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CNN Sunday Morning
Filmmaker Discusses New York City's History
Aired September 30, 2001 - 08:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: I want to talk about a new documentary. You may have seen it on air. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in that documentary, high praise for a predecessor, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. He took office back in 1934 at a time, says the mayor, Mayor Giuliani, now, when the city of New York was totally devastated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI (R), NEW YORK: It was perfect timing. He was precisely the mayor that New York City needed to get through the Depression and the World War. He was the mayor of New York City during the most difficult time ever to be mayor of New York City.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: The final two episodes of "New York, a Documentary Film" will air on PBS today and tomorrow. And with me now, Ric Burns, the film's director, live here in New York City.
Good morning to you.
RIC BURNS, FILMMAKER: Good morning.
HEMMER: A brother of Ken Burns, the younger brother.
BURNS: The younger brother.
HEMMER: Before we go backwards, let's go forward. Have you been able, given the incredible timeliness of this documentary that's been produced. To see this city in a historical context, given what happened back on 09-11.
BURNS: You know, it's been very difficult to do that. This is an almost unprecedented event. In fact, it is an unprecedented event, but New York has been a place that's been in the vanguard of creating the culture that we live in for so long, that in a sense it's used to unprecedented things.
It burned in the Revolutionary War. The Draft Riots of 1863 was a major cataclysmic. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. Again, and again, when the troubles of modern life hit hard, they hit hardest in New York, and they tend to hit here first.
HEMMER: Which is interesting, because so many people say, if you ever want an America city to recover, it would be New York City, based on the cataclysmic events we have seen.
BURNS: No question about that.
HEMMER: We have some video tape, Ric. We're going to roll it underneath here as we continue our discussion, and the Great Depression around New York City. Also, immigrants coming to this town, and a bit later, the 1960 skyscraper film.
But you made an interesting comment. You say this was the first global city.
BURNS: Absolutely.
HEMMER: By the mid-1700s, New York was speaking 18 languages.
BURNS: I mean, we think of New York as a diverse place in the 20th century, but that's astonishing. When the Dutch got here in the early 17th century, they founded really one of the first nodes in a global civilization. New Amsterdam was that. And all the experiments of creating that global commercial culture have been going on here more intensely and longer, for a longer period of time.
HEMMER: Yes. In your research, what surprised you about this town?
BURNS: I think, it wasn't surprising, but it may come as a surprise to people in America and around the world, New York is the most American of all places. Americans think of it as the most foreign of America cities, but of course it is the place where capitalism and democracy, these two great American impulses, came bubbling out of the ground for so long, and so much of what we think of as America was born here first.
HEMMER: All right, there's the videotape that we were waiting for before. As we look at it, what did you learn going forward about that diversity and how, in your estimation, how does this city reach back and draw on that?
BURNS: You know, in our first episode of this series, which began a couple of years ago, the first broadcast a couple of years ago, we said that New York was an experiment to see whether all the peoples of the world could live together in a single place.
That experiment is what was attacked on Tuesday the 11th. The experiment to see whether people of different races, nationalities, religions and creeds could somehow, without losing their identities, losing their differences, form some kind of common culture.
New York has more experience with doing that than any other place in the world, arguably, and so I think that in the wake of this assault on that value, the value of diversity and tolerance and inclusiveness, one can say, one can actually expect that New York, of all places, will be the place that will help lead us into the reassertion of that value.
HEMMER: I want to use your words too, relative to the World Trade Center. You say, quote, "all the hope and ambition and arrogance those buildings embodied is still here."
BURNS: Oh, absolutely. You know, let's build them up again, higher than ever before. The sky is the limit in New York. It's always been that way here, and the sky is the limit in America. And I think the best memorial to those that died would be to raise the buildings again, to say...
HEMMER: Back to 110 stories?
BURNS: Oh, 115. 120. Why not? I mean, that's always been the sense; that there is no bounds to the aspiration, to the hope, to the possibilities of transformation. And that's what those buildings stand for.
And although they fell, and although there was such a tremendous loss of life, those powerful urges have not been damaged at all.
HEMMER: Ric Burns, documentary filmmaker from New York. Much appreciated. Looking forward to it again. The final two episodes tonight and tomorrow night on PBS. Many thanks.
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