Lloyd Wright,the psychological and the personal as well as the proessional and the artistic?

Because I would suggest that his troubled relationship with his amilies, his clients

and his riends speaks to who he is as an artistic genius. Now, its easier to just

ocus on the artistic genius and live on that in an essayistic way. Or we can try to

do a biography thats complicated enough to blend the personal and the proes-

sional, which is what we try to do. And, I think, give a much richer sense o who

the person is.

Taking Creative Risks

Weve discussed how your style has become recognizable, but in the beginning

was it developed rom experimentation?

Absolutely. Its going to take a lot o trial and error beore anything really works

out. Tere were myriad problems and techniques that we had to resolve. How tophotograph still photographs was a big question in the very beginning. Just the

notion o how you would rephotograph much more energetically than had been

done beore. Also, combining complicated sound eects tracks.

the arc o your narrative.


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36 t A Da

ell me about your creative use o sound. You used some novel approaches on

Te Civil War, including original sound eects. Why was that creative choice

important?

In retrospect it seems so small and insignicant, but it was monumental or us.Te unwritten rule o documentaries is that when you cut away, when you cut to a

talking heador example, were in the middle o a battlethey cut out the eects.

And as I was watching it, Im going, something is wrong here, I want to be in this

battle. Te whole idea to tell history is to place people in the moment. So I said,

run the battle sound eects with the image o the interview.

One o the editors said, I dont think we should do that, as i that was bad, that

there was some god or ethic o documentary that precluded that. And I said, No,no, no, watch! So we ran the eects on the show. People are talking about the

Battle o Shiloh and it was, like, whoa! Because suddenly they put us there. And we

have done that ever since.

But it was difcult or you to take risks, to dey convention.

For us, at the time, it was a huge, tortured decision. I remember waking up at 4

a.m. the next morningwas this right? Was there a god and ethic o documen-

tary that would come down and smite us? Now, it might, in another documentaryorm, seem untrue to do that. But we were trying to create a reality where the past

was present. Faulkner once said, History is not was, but is. And we were looking

or those is moments. One o the ways we did it was to try that. And it worked.

Suddenly there was an organic unit o this thing, and it wasnt just dead silence,

From Empire of the Air. Burns

says, We realized that radio is

this incredibly active medium.

Youre the directorin

your imagination. Youre

the cinematographerin

your imagination. Youre the

costume designerin yourimagination. You hear these

words or the music or the

sound effects, and you create

everything else. Its a hugely

participatory thing.

Photos courtesy of Florentine Films.


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K B 37

the voice, and then back to the battle. But you elt like the interview subject was

watching rom behind a tree, or that you were watching rom behind a tree. Tat

was great.

ell me about how you used sound in the opening o your lm Empire of the

Air. Its one o my avorite lm openings because you place the viewer in the

time period immediately. Can you describe how that developed?

Empire o the Airis about the early pioneers o radio. Not the golden age stars, but

this very dark backstage drama; the three men most responsible or radios growth

and development, David Sarno, Lee de Forest, and Edwin Howard Armstrong.

We realized that radio is this incredibly active medium. Tat is to say, youre thedirectorin your imagination. Youre the cinematographerin your imagination.

Youre the costume designerin your imagination. You hear these words or the

music or the sound eects, and you create everything else. Its a hugely participa-

tory thing. And a lot o it has to do with the absence o imagery.

So we began to work on a variation o something Id experienced a little bit in my

lm on Tomas Hart Benton, when I was trying to ocus on his style o paint-

ing. Te problem there was how to see a painting rather than in a rame. I wasinto microscopically examining the context o it; the contours o the landscape

o the painting ading in and out. And in Te Civil War, in order to rivet peoples

attention on some o the dead at Gettysburg, we began to ade in and out on the

bodies, and wake you up with whats going on. It was a way o ocusing attention. I

realized that in Empire o the Air, we could begin to suggest that imagination that

takes place, that active imagination that takes place, when there are no images. So

or periods o time in the introduction, it just ades to black. And you hear inor-

mation. You certainly hear music and sound eects. But nothingsthere, which is,o course, terriying or a lmmaker, whos all about always supplying an image,

and certainly terriying to the powers that be. It made everybody anxious. But I

think to varying degrees o success in that lm, it does rivet your attention. And

that was our intention.


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38 t A Da

Style is communicating subject matter.

Well, the problemnot pejorativeis how do you give watchers an idea o what

it was like to just be a listener. Te style, the accumulation o techniques we use to

try to deal with that problem, is this idea o taking away pictures or an extendedperiod o time and asking you to hold in darkness.

Fund-raising and PBS

How did you nance your rst lm projects?

In the beginning, we patched together patchwork quilts o unders rom corpora-tions to government granting agencies to private oundations to individuals to

state tourism boards. And its still that kind o hodgepodge o unding every time

we go out.

But eventually you ound your home on PBS.

wenty-ve years ago, what we managed to do was back our way into public televi-

sion. And I say back our way, but now Im incredibly happy.

