Column: Ken Burns new documentary is 'The American Revolution'

Thirty-five years ago, I stood with filmmaker Ken Burns at what was then called the Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum ). He was telling me some advice that Southern novelist and historian Shelby Foote had recently given him: “God is the greatest dramatist — just tell the story.”

It was September 1990, and Burns said that was what he tried to do in the soon-to-premiere “The Civil War,” a television documentary that would forever change the face and pace of documentaries, remarkable in dozens of ways and in which Foote would be one of the most prominent of dozens of voices.

Burns was 37 years old, boyish looking in the extreme and passionate in conversation. He talked of his previous documentaries, “The Brooklyn Bridge” and “Statue of Liberty,” each nominated for