- [Voiceover] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part
by MFI Foundation,

improving the quality of
life within our community.

Also by Hillco Partners,

a Texas government
affairs consultancy,

and by the Alice Kleberg
Reynolds Foundation.

- I'm Evan Smith.

He's an iconic
Emmy award winning

and Academy Award nominated
documentary filmmaker

whose credits include
the Civil War,

baseball, and jazz.

His latest film for
PBS is Jackie Robinson.

He's Ken Burns.

This is Overheard.

Let's me honest.

This is about the
ability to learn about

the experience of not
having been taught properly.

How would you avoid it?

What has befallen other
nations in Africa?

And you could say
he made his own bed,

but you cause him
to sleep in it.

You saw a problem and
over time took it on.

Let's start with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.

Are you gonna run for president?

I think I just got a
F from you actually.

This is over.

(applause)

Ken Burns, welcome.

- Thank you.

- Honored to meet you,

great to have you here.

- It's my pleasure.

- Congratulations on
this wonderful project.

- Thank you very much.

I should say that's it's
the great good fortune of

growing old and public
television that I share

the authorship of
this with Sarah Burns

and David McMahon.

Sarah Burns happens to
be my oldest daughter.

This is

- Proud moment for a partent.

- We made a film together,

the three of us

called the Central Park Five.

It came out a few years
ago, and when that was done

we were plowing directly
into Jackie Robinson, and so

when you say that I've done it,

I'm always aware on
every film that is

an unbelievable collaborative
effort, but in this case

the coproducers
and codirectors are

Sarah Burns and David McMahon.

- Look at the generosity
of that statement.

- [Ken] Actually it has
the extra added virtue of

being true.

- [Evan] Is this a race
movie or a baseball movie?

- It's a good story about
one of the most important

people in all of
American history.

This is not the first
progress in civil rights since

the Civil War, but it's
the beginning of the modern

era of civil rights.

- [Evan] It's a transition point

or a reflection point.
- When Jackie Robinson

walks out to first
base on April 15, 1947,

Martin Luther King is a
junior at Morehouse College.

Harry Truman hasn't
integrated the military.

Brown versus Board of
Education hasn't happened.

There haven't been
organized sit ins.

Though Jackie did it as
a teenager on his own,

and Rosa Parks is
a decade away from

refusing to give up her seat
on a Montgomery, Alabama

bus, something Jackie had
done three years earlier

in 44 at Fort Hood in Texas.

What you have in some
ways is the beginning

of the modern era.

He's evolved from the A Philip
Randolf of the Brotherhood

of Sleeping Car Ports,

and WEB to boys

and to a lesser extent
some of the other leaders

of the earliest 20th century.

He's now plowing
forward and permitting

these other manifestations
to take place.

This is first of all a
great story in sports.

He is the most imporant person

in the history of baseball,
our national pastime.

He's not the best player
arguably, but he is

the most important, and then
it is a great American story

because it deals with
our central subtheme,

after you deal with
the nature of freedom,

human freedom, the tension
between what I want

and our collective
needs together,

then race is the central theme,

and I think it's a much larger
human story about a person

who takes on his shoulders
this enormous burden,

turning the other cheek,
and so he was a central part

of our baseball series
that came out in 94

in almost every episode
and we thought we done him,

but the chance to do a stand
alone prompted by his widow

Rachel who's 93, with
all of her marbles

and some of mine,
and I want them back.

(laughter)

I want them back.

We were able to do a
deeper, deeper dive,

and to help shed,

you know, what happens when
you have a mythological

figure is that mythology
gets in the way of really

understanding.

The barnacles of
sentimentality across

- We think we know
Jackie Robinson as we

think we know many
of the subjects

- Look at George Washington

who we say wooden teeth,
never had wooden teeth.

Threw a dollar coin across
the Petomic, couldn't happen.

Never told a lie.

Everybody lies.

Chopped down a cherry tree.

None of this happens.

This was invented
in the after math

to help glorify him and make
him palatable to schools.

- [Evan] What about
Jackie Robinson?

I'm interested in this
because I did think to myself

and looking at this film

there was a lot
that I didn't know.

There was a lot about
him as a personality

and his disposition
toward the world

that I don't know
that I knew or that

I hadn't been told or
maybe I had been told,

but idealized it
or romantisized it.

