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Upon first glance, Ken Burns’ latest project, “The American Buffalo,” might seem a bit out of character for the Emmy-winning documentarian, who has already tackled everything from the Civil War and baseball to country music, the national parks and Prohibition. But a deeper look reveals that the two-part series — which was written by Dayton Duncan and produced by Julie Dunfey, two of Burns’ longtime collaborators — fits right in with the rest of his filmography, as it traces the dramatic history of the American buffalo (named the national mammal of the United States in 2016) and connects it to our country’s destructive history.

The four-hour series details the near extinction of the animal at the hands of white expansion and greed, as well as its eventual restoration thanks to dedicated recovery efforts beginning in the late 19th century. Anchored by deeply moving interviews with members of the Northern Plains, Central Plains...

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s original screenplay for award-season juggernaut Everything Everywhere All at Once and Sarah Polley’s adapted screenplay for Women Talking scored the marquee awards Sunday at the WGA Awards.

The WGA, which handed out its trophies for the year’s best writing in dual ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York City, also gave Apple TV+’s Severance wins for Drama Series and New Series, and FX’s The Bear for Comedy Series. HBO’s The White Lotus won for Limited Series, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver won for Comedy Variety Talk Series.

Everything Everywhere completed its sweep of the major guild awards with the win, which comes after triumphs at PGAs, DGAs and the SAG Awards, as well as Saturday in the category at the Spirit Awards. It has 11 Oscar nominations including Original Screenplay.

Related: Charlie Kaufman Slams Industry Suits At WGA...

The 75th Writers Guild of America Awards took place Sunday night, wrapping up the final weekend of guild awards before the Oscars next week. Both screenplay categories are tight at the Oscars, but not all the contenders were present at WGA.

That’s because the guild’s strict rules disqualify a number of scripts every year. This year, ineligible original screenplays include Oscar nominees “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Triangle of Sadness,” as well as “Aftersun,” “Rrr” and “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.” Oscar nominees “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Living” are among the ineligible adapted scripts, which also include “The Whale,” “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” and “The Quiet Girl.”

The WGA’s original screenplay nominees are “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert), “The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner), “The Menu” (Seth Reiss & Will Tracy), “Nope” (Jordan Peele...

Ken Burns will dive into the history of the American buffalo as part of a new two-part, four-hour film set to air on PBS from October 16 to 17.

The American Buffalo is the biography of the shaggy bovid which has been in production for four years. It will take viewers on a journey through more than 10,000 years of North American history and across some of the continent’s most iconic landscapes, tracing the mammal’s evolution, its significance to the Great Plains, and its relationship to the Indigenous People of North America.

The series was written by Dayton Duncan, the author of the companion book, Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo, to be published by Knopf timed to the broadcast. It was produced by Burns’s longtime colleague Julie Dunfey. Julianna Brannum, a member of the Quahada band of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, served as consulting producer.

Kathy Mattea could hardly contain her amusement. The West Virginia-born country singer hasn’t had a song on the country charts in nearly 30 years, but after the airing of Ken Burns’ eight-part Country Music documentary, she woke up last week to find that both her greatest hits collection and her 1989 song “Where You’ve Been” were included among the 40 top-selling country songs and albums on online retailers like Amazon and iTunes.

“I’ve been laughing about it all day,” says Mattea, who served as a consultant and talking head in the documentary.

Though an instantly recognizable face from films such as “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “A Walk to Remember” and “Erin Brockovich,” it is Peter Coyote’s voice — a coolly authoritative baritone with a Zen master’s holy roll — that has endeared him to documentary lovers and makers. Alrhough director-writer Alex Gibney used Coyote’s wisened narration for “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and “The Pacific Century,” it is Ken Burns’ work where Coyote’s tones are most welcomed. In a collaboration that started with the 1992 documentary “The West,” Coyote has gone on to narrate 11 of Burns’ PBS film series, becoming almost a DeNiro to the documentarian’s Scorsese.

