{"id":8309,"date":"2010-09-30T09:24:38","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T16:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seamheads.com\/?p=8309"},"modified":"2010-10-02T17:52:21","modified_gmt":"2010-10-03T00:52:21","slug":"ken-burns-same-as-he-never-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/30\/ken-burns-same-as-he-never-was\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Burns: Same As He Never Was"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life can throw you a big fat knuckle ball.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three years ago, while writing a feature article for an alternative weekly paper, I spent a fall afternoon with a small documentary film company in western Massachusetts called Florentine. The three Hampshire College graduates based in the nearby village of Florence\u00e2\u20ac\u201dBuddy Squires, Roger Sherman and Ken Burns\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwere very polite and unassuming as they discussed the student shorts that got them going and the documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge they were hoping they could market to television when it was finished. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course, aesthetics come first,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Burns, smoking a cigarette he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d \"\"<\/a>plucked from his denim pocket, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but we are more willing to accept the world, to show it as it is, than to change it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Flash forward to a Dodgers game I attended a month ago, and purely by coincidence, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that same Burns guy \u00e2\u20ac\u201dnow perhaps the most successful documentarian in history\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthrowing out the first pitch two decks below me in honor of The Tenth Inning<\/em>, the sequel to his 18-hour landmark history of baseball. Just as I figured it would, his pitch to Russell Martin was hard and true and right over the plate.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve followed every blessed centimeter of Mr. Burns\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 excellent career, not just The Civil War<\/em>, Baseball<\/em>, Jazz<\/em>, and The National Parks<\/em> but even his non-opus work like Frank Lloyd Wright<\/em>, Lewis & Clark<\/em>, Horatio\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Drive<\/em>, Unforgivable Blackness<\/em>, and the superb Empire of the Air<\/em>, about the founding of radio. Burns\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 trademark lyrical richness and arresting imagery is also prevalent in the best work of his younger brother Ric, whose films in the early to mid 90s\u00e2\u20ac\u201dThe Donner Party<\/em>, Coney Island<\/em> and the 7-part Gotham history called New York<\/em>, are some of my favorite PBS broadcasts ever.\u00c2\u00a0 I even prefer Ric\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s earlier, shorter Into the West<\/em> to Ken\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s later and endless The West<\/em>, which I guess makes me somewhat of a radical Burnsophile.<\/p>\n

But on to The Tenth Inning<\/em>, and its reason for existing. \u00c2\u00a0Frankly, after watching all four and a half hours, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still not sure.\u00c2\u00a0 Other than a fascinating opening segment on Barry Bonds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 upbringing by his all-star and apparently alcoholic father, there is very little revealed that we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t already know, and complex issues like labor stoppages and steroid testing are dealt with in the most conventional, oversimplified manner possible.<\/p>\n

This is fine in a way, because I care about baseball labor problems and roids about as much as I care about soccer statistics, and the things in The Tenth Inning<\/em> that are good, notably more of Buddy Squires\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 gorgeous \u00e2\u20ac\u0153magic hour\u00e2\u20ac\u009d cinematography, and an incredible collection of rarely seen still action photos on display in crystal crisp hi-def, are really<\/em> good.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The interviews with noted talking baseball heads are fun and unobtrusive, and the inclusion of Ichiro speaking in subtitled Japanese is brilliant.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wonderful footage of baseball life in the Dominican, a heartfelt little sub-story all in itself. The same is true for a segment on the strike-doomed \u00e2\u20ac\u212294 Expos (though the MLB Network aired a more complete film about them recently), nice chapters on Pedro Martinez, the aforementioned Ichiro, the Atlanta Braves\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 amazing rotation of the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc90s, and the thrilling Sosa\/McGwire home run chase of \u00e2\u20ac\u212298.<\/p>\n

