Ken Burns Goes to the Dust Bowl

LAST night the first half of Ken Burns' latest docs, The Dust Bowl, went up; it concludes this evening.

By now, we have a pretty good sense of what a Burns doc will be like. That said, parts of this are quite ravishing. And while it is not exactly a work of polemic, this look back at this man-made disaster, coming so soon after the ravages of the storm Sandy, show us how we're really throwing the planet out of wack.

Here is my interview with the bowl-cutted auteur.

Remembering the Civil Rights Years

LIKE a lot of people, I knew the reputation of Eyes on the Prize, the famous documentary about the civil rights movement in the Deep South in the '50s and '60s. But watching all six hours of it was simultaneously spirit-rousing and soul-crushing as I watched the movement beaten back time and time again.

The documentary, which originally broadcast in 1987, has been out of circulation for decades, but is back on PBS and now available on DVD for the first time.

HERE is my LA Times piece on the program, which included interviews with some of the show's creators as well as a UCLA professor to put it in perspective.

I must say, as a white person, even one raised by anti-racist parents far enough after the events in the program, I found some of the "resistance" by segregationists almost painful to watch. I've never understood the impetus for black militancy so clearly as I do after seeing what well-armed white folk -- both police and "volunteer" racists -- did to non-violent marchers, many of them women and children.


Amazing to be reminded that Emmett Till's killers were never brought to justice despite admitting to having killed a 14-year-old boy and dumping his body in the river. Some of the politicians are incredible, when you compare the interviews they give years later to the footage of the '50s and '60s.

Sometimes the old and new footage comments on each other, as when Selma, Alabama mayor Joseph Smitherman, mocks the protesters as media-savvy phonies in a contemporary interview before a flashback to 1965 footage in which he refers to “Martin Luther Coon,” before apologizing.


My piece closes by wondering about the connection between the movement and the election of Barack Obama. New Yorker editor David Remnick has made that link quite explicit, apparently, in his new book, The Bridge.


The Southern resistance to "government meddling" and crowing about "state's rights" sure takes on a new context after you've reflected on the events of this period. 


Photos show Emmett Till and Rosa Parks with Martin Luther King.

Ken Burns vs. His Critics

AS a former (and very minor) member of the nation's conspiracy of jazz critics, i remember quite well the vitriol hurled at ken burns for his "Jazz" documentary. the UK's guardian, for instance, called the series, for its treating jazz like an art form that died with ellington, "a jam session in a mausoleum."

in some cases the charges were fair, in other cases not.

in any case it struck me that burns was experiencing a critical backlash, an exhaustion of the good will that had built up with "the civil war" in the early '90s. compared to hipper/angrier figures like errol morris and michael moore, the earnest burns was deemed as cool as his famous bowl haircut.

HERE is my piece on what may greet his new "the national parks: america's best idea."

i met burns not long ago to discuss his new project, his early work, and his critical reception. i like him a lot, a very intense guy who's willing to get swept away in a story, its characters and conflicts. anyone who helps bring more attention to john muir cant be all bad.