Cover Story: The War Comes to The Small Screen Amid Big Headlines

A lot of interest about the human cost of war has been hitting the air waves over the months since 9/11, and now award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has entered the mix with "The War," a seven-part series that tells a moving and personal story about World War II.

Directed and produced by Burns and Lynn Novick, "The War" tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four American towns. Six years in the making, this epic 14-hour film, reminiscent in scope and power of Burns’s landmark series "The Civil War", it focuses on the stories of citizens from four geographically distributed and quintessentially American towns -- Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and the tiny farming town of Luverne, Minnesota.

"The Second World War was so massive, catastrophic and complex, it is almost beyond the mind’s and the heart’s capacity to process everything that happened and, more important, what it meant on a human level," said Burns. "Every person in the country was deeply affected by this war, whether in battle, at home, at work, or in the case of Japanese-Americans, in internment camps. By focusing on the personal stories of ordinary Americans who had extraordinary experiences, the film tries to bring one of the biggest events in the history of the world down to a very intimate scale. And in the end, we all begin to see, I think, that there are no ’ordinary’ lives."

"The War" will air over two weeks, beginning Sunday, September23, 2007 (four nights the first week and three nights the second week) from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on three nights).

Corporate Support

Corporations seem to be stepping up in large numbers to support production of the project, as well as its promotion. PBS and its corporate sponsors,General Motors, Bank of America and Anheuser-Busch,are spending some $10 million on traditional advertising avenues, such as radio, print, online and billboard ads. Anheuser-Busch is also participating as well in what is seen as recognition of a subject that is in the hearts of all of America.

"I find that too often in public television we preach to the choir through limited resources," he said. "We felt we had a film like ’The Civil War’ that had the possibility of reaching beyond the traditional public television audience and that required a little more muscle than we had, and GM was more than happy to share the spotlight in helping to spread the news."

Controversy

No production about war comes without its share of controversy. PBS, addressing concerns of local stations over the Federal Communications Commission’s policy on indecent speech, plans to distribute two versions of Ken Burns’s 14 1/2-hour documentary on World War II, one unedited and the other with four obscene words edited out so that the viewer hears nothing.

It’s not known how many stations will air the edited version of ’’The War.’’ F.C.C. policy is not to decide in advance on possible indecency, but the commission had previously ruled that obscenity in Steven Spielberg’s film ’’Saving Private Ryan,’’ for instance, was not indecent, given the World War II context. But according to the New York Times, all the lawyers PBS consulted agreed that the unedited version was legally defensible in light of the ’’Ryan’’ decision, said John Boland, chief content officer of PBS.

But after months of debate, he said, PBS decided also to offer the edited version because many stations plan to rerun episodes during the day on weekends, when children could be watching.

Sopranos Star in HBO Troops Special

Other big stars are also stepping up in telling story of war as well. "Sopranos" star James Gandolfini, interviewed 10 soldiers and Marines in a heart wrenching HBO documentary premiered just last week: "Alive Day Memories:Home from Iraq."

At the heart of the film are one-on-one conversations with James Gandolfini, who, as an executive producer of "Alive Day Memories," sees his documentary as a way to put a human face on the cost of this war. (Portrait of Marine Staff Stg. John Jones by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, right)

"I’ve been surprised, because I’m a cynical person, by the honor and loyalty and discipline that these kids have," said Gandolfini, who visited troops in Iraq in late 2004 on behalf of the USO. "The positives of these kids aren’t put out there enough.

Originally, "Alive Day Memories" was going to be filmed inside Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Then, as the Associated Press reports, shortly before filming was scheduled to begin, military brass yanked their permission. Months later, a likely reason came to light with shocking reports of substandard care at the Washington, D.C., facility, the AP said.