Ken Burns reflects on keeping binders of rejection letters while fundraising for his early documentary projects.
Opinion
Burns: Streaming platforms offer $30M, but only PBS allows 10-year timelines
“There's no other place where any of these films could have been made. You know, I could go out to a you know, a Streaming service or to a premium cable channel and say, hey, I'm making a film on Vietnam, and with my track record, they'd say, how much do you ne…”
Insight
Burns: Viewing work as a conventional career ladder is a form of imprisonment
“In fact, later on, as Robert Penn Warren told me when I was working on Huey Long, he said, careerism is death. So I've actually never used the word career I use the word, unless I'm speaking like this, I use the word professional life, because he had instilled…”
Insight
Burns: Avoiding NYC overhead for rural New Hampshire was his best decision
“So I used to say that that was the best professional decision I made moving to Walpole. It's not. It's actually the second best professional decision. The best decision was to stay there. And it's because this is so labor intensive. It requires so much time. I…”
Disclosure
Burns: Florentine Films routinely rejects sponsors' attempts to influence content
“There have been many, many times when people have tried to cross the line, trying to influence content, trying to tell us what to do or not do, or that this is a little bit too hard, or this is too this or that, and we just go, sorry, you know.”
Insight
Burns: Retaining IP ownership prevents studio executives from sanitizing historical truths
“My insistence that I am not giving up the ownership of the film, because the second you do that, then there's someone else who might say, About James Baldwin, ah, I'm not sure about that. You know, there's some suit somewhere that would wish that it would not …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Burns: Brooklyn Democratic boss funded early documentary with a $1,000 cash envelope
“And met with the Democratic boss of Brooklyn, who died in jail, I believe, or at least went to jail, and he gave me an envelope with a thousand dollars in it from the Kings County Democratic Club”