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Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the

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Speaker 1: thing I think of a recent documentary you've loved. The

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Speaker 1: slow pan over still photos, the tight queue of period music,

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Speaker 1: the subtle shift from a personal story to a historical one.

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Speaker 1: These techniques have become so associated with Ken Burns that

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Speaker 1: the word burns in is found everywhere from the New

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Speaker 1: Yorker to the Times of Israel. And like any great artist,

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Speaker 1: Burns has created a whole studio of talent to carry

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Speaker 1: out his vision. In nine he brought on board the

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Speaker 1: brilliant Lynn Novic, with whom he just wrapped up ten

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Speaker 1: years of work on PBS's The Vietnam War. The series

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Speaker 1: wades deep into every possible angle of a conflict still

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Speaker 1: seared into the American consciousness. I invited them on the

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Speaker 1: show to talk about Vietnam, their paths to a making,

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Speaker 1: and they're ridiculously packed production schedule. We are planned out

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Speaker 1: to and we can waste most of your time telling

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Speaker 1: you even the thumbnail descriptions of all the things we're

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Speaker 1: doing on the American Revolution and Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad

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Speaker 1: Ali in the History of Reconstruction lb J and civil rights,

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Speaker 1: the possibilities must be infinite. Is budget a factor? No,

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Speaker 1: who's the decider? No, I'm at work, I'm the decider.

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Speaker 1: So far, how do you settle on? Hemingway is supposed

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Speaker 1: to fit general. So here's what it is. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of like friends and love and intimacy. We have lots

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Speaker 1: of ideas, as you're saying, the cauldrons are all boiling

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Speaker 1: over with potential projects, and we think about them. We're

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Speaker 1: making lists all the time, but their ideas, they're the

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Speaker 1: pink bong balls of the lottery. But every once in

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Speaker 1: a while, something goes down in here. So for example,

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Speaker 1: Jeff Ward our principal writer, and Lynn and I've been

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Speaker 1: talking about Hemingway. Jeff and I have been talking since

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Speaker 1: the eighties. Hemingway has been on shortlist of things. And

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Speaker 1: then finally it's just the gut feeling it comes down

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Speaker 1: and say yes, it's time to do Hemmingway. Um, now, Lynn,

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Speaker 1: I want to ask you, tell me what film and

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Speaker 1: you studied American studies at Yale. Yeah. Were your parents

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Speaker 1: and the biz at all? No, not at all. They're

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Speaker 1: both sort of more in science and math. My father's

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Speaker 1: a biologist, my mother's a neuropsychologist, so I'm kind of

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Speaker 1: the outlier in the family. It was a neuropsychologist who

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Speaker 1: does evaluations of kids with learning issues and tries to

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Speaker 1: figure out what's going on in their brains and then

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Speaker 1: helps figure out how to fix it. And you went

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Speaker 1: to Yale four. I thought I was going to be

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Speaker 1: premat actually, and that lasted about six weeks and I

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Speaker 1: sort of checking it down. Yes, exactly. And when I

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Speaker 1: sort of evolved into realizing I wanted to work in

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Speaker 1: documentary film, they kept saying, Okay, but how's that going

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Speaker 1: to work? Where are you? Where are you going to

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Speaker 1: actually work? Are you ever going to have a job?

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Speaker 1: What are you going to do with yourself? Are you

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Speaker 1: gonna move out? Yeah? Exactly. There was some of that too.

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Speaker 1: So where did it begin for you in terms of

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Speaker 1: when you shouted American studies at Yale? Did you go

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Speaker 1: to graduate school? I didn't. I thought about going to

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Speaker 1: film school, but at the time that I graduated, most

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Speaker 1: film schools really focused on narrative scripted. Um you know

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Speaker 1: drogs they are now, No, they weren't there. You couldn't

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Speaker 1: really study it in film school. I don't think we

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Speaker 1: talk about that, but when you get out of Yale.

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Speaker 1: So what's the path too? It was a very non

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Speaker 1: linear path. Um. I worked for a while as a

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Speaker 1: research assistant at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and

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Speaker 1: then I realized I didn't want to be a historian

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Speaker 1: and work in a museum, and I wanted to work

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Speaker 1: on historical documentaries. And I eventually got an internship at

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Speaker 1: w n E T here and got some some production experience.

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Speaker 1: I've freelanced. I worked for Bill Moyers for several years.

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Speaker 1: That was wonderful. It was I was going to graduate

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Speaker 1: school basically in how to do this, And then, luckily

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Speaker 1: for me, I figured out that ken Burns was working

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Speaker 1: on a film on the Civil War, and I just

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Speaker 1: waited until I've heard that he might have an opening,

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Speaker 1: and then I applied. And that was what do you

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Speaker 1: think he hired you? Four? What do you think ken

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Speaker 1: burn saw in you? That's a very good question. I

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Speaker 1: guess maybe. Um, I was passionate and interested and I

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Speaker 1: wanted to learn, I will say those things. And I

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Speaker 1: think having worked with film Moyer's helped a little bit.

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Speaker 1: So So, first of all, where I went to Hampshire

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Speaker 1: College and study film and photography every single semester, every

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Speaker 1: single semester, every single semester, and started we did organize

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Speaker 1: a little film company in the college to do uh

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Speaker 1: completely at cost films for nonprofits in western Massachusetts. And

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Speaker 1: so following that model, I started a company called Florentine

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Speaker 1: Films after I graduated, and the first one was one

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Speaker 1: on the Brooklyn Bridge. I moved out in Manhattan up

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Speaker 1: to up to the wilds of New Hampshire then, but

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Speaker 1: we were finishing the Civil War. It was done or

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Speaker 1: a month or two from locking, and I had lost

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Speaker 1: an associate producer who just sort of very unceremoniously left,

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Speaker 1: and friends suggested that I talked to Lynn, and she said,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'd love this job. You know, all of

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Speaker 1: her credentials seemed perfect and and but she was going

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Speaker 1: to get married and go on her honeymoon. She wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be able to start until mid July. Said that's fine,

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Speaker 1: that's fine, that's fine. We take the long view this

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Speaker 1: this project had taken five and a half years, and uh,

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Speaker 1: she was gonna attend to some rights issues for the

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Speaker 1: photographs and other things. And the previous person told me

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Speaker 1: they thought it would be done the following February. By

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Speaker 1: August fifteen, she had it done and we've been working

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Speaker 1: together ever since, like a month. So so Moyers was

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Speaker 1: more shall we say, agit prop than a lot of

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Speaker 1: other people. He was a very political guy, was the

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Speaker 1: projects I worked with him on. Joseph Campbell's series was

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Speaker 1: not really political, sort of existential and really deep way

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Speaker 1: about philosophical Yeah, and that was surprising to me that

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Speaker 1: I when I was working on it, I thought, she,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if American people are gonna want to

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Speaker 1: watch six or eight hours of talking about philosophy and

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Speaker 1: the meaning of life, and turned out to be a

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Speaker 1: huge hit because there's such a hunger for that kind

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Speaker 1: of conversation. Um. Just watching Bill work and seeing how

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Speaker 1: he related to the people that he spoke to and

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Speaker 1: the kind of quality that he expected of all the

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Speaker 1: producers that worked there was a great education for you. Ken,

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Speaker 1: I'll go with you first, and then Lynn, what did

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Speaker 1: Vietnam mean to you personally? At the advent of the project.

