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The expression "Ken Burns effect" is precisely the name of a function on Apple computers that makes sure that all your old static family photos move on the screen as if they came out of "The Civil War". But there is another Ken Burns effect that deserves to be mentioned. his "Country Music" arrives on television screens: the impact that one of his mini-documentary series can have on any major musical genre. As controversial as may have been the inclusions and exclusions of "Jazz" in 2001, few people could argue that art has still not benefited from a kind of reverb from this massively seen series. The country does not need much the same commercial boost, but it will still indulge in an awareness of the look of Burns in the twentieth century on the descent of the genre, hollers stadiums .
The director spoke with Variety just before the project premiere on September 15, he has been working for eight and a half years. The film comes after all this time with a lot of musical complements for all beginners who suddenly want a crash course in the country, like Spotify Spotlight's "Spotlight Ken Burns Country Music Experience" playlist (which includes dozens of key tracks as well as video clips of favorite contemporary stars) and two soundtracks (including a box of five CDs and one-disc distillation).
Perhaps its real effect will not be so much on catalog sales as it is on contemporary country artists who watch all these clips of Hank, Merle, Loretta, Dolly, Willie, Kris, Emmylou, Jimmie and the family. Carter and have to wonder what they did to belong to this lineage. This could serve as a genre-wide wake-up call or simply sell a few more downloads from Louvin Brothers; Anyway, it's a victory.
According to your interviews, is there anyone according to you who has been hardest hit?
No, I mean, Willie is always hard, because he's running all the time and he's not talkative. It turned out to be for us, which is a great advantage. You have to do it on your bus and it was just a question of finding a timetable. [Nelson’s bus interview is one of the few that has a different visual look than the rest of the film.] The sad thing is that we talked to the people of George Jones and we focused on a specific time thinking we would do it on the next trip to Nashville. He is dead. So this trip to Nashville had some great interviews, but it was not George Jones.
It's a bit scary to look at some of the interviews you did not do a long time ago, where people look vibrant, beautiful and alive … and that's no longer the case. Frankly, there are so many deaths – recently dead people – in this movie.
You see dead? Yeah. We did 101 interviews. I do not know how much we finally used. It's around 80, I think – and it's not the fault of those people who were not included; the film simply took a different direction, or we decided not to go into details. But 20 of those 101 people have been approved, and it really hurts a lot. We lost Fred Foster, Hazel Smith and several other people. Cowboy Jack (Clement) is great, and so many others. This is the bittersweet part of that. Frankly, when we start, we're going up the actuarial tables. You know, we go to the older people first – Jimmy Dickens, Ralph Stanley – both of us – because we want them. Merle (Haggard). Bitterness is clear, and sweetness is, we have them. They are there. And there is some kind of incredible presence. If what Merle says in the film is true – this country music talks about things we believe in but can not see: dreams, songs and souls – there is no doubt that his soul is still there.
It would be interesting to be a fly in your editing room while you and your collaborators discuss choices to cut. Because 16 hours and a half sounds like a daunting length for some people who do not worship country music, but those who realize it realize that there is not much time to cover the greater part of 100 years . There must be hard choices every day.
I wish you could have been a fly on the wall. It's intense, but no one shouts. I listen very carefully. I certainly have the last word, but I do not use it arbitrarily or arbitrarily, except when we have to move on. There is no ego. None with Dayton (Duncan) about writing, knowing very well that I will cut one-third to one-half before he's finished tinkering with it. And none of the people who collect a hundred thousand images and we use only 3,400, or collect thousands of hours of filming while we can only include a few hours in the film. And that's why it takes eight and a half years. There is no business model for this on television; it's the only public television. Because I could end all my fundraising efforts tomorrow if I switched to a premium channel or streaming service, and they would give me the money we needed – but they would not give me eight years and a half. There is simply no business model for this.
Were there any differences in the way you were received during production or afterwards by the country and jazz communities? Both can protect themselves, but Nashville probably a lot less.
Country is a form of lyrical-based art, while jazz is primarily a form of instrumental art. And so it was a challenge for talkative and talkative people like us to learn to bite our lips, sit on our hands and let the music play. The country community and the jazz community were extremely welcoming and extremely helpful in filming the film. As you already know, some jazzerati took the trouble to tell us what we had left out. … I think that the battles and debates around this philosophy and philosophy, which convinced a handful of people, were really immaterial. This series had the effect of quadrupling jazz sales. This is not a bad thing. So, all the beards and arrows that were sent in my way have somehow bounced on the rather thick skin that we had already developed. And in this case, the country music community was stunned. I mean, there's nothing more wonderful than being out of breath listening to CMA executives saying, "I can not believe I had to come to New Hampshire in February to find out more about my city, Nashville, and about the area. in which I spent my life.
