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Speaker 1: Joining me now is one of those you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: I am A. I hate this cliche, but sometimes some

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Speaker 1: people actually live the cliche. This person needs no introduction.

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Speaker 1: It's ken Burns, and he is as I was joking

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Speaker 1: with him before in my own team. I may season

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Speaker 1: pass subscriber to ken Burns, and yet there are still

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Speaker 1: ken Burns documentaries. I have not fully consumed. My biggest

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Speaker 1: regrets so far, as Jazz, I have not fully consumed Jazz,

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Speaker 1: I will make that confession. But you know, it's one

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Speaker 1: of those cases where every time you think there isn't

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Speaker 1: a new story to tell, there's a new story to tell,

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Speaker 1: and Ken burnsfuys that story to tell. Ken, It's good

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Speaker 1: to see you.

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Speaker 2: It's good to see you too, Check, thank you. You know,

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Speaker 2: I think if I were given a thousand years to live,

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Speaker 2: which I will not, I wouldn't run out of topics

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Speaker 2: in American history. And there's something just incredibly wonderful about

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Speaker 2: saying that, particularly in tough times where we're sometimes avoid

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Speaker 2: the tough times. But history's so instructive. You know, we're

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Speaker 2: way more divided during our Revolution, way more divided obviously

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Speaker 2: during our Civil War, way more divided during depression, way

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Speaker 2: more divided during the Vietnam year. I mean, we tend

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Speaker 2: to think, as kind of narcissist Dick Chicken littles that

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Speaker 2: our time is the worst. It's got to be bad,

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Speaker 2: and there's history is there to say, you know what.

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Speaker 2: I had a friend in the financial services you'll appreciate

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Speaker 2: this who came to me in the after the eight

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Speaker 2: meltdown and he said, this is a depression, and I

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Speaker 2: just I said, you know, in the depression, in many

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Speaker 2: American cities, the animals in the zoo were shot and

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Speaker 2: the meat distributed to the poor. And that happens.

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Speaker 1: It's a depression.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a depression. And so like right now, we're not.

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Speaker 2: I don't want to minimize whatever pain he was personally

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Speaker 2: going through or professional going through. But I do think

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Speaker 2: having perspective is a really important thing in history. Is

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Speaker 2: the best teacher there is for giving you a kind

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Speaker 2: of perspective?

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Speaker 1: No, And obviously we're having an argument on history sometimes,

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Speaker 1: right we're having I and I actually this I want

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Speaker 1: to begin here. I think the most remarkable accomplishment you

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Speaker 1: made with American Revolution was how limited the critiques were,

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Speaker 1: what I would call the partisan critiques. I know you felt.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you saw them, and I'm.

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Speaker 2: Sure you're right. You're right, you're right. I mean my

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Speaker 2: feeling is and I do this with every film. You know,

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Speaker 2: Mark Twain once said, if you if you tell the truth,

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Speaker 2: you don't have to remember anything. So I said the

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Speaker 2: same thing in the year of promotion of this thing

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Speaker 2: last year to Joe Rogan and Theo vanas I said

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Speaker 2: to the New York Times editorial board as I said

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Speaker 2: to inner city school kids in Charleston and Detroit, and

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Speaker 2: suburban kids in Chicago and the forty cities we went

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Speaker 2: to in the eighty different screenings and the six million podcasts,

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Speaker 2: I felt like I did, and all the other interviews,

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Speaker 2: and because I was trying to reach everybody, this is

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Speaker 2: a story for everybody. And problem is that right now

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Speaker 2: we've gotten to a place where we want to limit everything.

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Speaker 2: It's you have to pass a litmus test, you have

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Speaker 2: to sign a loyalty oath and nda to your real feelings.

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Speaker 2: And I want to speak to everyone. And so I

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Speaker 2: assumed if I could just get to October before the

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Speaker 2: mid November broadcast would be okay. Well, October came and went,

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Speaker 2: and then November broadcast came, and in the middle of

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Speaker 2: it there were a couple half hearted this is woke,

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Speaker 2: sort of superficial dismissals. It was really clear that the people,

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Speaker 2: the authors of two or three of these things had

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Speaker 2: watched maybe twenty minutes of the thing.

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Speaker 1: And this is a.

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Speaker 2: Film, by the way, that suggests that the American Revolution

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Speaker 2: is the most important event in world history in the

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Speaker 2: last two thousand years, and that, oh, by the way,

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Speaker 2: a guy I'm sure you've never heard of named George

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Speaker 2: Washington is the person most responsible for our success in

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Speaker 2: the creation of our country. And somehow because there were

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Speaker 2: women in it, and somehow because they were oh my god,

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Speaker 2: black people in it, and somehow because they were Native

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Speaker 2: Americans and there were other people from other countries who

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Speaker 2: were engaged in this World war in addition to our

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Speaker 2: revolution and a bloody civil war, that somehow this is woke.

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Speaker 2: And then you realize where is the wokeness? Actually is

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Speaker 2: it in the litmust of one side of what it

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Speaker 2: should be? And that's what it is. Wokeness is just

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Speaker 2: a miss test that is fearful of the truth. And

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Speaker 2: it occurs in both ends of the spectrum. And and

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Speaker 2: in fact, I don't think there ends.

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Speaker 1: I think there.

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Speaker 2: You know, we discussed this before. You know, a third

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Speaker 2: of Bernie's supporters stayed home, a third voted for Hillary,

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Speaker 2: and a third voted for Trump. So you've got a

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Speaker 2: circle here in which the far left and the far

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Speaker 2: right are often much closer than we would think.

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Speaker 1: No, I mean, that's why you know, we're all taught

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Speaker 1: the pendulum right when it comes to that, is that

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Speaker 1: at some point the two ends could meet. And you know,

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Speaker 1: in fact, I like to warn some of my friends

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Speaker 1: in the business community, watch out if there is a

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Speaker 1: if the populace on the right drop their cultural grievance

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Speaker 1: and you just have all of the economic grievance parts

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Speaker 1: of the electorate unite, we would call it the FDR coalition,

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Speaker 1: and it could It could end up not be pretty transformational.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to say I agree.

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Speaker 2: You know, for a couple of different times in a

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Speaker 2: coup role of different positions standing in very different political

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Speaker 2: ideological places, the Republican Party has been the most successful

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Speaker 2: political party on Earth, and a lot of ways in

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Speaker 2: the last fifty years, is getting.

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Speaker 1: The most successful third party.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, exactly started it, by the way, in a

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Speaker 2: schoolhouse in rip On, Wisconsin, in eighteen fifty four with

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Speaker 2: one platform out of the Demond dispute.

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Speaker 1: There's still a dispute between a place in Illinois and

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Speaker 1: a place in Wisconsin.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I hear that all the time. I'm

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Speaker 2: opting for rip But the whole idea is that they're

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Speaker 2: anti slavery, you know. And so then you come full

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Speaker 2: circle where you know it's successful in that it's gotten

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Speaker 2: so many people to vote against their economic self interest

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Speaker 2: because they've been able to interpose enemies. The great bugaboo

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Speaker 2: of political distraction and ledger domain in sight of hand

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Speaker 2: is to say it's oh, it's them, and to create them.

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Speaker 2: And I can tell you right now, I mean, my

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Speaker 2: bottom line is I've been making films about the US,

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Speaker 2: but I've been also making films about us, right the

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Speaker 2: lower case two lighter thing. And there's only us, there's

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Speaker 2: no them. And whenever anyone tells you there's them, you're

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Speaker 2: having the woe pulled over your eyes. You're having a

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Speaker 2: distraction take place in order for you to think it's

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Speaker 2: actually an economic interest that is of central value to

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Speaker 2: me is not as important as the thing that those

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Speaker 2: people might be doing to me.

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Speaker 1: What's always helpful about your documentaries is that I do

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Speaker 1: think they have a point of view, but it's not

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Speaker 1: this left right point no, no, no, no, it is it

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Speaker 1: is more of a larger, you know, sense of you know.

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Speaker 1: Just so, how would you describe, for instance, your point

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Speaker 1: of view for the American Revolution? You clearly at a

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Speaker 1: framework that you want to do and check the story with.

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Speaker 2: Not really, because what happens is when any whenever you

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Speaker 2: say yes, and your heart and your gut, whatever you choose,

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Speaker 2: you don't know anything about it. I mean, I got

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Speaker 2: the general edgic, I got a good education. I know

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Speaker 2: a lot about history. And yet when you say I'm

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Speaker 2: going to do country music or I'm going to do

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Speaker 2: baseball something I grew up playing, oh well, finally a

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Speaker 2: subject I know about. Each day of baseball was a

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Speaker 2: humiliation of what I didn't know. And so revolution you

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Speaker 2: just automatically, so you're not looking. You've got a chronological structure.

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Speaker 2: It's already there, that is to say, and then and

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Speaker 2: then and then, so then how you begin to put

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Speaker 2: it together. You're absolutely right that there's no political thing.

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Speaker 2: You just want to say what happened, and you want

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Speaker 2: to call balls and strikes. And I would suggest that

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Speaker 2: in our media culture, as diverse and as multitudinous as

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Speaker 2: it is a kind of tsunami of information, it's relatively

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Speaker 2: the same. And so we become a kind of highlight reel.

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Speaker 2: Babybruth only hits home runs. Well, Baybruth struck out way

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Speaker 2: more times than he hit home run. And more importantly,

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Speaker 2: bab Ruth only comes up once every nine times at

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Speaker 2: bad So sometime as the last World Series showed you

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Speaker 2: a second basement, a middle infielder, not the star, becomes

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Speaker 2: central to the outcome of a very dramatic thing. And

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Speaker 2: so what we've tried to do is always keep that

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Speaker 2: in mind. Do you scrimp on your biography of Babe Ruth, No,

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Speaker 2: you tell a complete one. In this case, the Babe

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Speaker 2: Ruth is George Washington. We don't have a country without him.

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Speaker 2: But then you also introduce people to scores of other

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Speaker 2: characters that are bottom up, probably for the most part,

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Speaker 2: but they also are central to what happened. They're the

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Speaker 2: calling of balls and strikes, and I think there's something

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Speaker 2: exhilarating in that complexity. And this notion that, certainly among authoritarians,

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Speaker 2: that you want to reduce it to some simplistic slogans

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Speaker 2: is ridiculous. Ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: How do you deal with you know, one of my

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Speaker 1: one of the things that obviously the more you read

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Speaker 1: up on an historical event. I'm obsessed right now with

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Speaker 1: the period between eighteen sixty five and nineteen twenty eight.

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Speaker 2: We're making a film on it called Emancipation to Excess,

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Speaker 2: about reconstruction and the filon.

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Speaker 1: Period, and you know, it's it's you know Garfield's the

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Speaker 1: you know, I view Garfield as of all of our

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Speaker 1: assassinated presidents. You know what the modern myth making around

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Speaker 1: Kennedy was, actually that could have been Garfield, and Garfield absolutely,

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Speaker 1: you know, Garfield could assigned.

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Speaker 2: The Civil Rights Act has a great book on this right.

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Speaker 1: And there's a couple of them that I've read now.

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Speaker 1: But in order to understand eighteen eighty, you got to

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Speaker 1: understand eighteen seventy six. And this is my long winding

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Speaker 1: road to get to the eighteen seventy six. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people have written the book about the eighteen seventy

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Speaker 1: six election. There's all sorts of scholarship on it. And

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Speaker 1: what I've noticed is that the author's politics matter a

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Speaker 1: lot when you read, when you consume these books, and

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Speaker 1: it's become to the point where I am get frustrated

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Speaker 1: sometimes by his history books when you realize, no, the

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Speaker 1: author has their own point of view and they start

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Speaker 1: with it. And then and then it's sort of I

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Speaker 1: don't want to say it poisons it, because if you

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Speaker 1: know it in advance, you know it.

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Speaker 2: Does poison it. Chuck, because you're smart and discerning and

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Speaker 2: have read enough. But for the people who are picking

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Speaker 2: it up. They then become.

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Speaker 1: What if it's the only thing they read about it,

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Speaker 1: only that's what I always worried about it, Then that's

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Speaker 1: what I worry about too, And that's why I can't

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Speaker 1: do that.

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Speaker 2: I can't ignore that George Washington owned hundreds of human beings.

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Speaker 2: You can't, as the writer Rick Atkinson said, and you

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Speaker 2: know he's now two thirds the way through his Marvel's trilogy,

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Speaker 2: you can't square that circle that he makes, you know,

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Speaker 2: tactical mistakes, that he's rash on the battlefield. But all

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Speaker 2: the other things add up to something. And you don't

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Speaker 2: need to throw the baby out with the unforgiving revisionist bathwater.

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Speaker 2: Nor do you have to subscribe to the Parson Weems treaqily.

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Speaker 2: You know, never tell a lie, chop down on Jerry Dreeley,

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Speaker 2: throw a coin across the doll. You can you can

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Speaker 2: unsubscribe from both of these tyrannies and come to a

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Speaker 2: much more complex thing. And that's where you bother people.

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Speaker 2: Because they want things to fit in. They just want

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Speaker 2: it to be white, or they wanted to be male,

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Speaker 2: or they wanted to be simple, or they wanted to

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Speaker 2: be still entrusted with the barnacles. But we don't even

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Speaker 2: have to look at the big ideas that we're supposed

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Speaker 2: to be protecting, because if you look at those big ideas,

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Speaker 2: you begin to understand even further the complexity and the beauty.

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Speaker 2: You have to go into fiction. You have to go

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Speaker 2: into William Shakespeare to see all that.

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Speaker 1: So what I'm curious about is when you're dealing with

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Speaker 1: source material. Maybe it is Abigail Adams letters, right, maybe

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Speaker 1: it's Ben Franklin letters, and you really have to understand

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Speaker 1: the language of that day to get certain nuances. You've

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Speaker 1: got to understand that a turn of phrase that may

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Speaker 1: be meaningless to somebody reading it two hundred years later

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Speaker 1: actually was incredibly important. And I often find that sort

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Speaker 1: of what I would call the amateur historian, and I

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Speaker 1: would put myself in that where I could misinterpret reading

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Speaker 1: something because I'm reading it through the prism of today's

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Speaker 1: American English language, and I just think about those issues. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, when did you realize as you went through

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Speaker 1: this over decades that you've done this. I assume over

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Speaker 1: time you've now you're now almost an expert at seeing this.

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Speaker 1: But when you first ran into this challenge. You know

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Speaker 1: what were the what are the different ways to deal

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Speaker 1: with it?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what? It manifested. I think I'm quite

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Speaker 2: lucky it manifested less as a challenge. It is always

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Speaker 2: a challenge than an exhilaration. The idea that information could

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Speaker 2: be delivered in a way that I wouldn't or you

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Speaker 2: wouldn't speak it suddenly becomes I mean, Lincoln didn't go

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Speaker 2: around saying four score and seven years ago. He was

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Speaker 2: just trying to ask you to think about eighty seven

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Speaker 2: years in a different way, that's all. And it was

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Speaker 2: a great rhetorical device for score in seven. So you

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Speaker 2: have to do the math yourself. He's got you. As

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Speaker 2: you're doing the math intention you're paying attention, and you've

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Speaker 2: been sucked in, and you begin to understand. And so

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Speaker 2: what you find in all of these parsing the last

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Speaker 2: sentence of the first inaugural taking, the Declaration of Independence,

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Speaker 2: A few phrases past the pursuit of happiness, we can

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Speaker 2: get to that which is really loaded and wonderful, particularly

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Speaker 2: for today. He says, all experience has shown that mankind

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Speaker 2: are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable. Maybe

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Speaker 2: you've read it at the picnic before on the fourth

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Speaker 2: of July, and just let it go over. Think about

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Speaker 2: what he's saying. He says, all experience has shown that

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Speaker 2: mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable.

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Speaker 2: Not hard to parse means Heretofore everybody, he has been

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Speaker 2: under an authoritarian's boot and have been willing to suffer

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Speaker 2: for that for a thousand years working someone else's land,

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Speaker 2: you know, for a thousand years being a slave without

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Speaker 2: even earning a farthing. Right. But this is going to

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Speaker 2: be a new era. This is going to be a

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Speaker 2: place where we're going to replace your subject hood with

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Speaker 2: something much more responsible, coled citizenship. So let's go back

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Speaker 2: to pursuit of happiness. So we've always assumed this is

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Speaker 2: the American license for freedom. He didn't follow John Locke

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Speaker 2: and said life, liberty, and property. He said pursuit of happiness.

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Speaker 2: And so happiness was not the acquisition of things in

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Speaker 2: a marketplace of objects, but lifelong learning in a marketplace

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Speaker 2: of ideas. If you did that, you would become more virtuous.

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Speaker 2: That was the free electron word throughout every episode of

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Speaker 2: the revolution. As we began to gather stuff. John Adams

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Speaker 2: is worrying about virtue. Abigail's worrying about that. George Washington, everybody,

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Speaker 2: even the folks at the so called bottom, are thinking

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Speaker 2: about it. And so virtue becomes a thing reaching back

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Speaker 2: across the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, back to antiquity,

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Speaker 2: the virtue that was going to make you able to

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Speaker 2: assume the mantle of this, and Adams, at one point

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Speaker 2: great worrier says, you know, there's too much avarice and ambition,

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Speaker 2: too much lust for profit, not enough virtue that I

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Speaker 2: wonder whether we have the ability to create a republic.

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Speaker 2: So what happens is by isolating these words, by getting

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Speaker 2: great actors, I have the best cast I think for

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Speaker 2: anyone ever made, bringing them to life in a way

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Speaker 2: that you say, oh, I now know what that means.

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Speaker 2: I get it, and you begin to see that those

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Speaker 2: differences which have held these people. They're wearing hoes and

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Speaker 2: breeches and they've got you know, powdered wigs.

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Speaker 1: They're not me.

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Speaker 2: There's no photograph of anybody, so they can't be like me,

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Speaker 2: and they are exactly like us, and they are. One

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Speaker 2: of the more moving things Chuck to me is that

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Speaker 2: they're speaking to us like all the time Washington and

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Speaker 2: Jefferson Adams too says about the millions yet unborn. They

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Speaker 2: are taking an idea that's never been tried. The chances

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Speaker 2: of success that, like Sington Green, are zero, and yet

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Speaker 2: they're thinking about you and me. And so the strawdinary

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Speaker 2: story of our founding is the fact that, as the

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Speaker 2: Old Testament says, there's nothing new under the sun, guess

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Speaker 2: what on July fourth, seventeen seventy six, there was something

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Speaker 2: new under the sun. Now does that mean that there's

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Speaker 2: not the same quantities of virtue and venality and generosity

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Speaker 2: and greed. Nope, that's the same thing. And you can

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Speaker 2: find him in our story then, and it will echo or,

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Speaker 2: as Mark Twain said, rhyme with the present moment. But

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Speaker 2: you have to be disciplined as a storyteller not to

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Speaker 2: date your film by pointing arrows at isn't this so

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Speaker 2: much like today? I began this film when Barack Obama

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Speaker 2: had thirteen months to go in his presidency, right, lots

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Speaker 2: of water under the brid No one was talking to

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Speaker 2: fifty no one was celebrating. Now people are saying, oh,

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Speaker 2: you're so smart, you figured this out. You came out

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Speaker 2: exactly the right time. I went the total total luck

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Speaker 2: of the draw.

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Speaker 1: History is always the right time.

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Speaker 2: History is always the right time. There is no clearer

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Speaker 2: statement than that. And then when you do that, and

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Speaker 2: Mark Twain is right if he said he says history

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Speaker 2: doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, you are aware. I mean,

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Speaker 2: I'll tell you there's a if our film is just like,

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Speaker 2: by chance, come out a year earlier than it did

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Speaker 2: in the Fall of twenty four. You knew what was

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Speaker 2: going on in the Fall of twenty four. Well, we follow,

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Speaker 2: among dozens of characters, one hundred and fifty different characters

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Speaker 2: in the film, the wife of a German general who's

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Speaker 2: heading to join Burgoyne's army and her husband for their

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Speaker 2: triumphant victory at Saratoga. Doesn't happen. The French come in

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Speaker 2: blah blah blah. I'll give away the punchline. However, she's

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Speaker 2: doing the perilous Atlantic crossing a little bit nervous because

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Speaker 2: she hears that Americans eat cats. Now, nobody said anything

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Speaker 2: this fall, but if it had come out, they'd go burns.

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Speaker 2: You know what he's trying to do, You know, I

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Speaker 2: mean there was a letter that didn't make it into

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Speaker 2: the film. But Jefferson's trapped during the Constitutional Convention in Paris,

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Speaker 2: and he writes a Madison who's writing the code. The

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Speaker 2: Constitution is not pros except for the preamble written by

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Speaker 2: Goriuvenor Morris in New York, but says what if someone

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Speaker 2: should lose an election and pretend false votes and reap

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Speaker 2: the whirlwind?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 2: I mean they were trying to reverse engineer for all

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Speaker 2: the things. So the founders are no.

