True stories, tight times

Ken Burns, who lives in rural New Hampshire, was determined not to be slowed down by a late winter snowstorm crippling Washington, D.C.

“I have meetings down here and I’m trying to get financing, just like every documentary filmmaker,” says the man whose films, such as “The Civil War,” “Baseball” and “Jazz,” made him a shining star among documentary filmmakers. “Here’s an image for you: Ken Burns with one of those metal detectors looking for quarters around the cherry blossoms.”

It is an image that would elicit uncomfortable gulps from the documentary community. If one of the most famous nonfiction filmmakersis scrounging for capital, then what will be left for even the merely talented?

True, it’s never been easy to get documentaries funded. Even the top filmmakers, in the best of times, have to scramble for backing. Now, with Congress and the foundations and corporations that traditionally finance documentaries wrestling with a down economy, it’s only made a hard fund-raising job tougher.

Yet as contradictory as it might seem, these are boom times for the television documentary. There are more networks than ever with at least some documentary presence. Besides the old standbys like PBS and HBO, MTV, Comedy Central and even ESPN are doing documentaries. The cable network “multiplexing” era means there’s more air time to fill at the A&E; Networks, such as the History Channel, and the ever-multiplying Discovery umbrella (the Learning Channel, Animal Planet, the Travel Channel). Although it has been delayed, the Sundance Channel is still planning an all-documentary spinoff outlet.

Existing in a space between scripted comedies and dramas on one side, “reality” shows on the other -- and the nonstop blur of breaking news coming out of Iraq -- the 2003 class of documentaries is searching for original topics, fresh angles and deep pockets to feed the appetite of the 500-channel universe.

On the positive side, new voices and innovative films are emerging. Series such as “Independent Lens” on PBS, “DOCday” on Sundance and HBO’s independent documentary films have ceded more editorial and technical control to producers and, as a result, have achieved their goal of edgier stories.

The flip side is that not all channels are so welcoming of provocative fare. Most documentaries, especially on advertiser-driven cable networks, fit particular models and are often downright formulaic. It’s just part of succeeding in a competitive environment where channels must fight and claw for viewers, say executives at these channels.

Abbe Raven, executive vice president and general manager of A&E;, is unapologetic for the tight controls his channel places on the many documentaries it commissions, such as for the booming “Biography” franchise. “Every program, every minute counts on TV. So every documentary we air has to have the A&E; imprimatur on it. There are standards and we want to be involved every step of the way.”

Documentary producers say that can mean tight budgets and too-quick turnaround times. Raven said that there are already more than 1,000 “Biography” films in the A&E; archives. Discovery’s science-oriented documentaries number in the hundreds. There is hardly a species Animal Planet hasn’t surveyed in depth.

“But the budgets are so tight and the pay so small, that while the television media desperately want more and more documentaries, they’re not willing to pay prices for them. So the quality suffers,” says Joe Saltzman, a USC journalism professor and a veteran documentary filmmaker. “The opportunities are there and the need is there, but it is getting harder and harder to get enough money to do the job right. The result is superficial and quickly done documentaries that have less and less value.”

Strangely, many want to lay the quantity-versus-quality documentary dilemma at Burns’ feet. He has been so prolific and popular that his style has become what networks want. While few blast Burns’ documentaries, they say imitating him is dangerous and, worse, dull.

“The Ken Burns style is the still photographs, the camera that caresses them and the plinking piano,” says Robert Thompson, head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. “ ‘The Civil War’ was so influential that everyone had to feed from its bounty. The style has become a cliche.”

Phillip Rodriguez spent several years documenting the social and economic split along the border between San Diego and Tijuana, using new digital film techniques. He barely broke even on the film, but his “Mixed Feelings” did finally air on PBS recently.

“PBS will die if it continues to search for the 10th version of the Ken Burns show,” says Rodriguez, senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “The guy has contributed much to the network and the understanding of American history and all that. But documentary is a big, broad thing, and there can be a lot of possibilities that are barely being explored.”

Shiela Nevins, HBO’s executive vice president of original programming, hopes that her network is breaking the Burns mold each time out. She admits that since her network doesn’t have to worry about Nielsen ratings, she is a bit freer to experiment with the documentaries she buys or commissions.

“Sometimes it is so obscure, no one on a commercial network would touch it. And sometimes, like with, say, ‘Real Sex,’ sometimes it is so risque, no one would touch it,” she says. “And I’ll admit, no one is subscribing to HBO for the documentaries.... But that means we have room to do some different things that might catch viewers off-guard, and yet pleased.”

PBS, too, while admitting that Burns is its most popular documentary face, claims to want to air edgier stuff.

“Ken is one of the major filmmakers of the last 50 years, and if you have stuff like that in your library, why not air it?” says Jacoba Atlas, PBS vice president of programming, defending this year’s decision to rerun old Burns films on a weekly basis. The program, “Ken Burns American Stories,” returns May 5 with an efrom his “Baseball” series. “But if that were the only thing we were doing, you could kill us for it.”

Atlas points to “Independent Lens,” a series of 14 new documentaries, which range from whimsical offerings like “Off the Charts,” which looks at the obscure song-poem industry, to more serious topics like last week’s showing of “Strange Fruit,” on the landmark Billie Holiday song about lynchings.