- That's exactly right.

- What do you think
we don't know?

And why don't we know it
about Jackie Robinson?

- I know why we don't
know it first of all,

which is we live in a
media culture which we are

buried in a tsunami
of informaiton

so what tends to happen
- Some of even true.

- A few things are true,

and what we have is
a kind of superficial

conventional wisdom
that then accrues,

I think I know who
Jackie Robinson is.

He turned the other
cheek for three years,

all this stuff.

Maybe know a little bit more,

Branch Ricky is God who
bestows points like Michael

Angelo's finger and
bestows his son.

This real story is so
much more complicated that

everything changes, and
what's so nice is that the

complexity doesn't diminish him,

and this isn't revisionism
where the pendulum swings to

where we're not throwing him out

because he's.

- We understand he's a
demential human being.

This is a multi-generational
portrait of an African American

family, which you
don't get very often.

This is an extraordinary
love story between

two people who loved each
other but not without

it's tensions and
it's flash points.

There's a wonderful
story, and she's there

to narrate us through
incredibly difficult, incredibly

pointy and incredibly moving,

and incredibly dramatic
moments not only her

and their life, but in the
history of the United States

and so what happens is it
permits us to at every juncture

to say, "The familiar
tropes of the old story,

"the children's books
don't work here."

What we're suggesting
is something great.

I'll give you an example,

not with Jackie, but
in a larger sense

which is we lament that
there are no heroes today,

and that's because in that
same superficial conventional

media that we have,
conventional wisdom

is that we think
heroes are perfect,

and the greeks who invented
the notion of heroism told us

thousands of years ago that
heroism isn't perfection,

it's in fact a very
delicate negotiation,

sometimes a war between a
person's obvious strengths

and their not so obvious,
but perhaps equal weaknesses,

and it is that negotiation
and that tension

that sometimes that war
that defines heroism.

What happens is we have
the unfortunate tendency

in a media culture to
throw somebody out when

we find the slightest
bit of lack of perfection

and say, we so sorry
we have no heroes.

There are thousands of

heroes, because it's
how you negotiate with

the bad stuff,
both your own flaws

as well as the stuff
that happens to you

that defines heroism.

- I would say that's
absolutely true,

but another thing that
happens is that we carve away

the parts that we
don't wanna see.

- [Ken] That's exactly right.

- So that when we
present Jackie Robinson,

the image that comes
to my mind's eye

is of him sliding and then
you quickly go to a shot

of him with Branch
Ricky or him with other

white executives of
baseball at the time,

and the heroism of his
having been the first.

He's kind of the
beginning, the middle,

and the end of the story.

One of the things I loved
most about this movie

was the juxtaposition
of Jackie Robinson later

in life with Muhammad
Ali an with Jim Brown,

and the idea that
somehow Jackie Robinson,

who had been the first,

without whom none of this other
stuff would have happened.

Jackie Robinson is now
being put in the position of

being too much of
an accommodationist

- An uncle Tom.

- And Muhammad Ali and
Jim Brown are representing

the militancy of the time,

and Jackie Robinson is being
criticized for not being

sufficiently an advocate
for this position.

- And he had been
the most radical

- How could you have
been more radical?

- Exactly.

There's a wonderful
historian, Yura Williams,

who says the
definition in the 1940s

of black masculinity
is Jackie Robinson,

but by the 1960s that has tired,

and so you have a Muhammad
Ali and a Jim Brown,

and Carlos Smith
at the Olympics.

- At the olympics, right,

fist in the air.
- That becomes

and some of the
more radical folks,

at the same time our laws
are being transformed

in Civil Rights acts
by Lyndon Johnson.

There's a kind of impatience
that it's not really working,

and it's not
happening fast enough.

There are a lot of people
who migrate to a more

violent posture, a
more militant posture,

and so we're trying
to understand it,

and Jackie got caught up in
that, just as Dr. King did.

He was often there's
some very pointed

comments by Malcolm X talking
about passive ministers

and there can be only
one passive minister that

he's thinking about.
- But Jackie

Robinson did not shrink.

What I loved about him,

the first part I loved
was the juxtaposition.

The second part that I loved
was Jackie Robinson basically

going back at these guys.

You're wrong here.