Being a musician and musical collector since his adolescence made Coyote an apt choice to narrate Burns’ epic new “Country Music” series. But it is the actor-writer’s activist past in the 1960s, cofounding the Diggers — the anarchist communal group that sought...

Musician Rosanne Cash is used to speaking about her father Johnny Cash. After all, she’s been living in his shadow her entire life and even wrote a memoir in 2010 that in part examines her rocky relationship with him. But for Ken Burns’ new miniseries “Country Music” – which details the creation of modern country music – she was unprepared for the emotional journey that revisiting the past would bring.

“Well, some places they went were painful like, ‘What did you sing at your dad’s deathbed?'” Rosanne Cash told IndieWire. “I think that was the first time I told that.”

“Country Music,” delves into these details – not to mine personal tragedy – but to highlight the often complex and tumultuous lives that these legends in the industry led. So much heartache, loneliness, and yes, drama, made headlines and yet simultaneously fueled art.

Straight From the Musician’s Mouth

There’s an additional storytelling benefit,...

Earlier in 2019, Ken Burns and his Florentine Films collaborators Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey took a whirlwind bus trip that whisked them around and across the entire state of Tennessee in a few short days. Their itinerary included several places with significant ties to the history of country music: Bristol, site of Ralph Peer’s 1927 and 1928 recording sessions that first captured the Carter family and Jimmie Rodgers; Knoxville and Sevierville, central to Dolly Parton’s story among others; Memphis, the birthplace of rock & roll with Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio and...

There may be no documentarian who’s ever taken the dictation to “show your work” more seriously than Ken Burns. The omnipresent filmmaker has made his name on deep, dense dives into American culture that provide as much context and archival material as possible without fogging up the overall narrative. It’s an impressive balancing act that has helped him direct and produce examinations on everything from the evolution of baseball, the lasting legacy of the Roosevelts, the intricate horrors of the Vietnam War, and beyond. Now, alongside producer Julie Dunfey and writer/producer Dayton Duncan, Burns has set his sights on the origins and impact of country music, a thoroughly American genre with an extremely complicated history. It’s a hugely ambitious project given just how many decades the genre has encompassed. While Burns’ “Jazz” zoomed in on about 30 years of history over the course of 4 episodes, “Country Music...

Filmmaker Ken Burns and his collaborators on PBS’ upcoming “Country Music” documentary series had no inside connections to the country music community when they began work on the eight-part series more than eight years ago. And that’s a good thing, in the view of Vince Gill, the renowned singer-songwriter.

“Country Music,” a masterful chronicle of what Burns calls “a uniquely American art form,” is set to debut Sept. 15. The fact that Burns and his longtime producers Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey were not “insiders” allowed them to tell the story with a level of objectivity that made for a more powerful work, Gill said.

“It’s finally go the respect that it’s never had,” Gill said Monday night as he joined Burns, Duncan and Dunfey at New York’s 92Y for a screening of clips and Q&a about the series, moderated by music journalist Alan Light.

“The...

Ken Burns was in Dallas some years ago visiting a good friend, philanthropist Cappy McGarr. The filmmaker was working on his 2012 Depression-era miniseries, The Dust Bowl, and as usual for a workaholic who often has six or seven films brewing, Burns was turning over ideas for his next project. When McGarr suggested tackling country music, “it just exploded in my brain — like, of course,” Burns says. “And as we got into it, we saw that it was as real, important, and emotionally compelling as any film we’ve made.”

Related:...

At a panel previewing his forthcoming PBS documentary “Country Music,” legendary filmmaker Ken Burns addressed inevitable questions about the origins of country music and the genre “not having a mass appeal.”

The director, who was joined on stage by some of the musicians featured in the marathon 16-hour endeavor, bristled a little when asked about the latter.