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Speaker 1: I mean I I look, the Constitution is such a

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Speaker 1: brilliant document.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god, four pieces they are still.

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Speaker 1: And it anticipated all of these issues we're dealing with today.

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Speaker 1: The thing that the Constitution that those that wrote this

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Speaker 1: Constitution didn't anticipate was that they were going to be

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Speaker 1: these five hundred and thirty five individuals who didn't bother

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Speaker 1: to read Article one. That's exactly what I was just

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Speaker 1: going to say.

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Speaker 2: Uve El eleven, the conservative scholar told me the Scott

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Speaker 2: the founders would not be surprised that someone who was

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Speaker 2: seeking monarchical powers is that Article one, the first article

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Speaker 2: that Article two is the executive that's the manager of

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Speaker 2: what Article one did. And the third article. Is the

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Speaker 2: judicial that is going to judge this and pass on

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Speaker 2: it is that they had abdicated their power. That would

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Speaker 2: be the great overwhelming disappointment on the part of the founders.

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Speaker 2: If they look they'd be happy that we'd survive, surprised

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Speaker 2: and so many of the changes, and not surprised that

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Speaker 2: there could be you know, power grabs.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. I keep going backwards about like

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Speaker 1: when did Congress start to abdicate? And you know, you

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Speaker 1: can keep going back. I've taken it all the way

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Speaker 1: back to nineteen twenty and the decision no longer to

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Speaker 1: expand the size of the House of Representatives. That moment

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Speaker 1: in that decade when they chose to stop expanding the House,

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Speaker 1: they actually stopped. They stopped implementing the founder's vision.

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Speaker 2: And you had a complex modern world, a twentieth century

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Speaker 2: that is going to be within ten or fifteen years

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Speaker 2: working at a kind of lightning speed. That always makes

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Speaker 2: the argument of authoritarians that I need to decide this

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Speaker 2: in advance of your cumbersome democratic process. Trust me.

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Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Toddcast is brought to you

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Speaker 1: by American Financing. So if you looked at your credit

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Speaker 1: card statement. Lately, you're working forty fifty hours a week

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Speaker 1: just to buy groceries and gas, things that used to

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Speaker 1: be able to afford right, and the credit card companies

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Speaker 1: are charging you over twenty percent interest for the privilege.

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Speaker 1: Think about that. It's a lot of extra money out

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Speaker 1: the door. It's designed to keep you under water. Well,

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Speaker 1: American Financing is doing something they hate. They're actually trying

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Speaker 1: to help people. They have mortgage rates in the fives.

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Speaker 1: They're showing homeowners how to take their hard earned equity

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Speaker 1: to wipe out that high interest debts. The average savings

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Speaker 1: is eight hundred dollars a month. So talk to a

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Speaker 1: salary based mortgage consultant, no upfront fees, no obligation, commission,

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Speaker 1: none of that, to see how much you can say.

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Speaker 1: And if you start today, you could delay to mortgage payments.

432
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:51,240
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436
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453
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Speaker 1: Chuck podcast at checkout for the fifteen percent discount. Again,

469
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: use the code Chuck Podcast. I would argue we basically

470
00:24:54,720 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 1: one hundred years of congress eroding away its own and

471
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: they did it to themselves. They did it to themselves.

472
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 2: But I would say it's been most noticeable in the

473
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 2: last few years where you've just the century just all

474
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:14,560
Speaker 2: all of this, you know, undeclared war stuff all well.

475
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:16,199
Speaker 1: It goes back to nine to eleven. I mean, you know,

476
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 1: and and fear does that right, Fear.

477
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:22,880
Speaker 2: That's exactly right? And whether it's real or not. The

478
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 2: manufacturer of fear in a populace allows them to say, okay, please, Mussolini,

479
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 2: make the trains run on time for me. Please. All right.

480
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:33,880
Speaker 1: Let me ask a few questions because missus Todd wanted one,

481
00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:38,200
Speaker 1: which is, does does your Ben and Franklin doc change

482
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: if this had come out first, if American Revolution had

483
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: come out before Ben Franklin.

484
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny that it's a really that's a very

485
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:49,680
Speaker 2: smart question. First of all, we'd already been well underway

486
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 2: on the American Revolution before we even said yes to

487
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 2: Franklin and began working.

488
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,360
Speaker 1: On Oh interesting, So you were how simultaneous was this?

489
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 2: Well, I you know, when I say this took ten years,

490
00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 2: nine years and eleven months to do, it's true. But

491
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,360
Speaker 2: I also released ten films during that time. So I've

492
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 2: got different production teams and we're working on stuff. And

493
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 2: it's very symbiotic. When you leave to work on Leonardo

494
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:16,640
Speaker 2: da Vinci or Muhammad Ali, it helps you come back

495
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:19,640
Speaker 2: to the revolution, It helps you come back. Well, what

496
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 2: Ben Franklin represented was an opportunity to practice on the

497
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 2: absence of photographs and newsreels, and we could because it

498
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 2: was only two episodes, do it without doing any recreations

499
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 2: with except for the print shot stuff. But here, as

500
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 2: soon as I said it, I knew we were fully invested.

501
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 2: So rather than get people to have them reenact a

502
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 2: specific thing I'm not crazy about, why not make a

503
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:47,920
Speaker 2: feature film. We just spent seven years collecting a critical

504
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 2: mass of people doing reenactments in an impressionistic way, sometimes

505
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 2: way up above from a drone, sometimes intimately where the

506
00:26:56,040 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 2: musket the hammer hits the flint and the gunpowder explodes,

507
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 2: or the cannon goes off, or you see women tending

508
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 2: to a burned hand or slashing blood off a tile floor.

509
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:12,479
Speaker 2: And then what you have is yet another resource. You've

510
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:14,879
Speaker 2: got paintings, you've got drawings, you have lithographs, you have

511
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 2: print you have maps, maps, maps, you have live cinematography

512
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:21,679
Speaker 2: devoided people of the real star of our film, the

513
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 2: magnificent country that we have, the prize that had animated

514
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:31,560
Speaker 2: this fifth Global war over it the land, And so

515
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 2: then it could work in and you'd find a volley

516
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 2: sort of out of focus and muzzy of redcoats firing,

517
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you're panning across a painting

518
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:43,040
Speaker 2: in which on the left side of the painting are

519
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 2: a bunch of red coats firing, and then all of

520
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 2: a sudden, you treat the paintings like they're live, and

521
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 2: you treat the live like their paintings, and you've got

522
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:55,120
Speaker 2: a wonderful dynamic. We didn't have that in Ben Franklin

523
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:57,360
Speaker 2: because you could always return to a portrait of him.

524
00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 2: And it's over two. So this is six with as

525
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 2: I said, one hundred and fifty different characters.

526
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 1: It's six feature length movies. It makes you know, I

527
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:08,960
Speaker 1: mean it is you know it was not this is

528
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: not six episodes of six.

529
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 2: So I have a friend who's a noted a director

530
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 2: in Hollywood who wrote me after I think I'd send

531
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:19,400
Speaker 2: him a link, and he wrote back how much he

532
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:22,320
Speaker 2: had loved it. And then after Christmas he said, I

533
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 2: looked at it again, this time to look at characters.

534
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,480
Speaker 2: And so you realize there's there's a lot that goes

535
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:32,680
Speaker 2: into it, and it rewards sometimes second, third, fourth.

536
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:35,320
Speaker 1: You need one hundred percent. And it's sometimes easier to

537
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: watch you a second time than read the book a

538
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: second time. Yes, that sort of historical event, right like yeah, yeah,

539
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: yeah you know that you that you that's I.

540
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 2: Could spend an hour on that paragraph and really get it.

541
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 2: But in a film, I'm controlling how long you see something,

542
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 2: and I've got lots of things going. There's lots, and

543
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 2: it's not we're trying to do it to be confusing.

544
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 2: It's just that it is complicated. As my neon sign says.

545
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:05,320
Speaker 1: I want to throw another one at prohibition. So I

546
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:09,959
Speaker 1: now understand prohibition better after COVID than I did before COVID,

547
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 1: And right, you just sort of I get it, You're like,

548
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: And frankly, I look at the current anti VAXX movement

549
00:29:19,600 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: and I sort of see it as sort of familiar

550
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: to how we ended up with prohibition and then how

551
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: within a decade we realized, well, this is crazy. Well

552
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:30,160
Speaker 1: it is.

553
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 2: Different in some ways in that using government as an

554
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 2: instrumentality of social change is different from suspecting government and

555
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 2: therefore not doing what the government says might be efficacious

556
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 2: with regard to measles or COVID.

557
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I get that. But I guess what

558
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that sort of I looked at it,

559
00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: not in the specific, but sort of in this respect

560
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:04,760
Speaker 1: after the pandemic in nineteen seventeen and eighteen, you know,

561
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 1: and what we all learn is everybody loses their minds

562
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 1: a little bit, like we all go a little because

563
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: of the different and so something that seems so radical,

564
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 1: like prohibition or you know, or you know, or calling

565
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: it the temperance movement, right, which was had We've been

566
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: there a long time, but it had never really gotten huge

567
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 1: traction until we had this perceived moral decay, you know,

568
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 1: and the whole what happened with the pandemic. And that's

569
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: where you sort of like, okay, we can sort of

570
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 1: you see, how we can go down sort of rabbit

571
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: holes almost as a collective society when you go through

572
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: a shared trauma like a pandemic is right in a

573
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 1: fairly organized society, I guess I ask, I'm curious, do

574
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 1: you think you would have Do you think you end

575
00:30:57,240 --> 00:30:59,479
Speaker 1: up spending more time in the pandemic in nineteen seventeen

576
00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:02,920
Speaker 1: and eighteen if you're doing prohibition today post, well.

577
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 2: I think prohibition was already about to happen before the

578
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 2: pandemic hit. It may have sped it along. I don't

579
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:11,400
Speaker 2: think it's that a determinant, I understand, And it's a

580
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 2: really really good argument.

581
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 1: This is something that I've like' and I totally accept

582
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: the premise. It's my own interpretation, but I know it's

583
00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 1: sort of like, okay, I think I understand.

