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Amid the surge in popularity of documentaries and docuseries in recent years, famed director Ken Burns — whose nearly fifty-year-long career has allowed his name to become essentially synonymous with the art of documentary making — remains critical.
On Thursday night (Dec. 14), the filmmaker sat down with PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger, as well as moderator and LA Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio, to chat during the PaleyImpact series event “Finding Common Ground Through Storytelling.”
During the panel, Kerger highlighted that the majority of documentary films being purchased by streamers are “celebrity-adjacent or true crime.”
Battaglio turned it over to Burns, noting that the filmmaker has “got a big problem with that.”
Burns explained, “I think that I’ve spent my professional life in public broadcasting, and so I just understand the huge importance of the separation of church and state. And so when I look at people who are the subjects of the films [also] being the producers and executive producers of the film, even if the film has unflattering moments, I’m really uncomfortable with that.”
Deeming himself “a PBS child,” he brought up a poignant query viewers must ask themselves.
“You just wonder who said, ‘No, don’t use this,'” he shared. “‘What am I not seeing’ is the inevitable question.'”
He noted “PBS is incredibly strict,” so much so that for his most recent two-part series, The American Buffalo, he almost wasn’t able to mention “a non-profit that helps buy land so that buffalo can roam” due to having “a relationship with [them] because they named a prize in [his] honor.”
“Public television was ready to say, ‘You can’t even mention them,'” he recalled, ultimately quipping that they “finally agreed that the buffalo didn’t have a constituency pack in Washington, and they needed to roam.”
“So it’s in there, but I actually appreciated the good fight of it,” he said.
He elaborated on his feelings toward the recent boom in documentaries and docuseries to Decider on the red carpet, clarifying that “it’s been so amazing to see it continually explode and get bigger and bigger,” despite “so-called reality shows tend[ing] to give a bad name” to the medium.
“But I think the proliferation of both cable and then premium cable, and then the internet and streaming services, it’s given more opportunity and people begin to understand that Hollywood, which they often call ‘the industry,’ turns out, with some wonderful exceptions, industrial films,” he shared, adding that “the storytelling in documentaries are unique to that situation.”
He continued, “They follow the same laws as a Hollywood film in terms of how you tell a story, but you don’t make anything up, and you’re face-to-face with real people, and that is always going to be thrilling to people — always will.”
