An Interview With Ken Burns

*Warning: contains plot spoilers* The following interview took place on Tuesday, Sept 13.

It is obvious you have a passion for American History. What was the spark that ignited the flame?

I think it was born in tragedy. My mother died when I was 11-years-old and there had never been a moment in my life before that that I wasn't aware that she was sick and that something bad was going to happen. After she died, my father had a strict curfew which he forgave if there was a movie on TV late at night on a school night or he would take me out to see movies, and it was the first time I ever saw my dad cry - I realized instantly at age 12 the power of movies and the power of stories, of histories if you will. I've just been passionately interested in telling stories ever since.

What elements do you look for when making decisions about what topics to document and how did it tie in to choosing Prohibition as a topic?

It's simple, it's not rocket science; it's just a good story. I don't really know what that is but when you see it, you know it and you go 'Wow, this is the story firing on all cylinders!' It has got amazing, complicated characters, it's a little known period in our history, but we think we know about it - we just have the superficial images of gangsters and flappers but not much other knowledge. So we wound it back 100 years to see the lead up to it and then really got deep into what Prohibition (was) that went beyond those flappers and those gangsters. You begin to realize that so many of the themes are contemporary with single issue political campaigns that metastasize with horrible unintended consequences, the demonization of recent immigrants to the United States, smear campaigns during presidential elections, a whole group of people who feel that they've lost control of their country and are determined to take it back and don't compromise and are absolutely certain they are right - that sort of moralistic certainly, warrantless wiretaps; you've got all these things that are in today's headlines and they are back then.

We have such a sort of arrogant view of the past, we think that we're here; we must be so much more sophisticated than them. I think people will be shocked, when they look at this film, to realize - oh my goodness, that's grandma and great-grandma dancing up there on the table, having pre-marital sex, violating the law. That's pretty sexy and racy and exciting stuff. This is what Prohibition carries in its wake.

After watching the documentary, I kept thinking of Sting's song, "History Will Teach Us Nothing," because of all the parallels between then and now.

Well, I think what we say, what a lot of people like to say, "Oh, there's cycles of history" or "If you forget your past, you are condemned to repeat it." I don't believe any of that. What I think is, is that human nature is always the same. That we have between us, and most importantly, within us, the same prurience and Puritanism, the same generosity and greed, the same sort of sincerity and hypocrisy, the same kind of Saturday night party and Sunday morning church, all in us. And Prohibition is a manifestation of this and today is a manifestation of it in very similar ways, and other times have reflected that as well and that's what will always be is just deeply flawed creatures who like to call themselves human beings.

Hahahahaha, definitely! I think that's why we have created gods and demons because it's what is inside all of us.

Well, you know, we make that up. The world is a chaotic, random place, so we feel we have to superimpose on it orders of some kind. We tell stories; that is one form of order. Talk about religions, we have art, we have science, we have reason. All of these things we superimpose over the chaos of things just to keep the world at the door. And another way to keep the world at the door is to have a good stiff drink at the end of the day.

Definitely, to take the edge off of the madness.

Exactly.

Through your years of documenting American history, what adjectives would you use to describe the country and its people, our people?

I think it is, as we just talked about, a kind of set of contradictions. Sort of exquisite and horrendous and awful but beautiful contradictions between people, and within people - I really want to stress that. We're so often sure that if we could just … the opening of the film, Mark Twain said, "Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits." You know, we're always willing to tell other people how to behave but we're not so willing to see how we live, how we are - it was always "Prohibition for somebody else or those immigrants or those black people or those this or those poor people. We don't need it but we'll go along." And I love this country, I don't know anyone who loves his country or her country more than I do, I love studying it, I love travelling through it, I love learning its stories, I love trying to tell those stories.