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Speaker 1: So I always picked things I don't know about and

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Speaker 1: want to know about. Rather telling you what I know,

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Speaker 1: I'd rather share with you our process of discovery. So

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Speaker 1: two films Baseball, which Lenn and I produced together uh

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Speaker 1: In in the nineties. I thought I knew something because

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Speaker 1: I've been a wild about baseball from the moment I

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Speaker 1: could remember anything, and I instantly found out how little

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Speaker 1: I knew. I grew up in Antarbora, Michigan. I was

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Speaker 1: present for the first teaching against the war and demonstrations,

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Speaker 1: and I had a high draft number. But it was

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Speaker 1: very politically active campus, very politically active campus, and a

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Speaker 1: politically active father, and you know, I was just thought, well,

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Speaker 1: I know everything about it. And basically for ten and

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Speaker 1: a half years, it was daily humiliation of what we

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Speaker 1: didn't know. And what's so great is that to basically

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Speaker 1: lose your baggage early on, lose that conventional wisdom that

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Speaker 1: actually is wrong, and then be able to avail ourselves

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Speaker 1: in a very clean way of more than forty years

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Speaker 1: of new scholarship in every single department, so that we

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Speaker 1: got excited because we dissembled all these scholars there, and

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Speaker 1: as we're working first with proposals, then with early scripts,

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Speaker 1: then with advanced scripts, then with assemblies and rough cuts

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Speaker 1: and fine cuts, they're all blown away, not by what

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Speaker 1: they've contributed, which is significant but what their colleagues have

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Speaker 1: contributed because they don't know that stuff. And then all

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Speaker 1: the other colleagues are saying the same thing about their stuff,

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Speaker 1: and you begin to realize, Wow, we are aggregating in

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Speaker 1: here the latest stuff. You know, the centrality of Ho

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Speaker 1: Chi Minh to the leadership of the Vietnam we assume,

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Speaker 1: you know, we so we we we have in episode one.

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Speaker 1: It turns out it's another guy who's really in charge,

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Speaker 1: and he'll be a character in old ten episodes. But

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Speaker 1: everybody presumed Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh and LF is

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Speaker 1: gonna win, and nobody asked another question about that. I

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Speaker 1: know Lynn will agree with me. When Americans talk about Vietnam,

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Speaker 1: we just talk about ourselves, and that what what we

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Speaker 1: needed to do was to triangulate with all the other perspectives,

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Speaker 1: not just the enemy. This isn't just Clint eas We're

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Speaker 1: doing postcards and all of that sort of stuff. It's

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Speaker 1: finding out what the civilians felt, the enemy felt, the

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Speaker 1: viet Cong felt, But then our our our all the

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Speaker 1: South Vietnamese who get treated like you know what all

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Speaker 1: the time, and their civilians and their protesters, as well

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Speaker 1: as all the servicemen that we did in the air

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Speaker 1: or marines or army guys and everybody all the way

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Speaker 1: out to deserters and draft dodgers across the American spectrum.

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Speaker 1: And if you then do that, then the kind of

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Speaker 1: political dialectic loses its its force because you realize that

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Speaker 1: more than one truth could obtain at any given moment.

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Speaker 1: From my money, what I walked away with that project

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Speaker 1: was that ho Chiman was a man who understood his

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Speaker 1: people and what they wanted and what he needed more

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Speaker 1: than his American counterparts. From the moment Kennedy is assassinated

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Speaker 1: to the moment that Nixon resigns. Yes, you go, there's

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Speaker 1: a line from sixty three all the way down to

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Speaker 1: seventy three. There's ten years there was out of power

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Speaker 1: when he died in sixty nine, and by sixty four

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Speaker 1: he had essentially neutralized himself on the Polite Bureau. From

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Speaker 1: there on end he had opposed the tet offensive vehemently,

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Speaker 1: and his secretary was throughout the fifties and then on

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Speaker 1: in the early sixties. And you get to some point

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Speaker 1: in this project and go, my god, I'm just no,

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Speaker 1: My my next project is going to be about the

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Speaker 1: boy Scouts. No, Because Lynn came in and we looked

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Speaker 1: at each other and realized we had to do Vietnam,

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Speaker 1: inviting exactly what you just talked about. The Second World War.

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Speaker 1: Our first episode is called a necessary war. But what

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Speaker 1: would happen if you took a war in which there's

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Speaker 1: not a positive that. You know, we didn't unite the

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Speaker 1: Union and free slaves, we didn't end the world of

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Speaker 1: militarism and fascism. And Americans particularly are susceptible to the

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Speaker 1: disease of argument that their Second World War they call

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Speaker 1: it the good War. It's obviously not the good war.

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Speaker 1: Sixty million people died, that's not a good war. You know,

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Speaker 1: you can't do that. History is not a parlor game.

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Speaker 1: When they're more PTSD candidates from World War Two than

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Speaker 1: there are in Vietnam. We just didn't have a name

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Speaker 1: and a convenient level. You're saying in the sense that

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Speaker 1: Vietnam was no worse than the other war, that's hugely important.

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Speaker 1: It was divisive. I think, um, it is different than

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Speaker 1: the other wars before then that we paid attention to

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Speaker 1: and that we didn't win. And it was so divisive

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Speaker 1: while it was going on, and we never could talk

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Speaker 1: about like Kinna saying, so I always think a bit

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Speaker 1: sort of like this childhood trauma, say that we never

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Speaker 1: talked about and just never dealt with, and it just

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Speaker 1: keeps cooking away underneath the surface. And so that's why

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Speaker 1: the film was the most challenging thing we've ever done.

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Speaker 1: And like Kenna's saying, just this chance to bring people

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Speaker 1: together to kind of start over. Okay, something terrible happened.

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Speaker 1: We've never really figured it out. We don't know what

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Speaker 1: it was, We don't know what was going on in Vietnam.

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Speaker 1: Maybe if we would just let people tell us their

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Speaker 1: story and put it together, we could find out some

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Speaker 1: sort of deeper truths that we've never really acknowledged. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: the Vietnam War has been covered in you know, to

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Speaker 1: a fairy Well and film, in books, in Broadway musicals.

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Speaker 1: Do you start by immersing yourself and what other people

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Speaker 1: have done or you just tune that out completely. It's

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Speaker 1: a really tough one because you don't want to imitate

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Speaker 1: when anybody else has done. And we've certainly carry around

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Speaker 1: in all of our heads the Hollywood versions of the

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Speaker 1: Vietnam War, so we didn't have to immerse ourselves. They're

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Speaker 1: just they're present health poclets now put you in the

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Speaker 1: deer Hunter. We're very familiar with those. But for documentaries

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Speaker 1: that have been done, and there have been some great ones,

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Speaker 1: and there have been some very sort of dated things

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Speaker 1: that were great at their time, we sort of check

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Speaker 1: them at the door. Our colleagues have to look at

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Speaker 1: all that for for footage and stills, so for research perverses,

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Speaker 1: we have to go through everything and see what's out there.

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Speaker 1: I go to a monastery and take a vale of silence.

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Speaker 1: I will not look at anything anywhere, nothing, and just

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Speaker 1: try to make sure complete. Even though I've seen this,

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Speaker 1: has lind said that, even though I've seen this stuff,

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Speaker 1: I need to be free of I'm always in President Lincoln.