Your original goal wasnt to show your work on public television?

Originally, I assumed, like most documentary lmmakers, that I made lms that

would be shown at estivals, maybe get some cable distribution. But so many

o the sources o unding that were willing to give us money, like the National

Endowment or the Humanities and the Corporation or Public Broadcasting, and

even private corporations and oundations, expected us togive the lm to publictelevision. So there was a bit o a bargain that was struck which was, I will take

this money knowing that this lm wont be sold at the end, it will just be given to

public television. But, in the end, the calculus was exactly right.


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K B 39

Your unding always comes rom nonprot sources, why?

Because the type o work we do is so labor intensive, it takes so much time, that it

means you cant just max out your credit card and shoot a ew interviews and edit

it. Tese are massive things that take years to do, and youre either going to starveor youre going to do it.

You preer to have your work on television, instead o in theaters. Why are you

happy with your home on PBS?

Because rather than being seen by a ew hundred people at a lm estival, or a ew

thousand, and maybe tens o thousands on a cable outlet, these lms are being

seen by millions o people. I thought that i you had a certain passion to do some-thing, i you brought an enthusiasm to its production, and i you were answering

questions about what happened in history, then the resulting lm shouldnt be only

or people with a particular set o belies. It should be or everybody. You should

be directing it at an ignorant but curious person. Tat is to say, they are ignorant

o the subject youre covering. And, may I entertain you?

Whats the relationship between moving orward

on a project and raising the unds necessary to pro-duce it? Do you wait or all the unding to come in

prior to starting?

Well, all along Ive had a perhaps nave aith in my own ability to do it. So when-

ever I elt in my heart that I wanted to do a project, weve done it. And i Im raising

money even aer its donewhich Im doing now orJack Johnson, because o the

delicacy and the controversy o the subjectbecause were over budget, so be it.

What happens when the unding is not coming together?

Ive had some projects that have been ully unded beore I began, but in most

cases, 90 percent o the cases, Ive been constantly und-raising while Im making

it. And I eel very lucky, because Ive been able to push through that.

All along Ive had a perhaps naveaith in my own ability to do it.


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K B 41

You have a unique relationship with PBS at this

point. ell me about it.

I know that not every lmmaker eels positive about

PBS. Some o them eel that its a kind o impenetra-ble arcane ortress and youve got to know the secret

handshake or whatever. I havent ound that to be

true, but I know others have elt that.

Its perect or me. I came into it accidentally, because

my lms had to be given to public television. I g-

ured out how it worked, and ultimately chose a sta-

tion that leaves me alone. And they dont tell me to

change something. Tey dont ask me to so-pedal

the issues that I bring up; Im very passionate about

race and almost every lm ends up being a airly

complicated, sometimes controversial discussion o

race. Tey are excited to have the lms, and I eel the

same way about them.

And it doesnt have the pitalls o the other venues,

which are the loss o ownership and creative controls.

At the end o every lm, I own them. No ones told

me how to make it. And I can say, as I said beore,

that i you dont like it, its all my ault. Tats the way

I want it to be. I dont want to be able to sit here and

say, Well, you know, they didnt give me enough

money, they wouldnt let me shoot this scene, they

made me use this narrator, they made me use this

actor.

FIn film classes back in col-

lege, we debated endlessly

whether films ever really

made people do something.

Shortly after Brooklyn Bridge

first appeared, The New

York Times ran a front-page

photograph of a married

couple and their children

walking over the Brooklyn

Bridge. They said they were

from Idaho and they had

traveled all the way to New

York so their family could see

first-hand this remarkable

structure. They said they got

the idea after watching a film

on PBS.

Ken Burns, from the PBS

website.



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42 t A Da

So as long as you nance your work through oundations, PBS gives you total

creative reedom?

Completely. Teyre great, i youre good. And thats important. I think what weve

been able to do with PBS, is that the decisions we have made have been all basedon whats best or the lmwith regard to time, length o programs, nonstandard

length. How long we take to do them, waiting or the right image, choosing, per-

haps, to continue to edit linearly, or whatever it is. Im not saying that these are

hugely outrageous budgets, but its all on the screen. No big overhead or us.

What advice do you have or lmmakers?

Have something to say. When students ask, How do you do it? I say, Terestwo things, and youre going to despise me or the platitudes that they are, rst,

but youve got to know who you arebecause weve seen so many people drawn

to lm or some perceived glamour that isnt there. And its no shame to say, You

know what? I dont have something to say. Because a ew o us do, and were very

lucky, or were burdenedcursed. But whatever it is, i you have something to say,

then you can still do that.

Te other thing is perseverance. Because Ive rarely run into bad lmmakers, I

rarely run into bad ideas. So it means that everyones got to work that much harder

just to make sure it happens. You must overcome not just the obstacles in produc-

tion, but all the other obstacles. Not enough money, a government not disposed to

unding documentary lms, competition and mean-spiritedness within the com-

munity. All o these things have to be overcome.

