Why filmmaker Ken Burns won't do a documentary for the streaming giants

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss his partnership with PBS and explain why he won't be working with the big streaming platforms.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: You were kind of the OG, the original gangster of this modern documentary era, though. And now, it's sort of spread out, I think, to a really great degree because of your work. You have this arrangement with PBS, but HBO has, of course gotten in the business. Netflix. What do you make of the world of documentary films right now, Ken?

KEN BURNS: Well, you know what? In '85, we were talking about what a great golden age it was, because documentary's a very weak word, because it means what Michael Moore was doing, what, something-- there was a film called "Streetwise", it was Errol Morris' [INAUDIBLE] thing, it's the self involved films, like Ross McElwee's "Sherman's March."

ANDY SERWER: "Sherman's March," wow. Yeah.

KEN BURNS: All of these things, my stuff, it was just great. The whole thing, right up to fiction, maybe crossing over the line, to pure documentary, like Fred Wiseman's stuff. There was just an amazing spectrum, and it's only gotten bigger and more effective, and maybe the success of "The Civil War" had something to do with people turning around and saying the cost per hour of whatever, versus fiction.

But look, I've been with public television my entire thing. I'm staying with them. They have one foot in the marketplace and the other tentatively out. Look, I could have gone a few years ago, or 10, 13 years ago, to a streaming channel, or a premium cable, and say, I need, with my track record, I need $30 million to do "Vietnam". And they would have given it to me.

But what they wouldn't have given me is 10 and 1/2 years. PBS gave me 10 and 1/2 years. And they gave me 6 and 1/2 on "Ernest Hemingway", and 10 on "National Parks." We've got many projects going at once. I've got eight others happening now, with four different teams, and I'm not missing stuff, I'm delegating, in a way, because I don't have to do everything the way I did when I started off in knee pants.

But the interesting model is that it's not a financial model, it's a grant model. We raise money from foundations and individuals of wealth, from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, from PBS itself, Bank of America has been our corporate sponsor since 2006, they've signed up to 2030. We've had a stable of support from foundations like the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Park Foundation, stuff like that. We started a group we started called the Better Angels Society, which is a nonprofit that seeks money from individuals of wealth to help do these films.

So we make them as zero sum games. Not allowed to put in contingency, not allowed to put in any profit margin, and it just happens. And then when they're done, it's all zeros, and we've already moved on to the other projects that we're working on.

What that gives me is total creative control, which is-- I live in rural New Hampshire, this is my barn, because I do not want to sit here, having a conversation with you, and saying, well, they wouldn't let me do this, and they wouldn't let me do that, or I really wanted to work with that writer, or I really wanted this person. And if you don't like these films, it's all my fault. In this case, it's Lynne and my fault, because she's the co-director, but it's our fault. And that's the way you want it to be. No excuses.