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Ken Burns · The David Rubenstein Show

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: More than a quarter of a century ago, Ken Burns
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: came into the consciousness of every American with this compelling
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: nine part series in the Civil War. Since that time,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Kenneth continued to make an enormous number of documentaries about
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: American history. I share his love of American history, and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I've come to no Can as a friend and also
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: as a supporter, And recently I sat down with Ken
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  Speaker 1: to discuss our mutual interest about this country's history. So, Ken,
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  Speaker 1: you were, I assume now in Walpole, New Hampshire, where
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: you do much most of your work up Walpole, New
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Hampshire is not known as a media center, so I'm
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  Speaker 1: just curious how come you happen to do all of
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: your work there. Well. I moved here in nine forty
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: two years ago when I realized that becoming a documentary
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: filmmaker focusing in American history was taking a vowe of
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  Speaker 1: anonymity and poverty. And though my first film was nominated
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: for an Oscar and everyone presumed that I would come
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: back to this it a year ago to l a.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I stayed here because of the labor intensive nature of
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  Speaker 1: what I do, the fact that it's all grant funded,
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  Speaker 1: philanthropic uh, projects, and that they're very time consuming. So
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  Speaker 1: I keep my overhead very low here. And it's quite
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  Speaker 1: beautiful in southern New Hampshire. So I assume you're Walpaul,
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  Speaker 1: New Hampshire's most famous resident. Oh gosh, I don't think so.
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  Speaker 1: You know. I always thought that if my great great
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  Speaker 1: great grandchildren sort of kept their heads low, they might
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  Speaker 1: be able to be a member of the Volunteer Fire Department.
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  Speaker 1: So there's a kind of a different kind of hierarchy
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  Speaker 1: here where any notoriety plus fifty cents get you a
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  Speaker 1: cup of coffee. Okay, So let's talk about most recent
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: film that you've had on television, which is a four
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: part series. Oh, Muhammed Ali. Why did you decide to
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: focus on Muhammed Ali? What was your interest in him? Well,
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  Speaker 1: he's one of the most compelling figures in all of
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  Speaker 1: American history. He's certainly intersects with all the major issues
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of the last half of the twentieth century. The role
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  Speaker 1: of sports and society, the role of the black athlete
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  Speaker 1: in sports, the definitions of black manhood and black masculinity,
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  Speaker 1: the Civil rights movement, not as a fixed thing but
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  Speaker 1: as a kind of ongoing, developing thing. It's a story
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  Speaker 1: of politics, of course, of race, the central American question freedom. Um,
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  Speaker 1: it's also about faith and religion and Islam, about sex
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  Speaker 1: and all of these things because human nature doesn't change,
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  Speaker 1: or things were grappling with today. So when you have
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  Speaker 1: a larger than life mythic figure like Ali, he just um,
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  Speaker 1: he sort of lights up page after page of history.
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  Speaker 1: He's he's in a way irresistible. In is a way
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  Speaker 1: to communicate some pretty complex undertow about not just the US,
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  Speaker 1: but who we are. How long did it take you
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  Speaker 1: to do that? Serious? We said yes to this, uh
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  Speaker 1: In we began work in real earnest. Production and shooting
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  Speaker 1: of most of the stuff began in sixteen, the year
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: that he died. Um. So you could say that it
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  Speaker 1: took eight years or seven years, um. But you know,
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  Speaker 1: there's fundraising involved. There are other projects that you're giving
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  Speaker 1: your attention to at different times. What we need, though,
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  Speaker 1: is that period of time in order to do the
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  Speaker 1: deep dive on the research, in order to do the
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  Speaker 1: deep dive on the archives, and to be able to
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  Speaker 1: come up and say that we think we really got him,
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  Speaker 1: or at least that we have materials that show the
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  Speaker 1: kind of dynamics and the dimensions, the contradictions, um, even
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  Speaker 1: the controversy, the flaws of a character, and not have
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  Speaker 1: it merely be a resuscitation of conventional wisdom. So when
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  Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali, did you initially seek his approval or his
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  Speaker 1: family's approval or not? No? Um, we never operate that way.
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  Speaker 1: We can't operate that way in PBS because it's so
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  Speaker 1: completely you know, we have to have a separation of
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  Speaker 1: church and state. We did have cooperation from Emily members
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  Speaker 1: in that they gave the photographs. Uh, they gave us access.
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  Speaker 1: We were able to interview two of his ex wives,
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  Speaker 1: We interviewed two of his daughters, his brother, friends, families,
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  Speaker 1: hangers on, scholars, you know, all of that sort of stuff,
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  Speaker 1: that kind of triangulation that we want to do. Now,
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  Speaker 1: we need to see boxers today, professional boxers. They seemed
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  Speaker 1: awfully bulked up. They have gigantic muscles. Uh and maybe
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  Speaker 1: because of stimulants they're taking, or maybe they're better training.
