Ken Burns
“The Central Park Five” Interview
with Kam Williams
 

Ken Burns has been making films for more than thirty years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and to produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made.

The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.” A December 2002 poll conducted by Real Screen Magazine listed The Civil War as second only to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North as “the most influential documentary of all time,” and named Ken Burns and Robert Flaherty as the “most influential documentary makers” of all time.

In March, 2009, David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said, “… Burns is not only the greatest documentarian of the day, but also the most influential filmmaker period. That includes feature filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I say that because Burns not only turned millions of persons onto history with his films, he showed us a new way of looking at our collective past and ourselves.”

Ken’s films have won ten Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Here, he talks about his latest film, The Central Park Five, co-directed by his daughter, Sarah, and her husband, David McMahon, which premieres on PBS on April 16th.

Kam Williams: Hi Ken, thanks for the interview. I’m honored to have the opportunity to speak with you. 

Ken Burns: Not at all.

KW: You’ll be happy to hear that the Central Park Five was the #1 documentary on my Top 100 Films of 2012 list. http://aalbc.com/blog/index.php/2012/12/29/100-films-2012/

And it was also #1 on my Blacktrospective 2012 list, an annual assessment of the best in black film.

http://aalbc.com/reviews/blacktrospective-2012.html

KB: Wow! Thank you for that. What was your number one feature film?

KW: Zero Dark Thirty.

KB: What was your #2, Lincoln?

KW: No, that didn’t even make my Top 100 list at all. 

KB: Wow! Why not?

KW: I’d had some problems with the film that I can’t go into right now, because I’m lucky enough to be interviewing Ken Burns. This interview’s supposed to be about you, not me.   

KB: I understand, but I’d love to discuss the rest of your list over lunch sometime.

KW: That’d be great. I told my readers I’d be speaking with you, and asked them to send in questions which I’ll be mixing in with my own. Children’s book author Irene Smalls asks: What interested you in this story? Was there a personal connection?

KB: The personal connection, simply, was my daughter, Sarah. She was too young to have heard about the actual crime, but learned about it in the summer of 2003. She then just began obsessing about the case to the point that she had to write a book about it. And she had two people around her, her husband, David, and her father who were saying, “Hey, it’s also a film.” And that’s how it got made. However, in a larger sense, I do remember the climate at the time that this happened, and it was with resignation that I looked at this “Crime of the Century” as Mayor Koch called it. We were wringing our hands, asking, “What happened to our city? What happened to our youth? Have we lost them?” As it turned out, that wasn’t the case. But they served out their full sentences and were never considered for early parole, because they refused to admit any guilt, since they were not guilty. Yet, when they were exonerated thirteen years later, the story got almost no coverage. It’s a very complicated case which Sarah became preoccupied with as a senior in college, and she never could let it go.      

KW: Irene also asks: What does this documentary seek to do: re-publicize the event, further vindicate the boys, or something else?

KB: The documentary asks two essential questions. First, how could such a gross miscarriage of just have taken place in a progressive city in the North at the end of the 20th Century by using the sort of language employed by a Jim Crow city in the South at the beginning of the 20th Century when lynching was prevalent? And the second question is: Who are these five boys, because they were robbed of their voices instantaneously. Their confessions were coerced, so they had no voice and were hated by everyone. If you were one of the Central Park Five back in 1989, you were one of the worst human beings that had ever lived. In fact, they were no longer considered human, but a wilding wolf pack of brute beasts. So, we were compelled to tell the story as accurately and as journalistically as possible, asking those two questions.

KW: Were you at all concerned about including the boys’ “confessions” in the film because of the possibility that some people might see them as guilty?

KB: No, we fully accepted the possibility that some people could come into this film already thinking they were guilty. The police and prosecutors refused to cooperate with us at any time, and we bent over backwards to include their point-of-view throughout. What I think happens over the course of the film is that you gradually get to know these kids who had never been in trouble before, who had no record, who had never been arrested, and who were just trying to cooperate with the police when the questioning began. But then all of a sudden these 14 and 15 year-olds found themselves prime suspects, along with a developmentally-challenged 16 year-old who was eventually tried as an adult and convicted. This was just too big a mountain to overcome for them.   

