[Warm folk violin.]
NARRATOR: From Ken Burns...
...director of THE CIVIL WAR...
...BASEBALL...
...and JAZZ...
... comes a film about a subject that only Ken Burns could tackle.
Ken Burns presents...
...KEN BURNS...
...a nine-part documentary...
...ABOUT the documentary filmmaker who brought you...
...THE CIVIL WAR...
...BASEBALL...
...and JAZZ.
WOMAN: Before Ken Burns, when you would see still images in a documentary, they were just that...
...STILL images.
But BURNS taught us that you could ZOOM in...
...or PAN SLOWLY left to right...
...and THAT...
... was a VERY big deal.
NARRATOR: He was born in 1953, in Brooklyn, NY...
...though some sources give the location as...
... Ann Arbor, MI.
Only Burns knows for sure.
MAN: You know, what a lot of people don't realize is Ken wasn't IN the Civil War.
He didn't play baseball...
...or jazz.
...but he made DOCUMENTARIES about those things.
[Peal of thunder. Exciting music!]
NARRATOR: He would shake up the nation...
...and challenge its institutions to their core.
WOMAN: He came to PBS and said, "I want to make a documentary about the Civil War."
They said...
"Can you have it ready by August?"
He said...
"September."
They said...
"That'd be fine."
NARRATOR: Cobbled together from home movies...
...personal emails...
...and footage that didn't make it into the other documentaries...
...it's an unparalleled story of hardship...
...and redemption.
ACTOR READING: "Hi, Jess. Editing is going slowly...
"...and we're having trouble locking down Paul Giamatti to do narration.
"I think we're going to have to play hardball and tell him we've got feelers out to Sam Waterston."
NARRATOR: It's the story that Ken Burns...
... was born to tell.
MAN: Should a man make an eighteen-hour documentary about himself?
MAN: I don't know....
MAN: Then again...
...some people said that he shouldn't have made that one about the Dust Bowl either.
NARRATOR: Ken Burns's...
...KEN BURNS.
Beginning this Sunday on PBS.
