The ambitious project, which mixes interviews, archival footage and real-time sequences of Burns doing his laundry and eating breakfast cereal, will trace the story of Burns from childhood to the present with the same attention to tedious, excruciating detail that has characterized his other films.
No one at PBS has yet seen a rough cut of the documentary, which, in its unedited form, has a running time of eight months. At press time, public-television executives were drawing straws to determine who had to watch it, insiders say.
Some critics questioned whether Burns himself was as worthy a subject as those featured in his earlier documentaries, such as baseball, jazz, and the Civil War. Burns couldn’t be reached, and a spokesman said that any comment Burns might have would be “incredibly long and exhausting.” In order to drum up excitement for “Ken Burns’s Ken Burns: A Film by Ken Burns,” PBS officials will offer a cash prize of $50 and a PBS tote bag to all who can prove that they watched the entire program.
