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What would a Ken Burns documentary be without its measured, authoritative narration?
His calm, cowboy-around-a-campfire timbre is basically the voice of America, at least within the orbit of PBS.
Generations of kids first met Coyote as the embodiment of authority he played Keys, the head scientist inE.T.
the Extra Terrestrial but the man himself has lived a Zelig-like life.
I saw grown-ups weeping in my living room, he says.
Men and women who were broken by lies the government was telling.
These days, hes also an ordained Zen Buddhist priest.
Ken, is it project-specific when you choose to use Peter?Ken Burns: Yes it is.
I would ask him for every project except those that are subject-wise African-American.
And we do not execute the film while were recording.
We get about 95 percent of the way through editing, and then we say, Time for Peter.
An episode might run an hour and 50 minutes.
Peter reads it cold.
And more often than you could possibly believe, that first take is often terrific.
Its usually two, three takes.
Im sure it now drives him insane.
I always say, Perfect.
One more for the insurance company.
Is it more than just an easy paycheck?Peter Coyote: Nobody does a documentary to get rich.
They do it because they really care about it.
There are some of them I do because its like a masters degree in a subject.
And then Kens really stand above and apart like a Ph.D. in the subject.
I have a very wide peripheral vision.
I understand what Im reading fully.
Ken Burns: He feels like Zelig.
I mean, hes the intersection of the second half of the 20th century and American culture and life.
He was our narrator ofBaseballback in the early 90s.
After a while he said, Oh, you want me to Gods stenographer?
I cracked up and I said, Yes, John, thats exactly it.
It has all the meaning.
All of the import, none of the ego.
How much of voice-over work is performance?
He wants zero performance.
I dont feel like Im doing a performance.
I always do them cold.
I never read the scripts in advance.
The first time I read the text, I have the most vivid images.
Those images actually control my voice.
Its not my ego or my small mind.
Its fealty to the images.
As Im reading, each sentence is just creating an image.
Im not trying for an effect.
My voice is automatically responding to the images in my brain or in my body.
Do you ever get emotional?Peter Coyote: Sometimes.
I mean, those are words I would like to spit.
My discipline is to harness my own feelings, so that you have free rein to yours.
Youre attempting to be as dispassionate as possible?Peter Coyote: Im attempting to be astransparentas possible.
I want to just be there to serve that film.
Really, man, Im a Jew with an animal name who reads good.
These guys have been out there for years working, fact-checking, thinking.
And there are many ways in which Im far to the left of Ken.
TheVietnamseries began by saying: The war was begun by good people for good motives and went bad.
My leftie friends went ballistic.
How can you do that?
Id like [Ken] to hit harder sometimes.
But hes the master.
And in fairness, he gets the Koch brothers to pay for it.
Ken, its not just the volume of words you give him, right?
More often than not, he knows in advance how to pronounce something.
Are we going to say hollos or hollers inCountry Music?
These are our big, huge questions.
Were often finding that one reading of his might be longer than mine.
Why would you have him adjust it when its the most beautiful wave?
Youve just got to get back on your surfboard.
And later on, Wynton says, Music is the only art form thats invisible.
So why not take advantage of, in this case, the music of that narrator?
Not in timbre, not in sound, but in meaning.
And no one has come closer to my voice in meaning than Peter.
Peter, youre a pretty political person.
We couldnt join the country club a block from our house.
and I couldnt go.
No one ever said, Wait, why dont we do something that Pete can do?
So theres a lesson in politics right there.
When you looked at that, you had to take a side.
If you didnt take a side, you were taking a side.
Ive never wanted to disenfranchise myself since.
By the time I started acting, I had a family and I had real economic pressures on me.
My inability to get that training left me with certain insecurities.
So I did, and I paid a tax on my career for that.
But it was never the source of my joy and fulfillment.
Thats just the truth.
One felt authentic, and one didnt.
Youre also an ordained Buddhist priest.
The core truth of Buddhism is that everything is interdependent.
So when I speak to people, I have to do it without being judgmental.
Were the same animal.
I have everything that my opponent does.
Theyrescreamingat people for peace and they dont see the contradiction.
This interview has been edited and condensed from separate conversations with Peter Coyote and Ken Burns.
