The Ken Burns Cat Out Of The PBS Bag

You wrote of the update:

“It’s exceptional, retains his distinctive style and pace despite the greater availability of video, it’s historically perfect, and as always with his series (Shelby Foote in “The Civil War,” the late Buck O’Neil in the original “Baseball,” and all of the principals in his epic of WWII, “The War”), it will make stars out of some of the interviewees.”

Pretend your producer made a suggestion: “Give some details to the tease; not enough carrot to makes someone sit through 3 minutes of commercials.”

No risk if you agree. Some if you don’t.

Let us know.

Looking forward to it! Please remind us when the time gets closer, would you? The one thing I’m known for among friends and family is… uhh… is… oh crap. I forgot.

mirlygreen or anyone else who might know this.
I became a fan of KO because of countdown I never got to see the BIG show or his early show on MSNBC or even when he was on Fox Sports so i do not know for exactly sure what KO’s problem with the first one. Miylgreen yu said that it was correctness of the piece. Does anyone know specifically if it was the whole accuracy of the piece and information as a whole or just some parts. I watch the first one and thought that it was pretty good and accurate but of course I am not a Baseball expert like KO. I ask because I have loved everything that Ken Burns has done. He usually is right on history wise expect I do agree about the World War II one not having enough info on hispanics who fought, but otherwise he one of might absolute favorite when it comes to historical documentaries. If you can remember I love to know or at least if you find the link to the replay that KO did for ESPN on the USa today article about the the first one I would be much appreciative.

My two favorite things– jazz and baseball– and somehow Ken Burns got the honor of making the “definitive” documentaries on them. I find his style annoying, especially his “Americana” approach to these two admittedly very American contributions to world culture. Burns is falsely cozy, touchy-feely, Capracorn-esque. MLB Network does a better job with its “Prime 9″ shows and the Bob Costas interviews. Like most people in the media, entertainment and otherwise, who are considered important today (not you, Keith), Ken Burns just oozes mediocrity. When I see his name on a Billie Holiday CD (“Ken Burns Jazz”) I think– why should his name be on there? When this program comes on, I’ll be listening to Miles Davis’s “On the Corner” sessions from the 1970s (take that Marsalis!) or watching an All-Time Game on MLB Network.

I need to identify myself a little here. I’m a history professor (thus my moniker) and my graduate adviser was a consultant on “The Civil War.” I thought it was a masterpiece. Yes, he could have gone deeper into some issues, but it’s television and there’s a limit.

I’m also a baseball nut or I wouldn’t be here, and that documentary didn’t do it for me. One problem: Burns didn’t change his approach. There was a LOT of video he could have used and instead he stuck with stills and, especially, talking heads far more than he needed to. Buck O’Neil? Perfect. But Stephen Jay Gould and Doris Kearns Goodwin and Gerald Early and Bob Costas and George Will? However much they love the game and however articulate they were or are, overused. There isn’t any video of the Civil War, and his approach to that worked perfectly. But the way he did baseball would have been tantamount to doing his full documentary on jazz and using only three excerpts of the music.

The other problem was, oddly, the lack of certain talking heads. His main broadcaster was Bob Costas, but he barely used Vin Scully and didn’t use Ernie Harwell, both of whom had even then been around the game for so long–and if Burns wants to claim they didn’t want to talk with him or he didn’t get good footage, that is bull, and he would know that.

I AM glad he’s updating it, and I hope he is going to manage to talk about teams other than the ones in the northeast. I even say that as a Dodger fan, and he certainly paid attention to Dodger history (and his work on Jackie Robinson was magnificent).

Thanks mirynlgreen
I trying but I may have to use a better source, because i not getting anything not even the article.
Histroymike
i know what you mean I not a professor like you but just a consumer of history and Ken Burns does a great job with what he has. I have come to the conclusion that no history documentary is going be perfectly accurate but to me they are much better than the history movies that Hollywood will put out which has not very good when it comes to accuracy of any of the periods that they are covering. I have almost done giving up hope that they will at least try with the accuracy there.

