“Forgotten Hollywood”- The Rose Parade Grand Marshal is…
Manny P. here…
When it came to choosing the grand marshal for the 2016 Rose Parade, it was a natural progression for Tournament of Roses President Mike Matthiessen. First, the organization’s collaboration with the National Park Service, which is celebrating its centennial. Then, the tournament took a page from the NPS program, Find Your Park, when it came up with the theme for the 2016 parade — Find Your Adventure. With that in place, it was an obvious choice for acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns — who won an Emmy Award for his 2009 PBS documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea — to do the honors of leading the New Year’s morning celebration.
Burns who has produced and directed more than two dozen documentaries, perhaps first gained broad notice for his acclaimed 1990 documentary mini-series, The Civil War. Since then, the subjects of his documentaries have run the gamut from baseball, jazz, and cancer, to World War II and the Roosevelt family. He has won five Emmys, and has been nominated for two Oscars.
Becoming a documentary filmmaker was a natural progression for Burns. His interest in history started as a young boy growing up in Brooklyn, digesting the family’s encyclopedia. He received his first movie camera, an 8mm, as a child, and began by documenting polluted areas in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a teenager. At age 22, Burns started his own film company, Florentine Films. His signature technique of using archival footage and photos in his documentaries, slowly panning and zooming over them, became known as the Ken Burns Effect.
Currently, he is working on several projects, including a series for PBS about the Vietnam War, which will air in 2016. PBS is planning to re-broadcast The National Parks: America’s Best Idea in April. Burns’ other projects in the works include films on Pasadena’s own Jackie Robinson, author Ernest Hemingway, and the history of stand-up comedy. His daughter Sarah, and her husband, also worked on the Robinson movie, which is also set to air on PBS in April.
Burns, a newbie to the parade, said he’s excited to ride down Colorado Boulevard on the first day of 2016.
Until next time> “never forget”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015 at 10:24 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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