KW: By the time I turned 25, I’d been profile-stopped just for being black at least a couple dozen times either while either walking or driving.

KB: Sarah’s original title for the film was Born Guilty. Evidentially, we do not have a fair criminal justice system. It favors those who can afford it. And more often than not, people of color are condemned to the worst kind of treatment. There is a “driving while black” phenomenon and a crime of just being a black person in a white neighborhood. Trayvon Martin would be alive today if that were not the case, I’m very, very sorry to say. This case is merely one of the loudest, grossest cases of that type.

KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier asks: What message you want the public to take away from the film?

KB: I don’t think we want to telegraph how the audience should feel. Rather, we want people to understand what happened, and to form their own opinions. But clearly there is something wrong with a criminal justice system which could permit such a miscarriage of justice. And not only did it let that transpire, but when the real rapist came forward to confess, the press didn’t apologize for its hyperbolic prose encouraging a rush to judgment, and the prosecutors and police didn’t admit to their coercion of the confessions, or to their ignoring of exculpatory evidence. Even now, it’s been ten long years since the Central Park Five were exonerated, and they’re still awaiting redress from the civil suit they launched against New York City. Ten years is an awfully long time, especially after you’ve been robbed of thirteen years of your life. So, it’s been thirteen years of justice denied, followed by ten years of justice delayed, which we know also amounts to justice denied.

KW: Marcia Evans says: I absolutely have much to say about this heart-wrenching film. It sent me through numerous emotions to the point I shared it with my therapist. The film disturbed me to my core. It was interesting to hear all the moaning and groaning in the theater and comments afterwards from both black folks and white folks. 

KB: I love Marcia’s response to the film. We get those moans and groans wherever we show it… mothers of 15 year-olds of any color, standing up, in tears, and anxious about their own sons’ safety.

KW: Marcia says: Most people are unaware that the City of New York even had the nerve to try to intimidate you and your daughter after you made the movie. Would you talk about the subpoena?

KB: Yes, the City of New York subpoenaed all of our outtakes and notes for the film in an attempt I believe, cynically, to delay the trial and to fish for inconsistencies. This is a legal tactic as old as the hills. But we were intent to make sure that our difficulties were not blocking out or overshadowing the decades-long Kafkaesque hell these five men have been put through. So, we’ve had to engage legal counsel and defend ourselves in a lawsuit that isn’t just about us, but about journalists everywhere. We shouldn’t have our work impounded by the state just because it feels it might be helpful to make their case.

KW: What was it like co-directing with your daughter and son-in-law?

KB: It was a joy!

KW: Editor Stephen Fay would like to know how you were influenced by Jerome Liebling, your photography professor at Hampshire College.

KB: I don’t recognize the person I was when I met Jerome Liebling from the person I am now. Our parents are our greatest influences but, for me, after them it was without a doubt, unhesitatingly, Jerry, from his social consciousness to his fierce sense of injustice to the quality of his images to his understanding of the strength of a single image to convey complex information. I’m just sad that he didn’t have a chance to see this film, because his signature is written all over it.  

KW: Speaking of Hampshire, I had a friend named Liz Dreesen who was there at the same time as you? Do you remember her?

KB: Yes I do! Small world!

KW: Well, she’s a surgeon In North Carolina now. Steve Kramer asks:  Would you consider making a film about the comic book industry, and specifically about William F. Gaines, the demise of EC Comics and the start of Mad Magazine, and how Mad has influenced a generation or two of artists, writers and filmmakers.

KB: You’re talking to one right now. Mad Magazine was hugely important. We get lots of suggestions of what our next project should be, and it’s interesting that comic books are way, way up the list, in the top ten, if not the top five. It’s a great topic which we may get around to, but I already have my next seven lined up and in various stages of production.  

KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles says: How would you describe the critical qualities for a memorable documentary to an aspiring filmmaker?