584
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 2: How we talked a lot about it with scholars. I

585
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 2: think what happens is that you have a rare sort

586
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 2: of eclips like situation where you have a conservative movement

587
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 2: that is starting first with temperance, which means moderation, that

588
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 2: all of a sudden becomes absolute. The Anti Saloonty League

589
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 2: takes over and it's all about no and it's a

590
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 2: conservative thing, and a lot of it's based on immigration.

591
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 2: Catholics are coming in, and so you want to take

592
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 2: away the sacrament. Blacks have the vote, you want to

593
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 2: take away the bottle. You know, you've got these these

594
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 2: other ulterior, sort of darker motives. And it's a conservative movement.

595
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:02,600
Speaker 2: And then you the progressive movement, which you can say

596
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 2: is liberal or not. It doesn't really fit quite great,

597
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 2: but they're going along saying that government, as I said,

598
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:12,280
Speaker 2: could be an instrumentality of social change. So if you

599
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 2: reverse engineer it. We have an amendment of the Constitution,

600
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 2: the only one that's been repealed, the only one that

601
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 2: limited human freedom, that was prohibition, and you had people

602
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 2: on both sides of the aisle buying into it for

603
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 2: different reasons. I'd say a much more determinate part. And

604
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 2: again it's based chuck on fear. So your pandemic of

605
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:39,960
Speaker 2: the influenced Spanish influenza thing is not is the First

606
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 2: World War. So Germans were brewers, and it became very

607
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 2: easy to say they had been equating all the nineteenth

608
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:53,000
Speaker 2: century that it's grain, beer equals bread, it's the milk

609
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 2: of human kindness. And suddenly they're the enemy, and so

610
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:01,640
Speaker 2: it becomes possible to begin to rev up your population

611
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 2: in that sort of the thing that happens when people

612
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:07,480
Speaker 2: react by fear. And I would think it's more the

613
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:10,480
Speaker 2: anti German sentiment. Most of the brewers, if not all

614
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 2: the brewers were Germans. And then this sense of social

615
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 2: change combining with the anti immigrant, anti black, anti Catholic

616
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 2: sort of sentiments, and the idea too but very legitimate

617
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 2: idea that, as our first episode of three was called,

618
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 2: we were a nation of drunkards. Alcohol was a big,

619
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 2: huge problem. What we learned is that we couldn't address

620
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 2: it by you know, as Twain said, again, never wrote

621
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 2: a bad sent in his life. The prohibition of anything

622
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 2: makes it worthwhile, you know, or as he also said,

623
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 2: nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. You know,

624
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 2: that's what prohibition is, reforming other people's habits.

625
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:54,760
Speaker 1: So you know, when I look at your your overall

626
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 1: and you say that you want to hit reconstruction, I

627
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: mean in some ways there are still more stories to tell.

628
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 1: On other ways, you've hit a lot of the big stories.

629
00:34:04,600 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: But there are different slices you could always go at.

630
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: That's different. You have religion, you always historically note, but

631
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: you've you've never I say never you did. I'm not

632
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 1: going to say never you did the early on the Shakers.

633
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 1: But you know, I think so I go in political

634
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:30,439
Speaker 1: science curriculum, you're never And I think it's a huge

635
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: mistake by universities. If you're trying to study the politics

636
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:36,920
Speaker 1: of any society and you don't understand the following three things.

637
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: It's religious history, it's sort of economic engine, and its

638
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: demography demographic history, then you're not going to understand. These are,

639
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:46,840
Speaker 1: by the way, three classes that no political science community

640
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: makes requirements. It's one of these I find the whole

641
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 1: You know, political theory is fine to know, but you

642
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: need to know other things. I agree, and you know,

643
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: I believe and I always I. I uh, when I

644
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,280
Speaker 1: got to college, I didn't know who ponnscious Pilot was really,

645
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:08,120
Speaker 1: and I just didn't. I grew up. I was basically

646
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: I say, basically, I'm Jewish, but I didn't really I

647
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: had no knowledge of the New Testament. And you know,

648
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: I think of myself as incredibly well read. My parents

649
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: were well read, and yet I remember, and I got

650
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: shamed about it. It happened. I was a music composition

651
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: major for a brief period and I was having to

652
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: write write in the style of Bach and my teacher

653
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: got my professor got mad. He said this is too

654
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: upbeat for ponscious Pilot. And I went like, okay, who's

655
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 1: ponscious Pilot? And he goes, well, I'm not telling you.

656
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: And that's so I literally went and read read the

657
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:47,000
Speaker 1: New Testament. I just sort of like realized, Okay, I

658
00:35:47,160 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: lacking education. And then I got upset. I'm like, you know,

659
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: we don't teach the history of religion because we're so afraid.

660
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: I know why we don't write. I know in the

661
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: public school system we can have huge fights over it, right,

662
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,399
Speaker 1: and so our fear of it. Sometimes we just leave

663
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: it out too much because those that are devoted don't

664
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 1: like when people deal with it as scholarship, and those

665
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 1: that aren't devoted don't, you know, in some ways are

666
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: like you're giving it too much attention. Yeah, and no

667
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 1: thing that.

668
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, well i'll tell you, Chuck, I'm so glad you

669
00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 2: brought that up because I said something the other day

670
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 2: in some conversation.

671
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: I confessate that conscious pilot story, but I always want it.

672
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:31,399
Speaker 1: I get it, but I also want it as a Look,

673
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 1: we all, no matter who you are, there's certain things

674
00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 1: you don't know that you're embarrassed to say. And it's

675
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: like you got to learn to say it.

676
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 2: This is what I agree with you one D. And

677
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:46,239
Speaker 2: there's always a spiritual dimension to the films that we've made.

678
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: You always doing it.

679
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 2: Because look, let's just take Article one. I mean, you know,

680
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 2: Amendment one of the Constitution, the first Amendment. It does it?

681
00:36:58,120 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 2: You ask anybody on the street, you take your camera

682
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 2: out there and you stick the mic, and they say

683
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 2: it's freedom of speech, right, And then maybe you get

684
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:08,360
Speaker 2: somebody who says freedom to redress your grievances, you know,

685
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 2: protest whatever it might be. And then those are the

686
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,279
Speaker 2: second and third parts of a three part thing, the

687
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 2: first of which is that the Congress will make no

688
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 2: establishment of any religion. And so one of my favorite

689
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 2: sections in all of the Revolution film is one on deism,

690
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 2: which becomes this sort of aggregate not default, but kind

691
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 2: of aggregate conscious choice of many of the mostly Protestant Founders,

692
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:42,279
Speaker 2: you know, capital ab Founders, and the whole idea. And

693
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 2: our scene begins with Thomas Jefferson saying, if my neighbor

694
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 2: believes in twenty gods or no god at all, it

695
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:54,919
Speaker 2: neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. So we've

696
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 2: all religion has heretofore, the Founders understood, always been the

697
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 2: cultural every country's had in this state bablished faith, and

698
00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 2: that has been the source of a great deal of

699
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 2: the problems. But in fact, as we begun.

700
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,720
Speaker 1: To enlightened to understand that back then, it's actually it is.

701
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 2: We are an enlightenment and.

702
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 1: Invent This is what it is, is.

703
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 2: That God we always you know, you hit a home

704
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 2: run and you thank God. You know when you hit

705
00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 2: into a game ending doubles play, you don't thank God, right,

706
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 2: And that's and somehow God is always responsible for this

707
00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 2: and the anthropomorphosizing and the narcissism that's involved. The Founders

708
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:38,320
Speaker 2: came to some very incredibly amazing enlightened idea that they believe,

709
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 2: almost all of them believe in a supreme being, supreme architect,

710
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 2: divine providence. You hear those words, right, And they believe

711
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 2: that that God has takes no interest in the daily

712
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 2: affairs of mankind and makes obviously therefore no distinctions between religions.

713
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 2: So it then becomes, in pursuit of happiness that our

714
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 2: obligation to make ourselves better and then closer to whatever

715
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 2: that being is, because if you're worse, you're cruder, and

716
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:13,879
Speaker 2: you're devolving, and you're closer to the animals. And many

717
00:39:13,960 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 2: might say Satan, but there is such an I've spent

718
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:19,760
Speaker 2: a lot of time looking at Deism and I find

719
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 2: it such an interesting thing, and nobody wants to do.

720
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:24,919
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm traveling around the country and people say, well,

721
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:28,360
Speaker 2: this is a Protestant a Christian nation, and you go, well,

722
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 2: you know, they're Jews and they're Catholics, and there's you know,

723
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 2: all the animals religions that are brought over in the

724
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 2: slave ships, including Muslim relationship, and then Native Americans have

725
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:43,279
Speaker 2: their own stuff. This is really polyglot, and people are

726
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:45,960
Speaker 2: in different parts of the country susceptible. One of the

727
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:48,319
Speaker 2: things that they resented in the back country of the

728
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 2: Carolina is and Georgia was that if it was the

729
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:56,799
Speaker 2: Anglican Church or the Presbyterian Church, or not Presbyterian, but

730
00:39:56,960 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 2: some other church that was the favorite of the governor,

731
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 2: then you had to pay for the minister's salaries. And

732
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:05,120
Speaker 2: you didn't like that if your own Methodist or a

733
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:08,440
Speaker 2: Baptist or a Presbyterian, and so you have this sense

734
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 2: of being suspicious of somebody trying to tell you their

735
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 2: way is the only way, and that the government should

736
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 2: in any way favor any one flavor faith, whatever you

737
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 2: want to talk. And if you go to Deism and understand,

738
00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:27,920
Speaker 2: it's just you'r and my responsibility to move closer to God.

739
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 2: However we see that to divine providence to the miracle

740
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 2: of this snowfall out my window or the sunset that

741
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 2: will come in a little bit.

742
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:42,319
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769
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770
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774
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795
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796
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797
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 1: quite surprising that the founders were this enlightened, considering how

798
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: important you know that the place, in some ways, the

799
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:54,279
Speaker 1: reason many of their their found their parents came here

800
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:56,720
Speaker 1: was for freedom to worship.

801
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 2: That's correct, and I think that what they realize, I

802
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 2: mean that you have to say that that we are

803
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:11,320
Speaker 2: the manifestation of the enlightenment in the form of a country.

804
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 2: The first ever I've said it on the road. I

805
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 2: didn't say it in the film per se. I mean,

806
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 2: I said it's consequential revolution in the history, but I

807
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:20,399
Speaker 2: said it's the most consequence it's the most important event

808
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 2: since the birth of Christ in world history, because it's

809
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 2: set in motion revolutions for two centuries, but in set

810
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:30,239
Speaker 2: in motion, which for two hundred and fifty years is produced,

811
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 2: you know, one of the greatest countries.