And people will quibble and say, "Why did not you do this person, and if you made that person, why did not you make that song?" And that's exactly the kind of conversation you want to have. But we are storytellers. We do not read the phone book. We are not an encyclopedia. We intend to say, "Let me introduce you to 150 people. You know, about 50 people are primary and 50 other secondary and 50 other tertiary years or more. But they are all at the heart of something complex, like a Russian novel, that spans many decades and generations. And we're going to start here and finish here, because we're in the story business, and we're not comfortable commenting on that moment, or the near past. "
There is certainly a lot of discussion online about whether the ultimate goal of "Country Music" in the early '90s (with a little post-scriptum) was arbitrary, and why you do not want to. have not touched on so many interesting things from the past 25 years.
People have given us arguments about this in "Baseball" and arguments about "Jazz," but the simple answer to those people in jazz who are upset about not having spent more time in the modern era is to say, "Well! , which in modern times is equal to Armstrong or Ellington or Parker or Gillespie or Davis or Coltrane? And they say, "Well, it would take 30 years to find out. "Exactly! That's why we stopped in the mid-70s for a movie that will be released in 2001.
You keep abreast of the modern scene; you have just sent a tweet congratulating the Highwomen. Have you ever considered a controversy like the one on Lil Nas X and would you like to be able to tell it up to the present?
Well, for me, Lil Nas X is my microphone drop moment. We spent eight episodes and 16½ hours talking about the fact that country music was never a thing. At the big bang, you have the Carter family on Sunday morning and Jimmie Rodgers on Saturday night, and both are not a thing in themselves, there are many of them. And there is a huge African-American influence that permeates the whole story. And it's a two-way street: Ray Charles arrives and says, "Hey, I have creative control of an album – I'm going to do Modern Sounds in Country and Western" . 62 is "I can not stop loving you." And here we are in a new modern era that we do not touch, with all these classic and binary arguments about the Billboard, which is not listed. [“Old Town Road”] on the country map, and it turns out that it's not just the country # 1 touched but the # 1 Single, period, and it's by a black gay rapper! We do not have to update. It just proves that all the cycles we've reported over the decades – all the strains in country music of race, class, poverty, gender, creativity versus commerce, geography – are still present. And that's the drama going on, and it's something you have to cover, not me.
I think the controversy over the absence of women on country music radio is a very interesting thing, given the absolutely central character of women in the history of country music, as nowhere else in the world. especially jazz. Jazz has been an hermetic fraternity for decades and decades; you'll leave an Ella or Billie from time to time. But Mother Maybelle is the original American guitarist, right? Sarah Carter is this original folk singer. You have Rose Maddox from Maddox Brothers and Rose, you have Kitty Wells, you have Patsy Cline. And then you get to Loretta Lynn, who publishes "Do not go home with thoughts of love" and "The Pill" the same year, the National Women's Organization is created, and no one in rock or folk has taken this kind of things. And she is the beginning of another long line of very strong women – Dolly, needless to say, but also Reba and Kathy Mattea and, before that, Jeannie Seely and Bobbie Gentry.
In the end, what interested us most was the act of writing songs – the fusion of melody and words, the three chords and the truth, and what goes into this mysterious act. In her opening remarks, Merle said country music was about "things you believe in and can not see, like dreams, songs, and souls." I mean, good grief. I think we spend more than 16 hours trying to show what Merle meant.
By entering this field, you are not necessarily an aficionado …
No.
Your writer-producer partner, Dayton Duncan, was a fan who was growing up and might have been a little ahead of you.
Yes a little bit. And Julie (Dunfey, another producer) had even less than me. I am a child of R & B and rock'n'roll. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, worked in a record store, I knew all that, I sold all those country records … I enjoyed Johnny Cash when he came into the group. our community in the late '60s and early' 70s. But no, it was not my music. As hippies, we love "Okie of Muskogee." The great joy of this series, among others, was to discover Merle Haggard for whom he really is – the poet of the common man, with "Mama's Hungry Eyes" and "Mama Tried", "Hold Things Together" and "The Bottle Let Me Down". Emmylou says it better: "Do you want to know country music? Get a Merle Haggard record. It does not matter which one. "So lifting the novelty and political manipulation of" Okie from Muskogee "- when it was very clear that everyone in Merle Haggard's group, including Merle Haggard, was smoking marijuana – was just a joy. so happy to have had him before his death.He feels like Zeus for me.
