New Ken Burns Film Takes A Bottom-Up Look At The Global
Conflict
NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2007
(CBS) The new
documentary series, "The War," from award winning producer and
director Ken Burns debuted on PBS last night and is
re-examining one of the most hallowed eras of American
history.
World War II changed America and the people who lived through
it. He said that he and his co-producer/co-director Lynn Novak went
spent years going through archives to find pictures and images most
people had never seen before.
"Usually you have the documentary and greatest hits on top of
the table," he told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "We went
in and found outtakes not seen since it was shot, and some in
color. It's also how you use it, too. You don't want it to be just
what we call in our business B-role. We're just illustrating, you
want some sort of emotional archeology you're after. I think the
testimony of veterans we got were great."
Burns said he wanted to make a series that focused on the real
people who were there. There are no historians or generals, just
the average Americans who participated.
"The problem with the second World War, for years we mediated
it, made it the good war and bloodless war and mediated it by
having celebrity generals and strategy and tactics everything and
weapons," Burns said. "We want to find out what happened. These
people are dying at a rate of 1,000 a day. If we don't record what
they experienced, what war is like, which is just as horrible as it
is now, more."
What's amazing about Burn's documentary is that he is able to
get notoriously humble and reticent veterans to talk about what
they saw.
"Think about it, you're 18, 19 years old, you go to war. The
thing about war is you're scared, you're bored, you're hot, you're
cold, you see bad things, you do bad things, you lose good friends.
How can you come back and explain it?" he said. "The guys who saw
the worst stuff were quiet and helped deal with it by making funny
stories. We had a guy in the Battle of the Bulge, we took over a
French farmhouse, 'They had a wine cellar, we all got drunk.' "
Later, the man's son said he had never heard that story before,
Burns said.
Burns focuses on geographical areas: Mobile, Ala.; Luverne,
Minn.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Waterbury, Conn. They went to each
place and asked to see the archives and found the characters. When
they initially began working on this film, they interviewed 650
people.
"Isn't it better to know what somebody said on the beach and
what his momma said, if you can triangulate from an emotional way,
isn't that better than from the top down? Then General Eisenhower
decided to do this. All that has been done to death. What happens
if these guys leave without having heard them out? My dad died in
2001. There hasn't been a day since then I haven't regretted asking
him more questions about what he did in the Army in France. This is
the stuff. We initiated, in addition to films, oral history
projects at the Library of Congress that allow everybody to
download sample questions from us and go get great grandma and
grandma and do this and we'll have it forever. This isn't a film we
couldn't have done 10 years ago, they were talking and in five
years."
"The War" began on Sunday, Sept. 23, and will air on PBS as a
15-hour, seven-episode series. On Oct. 2, Paramount Home
Entertainment will release the film on DVD. There is also a
companion book on sale now.
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