812
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:32,960
Speaker 1: Now. Have there been.

813
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:36,319
Speaker 2: Series of mistakes, Yes, indeed, and I've spent most of

814
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:40,839
Speaker 2: my professional life not ignoring them in favor in some way,

815
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:44,400
Speaker 2: chronicling them in some ways. But you know it. But

816
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 2: it's not all dark either. It's it's an incredibly positive story.

817
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:50,919
Speaker 2: And if you listed all the good things, I don't

818
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 2: know any other country on Earth that could put up,

819
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 2: you know, starting with the Declaration, the Constitution and the

820
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 2: Bill of Rights, and then you just go on, whether

821
00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 2: it's land grant colleges or National Park or Homestead Act,

822
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 2: or you know, child labor laws or anti trust or

823
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 2: you know the GI Bill, or Social Security, labor's right

824
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:12,759
Speaker 2: to organize, Interstate Highway, Man on the Moon, affordable care medicaid,

825
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 2: medicare you know voting? I mean, this is like an

826
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 2: amazing stuff and it has tangible things. William Luckdeberg the

827
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 2: latest Story and died recently at A one hundred and two,

828
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 2: was an advisor for almost all the films that we

829
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 2: worked on. But he was in our Roosevelt thing. He said,

830
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:31,520
Speaker 2: you land at LaGuardia FDR New Deal, you go across

831
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 2: the bridge FDR New Deal, you go through the Lincoln

832
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 2: Tunnel FDR, you go down the Skyline Drive and the

833
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 2: you know, Blue Ridge Parkway. The thing if you do

834
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 2: the Lincoln Highway, if you do this ten thousand landing strips,

835
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 2: you begin to understand all of the ways in which

836
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 2: just that one presidential administration transformed the country.

837
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 1: How long? What is you know? I've been I was

838
00:45:56,719 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: looking to see what's the shortest amount of time between

839
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: in this historical event or era that you would then

840
00:46:06,040 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: feel comfortable making talk about it. I guess the Central

841
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 1: Park five is the shortest. Is that?

842
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I think that's the correct All that

843
00:46:15,200 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 2: we've had things like the Shakers and baseball and jazz

844
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,399
Speaker 2: country music, the.

845
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: Present comes up to the press.

846
00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 2: We unlocked the narrative and are more impressionistic for the

847
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 2: last twenty five third years. That's what I've said. So

848
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,319
Speaker 2: the actual event of the Central Bark Jogger, that's a

849
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 2: film that came out in twenty twelve twenty thirteen, was

850
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:37,240
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. So that's still twenty five years, still

851
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:40,160
Speaker 2: under twenty five years, but it's enough. Things are collaps

852
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:42,800
Speaker 2: You Know. What's interesting is I've had the great privilege

853
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 2: of interviewing Barack Obama for eight two hour interviews. I've

854
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 2: got a couple more to go, but there's no rush

855
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 2: because what's happened in the recent political administrations is that

856
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 2: it's constipated the scholarship. So by this time there'd normally

857
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 2: be twenty five books of scholarship on Barack Obama's presidency.

858
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 2: But it hasn't happened, and so there's no urge to

859
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:06,360
Speaker 2: go and do it till you can get to that

860
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 2: point of triangulation, that is to say, the perspective that

861
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:12,960
Speaker 2: comes from new scholarship and new things in which you're

862
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 2: not solely dependent on.

863
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:18,480
Speaker 1: Well, I'll give you a perfect example of how my

864
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: view has changed about this century and how my views

865
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:23,960
Speaker 1: get or frankly, the Cold War you know, I'm now

866
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 1: more comfortable understanding that the Cold War was an outlier.

867
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 1: It's an outlier in American history, it's an outlier in

868
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 1: the history of the media, it's an outlier in all

869
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: sorts of It's an outlier in our streamism and politics.

870
00:47:37,640 --> 00:47:40,880
Speaker 1: But you don't fully appreciate it until you get farther

871
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:41,520
Speaker 1: away from it.

872
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 2: That's correct.

873
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's election, You're going to have one interpretation based

874
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:49,960
Speaker 1: on it when you look at it through the prism

875
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:54,439
Speaker 1: of starting at say twenty fifteen. Now I look back

876
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:57,640
Speaker 1: now from a perch of twenty twenty six, and you

877
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 1: now see that Obama and Trump are are more intertwined,

878
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:04,320
Speaker 1: and they're going to be more intertwined in American history

879
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:07,399
Speaker 1: fifty years from now than I think either gentleman wants

880
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,800
Speaker 1: to what a wants to admit would be. That's sort

881
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:16,319
Speaker 1: of you know, your successor whoever that person is in

882
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 1: fifty years. You can't explain Trump without Obama, and you're

883
00:48:20,200 --> 00:48:22,080
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to explain Obama without Trump, like

884
00:48:22,120 --> 00:48:26,040
Speaker 1: you agree, going to be intertwined. Yet you couldn't tell

885
00:48:26,080 --> 00:48:30,200
Speaker 1: the Obama story in twenty seventeen completely. No, I don't

886
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:33,040
Speaker 1: know and maybe that you can't tell this story completely.

887
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 1: And maybe it's twenty thirty eight, maybe it's twenty three.

888
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:41,080
Speaker 1: Don't so, I guess, Mike, when do you feel comfortable me? Okay,

889
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 1: I think I can tackle it. I can tackle an

890
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 1: era now where new information isn't going to change.

891
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 2: I used to say twenty five thirty. I still believe it.

892
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 2: I do believe that because of the rate of information.

893
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:55,240
Speaker 2: I wish there was more scholarship, and I will wait

894
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 2: for that before I really begin to try to structure

895
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 2: and put together. The Obama thing is really just unbelievable stuff.

896
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,360
Speaker 2: But I'll give you an example that's close to tell you. So,

897
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:07,240
Speaker 2: we did a film that came out in twenty seventeen

898
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 2: on the Vietnam War. It was ten episodes, eighteen hours.

899
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 2: If I had done it ten years after the fall

900
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 2: of Saigon in nineteen eighty five, America was in a recession.

901
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 2: There's a Pacific rim but we're not talking about us.

902
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 2: We're talking about Japan is a scendant, and we would

903
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 2: see Vietnam as this ball and chain, this sort of

904
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:31,239
Speaker 2: like perpetual rain cloud over a.

905
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:33,360
Speaker 1: Star on ours a star.

906
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:35,920
Speaker 2: So if you wait, if I waited twenty years, So

907
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, we are the sole superpower. We're in

908
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:42,680
Speaker 2: the middle of the largest peacetime economic expansion. We have

909
00:49:42,800 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 2: just fought a Gulf War without all all of the

910
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,320
Speaker 2: you know, assembly of people. We would say Vietnam is important,

911
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 2: but it's you know, we've liberated, we've escaped the specific gravity.

912
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 2: If I've waited thirty years and it's twenty two thousand

913
00:49:56,520 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 2: and five, we're bogged down in both Iraq and Afghanistan,

914
00:50:00,960 --> 00:50:04,520
Speaker 2: and people are using Vietnam analogies to talk about that.

915
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 2: And then you know, the film comes out essentially ten

916
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 2: years after that, forty years, forty two years after that,

917
00:50:10,880 --> 00:50:13,520
Speaker 2: and you begin to realize that your job is to

918
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 2: use the passage of time as triangulation, to use the

919
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 2: scholarship as triangulation, to figure out how to more firmly

920
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 2: understand an event by what you've done and sort of

921
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:29,720
Speaker 2: average out those things. Disaster not a disaster, disaster again,

922
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:32,720
Speaker 2: And so Vietnam undergoes lots of things, and of course

923
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:37,440
Speaker 2: it's none of those things. It's never history doesn't repeat itself.

924
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 2: No event has ever happened twice, never has, never will,

925
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:45,759
Speaker 2: And so the trope of that becomes a kind of

926
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 2: prison for us to get in. And so what you

927
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 2: have to do is be dispassionate. You have to sort

928
00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 2: of like a dissease, tie yourself to the mass so

929
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:56,120
Speaker 2: you can hear seriously sound, but you don't want to

930
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 2: like point arrows. Isn't this so much like today? Because

931
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,560
Speaker 2: as I said, you're dated instantly by that, and you've

932
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:07,520
Speaker 2: become you know, the historical profession has gone through many

933
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 2: fashions of historiography. Right, so after World War Two, narratives bad,

934
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:14,279
Speaker 2: it's bankrupt. So we're going to replace it with a

935
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:18,520
Speaker 2: Freudian interpretation, a psychosexuality, and it's going to be Marxist

936
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:23,200
Speaker 2: economic determinism. Somewhere along the line. It's symbolism, it's semiotics,

937
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 2: it's deconstruction, it's queer studies, it's afrocentrism, it's whatever it is.

938
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,719
Speaker 2: None of those give you what all of those give you,

939
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 2: which is a multitude of modes of inquiry, multitude of perspectives,

940
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:39,800
Speaker 2: like the spokes on a wheel that make the wheel

941
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:44,919
Speaker 2: engineered to great strength, to able to bear a great load.

942
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: So we draw in.

943
00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 2: Scholars on Vietnam or the Revolution that represent all sorts

944
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:53,440
Speaker 2: of different areas of scholarship, and we take in what

945
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 2: their knowledge is, but not necessarily their total interpretation. So

946
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:01,120
Speaker 2: scholars of Native Americans, one of us dollars, Christopher Brown

947
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 2: is a student of eighteenth and nineteenth century British economy.

948
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:10,239
Speaker 2: He's a black man to go, no, no, no, he must

949
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 2: want to talk about slavery, and does, but only in

950
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,520
Speaker 2: the context of economic So you get a wonderful dynamic

951
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:25,480
Speaker 2: without having to subscribe to anybody's theory of how American history.

952
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:29,399
Speaker 2: That's why, you know, and we're constantly being bombarded with

953
00:52:29,680 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 2: what is the correct way to see this? You know,

954
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 2: it's seventeen seventy six, or it's sixteen nineteen, or it's no,

955
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 2: it's from eighteen seventy it's from seventeen seventy five to

956
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:42,919
Speaker 2: seventeen eighty one or seventeen eighty three, depending on whether

957
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,080
Speaker 2: it's Yorktown or the British Slavy Board.

958
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: So well, let me ask about the Cold War. That

959
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: feels like a ken Burns project.