KB: For too long, documentaries were expository, telling you what you should know, which the last time I checked was just called homework. Or they were just in the moment, championing some evanescent thing happening right now. The essence of any good film, whether it’s made by Steven Spielberg or by Ken Burns, is how you tell a story. And that’s a critical point. If you can tell a story well, you have everybody’s attention. We are all storytellers in our ordinary lives. And filmmaking is just a heightened version of that in which you have a thousand things going on and easily a million decisions to make, no exaggeration. So, the simple answer is: Tell stories well. And the answer to how you achieve that is: There are a million different ways.

KW: Your work has been characterized by your father-in-law as “an attempt to make people long-gone come back alive.” I thought that was a terrific description. Where did that approach to filmmaking come from?

KB: My mother died when I was 11 years-old. There was never a moment in my childhood when I wasn’t aware of her impending death and then, after she passed, that she had died. I remember speaking to him about it, and he said, “What do you think you do for a living? You wake the dead! You make Abraham Lincoln, and Jackie Robinson and Louie Armstrong come alive. Who do you think you’re really trying to awaken?” That was almost twenty years ago that he said that. It had a profound effect on me.

KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?

KB: Playing among the studs of a dark room my father was building at our tract house in a development in Newark, Delaware in around 1955.

KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

KB: [Chuckles] A guy who’s 60 years-old and has bags under his eyes from working too long.

KW: If you could have one wish instantly granted, what would that be for?

KB: Oh my goodness! World peace!

KW: What’s it like to have an app named after you, the Ken Burns Effect.

KB: It’s very flattering. Steve Jobs showed me this effect that would allow people to pan their photographs a decade ago when it was in development. I thought it was very cool, but I didn’t want to do any commercial endorsements. So, we ended up striking a deal where he gave a lot of free equipment to non-profits in my name. That assuaged my conscience, the name stuck, and now the technological tail wags the dog, with people coming up to me saying how I’ve saved their wedding, bar mitzvah or birthday party. That makes me feel happy.  

KW: It’s kind of funny to hear your name associated with something seemingly as fleeting as an app, when I associate you with solid, sober productions built to last.  

KB: At the end of the day, all meaning accrues in duration. No amount of MTV cutting or youtube sensibility is going to be permanent in the way that things that are lasting endure. I’m sure the work that you’re proudest of and the relationships that you care the most about have benefited from your attention. If something’s done well, then people will respond to it. That’s the only arbiter in the end, although many people like to superimpose critical schools of thought on art. Without ever dumbing-down, I’m trying to make a film for everybody. I’m aiming high. And if you do reward me with your attention, I am honor bound not to violate your gift to me of that attention. So, I have to work as hard as I can to make the best possible film.   

KW: Lastly, the Tavis Smiley question: How do you want to be remembered?

KB: Oh, I want to be remembered as a good father. I have four daughters, and they are my most important co-production. I just want to be a good father because it’s a tough job, and I love that more than anything else.

KW: Thanks for a great interview, Ken, and I hope we can find the time to do lunch.

KB: I’d love it, Kam. Take care.

The Central Park Five premieres on PBS on April 16th.

To order a copy of The Central Park Five on DVD, visit

Scary Movie 5
Film Review by Kam Williams

What do Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Mike Tyson, Katt Williams and Snoop Dogg have in common? They’re all celebrities whose names have been splashed across the tabloids in connection with controversy. But in a macabre gesture ostensibly intended to exploit their notoriety, this motley collection of the craziest people currently in the public eye was tapped to make cameo appearances in Scary Movie 5.

The picture was directed by Malcolm Lee (Undercover Brother) who opted for an overhaul of the series with a fresh set of characters rather than a sequel. That shouldn’t be a problem for purists, since each of the earlier installments has basically been a string of disconnected skits spoofing the latest horror movies.

Among the fright flicks lampooned here are Paranormal Activity, The Black Swan, Evil Dead, Sinister and Mama. However, this equal opportunity offender also takes potshots at offerings from other genres like The Help, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection, Planet of the Apes and 127 Hours.

Unfortunately, the disappointing production is little more than a crummy appeal to the lowest common denominator employing generous helpings of scatological humor. Worse, none of the sketches elicited even a perfunctory pity laugh from the audience I watched the movie with.