He wrote a column,
newspaper column,

I remember once
specifically that you cited

in which he took
Malcolm X on directly.

- Yes, but also
criticized the NAACP

for not advancing younger
leaders more quickly.

What you have is somebody,

this is some ways a
existential story.

A lot of people talk the talk.

Do you walk the walk?

And Jackie Robinson
got up everyday

to try to improve the
lives of other people

and one of the stories that
we can sort of disengage

ourselves from because
it's too convenient

and it's the subject of
children's books and statues is

the famous saying where
in that first season,

1947, they have gone
to Crosley Field,

incredibly racist.

The tuperative comments
are being hurled at Jackie,

and Pee Wee Rease
walks over and puts his

arm around him.

That's one of the great
moments in the mythology

of Jackie Robinson.

It didn't happen.

- Another thing that we

- There's a statue
outside of the

Great American
Ballpark in Cincinnati

that shows this.

There's children's
books about this.

But it didn't happen.

It's not in Jackie's
autobiography.

It's not in the white press.

It's not in the black
press which would have

done 15 related articles.

Also that first year
Jackie played first

and Pee Wee is at short.

You would have to go
across the diamond

which never happens before.

Maybe later years, and what
happened is they probably

did, after many years
they were together

and they threw their
arm around her,

had a conversation,

and that migrated back in time
to that first season, because

no pun intended, we white people

wanted to have skin in the game.

We wanted to feel
like we were good

and that we were capable
of participating this

and supporting it.

Another thing is
we always invest

Branch Ricky with much more
authorship of this moment

than before, as if he said

my conscience is stirring,

and we pointed out in
our baseball series that

he was also a good businessman,
and he knew he could

put African American seats,

fill African American

- Seats in the stadiums.

- In Ebbet's Field, but

and it's true he had
this great conscience.

He was a very, very
amazing human being,

but the African American
press have been pushing

for this for decades,

so had the left wing
press in the United States

including the communist press.

Oh, I don't wanna hear
about the Communist press.

The Daily Worker, right.

So had the left leaning

Republican,

I have not lost my
mind, left leaning

Republican mayor of New
York City, Firlia Auglaria.

There were state commissions
that were investigating

discriminatory hiring practices.

There was lots of
pressure on Branch Ricky,

and he had planned not
to have one single son

that he would bestow,

but to bring up a handful
of African Americans,

but because of all this
pressure and this failure,

his anxiety that maybe
he was gonna lose control

of the moment, he
hears about Jackie

from an African
American reporter who

he's in touch with who
had a good try out,

and he said, "Oh
yes I remember him.

"He's the great football
star, and the guy

"you refuse to give
up is at Fort Hood,"

and blah blah blah.

It all plows accidentially
as well as on purpose

towards Jackie, and not
this sense that it was all

set out to be.

Angels arrived, annouced
the virgin birth,

this happened
(laughter)

- It's a lot messier
than it seems.

- Here's the other thing that
is perhaps even more important

as you get to know
how competitive, how
fiercely competitive

Jackie is, you begin to
understand the the turning

of the other cheek
is unbelievably

it's a tough thing to do.

He's gonna turn the other
cheek for three years,

one in the minors
and two in the majors

is not like his character.

He's actually going
against who he is

in order to make sure that
this experiment succeeds.

- Amazing.

- It's one of the great stories.

- [Evan] One of the
things I loved also,

another part of this
that I really enjoyed

was the story that
Rachel Robinson tells.

They get married and instead
of going on a traditional

honeymoon, the honeymoon
is we're gonna go

to spring training.

They get on, they
attempt to get on

the plane.
- A series of planes

that are gonna take
them from Los Angeles

to Florida for the
spring training.

He's joining the Royals
which is the triple A

baseball team of the Dodgers,

and Ricky's picked it
so he can go and be

in Montreal where it's a
better environment for him,

but they got spring
training in Florida

which is not the greatest.

- They attempt to board
planes with the team

and they're bunked
for white travelers

once, twice, and eventually

they have to ride a bus because
they cannot get a flight.

They will not get a flight.

Rachel Robinson in
fact tells this story.

She's sort of distraught.

This is my honeymoon, this

her moment.
- Her mother in law comes

as they're about to leave
Los Angeles and brings

them a shoe box full
of fried chicken,

and she's embarrassed, but
Mallie Robinson, Jackie's mother

knows of the world.

