Steven Rinella talks with Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.
Topics discussed: When you’ve made more than three dozen renowned documentaries; Ken Burns’ college film ending with the pan across a painting; how The Civil War film consumed Americans; The Tenth Inning; Lewis & Clark, Jazz, Muhammad Ali and so many more; what do you want on your cheeseburger?; questioning the superiority of a species; The American Buffalo film, featuring Steve and former podcast guests Dan Flores and Michael Punk, premiers in October; watching the last buffalo herd disappear; word choice and the feeling of needing to explain the rationale behind a thought; George Horsecapture Jr.; what is the buffalo a symbol of in American history?; how nothing is binary; Quanah the warrior; how you should go watch all of Ken and Dayton's films; and more.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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active regular programme whereby we're here with can birds and dayton duncan unless they can birds that mean that can burns is first feature. Film
came out nineteen eighty one about the brooklyn bridge since then, his
aid over three dozen films non risa conversation you mentioned to me: thirty films, it's what you said about now, surprise some would say about book.
never count them in that weird sort aware. I know how many kids I have, but I'd send
Didn't I pbs as forty now
it's gonna pass at him, but then that the fund rainy night or says three dozen listen the over the edge of the moment.
One thing is that one could
a one hour film and one could be a ten part. Eighteen,
Nineteen, our film still counts as one so
whatever it is it's a lot of our snow and since then
but but you agree, you have certitude that your first film was brooklyn bridge canadian was actually a pbs and an app that we have called one m which is sort of curating the evergreen themes that are in our film and
actually not an app website. One m in a pluralist earning has released the film I made in college
my senior thesis at hampshire haulage about oldster bridge village, cut of the colonial williamsburg of new england, which is called working in world new england and its seventeen. Ninety two eighteen, forty gonna,
goth vibe to it in the let's all livestock, with the last shot as a pan across a painting. Oops. Oh
does the genesis moments of the effect so there's four there's forty one films made
works on the civil war called the civil war and in a I I want to tell your handle is for if you've heard this hundreds of times from thousands of people and that overtook like that consumed are,
life that film even even to wear my parents, bought the cd, would play the music in the house. My children, like you in all four of them
it was just like. I did consumed people in a way it was created at that time. You know now things are so diffuse.
and disperse, but it was like one of those recognise one of those elements of sort of like a shared. He was unit
like a shared national experience. You know it's pretty interesting that something that torture us and to be
him something that unified us in a way. I think we'd,
we knew about the civil war and had kind of superficial views about it, or
ideas even mythologies at were incorrect in this was sort of trying to tell him really deep, complicated story and having p,
want to know is the most important event in american history in american history
so everything that we were led up to it and everything that we become as issued from it. So I think there was a curiosity with no matter what idiot was making. The film that people would be drawn
to where we came from in the simplest thing I can say is that before the civil war, when speaking about our country, we said the united states are plural, which has dramatically correct after the war we said the united states is, and we still to this day, which is wrong. These group of people as nice, as is unromantic AL.
So what we did is take as a people when, when Lee was offer the head of the union army and turned it down, he said I cannot raise my,
sword against my country, by which he meant Virginia m, that when you said your country, you met the united states of america and so has just one hell of a good story,
and basically the whole eleven and a half twelve hours is how an r became and is hm, didn't solve a lot of things about race, didn't solve a lot of other things, but it it sure at least for a while made us in his ah
so also world war. Two, a major work on world war, two called the war.
the vietnam war, also, the dust bowl country, music, national parks, the west jazz.
And then project centred around pivotal american figures quoted thomas jefferson, marked
ain't, Jackie Robinson
Curly workin out of this sort is limited, surprise near working on
that work, and I feel that
we'll be J. We're gonna go
the american revolution, which want to ask you about but
Leonardo DA vinci yeah. So
does that america, so indeed, so when I was thinking
doing. Benjamin franklin had dinner one night with one of his biography,
now.
Walter, isaacson, dear friend,
maybe no longer hardly heard my hesitation
in walter, and I were having dinner in washington d c and all of a sudden. He started to try to sell me a twofer. He said you know, you know, he's this great scientist, an artist, a political artist and writer. You could argue we've, I think, undeniably, the greatest american
or the eighteenth century, and he's funny and all of this. But you know, and walter had done another biography on Leonardo and he said same thing. You've got this guys is great scientist, but also this great artist- and you know you should I say: look I don't do a bear, not a mirror
I only do american topics, but I walked out and was talking to two one of one of the producing deems that produce the central part five and their jackie robinson by
I see that you mentioned, and the muhammad ali thing and I said Leonardo they said yes, let's do it, so I thought why the hell,
you know why be stuck
I'll tell you why not by mid sixties, criticism it's it's a year, you're in a mare! Wait till you see! Well, you see where it well we're about we're halfway through editing and it's just.
So exciting and riveting in and Sarah, my eldest daughter who's that partner and her husband gave it a big man who is the other partner? I have just returned
from a year with two of my four grandchildren in florence and what we ve got is just an amazing stuff and less remember,
florentine films. So we were men, argosy venture to get to somebody in in florence right
while I think, there's going to be there's going to be a lot of you've, got to explain that probably a whole bunch. The biggest thing is that is the american revolution. That's just consuming almost all of my bandwidth. Yet you mentioned to me and just in passing and of course we need to get to what we're here to talk about, which is your your new phone,
the american buffalo, but you mentioned me somethin. I wish I wish. I could remember more precisely. You said,
working on the american revolution, and you mentioned, I think, concord and he said, and if not what people think or
for the eater. You know what is the it's, because I guess it's not help, because I can't really remember what exactly you said, but you you,
intimated that thursday, that that there's third element that has become misunderstood about the american revolution, perhaps well
like the civil war. Its less missile.
Stood is just not understood and that the work that we try to do is a pretty deep die that helps to
sort of dissolve the veto, the the ardor
is that are clogged with the false stories that it wasn't? This war wasn't about slavery. It was about slavery, there's no mention of states, rights or nullification, or enterprises,
in the south carolina declaration of secession. It mentioned slavery, an awful lot, that's what it's about the ku klux klan are not the heroes of the post civil war era. That's what birth of a nation
gone with the wind suggest. So we begin to inherit a lot of stuff and we think that the people who fought against the british were
dirty new england;
farmers in virginia. You know farmers
they left their work and their job. The minute man idea
and we only know lexington unconquered, we kind and now washing and crossing the delaware for trenton. That christmas day, people think it's christmas eve
Then that's it and they don't know that the bat, the biggest battle of the entire thing is the battle of long island or brooklyn, where washington makes classic mistakes. Another big mistake as brandywine the same mistake.
german town, all of these stuff saratoga, which washington's not of involved, is a great victory. So we want to go.
With through the military history and get you to know. We want you to know what guilford courthouse was about in south carolina are cow pans or camden all in south carolina. We want to know about kings, mountain and yorktown and the places where it's faults like a three part opera. You know in new england, central states and then south, but it's also a much more complicated picture. It isn't just fifty five white guys in philadelphia thinking
great thoughts in a lot of these guys are slaveowners. Lot of them are, are trying to get in the land. A lot of this is about getting in the land, and so it's
now dealing with slavery, freed slaves, runaway slaves, british or offering free.
And if you belong to a rebel, if you belong to, somebody is loyalist, forget it you're still a slave right, so there's unbelievably complicated dynamics. Women are involved from the very be
getting and any army is travelling. The american army, particularly, but also the british and hasn't have
wives and children and people that are their involved in it and you ve got french and you got german and you ve got british people. Some of the
british people are pro american summer, obviously vociferously. Not there's a canadian dimension,
There's loyalists among us at any given table, you might have twenty thirty percent are favouring staying with the ground. Lotta people just remain neutral, so it is,
Our civil war is not a civil war. There is not huge civilian deaths, except in Missouri and kansas related to the issues of the civil war. Yeah two people die in gettysburg. That's not what happens in a civil war, it's a,
action or war it is north against south. The revolution is a bloody violence, civil war that engages all americans native america.
and what is it about civil war? You mean that there were not a lot of noncombatant the peace right people, people who don't didn't hair carry a rifle at that moment are tarred and feathered because you're a loyalists, I mean we just made a film on franklin and
franklin's own son, William, was the royal governor of new jersey deposed impressed,
eventually released, presume to go to to england and get out of the thing and steady starts a terrorist organisation
dedicated to murdering patriots, because
by the way their lots of patriot organisations dedicated to murdering loyalists, and that me
it's right within your own community and it's it's from
new hampshire down to,
georgia, Georgia's more and more
loyalist, at least a you know,
beginning then, then,
then say: new Hampshire and the new england states are particularly massachusetts, but this changes. They start a son,
strategies, beginning with savannah and moving to charleston cause they Brazil
that this oil is population will help them pacify. As a word from vietnam pacify
the countryside never happens and so the
shrugged his shoulders and said? Well, maybe we should just go to Virginia, which is the death knell of the british attempt to keep these rebellious calmness
none of whom really know much about the other, the carolinas do, but everybody else is pretty much an independent vassal state plus to the west. There's forty or fifty other
nations yeah. I think we learned and doing franklin at least I it. It was driven home to me that, just because franklin and his son, but
in this in the revolutionary war, is a civil war also because there is
state. There is probably no town in the thirteen colonies. That itself was its didn't, have people on different sites? I see you know and
and I remember when we are working on the west and writing about bleeding kansas in Missouri in that at that time, the wars the in bosnia in in oh, what used to be hungry, we're going out with the bloody just murders of beer, your neighbors and I thought what that as a civil war in all in in the classic sense that people who are neighbours and em
the collected together or you know it in a location- are fighting each other, and this applies to everybody. So the oldest functioning democracy in on the continent is the hoddan shown I often referred to as the iroquois confederation made up of six first five minutes. Six nations and what the revolution does is it
sports them. Some are thinking. Maybe we'll get a better deal with her on the americans, but most of them know
the sure they know the british from history and their super
red correctly that the whole impulse of the colonists is to move westward and take their land. In fact, our whole series- big
with. We know you know how valuable our lands are. We know you want to take thou o, o
because that's what this is about. You referred to that that the reward system, while the royal product participants
in interferes with on the american side were often rewarded land at often. If, if you sign up for the duration, you got twenty bucks. If you got signed up for three years, you get ten bucks, but the twenty bucks folks were also palmer, promised indian it. But the revolution happens for really entry
ding reasons. One is when the british win, the french in indian war, which the rest of the world causes
seven years war, they get a huge empire and he can't pay for their bankrupt
the war, and so they see the settlers streaming people english
irish, german sellers streaming over
apple actions in the indian territory and the indian
their fighting back and say: no, you can't take our land, so they do a demarcation line and say you can't go over the abolition of a what
I have an opportunity to own land for the first time in two thousand five hundred years in my family
what are you going to do that and
by the way. We're so broke we're going to begin to tax, the least tax people on earth, the american congress, and so this is
but it is, but there's always that pressure to move across the abolition, a great deal of the killing
of the american revolution takes place not just from lexington.
Hunkered in Boston down
to hear or up decoyed back or ticonderoga. It's all there and we detail it.
Your town down at charleston and savannah, and even into a mobile. But it's in upstate, new york, with native people being killed and having their village.
These are not planes, indians nomadic people. These are people with cities and towns and farms and orchards. Having scorched earth policy, you know
Washington was called by many of the iroquois confederation tribes, the town, destroyer and even further to the
revolution as the whirlwind and also happen in the south east
and it also happened in the midwest, particularly with george rogers clark, who's just he's out to pease the attila, the hun of the storm he's out to just kill as many indians as he can to destroy as many villages to make that area which will later become the northwest territories. You know suitable, for
settling, so it's a super complicated story, and yet it engages some of the most noble aspirations of humankind period so that when
someone came up to me and said our last film that was broadcast was called the? U s in the holocaust, I said: do you think after the birth of Christ, the most important event in world history is all of? I said no, it's the birth of the united states,
that's great. I can see that one. How long will that would be a little bit,
twelve hours without a single photograph right. That's the big challenge that we we pay
destiny franklin, I don't mean to suggest that it was more easily and lewis and Clark,
which is how you tell a story in which its pre photographic, no photographs known, whose real no combat forty joe combat forty. Whenever I travel had, I give a specious and have anybody got a photograph from their own, please
here again address please send it in. But what
happens is that MR
said he is a mother of invention, and so we begin to find new strategy.
He's gone out film in yourself, graveyard gravestones and and and am treason, atmospheric sweat, Emily Dickinson called the far theatricals of day sunrises sunlight.
That's and and try to find new ways to do it in its beginning to work work knock. I would
we ve been editing now for several months in and have fun. You were beginning to feel like we can exhale a little bit
I want to do a better job of introducing dayton duncan after our our preamble about the forthcoming revolutionary film merit revolution.
They dug has written and produce many films with can burns country music. You can't be filling list country, music, lewis and clark mark twain. The west does well thus ball national parks, national parks. Croatia's horatio issues drive about the first car trip across the united states in nineteen o three
the west, the west are also worked on civil war. You know lots of different projects. I would because we're friends- and he went as I was- writing books can be read. The books said I was working on in progress and he'd asked me to sit in and look at films in progress, not as an expert on the topic, but to somebody who shares his passion for narrative, storytelling and I'd say well. This is really working and I was confused here. This is dragging here. I will you know that that do more of this and a little less of this and that kind of thing, so I I fiddled around on the ones I didn't produce and and write, but was dedicated and lucky.
to work with them on ones that were particular passion or interest. To me. How you got me, that's good, sorry, that, as ethnic did you meet through danes books are now I am I you know
When I decided to become a documentary film maker strike one on p pbs,
Two in american history strike three, your out. I move from new york city to walpole new Hampshire to the house, I'm living in now to the bedroom. I still sleeping forty four years ago, but before
that, in order to survive, we would take day jobs from
maybe see you didn't want to send a union crew from new york city all the way up and incur all these expenses,
he said we won't charge premiums- will just get where you need to be in new england, which was not waken up at one. I am to go, be ready to shoot at six a m to finish at midnight to drive another six hours are unworkable
like one day shoot so one day the bbc was interviewing the governor of new Hampshire,
who was active in sort of the adaptive reuse of some of the old abandoned mills, the amis gag males in manchester new Hampshire, that governor
his name's, hugh gallon and his chief of staff was dayton Duncan. So the first time I met
it really is when we want to talk to hugo in the air to go through me, and here reputation already is kind of this tough. So we did it
shoot we sorta noticed each other. I think he thought. Oh, this child is making her film. What is he doing, but it turned out all right and then later we'd bump into each other at at sort of political of the
Hence in the state, it's a small state, an intimate and then what
I was getting married, ah ice head, I'd call
Every t indicted every high, except the very important marriage license, and I needed to cut through red tape
bout a day and a half. So I called my
Body has eventually are our wives, and then my children and his children became the dayton moved here, and so why are we here? He gave me one of the books he did give me was outlast, which is this magnificent,
story of lewis and clark, but is also the story of his story in
aging, the lewis and clark trail, and I went to date. I man this is a really great film ragged
your story, but tell lewis and clark
so we had some stuff in the way like the civil war and baseball and the west bank.
we are one of the most satisfying parts of my professional experience has been working with dayton, particularly on louis
clark, particularly out on the road in montana drive
from one town to another and looking and making jokes about? Well, it looks like one of red its way up here and what it you know dayton would say what what are you gonna get when we get into town as well? I think I'll start with
called vichyssoise. And then I'm going to move to a salad of of on these with a vinegar.
dressing. And then I will have probably
the chateau bree all or the dover soul, and then I
to follow it off with a beautiful crammed, brew lay and then there would be a beat need say what do you want on your cheese
So we go into town and we go to the cafe.
and we get a delicious cheeseburger and then,
repeated the other way. I would I would say to date and well you know we're coming up. I worry it. What do you think? We should get
He would laboured thing and then I'll go. What do you want? Your cheeseburger? That's it
it was our routine, but in that time we got with you know
Dayton had already known the west, but I fell in love with it and and he was the guide and we'd be drinking
I have Fresca yeah and I think one of the joys of my life and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I was with you the first time that you were ever in south Dakota,
in north Dakota, yeah and maybe montana montana, oh and the first time you ever saw any buffalo for cinema. Where that wasn't the zoo, yeah yeah right, I saw buffalo when I was a little boy in it's either philadelphia or baltimore,
remember what zoo and I'd always been animated as a further policies, sons by native people and buffaloes and stuff like that. But I saw a buffalo.
at the ranch were years later. The dancers with wolves was all the ranch at north appear. That was the hulk granted them.
time triple you I think was named ranch.
The largest herds, the largest herds in america at the time, and I had met the guide that the rancher, when I was doing my book at west and interviewed him, but then so we filmed there
but at those what is going to say when the joys of my life was on those moments with with cant even know, you know we're doing ridiculous hours to get up and shoot at dawn and then drive and find the place, we're going to shoot next and go till sunset in the northern plains in the middle of the summer. So you're talking about sunrise at four o'clock and sunset at ten and
but of just seeing. His was important to me when we're making that film of seeing his eyes so wide at the landscape ends
encountering the landscape of of the great plains and remind me
that we need to make sure in our film that we somehow, because we can show the faces of lewis and clark and the members of the court of the sky,
three. We were standing with them, looking at it in using their quotes from their journals, but to make sure we get across the sense of wonder that they had, because I didn t know they came from this part of the country up in new england in the east were basically, you have vertical views through gaps and trees and stuff and now you're in this horizontal
world and you're encountering animals that, as they would write in their journals, not known back in the united states. I mean they're writing that when they're in nebraska and south Dakota I back in the states, you don't have these things- that the barking dogs and pet she shins and prairie dogs as John ordway called them, and that's what they became an antelope and you know prong jack rabbits and have the a and bison they knew about, but because they used to be in the east coast, but but not in those numbers and the
Donna she numbers grizzly, bears living on the plains and Elk Elk on the plane was a planes animal at one time, and just this wonderland of landscape and wildlife that they encountered as the first? U s, citizens to ever, go that far west and as the first? U S, citizens white citizens to see in that Paradise, motherland, wonderland of wildlife and landscape, and for me, that's the marker in oh. That was what the west was after. The united states had claimed it through Louis aunt purchase but didn't control it, but it was a view of of land and a people and animals that in the next eight years would be irrevocably changed.
and so they were the first in one respect, and they were the last in other respect too, to encounter that place, it has been evolving fronted, be land thousand years before the united states is officially was
during into it, and my book at worst was about the difference between what they saw on what I saw to tell the history of the west in between
Why haven't regional, yet they saw they sub buffalo everywhere it
like going to kenya right,
seeing all the things you can see in kenya anymore, right that there is a kind of silence and a kind of culture now
to the prairies when it was, as they say, our serengeti and that's, I think I think we tried, I think we accomplished in lewis and clark, and I think again in the buffalo film, to get a sense of just how filled the planes were with species of both both flora as well
fauna and how what it will be like to imagine or now re imagine the possibilities that there were elk. There were grizzlies. There were wolves into now and end in a variety of plant life. That is just a spectacular eden as as as dayton says, is as people talked about it. You know this was this. Was there are new the new territory we are acquiring, and it was just for then very shortly afterward.
It's not for the mounds of disappeared, lewis and clark dwellers. They were just saw them just talking about buffalo
They saw them everywhere once they reach what now south dakota and the plains.
Across the early eighties retracing their route. That was a wild life desert now and defined to see buffalo out
arrange, took a lot of work ahead of us a reporter had the audition
and defined at work and go see some. You know and talk and learn a little bit about them and have soap south dakota, and then my friend doe became my friend through that gerard baker, who's in our in our lives
clark them, and also in our national parks hillman, also in the west, in common and also in this buffalo from who's amanda and her daughter, the tribes that sheltered lewis and clark in the winter of eighteen, oh for eighteen, oh five,
in. I got to know him very well, but at one point he became the district granger of theodore, roosevelt national park, the north unit and one of his job to serve managing their buffalo herd. So I threw him I got not only introduced, you know personally to have to buffalo, but more importantly- and I we hope that our film gets us across and the importance that they had both for sustenance physical sustenance, but also for spiritual sustenance for a for native people who had been living with them for ten thousand years and he really
got that across to me? And that's what another thing we hope in this film that we make perfectly clear. You know you can say it all of them in lebanon. For ten thousand years and everything, and then they were gone, and that was really devastating it that just doesn't yeah touch it know about how how interpret it interpret it and
integrate whatever how closely thank you. They were their lives. Are intertwined
then the meaning that they had for people beyond. You know the food or the hides or the bones that they would use for different things. It was part of existence, and that was part of a web of of being, and that is eakins. You can talk about it, but having people like gerard and other people, that we interviewed in our film describe him because they're talking about their people, whose bones are out there to yell or talking about how deep it was and therefore how devastating it was and therefore how important it is now to try to restore some more buffalo to reservations to the land, their own ancestral lands, the buffaloes and the ancestral lands that are laughed at least on reservations for tribes, to revive that
sacred connection that they had and also to provide them with food sovereignty as well. It's been broken for in a five six generations in it's a big break cause, if you think about it, it six hundred generations of experience up to that
and then all of a sudden you, we haven't film, making a phrase called peel v, which means point of view and we tend to.
realize that we are susceptible to one p, o b and while it might be generous enough to encompass other points of view, it does so in the kind of.
Sometimes patronising kind of noblesse oblige way will. Yes, there are other views of this.
But you really in this in the case of this question- have to yield to those people who have six hundred year. You know generations of experience and not rest for five or six generations of experience with regard to this animal. I think for us,
The ability later and our professional lives to be able to see to view
it is not just some sort of kind liberal,
the bleeding heart way, but in a real full, was just give it over and challenge lots of things, presumptions about ownership of land and presumptions about superiority as a species and presumptions about how you act in concert with us, because if you're just killing
Buffalo and taken the tone, which is the first thing you can imagine what the effect is on a culture that is using everything as data suggesting from the tale to the snout and, as gerard says in our film,
and also the snort, because the buffalo sounds get worked into ritual, so it is.
Just using every lasting and Dayton wrote. A beautiful thing of you know from the moment you're born in two into a warm bustle,
blanket and the time you die in a shroud of buffalo skin?
All the ways in which the buffalo is used from tailed us now and then having as dayton, has said so well, this spiritual dimension and and
So we need to actually look at the story that takes place from a variety of bee of ease and
surely seed something even as filmmakers
tightly and control. The narrative is that we now
We may not always be right or see it in a way, and how can we in developing this narrative, see things from what is in many cases with regard to say, ownership of the land or kinship with us
species entirely different.
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question I think, is handled really well in the film and in again the the the the film releases in october. Yes, now called the american buffalo, and I think those were sixteenth and seven
we october told her six things a finger
very convincingly, and I'd like to
references of it and pondered it before, but you guys captured, will well. Is this idea of arm.
Between the planes, tribes and the animals.
That there is an end in a spear
suitable mansion and otherwise does like this, this real equal footing.
Meaning it was even there at one in some belief systems, as even at once, upon a time the buffalo or dominant over human spot
various circumstances. The humans became dominate over buffalo, but if humans,
did sort of moral infractions,
Hence the animals and animals would deprive themselves in you,
add two to end in
writing about the film later I am. I wrote a thing for outside magazine about the film and writing about it. It'd be that bad hunting.
could be more than bad luck like bad hunting,
it could be a
I have some moral transgression s meeting.
To make things right. Yeah, it's a or of only certain religious, karma idea, right that there that there was you had a kind of,
sponsor ability, there's a reciprocity and in quality between all of creation, and you needed
the imbalance without- and this is not just every try, its specific tribes have specific myths.
About the creation and when man came dominant, but that dominates required a cut of humility in the face of what the buffalo then provided
pre horse, this is going to be a very big deal. This is the service
have all of your band, your drive a might be on the success.
Of one hunt that would provide you with enough meet for a month. If you got to buffalo, and if you didn't
What were you doing if they were not their head? Had you done?
something wrong, and it was it's really
a wonderful. What is its is different from the steamroller effect. It's about respect amendment.
The cause malagigi is so different world view.
of human beings and their relationship to the natural world than what was brought to the americas in fourteen ninety two and following which was, we are all part of this web and we're all in essence, on an equal basis
Everything and it all comes from the sun and that
great unknown, that of the the lockers we called the walk on tonka, the you know the great incomprehensibility, and they understood that the sun was the source of of all life and the represent. The biggest representation of the sun was the buffalo. The buffalo ate the grass
that the sun made possible and then turn that into meat that they then relied upon for their in for their food, but also every body part fur for some
yes and that the that relationship was one in which a number of people we interviewed say in our film knitting. The buffalo give themselves to us than
part of how this work it came down and if it and if, if we don't
through our ceremonies and our practices, respect that then they might withhold bad and they would go back to where they came from our times and sacred places to them. The wichita mountains in oklahoma into the black hills, in
northern plans for the look odin and shy and they might go, go back there and then special ceremonies, and maybe the intervention of a culture hero were required to
convince them? Ok, we ve learned our lesson: were meal will bolster
frazier will reset, and will we promise that we won't? What will try our best not
do whatever that violation was that caused you to disappear and, to a certain extent, in our film remarkably,
when the first national preserve for bison back on the plains is created in the early nineteen hundred through Theodore rose
It, was in the wichita mountains work.
into the cairo was they would go. There
first emerge in his where they would go well
he hadn't been respected and, according to a legend told by a woman main bold lady horses, whose words we use in the in the film she describes a girl watching the last buffalo heard after the buffalo had been slaughtered by the hide hunters disappearing that into what's called now mount scott and the wichita amounts and set it opened up and inside was whirled fresh beauty in the room,
ran clear and the grass was green and they that's where they went and when they came back for the guy was an comanches. It was at the wichita mountains, where the preserve was
but that you know Theodore Roosevelt believed me wasn't doing it because he knew the legend of that old lady horse had told it was a just a good place. The federal government had taken some of the land from the comanche reservation during allotment and made sense.
To do it, but there were people they're, gonna, parker and others who understood that deeper
and were and heard interacted with animals as young as high as the shoulder, and here they are now. Some people live that recommended rambler time who, when they covered the plains, and they were also their children, who had seen a buffalo,
so dramatic that, in the startling irony is that.
Follow that organise seed. The
wichita mountains. Refuge come from
I come from the Bronx zoo are loaded on this. You know in the busiest city, the biggest city in the western hemisphere are going to be loaded on these boxcars and make the reverse trip out to their. You know, as we said, new old home
and that, I think, is part of trying to understand the undertow of this story. Look
It was a very good interview in that,
well yeah, we should help with this crisis. Steve are now awesome, but yeah, oh yeah. Definitely this helps us get from the bigger the irony rather promising middle aged man. So so the the thing to remember is that human nature never changes. It's the same for all
villains and heroes and all that stuff that we superficially apply. So there
our lots of ways of thinking and lots of ways of behaving in whatever but native p,
rules are warring without one another in committing atrocities, but I think for us to be able to
look and see that
you: have our own ancestors participated in a kind of thoughtless which it may be the most terrible thing you could say thoughtless slaughter that reached a kind of industrial pitch in the last
of the nineteenth century that took an animal that numbered in
perhaps thirty million at the beginning of the eighteenth century, down to basically, nobody could find
the eighteen hundred today again emerging at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There are
he's, thirty million, thereby by the
the eighteen eighties, you can't find one outside of a zoo or private
elections, there's someone yellowstone there under tremendous threats from poachers and things like that. So how did
tappin, and then why are we sitting here today? Not so
worried about the buffalo.
While I want to touch on that- and I want to touch on the slaughter by my back up in a bid to ask to ask an earlier question you
As in your work, you touch on you touch on the buffalo in the gospel early on in establishing yeah. You know the the come uppance for tilling the great plains and and and you have this thin, you know layer of grass that has a root structure that goes buffalo grass, five feet subsurface right and has a tiny reflection on the surface. Yet in that ecosystem and you touch on the anvil there, you touch on the animal lewis and clark in the west
of course, the national parks. But at what point in the back, your has the frontier heads would ever at what point? Did you think what let's just go at some point? What is tat
of the animal,
We ve been talking in its own free standing project. Even talking about there are more than three decades. We found a purple
also from the mid nineties that was like really fully developed, and we really here were about to do
and who generated the proposed
new data tat. We are all, but we talked about it from the early nineties.
about how this would be a great film in and of itself and was so good. Is that this? You know, and this happens
projects. You know you say this country, music, room, you're. Suddenly in others,
same same way and others. You know, sit over there in the process from from from conception, but the first articulation of it. You know in front of me:
back of mine so that further you say something else in your racing towards a new working made. Two hundred musicals Lobo YAP cut was like that and I shall park national parks like that. Many
the project of Vietnam
you know a newer gonna. Do it
took a long time to do the war, because after the civil war, we said no more wars and then we had to decide how we are going to jump into that, but
What was so great is that a lot of things
over the years, kept kind of on the back burner
I've just been there. Of course, the buffalo it falls off lists comes back on lists. You make a ten year plan and
it's not there, but then maybe there's a whole and comes, and I'm so happy that we waited these decades to do this cause. I don't think
We had that ability to do what I was trying to describe earlier about, respecting without patronising without some sort of inherent paternalism. Other points of view, just to literally permit them to obtain, doesn't fit with your,
leave system. Ok, but that's the way. The whole world works by a cross, thousands of cultures and an eons of time, and so
to be able to have this little moment of daylight that we could say. Okay. So after franklin, we should be doing us in this particular team with dayton and with Julian, and an answer will will will fit the buffalo and here,
It was just the right time they feel so far to in the same way that we celebrate country music for the impulse of just
I am in a friend suggested it to me in Dallas I was kind nervous coups d
and I would think about something else. I went back to date. We don't have to forget that idea, but countries like we forgot that idea
We still, we all remember what it is any more, and so
and suddenly we were just pressing forward on that and that's ok, you know some things. Some things are developed,
over time, and this one like a fine wines, is needed that a adopting by think by by dealing with it in bed,
pieces on those other films, you know even before
some of those other films. We talked about wonder son and the buffalo, but we re just kept saying this is such a it's such a portal to telling a story? That's not it! This is a by, but goodness like in our biography, serious yeah
This is a biography of the american buffalo and in one respect, but is not just about the buffalo, because it never was just about the buffalo and what
my friend gerard and other people made clear to us is that that, if, if you tell the story of the american buffalo, you're, also telling the story of native people, particularly on the
ain't? You also telling the story that even larger than that, which is a collision of two world views of how we interact with the natural world which reached it.
Most dramatic crescendo on the great planes in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and your also just tough talking about lots of different the eel. The importance of you know what does?
railroad mean what is manifestly desdemona s. Destiny mean, you know: what does conservation mean? Who are the people that the that that step forward in there for their own individual private reason serve
suit yourself, buffalo salvation projects in all twenty four twenty head here and twenty
we're here in new england of all places and andor, some or doing maker,
an anti reservations that, where there being preserved in and grown for the more traditional reasons but ranchers jarley goodnight, the legendary cattlemen the panel
Texas hated buffalo, and he really did like indians much and by the end of the film. You find out that
it has been raising a search raising buffalo, he becomes very attached to him and he becomes very attached to providing buffalo to indian tribes near him for their Sarah monique reasons, and you know george bird grinnell a great who was
character in our film on the national parks plays a critical role in their salvation and some very mean old couple people who aren't particularly likeable in modern
times rightfully so we empty hornaday, whom becomes just you know, a crusader for saving them from the commercial destruction and who hates indians and thinks it their end and a lot of other non white people and believes in the pseudo science of eugenics
but he still is a person who played a crucial, crucial role. He can overlook it, yeah yeah, you can't you can't overlook either of them. I mean you know your key. If we're talking about buffalo, we can't just sir say well, but it we're not going to talk about this other part. You know, as can mentioned, our films deal with human beings
who are their own. Amalgam of different impulses have, and you have to be honest with your portrayal of it and with you without saying. Well, we can't talk about him because he had this deplorable belief that there was as hierarchy of genetically driven and purity of of the human species and, at the same time he was doing everything he could to to keep this magnificent beast from disappearing forever. It's you know
and there's a good the the complexities of the people involved. Ah, you explore handful and there is a story in there that I had that. Wasn't familiar with, and so palo duro canyon and
If, if listers of your matching the texas panhandle is a thing called the
landscape feature, called the to piano, staccato, staked planes and coming off this ban, should these are deeply incised canyons and
the command she and others had long hunted these canyons, I hadn't
heard the story that, after the animals were mostly disappeared, that I came here to help me fill this in.
Wasn't that the yeah, the quanah parker and the comanche went to Palo duro, can't from the reservation they're like if there's one place, we'll find them it's their way and they get there and it's being ranch by
early goodbye, charlie good night, and he says you're not going to find any
But I know you're not gonna. Believe me own, go, take a look at
detail. Every two days you can have a couple of Michael you kill,
every whatever days or kill some number of my cows to feed on this is the beginning. It's to satisfy your curiosity that they're gone. We we really love the simplistic binary idea of villains and hornaday fits a villain because he starts off doing one thing any any and he does an admirable thing, but he does it for all the wrong reasons says a lot of horrible things along the way. But then you have these other things that are the charlie good night stories in
to have a human being whose an indian haider and indian fighter and is is a buffalo aid or in a buffalo killer. He wants raises catalan,
Euro canyon he's got the first ranch there and
this evolution ends up embracing his dayton said. Not only the buffalo,
on an accident, his wife's lonely and she wants to raise a few buffalo cabs, and so they end up with a herd. That's not insignificant! In the story of all these icily
It hurts that need to in some ways, if not coalesce contribute to a coalescing in various places that will protect the buffalo from the pressures of real extinction, but he also them is shedding lee animosity towards native people and embracing them, and he and them
He in a hugely important way in its those stories that punctuate all of history, regardless of subject matter that you are drawn to as
De as you do. We have in our editing roma neon sign that says it's complicated, there's, not a filmmaker.
Not a filmmaker on earth that
when the scene is working, you just wanna, just don't touch it, don't touch it.
but we always are finding out new and contradictory information about something undertow that threatens to sort of thumb, derail. What was effective about
that particular scene, but we always will move towards that end lean into it.
Because you end up
realizing his date and said you know that nobody I mean we always lament. There are no heroes now, but her heroism is not about. The greeks. Tell us about perfection, it's about strengths and weaknesses, and so you want to calibrate and calculate what those strengths are young,
the achilles had his hubris and his heel to go along with all of his great strength,
It's really not perfection is the nigger.
Creation between stank strengths and weaknesses, and what happens in that, and so
The day remains unimportant person, d
Oh, you don't wash em out, you don't cut him out of this. He's not disappeared or cancelled, he's an important, really important person.
but he represents a kind of heroism.
That is not you know, doesn't region, Charlie Goodnight,
You cancel him for the early years and then also embrace so the idea
of even cancellation in good history becomes kind of beside the point, you're going to try to include as much as you can and treat everybody with,
that kind of perspective that allows you to understand. Even the motivation of the hide hunters-
Even the motivation of this, so you're you're you're an erotic.
Using it isn't some big
oh come by our moment. Does this is tragedy. This is violence. This is here
did. This is race animosity. This is generosity and love and purpose. There are people from all over the country
band together, and we now have buffalo not skinned inside
in some museum as one day initially was doing not or not the m nickel, but there's hundreds of thousands of them that are alive and we can take our kids and our grandkids to see them and
one hell of a great story. I was heartened by the bull choice to use the word
buffalo, yeah, the title and I'll let datememe address it. Is I had a dinner date last night and we were talking. I was talking about a question. I'd asked of well all points out, so there's a number of people. What there's a couple of people that are in this?
new ken burns documentary, the american buffalo who have appeared on this podcast before so. We've had Dan flores out a couple of times. Michael parks been out a couple of times and
I recently interview damp lorries about as new book while new world.
And one of the questions I asked him was what their we're time out,
There are certain things that historians and writers: when they talk about them, they feel they have to explain the evolution of the thought right,
the peoples of the americas
no one ever is comfortable, saying here's. What happen they'll say
for while we thought this.
then for a while, we thought that
currently, we think
in a certain subjects that every people like they feel like, I can't just say what the current thinking is. I have to say how we got to the current thinking.
there were times when you when you use the word. If you describe the animals buffalo
it usually causes. You feel this need to go. Hear me out.
Right and explain the whole thing and just the in the film they they spare all that
it's not theirs as scientists, whatever, instead designed as call it by its known to scientists, s bison buys it there and that allows us to use it interchangeably, not get into the hall and had a mile gr argument, because it is.
buffalo new york not base in new york. It's the buffalo.
Nickel, not the basin.
It's now been changed from a bison mother. Do I go to have its buffalo bill? I mean you ve got all these examples, so what
technology and though
dayton care, I can present by of no steal from you the boys, a nickel, will you you can you can hear the whole dynamics of the argument, but it's quite simple: if that's what you're cold
Yet this is what will call it and we will early on acknowledge that scientifically it is
it is bison bison, and if you want to get into the fact that their buffalo in africa and buffalo
in asia and nothing's written. This is not really a buffalo, it doesn't matter.
We say this is what the earliest settlers called it, or by a variety of things. There's lots
of native american names word dozens and sometimes you know one tribal, have dozens of names or depending on its age in its eyes, and sex and selfish
where it is and how much skin and acknowledge word as what furs lost, so you
This is what we call it and the rest becomes complicated semantics, which is designed to put people to sleep,
If you have two in that met away serve sir. He
This is how we all have to think about trying to save
eight and from having to
I do wonder what he does, which is its it's. You know it's a settlement took him to task at a recent you- and I do it here later- rewrite it taught for ten we're gonna talk for twenty minutes, and nineteen was his explanation. I wonder why this picture the guy raises: have you like behind him and yeah right, exaggerated the wrong? So all your ear, maybe you didn't
with their actually buys. I say there these other than I
as well as what to do with that. You know it's like it's like a rabbit. There's leaves don't give me a lanky explanation of of. Please don't ask for a lengthy explanation of the bison buffalo got hers and then
brought up another incident where,
is this, where he toyed with
one about one of the things, which is the louis losses that that louis
Kill themselves was murdered and he exclaimed the process of
do we get into it. How do we get into it and eventually it's just he killed himself. How much of dinner did that yeah? It was post dinner that I really need to do this. I suppose I should do, and I said well actually the way we solve that it was because I was one of the interviewees on the lewis and clark. Film is that I tell the story, and so I I said
So we can have the narrator later say. While there are some people who claim me was murdered now that, but
the one that saying at the narrator's not and just give him my address, and my phone number and I'd be happy. Taco now be happy to anybody wants to chide us for naming this, the american buff.
said the american bison and using it interchangeably with with bison, to save time
this broad party and avoid reducing vacant leg and contact me as also in every day, with a twenty minute phone call just thinking up here in a sentence, as that comprise paragraph setting comprised blocks of narration, that our pages of talk that you can't see buffalo buffalo buffet
above all our bison bison bison, so you're, you're, saying bison and then buffalo.
Then the animal and then by above. So it just helps relieve the thing. But the point is their buffalo
and that's the name of our film and were sticking with the other.
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This this is a version of asking. How do you find your subjects for your films, but I want to focus on one that I found just the that I could watch all day and listen to all day because of just the articulation. The passion is george horse captured
sir? I you know, I didn't tell a story, but I think when I was trying to talk about what it might be like
to succeed,
momentum? The impetus of your own world views,
To someone else's, not just in
kind of grace
this after you alfonse? No after you
s not, but in a real way.
it occurs naturally, because george does not see, junior does not see thing
the way we expect people,
see. So why does it just concern? Not not disco is disorienting. Almost immediate disorienting in the most, for me,
most away. I have watched this film dozens and dozens of times. I have wept every time I get to his last remark, which we will not give away and
have been watching myself, agitated disconcerted
having been kind of elated that there
might be another way to see this grasshopper
You know I mean it's like so
Lee there's another way too
figure out how to square the circle, and that makes me curious about it. So you know he
is you, you could listen to him about anything because he is going to come out.
Out of it away that just a ban
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maybe there's nothing wrong with wherever we come from his wherever we come from, and what we bring is ok, but he is
be nice to have him there as like. What are we call it? A disruptor made it just
but it, but in a real sense, in a spiritual. Why it's like up ending. Can
Actually, dayton used to have this rap we'd, be on the road, with a national parks
and he'd say you know that people would look at a river and think damn they would look at a stand of timber and think bore
feet. They would look at a cannon and wonder what minerals could be extracted, but couldn't you with a national park idea? Let go of that and see things in a day
way. So the seeds of that impulse are part.
Of the six hundred generations. History of george horse capture, junior of out of a small, tiny tribe in north central. Ah, my montana and out of his wisdom, is,
not an argument, not fight, not a war, but the possibility
that. If I sit where you're saying you know, as my answer, sir Robert burns said: oh would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others. Yes, george, just
only goes and there's just some new light. That's that's that's possible. He's the bee's knees
I met his father george horse capture, his boat horse junior, who was a very renown anthropologist
when we were working on the west and spent some time with him.
When I try to fine george horse captured,
dinner on line. I read a lot about his father gap, and so I know about him and then I learned from a friendship
we have at american prairie the nonprofit, that's trying to reintroduce buffalo and and restore part of the prairie in Montana, which is not too far from the fort milner. The reservation that
George George captured junior was doing a programme at the reservation dealing with buffalo
and would sometimes come and talk to two to them at the american period to be in all their their neighbours.
And they work together now, and you know the american prairie giving some of their buffalo for the fort Belknap heard, but that the admit that he would come and talk to people that were visiting their. You know about what it meant, but the buffalo mn meant and still mean to his his people, and so I said well, I had never met him, but I you know this is part of the
process. You know you want to give things a chance right, and so we obviously went to people like yourself and others, Dan flores and other people who are who have written books about
then also?
dan o Brien, who is right.
Her, but also has a buffalo ranch in south dakota and rosalind lapierre, whose blackfeet matete, but whose annette no bottom
then historian. You know michelle knew how a ny house who's a writer about extinctions and stuff. You know you go through all the reading. You do and you say, oh well, let's go talk to those people that might help us tell our story and some of those that turn out to be really good and some of them don't. But he also we wanted to talk to descendants of quanah parker. We want kusa character in her film. The wonders we learned about Marsha pablo, whose great grandfather was a michel pablo, who had an important heard on the flathead reservation and then so with. I just said
watch. You know, spend two hours with george and to see what it's got to say and interviewed him in fort button Montana and in all right from the get go you knew the sky was bringing something.
that was not necessarily narrative storytelling of the of the historical story, but just a flat out point of view in all these got some
Incredible moments in the film, including the the final, but even well before that, in what we're talking about the technique of
the buffalo jump before the hypotheses debut in the fountain in, and we have other people say
rational my pierre Jared dad who so in burma story explore
how that worked. Hell a tribe, you know work community to tread, maneuver a herd
And then get it moving toward what you couldn't see from the ground is that there's a cliff on the other side and the buffalo jumps Pushkin's, as the blackfeet would call him and
and they tell the story and it just comes alive, and then georgia's comes on,
in the end, the sore in a momentary using large. Those going is pretty
can it's a music and it just so.
ends and resolves as
they go over the cliff in your imagination and in a painting, you're looking up on a live shot, we see a live shot with quiet and then you hear this voice come on and he says you go to a buffalo jump. You know these days and, if required, if people ain't
You're talking like magpies, so you think you're gonna, hear about sorrow of the buffalo that you can hear in in
native american way. The.
Sadness, the sorrow the screams of the buffalo, but he takes you in exactly the arbiter and he says, but you know you get the quiet, you think about that and they're going to eat now, they're going to be able to eat, and that makes people happy. You know that that my family, my tribe, are going to be real. Have enough meat to last us? You know, weeks or months
into the winter and then a good thing and in all his psych holly's,
Ok, you know it's just like, of course,
it, they would celebrate yo, you just got in all. We
get into it. In the end, the founded in the
book I mentioned that there were certain among certain native tribes. If you didn't get all of them, they went.
The cliff, because they would not necessarily die going up and they had people at the bottom to finish them off. We say that, but part of the thought was you need to do that, because otherwise us
drivers would go and tell and worn and more, and we still use that term day is called when their educated. Yes right
I want to educate turkey's here,
He has aligned stock of me and it increases saw fluidly
It'S- not rehearsed but he's talking about his people, his tribe or his collective people native americans, and he says, oh my people and their people when he says they're people he's talking about the buffalo n. When I and the thing I
what about your film and and and I touch on being in the film is- and I quote him and I want of needing to when I called
and when I say there, people so disorienting, like I said I needed to put in parentheses
where the reader will never understand when he says there
people, he means the animals.
There's no parentheses under his mind. No, that's the great thing about it. You're writing about rise. I wrote that look at their blake
No, if I say what he's talking about right now,
they are we like, but
George, is asking you to take. The parentheses ah see things in an entirely new way in which that that word, then, is part of of
a reciprocal relationship between all of creation and not just the dominant species and everybody else. I could make it like you,
you can't make it work
writing again without oppresses clarifying what what Zaga
by saying their people.
It's a thing with on the film and film, when he's talking and he'll say some things that you know grammatically you know are confusing or something like that. But there is no confusion, confusion watching him say it is it's it's totally communicated.
The mai winter ownership
I count on my lad, my this he's
Can you to say you know, there's a what who's that
the response to good night this is this is this? Is the m?
The early nineteenth century philosopher prudence. I think you said property is theft, and I was part of the developing revolutionary and all the stuff that leads to. But he has that not as an intellectual idea in opposition to anything is just like
what kind of theory assess what is my mean? What is what does that mean to be my I mean: where does it come from? This does not compute in a way and so he's by virtue of his clare.
And his certainty you are then required to let go for a second
your own sort of momentum, which in this case is four or five generations- six generations old, as opposed
his, which has six hundred generations old on this continent and say whoa will. Maybe he's got a point here right, and so I I love being a you know, not calcifying. I love the fact that that that that he kind of wakes you up. He also has a great moment, speaking of the bison nickel, the buffalo nickel and in interaction with your comments,
about that about their this animal. That gets put ana on on a nickel on either side of an indian head by the way, but that the model for that was
What black guy like diamonds describe in that, whatever I know, one eyed, alas, not in low rate, I went to the nest, the last known location of black diamonds head, which had become an italian clothing, boutique
and I went in and told the woman working there. You know what is
yeah, but but but as you as you point out that so Harris this year in nineteen
thirteen here is this symbol
side as a portrait of well,
the native americans these individuals porch? Who is, I think so, and I can't I can't remember his name like that, or at least I know that there are theories of who it is. It may not be known, but definitely and fraser said this
This one black die like diamonds is about, as you say, and so
but were left with this,
What is it a symbol of that? You know it. It's a wonderful thing. Is that end in that tourist comes near the end. The film is what is the buffalo
symbol of an american history is a symbol of plenty is a symbol of destruction. You know
What is it and then George comes on you know and just gives it the final things as a in my confusion, he says of his looking at thinking like he's looking at that nickel right at that moment, it just makes me why did they put that buffalo on there? You know what is it? Why is it that, for some people
that you want to kill the thing you love this? Is it because life look at limit? Look what we ve done. We are beginning now it is nineteen thirteen to better
guys and a romanticize, the knee
It is man and the buffalo something we have just said,
the last century, trying to exterminate
and now all of a sudden is the symbol of us
What two symbols represent the
the newness of america, particularly the west.
then the native american and the buffalo and
and so we we ve done
stood it to me when he
Does it do you have to kill the things you love your skull? I got it did that
be the story of mankind.
there's a moment. One of the episodes of in vietnam film, the aid they think of
out of ten is something at a marine said to us that
we were just talking about warfare in general and he goes unless the history of the world, meaning warfare. So we just call.
The history of the workers this? What human beings do is what we do. This is not at the
aspect that we like to say. We want to say: oh no were the Mona LISA were the tower of bees and were the this in. That were also this work
I have not yet right at now have tried to find parallels. I mean there are many parallels for that in minor, for
you look at our most populous state right? There, state symbol,
the grizzly bear of which they don't have any right. So
If he's a debit. But it's all in one of the comments that the one. The comments that I have in the film is how quickly the nostalgia yes
began cause you guys you a great job of buffalo bill cody here in the wild west show
and where they are it's, it's like a it's like. He got on a train
For if he got on a train from participating in the final slaughter
to arrive on the east coast.
The mythology eyes the thing he tried it
because the members like it's like he, he don't even look different
still advertising. This aim stick just now flip the coin for aid and its different, but
Look at we romanticize their revolution. We
took the civil war and made it not about raise his brother about coming together. You know
all of this sort of stuff. We call the sex
world war, the good war, it's the worst war ever sixty million human lives were extinguished, and it's the good war to us right so
This is always happening in our inner purview and- and I think what we ve been dedicated to is to try to take this. The onus of a superficial treatment off it and just say it is possible to tolerate
complexity, it is possible to give and take away at the same time within
visual or a moment. It is possible to sit in contradiction. It
complicated, as the sign goes in the editor. You said to me one day on the phone. You too said nothing,
Binary nothing's minor, nothing is binding, and that's all we want to do. We want to make something red cedar blues.
black or white, young or old, richer bore male or female gayer, strict whatever it may be. We were
and make sure that there is just an off switch for it.
That we know where
we stand with. Everything and everything is: will resist that kind of on off switch, because in charlie good night you have
all of this complication in william to horn date. All of his complication
in Theodore. Roosevelt, no great concert
Press president who in fact said
gripes to many of the abhorrent eugenics views of of Hornaday and and those that are
a spouting them like madison grant ard, are also do
magnificent things and so lincoln. As late as eighteen sixty one was thinking of colonizing black people to mexico or herself
america or back to africa
sixty one. That's when the guns open up at fort sumter right, I mean
and yet he's the great emancipator which he is he's the
canary who saw who wrote the gettysburg
Ass. Witches are two points
oh operating manual declaration. One point out: whoops
the guy's. As all men are created, equal ons, hundreds of human beings. We will
gloss over. Don't pay no attention to that man behind the plantation
He says: no, we really do mean it, but it's complicated men's room
we really complicated and I think we need to as americans, particularly today rejoicing complication. I think
what I was trying to say before is that maybe, as we got older chops, get a little bit better and that
We find a way to rejoin agreed at more to rejoice. In that kind of thing I can say in terms of these complications and other thing, you do a great job, helping us in in talking about how the people, like Roosevelt avid hunters, george bird grenelle, an avid hunter
informing the boon crockett club, you know, help start a movement in which hunters were at the forefront of conservation.
So you got it. You can't just have all this market hunting. You can still have hunting, but there
but it needs to be regulated and not just sort of washington and that's an important part of it and and item and grenelle is
a personal hero of mine. In that respect
who also saw conservation differently than some of the others of is of his age, because he also had a deep connection with native people was actually interested in them as human beings, buildings in earthly, but
you take roosevelt who rushed weston eighteen. Eighty three
because he had heard that the bison were about to be gone forever and so forth,
we want. He gets on a train and rushes out to what is now north Dakota, where he wants to shoot one while there's still a chance to do it, so he can hang a a a trophy on his wall in the book he writes after he buys a ranch. Also in that placing keeps coming back for several summers about hunting adventures of a rancher, a ranch man. He talks about the buffalo and said
this is their disappearance is a great tragedy, but on the other hand not it molly was a problem
not only was it necessary for the advance of what he called white civilization. It was probably a blessing that it needed to be done because of it's impact on us. You know controlling native people, so he he just just said in a
that he's written that the elimination of the bison was
gonna, be there may be anonymous disappearance, but it was, but it was a blessing and necessary who then, at the then with grenelle forms the burning cock club. Who then with grenelle, helps
avian and enact regulations in yellowstone to save that last remnant, wild heard from being poached out of existence who then
signs the the bill that creates with the executive order, create
the first preserve for bison in
on the plains, and also the one on the flat had reservation in north west montana
and, as we say, the greatest com?
Innovation, president in our history, that question, but he's all of those that do
and there's nothing wrong with saying it's all those
you had to safe. If your tilt is well, he said this
at the extermination he's done or opposite. If the issa said he just you know, and he you know he there's only gold
To be talked about with him, he it was who he was. He was complete thing we try to portray here.
in that way. He also spent. I can
imagine this he one or two to oklahoma to the comanche.
starvation after he had met after him after quanta parker at appeared with some other native leaders in his inaugural parade in numb, nineteen o five
Five. He then went out to hunt coyotes in and quanta invited him to come to. His
fairly elaborate house called the star house on the reservation,
you met at the present the nine states going to a indian reservation.
spending, the night on the porch
If the reports of one
the indian leaders, but then told him. You know
from what you've told me and everything. I think this is a good place for us to have the first buffalo preserve. I mean that's a journey, I mean, I don't think I'd adult one overstated. I don't think Theodore Roosevelt's views of you know the pecking order of of the races, as he would call them changed that much in terms of his opinion of native people, but you know he loved to hunt and he loved you know
they're too old. There are two warriors who are ill: quanah parker had his own journey. Oh Ellen hated texans more than he did they. They abducted his mother and his little baby sister, and and took them away from the comanches back to the white.
civilization cassettes, whereas they hidden lizards, want to get out of it. This is a sensitive rum from the film, but also
recommend as well empire the summer yeah yeah, absolutely her story, but anyway, jolly good night was one of the texas rangers who abducted cynthia parker from the commission to bring her back to the texas, almost so quantum
was a renowned warrior. You know in fighting
directly texans, but also the u s military, but then
when he finally decided the buffalo are gone there. We have to you know, forge a new path became. Oh you know, of a leader of trying to help his people make their judgment without giving up his many of his traditional believed and glory.
multiple wives and long here and in the use of priority, but he became a good friend with with truly good night and
Goodnight helped quota.
Get the remains of his mother and baby sister brought back from texas and buried near them.
wichita mountains where they and they wouldn't they had considered their home, and in thanks for that, quanta gave Goodnight
lance, the comanche lance that huge used to kill, hide hunters
at the battle of adobe walls. Okay, so I mean it I'm so that lance
is doubt in my mind that not just the
it's what is it a symbol of
that's a symbol of resistance right. It's
a symbol of friendship and an possibly some. You know some redemptions
yes, some measure of redemption and reconciliation. It's. It is something you know,
he audrey's our rights. It has blood member here right. One thing you guys did Anne
I recognise that this is one of the ones you wrote or produce, but
one of the EU mentioned. Celebrating these personal evolutions in in the complexities of thought, one of the most beautiful things and in any or films was
at the end of the vietnam war, which has a very, very good telling of the deep complexity of the war and what it did to America.
it did vietnam, but it ends.
Among ends on the wall, the memorial.
Narrows in on an individual who, speaking of personal choice,
in an individual who initially refused
I was not going to go. Look he hey
The idea of the wall was in that school. It was very contentious that it was this black gash that it was celebrating defeat that it was the list of the dead. It was, and in no way responsible for
honouring what had pretty
curly gone on and
I had resisted and was adamant about not going amongst a group of people that have
already gone and had ever
it happened in and when he began to answer the question about this, he started off with the
violence by the end of his sentence of story. He has gone to see a friend and he's a breaks down on camera, because.
The power of it, a memory. He would probably still say to you mentally.
intellectually. I don't agree with its is but
He was himself
than any of the other people. Proof of the power of that great work to transcend amene tolstoy said, are
is the transfer of emotion from one person to the other, and we hope that our films do that
that were emotional archeologists, not just excavating dry dates and facts and events, but something other when I was with george horse capture canoe, but at that
moment you take someone who is opposed
and led him in his own mind, he just narrating what he did in some living room safely out of the thing
to the monument in he loses it, and it just tells you with the force of that thing is and how spectacular means. Second, only to the lincoln memorial, which has the greatest thing ever in our republic
was my family was gone. I was between houses. I was on the second floor of the lewis and clark hotel and the bowls in montana, looking over the parking lot watching the end of that movie, and I sat my I thought something was wrong with me. I sat in that room and wept when we
We all like to appoint, roused big
we'd, be concerned about myself at the end
Vietnam warrior we have, as you know, we, because we are addicted to this notion of binary, everything's, good or bad. We we build
up within us reservoirs of attention based on that false premise that it's all just black and white, so catharsis is the ability, wherever it occurs, to let that room
is go. I know what it means, there's not a listener.
Seeing right now that doesn't know what it's like to just break down and cry, and there's really not an answer, and there is really what's. Why is it this little thing? I meant
It wasn't in vietnam. We know I'd. I didn't do that.
Adam here in the lewis and clark here, but something opens up and it just you just
It spells out its sole healthy in the best sense of the word tat turk. Timber met that an
you know where the rap and florentine films is that we kill people really well. You know how is
happy at the end of this film. We didn't kill anybody. We we save somebody a person, I mean
You think the buffalo is a biography, but we
so permitted? Somebody like george horse capture to do
do something that for me
of us exactly the same thing happens all of the tensions.
of trying to maintain the fraudulent use of
by binary. Yes, no thing in which does not exist in the universe. You just get. You get full expression there and george just lets me.
just let go of a whole bunch of baggage that I just perpetually carry put down
I think I wanna gonna pick up again and find out I'm still carrying the same stuff. Do you feel that you have
after do something on the war in Afghanistan,
I need to
five years after an event to do it I mean, but I think that I'd like to challenge that yeah, I don't think you do well. We will see what
Hence we ve got stuff through the end of this decade and after that it made it may in fact be, and it would not it might be.
The petroleum war sooner
may be a rack force, Iraq and and and second iraq, as well as afghanistan, and try to
understand them in and in that sort of postcolonial.
A and and in an in it, in a global sense, and also in the deeply personal that thing, particularly with with afghanistan relating to Levin. So it's a wonderful
story in his very, very complicated and all
and his eyes were even the people that it's like for me to look at it. I was born the last
dear of active engagement in vietnam, but I was
raised around my bodies
vietnam, but yes, but I think that there are plenty of people who
live live to that twenty year war, yet who have really lost sight, yeah of the evolution of of mission, the evolution of the thinking there, yet what it was in the first place, what it became the withdraw.
in the guy you guys get it needs to be. Someone needs to be someone
Your team that to to do it- and I just don't know that you need a way to tell
yeah. Well, we always liked her. You know,
philip, graham, who owned the washington post, said that journalism was the first rough draft of history, which is a one
yeah, but he also realise that nobody turns in a rough draft right now. So what we like is the passage of time and the perspective. That would give you a good, but not so quick but pretty quick thing.
We done the vietnam film ten years after the fall saigon right in nineteen. Eighty five murkison
bit of a recession. We're talking about the pacific rim, but we don't mean us we
japan, which is ascended. Vietnam would rep
present the symbol of our declined, the ball and chain that we would forever carry around with us. If I had waited twenty years to nineteen. Ninety five we're the sole superpower in the middle of what was then the greatest peacetime economic expansion in the history of our country. We had won the first gulf war with one arm tied behind our back with a coalition.
of dozens and dozens of countries supporting us. The beacon the city on the hill,
vietnam would have would be an important story to tell, but it wouldn't be representative of any decline. You go thirty years to twenty five
and were in both the iraq and afghanistan and were bogged down, and now people are
in vietnam references so once again you're going well. Maybe vietnam is more symbolic of that, so we beetle
comes out twenty seventeen, and so we
able to look from you.
like the bitter mounds, from a lot of different peaks and louder different valleys to see a better,
Two triangulate better what actually took place, and so I, after view
nor I was
old to realise when we were working not after it, I'm I'm looking at a map
You drank valley and play made is important.
How more story and we're just doing
so. We ve got this kind of three map that were threatening through through the drank valley on a graphic right, and I go to the battle of long island right
here, we're going back to the revolution and people like what, but now
or like four years deep into it.
To me and we're still it still contentious the stuff were
doing about in the editing room among scholars about
thing that happened, it will be
when this comes out it tutor in fifty years ago,
is just magnificent, so I'm not saying notice is somewhere between thirty and two fifty years as an american filmmaker I mean we are working on our daily in our sir we're doing two centuries. Before that I mean he's with a set of two different places. It will have to be down to one in the leonardo film. It would be an
There are four hundred and fifty years before anybody would be able to duplicate what it does right or the his theories of this had benefited. From I mean he he had
some theories of gravity that isaac.
There is still a century away
Einstein is for centuries away and
newton and einstein have calculus. He does not, and he's got.
Some stuff on gravity he's a painter re he's a painter
and it's their point. You're going. You know her
the god. So we're the perspective is, is is pretty important to us just because- and I thought
as one of the arguments, and maybe we ve said it of the buffalo weight is to be.
It will to be in the age we're now with the
and a scholarship, including yours that that helps us
understand and evolve the story that we were drawn to instead point. We need to do a film on just the buffalo cause it.
Touches all the corners is dayton, says in the film back in an early
these or leaving ladys right get do that. But the fact that we waited
as long as we have nothing changed except the inter buffalo, try,
both council and stuff like that and
was released in yellowstone.
Whatever is back
as happened in the last, but to be
well to enjoy your and
an floor and- and you deal so many other scholars that appear in the film mark upon michael punk for sure
You begin to realise that we ve got a richer,
more dynamic, less binary.
story to handle
well whatever you, wherever you
as make known in the future, I will watch it and I will be moved by it. I will think how I would add: dunbar
different, and I think our audience is really gonna get a lot of out of the american buffalo. I think that
you listeners. What, when you watch it, the parts are going to speak to you. Parts are going to challenge you, it's healthy, it's good.
Probably if you know the story well, you're gonna have parts you're like we want about right,
as the great man, it's good for your brain, so exactly, I hope, hope every watches it and really wanna. Thank you guys for coming out and give me the time you thank you. Thank you. Thank you
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Transcript generated on 2023-11-13.