WEBVTT

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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One of the central elements
of our film are the interviews.

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And they are hugely important
for many of the films.

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Sometimes we have
very few of them.

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But most of them are
contemporary people

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who have been involved with it.

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But also, we have
historical interview people

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that know something
about the subject.

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that know something
about the subject.

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Getting them is
totally different.

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The-- the historical
people are pretty easy.

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You can't interview
Abraham Lincoln,

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but you can interview
Shelby Foote.

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You can't interview
Frederick Douglass,

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but you can interview
Barbara Fields.

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So that's what you do.

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And that's pretty obvious.

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And you get a list
and you go out.

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And you set up a time and
you conduct the interview.

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With the subjects that are
part of the story of the film--

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veterans of the Second
World War, veterans

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of Vietnam, people
in country music--

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of Vietnam, people
in country music--

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that's a different
sort of thing.

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You're reaching out, hoping
to find the best person.

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That's a different
set of questions

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than if you're finding a
scholar who knows something

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about the Civil War, or knows
something about the Roosevelts.

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A lot of it involves some of the
most significant digging we do.

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And the others are sitting
right there in front of us.

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And-- and we need to just
go out and figure out

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who that cohort will be.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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We go to lots of
lengths for everything,

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whether it's an archive
or diaries or journals.

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And the interviews
are no exception.

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In the case of Vietnam,
where we ended up

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shooting about 100 people, we
probably talked to over 1,000.

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And it's-- it's trying to
identify those people--

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casting the net hugely wide,
10 to one, 100 to one--

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that we might talk to, and
then eventually getting

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to those interviews.

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What you want to do is
ask them to tell you

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about their experience,
and take furious notes.

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And you're not only
writing down the details

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And you're not only
writing down the details

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of what they've done,
but you're also noting

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how well they tell a story.

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And I have had an instance
in "Huey Long" film

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where I was interviewing a
retired judge in Louisiana who

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had been fiercely
anti Huey Long.

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And in the lead-up
to the interview

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The guy could not shut up.

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And I just thought, oh no.

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This is going to be terrible.

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And we just--

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I didn't know what to do.

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But somehow, turning on the
camera, he gave it in bites.

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He's a huge part of the film.

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He's a huge part of the film.

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Sometimes everything
that you've got written

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down goes out the window.

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They're not going to
tell that story again.

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You can try as best
you can to do it.

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And they might even say, well,
I'm not comfortable saying that

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again on camera.

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Sometimes you
realize they are not

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going to be a good interview.

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They're-- they're
too anxious about it.

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Even in the pre-interview,
they're stumbling.

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You don't want somebody to be--

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to fall apart when you
put the camera there.

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And that's happened, where they
just have clammed up and been

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unable to do stuff.

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And sometimes you've been able
to pull us out of a nosedive

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and get us--

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get us something good.

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And that's-- those
make for good--

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And that's-- those
make for good--

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good stories about interviews.

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But mostly, you're very polite.

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And-- and you don't do it.

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Most of the people don't
hear from us again,

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or they hear from us, politely,
that it looks like we've

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gone a different way.

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I would never say,
you were terrible,

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or it didn't work out that way.

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I was once asked to give
a commencement address.

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And someone said, you
are our third choice.

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And I said, thank--
thank you, OK.

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Like, you could
have just asked me

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to give the
commencement address,

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not tell me I was number three.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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What makes a great
expert interview--

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and that's to be sort
of distinguished from

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the witness--

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is that they are understanding
that they don't have

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to tell the whole story, right?

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So I'll give you an
example of somebody

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who hit the cutting room
floor in "The Civil War."

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We interviewed a historian.

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He said, in 1862, they
were pretty well supplied.

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In 1863, things were
getting a little tough.

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By 1864, you know,
they were really-- they

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didn't have very many supplies.

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And by '65, just
before the surrender,

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And by '65, just
before the surrender,

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they were basically
starving in some places.

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Well, he just gave
away the whole story.

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I asked Shelby about
the privations.

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And he said, oh, they had
a thing called sloosh.

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They'd have a little bit
of corn meal left over

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and maybe a little bacon
grease in their pan.

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And they'd-- they'd fry that up.

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They'd make the corn
meal into a dough.

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And they'd make it
look like a stick.

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And they'd wrap it
in the bacon grease.

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And then they'd put
it on their ramrods

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and heat it over the fire.

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and heat it over the fire.