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Speaker 1: It's difficult. I read a lot too. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of you know, we we do have

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Speaker 1: a big team of people helping us. So I've been

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Speaker 1: in an interview you did with somebody where you mentioned

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Speaker 1: a board of advisors that you can so describe the

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Speaker 1: board of advisors and what their role is. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: we we put together the foremost experts on the subject

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Speaker 1: whatever film we're working on. So in this particular case,

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Speaker 1: you have an ad hoc consultants like that people some

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Speaker 1: some We have a couple of people who come on

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Speaker 1: more than one project because they just understand American history

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Speaker 1: and pretty much can talk about and understand. And every

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Speaker 1: Bill Luchenburg is in nineties something year old, yeah year

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Speaker 1: old historians, Dean of American Historians. He's we don't leave

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Speaker 1: home without him. He was with my Hue Long film

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Speaker 1: back in the early eighties and I think he's just

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Speaker 1: done the majority of the film since. But for this case,

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Speaker 1: we also wanted um veterans, we wanted Vietnamese historians, we

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Speaker 1: wanted military storms, you wanted social historians, pop culture, Hispanic American,

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Speaker 1: African American presidential audio. Right, So it's it's a wide range. Actually,

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Speaker 1: probably twenty people by the time we collect all these

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Speaker 1: different experts. Some of them read scripts and then don't

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Speaker 1: come to screenings, some kind of screenings and haven't read

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Speaker 1: a script. Some are there every step of the way,

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Speaker 1: and their roles kind of evolve over time as the

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Speaker 1: film evolved. You you remember in another interview you will

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Speaker 1: also reference how you had the Vietnamese producer Ho Ho

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Speaker 1: dang Wa, and you mentioned said in another project you

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Speaker 1: did where you were interviewing the famous Japanese baseball player,

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Speaker 1: and you couldn't keep up with him, and you couldn't

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Speaker 1: that you're a follower, so you decided you wanted to

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Speaker 1: approach things differently. But but you also mentioned that you

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Speaker 1: were talking to some of these men in the Vietnamese counterparts,

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Speaker 1: and you were kind of taking with how gracious they

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Speaker 1: were talking about people you knew they hated in a

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Speaker 1: despise and had fought in war. Very different from the

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Speaker 1: American point of because when Americans talk about these things

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Speaker 1: it's often very heated. We had both, you know, we

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Speaker 1: had people on both sides that talked about their hatred

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Speaker 1: for the enemy. But it's interesting now that they're at

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Speaker 1: the age that they're at and many of them are

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Speaker 1: grandfathers and have survived, they're most curious. Like we we

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Speaker 1: were able before the film came out to share with

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Speaker 1: Center McCain, who we did not interview, and consciously told

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Speaker 1: him early on in the project we weren't going to

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Speaker 1: interview him, or carry or Kissinger or heroes. That wasn't

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Speaker 1: been a big because no, no, no, because they're still

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Speaker 1: polishing their apple in the public sphere, and we didn't

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Speaker 1: want any of that. We want people that you didn't know,

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Speaker 1: and then they would be characters carry and and McCain

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Speaker 1: and Kissinger and and but they couldn't try to put

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Speaker 1: their thumb on the scale in anyway. He got it immediately.

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Speaker 1: But when it was done done, he invited us in

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Speaker 1: for what was just going to be a few minutes.

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Speaker 1: All he wanted to watch, and he kept extending it

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Speaker 1: in the aids said no, you've got to go. Was

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Speaker 1: he wanted to watch them the other side. And what

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Speaker 1: you begin to realize is that at that point of combat,

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Speaker 1: which is where human beings are at their very worst,

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Speaker 1: they're really good at killing the other people and avoiding

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Speaker 1: being killed or all this stuff happens. But it's hell,

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Speaker 1: and we couldn't even possibly imagine what it's like. And

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Speaker 1: we've tried so hard in so many films, from Civil

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Speaker 1: War through World War Two into this. But they recognize

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Speaker 1: each other, and they that recognition has transcendent, and so

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Speaker 1: he wants to see what they're saying, and what they're

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Speaker 1: saying sounds so exactly like our marines and our army guys.

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Speaker 1: And so you have a marine, for example, Karmar Lantis

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Speaker 1: who says you know, we're not the dominant species on

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Speaker 1: the planet because we're nice, right, And people complained that, oh,

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Speaker 1: the military turns young men into killing machines. I'd suggest

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Speaker 1: it's only finishing school. On the other side, we have

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Speaker 1: an n V a young soldier now kind of beloved,

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Speaker 1: David McCullough, Yoda uh figure in in in their culture,

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Speaker 1: and he says, um, humans are the only animal the

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Speaker 1: kill when they're not hungry. I've been in the jungle.

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Speaker 1: I spend time in the jungle. Even the tiger does

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Speaker 1: not kill when it's not hungry. And so what you

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Speaker 1: find on the front line is a kind of similarity.

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Speaker 1: And so for the North Vietnamese, nobody had asked them

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Speaker 1: these questions before, because I remember, this is the singular

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Speaker 1: victory of the people capital p So they've never heard

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Speaker 1: about losses. They've never seen their dead bodies scooped up

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Speaker 1: with uh you know, you know, bulldozers and things like that,

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Speaker 1: and no one said, what did you feel, who did

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Speaker 1: you lose? What did your mother worry about? Which is

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Speaker 1: the questions we in a kind of egocentric, narcissistic Western

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Speaker 1: society kind of promote. And so when you hear them

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Speaker 1: they break down and cry just like our guys do,

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Speaker 1: and they get outraged just like our guys doing. It's

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Speaker 1: a pretty it's a wonderful affirmation of what we sort

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Speaker 1: of loosely talk about and don't really believe is a

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Speaker 1: common humanity. I think, as this is evolved in my life,

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Speaker 1: I'm somebody that as a boy on Long Island, they

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Speaker 1: named an award my high school, uh for the most

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Speaker 1: improved athlete that was called the Roland Floria Award, who

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Speaker 1: died two weeks before he was meant to come home.

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Speaker 1: He was all ready to get discharged. And he was

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Speaker 1: the brother of a family that lived down the block

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Speaker 1: from us, and the and the sisters in the family

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Speaker 1: were our babysitters. And as this is evolved in my

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Speaker 1: life watching films which Full Metal Jacket is my favorite

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Speaker 1: because you distill it down to the the indefective ability

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Speaker 1: of the of the enemy. It's a girl with a

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Speaker 1: gun in a building and just she's gonna take it

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Speaker 1: all the way down the line and kills many of

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Speaker 1: her enemy as she can infend. And you met her

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Speaker 1: in real life in the Ted Offensive a couple of times, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you met that counterpart from full matile jacket,

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Speaker 1: but it really a real person. But for me, what

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Speaker 1: we would I arrived at the point I arrived at

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Speaker 1: is not just Ellsberg, Pentagon papers McNamara. We knew was

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Speaker 1: wrong at the time, not in hindsight. We knew it

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Speaker 1: was wrong. They knew it was a mistake in the

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Speaker 1: middle of it. When it also takes me to us

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Speaker 1: is the evolution of the MA are in military. People

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Speaker 1: are embedded. It's a limited transparency, there's no draft, it's

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Speaker 1: a professional military. The ten part documentary I'd like to

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Speaker 1: see Lennovik and ken Burns do is the history of

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Speaker 1: the U. S Military and how we've arrived where we

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Speaker 1: are now. We're on one hand, you believe even though

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Speaker 1: a hornet's nest has been kicked, maybe we kicked it,

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Speaker 1: Maybe we should have, maybe we shouldn't in the Middle East,

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Speaker 1: But the point of the fact matter is we've kicked

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Speaker 1: its kicked and if we walk away, we can't walk away.

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Speaker 1: We have to engage somewhere, some where we engage and

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Speaker 1: how is always the question. But the idea that we

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Speaker 1: can just hold the bartend to come home is ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: But but but I want to ask you both back to

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Speaker 1: one thing that I just in this question of heroes,

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Speaker 1: because it's come up a few times about what's the hero,

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Speaker 1: and this film taught us that there's lots of different

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Speaker 1: ways to be a hero in a situation like this.

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Speaker 1: And they're certainly incredibly heroic soldiers on both sides, and

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Speaker 1: you know, sacrifice for other people and are brave and

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Speaker 1: do incredible things and sometimes suffer terribly for it. But

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Speaker 1: they're also the heroes who went to Canada and the

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Speaker 1: heroes who protested the war, and the heroes who revealed

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Speaker 1: what was wrong about the war, you know, and the

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Speaker 1: reporters who tried to cover it, and the Vietnamese who

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Speaker 1: didn't believe that what their government was doing was right.

