By Andy Serwer
Ken Burns knows American history, but what about American business? I recently spoke with the award-winning filmmaker of such documentaries as The Civil War and Baseball, and his latest, The American Revolution , as part of our At Barron's interview series.
I asked Burns about the role of business in the American Revolution. "It's all economics, in some ways," he says. "This is about money, taxation. You're going up against the biggest empire on Earth, the British Empire. How do you fund the war and revolution? You're having financiers like Robert Morris who are putting money in. He financed the revolution, and the revolution financed him. There were people making money."
Burns has relationships with some boldfaced names that Barron's readers know well, like Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, and Steve Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, who have underwritten Burns' endeavors.
"I have a special relationship with Brian," Burns says. "He majored in history at Brown University, and his mentor there is Gordon Wood, who's in our film on the revolution. [Brian and I] meet periodically. We take care of the business side of things -- this is the budget for next year, these are the films that we're thinking about -- then the rest of the time we talk about history.
"I met [Steve Schwarzman] in 2017. We regularly talk on Zoom or get lunch. He's been incredibly generous supporting The American Revolution and other things we've done. He's got some incredible perspectives about what's going on in the U.S. and the world."
Neither of these benefactors have a say in the editing room, Burns says.
Burns himself is a CEO, owning and running Florentine Films for some 50 years. "For the last 20 years, our sole corporate underwriter has been Bank of America. The 22 years before, it was General Motors," he says.
"I've done everything the opposite of what I was told to do. I was told to stay in New York. I moved to New Hampshire. I've been told, 'You should adopt this technology...or have more bells and whistles.'
"I've never gotten investors. My film on the Vietnam War came out in 2017. It took 10 1/2 years. It cost a little bit over $30 million. I could have walked into a streaming service or premium cable and walked out with that $30 million. What I couldn't have walked out with was the [time] I needed to get to the heart of the story."
Burns says he has avoided a "layer of suits saying, 'Longer, shorter, sexier, less sexy, more violent, less violent.' " Instead, he made an "essential sacrifice that has for me been the right decision. It may not be for another filmmaker who might go [to] an HBO or to a Netflix...[but] this is what has worked for me."
Write to Andy Serwer at andy.serwer@barrons.com
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May 07, 2026 01:30 ET (05:30 GMT)
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