Even now, at this stage in your career, it requires perseverance?

I had, on my desk, or I dont know how many years, two large three-ring bind-

ers lled with every rejection I got or my rst lm, Brooklyn Bridge. Teres never

been a moment where I havent, on any given day o the year, been actively pursu-

ing the raising o money to pay or these things. It didnt get any easier as my suc-

cess grew or the popularity o the lms grew. Mainly, I think, because we also took


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K B 43

on more projects. Or they got bigger. Sometimes theres a backlashOh, well, he

should be able to do it. Lets give the money to the next person, which is a per-

ectly reasonable triage to perorm in a world that has many good lmmakers and

many good ideas and very little money.

Process and Pragmatism

I understand your lms and series take years to make, and yet you work with

a very specic team o collaborators who also work independently. How does

that work, practically? When do you crew up?

Were usually talking about it years in advance. Even rom the beginning.

I just nished a lm called Unorgivable Blackness: Te Rise and Fall o Jack

Johnson. We were talking about doing this in 1992, and we knew, more or less,

three-quarters o the our principal people involved. We knew who the writer

would be; we knew that I would direct it and coproduce it; and I knew one o the

coproducers. And it was our years ago that I picked Paul Barnes, whos my long-

time editor, to be the other coproducer, the third coproducer. We have less o a

civilized circumstance, the model o a corporation, and more o a heroic onethatis to say, were grabbing rom the lmmaking amily that weve worked with or

years. Ten, we constantly turn over a resh bunch o young people who come and

work or us, rst as unpaid interns. Tose who show a lot o promise move in and

through the ranks. Some leave right away and take jobs in Hollywood, commercial

businesses. Others stay.

Do you ever eel deadline pressure?

No. Weve been very lucky over the last 25 or 30 years that the projects weve

chosen, weve been realistic about how long it takes. And we have met every sel-

imposed deadline. No ones imposed a deadline on us. So weve been estimating

even six or seven years out on a lm that were doing. Jazztook six and a hal years

to make. With the decision to make it, it was seven years out. And I knew that it

would be broadcast more or less when it was.


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44 t A Da

Why is delivering well beore the broadcast date important to you?

I know many people who are mixing just a ew weeks rom broadcast. But were

done six months beore its broadcast, at least, so that a hugely important and oen

neglected part o thiswhat I call the evangelismcan take place. Its a phenome-

nological question: With so many channels you can make a great lm that nobody

sees, so you have to go out and sing about it.

How do you remain inspired by the topic three years into a seven-year project?

Everybody asks that, but by the end o the lm, Im more excited than I was at the

beginning. Im more excited aboutJack Johnson now because, when I started, I

didnt realize that this was not just a lm about athletic accomplishment and race,but about sex, reedom, and who we are. People always tell me, I work on these

deadlines, we turn out a lm in six months, you did this or six years? You must

get bored. And I say, Never. Its this escalating sense o challenge, and escalating

sense o terror.

So its entirely enjoyable or you.

I eel so lucky. I eel like I have the best job in the country. I mean, theyre payingme to do this. How is this possible?

Many documentary makers Ive spoken with nd their work rewarding, but

they speak about sacrice, and the endless challenges.

Maybe Ive been unair in describing this all in these perect conditions. Its ter-

riying to make these lms. Tis is such a huge thing. I remember when I decided

to do Te Civil War, my ather said, What part? I said, All o it. And he justwalked out o the room shaking his head, like, Oh, my son is an idiot. But I paid

or that decision every morning at 4 a.m. or ve years, and guess what? I still

wake up at 4 a.m. going, How do I do this?

Its terriying to make these flms.


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K B 45

Were in the middle o working on a massive history o experiences o everyday

Americans during the Second World War, and were trying to gure out how to

connect several dierent towns. Its this three-dimensional chess puzzle, and it

just wakes me up. So, I think were galvanized by the sheer terror o what we do.

Because you have to get it right, have to gure out how to do it. I think that terrorand the love combine in a very interesting way. Tey dont cancel each other out!

Te love comes when it comes, and the terror is always there.

Have you endured sacrices to make your lms?

When I started, or years and years and years I didnt make more than $2500 or

$3000 a year or 1978, 79, 80, 81. I moved out o New York to New Hampshire,

so I could live or nothing and make my lms. I did! I just thought, i I become adocumentary lmmaker Im going to take a vow o anonymity and poverty.

Well, that didnt work out.

It didnt work out, Im very happy to say! I just had a conversation on the subway a

ew minutes ago with a woman whod seen the lm and wanted to talk about it. Its

just great.

I noticed when I came into this restaurant, people recognized you. Do you

oen get stopped on the street?

Every day. A hundred times a day. And Im thinking, wait a second, Im glad I still

live in New Hampshire. Tis little village where I live, all o whatever notoriety I

have, plus 50 cents, gets me a cup o coee. Tey dont care. Te roads have to be

plowed in the winter.

Keeps you human.

Oh, it does. Tat and having daughters. My most important production.

Coproduction.

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