00:01If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or
00:08do things worth the writing.
00:11The challenges of making a film about Benjamin Franklin are kind of endless.
00:15We kind of know he's on the $100 bill.
00:18We kind of know the kite and the lightning experiment.
00:22And then after that, it's fallen off.
00:25And so this whole film was, at least for us, revelation and we hope for our audience.
00:30He was interested in everything you could possibly know about all things knowable.
00:35So that makes him a perfect Ken Burns subject.
00:38Franklin is endlessly interesting.
00:40He is the only founding father who evidently had a sense of humor.
00:44This is the perfect moment to do a film about Ben Franklin.
00:50This is a moment when many of us want to reframe our founders and to think about them during their
00:59lifetimes, but also the way in which Ben Franklin translates in the 21st century.
01:05He's a flawed man.
01:07He enslaves people in his own household and is very, very late, as far as I'm concerned, to the cause
01:14of abolition.
01:14But he does get there.
01:15And then he's the greatest diplomat in all of American history.
01:19Not only does he invent lightning rods and Franklin stoves, he invented a way to unite the colonies.
01:27And so I think he's a quintessential American.
01:31Our new constitution is now established.
01:34Everything seems to promise it will be durable.
01:37But in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.
01:43And he does all of this with a kind of wink.
01:46He knows his own foibles.
01:47He's trying to improve himself.
01:49And the example just comes down to us centuries later of what it's like to be a better American.
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