She's brought him from Jim
Crow, Southern Georgia,

K Row Georgia where
African Americans are being

lidged all the time,
and guests in Pasadena

where they have to
deal with a new form of

sometimes overt,
sometimes covert racism.

She understands and
Rachel has never even seen

bathrooms more colored and
so she goes into the white

ladies bathroom to sort
of compose herself,

and as she says, do
what she had to do,

and then walk out
and all these women

are looking at her, but
there's this moment of

unbelievable shame
and then Rachel comes

back and says fiercely, "The
fried chicken was great."

They started off
with embarrassment at

this gesture from
the older generation,

and suddenly understood
that the accommodation

was gonna have to be a part
of their lives yet again.

- I asked you if this was
a movie about baseball

or race.

Really the better question
is, is it a movie about

Jackie or is it a
movie about Rachel,

because on some levels it
really is Rachel's story,

and as you say, Rachel
is in the movie,

present, narrating,
telling stories,

and she was in fact the one

going back to the
decision to do the story

to begin with.
- She called me up

after the baseball
series and just lobbied

for an awfully long time,

and finally I saw some daylight,

and I said, before that, I
said, "Rachel, if you find

"somebody else to do it,
he deserves a stand alone,

"but do it."

She says, "No, no, no,
I'm waiting for you."

- Her dignity and her,

her dignity in this movie
on camera is remarkable.

- We had the opportunity
as you did yesterday

to interview not
only the president,

but the first lady as
well and these are four

people, hurdling
through space and time,

two couples and
they're very similar.

Jackie is walking through
a door that no one has

walked through before
and he probably can't

do it without her,
most definitely can't
do it without her,

and the president
walked through the door

no one had ever
walked through before

as an African American,
and he probably couldn't

do it without Michelle,

and it's interesting
to hear Jackie's there

and voice and spirit and Rachel

is resurrecting him,
but they're both there

talking about what
you need to come home

when the opprobrium
of the world has been

heaped on you, not because
of the content of your

character, but because of
the color of your skin,

and the president says so
movingly, it's so great to

come home to find
someone who loves you

and has your back, which is
exactly what Rachel is saying

and you suddenly realize
this an old trope

in American history.

- We haven't mvoed an inch.

- Well we have because
I got to interview

an African American
president and first lady

about the first baseball player.

- Right but at the
same time, the same

thing about the president was
said about Jackie Robinson.

Maybe he's not black enough.

- Our film

is got issues of the
confederate flag and integrated

swimming pools and
driving while black

and stop and frisk,
and all sorts of stuff.

The tropes that are going
on now, so you do feel

the pessimist could feel
that the more things change

the more they stay
the same, but to me

what I've understood from
doing this for 40 years is

from Ecclesiastes, "What
has been will be again.

"What has been done
will be done again.

"There's nothing
new under the sun."

There's no cycles of history.

We're not condemned to repeat
what we don't remember,

that's very convenient,

but human nature repeats
itself and superimposes itself

over the seemingly random chaos
events and we can perceive

patterns and themes.

Mark Twain is supposed
to have said that history

doesn't repeat
itself, but it rhymes.

My job is to listen
to those rhymes

and to try to hear somethings.

I think we can, the
pessimist can say,

this is a glass half empty,

but at the same time you
can understand that progress

has been made.

What you can't do is let
up on the accelerator.

What you can't do, and this
is what Jackie understood,

that life is measured only
by the way it affects other

people's lives.

It says on his gravestone,
and that is what

this is about, that's why
it's an existential story.

You get every morning to
improve the lives of others

you are walking the walk.

- You are the Ecclesiastes
of documentary filmmakers

in the sense that the
way you've approached

filmmaking over time,
different films,

but what has always
been is still the case.

You tackle a subject thoroughly,

you tend to tackle institutions
which I think really hard,

how do you make a
nine episode series

about the Civil War

or a nine episode or 10
episode series about baseball.

These are institutions that
are so large and so difficult

to get your arms around,
but your approach has

been similar, and I think
there's something comforting

about a Ken Burns project,
because you know going into it

that there are gonna be
certain standards, and certain

visual cues and audio cues, and
you know what you're getting

even though the
subject is different.

That has been a deliberate
decision on your part.