960
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 2: It is we do you know what we've been talking about?

961
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:55,279
Speaker 2: The Cold War? I can't believe you brought that up.

962
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:58,600
Speaker 2: Check it's so we're on the same wavelength. So we've

963
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:02,359
Speaker 2: been talking for probably two decades about the Cold War,

964
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 2: and about a year ago I said, I want to

965
00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:07,800
Speaker 2: make it the CIA. So we're doing a big but

966
00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:12,360
Speaker 2: we're just beginning to sort of unload and create the space.

967
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 2: I like took all the books and stuff like that

968
00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 2: and put it in a corner of my house and

969
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 2: I put a sign up over and said, Langley, you know,

970
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:21,560
Speaker 2: because that's where we're going to collect all the CIA

971
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:22,840
Speaker 2: notes and papers.

972
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 1: We talked to something.

973
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:26,080
Speaker 2: We know how we're going to do it because you'll

974
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:28,839
Speaker 2: get the Cold War, which you also get all the

975
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 2: intimacies of the stories, you know. Like I was just

976
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 2: talking to Rick Atkinson the History and he described a

977
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:38,240
Speaker 2: friend that he knew, a Russian who disappeared because Alder

978
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:41,080
Speaker 2: James betrayed him. He was an asset for the United

979
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:44,560
Speaker 2: States working at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Poof gone.

980
00:53:44,719 --> 00:53:47,920
Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, the abstractions of talking about

981
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:50,120
Speaker 2: Cold wars and stuff like that goes down to the

982
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 2: minutia of somebody in Geneva doing this to somebody else.

983
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:56,560
Speaker 1: So my obsession with Cold War, with the Cold War

984
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 1: has come from when people lament to me I wish

985
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: we were like this, you know, whatever it is. I

986
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:05,960
Speaker 1: wish our politics were this way. I wish our media

987
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:07,759
Speaker 1: were this way, and I wish and I go back

988
00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:10,279
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you're a child of the Cold War era,

989
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 1: and you don't realize you live in an outlier. And

990
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:16,400
Speaker 1: then I'll go through, you know, and say, you know,

991
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:21,239
Speaker 1: we're actually we're reverting. Today's America is no different from

992
00:54:21,280 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: nineteenth century America. There's a lot of differences and as

993
00:54:24,200 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 1: far as people's freedoms and not but in some ways

994
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:29,319
Speaker 1: our politics is not this similar. We're still fighting about

995
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:31,319
Speaker 1: who gets to be an American and who isn't. We're

996
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:35,359
Speaker 1: still fighting about you know, shares of the pie and

997
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:38,200
Speaker 1: things like that. And oh, by the way, the nineteenth

998
00:54:38,200 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: century was superpartisan, our media was superpartisan. And where are

999
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,719
Speaker 1: we today, you know? And then it has made me

1000
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 1: look at the Cold War as an outlier as far

1001
00:54:48,560 --> 00:54:52,719
Speaker 1: as in political history, right, we had I love to

1002
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:55,080
Speaker 1: remind people are closest. We've had six of the last

1003
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: seven presidential elections been decided by five points or less

1004
00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:01,200
Speaker 1: in the entire twentieth century, when we had five, and

1005
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:04,520
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, why and yet the nineteenth century. My gosh,

1006
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:07,800
Speaker 1: we had twenty I'm obsessed with the seven presidents between

1007
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:10,359
Speaker 1: Jackson and Lincoln in twenty eight years. Like you want

1008
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 1: to talk about instability, there's instability.

1009
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:17,040
Speaker 2: You know, the popular vote in seventy six, eighteen seventy six,

1010
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:19,880
Speaker 2: Tilden wins the popular vote, and we had three elections

1011
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:24,600
Speaker 2: with Grover Cleveland. He all won the popular vote three

1012
00:55:24,640 --> 00:55:27,719
Speaker 2: times and lost the middle one.

1013
00:55:28,400 --> 00:55:31,400
Speaker 1: And what I love to also remind folks is that

1014
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 1: we've had three straight one term presidents. We never had

1015
00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:36,560
Speaker 1: that once in the twentieth century, but we had it

1016
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 1: two different times. We went five straight one term presidents

1017
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. So it is I think we

1018
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 1: haven't fully appreciated. And this is where obviously it's sort

1019
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 1: of like why does experience matter? Because you have to

1020
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:52,160
Speaker 1: sort of live to see it. You have to be

1021
00:55:52,200 --> 00:55:55,120
Speaker 1: able to look backwards in the world I grew up,

1022
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 1: you know, I always think now that that I grew

1023
00:55:57,360 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: up in the wrong I always think I grew up

1024
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:01,880
Speaker 1: in the right of the way the media worked, And

1025
00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:03,480
Speaker 1: it's like, no, in some ways, I grew up in

1026
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:08,720
Speaker 1: the wrong era because it was a false premise.

1027
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:11,640
Speaker 2: So you could make an argument therefore, with regard to

1028
00:56:11,719 --> 00:56:16,440
Speaker 2: I think your excellent theories about the Cold War is

1029
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:21,239
Speaker 2: that when the Soviet Empire collapsed, the total destabilizing of

1030
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 2: American politics was assured. That is to say, destabilize from

1031
00:56:26,120 --> 00:56:28,960
Speaker 2: what you're calling the outlier of a kind of general

1032
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:32,640
Speaker 2: consensus that had been built not since just forty five,

1033
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 2: but I would say back to the progressive era, where

1034
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:37,880
Speaker 2: you had people in both parties wishing to use government

1035
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 2: as an instrumentality of progress, or at least, as tr

1036
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 2: would say, a countervailing force between labor and capital.

1037
00:56:46,120 --> 00:56:48,719
Speaker 1: And instead we basically were a period of just security.

1038
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:53,440
Speaker 2: So what happens just surviving the thing, and so that

1039
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:56,520
Speaker 2: when you take this away, you don't have an enemy anymore.

1040
00:56:57,120 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 2: And so who do you make the enemy?

1041
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:03,680
Speaker 1: No? Right, well, well, I love to remind people the

1042
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:07,240
Speaker 1: Berlin Wall falls in eighty nine, and within three years

1043
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:10,959
Speaker 1: the isolationist wing of the Republican Party sprouts up again,

1044
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:16,120
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump's first campaign is launched. It's called Pat

1045
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 1: Buchanan's campaign for President, and so and it's and I

1046
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 1: you know, and in fact, two of our closest presidential

1047
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 1: elections were followed by two of our biggest blowouts. So

1048
00:57:28,480 --> 00:57:31,520
Speaker 1: seventy two and sixty four were blowouts because each party

1049
00:57:31,560 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: went off the reservation, But sixty and seventy six were

1050
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:38,640
Speaker 1: two of our closest presidential elections because both parties went

1051
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:43,800
Speaker 1: back on the reservation and it was anyway. It's just

1052
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:48,040
Speaker 1: one of those where I feel like you have to

1053
00:57:48,080 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 1: capture this.

1054
00:57:49,080 --> 00:57:52,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm trying. I'm trying. Give me time, I'm

1055
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 2: taking vitamins, I'm walking, I'm doing my exercises. It's I've

1056
00:57:55,560 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 2: got that look, Chuck, I have the best job in

1057
00:57:57,200 --> 00:57:57,560
Speaker 2: the country.

1058
00:57:57,640 --> 00:58:01,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. Well, you're you are you are this

1059
00:58:02,240 --> 00:58:04,880
Speaker 1: this guy for us. When do you suspect you'll do

1060
00:58:04,960 --> 00:58:08,840
Speaker 1: your first twenty first century you know, an event in

1061
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:11,480
Speaker 1: an era which the most obvious would be nine to eleven.

1062
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:14,280
Speaker 1: But when do you feel like you'll tackle your first

1063
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 1: twenty first century event era?

1064
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think that part of the Central

1065
00:58:25,680 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 2: Park five begins in the early is resolved in the

1066
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:32,080
Speaker 2: twenty first century. The update of baseball, called the Tenth

1067
00:58:32,120 --> 00:58:36,280
Speaker 2: Inning ends in two thousand and nine. We've done some

1068
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:41,160
Speaker 2: stuff on housing. I was executive producer. My daughter Sarah,

1069
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 2: who's one of our main directors, and her husband, David

1070
00:58:44,440 --> 00:58:48,920
Speaker 2: McMahon have done things on public housing. I think the

1071
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 2: Obama one will be fully potentially. I mean, my first

1072
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:56,520
Speaker 2: question to him is, of course, where were you born?

1073
00:58:57,280 --> 00:59:00,520
Speaker 2: But you know, you should see the way I.

1074
00:59:00,480 --> 00:59:03,400
Speaker 1: Said it was it's a log cabin in Kentucky. Right,

1075
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:05,160
Speaker 1: that had been funny?

1076
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:09,000
Speaker 2: You mean him Madras in Pakistan or Indonesia.

1077
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 1: Well, I've always said, you know, if he were this

1078
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:14,080
Speaker 1: sort of counter this secret you know, idea of like,

1079
00:59:14,120 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 1: you know, to take over America, Right, that was what

1080
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:19,160
Speaker 1: a brilliant move, right to incubate him through Hawaii and

1081
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:21,240
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Why would you name him Barak Husain?

1082
00:59:21,280 --> 00:59:23,000
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you call him Thomas Jefferson.

1083
00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:28,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So the log cabin is to your point, Yeah,

1084
00:59:28,920 --> 00:59:32,440
Speaker 2: it's it's a pretty great story. I've I've dealt with

1085
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:36,360
Speaker 2: Race Chuck forty plus films that have been out. I

1086
00:59:36,400 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 2: can count on the fingers of one hand.

1087
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 1: When is Race not a part of it? And I

1088
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:43,320
Speaker 1: say this because it's always a part. And I always

1089
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:44,640
Speaker 1: apart art.

1090
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 2: Fingers of one hand and self enough time to snap

1091
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:50,960
Speaker 2: my fingers. And I've gotten a lot of criticism over

1092
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 2: the years about it from people from critics, from even historians, friends,

1093
00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:59,640
Speaker 2: other colleagues, and they said, what are you going to stop?

1094
00:59:59,640 --> 01:00:02,520
Speaker 2: And when Barack Obama was inaugurated on December twenty, two

1095
01:00:02,560 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, they said, now are you going to stop?

1096
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:07,280
Speaker 2: And I held up the Onion magazine and it said

1097
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:10,959
Speaker 2: black man given worst job in nation. And I just said,

1098
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:14,600
Speaker 2: watch what happens. And at least to their credit, most

1099
01:00:14,640 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 2: people have come back and apologized. Is that you're right.

