Filmmaker, Ken Burns, tells us about his new documentary about Ben Franklin and why Philadelphia is better than Boston.
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00:00He's just the nicest guy in the world and one of the most talented guys.
00:04Oh, love his stuff.
00:05Especially when it comes to documentaries.
00:06And we are happy that the subject happens to be one so near and dear to this city,
00:11our most famous resident ever, Mr. Benjamin Franklin, is the source of this.
00:16So it premieres tonight, and it is also on tomorrow, 8 p.m. on PBS.
00:21It is a four-hour documentary.
00:23Please welcome Mr. Ken Burns.
00:25Yay!
00:26Morning, morning, morning.
00:27How are you guys doing?
00:28It's been a while.
00:28It has.
00:29It is good to see you as well.
00:31We're doing this via Zoom, but thanks so much for joining us again, Ken.
00:35It's always great to have you on.
00:36It's always great to be on.
00:38Yeah, now we got one really super close to home, don't we?
00:40Wow.
00:41Yeah.
00:42And as Preston said, so, you know, near and dear, and obviously there's so much.
00:45You can't go anywhere in this city and not see.
00:48Obviously, this holds true for the country and for history, but in particular here,
00:52we almost feel like he's a living resident.
00:55You know, he's always around you in one form or another.
01:00Yeah, that's the key thing about Franklin.
01:02You hit the nail on the head.
01:03You know, he's accessible.
01:04He's not like the other founding fathers, the kind of marble statuary that seemed fixed
01:10in their time.
01:12He's very accessible to us.
01:13He's a great writer, so he communicates that way.
01:16He's our original humorist.
01:18You know, there's so many things in our lives in which he's had an impact, and he's the
01:24most important person in my mind, at least equal to George Washington, for our independence.
01:30And without his diplomacy, the greatest diplomat in American history, without his editing of
01:34the Declaration, without his forging of the compromises that created the Constitution,
01:39we don't have a country.
01:40And he's fluid.
01:42He's always trying to self-improve.
01:43He's always trying to get better.
01:45For a while, when he was a wealthy man and retired, he held some enslaved people as household
01:50servants.
01:51And, you know, by the end of his life, he's leading an abolitionist society and proposing
01:57the abolition of slavery, you know, decades before most of the abolition movement got started
02:02in the 19th century.
02:03And he's funny, you know?
02:05He's good, and he's generous.
02:07Like, he's on the $100 bill.
02:09Everybody wants more Benjamins.
02:12We're missing half of the equation, because he bound it back to civic improvement.
02:19Why Franklin's on everything here is because he was interested in making the community better.
02:26Let's remember, he was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a little kid, broke out of an
02:31indentured servitude to come here to Philadelphia, and died in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
02:40He was as much interested in what we do together, the good we do together, as he did for improving
02:47himself financially.
02:48I mean, all of his inventions, the lightning rod, the stove, the bifold, all of that are
02:54held without patent.
02:55He would have been a hundred times richer, but he understood that these were good for
03:00everybody.
03:01So he's the embodiment of the whole tension between what I want, personal freedom, and
03:06what we need, collective freedom.
03:08And he knew how to parse that.
03:10And that's why he's so great.
03:11And that's why he lives today.
03:13You know, it's interesting, Kenneth, that you were so, I think, in general bereft of the
03:18belief that the people that we entrust are, whether they be the political elite or the
03:22people that we elect, that they have, you know, our best intentions at heart.
03:27That's a motivation.
03:28But you look at Ben Franklin and you look, as you said, you just reeled off a list of things
03:32that really does seem to be about someone looking to intercede on, you know, on behalf of the
03:39people.
03:39That's right.
03:40And a guy who is resolute in evolving himself, who could realize his own foibles and what
03:46he needed to improve upon.
03:48That's exactly right.
03:49And so, you know, the problem today is not that the people aren't there that want to
03:54serve, it's that we live in a binary media culture, computer culture.
03:58Everything's a one or a zero.
03:59Exactly.
04:00You know, for us, life is melodrama.
04:03Every villain is perfectly villainous.
04:05Every hero is perfectly virtuous until we discover that they've got a flaw and then we
04:09throw them out, right?
04:11It doesn't matter left, right, center.
04:12That's what happens.
04:13But what Franklin understood is that, you know, this is a tragedy.
04:17You know, people are complicated.
04:19He had, you know, he had strained relations in his family in lots of different ways.
04:23His son was the royal governor of New Jersey, stayed a loyalist, you know, was in prison
04:28during the revolution, got out, presumed he'd go to London.
04:31Instead, he stayed to start a terrorist organization killing patriots.
04:34Not that there weren't patriot organizations killing loyalists.
04:37Right.
04:37It was a big mess.
04:39But, you know, they never reconciled.
04:40He stayed away from his wife, Deborah, who stayed back and ran the family businesses for
04:4415 out of the last 17 years.
04:46He knew that she had had a stroke, was dying, and he wasn't there for her death.
04:50So, yeah, he's complicated, but he has this desire to improve himself and he makes all
04:57these lists of virtues that he tries to do.
05:00And yet he's, you know, he's human like you and me, so he's recognizable.
05:05And I think our problem today is that we just, it's an on-off switch and life isn't about
05:10that.
05:10You can't be married.
05:11You can't have kids.
05:12You can't be a friend without understanding you're going to tolerate somebody else with
05:16flaws and that they themselves are tolerating your flaws.
05:19Well, it's often been said that you're, you know, you're more interested in the imperfections.
05:23I think the imperfections are what makes someone human.
05:25I also think something that you've employed constantly throughout your years as a documentarian
05:30is the ability to judge people in their time, to realize that, you know, eventually there
05:37might be a finger pointing at you for what you're not doing quite right that might not
05:41be suitable as things move along.
05:43So realize that people in their time, and I think Ben Franklin's one of the prime examples
05:49of somebody.
05:49He's exactly that.
05:50He's exactly that.
05:51But he's speaking to us from that time and said, look, I could look at the limitations
05:57of the rest of the people around me of my time.
06:00I mean, Jefferson writes the declaration that all men are created equal.
06:04You know, he wrote, here's the good part.
06:06He writes, we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.
06:10Sends the first draft to Franklin.
06:12He goes, this is beautiful, Tom, beautiful, but let's make these truths self-evident.
06:16We're in the age of enlightenment, right?
06:18The sun comes up in the east and sets in the west.
06:21Let's make it self-evident.
06:22Let's not tie it to religion anymore.
06:24Let's just make it, this is scientific.
06:27This is the rights of human beings, you know?
06:30And so he, you know, Jefferson never saw the hypocrisy or the contradiction.
06:35I made a film on him about owning slaves, but Franklin did.
06:38And he worked on that.
06:40And so he was able to transcend it.
06:42You know, in his will, he left some money for kids in his native Boston and in Philadelphia
06:48to go into the trades.
06:50And I talked to some folks from the Boston School, the Franklin Institute, and they were
06:55all, you know, young first-generation immigrants or, you know, lower middle-class folks that
07:03are striving to go to college for the first time.
07:05They were so filled with that energy that Franklin wanted Americans to have.
07:12It was just so beautiful that this gesture that this guy dying in 1790 makes that today
07:18in 2022, there are people benefiting, not just what we read about, just the documentaries
07:25that we watch, but are benefiting from this endowment to say, you matter.
07:30If you work hard, you can go someplace.
07:33And there ought to be a place, it happens to be the United States of America, doesn't always
07:37work well, where if you apply yourself, we ought to be able to help you get along.
07:42And it isn't, you know, it isn't just pull yourself up at your bootstraps.
07:46That's what the people think about Franklin, who loves the $100 bill.
07:50That's why he's on the biggest denomination in general circulation.
07:53But they miss that other point that we are required to help each other.
07:57You know, Orwell makes a point in 1984 of talking about a world that's just a constant
08:02present.
08:03There's no past.
