Ken Burns: evaluation

Transcript context

…What makes you so well suited to work together with Lynn Novick? Well, Lynn has been one of many colleagues that I’ve worked with for dozens of years. It’s really great. We’ve made a lot of films together. Sarah Botstein, Dayton Duncan, Geoffrey Ward, who I mentioned. I think it’s the fact that we’ve never yelled; I’ve never yelled. This isn’t brain surgery. I think even in brain surgery, it doesn’t make sense to yell if somebody hands you the wrong implement. You just — you have to do. We’re making documentary films. It’s not the end of the world, and so we want to do it. The people who end up working with me — in Lynn’s case it’s been a little bit over 30 years; in Sarah Botstein’s case, it’s been 25 years; in Geoff Ward’s, it’s been over 40 that we’ve been working together. Dayton Duncan is over 30. I have editors who are 45 years I’ve been working with — editors who’ve retired now. There’s a sense of process and a sense of yielding to the process. I have a couple of skills. I often have lots of credits, from music director to executive producer to producer to writer to director, whatever it might be — cinematographer — all of those things I do. But the only one that really matters is that when things are darkest, I kind of know what the next step is. Even if that next step, the next morning I go, “Whoa, that was not so smart; let’s try this.” Everybody’s in this together. It’s gloriously collaborative. Lynn has just been one of the very, very special collaborations that I’ve had. We’re still working together and will continue through this decade to work together. But I’ve kind of kicked her out and up and said, “Look, a project that I was going to do with you, with me as the boss — I’m just going to step back and be the executive producer, and you do it.” She did that on a film called College behind Bars with Sarah Botstein, where I was executive producer. We were going to do a big thing on the history of crime and punishment. That’s now Lynn’s. Sarah’s not working on it. Geoff Ward’s not writing it. She’s doing it, and I’ll serve as executive producer and help her as much as I can, but she won’t really need my help. Do you find selfies interesting as photography?…

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