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  Speaker 1: But he didn't seem like an overly muscular person. What
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  Speaker 1: was his strength as a as a fighter, was he
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  Speaker 1: was as faster than anybody else? Or what was it
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  Speaker 1: that made him such a great boxer. He wasn't because
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  Speaker 1: he was so strong, was it? Well, you know, he trained,
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  Speaker 1: he had he was very, very disciplined most of his life.
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  Speaker 1: He usually lost when he hadn't been disciplined. And he
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  Speaker 1: did have, you know, great bulk to muscles, but not
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  Speaker 1: in the kind of way that we see today. He's
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  Speaker 1: so suey generous in every single way, not just personality,
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  Speaker 1: but in his style of boxing. He did everything wrong.
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  Speaker 1: You know, when somebody throws a punchet, you're supposed to duck.
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  Speaker 1: He would lean back, which is supposed to be the
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  Speaker 1: recipe for disaster. And fortunately got a good trainer, Angelo Dundee,
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  Speaker 1: who realized that he was suey generous and that he
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  Speaker 1: would have to just strengthen these things. He moved around,
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  Speaker 1: he was very quick, but he you know, he's an
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  Speaker 1: amazing boxer. I made a film on Jack Johnson, the
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  Speaker 1: first African American heavyweight champion UM back in the first
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  Speaker 1: decade of the twentieth century, and they share similar traits.
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  Speaker 1: The difference was is that Jack Johnson was just for
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  Speaker 1: himself and Muhammad Ali seemed to be for everybody. He
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  Speaker 1: seemed to want to carry everybody with him and to
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  Speaker 1: love everybody. I mean, I think in the end, David,
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  Speaker 1: it's a hard thing to talk about. This is a
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  Speaker 1: film about freedom, which is a classic American theme. It's
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  Speaker 1: about courage, which is also true not just in the
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  Speaker 1: ring but in the kind of stance, particularly with Vietnam,
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  Speaker 1: but also about love. I mean, this guy dies five
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  Speaker 1: years ago, the most beloved and known person on the planet.
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  Speaker 1: Something happened from that reviled, hated person refusing the draft
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  Speaker 1: to then and ats. That's a pretty interesting story that
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  Speaker 1: in many ways doesn't have anything to do with with boxing.
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  Speaker 1: So let's go back to how you became a documentary filmmaker. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody who wants to be a documentary filmmaker now wants
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  Speaker 1: to be Ken Burns. Um. I don't know who your
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  Speaker 1: role model was when you were starting out. But did
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  Speaker 1: you grow up and say I don't want to be
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  Speaker 1: in private equity, I don't want to be in hedge funds?
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  Speaker 1: Things important like that? You said I wanted to be
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  Speaker 1: a documentary filmmaker. What propelled propelled you towards that? And
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  Speaker 1: where did you grow up? I I grew up the
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  Speaker 1: son of an anthropologist and biologist mother who died very
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  Speaker 1: young of cancer of a tenure battle of cancer when
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  Speaker 1: I was eleven. I remember after my mom died, I
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  Speaker 1: saw my dad cry for the first time, and he
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  Speaker 1: cried at a movie, and I said, that's it. I
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: want to become a MovieMaker, and that at that point
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: that meant Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford or Howard Hawks,
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  Speaker 1: big name directors of the sixties. But I ended up
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  Speaker 1: going to Hampshire College, new brand new experimental school that
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  Speaker 1: opened in the fall of seventy I went in the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: fall of seventy one, and all of my teachers there
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  Speaker 1: were social documentaries, still photographers and filmmakers who reminded me
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  Speaker 1: quite correctly, that there is as much, if not more
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  Speaker 1: drama in what is in what was of any than
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  Speaker 1: anything the human imagination can dream up. And often the
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  Speaker 1: human imagination dreams up things based on historical fact or
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  Speaker 1: the impossibilities of historical stories, as you know as well.
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  Speaker 1: So I emerged a documentary filmmaker and had the kind
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  Speaker 1: of Hampshire inspired hoods. But to just decide that I
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: would just not go to New York and apprentice, I'd
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  Speaker 1: start my own company, Florentine Films. The first film we made,
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  Speaker 1: which took five and a half years to make because
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I looked like I was twelve years old and I
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  Speaker 1: was trying to sell people the Brooklyn Bridge. On the
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  Speaker 1: Story of the Brooklyn Bridge was nominated for an Academy Award.