- It has been deliberate.

I mean style is, you could say,

is just the authentic
application of techniques.

All craftsmen, all artists
have lots of techniques

at their disposal, but if you

- But it evolves.

- And it evolves, but if
it's done organically,

honorably, then
people recognize.

This is why you can
go into a gallery

and there are all paintings.

You go, "Oh, man.

"I get it, that's all De Gah."

I've tried to live that way,

to not let technology be
a tail that wags the dog

but rather control the
technology to serve something

that's not glamorous, but
to serve a complicated story

and we're always not
trying to tell you

what we already know,

as some documentary
filmmakers do,

and the last time I checked
that's called homework,

but share with you our
process of discovery,

and that's huge.

Each film is saying who are we?

Who are these strange
and complicated people

who like to call
themselves Americans?

What does an investigation
of the past tell

us about not only where
we were but where we are

and where we may be going.

History, if you know it,
it's a kind of armor,

and I'll give you one simple,

very quick example.

When the '08, '09
meltdown happened,

friends of mine, even in
the financial industry said,

"This is like the depression."

I said, "No, it's not."

In the depression, in
some cities, the animals

in the zoo were shot and
the meat was distributed

to the poor.

When that happens I'll
admit we're in a depression,

and then all of a sudden
that gives you a kind of

perspective to sort
of deal with things

on a different level.

You don't have to chicken
little, the sky is falling,

and you can also say
let's take this seriously

but let's not over do it.

Let's not invest it.

- We tend to romanticize
in the positive direction

and we also romanticize
in the negative direction.

It's never as good
as it seems to me

and never as bad.

If I went back and
looked, as I understand

the story, your first
film was a documentary

you made in Anarbor.

Is that right?

- No, everybody

- Was that a film?

- No, my dad gave me a
camera and I went out

and shot different things there.

My first film that I signed

is one that is the first one
for PBS on the Brooklyn Bridge.

That was the film.
- Based on the McCaloh book.

- The construction,
he had done a book on

the construction of it
and half the film is about

the construction
the other half was

- More of your project than

- Yeah, and then I brought
David to be the narrator,

because he knew the
story as well as any

and that was taboo
in those days.

Your narrator was
Alexander Scorbi or

Orsten Wells, and you got.

I thought why?

Why would you groom somebody
who understood the story?

- If I went back and
looked at Brooklyn bridge

or I went back and looked
even before that at the stuff

that you were shooting
more casually back in

Anarbor, would I see
in those productions

elements that I would recognize
instantly as the Ken Burns.

- You would seen in a film
I made as my sort of senior

thesis at Hampshire College
in Ameris, Massachusetts

for old Sterburge village
which is a living history

museum in New England,
the beginnings of that,

and then certainly in
Brooklyn bridge you

would see everything
that you see today,

and I hope it's evolved
but at the same time

that film is still a
lovely little film I think

because I was able to just

figure out how to
tell a complex story

with those things.

When we talked about techniques,

there four oral.

Not only the third
person narrator,

the voice of God, but a
first person voice is reading

letters, journals, love
letters, military counts,

newspaper counts,
complex sound effects

that are willing that
old photograph to life

and period music, and on
the visual side you have

interviews, you have
still photographs.

You have news reels,
and you have live

modern cinematography.

There are thousands of
other techniques we have,

but if you understand those
four visual and four oral

techniques in combination.

Some films have no talking.

Some films have no
first person voices.

Some people, like Lewis and
Clark, have lots of live

cinematography.

Some like the upcoming
films don't have very much

live cinematography because
we've got news reels

and photographs.

Everything is
calibrated so to me,

each film feels unique and
at the same time they're

employing the same we hope
honorable relationship

to the subject and that
taking the time to do it,

God bless public television,

that permits us to
say that this style

can be consistent throughout

and yet each one
is it's own set of

a single film is a million,
literally, no exaggeration.

A million problems, but
I don't see problems in

a pejorative sense.

I see it in a way to try
to overcome the necessary

inevitable, lawful friction
that comes, like how

do you start?

Which is the first shot?

What's the second shot?

These are all problems
that you have to solve.

That's what I love.

That's what gets me
up in the morning,

and a series might be
10 million problems,

but that's a good thing.

- The Robinson film is

- Two parts, four hours.

