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Wrong, possibly on two counts...

Posted by EBerlin (A) on October 22, 2008 at 18:03:21

In Reply to: RE: "Jazz," by the Burns Bros. I've only seen #7, the Be Bop disc, but it truly is posted by no1maestro on October 22, 2008 at 09:51:50:

PBS does NOT put up the money for these productions. The money comes from outside underwriters (IIRC Burns' programs have gotten a lot of money from GM). The vast majority of PBS documentaries require funding to be arranged by independent producers, not PBS, before PBS will agree to collaborate. There are a few high profile PBS producers that have an easier time because they have continuous or easy-to-acquire underwriting or because they've made a long series of popular programs for PBS. Possibly the leading non-Burns example is David Grubin.

I must also disagree on the creative side. As a documentary filmmaker myself I can confidently report that a large proportion...probably a majority...of my filmmaker friends are highly critical of Burns' work. The reasons are many. For one he tends to hew to a narrowly defined point of view in his work, and in the Jazz series this is a more serious liability than elsewhere. He kept to a VERY conservative take on the meaning of jazz history, with Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch as the chief commentators. Both are known for their conservative views. If they had had more interpretive commentary from a wider range of jazz artists and historians the impressions left by the film would be very different and a lot more diverse.

Also, I and many friends believe Burns's approach makes very excessive use of "voice-of-god" narration. This means that much of the interpretation of jazz history actually comes from Burns and his co-writer(s). When you write that sort of narration you can put whatever thoughts you want into "god's" voice.

Burns acknowledged that he knew almost nothing about jazz before the production started. To create such a series that projects the impression of being in some ways definitive, while the creator himself is a neophyte on the subject, is highly questionable.

In films made by me and many others, such narration is either restrained or entirely absent. My films tend to have NO written narration; the storyline is driven by interviews with people who have primary experience and long-gestating and hard-won insight into the subject and its meaning. I don't claim this means my films are objective, but with my co-director our intent is to minimize extant traces of our own personal perspectives. There are some films that can ONLY work if they're driven by written narration. But Burns' subjects, especially Baseball and Jazz, lend themselves to a more diverse collection of voices woven into a coherent, more wide-ranging, and nuanced collection of contrasting ideas. But he doesn't go there.

Also, Burns uses identical creative strategies/styles for every film, regardless of subject. Couldn't a series on jazz employ a style that feels a little looser and more improvisational, to match the spirit of its subject?

Finally, the Burns series is also fatally flawed for presenting itself as definitive while essentially IGNORING the most recent 40 years of jazz history! That entire period was pathetically inadequate, and was pretty much covered only in the last hour of the series. So 10 hours for the first 50 or so years and one hour for the last 40. Doesn't that seem strange?

I completely reject Burns' contention that he de-emphasized this period of jazz history because it's too recent to be "history." If nothing else at that point he could have segued into an exploration of recent and contemporary jazz that made greater use of input from living musicians. It could have been a way of demonstrating the truth of or exploring the limitations of what was supposedly revealed in the prior hours. And, if he felt he wasn't the right filmmaker to produce the more contemporary episodes there are any number of filmmakers he could have subcontracted for that work. Like me, for example!

Rant over.

Edits: 10/22/08 10/22/08 10/22/08

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