08:04There's no, there's nothing to learn from.
08:06And, and, and, uh, and here is a case where if you go back and visit, you know, what, what
08:12you might think of someone, I love taking a dive into someone's best.
08:15And you've been the vessel for helping me do this.
08:17And all of us do this over the years, the things that you learn.
08:20And, and the more someone becomes a well-rounded, positive, negative kind of person, the more
08:25you can appreciate what they did.
08:26You'd mentioned Franklin's rules to live by.
08:29And you mentioned, you know, how he could have been, uh, you know, fabulously wealthy if he
08:33patented some of these inventions.
08:34One of his rules is be extremely frugal.
08:37What was the one thing that Franklin couldn't be frugal about?
08:41They just love too much to not be a little audacious.
08:44Well, you know, what's so funny is John Adams arrives a little bit late in Paris.
08:48Franklin's been there for a while negotiating with the French and he knows how to handle
08:52the French.
08:53Adams has studied French language by reading, by, by memorizing funeral orations.
08:58Franklin's learning to perfect his friends by writing love letters to the ladies.
09:04So I think he just found in the high society of Paris, just a way in which, oops, a lot
09:10of those aphorisms, a lot of those things that he had said, you know, early to bed, you know,
09:14and, and, and Adams goes there and he goes, wait, where's poor Richard?
09:18Where's early to bed and early to rise?
09:19But, but to, to Adams' great shock, Franklin had already negotiated two treaties.
09:25And just think about it, Washington had a big task not to lose a battle.
09:29Yeah, he wins at Trenton, but that's a surprise thing.
09:31And it's not this big of a deal.
09:33There is a victory at Saratoga, which allows Franklin to convince the, the French that we're
09:39a viable, that we can win this thing.
09:41But when Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown in 1781, Washington is there with about 9,000
09:49Continental soldiers that are equipped and uniformed by the French.
09:54Thank you, Benjamin Franklin.
09:56Next to him are nearly the same amount of French soldiers.
09:59Thank you, Benjamin Franklin.
10:01And oh, by the way, Cornwallis can't escape and has to surrender because out in the harbor
10:05is a French fleet blocking the British retreat back to New York.
10:10Thank you, Dr. Franklin.
10:11So all of this, you know, know him, know us is what I like to say.
10:16It's amazing.
10:16You know what, Ken, we had, Steve and I had received an award from the Masons here in
10:21Philadelphia, and we got invited to the Masonic Temple for a ceremony and an evening.
10:26And that place is just dripping with Ben Franklin.
10:29I mean, it was amazing to see his likeness all over the place.
10:33And it was at that point, obviously, I knew the legend of Ben, and I know the thumbnails
10:37version of his history.
10:38But how many things he had his hands in and how he could, how did he have enough time to
10:48do that?
10:49So here's the key to him, I think.
10:52And you'll see it in the film.
10:53So his parents want him to go on a Harvard tenure, you know, track education.
10:59But they can only afford a couple years elementary school early.
11:02So he has two years of schooling.
11:03So as the writer H.W.
11:06Brand says in our film, he didn't know what he didn't have to know, because school teaches
11:10you what you need to know, but also what you don't need to know, right?
11:13Right.
11:14So he he figures out he has to learn everything.
11:17So he's omnivorous.
11:18He reads all the time.
11:19He does all that.
11:20When he gets to Philadelphia and he's a printer and he's beginning to make it in the world,
11:25he collects like minded tradesmen, the leather apron club.
11:28It was called the Junto, meaning to join together.
11:30And what comes out of this and his other civic stuff, the Free Library of Philadelphia,
11:35the University of Pennsylvania, hospitals, police forces, volunteer fire departments,
11:41ideas on how to pave roads, ideas on how to maintain streetlights, all of this stuff that
11:47is promoting a civic good at the same time he's improving himself.
11:51And our problem today is that we're all independent free agents.
11:55And it's just get what I can and I don't have to care about the other.
11:59And this is not a left or right problem.
12:02This is an American problem.