1100
01:00:17,120 --> 01:00:20,240
Speaker 2: Race is central, it's the story. How can you say

1101
01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:22,920
Speaker 2: that we know exactly when we were founded, and we

1102
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:25,560
Speaker 2: know what's our catechism, and it begins, we hold these

1103
01:00:25,560 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 2: schoos to be self evident, that all men are created equal,

1104
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:31,160
Speaker 2: and the guy who wrote it owned other human beings.

1105
01:00:31,240 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 2: And so how are we not constantly both ennobled and

1106
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 2: also stricken by this, by that contradiction and that hypocrisy.

1107
01:00:40,120 --> 01:00:43,840
Speaker 1: All right, let me let you play critic on historical fiction.

1108
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:46,040
Speaker 1: What's your favorite historical fiction out there?

1109
01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 3: Oh?

1110
01:00:47,160 --> 01:00:50,160
Speaker 2: To me, it's Michael Sharra's Killer Angels. I read it

1111
01:00:50,200 --> 01:00:52,760
Speaker 2: and finished it on Christmas Day nineteen eighty four, is

1112
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:55,200
Speaker 2: visiting my dad in Michigan, and I said, I now

1113
01:00:55,240 --> 01:00:56,800
Speaker 2: know what I'm going to do for my next subject.

1114
01:00:56,840 --> 01:00:59,000
Speaker 2: And he said what's that? I said, the Civil War?

1115
01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:01,560
Speaker 2: And he said what part? I said, all of it.

1116
01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:03,680
Speaker 2: He just shook his hand and walked out of the room, like,

1117
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:05,600
Speaker 2: my idiot son, what's.

1118
01:01:05,440 --> 01:01:09,160
Speaker 1: My son doing? But yeah, he's never going to succeed

1119
01:01:09,200 --> 01:01:11,360
Speaker 1: in this career. I mean, you know, there's no way

1120
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:12,960
Speaker 1: people are going to watch nine.

1121
01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:17,320
Speaker 2: In the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. May they rest in peace?

1122
01:01:17,440 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 2: The first time three didn't turn this down. They said, look,

1123
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:21,760
Speaker 2: you know, people watch an hour an hour and a half, ken, Yeah,

1124
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:25,160
Speaker 2: are you really that we do a proposal five one hours.

1125
01:01:25,360 --> 01:01:28,160
Speaker 2: It only became because the editing was going well, the

1126
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:31,000
Speaker 2: nine episodes in the eleven and a half twelve hours

1127
01:01:31,240 --> 01:01:34,240
Speaker 2: that it is, And so even at five one hours,

1128
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 2: my biggest source of our funding over the years wasn't

1129
01:01:39,240 --> 01:01:41,560
Speaker 2: sure that it would work well.

1130
01:01:41,880 --> 01:01:44,800
Speaker 1: Have you ever wanted to dabble in either dramatize?

1131
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:48,280
Speaker 2: She just wanted to be a filmmaker. My mom died

1132
01:01:48,320 --> 01:01:50,280
Speaker 2: when I was eleven. When I was twelve, my dad,

1133
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 2: who never cried during her sickness or death or funeral,

1134
01:01:53,640 --> 01:01:55,480
Speaker 2: cried at an old movie. Let me stay up and

1135
01:01:55,480 --> 01:01:57,160
Speaker 2: watch with him, and I thought, right then and there,

1136
01:01:57,200 --> 01:01:59,320
Speaker 2: I get it. I want to be a feature filmmaker.

1137
01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:01,840
Speaker 2: That means I'm David Lean, it means I'm Howard Hawks,

1138
01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:04,920
Speaker 2: I'm John Ford, I'm Alfred Hitchcock. And then I went

1139
01:02:04,960 --> 01:02:09,040
Speaker 2: to Hampshire College where they were doing nothing but social documentary,

1140
01:02:09,080 --> 01:02:12,800
Speaker 2: still photography. So I realized, truthfully that there is as

1141
01:02:12,880 --> 01:02:15,400
Speaker 2: much drama, if not more, in what was and what

1142
01:02:15,600 --> 01:02:18,360
Speaker 2: is than anything that human imagination dreams up. But I

1143
01:02:18,560 --> 01:02:20,720
Speaker 2: think about it all the time. But I don't have to,

1144
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:23,000
Speaker 2: you know, Shelby called me up in the middle where

1145
01:02:23,120 --> 01:02:25,640
Speaker 2: editing had this huge problem. I called him up and

1146
01:02:25,680 --> 01:02:27,960
Speaker 2: I just said, I can't figure out how to do

1147
01:02:28,120 --> 01:02:31,800
Speaker 2: Vicksburg and Gettysburg. And he said, God's the greatest dramatist,

1148
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:35,920
Speaker 2: I said, he said, I said, what goes? God's the

1149
01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:38,440
Speaker 2: greatest dramatist. So I hung up, and I realized, just

1150
01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:40,760
Speaker 2: tell it the way it happened. So everybody either puts

1151
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 2: Vicksburg after Gettysburg or Vicksburg before, but actually Vicksburg happens

1152
01:02:45,240 --> 01:02:49,280
Speaker 2: before and during and after a Yettysburg. And that's exactly

1153
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:51,360
Speaker 2: the way. And then he called me up and he

1154
01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:53,360
Speaker 2: said it again. He said, maybe a couple of years later,

1155
01:02:53,400 --> 01:02:55,400
Speaker 2: he goes, God's the greatest dramatis. Who would have thought

1156
01:02:55,520 --> 01:02:57,439
Speaker 2: that Lee would surrender the grant and a few days

1157
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:00,200
Speaker 2: later Lincoln would have enough free time after eighteen hour

1158
01:03:00,720 --> 01:03:04,560
Speaker 2: days prosecuting the war to go to the theater. God

1159
01:03:04,640 --> 01:03:05,440
Speaker 2: is the greatest drama.

1160
01:03:05,880 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: No, it just tell the story.

1161
01:03:08,840 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 2: Just tell the story. And then and people say, what's

1162
01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:13,360
Speaker 2: your structure? I go and then and then, and then

1163
01:03:13,480 --> 01:03:15,480
Speaker 2: if you look at our World War two drama, we

1164
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:18,360
Speaker 2: land d day, go back to the reaction, and then

1165
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:21,120
Speaker 2: go to Saipan, because that's what the front page of

1166
01:03:21,160 --> 01:03:23,400
Speaker 2: the paper is looking at. Everybody does, Oh, we'll do

1167
01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:25,400
Speaker 2: the European. Then we'll go to do the Pacific. And

1168
01:03:25,440 --> 01:03:28,240
Speaker 2: then you have no idea of their continuity. And so

1169
01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:30,320
Speaker 2: we then go back and they're having trouble breaking out

1170
01:03:30,360 --> 01:03:32,320
Speaker 2: of the hedgerows. And then you go back to the

1171
01:03:32,360 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 2: middle of the Battle of Sidepark.

1172
01:03:33,560 --> 01:03:34,960
Speaker 1: I wish you were put in charge of the World

1173
01:03:34,960 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 1: War two memorial here. I'm not going to make you

1174
01:03:37,320 --> 01:03:41,280
Speaker 1: criticize it. It frustrates me to all end. How it is,

1175
01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: how it just barely scratches the surface. I get it.

1176
01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:48,120
Speaker 1: It's what happens when you have a committee. Whenever you

1177
01:03:48,160 --> 01:03:49,640
Speaker 1: put a committee in charge of something.

1178
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 2: The greatest gotaclosm in human history. We can do better.

1179
01:03:52,920 --> 01:03:56,720
Speaker 1: We can do so much better than that. So America

1180
01:03:56,760 --> 01:03:59,000
Speaker 1: two fifty, How do you celebrate? How do you tell

1181
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:04,520
Speaker 1: how do you tell somebody to celebrate? How would you Well, it's.

1182
01:04:04,400 --> 01:04:07,360
Speaker 2: All individual and independent, right, We're all citizens. We've got

1183
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:11,240
Speaker 2: that great special privilege. What I've done every year is,

1184
01:04:11,800 --> 01:04:14,520
Speaker 2: with maybe one or two exceptions over the last forty years,

1185
01:04:14,840 --> 01:04:16,720
Speaker 2: is at our late cottage, I get out on the

1186
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:19,400
Speaker 2: front porch and before I let anybody eat, I read

1187
01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:22,560
Speaker 2: them the Declaration of Independence. And it ends with we

1188
01:04:22,640 --> 01:04:26,160
Speaker 2: mutually pledged to each other our lives, our fortunes, and

1189
01:04:26,200 --> 01:04:31,240
Speaker 2: our sacred honor. And you know who, George Washington was

1190
01:04:31,280 --> 01:04:33,360
Speaker 2: probably the richest person in America, or one of the

1191
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:36,840
Speaker 2: richest at the time of the revolution, certainly before he was,

1192
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:39,400
Speaker 2: and he risked everything, his life and his fortune and

1193
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:41,680
Speaker 2: his sacred honor. You know, you make we make a

1194
01:04:41,720 --> 01:04:45,240
Speaker 2: joke now of Washington slept here, But he spent between

1195
01:04:45,400 --> 01:04:48,680
Speaker 2: when he was named the head of the Continental Army,

1196
01:04:48,880 --> 01:04:51,040
Speaker 2: not the East Coast Army, but continental. We knew where

1197
01:04:51,080 --> 01:04:53,560
Speaker 2: we were going. By the Continental Congress, we knew where

1198
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:58,640
Speaker 2: we were going. In the early summer of seventy five,

1199
01:04:59,160 --> 01:05:02,400
Speaker 2: he gets back to my Mount Vernon for four nights. Right,

1200
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:07,280
Speaker 2: he comes back to Mount Vernon in December of seventeen

1201
01:05:07,360 --> 01:05:12,800
Speaker 2: eighty three. So who would And this is an idea

1202
01:05:12,840 --> 01:05:14,840
Speaker 2: that's never been tested. Now we've tested it for two

1203
01:05:14,880 --> 01:05:18,040
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years. And could you imagine somebody in

1204
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:22,960
Speaker 2: the top one hundred risking their lives, their fortunes, and

1205
01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:27,000
Speaker 2: their sacred honor for something as important as our founding.