The point of departure is a sex scene in which Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan are joined in bed by a colorful menagerie of oddballs, animals and objects. The kinky copulating is sped-up in corny fashion ala a typical Benny Hill episode, and the action’s even underscored by the familiar strains of that frenetic melody routinely employed on the classic British comedy show.

But Charlie fails to survive the session, leaving his three orphaned children to be raised by his brother (Simon Rex) and girlfriend (Ashley Tisdale), and their hairy-armed housekeeper (Lidia Porto). The bodily function fare that ensues around the premises includes sight gags involving farting, projectile vomiting, poop disguised as a banana, a monkey tossing feces at a mirror, a woman putting a urine-soaked cell phone to her face, a dog with a toothbrush stuck in its tush, a child playing with a vibrator, a dog licking his own gonads, and a gay man with the hots for a fifth grader.

This vapid, vulgar insult to the intelligence couldn’t possibly have been tested on any focus groups. Can we all now agree that we’ve reached the cinematic saturation point with this rapidly-expiring franchise?

Poor (0 stars)

Rated PG-13 for profanity, sexuality, gore, drug use, nudity, ethnic slurs, cartoon violence and crude humor

Running time: 85 minutes

Distributor: Dimension Films

To see a trailer for Scary Movie 5, visit

Herman's House
Film Review by Kam Williams

72 year-old Herman Wallace has been imprisoned at Louisiana’s infamous Angola penitentiary since he was found guilty of committing bank robbery back in 1967. His sentence was later lengthened to life after he was convicted of stabbing a prison guard to death solely on the testimony of a fellow inmate.

Was he a political prisoner who’d been railroaded on account of his membership in the Black Panther Party, or had he actually committed the murder? Unfortunately, that question is not the focus of Herman’s House, an unlikely-couple documentary directed by Angad Singh Bhalia.

Mr. Singh instead devotes his attention to the friendship forged between Herman and a woman half his age. “Jailbirds and the naïve girls who love them” has served as the theme of many a TV talk show, but rarely have any gangsters’ molls had the pedigree, sophistication or undying dedication of Jackie Sumell.

Sumell, an activist who once presented anti-abortion President Bush a quilt woven from hundreds of pro-choice feminist’s pubic hair, was a grad student in the Art Department at Stanford when she took an interest in Herman. What really rankled her was the fact that he held the record for solitary confinement in the country, currently at 40+ years and counting.

Over that period, he’s been cooped up in a 6 x 9 foot cell, which Jackie felt was a violation of the 8th Amendment’s sanction against cruel and unusual punishment. So, she struck up a long-distance correspondence with Herman via a combination of letters and phone calls.

And that led to a decision to draw attention to his plight by mounting an art exhibition featuring a full-scale replica of his prison cell. But this is where it gets weird. She also asked Herman what his dream home would look like, prior to then moving down to New Orleans, buying some land, and consulting architects to draw up plans for a place the two would ostensibly share should he ever be paroled.

Listen, this biopic basically revolves around Jackie’s earnest effort to turn Herman into a cause célèbre, but it carefully tiptoes around the more compelling elephant in the tiny cell, namely, whether there’s a romantic aspect to their relationship? A fascinating flick as much about a possible miscarriage of justice as about a case of arrested development who looks like a little girl playing house with an imaginary mate.

Very Good (3 stars)

Unrated

Running time: 81 minutes

Distributor: First Run Features

To see a trailer for Herman's House, visit

Lucky Bastard
Film Review by Kam Williams

Dave (Jay Paulson) thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he learned that he’d won the monthly “Lucky Bastard” contest run by the adult entertainment website. He was informed by the site’s owner, Mike (Don McManus), that his name had been picked from all the entries to sleep with his favorite porn star, Ashley Saint (Betsy Rue).

However, the prize came with just one hitch, namely, that he’d have to sign a release so that the lusty liaison could be videotaped from every angle. After all, the promotion was designed to give the site’s subscribers a chance to see an Average Joe enjoying a roll in the hay with a gorgeous goddess who would never normally give him the time of day.

Bespectacled Dave definitely fit the bill in that regard, between his awkwardness and anxiety attempting to perform on cue on camera, even with the woman of his wet dreams. However, the skin flick’s director (Chris Wylde) obviously had a lot more to worry about than a limp nerd in need of Viagra.