Like everyone else, we interviewed Haggard, too, to try to get a definitive answer on the true intentions of "Okie from Muskogee".
Was he hemmed and hawing? We tried (to exegete) and I finally said, "You know, we do not care what?" In the beginning, it's a joke, n? is this not? And then counter-culture appropriates the question, and it is extremely popular. So he finds himself trapped in a few other kinds of things that country music is always susceptible to. these kind of political statements. And then I think that he says, "Wait a second, it's not me" and he begins to reinterpret the initial impulse that is to be, as he says in our movie, " to be proud of one's city of origin ". it may be just a little time to hide what is potentially an embarrassing time or, at least for him, not too happy. That's why I was going, okay, we can twist knots to try to decode that, or we can just go, here's the song. We have already established good faith in history. He has already acquired his own supreme knowledge, because in Episode 1, he adores Jimmie Rodgers and sings the beginning of "Mule Skinner Blues". Everything I had like "Gotcha" is so boring. And as a filmmaker, I ended up saying, "Who cares about [about Haggard’s politics]? & # 39; Go, let's go from the front.
Speaking of Haggard, one of the strangest, most effective moments of the film, at least for some of us …
Yes, yes, everyone. Everybody!
That's when Dwight Yoakam tears his tears as he recites the lyrics of Haggard's "Hold Things Together." I already know these words, so it's not as if they came by surprise, but I was tearing it up.
I did the interview, I did not know those words and tears ran down my cheek. I did not know what to expect from Dwight. He came in and he is wearing a lot of his attitude and his protective mask – you know, the jeans, the boots, the hat above the level of the eyes – and he just opened it. I like it. I mean, I consider him a friend now. And this moment has just stopped me dead. We filmed it at Studio A of Capitol Records in Hollywood, so it was a place where ghosts of Buck and Merle were already in the room. He did not think he would break down. I knew exactly what you were talking about, because it's the one that gets me every time – with about 10 other moments.
Having spent so many years on it, with so many other projects in preparation, you have probably moved on and are not in a state of the art country music for the moment…
Well, I am because I have been on the road for months to promote it and so I am a country in its own right, even if I take a little vacation to edit "Ernest Hemingway" or to shoot "Muhammad Ali "or to raise money for" The American Revolution "or shoot an interview for that or" Benjamin Franklin ". I have seven new things going on. But the most important thing I did was "Country".
If you had to put something for pleasure now, what would it be?
You know what, I put our soundtrack, because it's so good, and everyone is there. Jimmie, the Carter family and Garth. I think Merle and Hank and Dolly and Loretta and Johnny are the ones I'm returning to more and more. But all of a sudden, you get those little blows and you say to yourself, "Well, let's just go to a day at Louvin Brothers." See what I mean? And you spend a lot of time with these exquisite exquisite brothers who anticipate the Everly Brothers, who anticipate Simon and Garfunkel on the rock folk scene, but also what Emmylou will do with Gram Parsons. I like to take these little musical trips.
But I also listen to jazz, anyway. I did not get away from it and I thought: made jazz. "And I love the way they (country and jazz) are so interconnected. Louis Armstrong sings "Blue Yodel Number Nine" around the corner with Jimmie Rodgers in the 1920s, and he does the same thing with Johnny Cash in the late '60s or early' 70s. As for Charlie Parker, he plugged the jukebox strings between sets on 52nd Street in the late '40s, as he perfected the new sound he created, bebop, like Bill Monroe, who created bluegrass , and playing the role of Hank Williams. Cats leave, "Bird. What are you doing with this stuff? And he says, "Listen to the stories. "
You have a Spotify playlist initiative. Spotify was not a thing when "Jazz" was happening.
No, we did a little bit with the movie "Vietnam" two years ago. But it is a very big link with them, and they have been great to work with. We also have an application called Unum, after E Pluribus Unum, which handles recurring themes in movies – be it war, race, difficult times, leadership or innovation – and broadcasts them among several movies and in the film. present. There is a huge intersection between "Country Music", Spotify, the soundtrack we have and what we do with Unum.
When it comes to rights, it's hard to believe you're licensing everything you buy.
We had our teeth in "Jazz", which consisted of bringing together (different labels and music groups) and saying: "Look, you take foreign languages … you take national songs …". If we have a best-of, it's really is a best-of, not just the best of such-and-such was on Decca, say, from 1941 to '46. And everyone started it, and the set of five CDs became platinum. Our movie "The War" in 2007 has been improved. I think it 's in "Vietnam" that we really learned to perfect those relationships so that we could go to the Beatles and Bob first. Dylan says, "Look, we need 120 tape cuts and Beatles, but we can not afford it. But if you help us and give us the most favored nation … " It's still expensive; it's still a huge explosion of our budget. But the soundtrack of "Vietnam" contains 120 drops of needles, in addition to the material (original) Trent Reznor and Yo-Yo Ma. They are people who want to help, and they obviously want to earn money but they obviously know that they will sell a large part of this catalog when it is published. It's something you spend years on … The people of Nashville were incredibly helpful and everyone went out of their way to make sure that we did not just have the images or the archives, but the ability to clean all kinds of things. It's very complicated to broadcast a TV show and erase the publication and broadcast performances, as well as the TV rights.
Have you always encountered obstacles? What you have is staggering, but some look at what's missing – like Glen Campbell's absence in the soundtrack and a brief stint in the film – and wonder if it's a rights issue.
No no not at all. If we had done more for Glen Campbell, there would be more for Glen Campbell. This is where it happens in the arc of the thing. I think we did him justice. It helps us somehow lead to "Hee-Haw" (with mention of its network program), and that means you can not mitigate that. It's the end of an episode. The laws of narration thus suggest not to taste "Gentle on My Mind", "Wichita Lineman" or anything that Glen wanted to do. But it was nothing about him, nor certainly about rights issues.
If anyone is interested in "The Civil War", it is all or nothing. But it covers such a long time and an extensive collection of stars and styles. Many country music fans may not want to hear from Uncle Dave Macon in the 1920s and would like to go directly to Garth and the artists they know and love. Do you worry, some people might look like this: "Can I watch episodes 5 and 6 first, then go back?" There might be a tendency to read the last chapter first.
You can do it. It's a free country. But that will not help you understand the story. Do you know what it is? Are you ready to submit to a story? We live in a time when the attention span has eroded and we are also living in a narcissistic era where people are bending over the index, so I guess there will be some people rushing to the last episode to see if they are included or their favorite person is included. But it's OK. Each episode is its own autonomous element and is part of a larger continuum of the eight. But you know, we are storytellers. For me, it's fascinating. The only fact mentioned in episode 1 of the banjo from Africa should be enough to encourage people to get started. And once the Bristol sessions are over, it's hard to turn away from the drama and melodrama of the Carter family and the genius of Jimmie Rodgers. At the time of his death, at the last moment of episode 1, I have the impression that the hook might be in.
The end of it, which is in the early 90s, is fascinating for a number of reasons. You leave it on a commercial spike, with the explosion of Garth, which is a bit reverse jazz that fades at the end of this film. But there is a little bit of possible misfortune with triumph as well, with the discussion on radio consolidation in the 90s and companies wanting better results both in terms of record sales and ratings. listen to the radio. Kathy Mattea says that artists like her were back in the '80s and' 90s, and they thought it would last forever.
And then the door is closed. Yes, I think it's perfect (to finish here). It's a lot easier than where to start. You've reached the peak of Garth's popularity, Bill Monroe dies, then you follow Johnny Cash for seven years until he dies, struggling to come back … And speaking of Lil Nas X, you have a producer of rap and hip hop, Rick Rubin, who helps Johnny Cash to his last bloom. It tells me everything. You can not invent that.
Many viewers will enter this knowing nothing. But you must also keep the attention of people who are very familiar with country music and have heard some of these stories.
You have to make those stories that some people know, but if we do it well, we have the ability to make it new for you. Like Dolly separating from Porter (Wagoner, spark of inspiration from "I'll always love you") – most insiders know it, but I think the way we did it is very moving.
But there are other little things that come up that most cognoscenti do not know. I have done extensive research on the history of country music and politics since the 1920s, but I have never known that Earl Scruggs participated in a counterculture march in Washington to end to the Vietnam War.
Yes, with Charlie Daniels! I think Charlie Daniels would like to forget he's here. But he is there – you can see him.
Do you remain aware of the need to balance things for viewers who know a lot of things and those who arrive by the cold?
No, all that matters is a good story. People always say, "For whom did you create it?" And I say, "Everyone," and they look at me as if I were crazy. I did it for people who love country music and know a lot about it. I did it for people who are not sure. And I made it for people who do not like it. Because if you tell a good story, you could change someone's mind. A friend came to see me right before the screening and said, "Dude, I loved everything you did, Ken. but the country, I do not know … "And he shook his head as if I had entered a cow's pie. It was a big career mistake. And four days later, after showing two episodes a day and discussing, he was in tears. And he apologized for the last year and a half. I said, "You do not need to apologize! I understood it. He calls me and tells me he has downloaded the Louvin Brothers or Jimmie Rogers, or says, "Well, Emmylou is fabulous. Where do you place them? I prepare them for this person who thinks they are not interested in baseball, Civil War battles, Prohibition or anything else. If you tell a good story, everyone should look.
