I happen to love Ken Burns‘ work. His PBS specials are some of the finest historical documentaries ever produced. As far as I’m concerned, both his Civil War and Baseball series were the most interesting and entertaining of any documentaries I’ve ever seen. He and his colleague, Dayton Duncan, are now preparing a 6-part PBS series on the national parks of America. This should be good! The following excerpt is from a very good article by Scott Learn, printed in the March 6, 2009 edition of The Oregonian, complete with many questions and the answers given by both Burns and Duncan when they were in Portland, Oregon earlier this week.
For more than two decades, Ken Burns and his longtime colleague Dayton Duncan have journeyed from their homes in
Walpole, New Hampshire, in search of the heart of America. Together, the two friends have worked on documentaries about the Civil War, baseball, jazz, Lewis and Clark, Mark Twain and other national hallmarks.
With their next documentary — “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” — the filmmakers take on their greenest project yet, delving into the often-contentious history of our 58 national parks while probing the notion that our best landscapes should be preserved for everyone.
For Burns, now 55 and with three daughters of his own, the filming conjured memories of a surprise childhood trip with his normally disengaged father to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. For Duncan, who helped produce the documentary and wrote the script, one of the highlights of the project came when his then-12-year-old son joined him on a breathtaking trip to Denali National Park in Alaska.
The deep connections the parks help foster — to the planet and to family — are shared among Americans, Burns and Duncan found. When they screened the film for 50 “jaded” Public Broadcasting Service executives, most of them came away weeping, Burns said with a grin.
The six-part series debuts this fall on PBS stations…