But whether it is the umpteenth History Channel exploration of the Battle of the Bulge or an Emmy-winning film on a social or medical breakthrough, the problems of funding are ever paramount in documentary film.

Burns’ films -- his next big one is a series on World War II -- cost millions to produce. The bulk of his funding comes from General Motors, which has been his major underwriter since 1987 and in 1999 signed a 10-year deal with him to provide 35% of the funds for his films and 100% of the educational outreach that PBS does with the films.

“It helps us connect with an audience that is desirable for us. People who watch public television are influential and well-educated,” says Ryndee Carney, a General Motors marketing manager. “People who tend to watch Ken Burns films might not pay attention to traditional advertising.”

Unfortunately for TV documentarians who aren’t Burns, it’s hard to get matching deals from other companies. The scramble for money just to complete their passion is a wearying battle.

“We insist that each project we fund has a real salary in it for a producer,” says Lois Vossen, the San Francisco executive producer for “Independent Lens.” “Cable channels operate from tiny budgets. They may give, say, a $100,000 budget for a ‘Biography,’ but after you acquire some film or license some sound, a lot of that is gobbled up.”

Can’t quit his day job

One of the producers Vossen pointed to as a “passionate, typical independent of the kind we love” is Michael Hazard, whose film on former U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, “I’m Sorry I Was Right,” took six years to make on a budget of $75,000. He passed a hat at a softball game with McCarthy for part of the funding.

Hazard, who lives in St. Paul, Minn., has made 20 documentaries, primarily for public television, since 1974 but has always done something else to finance his “real existence.” He had a graphics business for 20 years and in the last five years or so has run filmmaking workshops for schools.

“You almost can’t sustain a living doing documentaries, at least creative ones,” he says. “I know of no one who does except for Ken Burns, and you can argue that he does commercials for GM. I love him, but your work is controlled to some degree by your source of funding. I guess you have to deal with it like poetry, and no one makes a living from that.”

While PBS’ Atlas may disagree in degree with Hazard, she is not unaware of the documentary community’s concern about finances.

“It’s like ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ the best of times and worst of times for documentaries on TV,” she says. “There is a bigger audience than ever for documentaries, so more networks are willing to buy them. Documentary, too, is no longer a pejorative term -- it doesn’t mean ‘boring.’

“On the other hand, I do think it is getting harder and harder for documentary filmmakers to find enough money for good projects,” she says. “More people are in the field, so ... there is certainly less to go around.”

One place people do end up finding money is in foreign sales rights. French, German, British and even Canadian TV networks tend to fund projects more than American networks do. Often that money will get the film completed, and the filmmaker may make his or her money back by then selling it to PBS or Sundance, where it will get a prestige airing, just in time to raise money for the next film.

“We will see something at a film festival that was first on, say, Arte, the cultural channel in France,” says Paola Freccero, senior vice president of film programming for the Sundance Channel. “Other countries have a long-standing tradition of financing creative documentaries. One of the first in our ‘DOCday’ series, ‘The Trials of Henry Kissinger,’ was largely financed by BBC.”

Thom Powers, whose “Guns and Mothers,” about women who lost sons to gun violence, will be on “Independent Lens” in May, is writing a book about the history of the TV documentary to supplement what he calls his “habit” of filmmaking. He said he didn’t even take a salary for “Guns and Mothers.”

“The spirit of documentary filmmaking is thriving, but it is against the odds that you will make money doing it,” he says. “My father runs marathons, but he doesn’t have to run the next one to pay his bills. That is what I have to do. But we who love it do it.

“On the other hand, the distribution bottleneck is wider than it was 40 years ago,” he says. “More independent films make it on the air because there are more channels to go to. Yet, of course, back 40 years ago, there was documentary filmmaking on the broadcast channels, so certain people were employed there doing it.”

The network news-type documentary has been slimmed down on the three major networks to magazine-show segments. The old-style news documentary primarily lives on “Frontline,” the PBS series now celebrating its 20th anniversary on the air. “Frontline” executive producer David Fanning notes that financing is not a problem -- if you are a member of the select few.

“We have a repertory company of producers who do many of the ‘Frontline’ pieces, and I don’t think they complain about money,” Fanning says. “We may end up doing a story that ‘Dateline’ has done but will do it in a more in-depth manner, with better storytelling, which is our signature. We’re the alternative to reality TV.”

Ironically, though, Atlas, at least, thinks the new rush of reality TV can help the spread of the documentary.

“First off, ‘Real World’ on MTV introduced a whole new generation to documentary. Young people found out documentaries didn’t have to be boring and could speak to them,” she says. “Reality TV will eventually drive people to watch good nonfiction television. There is an upside to everything.”

Clark Bunting, executive vice president and general manager of the Discovery Channel, certainly hopes there is a market for documentary TV, since there are 14 Discovery networks that all rely on nonfiction programming.

“I’m hoping that the documentary form will have a renaissance, that people will say, ‘I want to watch something good’ and that we and all the people who want to make documentaries will provide it,” Bunting says. “As the baby boom ages, they seem to want more and better stuff. Digital cameras and computer advances will make it cheaper to do. Some of it will be schlock, but all in all, I think we’re looking at a coming bright future for documentary TV.”