Some of the interviews you have done for "Country Music" are slightly condescending. They will not say it outright, but they ask, "Do you think you've learned something by doing it that should help us feel better with these hay beans in the middle of the country?"
Well yeah. Because the presumption is that whoever is "them" is less a human being than you, and that is a priori false. We spend our life making the distinction: I am rich, you are poor. I'm gay, you're straight. You are a man, I am a woman. You are black, I am white. And country music touches on the fact that we are all in the same boat and that we are dealing with the fundamental crisis of the human project, from which none of us came out alive. And if you have Hank Williams to help you get through this – if you sing it "I'm so lonely, I could cry", or if you have Johnny Cash singing "I still miss someone" – you know, it's a big help. And I do not really care if you are a redneck.
In the interest of full disclosure, note that in the first episode of "Country Music", you quote Variety speaking of country music fans as "illiterate and ignorant, endowed with the intelligence of morons". You even put up a graph of Variety text on "nasal vocalization" of singers who "can neither read nor write English". was the 1920s, when he was still known as hillbilly music. But still, maybe a mea culpa is in order.
It's ironic, but not too surprising, given the usual prejudices and nauseating epithets, even the most erudite and respected publications spewed incessantly in earlier eras. Nothing nourishes or gains respectability, however, as financial (and sometimes artistic) success. Moreover, we are all trying to overcome the myopic perspectives of the past. I think it's called progress, sort of.
Non-Country Note: When we enter our Apple computers to set up a photo montage that people can see, "Ken Burns" is one of the modes you can switch, which is rather hilarious. Was it some sort of ultimate marker for you, whether you have a style that is distinctive enough to use as a shorthand for a computer function?
Well, "the effect Ken Burns" has a fun providence. I received a call from Steve Jobs in 2002 and I met him. We became friends and were friends until the end. He drove me into this room and his two engineers perfected this feature that allowed people to pan and zoom in on their photos. And I'm a little Luddite, or certainly a true Luddite at the time. He said, "We have perfected it. All Macs starting Jan. 1, 2003 will have this thing. Et nous voulons utiliser le titre de travail. "J'ai dit:" Qu'est-ce que c'est? "Il a ajouté:" L'effet Ken Burns ". J'ai dit:" Je ne fais pas de publicité. " "Quoi?" Les ingénieurs semblèrent un peu inquiets. peut-être l'avaient-ils vu crier ou quelque chose du genre. Mais il a dit: «Revenez à mon bureau.» Nous avons donc discuté et j'ai essentiellement dit: «Regardez, si vous me donnez beaucoup de matériel et de logiciels, je me retournerai et le donnerai à des organisations à but non lucratif." Je veux dire, un Au début, quelques ordinateurs nous restaient coincés parce que nous avions désespérément besoin de ce genre de choses dans nos productions PBS, mais 95% étaient destinés à des collèges et à des organisations à but non lucratif, et nous venions de donner plusieurs centaines de milliers de dollars (d'équipement), et Apple continuait à renouveler cette.
C’est drôle, parce que mes enfants l’utilisent tout le temps. Et je sais que j’ai épargné beaucoup de bar-mitsva et de services commémoratifs, ainsi que de fêtes et de vacances. Pour moi, c'est la queue technologique qui remue le chien. Ce que j'essaie de faire a de nombreuses dimensions structurelles, kinesthésiques et auditives différentes. J'ai passé toute ma vie professionnelle à essayer de comprendre comment réveiller une vieille photo – en quoi consiste la composition, comment vous zoomez et sa cadence, et comment vous la traitez comme un réalisateur de long métrage: un plan maître avec un long, un moyen, une fin, une inclinaison, un panoramique, une révélation, ce qui signifie que vous effectuez un zoom arrière ou insère des détails de celle-ci. C’est une variation superficielle de cela, et je ne le regrette pas. C’est juste un de ces phénomènes qui fait rire.
Mais je vous dirai, si j’avais dit: «Bon, bon, je veux un dixième de cent chaque fois qu’il est utilisé», je pense qu’il aurait dit: «Peu importe. Nous appellerons cela l'effet de panoramique et zoom. »Mais le fait que je ne souhaite pas le faire par principe l'intéressait, et cela a créé une amitié vraiment intéressante. Il me manque aussi beaucoup. C'était une personne vraiment très spéciale. Et je ne l'ai jamais vu crier.
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