- Four hours total.

We have just a
couple minutes left.

The next things that

the next thing of
yours that we'll see

- Your next thing is one
called Defying the Nazis,

the Sharp War about a

unitarian minister and his
wife that got Jews out of

just on the eve
of the Holocaust,

and then the next thing
is a big 10 episode,

18 hour history of
the war in Vietnam.

- Another big institution.

And you described it to
me as maybe your biggest

- Oh, it's most definitely.

It's obviously, it's
where a lot of our own

inability to
communicate with others,

ourselves, metastasized,

and if you add that to
a media culture which

celebrates the independent

free agentness of us
all that is to say,

the birthplace of narcissism,

you've got a terrible soup,
because we don't listen to

each other, we talk
over each other,

and what I try to do is
unpack the Vietnam war.

Almost everything
you think about

is probably not true.

- I don't want you to ruin the
ending for us as a spoiler,

but we lose, right?

Is that right?

- We do.

We do.

- Okay good, and then you've
got a big country music.

- Yep, we just opened
our editing room

at the beginning of the
year on country music.

We've been filming and
it was great to leave

the editing room on Vietnam,
waist deep in the deep muddy,

sometimes higher, and to
go to Nashville and talk

about country music
which is just,

as people say, three
quarters of the truth.

If I had my others, I like
to have just straight names.

Civil or baseball, jazz,

just to not confuse
you about what it is.

- Is Vietnam called Vietnam?

- The Vietnam War,

and I would call this

I can't stop loving you.

This is sort of the epitome

of country music, and
it is so much about

the sort of stripped away
American values about what

things are.

My last interview was
actually with Willie Nelson

in his bus, outside his
hotel in Washington D.C.

at rush hour.

- You've obviously
cleaned your clothes

since then, because I don't

- Well the first thing
everyone asks was

did I leave with a contact high?

We were warned in advance
that Willie would be,

as he is, often as
notoriously closed lipped.

He was incredibly great,

and wonderful and

help us understand
- You went to him.

- some important
people in the history,

and he could tell you what
it meant to understand

what Hank Williams
was going through.

- You go from the early days
of country all the way up

through the

- I would say

- The kind of contemporary

- No, we're historians,

amateur we may be.

- [Evan] So where do you stop?

- We always wanna
stop or at least lift

our foot off the accelerator
of sort of definitive

narrative about
25, 30 years out,

because that's the problem of
journalism in near history,

and so I imagine

that country music
was pronounced dead,

and Johnny Cash was his,

Columbia didn't pick
up his contract,

and everybody says he's dead,

and then a year
later Garth Brooks

is filling stadiums
with 60,000 people.

That's a good place to go.

- So you stop at Garth Brooks.

- We'll see.

We don't really know yet where

and we'll interview.

We've interviewed a
lot of people outside

of country music and
go up to some folks

who are now in country
music, but we wanna be,

we got a lot of criticism
in baseball and jazz

for not being more definitive,

but you go to somebody
and say in jazz,

tell me in the last 25 years
who is the equal of Armstrong

and Ellington and
Charlie Parker,

Miles Davis, and they'll
say, "Well we won't know."

And I go, that rests my case.

- Let me just offer you this.

Any film that is a history
of country music in which

Garth Brooks is the point
at which it goes black,

I'm fine with that.

(laughter)

Free advice, do with
it what you will.

Ken, what a treat
to get to see you,

to talk to you about this stuff.

Thank you for being here.
- It's my pleasure.

- [Evan] Ken Burns,
thank you so much.

Good luck with the film.

(applause)

- [Voiceover] We'd love to
have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at
KLRU.org/overheard

to find invitations to
interviews, Q and As with our

audience and guests,
and an archive

of past episodes.

- Beyond country music
which is coming out in 2019,

and in addition to
those five or six films

that I've set in motion

where I'm serving as executive
producer and I'm trying

to help other filmmakers

help them with fundraising
and help them with guidance

and stuff like that.

My own stuff that we are
already started working

our project on
Ernest Hemmingway.

We wanna do a history
of crime and punishment.

- [Voiceover] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part
by MFI Foundation,

improving the quality of
life within our community.

Also by Hillco Partners,
a Texas government

affairs consultancy,

and by the Alice Kleberg
Reynolds Foundation.