A conversation with the Ken Burns and Anne Finucane about Country Music

Story Through Music

Anne: How did you choose country music?

Ken: You know, I don't know why I hadn't chosen it before. It's American history firing on all cylinders. It's the story of us both in the lower case, personal, plural pronoun, but also in the big U.S. And it's a new way of seeing the 20th century. It's about strong women. It's about great music.

Anne: So you've been chronicling the American experience our nation, our history, our culture for how many years?

Ken: 40.

Anne: 40 years. How does this fit in? How does country music tell the story of our nation?

Ken: I think that too often, and particularly today, we feel so divided as if we have to set up a dialectic of us versus them. But this is about an inclusive story. This sort of pulls back, and this is folks who feel like their stories haven't been told getting a chance to tell their stories.

Ken: Why has Bank of America chosen to underwrite a film like Country Music?

Anne: The way that you tell a story is so powerful, and it has been incredibly important to us. We want to represent every community, every individual, and every part of our American history.

Ken: I agree with you completely. And I think when people always ask me, "What's your audience?" I say "Everybody." And they go, "What are you talking about?" And that's what I share in common with you all and why I've just so much enjoyed our association over the last many years, and many to come, is that you're not leaving anyone behind. And all we want to do in this is say, "Guess what, you can belong to this family too." It's us and it's the U.S. And it is a wonderful, wonderful story in there.

Making Country Music

Anne: So, Ken, more than 100 hours of filming and interviews over how many years for Country Music?

Ken: It's been 8 years since the moment I said yes. Sort of got down on my knees and proposed to country music and said, will you take us? And can we come and learn all about you?

Anne: Any surprises in filming, producing, editing Country Music?

Ken: I think it was a surprise every day. And that's become a little bit cliched for us. You go in and you have that superficial wisdom, you have that conventional idea of what it is, and you have to obliterate that. You carry your own baggage, that has to be gotten rid of. And that's a little bit easier than letting go of what you think the story's gonna be. And this snuck up on us, on how emotional it was. I don't think we were just prepared for how emotional it was.

Anne: So is there anything you left on the editing floor that you wish, oh I wish this were in now?

Ken: So you know what, you sort of think that making a film is a kind of additive process — that you're building this thing is. And in some ways you are, but for those on the inside, it's always subtractive. So what's actually on the cutting room floor when you get to that moment is all good stuff. It's not bad stuff. I love the fact that when we finish these big, long 18 hour, 16 and a half hour films, the basic criticism is telling us what we've left out. Which to me is like, whew. 

Music Touches Everyone

Ken: Do you remember the first country song you heard?

Anne: I think "Crazy" is probably the first one I ever heard, and I loved it. But then, I'm a Willie Nelson fan "Always On My Mind," "Seven Spanish Angels." I mean, a million.

Ken: What was your impression of country music growing up?

Anne: Remote. It was another generation from another part of the country. I really didn't relate to it. And yet, as an adult, I feel very differently about it. I don't think I appreciated the genesis of folk and rock 'n' roll and relate it to country music.

Ken: Right.

Anne: So as I got older and I connected it, yes. And also, sometimes you're listening to country music, you're just, I don't know, you're in the car and you're listening to it and you realize, oh wait a minute this is country music.

Ken: Right. I'm not supposed to be listening or I'm not supposed to like this.

Anne: And I'm loving this.

Ken: Yes. And of course, because it's not any one thing.

Anne: And maybe I'm crying even.

Ken: You're always crying. There are like 4 or 5 times in the film where someone describes pulling over in the car and weeping because how did George Jones or how did Willie Nelson or how did Patsy Cline know what I was going through?

Anne: Country Music September of this year. We're looking forward to it.

Ken: Thank you.