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Speaker 1: So it's just it's sort of up ended our no

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Speaker 1: conventional wisdom of what's the hero, which may deal with

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Speaker 1: this really horrendous tragedy over ten years inspiring for us. Actually,

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Speaker 1: I was overcome by a Rory Kennedy's movie Last Days

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Speaker 1: of Vietnam, which he talks about that guy that was

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Speaker 1: the guy that got everybody out of thereon Yeah, he's tortured,

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Speaker 1: Stewart Harrington by the people they left behind. To this day,

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Speaker 1: you know and and like he personally feels he's carrying

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Speaker 1: the weight of the decisions made by people in Washington.

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Speaker 1: My next question for you is, um, are you a

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Speaker 1: filmmaker or a journalist? And an easy one, I think yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think we definitely in ourselves filmmakers and not journalists.

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Speaker 1: But have you picked up some kind of you Obviously

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Speaker 1: you've acquired some journalistic education along the world, trying to

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Speaker 1: be really scrupulous about what we think is true and

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Speaker 1: what the facts are the way of journalist would, but

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Speaker 1: we really want distance to be able to evaluate which

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Speaker 1: facts are important. So Philip Graham, who owned the Washington Post,

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Speaker 1: um said that journalism is the first rough draft of history.

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Speaker 1: It's a great thing. But what history is able to

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Speaker 1: do is come back and triangulate, take advantage of the perspective.

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Speaker 1: The passage of time has permitted us to get uh

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Speaker 1: clearer sources. So we do participate in certain journalistic ethics,

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Speaker 1: but we're filmmakers. We are interested in telling a story.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever had a situation where you're doing a

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Speaker 1: project and you have someone who is significant to the project,

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Speaker 1: even integral, and then you find out that they weren't

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Speaker 1: necessarily on the up and up with you and what

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Speaker 1: do you do in war? You have to be particularly

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Speaker 1: careful because the fish gets bigger the farther away from

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Speaker 1: the lake you get. And there are people who feel

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Speaker 1: a certain amount of survivor's guilt who then have to

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Speaker 1: expand their story. And because war is tenent combat and

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Speaker 1: the rest is support, people who were in support often

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Speaker 1: guildlily a little bit. So we always make sure that

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Speaker 1: we can at least place them at the place where

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Speaker 1: they are based on their military record at that day.

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Speaker 1: Then we have to look him in the eye and say,

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Speaker 1: is this story believable? And that's why one of the

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Speaker 1: things the veterans do, the advisors do is they go, oh,

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Speaker 1: that's bs that that that debt didn't happen, And we

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Speaker 1: do it. And sometimes we've found people that were, as

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Speaker 1: you say, central parts of our narrative that we just

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Speaker 1: felt that we felt more comfortable if we could pare

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Speaker 1: them back a little bit. Well, people who come right

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Speaker 1: out and say John carry lied, he didn't do any

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Speaker 1: of the things he did that one in the Purple Heart.

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Speaker 1: Some people argue it cost him the presidency, that he

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Speaker 1: didn't respond adequately to that nothing happened. Well, this is

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Speaker 1: what happens when we politicize. We permit that relatively superficial

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Speaker 1: but so intoxicating and so seductive world of the buying

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Speaker 1: area of the yes and no. And so you can't

429
00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:43,679
Speaker 1: do that with Vietnam. You can't do that intel an

430
00:20:43,680 --> 00:20:48,000
Speaker 1: accurate story because it just sort of sets itself against itself,

431
00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:50,920
Speaker 1: you know. So it's we That's why we took ourselves

432
00:20:50,920 --> 00:20:54,119
Speaker 1: out of that contemporary debate about say carry it's interesting

433
00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:55,919
Speaker 1: to hear you talk now about you know what the

434
00:20:55,920 --> 00:20:58,440
Speaker 1: political DNA is or isn't in some of these projects,

435
00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:01,960
Speaker 1: and you privately have been somewhat politically. You've given money

436
00:21:01,960 --> 00:21:06,560
Speaker 1: to the Democratic Party. UM. In mid June of I

437
00:21:06,760 --> 00:21:10,120
Speaker 1: came out warning people about what I felt were the

438
00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:15,879
Speaker 1: supreme existential dangers of the then presumed Republican nominee. And

439
00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:17,480
Speaker 1: that was the first time I've ever done it that

440
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:19,720
Speaker 1: kind of went viral. Did the video for Teddy Kennedy's

441
00:21:19,760 --> 00:21:23,520
Speaker 1: memorial correct, Yeah, but completely anonymously and didn't charge a

442
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:25,560
Speaker 1: cent and didn't want to be involved in anything other

443
00:21:25,560 --> 00:21:28,160
Speaker 1: than somebody that I had known and respected. I don't

444
00:21:28,200 --> 00:21:30,439
Speaker 1: list that film on my resume. I just it was

445
00:21:30,520 --> 00:21:34,120
Speaker 1: something that I'm say, you have a democratic political DNA,

446
00:21:34,400 --> 00:21:36,639
Speaker 1: but what I would think it's masterful. This may be

447
00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:38,679
Speaker 1: one of the greatest things about ken Burns is filmmaking,

448
00:21:38,680 --> 00:21:41,280
Speaker 1: because you've kept the politics out of it. I think

449
00:21:41,280 --> 00:21:45,240
Speaker 1: the integrity of the films is inseparable from our collectively,

450
00:21:45,680 --> 00:21:49,720
Speaker 1: not just Lynn, but the films I do with other producers. Um,

451
00:21:49,840 --> 00:21:52,879
Speaker 1: we've we've made that decision to leave it out of

452
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:56,000
Speaker 1: it because it is so binary, it is so superficial,

453
00:21:56,040 --> 00:21:59,760
Speaker 1: it is so easy to just it's it's it's in

454
00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:02,359
Speaker 1: the end it is. I mean, there's a place for

455
00:22:02,440 --> 00:22:05,680
Speaker 1: political films, and that's an important part of the tradition

456
00:22:05,720 --> 00:22:08,240
Speaker 1: of documentary films that we have advocacy. We still have

457
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 1: a First Amendment. People can say, I believe it's this

458
00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:16,000
Speaker 1: way I'm trying. There's too much pluribus, Arthur Sassenger Jr. Said,

459
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:18,439
Speaker 1: and not enough unhum. So we actually just started a

460
00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:21,280
Speaker 1: website called Unum, which is trying to curate and take

461
00:22:21,320 --> 00:22:23,280
Speaker 1: the scenes from all these films to say, look, we

462
00:22:23,359 --> 00:22:27,160
Speaker 1: have shared stories. We're not trying to exclude anybody. When

463
00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:29,440
Speaker 1: you add an African dimension to a civil war story,

464
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:32,840
Speaker 1: you're not excluding other people. Well, I mean, this can't

465
00:22:32,880 --> 00:22:34,680
Speaker 1: be helped your ken burn, so you must walk around

466
00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:37,160
Speaker 1: old day people going excuse me, could you do a

467
00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:41,119
Speaker 1: story on the history of pizza. I think that people

468
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:46,560
Speaker 1: don't understand how important pizza is. But you know, getting

469
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 1: to this idea of your own personal ethic, did you

470
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 1: have to do some kind of political lobotomizing in order

471
00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:55,000
Speaker 1: to do the work you do? Affective? What happened for

472
00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:57,359
Speaker 1: you when you're a politize? You know, I feel very

473
00:22:57,359 --> 00:22:59,640
Speaker 1: grateful that my parents gave me a great education. Being

474
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:02,800
Speaker 1: credit and thinking about what happened and being honest are important,

475
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:05,560
Speaker 1: and that's been a huge sort of existential challenge to

476
00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:07,840
Speaker 1: sit down people. You do it all the time. A

477
00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:10,119
Speaker 1: lot of people don't do it. Talk to someone that

478
00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:12,480
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily agree with, and here where they're coming from,

479
00:23:12,720 --> 00:23:15,480
Speaker 1: think about why, think about who they are. Understand the

480
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:18,440
Speaker 1: documentary character. Look, you want a narrative character. The minute

481
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,280
Speaker 1: you look at that character in in in literature, whether

482
00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:23,919
Speaker 1: it's Williams or Faulkner or Shakespeare, and you look at

483
00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:25,639
Speaker 1: them and you study and they go, wow, that's interesting.