But the main problem I have with The Tenth Inning<\/em> is the exact same one I had with Baseball<\/em>: a blatant northeast-centric myopia.\u00c2\u00a0 There was practically nothing about Wrigley Field in the 18-plus hours of his last epic, and in this one we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re given a whopping five minutes just so we can see Steve Bartman muff a foul ball.\u00c2\u00a0 After over a half hour of Red Sox\/Yankee footage from \u00e2\u20ac\u212203 and \u00e2\u20ac\u212204, marking Boston\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first title in 86 years, we see less than ten seconds of Chicago White Sox glory in \u00e2\u20ac\u212205 (with zero narration), even though they hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t won for 88<\/em> years.\u00c2\u00a0 The thrilling Marlins 7-game victory over Cleveland in \u00e2\u20ac\u212297?\u00c2\u00a0 No mention whatsoever. Nothing on the emerging Tampa Rays and a mere pittance on Bill James and the stats revolution.<\/p>\n

You want to know about the \u00e2\u20ac\u212296 Yanks, though?\u00c2\u00a0 How about a half hour just for them, with as many shots of a weeping Joe Torre as possible. Or another fifteen minutes on the 2001 Series where everyone in the country was apparently rooting for the Yankees because the Twin Towers had just fallen.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not saying these weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dramatic events, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been covered to death for years, and saturating nearly half of the four hours with recycled Red Sox\/Yankee footage was not a great way for Burns to endear himself with the rest of the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fans.<\/p>\n

The central non-endearing figure of The Tenth Inning<\/em>, though, remains Barry Bonds.\u00c2\u00a0 Burns parcels out his entire career across the width of the documentary as the poster boy for everything that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s become wondrous and sickening about the game, and while it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible to sympathize with Barry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feelings about his mistreated father, in the end he comes off like a bigger jerk than we even imagined. \u00c2\u00a0(Giants myopia is even introduced: their 2002 loss to Anaheim is depicted as some kind of tragedy, even though it was an incredible moment for long-suffering Angels fans and certainly our last exciting, evenly-played World Series.) After Bonds breaks Hank Aaron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all-time homer mark and the Giants crowd is subjected to a joyless scoreboard message from Henry himself, the air seems to deflate right out of the film, and Burns quickly wraps it up with one more piano-laced ode to the sport\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s timeless beauty.<\/p>\n

Ken Burns is at his best when he takes on material we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re thirsty to know about.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no inkling of the history of our national parks, and was totally transported by his hypnotic series about them. Unforgivable Blackness <\/em>was about the boxer Jack Johnson, and what a tale that was.\u00c2\u00a0 At times a Burns film is like the moving version of a great endless New Yorker<\/em> article, such as the history of the orange or a crime investigation in Texas.\u00c2\u00a0 The Civil War<\/em> and the early \u00e2\u20ac\u0153innings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Baseball<\/em> were much more ambitious in scope, but worked perfectly because we were drawn into time periods we possibly would have liked to visit, and then learned about them in exquisite detail.<\/p>\n

But Roger Clemens?\u00c2\u00a0 Sorry, Ken, move along.\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing new to see here.<\/p>\n

Jeff Polman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fictional replay blogs of the 1924 and 1977 seasons can be visited at <\/em>http:\/\/1924andyouarethere.blogspot.com<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>http:\/\/funkyball.wordpress.com<\/em><\/a>, respectively.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life can throw you a big fat knuckle ball. Thirty-three years ago, while writing a feature article for an alternative weekly paper, I spent a fall afternoon with a small documentary film company in western Massachusetts called Florentine. The three Hampshire College graduates based in the nearby village of Florence\u00e2\u20ac\u201dBuddy Squires, Roger Sherman and Ken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4235],"tags":[11299,11305,11304,11302,11308,11296,11309,886,8099,11300,11306,11307,11294,11303,3628,11298,11301,11297,9397,11295],"class_list":["post-8309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-top-stories","tag-brooklyn-bridge","tag-documentarian","tag-donner-party","tag-fall-afternoon","tag-film-company","tag-frank-lloyd-wright","tag-hampshire-college","tag-history-of-baseball","tag-ken-burns","tag-knuckle-ball","tag-mr-burns","tag-nearby-village","tag-pbs-broadcasts","tag-roger-sherman","tag-russell-martin","tag-student-shorts","tag-tenth-inning","tag-unforgivable-blackness","tag-western-massachusetts","tag-writing-a-feature-article"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}