PASADENA, Calif. — No, this is not the most divided America has ever been.
Not by a long shot.
There was the Civil War, obviously. But more recently, there was the War in Vietnam — a conflict that sparked generational and racial conflict, split families, and led to battles in the streets, some of them fatal.
As he did with The Civil War, filmmaker Ken Burns will examine The Vietnam War for PBS. Made with his partner Lynn Novick, this 10-episode, 18-hour documentary arrives in September and will feature a score by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Oscar-winners for The Social Network).
Burns, who has been working on the project for 10 years, says if nothing else, Vietnam will remind people that "the past is like the present." Many of our divisions, he says, were born in the military, political, cultural, social and familial conflicts that surrounded Vietnam, a war that took the lives of 58,000 Americans.
Yes, Burns says, it's possible that some people in our currently polarized nation will react negatively to the film, but Burns says he's more hopeful that the film will inspire people to come together and talk. That, he says, is how he sees PBS, as "a place to come together and to begin to have courageous conversations."
In the end, he says, the goal was to create a film everyone could embrace. "It will be controversial, but only among those who don't watch it."
The divisions caused by the war played out in every facet of American life, including the music of the time — much of which will be heard on the soundtrack. That's one of the reasons Burns says he's so excited to work with Reznor and Ross, who will write the original score and bring a new sound to his films. And they say they're equally excited.
"I can't over-state how flattering this is," says Reznor.
Reznor says he and Ross were contacted in the fall of 2012, and they began writing the music not long after that, "the goal being to create a world that was unique to this project....We spent a long time trying to figure out the language, the musical instruments, that would best fit this film, and trying to figure out why they chose us for this project."
Why did Burns and Novick choose Reznor and Ross? "We knew we needed something different here," says Novick. She found it, she says, in 2011 when she went to see a movie they scored, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. "I lost track of the movie, and started paying attention just to the music....I thought, 'Whoever did this music, I need to get them for this film.'"
She didn't know at the time that the composers were Reznor and Ross, and when she found out, she figured she'd never be able to get them to do it. "But I thought, 'We might as well ask.'"
They said yes, and in the future, Reznor says, "should the subject matter warrant, it's an unquestionable yes" again. But that doesn't mean Reznor is open to everything. "I'm not going to be on The Voice next season. I don't think."
Over its 18 hours, Vietnam will try to cover almost every aspect of the conflict. Burns says inevitably it will include some information you've heard before, but most of what you hear will be both new and revelatory.
One thing you won't here, however, is the conspiracy theory that President Kennedy was assassinated because he wanted to withdraw from Vietnam.
"That's just a fallacy," says Burns.