That's what I've dedicated my life's work to, so I think we are generous and at the same time greedy, we are prurient and at the same time pious and Puritan, we are sincere and hypocritical, we are Saturday night and Sunday morning and that's a wonderful story to tell. How is it that some of the reddest states in the country consume the most pornography? Utah. What's up with that? I love that. The state that has the lowest divorce rate? Massachusetts. You just revel in all the contradictions. People are so certain, or like to be certain. I love the uncertainty of it. I love telling stories that complicate the orders; that say - "it's neither and both" might be the answer. Walt Whitman said it really well, "Do I contradict myself? I contradict myself." It's the human experience.

The great story of Prohibition is that here you have Mabel Walker Willebrant, who'd ever heard of her? She's the same as Sandra Day O'Connor in her time, (was on the) cover of Time Magazine. She's in charge of enforcing Prohibition for the Justice Department; she's the highest ranking woman in government up to that point, an Assistant Attorney General. All of her fellow Assistant Attorney Generals, and indeed the Attorney General, are corrupt, they are selling protection but she's zealous. She's doing it, and she's a little bit, too, at times, overzealous. She goes after Al Smith in the 1928 campaign, and when she's not rewarded with the Attorney Generalship, which she thought would happen, when she helped Herbert Hoover get elected, she quits the Justice Department, goes to Hollywood, represents movie stars, goes and represents a wine company that sells this grape concentrate with the thoughtful warning, "Do not add sugar and leave in a dark place." And then converts to the Roman Catholic faith when her whole objection to Al Smith was that he was not only Wet, but Roman Catholic. There within one person is the whole arc of the story. We cannot judge her, we're like that too. Anyone knows what it's like to pass somebody on the highway and be pissed off that they are driving slowly and then be passed yourself and be pissed off that somebody's passing you! It's very human.

Who were some of your favorite characters that were covered in the documentary?

Well, there's so many, and I didn't know them! And it's so funny because I've covered this period before many times, in Jazz and Baseball and I'm working now on The Dust Bowl and The History of the Roosevelts. And all of this period, the 20s, I thought I knew and it was great meeting the early temperance pioneers and the Anti-Saloon League genius Wayne B. Wheeler who could make senators sit up and beg and tremble; Mabel Walker Willebrant was great; Pauline Sabin - the Republican National Committee woman who suddenly thought, "Wait a second, this is so hypocritical," quits and leads the campaign against her party's platform of Prohibition.

Everywhere you learn, the bootlegger Roy Olmstead, cop up in Seattle who gets caught bootlegging, gets fired and is sort of relieved because now he devote himself full time to being a bootlegger and being a damn good one. He gets caught up because the government taps his phone lines without a warrant and it goes all the way to the Supreme Court and they go, it's okay. The whole issue of privacy is embedded and we are debating that today. It's wonderful, wonderful characters. George Remus, the defense attorney in Chicago was sick of Prohibition violators who were richer than he was and decides to go and make his fortune in Cincinnati where he's close to all the locked up liquor. And for awhile, paying off cops and politicians and everyone, and is raking in millions of dollars a year.

He was fascinating, and went and killed his wife because she totally screwed him. I was cheering for him and I kind of felt like an asshole.

See, so there you go, there it is. People say you can't legislate morality, people say that in the film several times, we actually do legislate morality. We say you can't kill, you can't steal, you can't do a lot of things, right? People do it all the time. And they get away with it.

Though I understand overall that Prohibition was generally rural vs cities, if you get a chance and if you haven't read it already, check out Minnesota 13 - a book about a central Minnesota county that distilled moonshine.

Sometimes I think it's too easy to say the country against the city because the countryside sort of invented the moonshiner and the guy who was trying to avoid the federal revenue agent, you know? It's pretty interesting.

I learned a lot!

Yeah, but it's fun though; it doesn't feel like homework, it's a fun story.

Lots of fun and interesting etymology of some of the words - I was like, 'oh, that's where bootlegger comes from.'

Yeah, bootlegger, yeah, teetotaler, I had the same thing. We didn't go in knowing about this, we went in as a process of discovery.