12:03Franklin points us the way to a kind of optimistic, as you were saying, present where you're filled
12:11with the past.
12:11A lot of people say history repeats itself.
12:13It never does.
12:14Mark Twain, who was the second humorist after, you know, Franklin, Franklin said fish and visitors
12:21stink after three days.
12:23Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
12:26You know, this is good stuff.
12:30He understands that human nature doesn't change.
12:35And so you're always up against the foibles of human nature, even when he is given the
12:39great honor of proposing the adoption of the Constitution in 1787 in Philadelphia.
12:45He says, look, when you assemble all these people with all their wisdom, you also gather their
12:50prejudices.
12:51And so you're not going to make a perfect document.
12:53And they don't.
12:54In order to keep the southern states in so that we're not warring, you know, states on
12:59the East Coast, they permit them to count their slaves as three-fifths of a person.
13:04It's a horrible compromise.
13:06But there wouldn't have been a United States without it.
13:09And you can Monday morning quarterback it.
13:11And it's going to set in motion the Civil War, the worst event in American history.
13:14And Franklin knew it.
13:15But within a few months of his government getting started, the government that he helped
13:19forge, he sends in a resolution suggesting that they outlaw slavery.
13:25Right.
13:26When you think about Ben Franklin, the two cities that come to mind are Boston and Philadelphia.
13:31And I want to know, Ken, why you think Philadelphia is the better of those two cities.
13:34Well, it's much better.
13:36You know, I tell you, so he grows up in Puritan Boston, right?
13:39The Cotton Mather and the Mather family are the sort of the religious stuff.
13:45And his family is, as I said, kind of lower middle class.
13:49They're candle makers.
13:51They can't even afford to send him to school.
13:53He apprentices, indentured servant, to his older brother James's print shop.
13:58Thank God for us.
13:59And as a teenager, he's learning to set type upside down and backwards.
14:02He becomes hyper literate.
14:04He's he's submitting anonymous letters from an old widow that are hilarious.
14:10And they're hugely popular.
14:12And the paper takes off.
14:13And when his brother finds out about it, he gets jealous.
14:15So, you know, the things are good.
14:17He he he runs away.
14:19He is a runaway and comes to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love founded by Quakers,
14:25a little bit more talent, a little bit more aware of native interests, all the these different
14:32cultures and religions are there.
14:33And he really imbibes it.
14:35You know, it's it's and he manifested.
14:37In fact, at his funeral, the largest gathering of people in the history of Philadelphia
14:41at to that point came together.
14:43And at the head were all the religious leaders of all the denominations of all the religions
14:49present in Philadelphia, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, all the various Protestant sects.
14:55And it's it's it's a testament to the fact that he understood that at the heart of all
15:01religions is the idea that I need to do better for my fellow citizens.
15:06So we've heard I've heard him mentioned occasionally as the the closest that America will come
15:14to a da Vinci to someone who is that that, you know, that that that I mean, as you said,
15:21just on a scientific level, he let's go ahead.
15:25So, you know, my first it's so funny that you said that I'm friends with Walter Isaacson,
15:30who wrote a wonderful biography of Ben and and and he's in our film, along with lots of
15:34other people who've written biographies of him and scholars about him and stuff like
15:38that.
15:38But Walter also wrote a wonderful biography of Leonardo da Vinci.
15:43And so we're actually in the early stages of producing our first non-American topic on
15:48Leonardo.
15:49But let's go back and examine your question is so to the point.
15:52The thing that people don't remember is that when he becomes a revolutionary, he's 69 years
15:57old.
15:58He's got 15 years to go on this unbelievable life that spans most of the 18th century, born
16:04in 1706, dies in 1790.
16:07This is an amazing, amazing life.
16:09Born, by the way, on the same day as Muhammad Ali, my last film.
16:12He may be the most amazing personality of the 20th century.
16:17Ben Franklin is without a doubt the most amazing American personality of the 18th century.
16:21But he is he retires because he's made enough money, enough money.