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  Speaker 1: And it was in that space that I moved from AMers, Massachusetts,
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  Speaker 1: where Hampshire was, to uh, New York, and then up
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  Speaker 1: here to Walpole, New Hampshire, where all the films have been,
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  Speaker 1: if not physically made, then erected. From up here was
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  Speaker 1: it easy to raise money for the Brooklyn Bridge. And
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  Speaker 1: people say, you're trying to sell me the brooklyn Bridge
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  Speaker 1: all the time, David in fact, and it was the
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  Speaker 1: baby face. I mean, I'm sixty eight now, and I
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  Speaker 1: actually know that I don't look like i'm sixty eight,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: and uh, you can imagine what I look like at
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  Speaker 1: at at twenty three and twenty four when I was
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  Speaker 1: beginning to work on it. So they would say, this
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  Speaker 1: child is trying to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge. And
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  Speaker 1: for a long while I had to three ring binders
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  Speaker 1: on my desk, you know, each those three four inch wide,
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  Speaker 1: big expandable affairs with all the letters of rejection, which
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  Speaker 1: I kept for you know, a decade on my desk,
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  Speaker 1: just to remind me of just how incredibly hard and
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  Speaker 1: it's still hard, uh to to raise the money to
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  Speaker 1: do these things. But the independence is is worth it,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of being able to present to you a
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  Speaker 1: film on Muhammad Ali that I'm not apologizing for. It's
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  Speaker 1: a director's cut, and if you don't like it, it's
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  Speaker 1: all my fault, you know what I mean. And I
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  Speaker 1: don't want to not say, oh, the executive producer wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: let me hire this person or this the budget didn't
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: allow me to do that thing. You know. It's just
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  Speaker 1: we get to do it in the time it takes
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  Speaker 1: to do it. However, long ten and a half years
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  Speaker 1: for the Vietnam War, six or seven for this one
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  Speaker 1: on on all e um some of them are the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: National Parks was a ten year project. So after the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridge, who did a number of other documentaries, I
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: think another six or so. Yes, or you decided to
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  Speaker 1: do the epic Civil War series which took how many
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  Speaker 1: years to do? And how long did it take to
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  Speaker 1: get all the work done, the research done, and how
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: long did it take to raise the money for that?
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: You know, well, we were raising the money up until
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  Speaker 1: the very very end, and it's just it's still it's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: never easy. It took us five and a half years
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  Speaker 1: from the moment I decided to do it, which was
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  Speaker 1: Christmas Day, uh eight four, where I was visiting my
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  Speaker 1: father with my brand new daughter and my wife and I, Um,
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  Speaker 1: I just said, I know what my next project is.
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  Speaker 1: And he said what I said, the Civil War? He
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  Speaker 1: goes what part? And I said all of it. He
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: just shook his head and walked out of the room,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: like my idiot son. But you know, five and a
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  Speaker 1: half years later we came out with something which is
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  Speaker 1: I'd always felt even as early as the Brooklyn Bridge,
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  Speaker 1: I said, I wasn't interested in excavating the dried dates
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  Speaker 1: and facts and events of the past. But the only
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: thing that could hold that those shards together, the glue
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: that could hold that was an emotional archaeology, not sentimentality
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: and nostalgia, which is the enemy of good anything. Um,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's the higher emotions our founders thought could be
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  Speaker 1: released if people were given a chance to govern themselves.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're interested in what those higher emotions are
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  Speaker 1: that we, you know, tend to avoid. We'd prefer things
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  Speaker 1: to be one and one equals to We'd prefer not
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: to talk about the four letter word. The FCC allows
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: me to say when talking about Muhammad Ali love um.
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  Speaker 1: And but yet our lives are compelled by the things
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  Speaker 1: were one and one equals three? Not too you know,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the the art, the faith, the relationships, the love that
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  Speaker 1: we have for other people. And that's what I pursue
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  Speaker 1: in my little tiny niche, my little Baileywick. All these
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: now nearly fifty years of doing this. So people were
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: mesmerized by it, and were you shocked at how Uh?
