The last in the series. I’m not sure whether this qualifies as a scoop or not, but I don’t believe I’ve seen Burns say that he plans to make a Vietnam documentary elsewhere (not that I’ve scoured all the clips): What kind of distance in time do you need from an event to feel comfortable [...]

Did you conceive this project before– KB & LN: –before 9/11. KB: And most of the interviews were done–and I’m thinking particularly of Sam Hynes’ interview–before the invasion of Iraq. So that when he says, in the beginning of the film, “There’s no such thing as a good war, only necessary wars and just wars,” [...]

SPOILER ALERT: This post reveals who was voted off last night’s Survivor: China. Also, the Ken Burns posts reveal who won WWII. Monty Brinton/CBS We interrupt Ken Burns Day at Tuned In to prove that we’re not all about lofty matters historical here. Survivor: China debuted last night, and while I can never judge the [...]

It’s interesting from the standpoint of today to see the images of death and gore that made it into the popular media and newsreels at the time. KB: And the sequencing of that, which went from absolute buttoned-down control, where no one knew until after the war the actual casualties and loss and materiel at [...]

Does Ken Burns have anything to say about the attacks by Hispanics for leaving them out of the original version of The War? Does he ever! Didn’t you have to take on faith that the four towns you picked would give you the whole scope of the war? LN: Yes. We naively though that if [...]

I spoke with Ken Burns and Lynn Novick for a good hour and a half, getting far more stuff than I could work into a 660-word column in Time. Burns, in addition to being thoughtful about the process and pitfalls of documentary making, is a saltier speaker than you might expect from a PBS type, [...]

Carrying wounded in Okinawa. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration In my column this week, I sat down with Ken Burns and his co-director/producer, Lynn Novick, and talked about–well, a lot of things, but the focus of this column ended up being on their WWII documentary The War and its parallels to, and implied comments [...]