I haven’t seen the Civil War, but I loved Baseball and Jazz while at the same time agreeing with most criticisms of them, which I guess is a bit weird.
@mantlewasarockstar : I agree that Burns neglected so much Modern Jazz, but hey the thing was still 9 days long, he had to stop somewhere. I wonder how much to credit Wynton Marsalis for that shortcoming, as he has become a bit of a spokesman for getting jazz back to its roots and may have influenced Burns to focus so much on the pre-war jazz era. I personally was disappointed by the lack of coverage of the West Coast Scene myself.

I agree that Baseball did not take advantage of enough video. I have the book for Baseball and reading it is just like watching the show!

Bob Costas. The best at talking baseball. The absolute best.

I remember his line from Baseball:

Were there better players than Jackie Robinson? Yes.

Was there a more important player than Jackie Robinson?

Who?

And Doris Kearns Goodwin. I’ve read all his books. But her book about growing up in Brooklyn was such a lovely portrait of a little girl growing up with her father and the Dodgers. She reminded me a little of me, although I was older than her before I started really following the Red Sox on an hourly basis.

1948braves
i agree whole heartedly about Doris Goodwin she along with David Mcoullgh and Joseph Ellis is one of my favorite biographers I loved Team of Rivals on Lincoln and his cabinet. I hoping that it true that Speilberg is making a movie out of it, because he one of the directors that does a really good job when it comes to history movies. Also it said that Liam Nielson is playing Lincoln he was great as Schindler and does great character acting he one of my all time great actors. Her LBJ book was just as good and I am looking forward to her book on FDR which I plan on reading after I finish the autobiography on Agassi. Which I highly recommend to anyone that wants to read it. She was really good on the first one along with George Wills even if I hate his politics he really good on baseball not as good as Keith. Along with Cotas, so when you add KO to it this becomes a really good documentary. One differently worth seeing.

Re Ichiro: Costas did a fabulous interview with him on his HBO show several years ago. As you say, intelligent and quite funny. My favorite current player with sneakily insane stats.

blotzphoto,
Forgive me for repeating myself but “he had to stop somewhere” would not have been acceptable if after the 1975 WS–arguably the greatest ever played–Burns had summed up the years since as “2 players strikes and the steroid era.” Which is what he basically did in his Jazz doc.

I’ll let my one-time music biz colleague, and respected jazz critic, David Adler explain it best:

“Having acknowledged Miles Davis?s birthing of what came to be known as fusion, the film stops with a stunningly vague comment about how more fusion bands soon emerged to follow Miles?s example. None are named. Thus is the music of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Headhunters, Weather Report, and Return to Forever written out of the history of jazz. In fact, the 1970s as a whole basically never happened in Burns?s view. It is left for Branford Marsalis, who knows better, to declare that ‘jazz just went away for a while.’

During the course of the Miles discussion, Wynton Marsalis all but dismisses the electric guitar as a non-jazz instrument, closing off the possibility that Pat Metheny and John Scofield ? both of whom drew considerable crowds while jazz was supposedly dead ? made meaningful contributions to the music. The film, giving similar treatment to the electric bass (referred to ineptly in the script as “electronic” bass), also dispenses with the towering influence of Jaco Pastorius.”
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/articles/arti0201_03.htm

Wynton Marsalis–and other contributors to the doc, like Stanley Crouch–are avowed haters of electric instruments in jazz and their disdain for modern jazz has been amply documented. Many critics have suggested that Marsalis held the keys to much of the contacts, research and info Burns needed for the doc and that his participation may have hinged upon Burns excluding those movements within the genre the famed trumpeter has issues with.

(To those of you uninterested in this slightly off-topic post, I apologize.)

Here’s MY problem with Ken Burns: He wants to have it both ways, creating both historical documentary on film and an individual artist’s interpretation.

He poses and presents himself as a maker of documentaries, laying claim to “telling the story” of Baseball, Jazz, the U.S. Civil War or World War II.

Yet, when challenged on his errors, omissions and bias, he presents himself as a creative artist with the freedom (or license) to interpret.

Without being stuck in the narrow duality of “You’re either one thing or another,” I think the two professions (scholar and artist) have different versions of “integrity” with little or no overlap. Call it “external truth” and “internal truth.” (But don’t switch ‘em. What is on second, and Who is on first.)

Many critics have suggested that Marsalis held the keys to much of the contacts, research and info Burns needed for the doc and that his participation may have hinged upon Burns excluding those movements within the genre the famed trumpeter has issues with. business management degree