“I don’t know what could have more mass appeal than country music,” Burns said in response, before pointing the fact that each member of the Beatles discovered their love for music through various country stars and lamenting the fact that country music “tends to be siloed into one single thing.”

“We cloak country music in hound-dogs and pickup trucks and good old boys and six packs of beer,” Burns went on to say. “But it deals with love and loss, particularly love, and it’s hard to address it…The arguments we...

Ken Burns’ upcoming documentary Country Music will begin airing on PBS stations before the year is out, but a piece of it will live on forever at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. At a press conference on Wednesday in Nashville, Burns showed a clip from the documentary and announced that he would be donating all the transcripts and interviews from the project to the Hall of Fame.

The eight-part documentary, on which Burns worked with regular collaborators Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey, was filmed over the course...

Get ready for a grand ole doc’ry.

Country fans have been thirsty for years just to get a release date for, much less see, Ken Burns’ characteristically epic documentary on the genre. A delivery date for “Country Music” was finally provided Friday in PBS’ presentation for the film at the Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena: It’ll air across eight nights in the Sept. 15-25 time frame.

And you know you’re a true country fan if you look at the details unveiled about the doc and your first response is: Only 16 hours?

“Sixteen and a half,” corrected writer/producer Dayton Duncan, one of Burns’ longtime filmmaking partners — happy to have snuck even a few extra minutes in — as he spoke with Variety after the TCA panel. The only way to get it down to that length was by cutting off the history the film covers in the mid-1990s,...

On September 15th, 2019, PBS will premiere the first episode of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ Country Music, a detailed exploration of the genre which has been in the works for the past eight years.

Directed by Burns and produced by the acclaimed filmmaker with his long-time collaborators Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey, Country Music premieres Sunday, September 15th through Wednesday, September 18th, and Sunday, September 22nd, through Wednesday, September 25th at 8 p.m. Et on PBS stations. Episodes will be available for streaming as well. The documentary follows Burns’ 2017 exploration of the Vietnam War.

Ken Burns could not come to TCA to tout his new documentary for PBS, Country Music, so frequent collaborator/writer/producer Dayton Duncan stood in for him.

He described Burns’s process:

“We chase every rabbit down every rabbit hole…That’s what reporting is. I’m a reporter who now talks about stories that are 100 years old” or more, he said.

“Our process is, I write a script using interviews and then we start making a film out of it. Then the hog wrestle begins – what to keep and what to throw out. It’s always too long at beginning, deliberately.”

Then a multitude of people on Burns’ team “sit and watch it, and say ‘Okay, what do we got to do here?’ and things start falling off,” Duncan continued.

“When great stories fall off and I start to cry” that’s when Burns pats him on the back...

PBS has previewed some of its 2019 launches at the Television Critics Association Press Tour.

Here’s the rundown:

*** Ken Burns’s Country Music will premiere Sept. 15. The 16-Hour documentary chronicles the history of the genre, from the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Garth Brooks and more. The eight-part series is directed by Burns and is produced by Burns and long-time collaborators Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey. It runs Sunday, September 15 through Wednesday, September 18, and Sunday, September 22 through Wednesday, September 25 at 8:00-10:00 p.m. Et.

*** PBS and Ryman Auditorium present Country Music: Live at the Ryman, a concert celebrating the Burns series. The show is set for March 27. Burns will host the evening, which will feature performances by Dierks Bentley, Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, Rhiannon Giddens, Vince Gill, Brenda Lee,...

The 2018 AmericanaFest kicks off in two weeks, bringing more than 500 shows and 60 panels to Nashville.

The festival announced its lineup of panelists, lecturers and interviewees this morning. Included in the mix are k.d. lang, who doubles as this year’s keynote speaker and Americana Trailblazer Award recipient. She’ll also serve as a sort of musical bookend, kicking off AmericanaFest’s special programming with a keynote address — delivered in a Q&A format with NPR critic Ann Powers — before hitting the Ryman Auditorium several days later for the Nashville...