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  Speaker 1: It kind of transformed culture in many ways, and people
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: were talking about all the time. Did you anticipate that? No? No,
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  Speaker 1: In fact, I'd been at with a press tour and
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: they said, Ken, this is terrific, but no one's going
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: to watch it because Steven Boco, the great TV guy,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: had a new police procedural that was a musical called
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: cop Rocks, and nobody would watch this, And then everybody
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: seemed to watch it, and it had forty million viewers
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: the first time. And you know DVD blank DVD tapes, Uh,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: not DVD, but cassette tapes were what ran out in Washington,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: d C. I got invited to the White House. I
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: was on the Tonight Show, and you know, it was
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: just it was flabbergasting. And what what was really helpful
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: to me, David was staying here in in Walpole because
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the pressure also to leave again Hollywood presume that just
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: documentary was just a step rung on some career path
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: that would inevitably lead to making feature films. And I
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: was saying, no, I like my day job and being
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: here and insulated by the people who are sort of there.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I think they're proud of what I've done, but it
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: matters what the content of my character is. Why did
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: you not go the route of becoming the next George
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Lucas or Steven Spielberg, make an enormous amount of money
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and then if you made a lot of money, go
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: back to doing what you were doing before. Well, I
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It wasn't for me. I really like
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the idea of public broadcasting PBS. It's public, but it's
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: also that S is not system, it's service. I like
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: that idea. I also think PBS has one foot tentatively
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: in the marketplace and the other proudly out of it.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Lots of what's best about this country is not necessarily
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: in the mar ketplace, which is of course one of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the best things in this country as well. And so
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: it's not making the other wrong. It's just saying that
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: if I had gone to a premium channel or gone
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to a streaming service, it might have been easier to
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: get the money. Um, but then they would own it.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: I own my films. They would also not permit me
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: ten and a half years to do the Vietnam They'd
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: want it in a couple of years, and the kind
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: of corners that would be cut in that process was
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: nothing that I wanted to do. I also was aware
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that even with the success of this Civil War series,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: people would come and ask me what I was working
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: on from other places, and then when I'd say Baseball,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: they'd say, oh, great, that'll sell, you know. And then
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: they said how long is it and I said eighteen
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: and a half hours, and they would walk away. And
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: then after Baseball had an even bigger audience than the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Civil War, they'd come to me, what are you doing
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And I would say jazz and they go long and
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I go yeah, they go no, African American stuff doesn't sell.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: And you just suddenly realized that sometimes you had to
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: pick these projects, all of them base done your gut,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: not on a focus group, not on some marketing panel,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: but what you wanted to do. So how many projects
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: do you have in the works now? Can you tell
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: you what some of the ones are? Yeah? Yeah, I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: don't know why people make the stuff secret. I've just
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: locked or finished. We're about two next week mixed the
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: first of two episodes on a four part UH two
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: two hours on Benjamin Franklin, born the same day as
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali and arguably one of the most compelling figures
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century. I've been editing all last week
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: and all this week. As soon as we're done, we're
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: going to dive into the editing today on a history
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: of the U S and the Holocaust. What we knew
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and what we didn't know, what we did and what
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: we didn't do, and what we should have done. A
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: very complicated story that needs to be told. We're doing
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: a history of the buffalo, uh sort of. It's actually
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a biography of not an animal, but a biography the
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: people who use the animal, the people who brought that
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: animal to the brink of extinction, and then those very
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: same people who nearly killed it to who brought it
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: back from extinction. It's a parable of d extinction. I
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: guess you might say, we're doing a massive series on
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the history of the American Revolution, not just fifty five
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: white guys with powdered wigs in Philadelphia, but a very,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: very complicated story of a bottom up story of people
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: quarter a fifth to a quarter of the country remained
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: loyal to Great Britain. And this was a civil war.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Our civil war was not a civil war. It was
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: a sectional war, North against South. At this point in
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: your career, do you consider yourself a filmmaker, a historian,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: an educator, or a public figure that's well known and
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: recognized by everybody. Well, you know, the biggest thing is
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that I'm a filmmaker, and and that means I tell stories.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And I happened to the way a painter might choose
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to work in oil as opposed to watercolors. I choose
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: to work in history, American history. With the exception of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the upcoming Leonardo da Vinci, they've all been in in
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: in American history, and history is convenient lea mostly made
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: up of the word story plus high and all the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: other stuff that comes. I'm I'm pleased that these films
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: live in schools, that they have an educational dimension. I'm
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: pleased that people respect the work, which means that if
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: you know who I am, it means that you've seen
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: a film of mine, and that that means that at
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: least these stories are reaching some group of us, as
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: much as I want to reach every single person. Um,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: it's at least exciting. You know, I'm walking to New
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: York City and uh, you know, a fireman goes by
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and says, hey, you're a guy that made the Civil War,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: or you know, somebody walks up to me to complain
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: what I left out of baseball, which I love. Baseball
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: is eighteen and a half hours. And people, if they
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: tell you what you left out, I'm not an encyclopedia.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not a dictionary. I'm a storyteller. You have to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: leave stuff out. And if they think I've left something
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: out of eighteen and a half hours, that means they
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: didn't find it boring. They just wanted the fifty nine
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: White Sox that they happen to grow up loving, and
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: we didn't have time or room or space, uh to do. So.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I have these conversations with people all the time about
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: who we are and what it means to be an
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: American at lots of levels and lots of different people
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: trust us to do and I want to emphasize us,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: trust us to tell a complicated and truthful story. And
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: in a time when the truth seems fungible, when we're
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: always accusing the other of fake news, it's important to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: have at least a space. I think PBS provides that
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: where you can get an accurate, balanced view of what's
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: taken place that doesn't sugarcoat and at the same time,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: isn't just invested entirely in revisionism. Why should people really
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: want to watch history about things that happened a hundred
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: or two hundred years ago? What what relevance is it?