16:25He could be fabulously wealthy with the patents, but he's not.
16:28And to invent.
16:29And in his work with electricity, it's as important as Isaac Newton.
16:34I mean, if there were Nobel Prizes back then, he would have had it.
16:36He was the most famous American in the world, which is why we sent him to France, because
16:41the only person anybody on Earth could name who came from America was Benjamin Franklin.
16:46And let's just think about it.
16:47We just get distracted by the kite experiment.
16:50We think the lightning has to strike the kite.
16:52He is proving principles that he got.
16:57It was parlor tricks about kissing people with static electricity.
17:00But now let's think about the names that we I'm sure you're not an electrical engineer.
17:04I'm not.
17:05But if I said to you positive and negative, charge, battery and conductor, those five very
17:13easy to understand terms borrowed from other parts of our language.
17:17Battery is a military term.
17:18These are all coined by Franklin so that the world, not just the scientific community,
17:24but everyone could begin to have a relationship with this mysterious force called electricity.
17:30He is when he arrives in France.
17:32He's a cult hero.
17:33And what's he promoting with his little printing press?
17:37Democracy for the for these people who are subjects to King Louis the 16th.
17:42It's just you can't make this stuff up and why it's so much better, I think, than fiction.
17:47If you're just tuning in, it's Ken Burns, who is his special four hour documentary.
17:52Benjamin Franklin premieres tonight and tomorrow, 8 p.m. on PBS.
17:55Can you know, stream it?
17:56You can stream it, by the way.
17:58Once it goes out, it's available for free on all the PBS platforms.
18:01So look at it when you want.
18:03You mentioned the kite, the the lightning strike.
18:06And there are myths that surround the amazing individual that was known as Benjamin Franklin.
18:14Is that touched on in this stuff or is that OK?
18:17Yeah.
18:17Yeah.
18:17I think this is, you know, myths are like barnacles that attach themselves to the hull of the ship and impede the smooth sailing.
18:24Right.
18:24It's just, you know, Washington, wooden teeth.
18:26No porcelain.
18:28Never told a lie.
18:29Everybody lies through a coin across the Potomac.
18:32Too wide.
18:33You know, I mean, the Dodgers would hire him.
18:38But I have it on good authority that Kim Jong-un has never gone to the bathroom.
18:42So that could.
18:44Right.
18:44So I believe that.
18:46Yeah.
18:47He looks a little constipated.
18:49Let me ask you, because you're you're you're obviously.
18:53Now he's redirected the missiles.
18:57That's right.
18:58They're coming right at us.
19:00In the world of documentarians, is there a documentarian that you could see you turning your talents on who represents a story worth telling?
19:11Because what a wonderful question.
19:13What are you thinking about?
19:15You know, I don't know.
19:16You know, there's a great series that Seth Meyers does.
19:19It's a comedic take on some of the great documentaries like Nanook of the North and other classics.
19:24And and, you know, I was wondering through your particular prism, is there anyone that jumps out at you that you think?
19:30You know what?
19:31It's a it's a little bit biased.
19:33Nanook of the North is is interesting and now deeply flawed because the anthropology of it.
19:38They're too many scenes set up.
19:39But it's Robert Flaherty who's considered the first American documentary guy.
19:44And and some of them are are are terrific films.
19:49I've got a friend.
19:50So this is completely biased.
19:51Who's mainly known for his feature films, the German director, Werner Herzog.
19:58Oh, he's phenomenal.
19:59And we've been friends for 30 years.
20:00And he and I are the oddest couple on earth.
20:02You know, I mean, we've been friends and our films couldn't be more different.
20:06But I adore him.
20:07He's he's amazing.
20:09I just finished another film that will be out in the fall in the U.S. and the Holocaust.
20:12And just by the way, whenever you want a really scary Nazi voice, I always go to I need your best to stop over this quote by Goering is so bad that you just have to drip it.
20:26OK, you know, and then at one point he says, I am interested in in the static truth.
20:35And my friend Ken here is interested in an emotional truth, you know, and it's like that he goes on and on.