1206
01:05:27,080 --> 01:05:30,920
Speaker 2: And so that's what the celebration of two fifteen. Nobody

1207
01:05:30,920 --> 01:05:33,280
Speaker 2: can tell you what it isn't nobody can tell you

1208
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:36,880
Speaker 2: what it is. It's always complex, that's the nature of

1209
01:05:36,920 --> 01:05:41,600
Speaker 2: human beings, and we should be reveling in that complexity.

1210
01:05:41,680 --> 01:05:45,280
Speaker 2: Let me give you one slight example. The bell cow

1211
01:05:45,360 --> 01:05:49,040
Speaker 2: of the conservative movement at this time is the television

1212
01:05:49,080 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 2: series Yellowstone Right. Right, This is finally they've made liberal.

1213
01:05:54,680 --> 01:05:58,320
Speaker 2: Hollywood made a story for us, right, And what is

1214
01:05:58,360 --> 01:06:01,800
Speaker 2: at the heart of that story A a patriarch who

1215
01:06:01,880 --> 01:06:05,440
Speaker 2: is the George Washington of the series, who also kills

1216
01:06:05,480 --> 01:06:07,480
Speaker 2: people who piss him off. Just as his father and

1217
01:06:07,520 --> 01:06:10,320
Speaker 2: grandfather have done, dumping their bodies wherever they went. He's

1218
01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:13,600
Speaker 2: got a daughter cut from his same cloth, as ruthless

1219
01:06:13,800 --> 01:06:17,120
Speaker 2: as he is. He's got two sons. One is tortured

1220
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:20,520
Speaker 2: by the relationship to the land and the Native American

1221
01:06:20,600 --> 01:06:24,120
Speaker 2: story that has been superimposed without any questions over that,

1222
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:26,520
Speaker 2: and he's married a Native American.

1223
01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:26,760
Speaker 1: Woman, right.

1224
01:06:27,120 --> 01:06:32,120
Speaker 2: The other son is Benedict Arnold, right. And then the

1225
01:06:32,360 --> 01:06:35,160
Speaker 2: daughter is in love with the chief foreman of this thing,

1226
01:06:35,200 --> 01:06:37,480
Speaker 2: who's in charge of a group of ranchers who are

1227
01:06:37,520 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 2: young and old, white and black, gay and straight, and

1228
01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:45,880
Speaker 2: over and surrounding them is this larger Native American issue,

1229
01:06:45,960 --> 01:06:49,439
Speaker 2: and over that this idea of development. If that isn't

1230
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:53,040
Speaker 2: as complex a storyline as anything I've said in which

1231
01:06:53,080 --> 01:06:56,360
Speaker 2: it's got undertow and all of the American experience. We

1232
01:06:56,400 --> 01:06:58,440
Speaker 2: made a film on the American Buffalo, and I remember

1233
01:06:58,480 --> 01:07:02,880
Speaker 2: looking at one scene where Kevin Costner plays the lead.

1234
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:06,280
Speaker 2: John Dutton is explaining to somebody just about it, and

1235
01:07:06,400 --> 01:07:08,960
Speaker 2: in three seconds I just turned to my daughter and

1236
01:07:09,000 --> 01:07:11,400
Speaker 2: I said, that was our four hours on the Buffalo,

1237
01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:14,840
Speaker 2: you know, And he did it in like three sentences.

1238
01:07:14,920 --> 01:07:16,720
Speaker 1: Have you ever spent. Do you know Taylor Sheridan.

1239
01:07:17,120 --> 01:07:21,000
Speaker 2: I know Kevin and he's one of the great guys.

1240
01:07:21,040 --> 01:07:25,920
Speaker 2: So anyway, yeah, it's it. Anybody trying to tell you

1241
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:28,480
Speaker 2: how it was, or to simplify it or to take

1242
01:07:28,520 --> 01:07:32,520
Speaker 2: down a plaque is scared and only authoritarians. And by

1243
01:07:32,560 --> 01:07:35,520
Speaker 2: the way, we follow in our film, and maybe this

1244
01:07:35,600 --> 01:07:39,040
Speaker 2: is a way to ram this out. We follow, among

1245
01:07:39,040 --> 01:07:41,400
Speaker 2: the one hundred and fifty different characters, we follow a

1246
01:07:41,480 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 2: German Hessian soldier named Johann Evld. He's openly contemptuous of

1247
01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:48,840
Speaker 2: these rebels, and he arrives in episode three at Staten

1248
01:07:48,880 --> 01:07:51,640
Speaker 2: Island when we send the first big batch there, but

1249
01:07:51,680 --> 01:07:54,160
Speaker 2: he's there in three, four or five and six, but

1250
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:58,440
Speaker 2: he's part of the surrounding army at Yorktown. And he says,

1251
01:07:58,560 --> 01:08:02,760
Speaker 2: after Yorktown, who would have thought one hundred years ago

1252
01:08:03,080 --> 01:08:06,240
Speaker 2: that out of this multitude of rabble could rise of

1253
01:08:06,280 --> 01:08:11,680
Speaker 2: people who could defy kings. These German soldiers who didn't

1254
01:08:11,800 --> 01:08:16,000
Speaker 2: get killed, who escaped and blended into the German communities,

1255
01:08:16,040 --> 01:08:19,280
Speaker 2: those who stayed and then got shipped back home. A

1256
01:08:19,280 --> 01:08:22,680
Speaker 2: lot of them came back with their families because they

1257
01:08:22,680 --> 01:08:26,400
Speaker 2: had seen the promised land who would have thought one

1258
01:08:26,479 --> 01:08:30,040
Speaker 2: hundred years ago, out of this multitude of rabble could

1259
01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:33,800
Speaker 2: rise of people who could defy kings johanney Vov.

1260
01:08:35,080 --> 01:08:37,920
Speaker 1: You didn't have to make up the script. Nope, it

1261
01:08:37,960 --> 01:08:38,679
Speaker 1: was right there.

1262
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:41,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, God's the greatest dramedis right there.

1263
01:08:41,360 --> 01:08:41,639
Speaker 1: You go.

1264
01:08:42,200 --> 01:08:42,880
Speaker 2: Thank you, sev.

1265
01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:47,439
Speaker 1: Ken. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Like

1266
01:08:47,479 --> 01:08:50,200
Speaker 1: I said, you've got you've got the job that many

1267
01:08:50,400 --> 01:08:55,240
Speaker 1: of us political journalists wish we could. We wish we

1268
01:08:55,280 --> 01:08:56,200
Speaker 1: could be you for a day.

1269
01:08:56,560 --> 01:09:00,599
Speaker 2: Come on over, it's all fine where you know. We're

1270
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:01,559
Speaker 2: up in rural New Nay.

1271
01:09:01,560 --> 01:09:04,160
Speaker 1: I'm going to stay in my lane of campaign history,

1272
01:09:04,240 --> 01:09:06,760
Speaker 1: so I'm messing around in that world. I think, you know,

1273
01:09:07,160 --> 01:09:10,080
Speaker 1: I think people you know, don't don't try to do

1274
01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:11,320
Speaker 1: something you're not capable of it.

1275
01:09:11,479 --> 01:09:14,280
Speaker 2: No, I agree. That's the thing. I'm so lucky because,

1276
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:17,080
Speaker 2: as I said, at twelve, I knew that, eighteen I

1277
01:09:17,160 --> 01:09:19,559
Speaker 2: knew what kind, and at twenty two it was history.

1278
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:23,960
Speaker 1: So well it is, you know, and you never half asset.

1279
01:09:24,439 --> 01:09:26,160
Speaker 1: Sorry for the colorful language.

1280
01:09:25,840 --> 01:09:28,040
Speaker 2: No, no, no, this is there's a.

1281
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:31,439
Speaker 1: Lot there's a lot of people in your space. You

1282
01:09:31,439 --> 01:09:36,639
Speaker 1: could start, you know, Ken Burns presents somebody else's version

1283
01:09:36,720 --> 01:09:39,240
Speaker 1: of history, and you could license your name and make

1284
01:09:39,280 --> 01:09:41,840
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of money and not have to work anymore. Yeah,

1285
01:09:42,040 --> 01:09:44,439
Speaker 1: but I don't I get the sense that you wouldn't

1286
01:09:44,479 --> 01:09:45,000
Speaker 1: be proud of that.

1287
01:09:45,160 --> 01:09:47,799
Speaker 2: No, no, no, And and the work's the thing, you know,

1288
01:09:48,000 --> 01:09:49,320
Speaker 2: why would you take a shortcut?

1289
01:09:49,320 --> 01:09:49,559
Speaker 1: If?

1290
01:09:49,840 --> 01:09:52,880
Speaker 2: If? I mean, every film is a million no exaggeration,

1291
01:09:53,080 --> 01:09:56,479
Speaker 2: a million problems. But we don't see the problems as pejorative.

1292
01:09:56,520 --> 01:09:59,960
Speaker 2: We see them as inevitable friction that every marathon runner knows.

1293
01:10:00,360 --> 01:10:01,880
Speaker 2: I don't want to pick up my foot this next

1294
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:04,120
Speaker 2: time I picked up my foot. I don't want to

1295
01:10:04,120 --> 01:10:05,720
Speaker 2: pick up the night I pick up my foot. And

1296
01:10:05,760 --> 01:10:07,840
Speaker 2: you just you figure this out? How do you tell

1297
01:10:07,840 --> 01:10:10,479
Speaker 2: this story? How do you do Vicksburg? And Getty's all right?

1298
01:10:10,960 --> 01:10:13,760
Speaker 1: There you go. Look, I think the more remarkable thing

1299
01:10:13,840 --> 01:10:15,759
Speaker 1: is not how many you start, it's how many you finish.

1300
01:10:15,960 --> 01:10:16,400
Speaker 2: That's right.

1301
01:10:16,439 --> 01:10:18,320
Speaker 1: And we've been so flushing is the hard part.

1302
01:10:18,520 --> 01:10:22,519
Speaker 2: We have finished. We have not abandoned a project once

1303
01:10:22,560 --> 01:10:26,360
Speaker 2: we started shooting. Been very lucky, lucky.

1304
01:10:26,320 --> 01:10:29,320
Speaker 1: So lucky. Well we're the lucky ones. Ken always a pleasure,

1305
01:10:29,600 --> 01:10:32,280
Speaker 1: Thank you, check, see you next time. Happy Birthday America.

1306
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:35,280
Speaker 2: Thanks Yeah, happy birthday. Let's let's have a real celebration.

1307
01:10:35,600 --> 01:10:36,960
Speaker 1: Absolutely, thank you.