The tireless Ken Burns has a new project in the works for PBS -- "Country Music," a multi-episode documentary slated for 2018. It will be directed by Burns, who'll produce alongside writer Dayton Duncan, Burns' longtime producing partner. "Country Music" will chronicle the history of a uniquely American genre, from southern Appalachia to Texas, California honky-tonks to Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. "For over a century, country music has been a pivotal force in American culture, expressing the hopes, joys, fears and hardships of everyday people in songs lyrical, poignant and honest," said PBS President Paula A. Kerger. "It is fitting that we have two of America's master storytellers, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, tell the story on film of an art form that for generations has told America's story in song." "Country Music" will look at artists like the Carter family, Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills,Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash,...

HBO dominated the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday night, grabbing 20 awards, including eight for the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, the most-awarded program of the night. Other notable winners include Bob Newhart; the TV vet took home his first-ever Emmy for his guest-starring role on The Big Bang Theory.

See the complete list of winners below; an edited version of the nearly four-hour Creative Arts Emmys will air Saturday, Sept. 21, on Fxx.

Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program

Ryan Seacrest, American Idol

Betty White, Betty White’s Off Their Rockers

Tom Bergeron, Dancing With the Stars

Winner: Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn,...

The full list of television winners and nominees at the 2013 Producers Guild of America Awards is as follows: The David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television

American Horror Story (Brad Buecker, Dante Di Loreto, Brad Falchuk, Ryan Murphy, Chip Vucelich, Alexis Martin Woodall)

The Dust Bowl (Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan, Julie Dunfey)

Game Change (Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, Jay Roach, Amy Sayres, Steven Shareshian, Danny Strong) - Winner

Hatfields & McCoys (Barry Berg, Kevin Costner, Darrell Fetty, Leslie Greif, Herb Nanas)

Sherlock (Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Beryl Vertue, Sue Vertue) The Norman Felton Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama

Breaking Bad (Melissa Bernstein, Sam Catlin, Bryan Cranston, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Mark Johnson, Stewart (more)...

Diane Haithman contributes to Deadline’s TV coverage. When documentarian Ken Burns speaks, everything sounds like poetry. At today’s TCA panel on his latest PBS documentary The Dust Bowl, Burns didn’t say that some of the survivors of the devastating 1930s dust storms that were interviewed for the documentary have died. He said: “We have already lost four of them to the merciless passage of time.” The documentary will air in two episodes November 18-19. Related: TCA: PBS Sets Ken Burns’ ‘The Roosevelts’ & Pair Of Cuban Missile Crisis Specials But some of them are very much alive. Cal Crabill, 87, appeared on the panel with Burns, his producing partner Dayton Duncan, and author and columnist Tim Egan, who appears in the documentary and whose book The Worst Hard Time served as an inspiration to the filmmakers. Burns and Duncan said they connected with some of the approximately 25 survivors interviewed through appeals on PBS stations,...

HollywoodNews.com: Prolific stars as well as HBO towered over the 2010 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy awards on Saturday afternoon.

Such celeb faves as Betty White and Neil Patrick Harris took respective wins for their work as guests on “Saturday Night Live” and “Glee” in the comedy series acting category. John Lithgow and Ann Margret took top honors as drama guests respectively for Showtime’s “Dexter” and NBC’s “Law & Order: Svu.” In accepting his kudo, Lithgow accidentally thanked HBO.

That pay cabler had a lot to be thankful for as it took home 17 trophies, seven of which were for its miniseries “The Pacific.”

Largely the Creative Arts Emmys honor the categories of for casting, art direction, choreography, cinematography, costumes, hairstyling, makeup, editing, lighting, music, sound, visual effects, stunts and technical direction.

Another two dozen Emmys will be handed out in the acting, best series and writing categories in a live...