20:41And I'd like to just find and go to the depths of Werner's ecstatic truth.
20:46And he's done he's done lots of documentaries lately.
20:48In fact, more documentaries recently than than than feature films.
20:52And I adore him.
20:54He's great.
20:55He's brilliant.
20:55I'm totally biased.
20:56Yeah.
20:56Ken, I had dinner with my parents on Friday night and I told them that you were going to be on the show this morning.
21:01And so my dad's first question, because we all watched baseball together when we were growing up.
21:05And so it's just such a wonderful tribute to the to the history of the sport and the current sport and what it's become.
21:11But my dad wanted me to ask you, Ken Burns, are the Phillies going to win the Annalise this year?
21:18She is so funny.
21:19You know, I live within the radiational gravitational pull of Boston because it isn't the Boston Red Sox.
21:27It's the New England Red Sox.
21:29So we've been I've been up here for 43 years and or more.
21:32I've been up for more than 50 years.
21:34And if we include some time in Massachusetts.
21:36So I've got that disease.
21:37And whenever I'm asked, I always say, oh, the Red Sox are going to win.
21:41And I can't concentrate on anyone else because I'm trying to hold up that, you know, house of cards.
21:47Although we have won four world championships in this millennium, which, you know, like the last century, they they they did four and then suddenly couldn't kind of connect for I think it's I think it's 86 years.
22:01Anyway.
22:01Yeah, just a brief pause.
22:03Yeah.
22:03Yeah.
22:03Just just a slight little hiccup.
22:05Season starts soon.
22:06We'll see what happens.
22:07Well, then, Ken, it's it's always such a treat to talk to you.
22:10Thank you so much.
22:11And we're really excited about the fact that you're focusing in on Ben.
22:14Yeah.
22:14Yeah.
22:15I can't wait for you to see it.
22:16I think he's you'll just feel like, oh, I know this guy.
22:18He's real.
22:19You know, the past.
22:20The past is not past.
22:22Faulkner says it's now.
22:24And you just sort of feel like, oh, if you if you get at the the good and the bad of somebody, they feel like somebody, you know, and I made that mistake.
22:32I was talking to a reporter and I said, you know, I've known him now for like five years.
22:36And she said, know him.
22:38And I said, oh, so right.
22:39You know, but I do.
22:41And I hope, you know, him, too, at the end of this two parter.
22:44We're looking forward to it.
22:45Premieres today and we'll be streaming everywhere that PBS has stuff available.
22:49So excellent.
22:50Ken, thank you so much.
22:51Have a great one.
22:51We'll talk to you soon.
22:52OK, I look forward to that.
22:54Thank you, guys.
22:54You got it.
22:55Ken Burns.
22:57Something else.
22:57Man, I love talking.
22:59Just great.
22:59Yeah.
22:59He does his he does his research.
23:02He gets on board with things that things that he's absolutely passionate about.
23:06Preston, imagine if most of your history teachers throughout school were like Ken Burns.
23:09Oh, man.
23:09Yeah.
23:10I mean, yeah, I'd actually.
23:12You would have dialed in a little bit, right?
23:13Yeah.
23:13You know, and I wish I would have.
23:15You know, I look at some of the things.
23:16I remember when my kids were entered into middle school and I was helping them with their homework.
23:21And and I started reading it.
23:23I'm like, you know what?
23:24Now I finally find Mesopotamia fascinating.
23:28When I was that age, you could have, you know, I would have rather been punched in the face than read about this stuff.
23:34But now I actually carry a care about it.
23:36So but when you do get a great teacher, when you get somebody who can explain things or a documentarian or somebody who's who's presenting this information and they do it in an entertaining way, it sets.
23:47It's really cool that that happens.
23:48It's really cool.
23:50It's really cool.
23:51It's really cool.
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24:00It's really cool.
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24:09It's really cool.
24:11It's really cool.
24:12It's really cool.
24:13It's really cool.
24:14It's really cool.
24:15It's really cool.