484
00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:27,160
Speaker 1: You meet the person in real life, feel like, get

485
00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 1: away from me. You mentioned round the Board of Education.

486
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:32,800
Speaker 1: I can't help but suggest that would be a really

487
00:23:32,800 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 1: great topic of the Supreme Court. The Court. So sometimes

488
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:41,000
Speaker 1: these uh formulations get a little bit expository into dactic.

489
00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:43,719
Speaker 1: So what I often say is that a lot of

490
00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:46,680
Speaker 1: times our films will cover this, like we've got obviously

491
00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:49,520
Speaker 1: the Dreads got Decision in this film, We've got plus

492
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:53,000
Speaker 1: the versus Ferguson in five films, We've got you known.

493
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:57,199
Speaker 1: So what happens is instead of just segregating it into

494
00:23:57,480 --> 00:24:00,720
Speaker 1: Philadelphia with the with the wigs and the green felt

495
00:24:00,760 --> 00:24:05,199
Speaker 1: tables with the white quill pens, exactly what you you

496
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: have the Constitution operating in all of the stories that

497
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 1: we're telling, whether it's Jackie Jackie Robinson, our film on

498
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:14,080
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson that I made with my daughter Sarah Burns

499
00:24:14,080 --> 00:24:17,000
Speaker 1: and her husband, the filmmaker David McMahon a few years ago,

500
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:20,600
Speaker 1: that is as much the story of Jackie Robinson taking

501
00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 1: away some of the myths that everybody has promoted. Even so,

502
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,520
Speaker 1: he was an amazing Lincoln was Lincoln during the Civil

503
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:29,640
Speaker 1: War and in the Civil Rights movement. You said Jackie

504
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:32,639
Speaker 1: Robinson was the Lincoln. He's a Republican who can't stand

505
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 1: Jack Kennedy, won't look him in the eye. Kennedy says, well,

506
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know too many negroes, and he goes,

507
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:40,720
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to know negroes, and then Kennedy has

508
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:42,440
Speaker 1: his come to Jesus. By the time of the Civil

509
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 1: Rights Act, Jackie's with Rockefeller are still a Republican, but

510
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 1: watches the Goldwater Tide votes for Johnson. And you can

511
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: see in the arc of part two of Jackie Robinson

512
00:24:52,359 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: the whole history of modern political America, which is the

513
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: switch of the Republican Party founded in eighteen fifty four

514
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:01,879
Speaker 1: and rip on Wisconsin with one thing in mind, the

515
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: emancipation of the slave hypocrisy that cannot exist any longer

516
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:10,359
Speaker 1: in this Republic. And now they become the harbor, the

517
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:15,120
Speaker 1: safe haven for white supremacists and racists. And and it

518
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: is just it's a stunning flip. And the Dixiecrats, who

519
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:23,159
Speaker 1: the Northern Democrats look the other way and counted on

520
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 1: their votes and to carry us ali itself went the

521
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 1: other way. But the Democratic Party has been liberated from

522
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: the tyranny of those people. Does he call you up

523
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: at three o'clock in the morning and do this. I

524
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 1: got this idea and it's like a twenty minute, one

525
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:43,000
Speaker 1: breath monologue. We're try not to send text before six am.

526
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:46,679
Speaker 1: At the core of Burns and Novic's documentaries is a

527
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:51,440
Speaker 1: belief in listening deeply and understanding all sides. But, as

528
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 1: Burns said, activist filmmaking has its place too. One of

529
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: the best examples, to my mind is Josh Fox's gas Land,

530
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: about fracking for natural gas in Pennsylvania. I spoke to

531
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:07,200
Speaker 1: Josh after the release of the film. Their priorities are

532
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:11,160
Speaker 1: not about protecting groundwater or keeping this situation non toxic.

533
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:14,200
Speaker 1: That couldn't be further from their priorities. Their priorities to

534
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:16,400
Speaker 1: get the gas out of the ground and make their money.

535
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: Here the rest of my interview with Josh Fox at

536
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing dot org. When we come back, Ken

537
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: Burns and Lynn Novik on Vietnam, Trump and why he'd

538
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: never leave PBS for Netflix. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're

539
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:47,760
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. One of Ken burns few

540
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: overt activism projects was lobbying presidents to pardon the Great

541
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:58,199
Speaker 1: boxer Jack Johnson. Burns thinks the conviction was driven by racism,

542
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 1: but after over ten years he much gave up. Then,

543
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:06,359
Speaker 1: advised by Sylvester Stallone, Donald Trump made it happen. In

544
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: May two eighteen. You mentioned Jack Johnson, and I'm going

545
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 1: to think you must be a huge Trump then, Now,

546
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:15,760
Speaker 1: didn't you lead a movement. I've been working with Sander

547
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: McCain since two thousand and six and we couldn't get

548
00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: w to move And for very obvious Truss, we tried

549
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: really hard. And and then for Obama, you know, I

550
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:27,160
Speaker 1: put I lifted up on the accelerated because I knew

551
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:30,160
Speaker 1: it was a no win situation for him. What this

552
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: black president is going to pardon an African American who

553
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 1: married white women and beat them? Explained that people, what

554
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 1: what what Johnson's would need to be pardoned? Four yea.

555
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 1: So Johnson is the first African American heavyweight champion, which

556
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,640
Speaker 1: was kind of He won on a mistake. Nobody had

557
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 1: intended to ever allow a black man into the ring

558
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 1: to possibly show. In those days, the superiority of the

559
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 1: races was determined in some ways by who was the

560
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: most powerful. So this is a real, just mono amount

561
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:58,160
Speaker 1: of thing, and he won great hope, and then they

562
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: sent a series of white hopes up against him. And

563
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: then on July four they sent up Jim Jefferies, the

564
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:07,639
Speaker 1: greatest of all white hope, and John Just Johnson demolished him,

565
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:10,680
Speaker 1: and there were white on black um riots all across

566
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:12,959
Speaker 1: the United States. So then there are a few more fights,

567
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:15,520
Speaker 1: but basically everybody said, how do we stop this guy.

568
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 1: This is a decade nineteen o five nineteen fifteen when

569
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: war African Americans were lynched that in any other time,

570
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:23,879
Speaker 1: and yet he's living exactly the way he wants to,

571
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:27,719
Speaker 1: dating women and multiple women and marrying white women. And

572
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,880
Speaker 1: so they hooked. They got him expost facto, meaning they

573
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,479
Speaker 1: apply to law that had passed after he'd done this thing,

574
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 1: which is illegal, constitutional on on the Man Act and

575
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: basically for crossing state lines with a moral purposes. So

576
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 1: she wasn't underage, she wasn't under age. She was a prostitute.

577
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: Of course. For people who are not familiar with the

578
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: Mayor film called Unforgivable Blackness, The Rise and Fall of

579
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: Jack Lola Johnson, which is from a quote by W. B.

580
00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: Two Boys, a great black scholar, who said, look, you

581
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: know boxing is in disfavor, and Johnson hasn't done anything

582
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: that other ball players and sportsmen, meeting boxers and even

583
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: senators haven't on it all comes down then to his

584
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 1: unforgivable black So in this is so at least in

585
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: the context of the single issue thing with Jack Johnson, Trump,

586
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 1: as far as you're concerned, is the greatest president of

587
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 1: the modern century. So let me put this very delicacy.

