Filmmaker Ken Burns Talks American Revolution

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
Few people have managed to tell the American story better, spanning all of its history, than documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.

**Christina Ruffini** (0:14)
That's right, we spoke to the Brooklyn Native and Emmy Award winner to get his perspective on this moment in American history.

**Ken Burns** (0:20)
I was taught a kind of superficial, top-down, kind of sanitized, almost Madison Avenue, bloodless, gallant story.
And that's okay to begin with, but I found that more complicated story that much more inspirational and obviously more interesting. You know, we're born in violence. That's the one thing we don't want to, you know, talk about. We accept the violence of the Civil War and the 20th century wars we've been in. But the American Revolution is credibly bloody. Revolution and Civil War, and also perhaps the fifth global war over the prize of North America. There's a lot of economics going on here between the 13 colonies that Britain has in the Caribbean that are based on slavery, the less profitable North American ones, though Virginia and South Carolina trade, obviously tariffs, obviously taxation, obviously representation, obviously inflation, obviously devaluation. It's all going on there in the midst of, you know, what is the most significant revolution in the history of humankind.

**Christina Ruffini** (1:18)
I do think that's a good point because I don't know what it is about reaching middle age. You suddenly get an undying affinity for history, but I was watching your series and reading up on the revolution and it does seem to have been a much bloodier occasion than we were really led to believe or we were taught. Why do you think that is?

**Ken Burns** (1:36)
I think it's to protect the big ideas that are coming out of Philadelphia. Somehow we think they're going to be diminished, but they're not. In fact, they're even bigger when you realize the chances, the odds at Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775 were zero and suddenly six and a half years later, not so suddenly, a very long bloody war, they're 100 percent. How we got there? Who was involved? Who were the characters? We know the top down people, but they're presented to us as these kind of perfect marble statues and therefore they're not accessible. If you make them human and dimensional, then they're suddenly accessible. We can be like them, but we can also find out that there's scores of other people that we introduce you to who are teenagers, little girls, French soldiers, American GIs, if you will, women. 50% of the population, they're there at every battle as our children.
It is an amazing, amazing story and how we beat one of the great powers. The most far-flung empire on earth, the Great Britain, is one of the marvels and with ideas that had never been tested. Everybody was a subject under authoritarian rule and all of a sudden we were suggesting, nope, you could be a citizen. It's as powerful as it could get and it's something to really celebrate on the 4th. 250 years is a magnificent achievement to have gotten there. And I think even in times of division, you'll want to go back and find out your origin story. That helps you sort of figure out where you are, where you come down on the big questions.

**Christina Ruffini** (3:07)
And maybe because that story is more multifaceted than we may have initially been taught. I know your new series, The American Revolution, it's centered on all of this, but the setting of the Declaration of Independence. We have a quick clip and then I'm going to ask you another question.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:23)
The American Revolutionary Movement served as a model for freedom from oppression.

**SPEAKER_6** (3:29)
America is predicated on an idea that tells us who we are, where we came from and what our forebearers were willing to die for.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:37)
Collins said no taxation without representation. The fear was if we give in to this precedent, what will they do in the future?
Crisis changes people.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:48)
It gave different people different ideas about what they should be doing.

**SPEAKER_8** (3:54)
It gave them a space to make this democracy real.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:02)
The founders thought we can start over again.

**SPEAKER_6** (4:04)
We can begin the world anew.

**Christina Ruffini** (4:07)
One of the other predominant narratives when we learn this as kids is it's all these great men. It's a handful of great men who did this.
But in your documentary, and as I'm learning more about it, it was great men, but it was also all of us. It was everyone. It was all kinds of regular people. Do you think that's why the documentary has been so popular? We were talking before we came on about the response to this.