But there's still only one you!
I spent 22 hours without a break scanning 450 archival negatives and my brain is fried. Once my teeth stop chattering, it's gonna be great! I've been trying to get these shots for 4 years!!! So, okay, if you wanna do that crazy pan and scan look that Apple now sells as the "Ken Burns look" you need to be able to blow up the image without it going pixel on you. Now I hate doing much with my stills, and I much prefer to throw a picture on the ground, point my camera at it under flat lighting and just call it done...but this time I became obsessive and ended up talking to Full Fame, the people who did all the motion control for Civil War and all those, themselves...and they told me to call Steeplechase Films, Ric Burn's company...and my jaw dropped. That's right, I just found out there's two Burns. Two! There's a -Ken Burns- and then there's a -Rick Burns- and while they might be brothers, they are not one person. No, really! I had no idea. Why didn't any of you tell me?!?!? It's not a joke, they are in fact two different people. Meaning there's more then one!!!!...there's two!!!....two entirely different Burns brother documentariens!...but I couldn't tell you what separates the them besides three days of beard growth. If that wasn't enough, I'm told they resent the hell out of each other for stepping on each others shadow or something brotherly to that effect. They've both won awards and both do those big PBS series pieces, so in my mind this means they might as well be the same person. I feel a little left out of the joke again, but hasn't the world pretty much decided for them that they're the same person? I think one did New York: An Illustrated History while the other did the Civil War: a really boring history... or wait they both did the Civil War ? There's steam coming out of my ears here. This is crazy. Okay, so which one is living in some old 18th Century farm house turned production studio in New Hampshire? The whole house is supposed to be filled with bearded, rotted toothed, Public Broadcasting die hards, all wearing v-necks sweaters, living off tree sap stimulants and smog fumes from a collection of maroon colored Saab sports vehicles circa 1981. It's the Father from Family Ties gone Heavens Gate. I bet there's a house across the way set up as a seminary filled with their groupies, a coven of uniform Diane Keatons. I'd like to think they communicate in secrecy through the wild bird mating calls of the Thrush Hermit, or crystalline wind chimes tuned to the temper scale of the local Purple Finch, and on solstice nights, carefully selected songs (maybe Steppenwolf, Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge, and Spooky Tooth) blasted over the indoor/outdoor speakers, threaded up on Ken's vintage prototype reel-to-reel home Qaud system. I'm certain they mark every anniversary for the inaugural airing of The Three Tenors by filling up canvas WNET totes with spoonbread, and gathering in the woods for talk of gang syncing, emulsion, moviolas, scopes, and sometimes on special nights, Ken shows them his Kino Eye. A Dessert of pear fondue, and tree bark is followed by a quick pledge drive, some peacock dancing, and a bacchanal of deviant delights in the homemade laserium Ken modified from the organic Bucky Fuller dome he ordered out of the Whole Earth Catalog in kit form. Then at midnight the fog lifts and both Brothers appear in the same location at once, so that followers can truly see double, and hear them in stereo. Out. of. sight!
I'm also told he has a baptism tub in the basement of this home which is the covert bottling source of Kabbalah water. It's there that a secret process "more complex then the manufacturing of Coke" produces the $15 bottles, all blessed and secured with a red string. Sounds utopian I'm sure, but that's not the innocent brother, not the unknown sweat shop documentarian who pumped out that Ansel Adams spittle, and NOT the one in production on a new Andy Warhol PBS doc. This reminds me of how I felt when they were playing Kid Rock and Jesse Jams (or whatever the fuck that dreadlocked duster wearing rapping cowboy was named) on All Request Video Music Box (Y'know "The Box"?) within the same hour, forcing me to come to terms that there was more then one of 'em. Possibly millions. This is really not healthy for me, as I already do tend to methodically pair people into 2's as if I'm putting together the next Noah's ark on it's way to sweeps week. Example: Winnie the Pooh, and Paddington Bear. Or um Rob Schneider and Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day! Or Rancid and The Sha NaNa! See what I mean now? RightHuh!? Exactly! Okay, probably not. Anyway, I have a whole list to illustrate my point...somewhere... I'm not organized enough to call it up and share it....but these are the things that make my world go...well not exactly 'round...but everything does come full circle if you want it to bad enough....and if it doesn't, I'm told you can order some weird seeds from the back of magazines that'll help put life into that perfect perspective.
I'm also told he has a baptism tub in the basement of this home which is the covert bottling source of Kabbalah water. It's there that a secret process "more complex then the manufacturing of Coke" produces the $15 bottles, all blessed and secured with a red string. Sounds utopian I'm sure, but that's not the innocent brother, not the unknown sweat shop documentarian who pumped out that Ansel Adams spittle, and NOT the one in production on a new Andy Warhol PBS doc. This reminds me of how I felt when they were playing Kid Rock and Jesse Jams (or whatever the fuck that dreadlocked duster wearing rapping cowboy was named) on All Request Video Music Box (Y'know "The Box"?) within the same hour, forcing me to come to terms that there was more then one of 'em. Possibly millions. This is really not healthy for me, as I already do tend to methodically pair people into 2's as if I'm putting together the next Noah's ark on it's way to sweeps week. Example: Winnie the Pooh, and Paddington Bear. Or um Rob Schneider and Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day! Or Rancid and The Sha NaNa! See what I mean now? RightHuh!? Exactly! Okay, probably not. Anyway, I have a whole list to illustrate my point...somewhere... I'm not organized enough to call it up and share it....but these are the things that make my world go...well not exactly 'round...but everything does come full circle if you want it to bad enough....and if it doesn't, I'm told you can order some weird seeds from the back of magazines that'll help put life into that perfect perspective.