The 2010 Writers Guild of America Awards Winners The Writers Guild of America, East (Wgae) and the Writers Guild of America, West (Wgaw) tonight announced the winners of the 2010 Writers Guild Awards for outstanding achievement in writing for screen, television, radio, news, promotional, and videogame writing at simultaneous ceremonies at the Hudson Theatre at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York City and the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Susie Essman of Curb Your Enthusiasm hosted the East Coast show, which was executive produced by Craig Shemin, who was also the head writer. Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) hosted the West Coast show, which was executive produced by Spike Jones, Jr.

The Writers Guild of America, East presented special honors to: Alan Zweibel - Ian McLellan Hunter Lifetime Achievement Award; Gary David Goldberg - Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence; Edward Albee - Evelyn F. Burkey Award for contributions...

As hard as it may be to believe sometimes, someone (or someones) actually sits down and writes a movie or TV show before you end up seeing it at your local multiplex or on your favorite TV network. The people who do the sitting and the writing are, surprisingly, called writers and, like the Directors, the Golden Globes and the Oscars, they have their own awards show.

This week, the Writers Guild of America, which is the trade group and advocate for writers, announced its nominations for outstanding achievement in feature film and television, radio, news, promotional writing, and graphic animation during the 2009 season to be honored at the upcoming 2010 Writers Guild Awards on February 20, 2010, in Los Angeles and New York.

We realize that these nominations may not be as glamorous as the Golden Globes or the Oscars, but we kinda like writers around here and think they do a pretty important job.

It’s mid-December and that can only mean one thing: awards season. Today, the WGA announced their TV nominations (feature nominations will be announced Jan. 11th) and it’s the usual suspects for the most part with a couple of surprises. Mad Men, 30 Rock, The Office, and newcomer Modern Family earned 3 nominations each. Meanwhile, popular fan favorite Glee received two. There are a lot of categories and nominees so I’m just going to mention the two big awards before the jump.

The nominees for Best Drama Series are: Breaking Bad, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Lost, and Mad Men. The nominees for Best Comedy Series are: 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Glee, Modern Family, and The Office.

The WGA will announce the winners on Feb. 20th. Hit the jump to see the full list of nominees.

Drama Series

“Breaking Bad” - Written by Sam Catlin, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, George Mastras,...

Awards heavyweights "Mad Men," "30 Rock" and "The Office" and buzzed-about newcomer "Modern Family" led the TV field for the 2010 Writers Guild Awards with three nominations each.

AMC's "Mad Men" and NBC's "30 Rock" and "The Office" are in the running for best drama/comedy series, and each received two nominations for episodic writing. "Family" made the cut for best comedy series, best new series and best episodic writing for a comedy series.

ABC's "Family" was one of two new shows to break into the best series categories along with Fox's quirky high-school dramedy "Glee," which faces "Family" in the best comedy series and best new series fields.

While the WGA Awards are still in its nomination phase, Fox's "The Simpsons" can already uncork the champagne. The veteran series is assured to win the animation category after landing all five nomination slots.

The biggest surprise among the series nominees was HBO's low-key baseball comedy "Eastbound & Down,...

"The National Parks: America's Best Idea," the documentary from Paramount Home Entertainment, has just been filled with 22 clips. Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature’s most spectacular locales, "The National Parks: America’s Best Idea" is a six-part, 12-hour documentary series by Ken Burns and his longtime colleague Dayton Duncan on the history of America’s national parks. This is a story of people...

Newsday (McT) -- Reason To Watch: Ken Burns ("Baseball," "Jazz," "The Civil War") and longtime colleague-collaborator Dayton Duncan explore the national parks system. What It's About: At 12 hours, TV's most exhaustive historic survey, beginning in the mid-1800s, with the campaign to save Yosemite, and ending in 1980, when the system was largely completed. As always, Burns and Duncan are interested in stories, people and the essential idea of what it means to be an American; don't come here to learn how Carlsbad Caverns were formed. Sunday's Episode: Mostly covers the establishment of Yosemite and Yellowstone, with a starring role for John Muir,…...