588
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: We support the pardon, but let's understand that the underlying

589
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 1: issues about Jack Johnson are about race, and we're dealing

590
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: with the human being who has a dismal record on race.

591
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 1: We actually made a film on the Central Park five

592
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: in which these are five innocent children, children, right, that

593
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:30,479
Speaker 1: did not commit the Central Park jogger. Right. We know

594
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: that they've been exonerated, but they went to jail, and

595
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: he took out full page ads saying bring back the

596
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: death penalty and double down on it the day of

597
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: the Access Hollywood tape. So this is, you know, a

598
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: tweet from he has a conversation with Sylvester Stallone. If

599
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 1: he does it, that's great. You want justice to prevail,

600
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 1: to get behind the Central Park five. Yes, and then

601
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 1: he could call Trump. We'll be done. Now here's my

602
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:59,479
Speaker 1: big gooey deep fried smother than cheese. Larry King question,

603
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: what's a Ken Burns movie? Because I have Michael want

604
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 1: to give him my answer. Yes, Sir Burns, his films

605
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 1: are He's like Spielberg. You're the Spielberg of documentary film,

606
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: big canvases, big themes, big budgets. Comparatively speaking, you think

607
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: about Spielberg, you think God doesn't even want to do

608
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 1: a movie for like two million bucks, and it's Edward

609
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 1: Norton and Refines trapped in an elevator. It's like one

610
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: set great dialogue. Which one do you want to make

611
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: that you can't? You're right, we do bite off. And

612
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 1: I have had many opportunities to talk to Steven Spielberg

613
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: about this, and we look at each other and we

614
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 1: go we do the same things. You can make stuff up.

615
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: I can't. What's a VIC movie? I think we're plowing

616
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:40,800
Speaker 1: in the same field. It's too we could pick something

617
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: very small, but it ends up that these projects take

618
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: a long time, enormous amount of effort and sort of

619
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: psychic energy, and so you want to pick something that

620
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: you're going to really care about spending time on. So

621
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: it's American history for sure, but it's also these sort

622
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: of deep questions about the human condition. That sounds very

623
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 1: pretentious to say that, but when you're looking at individual

624
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:01,239
Speaker 1: artists like Time Away our Frank woid right, it's how

625
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 1: do people create and live and get their work done.

626
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: I think what we're really interested in ultimately is our

627
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 1: country stands for something really profound and inspiring and beautiful,

628
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 1: which is that we're all equal and we have this

629
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: capacity to be great, and yet from the day we

630
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 1: were founded, from before that we are so far away

631
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:23,239
Speaker 1: from that thing. And in that space is where we

632
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: want to hang out and explore, and it's very painful

633
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: and it's also really inspiring. I would just suggest too

634
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 1: that these big themes, these big stories, the constituent building blocks,

635
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: are these intimate, bottom up stories, more often than not,

636
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: of people that you don't know. And so like William Blake,

637
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: we're finding the world in a grain of sand, and

638
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:48,640
Speaker 1: that changes, particularizes, literally atomizes the way you tell these stories.

639
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: So it isn't just the thirty thousand feet Great Man

640
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 1: history of the presidency in generals and wars. It's something

641
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: that is bottom up and you and you touch on

642
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: the African American experience, which is in almost every film

643
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: we've made, and the failure, as Lena is talking about,

644
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: to live up to our creed. And when you learn

645
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 1: from so called ordinary people, then it sort of mitigates

646
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:12,520
Speaker 1: the tension of the big idea, right and somewhere and

647
00:32:12,520 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 1: there you can begin to negotiate some of these bigger

648
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: questions about who we are, where we fail our promise,

649
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 1: where that exceptionalism is. So it's possible in Vietnam, which

650
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: is a horrible failure to find unbelievable pockets of love

651
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: and beauty and redemption. And how the political climate in

652
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 1: this country now make you feel about that. I think

653
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: we're right now in the greatest existential threats, certainly since

654
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 1: World War Two and the Depression. I would just find

655
00:32:38,480 --> 00:32:41,480
Speaker 1: that an assault on institutions and values. And because of

656
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 1: the way media is and the Internet, which we thought

657
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: of our as our friend, now we don't know what's true,

658
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:50,560
Speaker 1: and the ability to manipulate images and voices now and

659
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: video give us the possibility for a kind of say

660
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: whatever you want to disseminate into. And we've stayed in

661
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 1: public broadcasting consciously a kind of Some people would suggest

662
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 1: some creaky old form, but in fact is extraordinarily was

663
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: changed during the ark of your career. Not much we

664
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: what I happened to know what I mean, everybody knows

665
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: who studied this, that Reagan stacked the CPP with more

666
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: conservative people. Do they wanted doing? They had documentaries about

667
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 1: the oil business. Yeah, but one of his appointees is

668
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 1: the long time ahead of it now and she's been

669
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:22,200
Speaker 1: one of our greatest supporters. And the last thing they

670
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 1: want to do is cross over any kind of line,

671
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:27,080
Speaker 1: which is why I've stayed there. The unstated agreement is

672
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 1: you don't make me look bad, I won't make you

673
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 1: look bad. I wouldn't even say that. I mean, I

674
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: came out with a film called called Unforgivable Blackness, and

675
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:35,960
Speaker 1: they swallowed hard. They wanted to be called Jack Johnson,

676
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: The Rise and Fall of an American, you know, like that.

677
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 1: But but but but so I feel sort of fortunate.

678
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 1: I think we all feel very very grateful for it.

679
00:33:44,040 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: But we're able to make the films that we do.

680
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: And look what happened with Vietnam. We accumulated, just in

681
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 1: the fall its first sets of showings, thirty nine million people,

682
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 1: and then they had thirteen million streams, which means this

683
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: makes it one of the biggest things to pass sue

684
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: the PBS system. Ever, this is a truth of people

685
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:08,320
Speaker 1: don't understand. After the big three networks plus Fox, the

686
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: next highest network trading with Fox News PBS, which means

687
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: we're already able to activate a huge segment of the

688
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:22,399
Speaker 1: American population, which means old media is not so dead.

689
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: We're actually able to approximate the unum that we all

690
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:29,279
Speaker 1: just talk about in Wanna and Wanna, you know, not

691
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: our head to it. Actually we can in a documentary

692
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:34,879
Speaker 1: film like this, you can have people have a conversation

693
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:37,480
Speaker 1: that you can't really put in a room together. You couldn't,

694
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:39,479
Speaker 1: you know, that they would argue, so they'd start yelling

695
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 1: at each other. And in a documentary, we can interview you,

696
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: and we can interview you, and then we can put

697
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 1: you together and you can have a civilized conversation. And

698
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:48,799
Speaker 1: we're kind of modeling a kind of civil dialogue or

699
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: discourse that our country really lacks. It's not Jerry Springer.

700
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: It's not Jerry Springer. And PBS is where people kind

701
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 1: of come. They're expecting that people and I'm assuming there

702
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:02,360
Speaker 1: must have been many, many times that the Netflixes of

703
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 1: the world and these other independence have said, you come

704
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: with us, come work with us, you leave pps that's

705
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: your childhood. Well it's been throughout networks, studios more a

706
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:15,279
Speaker 1: lot of money in your face. Yeah, but you know

707
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: what it is is that I moved out of New

708
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: York in seventy nine, the summer seventy nine, because I

709
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 1: had finished most of the shooting on my first film.