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Would you say, Well, you know, I think it's hugely relevant.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: History gives you that ability to have a kind of
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: perspective to see where the precedents are. For all of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: the dangerous things, for example, that we find ourselves in today,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: there are precedents, and yet there is in its totality
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: obviously unprecedented dangers and threats to the United States. And
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I think it would be incumbent upon Americans, who are
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: often blind to their history, to understand exactly how their
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: government works, what the Constitution is actually about, what it says,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: what the nature of our government is. You know, we
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: don't teach civics anymore, and a lot of the reasons
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: we feel like we've lost a cohesion is because we've
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: forgotten the glue that's held us together, not just in
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the in the patriotic ways, not just in the emotional ways,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: but in the very functional ways of how you get
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: things done. And that's what civics is. It isn't just
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: one senators and four hundred and thirty five representatives and
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: three branches of government. It's how human beings together get
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: things done and compromise and see that there is a
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: shared common good and so history becomes away. It's it's
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: table around which I think we can all have a
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: shared discussion of what we want and how we might
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: continue to cohere, and how we can let the better
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: angels perhaps reassert themselves. That's that's what I'm about, and
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I think people want that. I think the divisions are
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: huge and massive and threatening and have exposed the fragility
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: of our institutions, indeed our democracy and our future. But
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I also think deep down people if they're made aware
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: of the fact that they share common everything. I mean,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: one of the fallacies of the Holocaust is just the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: myth of race of you know, biologically it doesn't exist.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: You know, we are all the same. And I've I've
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: said to you before, David. You know, I've made films
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: for more than almost fifty years about the US. But
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: I've also made films about us, that is to say,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the lower case two letter plural pronoun. And so I'm
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I'm addressing these films to everybody, regardless of their political
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: persuasion or where they come from, are the sex, or
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: their wealth, or their race, whatever it might be. I
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: want to reach everybody to remind them of the US,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: all of the intimacy of this plus all the majesty,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: the complexity, the contradiction and the controversy of the US.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: It's all there. And we don't need to say, oh,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: we got to limit our history and teach it only
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: this way and teach only the good stuff. It's morning
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: in America again. We need to actually have a rich
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: history that pulls back the camera and reveals all the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: startling and at times yes contradictory, and not so pleasant things.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: So many people recognize you because you have a very
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: famous hair do that I've asked you about before. But
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: to some people they may say, well, Ken, what happened,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Where did that hair do come from? And where's it gone?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Because right now it seems a little different than what
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I've seen before. Yeah, it's it's growing out a little bit, David.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: But COVID. You know, I ended up with hair going
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: back down to my shoulder, and I finally realized that
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: one of the things I had to do I had.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I'm very loyal person, and I used to have hair
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: down to my waist in my college and my hippie
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: days before that in an arbor, Michigan, and I had
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: it cut off in the summer of seventy five. And
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I've gone to the same person now, a grandmother many
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: times over, who was a young gal cutting hair in AMers, Massachusetts,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and I still seek her out. And I finally just
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: said to her, you know, COVID is enough of a
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: change that I ought to be able to do something new,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm ending up with shorter hair. Tom Brokaw, who's
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: been a mentor as well, when I turned sixty eight
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: years ago, said, you know, time for a big boy haircut,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and I said, oh wait, I thought you said seventy,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and so now I guess you know two years shorter
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of seventy, I'm getting a big boy haircut. Well, can
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I want to thank you for a very interesting conversation.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: You may not realize that your dog was in part
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: of the conversation. This is my executive producer. You know
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: what they say in Washington, and I think it applies
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to filmmaking too. If you want a friend, get a dog.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And that's Chester, who I call my executive producer. He's
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: never barked once. And every once in a while he
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: will pass through. Either he's heard this stuff before or
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: he's sick of hearing my voice or something. But he's
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: curled up over there and and and and is happily
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: snoozing away because I've put him to sleep. Thanks for
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.