For, something else would go horribly wrong after Dave’s arrival and by the time the police arrived, they would find the dead bodies of numerous males and females slain either by gunshot or blunt force trauma. The investigating officer (Lukas Kendall) was grateful to discover that the walls had been outfitted with 18 cameras which not only recorded Dave and Ashley’s fondling, foreplay and frustrated fornication, but the ensuing slaughter which subsequently turned the den of debauchery into a bloody crime scene.

So, cracking the case simply involved rewinding the tapes, and watching what transpired from start to finish. And that’s precisely the point-of-view shared with the audience in Lucky Bastard, a found-footage flick which puts a salacious spin on the “no surviving witnesses” cinematic device first effectively employed by The Blair Witch Project back in 1999.

The movie marks the impressive directorial debut of Robert Nathan, who also co-wrote the cleverly-constructed script with Lukas Kendall. Their novel storyline unfolds like your typical horror film, except instead of taking place inside a Gothic haunted house it unfolds on a sleazy set inside the bedroom of a nondescript suburban home rented for the day from a realtor (Deborah Zoe) out to make a quick buck.

Besides Dave and Ashley, the suspects include director Kris, cameraman Nico (Lanny Joon), Ashley’s regular co-star, Josh (Lee Kholafai), producer Mike and his considerably-younger girlfriend, Casey (Catherine Annette), an aspiring porn star. However, the perpetrator might not be a cast or crew member, since Mike also has issues with the alarmed real estate agent as well as with his estranged ex-wife.

It’s no surprise Lucky Bastard landed an NC-17 rating, given the fairly-explicit displays of carnality, though the production is as much a riveting murder mystery as it is a raunchy sex romp. A compelling, high body-count whodunit for folks willing to watch a lot of kinky cavorting while trying to unravel clues leading to the killer.

Very Good (3 stars)

NC-17 for violence, profanity, full frontal nudity and explicit sexuality.

Running time: 94 minutes

Distributor: Vineyard Haven Films

To see a trailer for Lucky Bastard, visit

Not Today
Film Review by Kam Williams

Lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, Caden Welles (Cody Longo) is living the American Dream. With money to burn at his disposal, the spoiled 20 year-old took off on a whim for a vacation in Hyderabad, India, along with some of his equally-irresponsible friends.

Before Caden left, his mom (Shari Rigby) packed a Bible in his suitcase with a note tucked in the pages asking God to help her son appreciate his blessings while on the subcontinent. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long for that prayer to be answered.

For, upon landing, Caden experiences quite a cultural shock when he finds himself in the midst of abject poverty he never knew existed. And instead of being able to participate in the non-stop partying they’d planned, he ends up feeling guilty about all the suffering he’s surrounded by.

He specifically regrets having cynically refused to help a beggar with a little girl claiming to be starving. In fact, he becomes so haunted that he goes back to look for them, only to learn that Kiran (Walid Amini) had reluctantly sold Annika (Persis Karen) into slavery to survive.

Determined to reunite father and daughter, Caden decides to try to track down the 7 year-old, a search which leads to the ugly underworld of sex trafficking. There, he discovers that Annika’s freedom will come at considerable cost, since the pimp who had purchased her expects to make a tidy profit to part with her.

Thanks to cell phone technology, Caden can both cry on the shoulder of his empathetic girlfriend (Cassie Scerbo) back home and ask his dad (John Schneider) to wire him $20,000 fast. There’s no hesitation, when the request is for such a worthy cause, as opposed to underwriting another one of the reformed slacker’s trademark self-indulgences.

Thus unfolds Not Today, a compelling, modern morality play marking the noteworthy directorial debut of Jon Van Dyke. Without getting too heavy-handed, the faith-based cautionary tale does a decent job of delivering its sobering message about a widespread form of exploitation of millions which no one ever talks about.

A searing indictment of India’s shameful caste system as a means of enslaving females based on the color of their skin.

Very Good (3 stars)

Rated PG-13 for mature themes

Running time: 103 minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Films

To see a trailer for Not Today, visit