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And they-- they
ate a lot of that.

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They called it sloosh.

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OK, that-- I get that.

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You're down to
corn meal and bacon

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grease is what you're
eating, that I understand.

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SHELBY FOOTE: You got
issued corn meal and bacon.

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And you fried the bacon, which
left a great deal of grease

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in the pan.

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Then you took the corn
meal and swirled it around

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in the grease to make the dough.

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And then you might take the
dough and make a snake of it

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and put it around your ramrod
and cook it over the campfire.

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and put it around your ramrod
and cook it over the campfire.

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That was called sloosh.

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They ate a lot of that.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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When I'm approaching
an interview subject,

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or one of my colleagues is
approaching an interview

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subject, we just
insist that we do it

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completely straightforwardly.

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It cannot be any subterfuge
whatsoever, you know.

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I'm making a film with Ken
Burns, or I'm Ken Burns

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and I'm a documentary filmmaker.

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And we're making a
film on this subject.

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And we'd like to consider
you to be interviewed.

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And we'd like to consider
you to be interviewed.

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And I'd like to talk to you.

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Is it possible to meet with you?

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If not, can we do this
over the phone right now?

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And is this something.

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And if somebody says,
look, I'm not interested,

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you say thank you.

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And if they're really
valuable, you think,

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you can bug them for another
six months, three or four times.

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A couple of times
I was turned down

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by Barbara Jordan for a film
on the Statue of Liberty.

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She's wonderful in it.

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And she said, nope, too busy.

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And I finally-- about six
months later I said, look,

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this is what your-- some
colleagues have said.

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This is what the poet
Jerzy Kaczynski said.

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This is what the poet
Jerzy Kaczynski said.

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This is what the filmmaker
Milos Foreman said.

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This is what James Baldwin said.

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I-- I'll be happy to
do it without you.

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I'll never bother you again.

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But I can't imagine doing
this film without you.

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And she wrote back
and said, fine.

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BARBARA JORDAN:
The greatest threat

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is the inner tension of
the people of this country,

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to liberty.

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If we don't attend to it,
if we take it for granted

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and let people trample on
it in even minute ways,

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and let people trample on
it in even minute ways,

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it can gradually suffer an
erosion, just like the statue

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itself suffered some erosion.

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You have to attend to liberty.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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You never know
when a person is

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going to turn into the best
interview in that film.

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It just-- you have no idea.

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And sometimes, you can come
out thinking that it's great.

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And sometimes, you can come
out thinking that it's great.

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And then you select
the interviews

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and cut the whole, full
transcript into a set of 20,

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and got to go--

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not so good.

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Then you put it in the film
and it's great, or vice versa.

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You just don't know.

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Shelton Johnson, who
is the most poetic park

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ranger in the entire
National Park Service,

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was one of these great
gifts and fell into our lap.

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And we just assumed that here
he was, an African-American park

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ranger, interpreting the story
of the African-American Buffalo

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ranger, interpreting the story
of the African-American Buffalo

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Soldiers, who were
Yosemite's first caretakers.

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And so Sheldon was that.

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But then, this is a kid
born in inner-city Detroit

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who had just been blown
away by his first visit

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to a national park, Yellowstone.

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He started talking about that.

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And he started talking
about something else.

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And so all of a sudden,
Shelton became not just

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the African-American expert
on the Buffalo Soldiers--

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which he was great on, and
interpreted it in a very

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nuanced and complex way--

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nuanced and complex way--

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he became all of our
guides to all of it.

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And it begins to
tell you a little bit

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about the kind of
pigeonholing even those of us

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hypersensitive
about race could do.

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Oh, he's going to cover this.

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He's a scholar of that.

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Well, it turns out Shelton
understood everything

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about the national parks, and
at a visceral, spiritual level,

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and communicated that to tens
of millions of human beings,

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many of whom--

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many millions of whom--

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because of him got
off their couches

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and went out and
saw a national park.

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and went out and
saw a national park.

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SHELTON JOHNSON:
And Yosemite Falls

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seems to flow out of the clouds
itself, as if out of nowhere.

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It's a gathering place
of water, all the waters

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of the sky flowing into
that one spot, which

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makes it a gathering of life and
a gathering of spirit as well.

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And all of those things are
flowing through Yosemite.

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And so I think that--

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what better place is there,
that has such a confluence

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of so many things
flowing together,

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and the result is music?