710
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:25,400
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridge had no idea how he's going to make

711
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: it into a film. But I realized I needed to

712
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 1: get a job to survive in New York, like a

713
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: real job, and that if I put that film away,

714
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:33,759
Speaker 1: I'd still be in New York. And you know, like

715
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 1: the ad guy who woke up and didn't write the

716
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:37,799
Speaker 1: novel that he always wanted. So I moved to this tiny,

717
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:39,799
Speaker 1: little world town where I could live for nothing. And

718
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 1: that model has informed the spirit at least, if not

719
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 1: precisely the letter, of what we've done ever since that

720
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:49,720
Speaker 1: we've had a kind of independence, we've stayed there. Yes,

721
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:53,720
Speaker 1: that all that is attractive, but it comes with certain things.

722
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 1: Suits can come in and say longer, shorter, more sexy,

723
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 1: less sexy, more violent, and it's just do not want

724
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 1: to ever say, even when somebody even has the whiff

725
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 1: of wouldn't it be better if you didn't do it?

726
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:11,719
Speaker 1: This no focus because and you know what, I'm not

727
00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:13,720
Speaker 1: good at us because I also get in a separate

728
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: way like people I really admire, like Errol Morris and

729
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: Spike Lee who do commercials like I would shrivel up

730
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: to nothing if someone said we want you to do

731
00:36:22,560 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: like a commercial for X y Z and the ken

732
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: Burn style and we're gonna pay you this. You don't

733
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: do this, Fort Knox, I cannot problem. I cannot. I've

734
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:35,840
Speaker 1: got four kids. I'm hosting a game show Friday. Yeah,

735
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: I admire you for that ability to do that. I

736
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 1: can't do that. But I live in New Hampshire and

737
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 1: we're fine. Ten and a half years somebody was sitting

738
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:46,399
Speaker 1: with Richard Plepler and me and saying he's the head

739
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: of HBO. He said, well, why don't you fun Ken

740
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:51,839
Speaker 1: And he stops and I said, because Richard wouldn't give

741
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 1: us thirty million dollars and ten and a half years

742
00:36:54,680 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: to do this. The model they're as generous and elastic

743
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: as it is at HBO doesn't permit even though the

744
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: PBS brand is no less quality wise, it's just a

745
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: little more obscured because of the marketplace is so diverse

746
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 1: now and so fractured. Just as our Civil War came

747
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 1: out in nineteen ninety when there were maybe twenty other stations, right,

748
00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:18,239
Speaker 1: and then we've gone through all of this cable revolution

749
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:21,480
Speaker 1: and then the Internet revolution. So we've got fifteen hundred

750
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: cable channels and millions and millions of Internet possibilities at

751
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: anything in a moment. And what is that that bit

752
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 1: of audience marching through from thirty nine million people for

753
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: civil wars? But what did we get in in the

754
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 1: aggregated of a few different showings in the fall of

755
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: Vietnam thirty nine million is Florentine headquartered up in New Hampshire.

756
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: That is that where the I L M is. Does

757
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:46,200
Speaker 1: all the stuff flow through there? That's where you cut

758
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: you do You have some superspace station set up there

759
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 1: where you cut everything and do it. We have a

760
00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:52,680
Speaker 1: little house off the town green that we got in,

761
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 1: but there's at us. It's the former knitting mill that

762
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:04,279
Speaker 1: you as a doctor's house. You're you're contemplating or you're

763
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: gonna do ali What do you think you're going to

764
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:08,879
Speaker 1: bring to I mean all, he's like the Beatles, He's

765
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 1: been covered from every angle. What are you gonna do?

766
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:12,920
Speaker 1: We're gonna bring a lie, right, because here's I made

767
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:14,799
Speaker 1: a film on Huey Long in the mid eighties, right,

768
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: And part of my proposal was, we're going to intercut

769
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:20,720
Speaker 1: pieces of Roderick Crawford's performance in the Academy Award winning

770
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 1: motion picture All the King's Men. We put him next

771
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: to the real speeches of Huey Long. It just diminished. Now,

772
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:27,799
Speaker 1: I thought, Will Smith, that was a you know, that

773
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:29,879
Speaker 1: was not a perfect film. The first twenty five minutes

774
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:33,000
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest openings of a modern American

775
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:36,280
Speaker 1: movie that Michael Mann did. It's just it's but here's

776
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: what happens in all the Ali stuff, and there's lots

777
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 1: of Ali stuff. It's basically this fight or it's that fight.

778
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: But we want to start, as we do with the

779
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: French coming in eighteen fifty eight to Danang, Let's tell

780
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:50,320
Speaker 1: the whole story. So we want to start in Louisville

781
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:53,239
Speaker 1: and and and tell the whole story up to the end.

782
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:55,960
Speaker 1: That's what my podcast is about, Origins, is you have

783
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: to do this and what happens is we are now,

784
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:02,280
Speaker 1: you know, biting off smaller and smaller chunks and sometimes

785
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:06,839
Speaker 1: doing extraordinary things with it. I'm not proscribing any other

786
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: way of doing it. We just think that there is

787
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:11,960
Speaker 1: room for us to learn a lot more about, as

788
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 1: you say, a person who would be impossible to duplicate,

789
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: So why try to duplicate him. Let's just go to

790
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 1: the archives here and spar with Cosell see the fightstial,

791
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 1: you know, and people at the end who were there

792
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:25,799
Speaker 1: when you know most of us were not. You know,

793
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:29,440
Speaker 1: we understood the power of that shaky lighting of the

794
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: torch in Atlanta, But but who was there who went

795
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:35,920
Speaker 1: back to the hotel room with him that night? You know? Um,

796
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:38,280
Speaker 1: I have for Lynn? How does the me too movement

797
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: play out for you? I mean, I don't mean to

798
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 1: be so topical, but are you any thoughts about that

799
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:44,960
Speaker 1: in terms of making a film? Well, I mean, it's

800
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 1: been really overwhelming to see what's happened in our world

801
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: in the last year and a half and how much

802
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 1: the stories we've been hearing resonate for everyone. I know,

803
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:57,760
Speaker 1: just the wide range being interrupted, just not being taken seriously,

804
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:01,279
Speaker 1: having people comment on how you look. We've had I've

805
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 1: had all kinds of inappropriate comments in my time, and

806
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: I've never talked about it. Sure, even in public television,

807
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: even in public television, perfectly, the men in public television

808
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: are like the men everywhere else. It's shocking to say,

809
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:15,440
Speaker 1: but yes, I think it's part of human relations and

810
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 1: how we've all been. I think conditions should just ignore

811
00:40:18,239 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 1: that and just keep going. And I frankly would take

812
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:23,759
Speaker 1: offense at someone saying, oh, you know, what does it

813
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: feel like to be a woman filmmaker. I want to

814
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:27,319
Speaker 1: be taken seriously as a filmmaker. Was it hard for

815
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: you to be as a woman filmaker in the beginning, No,

816
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 1: it really wasn't. No, I don't think so. In the

817
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 1: documentary world, even before landed in Florentine, What was it

818
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: like in the early days. Yeah, I don't I really

819
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:38,799
Speaker 1: don't have any mess came on this show and she was,

820
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:41,840
Speaker 1: I don't want to say, in the extreme on Mike

821
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:44,719
Speaker 1: in the show, she was very forthcoming. She said, the

822
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: guy put his hand in the sixties or whatever, the

823
00:40:46,600 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 1: late sing she goes, the guy put his hand on

824
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,719
Speaker 1: my on my leg right, So I mean their generation.

