History Repeats Itself – Ken Burns Explains Why Benjamin Franklin’s Story Needs to Be Retold Ahead of PBS Documentary Premiere

“Working in history, you really have a sense that you have the possibility to speak not about past events, but you're always speaking, because human nature doesn't change, about the present,” Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said during a TCA press conference for his new four-hour documentary Benjamin Franklin, premiering tonight on PBS. “There is a kind of continual conversation that takes place between the human beings that we think are anachronistic and different, they have powdered wigs, they dress funny, all of that, and who are exactly the same as us. Therefore, I think the study of history offers us a dispassionate and at the same time an incredibly focused, mesmerizingly focused view on what's going on now.”

(Courtesy of Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State)

(Courtesy of Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State)

“I consider getting to be [Benjamin Franklin’s] voice for those sessions when we recorded it one of the privileges of my artistic life,” Tony-winning actor Mandy Patinkin shared of his passion for this project. He was the first and only choice for Ken Burns, who is grateful the actor said yes. Having worked with some A-list talent on other projects, Ken Burns was blown away by Patinkin’s level of commitment in the recording studio. “We have never, ever had someone who committed that amount of their being to making this thing, these words written 200-plus years ago come alive and leap off and seem as if they were written today,” Ken Burns revealed. “It was just an amazing thing to watch. I cannot begin to describe how unusual it was.” The film also includes the voice of Paul Giamatti as John Adams, a role he famously inhabited in an HBO series.

“I think the importance of Ben Franklin is that he was able to connect art and science, able to connect the humanities and the technology,” author Walter Isaacson shared about what made Benjamin Franklin a true original. His published works include The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. “He cared about everything you could possibly learn about anything, from art to anatomy to math to music to diplomacy. And his science helped inform the things that he did. By being an expert in Newton, he understood checks and balances and balances of power. His electricity experiments are the most important scientific achievements of that period, right after Newton. And, so, I do think by being like a Renaissance man, like Leonardo da Vinci, he's able to see the patterns in nature. And he thought of himself as a scientist and an inventor. I think that is ingrained not only in him but into what the foundation of America was about.”

“When it came to science or writing, he had an incredible amount of emotional intelligence,” added historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a Rutgers University professor and author of Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. “There's another really important thing about Franklin that we see in the film, is that he's a total rascal, too. He’s larger than life, in a way that we don't see with a Washington or a Jefferson. He's someone who the common man can connect to. He liked to party. He liked women. These are the things Ken made certain to balance in this film, that while we see him and his immense knowledge, we also see him as a person. It's because of his experiences and his emotional intelligence that he becomes a wise, go-to person.”

PBS will air Ken Burns’ Benjamin Franklin in two parts on April 4th at 5th at 8/7c.

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Alex Reif
Alex joined the Laughing Place team in 2014 and has been a lifelong Disney fan. His main beats for LP are Disney-branded movies, TV shows, books, music and toys. He recently became a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA).