Ken Burns

Came in its second year in 1971.

And all of the teachers there were social documentaries, still photographers and filmmakers.

And they reminded me correctly that there is as much drama in what is and what was as anything the human imagination makes up.

Right.

And so fiction's fine.

But all of a sudden, my molecules are rearranged again.

I'm no longer just a filmmaker going to hopefully go to Hollywood.

I'm now a documentary filmmaker.

And all of that merged with this latent joy.

I don't know how to describe it.

Love of my country and its history.

I mean where everybody else growing up was reading novels and stuff like that.

I was reading encyclopedias and reading histories and trying to get at some aspect of who we are.

And I think every single film that I've made has asked the same question.

Who are we?

Who are those strange and complicated people who like to call themselves Americans?

And what does an investigation of the past tell us about not only –

where we've been, but where we are and where we may be going, which is the great gift of history.

It's the best teacher we have, as you know.

18 hours, 10 episodes.