825
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 1: I think really paid their dues. To be honest, She's

826
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: quite a bit older than me, and I think in

827
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: that time there were very few women in the world

828
00:40:56,080 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: of news and journalism. And right, so Dickerson Right's mom exactly, um,

829
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: and what's her name? Povitch Shirley Povid should be interviewed

830
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:10,799
Speaker 1: for Baseball film. His daughter Lynn Povish was a pioneering

831
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 1: reporter in news Day Newsweek, who sued. I mean, I've

832
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:15,440
Speaker 1: heard these these pioneering women, and even the women ten

833
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:18,239
Speaker 1: years older than me working at CBS sixteen minutes. I've

834
00:41:18,239 --> 00:41:21,480
Speaker 1: heard incredible stories. I really have not experienced anything criminal

835
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:23,879
Speaker 1: or regious or anything I would call harassment, but I've

836
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 1: certainly been objectivided. I think every woman who walks the

837
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: earth has been. And the way I was brought up

838
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:31,240
Speaker 1: and the way I just sort of functioned was Okay,

839
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do my job and I have I mean,

840
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: you know, and I think for women coming after me, though,

841
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:38,839
Speaker 1: and I have a daughter who's twenty five, almost twenty six,

842
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 1: I don't want that to be her world. In the

843
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: best no, she wants She's getting out of lost medical school.

844
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 1: Major parents happy for healthy granddaughter. Well but anyway, you know,

845
00:41:53,600 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: I just I think it's an exciting time actually that

846
00:41:56,120 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: some of this kind of conversation is happening. I think

847
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 1: that's healthy. I think it has gone way too far

848
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: in some ways of convicting people without any kind of

849
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: do process, And I think that's the problem. Did you

850
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 1: want to say something, Well, I have four daughters, so

851
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 1: you know, we're working with one of Lynn's counterparts, another

852
00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: producing partner, Dayton Duncan, and I've been working for many

853
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:17,920
Speaker 1: years on a film about country music. And what's so

854
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: interesting is that women from the very very beginning to

855
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 1: take a central role in this story, well before Rock

856
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: and roll was dealing with some issues about sort of

857
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: spousal abuse and marital rape and divorce and taking the pill.

858
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:34,720
Speaker 1: Loretta Lynn is in the mid sixties. This is stuff

859
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:37,080
Speaker 1: that Grace Slick is not doing or Joni Mitchell is

860
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: not going to do for another decade. But there she is,

861
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:41,600
Speaker 1: and you've got Passy Klin before her, and all of

862
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: these stories are there in American history. It's what we

863
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 1: choose to show, and that the ability for the patriarchy

864
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: to limit and narrow the story, We've just widened the

865
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: story and nothing's diminished. He gets more dimensional. And the

866
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:56,879
Speaker 1: same with race, the same with labor, the same with

867
00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:01,239
Speaker 1: you know, complications. There's undertow and my real brother from

868
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:05,160
Speaker 1: another mother. When Marsalis said in our Jazz film said

869
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: that sometimes a thing and the opposite of a thing

870
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:10,640
Speaker 1: are true at the same time, and we have been,

871
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: we've been, we have been working on trying to honor

872
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,360
Speaker 1: that in all the situations since he said that in

873
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:19,920
Speaker 1: the mid nineties. Cust Now are you ken Burns? Are

874
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: you a collector? Privately? What does ken Burns collect? Quilts?

875
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:27,440
Speaker 1: American quilts by women who tell the story I think

876
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: of in an elemental way who we are, the warp

877
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: and the wolf, and in that these are sometimes anonymous

878
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:37,800
Speaker 1: or collective efforts. An Amish piece from the eighteen thirties.

879
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:43,040
Speaker 1: A hundred years later, piet Mondrian is doing these geometrical, loud, geometrical,

880
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:46,480
Speaker 1: bright colors, which is the epitome of modernism. And I go,

881
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:49,720
Speaker 1: excuse me, I've got a shaker quilt from a hundred

882
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:53,280
Speaker 1: years before that can sit next to any Piet Mondrea painting.

883
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: And let me show this to you. It's like on fire.

884
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: And then it just the lies the kinds of borders

885
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 1: that we ach, they don't exist for the artists, and

886
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:04,279
Speaker 1: the borders we make between people based on color of

887
00:44:04,320 --> 00:44:07,279
Speaker 1: the skin or regions, or whether they're blue voting or

888
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:09,960
Speaker 1: red voting, or whether they're gay or they're straight. All

889
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:13,839
Speaker 1: of these superimposed distinctions don't actually exist, and it is

890
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:19,400
Speaker 1: possible to embrace a complex narrative. I have been immersed

891
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: in the world of documentary film for the past almost

892
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,240
Speaker 1: decade because David Nugent, the artistic director of the Hampton's

893
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 1: Film Festival, and I are partners. But docs have become

894
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous now and so it desired, you know, it's thrilling.

895
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 1: I remember an article that Vincent can Be wrote in

896
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: five about the releases of documentary that year. The Way

897
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: I had a film out on Huey Long Uh. Fred

898
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: Wiseman had a cinema very Tay. There was a thing

899
00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:50,799
Speaker 1: called street Wise which was really flirting with a dramatic

900
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: films uh and using real people. And Ross mckaway did

901
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: Sherman's March, self referential film. He said the documentary was

902
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 1: too arrow word and I think why we're drawn to

903
00:45:01,719 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: it today is that we have all these outlets that

904
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 1: need to fill stuff out. But more importantly, our plots

905
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:12,960
Speaker 1: are not tired anymore. Right, Steven's gonna invest everything with

906
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:15,239
Speaker 1: the meaning. But these plots we know what. You know

907
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: what it's like to go into a movie and go,

908
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 1: she's dead. She's not gonna survive this film and and documentaries,

909
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 1: even when you know it's gonna turn out the way

910
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:25,839
Speaker 1: you know it did. You don't think it's gonna happen. Right,

911
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: you go to Ford see or anything. Maybe this time

912
00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: the gun's gonna jam. Have you ever put yourself in anything? Done?

913
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:35,480
Speaker 1: In one film? In baseball, I was interviewing Billy the Spaceman,

914
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:38,799
Speaker 1: the Boston Red Sox pitcher who know people when he

915
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 1: was traded to Canadian team, he would find, uh, you

916
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: know tin foil? I said, why are people throwing tinfoil

917
00:45:44,960 --> 00:45:48,479
Speaker 1: at me? And it was hash But anyway, I said,

918
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:50,359
Speaker 1: what's your best pitch? And you needed it to set

919
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:54,439
Speaker 1: up his onlie. You put yourself Yeah, and you felt

920
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: you had to do it. Yeah, it was just really necessary.

921
00:45:56,600 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 1: We debated about it though. We had a big, huge conversation.

922
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 1: Do you have one? Well, I have one. It's a

923
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 1: World War two veteran said Phillips, and I was asking him, um,

924
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 1: you know, did you have a hard time kind of

925
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 1: keeping your language clean when you came home, because you

926
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: know how Marines talk. And here was this very courtly,

927
00:46:12,560 --> 00:46:15,360
Speaker 1: southern gentleman and he said, you know, in the Marines,

928
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: we only use but one adjective, and when I came home,

929
00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: it was really really hard to not use that adjective

930
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: at the dinner table. And so you hear me say

931
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:26,040
Speaker 1: what was it? And he says, I can't tell you.

932
00:46:26,080 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 1: My wife will come down and Heaven and hit me

933
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:29,319
Speaker 1: on the head. But it's kind of a conceit if

934
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:31,480
Speaker 1: you think about it. I mean, we were doing an

935
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: event the other day and someone said, was it intentional

936
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:36,959
Speaker 1: when you cut to this picture? After that person said

937
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,080
Speaker 1: something and as if it was some kind of accident

938
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: that these things happened. I mean, every single thing in

939
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: the film is intentional. Right, So we don't put ourselves

940
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:55,840
Speaker 1: in but we're in every frame. Filmmakers Lynnovic and Ken Burns.

941
00:46:56,400 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: Their latest documentary is The Vietnam War. I'm Alec Baldwin

942
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:03,600
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing