Interview with Geoffrey Ward
Contents
Geoffrey Ward is an American historian and writer. He is the author of nineteen books and has won seven Emmy Awards. He has written or cowritten many documentaries, including The Civil War, Baseball, The West, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, The Vietnam War, Jazz, and Hemingway. He is an advisor on the upcoming PBS documentary, Mohammad Ali.
West End Blues from the South Side Ward
Max Raskin: I want to start with your writing habits. Do you listen to music when you write?
Geoffrey Ward: I do – often. I like to have something in the background. When the news is unfolding, I do that sometimes. But mostly I listen to jazz.
MR: What do you have on now when you’re writing?
GW: Carlos Henriquez’s new CD – The South Bronx Story. He’s the bass player in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. It’s terrific.
MR: I read somewhere you love Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” – that it was a very important song for you.
GW: It was essential to my life.
MR: I interviewed Phil Schaap and he said he thought it was his most-listened-to record.
GW: Really?
MR: Yeah. I’m really sad about his death.
GW: Phil is a real loss. Most of today’s jazz fans knew him as the radio broadcaster who seemed to know the date and site of every recording ever made. He really was omniscient and perpetually enthusiastic about the music. But I will always be most grateful to him for his years at the West End where he gave a whole generation of neglected older masters a chance to be back on the bandstand making glorious music.
MR: What do you think it is about “West End Blues” for both you and Phil?
GW: When I was nine, I got polio, and I was in the hospital in Chicago on the south side, and it was pretty grim, and I was pretty gloomy. In those days, they didn't tell you what was wrong with you if you were a child, so I didn't know why the hell my legs didn't work. It was very scary.
Music in those days was particularly awful. This was 1949-50, and it was “Mule Train,” “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “’A’ You’re Adorable”– just really godawful music. One day in the hospital, I heard “West End Blues” on the radio, and it just got to me. It seemed to me it contained within it a lifetime’s worth of sadness and joy in just three minutes. It's just an exquisite piece of music. I've played it ten million times since, and it always makes me feel better.
MR: The thing that strikes me about your writing is how perfectly it syncs up with the music that’s playing underneath it. Will you listen to the particular music you’re writing over?
GW: Ken [Burns] has a special way of doing this. He has me write the script, somebody else is interviewing people, music decisions are made much later by him and the editors, and then it's all brought together.
Our scripts are always wordy – Ken likes words, thank God, otherwise I wouldn’t be working with him.
MR: One of the great sync-ups is in The Roosevelts where FDR accepts the 1936 Democratic nomination and “Stand by Water” is playing when he talks about his generation’s rendezvous with destiny [1:16:00 into Episode 5 of The Roosevelts].
GW: That had absolutely nothing to do with me.
MR: That’s not how I would have thought it worked at all.
GW: The idea is to make the whole experience seem seamless and that is a very tricky thing to do. Ken is very, very good at it.
Roth’s Complaint
MR: Will you talk to the narrators before so you can hear their voices in your head?
GW: We haven't had very many – Pete Coyote is very often our narrator and he's terrific. Their problem is to read my lines. I write very long sentences. When I wrote for American Experience, they told other writers, “You can watch the shows he writes, but don’t write long sentences.” That’s because a lot of narrators can’t handle them. You have to have a very smart person to read a complicated paragraph – they have to know what the lines really mean, and then they have to get out of the way. Peter is very smart.
MR: Why do you think you write long sentences?
GW: That's how I talk. I don’t deliberately do it. The stories we tell tend be pretty complicated.
MR: For Hemingway, how do you write long sentences about a writer who was famous for the opposite?
GW: That was tricky. Writing around him was very challenging because he's such a glorious writer. But the worst thing you could do would be to try to sound like him. And so I wrote just the way I always do, and the way Peter always reads, and I think it worked fine.
MR: A whole generation of American writers didn’t take that advice.
GW: Oh, sure. In the film Geoffrey Wolff says Hemingway really moved the furniture in the room. And I think that's true. Nobody quite went at it the same way after him, for better or worse.
MR: You were friends with Phillip Roth?
GW: I was, purely by chance. He had a very bad spine and had the same swimming therapist that my wife and I did. I used to talk to him in the locker room. He was a lovely and extremely funny and charming man.
MR: How did you recognize him?
GW: He’s Phillip Roth!
We were in the pool one day and a lady who came up to him and said, “Did anybody ever tell you how much you look like Phillip Roth?” He loved that.
MR: A friend of mine who knows Justice Souter tells me how people would always come up to him in New Hampshire to tell him how much he looked like Justice Breyer.
Some more questions about writing. Do you write on a computer or by hand?
GW: I’ve written on a Mac for years and years and years.
MR: What software do you use?
GW: Microsoft Word. Again, because of the way Ken and I work, I’ve never needed to learn the screenwriting software.
MR: How much time do you spend editing your work?
GW: I edit as I go. But you know, I've never been very good at handing in a small-d “draft.” When I hand something in to Ken, it’s the best I can do until he and I talk. I edit as I go, but it’s a pretty finished thing in one sense when I hand it in.
MR: Is there a big reveal where Burns says what the next project is and you’re either excited or not excited about it?
GW: We've done so many. We talked about doing Hemingway for years. I’m now working on The American Revolution, which is a long one.
MR: Oh my God, I’m so excited.
GW: There’s a show called The United States and the Holocaust, which is a three-part thing. I interrupted another series on LBJ to do that.
MR: Did you ever meet Robert Caro?
GW: Yeah.
No Time to Write a Shorter Letter
MR: How much research do you do before writing one of these?
GW: [Points to the bookshelf behind] That’s all American Revolution. And if I turn the camera around, the whole room is full of books. I read a lot. I sort of read until I can't stand it anymore, and then I start writing. Then I go back and read as I go.
MR: A big question for a lot of people is how far into researching do you know to start writing?
GW: I know that I don't know enough when it gets longer. The draft of The American Revolution at the moment is very long – I’m in the fourth show and we’re not as far as we should be. And it’s because I started out knowing so little and had to learn so much as I went along. The Roosevelts took me less time because I'm a biographer of FDR, have written about TR before, and I love writing about them. So that was a question of just sanding – getting it down to the right length to work on the screen.
MR: What is the last book you read cover-to-cover?
GW: So, Anyway …, John Cleese’s autobiography, which has nothing to do with this.
Alan Taylor’s American Revolutions – that’s the one I’ve read most carefully. It’s a wonderful book.
MR: Do you do marginalia?
GW: Once in a while – mostly when I want to say some smartass thing, which only I appreciate, so it’s kind of pointless. But I put checkmarks in, and I mark things.
MR: How do you remember anecdotes or points you want to put in? Do you have a notepad?
GW: I’m 80. It was a lot easier when I was 60.
MR: You’re 80? That’s right you were born in 1940.
GW: I think I’m doing the math right.
It’s harder than it used to be to remember where things are. I used to be able to say, “Oh, I know where that is – it’s on the top left page halfway through that book.”
MR: You didn’t use any notes or anything?
GW: I don’t have a system that’s very interesting. And I don’t do outlines because I don’t know how to do them. Sort of halfway through a show I write down all the scenes just so I remember, but I've never been able to do outlines. I work sometimes with Wynton Marsalis, who is a friend, and we did a book together on jazz, and he can't do anything without an outline. He writes meticulous outlines in tiny perfect handwriting. I can’t do that – stuff is either organic or it isn’t.
MR: I see you have a pen in your shirt – what kind of pen do you use?
GW: I have lost my good pen – it’s a Waterman fountain pen.
MR: That’s the pen you like to use?
GW: Yeah.
MR: Blue or black ink?
GW: Black. Not in a bottle; I’m not that old fashioned.
MR: Do you drink when you write?
GW: No, not when I write [points to drink], but we’re chatting after five.
MR: What’s your favorite alcohol to drink?
GW: Single malt scotch.
MR: Any kind in particular?
GW: Lagavulin.
“The Best Television Writer in the History of Television"
MR: Where is your favorite Indian food in New York?
GW: There’s a bunch of new restaurants we haven’t tried. I like Awadh, which is uptown.
MR: Do you have a favorite dish there you’d recommend to people?
GW: The Galouti Kebab – it melts in your mouth.
MR: Do you vacation a lot?
GW: No. When I’m not working, we’ve gone to India mostly – 25 or more times. I was a teenager there and think of it as a sort of second home. I’ve done a couple of books on tigers.
If I had not gotten sick when I was a kid, I think might have been a field biologist. I love that stuff. I love just watching animals. We've been to Africa once, and I hope to go again this winter.
MR: Do you have a favorite animal documentary?
GW: Anything David Attenborough has done. He’s a genius. I think he’s also the best television writer in the history of the medium.
MR: Have you watched all of his documentaries?
GW: Pretty much all of them. There’s a new one I haven’t seen yet.
MR: Is there a scene that comes to your mind?
GW: No, I don't think I can come up with one. It’s just the affection and knowledge that he conveys when he's showing you something incredibly weird and strange and wonderful. And the BBC film crews are just astounding. Years ago, I did one article and a book for National Geographic with Nick Nichols who is a master of photography in the field, and it just gave me a sense of how crazy they are. Just the willingness to sit in one place for six weeks waiting for something to come to the water – with bugs crawling on you. It’s just mind-blowing.
MR: Do you watch a lot of TV at home?
GW: I do. I’m a big TV watcher.
MR: What’s the last show you binge-watched?
GW: The Good Fight – the last season was pretty silly. But that’s a really good ensemble show.
MR: Do you watch the news a lot?
GW: I do.
MR: What channel do you watch?
GW: I watch CNN because it's current. But I am a great fan of Brian Williams on MSNBC, whom I watch at 11 o’clock. All during the Trump nightmare I watched him. He’s a brilliant interviewer – intelligent, informed – and funny.
MR: What’s the first thing you consume in the morning?
GW: I read the paper. You know 80-year-olds get to read actual newspapers, so I get the [New York] Times and the Washington Post delivered every morning, and I read them religiously.
MR: Do you do the crossword puzzle?
GW: No. I’m not a big games guy.
MR: What about for physical activity – what do you do to stay in shape?
GW: I ride a stationary bike – for the most part that's about all I can do these days. I did swim for a long time and now I haven't been able to do it because you can't get to the pool.
MR: Do you use a Peloton or anything?
GW: No. It just goes round and round.
Writing a Picture
MR: What will you watch before bed?
GW: Whatever I’m watching – it’s hard to come up with specifics.
MR: I listen to your documentaries before I go to bed sometimes.
GW: That I don’t do. I’m not sure how I feel about their lulling you to sleep.
MR: Do you ever watch your old documentaries?
GW: Very rarely. I like them when I watch them – I’ll be frank and say that. But there's something about devoting that much time to them again that I somehow don't do it.
MR: Do you have a favorite interviewee? For me it’s Shelby Foote – I know that’s not like a unique answer.
GW: Oh boy. Shelby was great. I regret a couple of things he said, and so he comes with kind of an asterisk in my head. Wynton in Jazz. He was fantastic in that.
MR: When I was an intern I wrote scripts for radio – you feel like you’re really plugged into the human voice. Do you listen to talk radio?
GW: I don’t, and I should. And I don’t listen to podcasts.
MR: Me either.
You said somewhere you’re a visual person.
GW: I was an art major at Oberlin, and I was going to be a painter. Later I was a picture editor for Encyclopedia Britannica of all places, and then I was the editor of American Heritage, which is very, very heavily illustrated. I started a photography magazine with a friend in college, too. So pictures have always been very important to me.
MR: Do you have a favorite artist that you come back to?
GW: Oh goodness. The painter I admired most when I was painting was Richard Diebenkorn. He was an abstract painter, then he then became less so.
MR: What do you like about this art?
GW: I don’t know – it’s just the way I wanted to paint. It’s big color fields with lots of gesture, and so on. When I was a kid, that was the abstract expressionist period, and I was very keen on them. He was a wonderful painter.
MR: Going back to the picture stuff.
GW: Let me let me just say something about that. While I write long sentences, I am seeing a scene in my head. It's less easy with The American Revolution because there’s much less extant stuff. With The Roosevelts I knew pretty much what we were going to be looking at. I didn’t tell them exactly what to use, but I knew, for instance, how much footage there was of him trying to walk. I try to write in scenes, and in my head, I see the scene. When General Burgoyne sails south on Lake Champlain I've seen pictures of Lake Champlain, so I sort of know what that looks like. That kind of thing.
MR: This is very interesting because you obviously have a much more personal connection to the Roosevelts just in the sense that you were somewhat of a contemporary.
GW: Well I was five when he died. But I know what you mean.
MR: But the writing for The Civil War was just as good.
GW: I knew those pictures too because I’d been the editor of American Heritage, and I’d worked with hundreds of them. I don’t mean that I tell Ken to use x or y photo, though once in a while I suggest something.
MR: That’s right – there’s a finite universe of pictures from that time – like from Mathew Brady. Do you think the Geoffrey Ward a hundred years from now is going to have a problem because there are just infinite numbers of pictures today?
GW: That's a good question. I don't know the answer. Luckily I don’t have to think about it.
MR: Who today do you think is going to have a documentary made about them in a hundred years?
GW: Oh goodness. All the presidents will. It’s really hard to say. It really depends on whether it interests somebody and it’s hard to know what somebody will be interested in. The other thing is almost anyone is interesting once you get started.
Campobello Island
MR: Do you use an alarm clock?
GW: I use my phone.
MR: Do you nap during the day?
GW: No.
MR: Are you interested in any historical person’s habits?
GW: Sure. Anybody I’m writing about. It’s a way to look at who they really are.
MR: If you could ask Roosevelt any question, what would you ask him?
GW: Oh boy.
MR: Has someone asked you this before?
GW: No, I don’t know if anybody ever has and I’m not very good at that kind of stuff. I would hope to just ask him almost any question because he would talk. If I were really talking to him – which is implausible – I would ask him about polio. And he wouldn’t answer. That would be how that goes.
MR: Was that a function of the times?
GW: Oh sure.
MR: Are you pretty open talking about it?
GW: I am now – I wasn't when I was younger. I am of that generation. It took a while. For a long time, a good day was when nobody noticed. And then, you know, you realize finally that’s stupid.
MR: Doesn’t that make Zoom very interesting for you?
GW: You mean because I’m sitting down, and no one can tell? No, I hate Zoom – it doesn’t make any difference.
It was something I didn't talk about in terms of myself until we did The Roosevelts and Ken asked to interview me. I'd never been interviewed in any of the films.
MR: I’d never seen you!
GW: That was deliberate – if I was gonna write it, why should I be in it?
He said I had to be in it, and he was going to ask me about polio. I went into the interview saying the one thing I'm going to do is not be emotional. And he got me on the first question. You can see that in the film.
MR: When you talk about Campobello Island?
GW: I was astonished that that happened, and then I'm glad it was in the film.
MR: What’s really interesting is you don’t talk about your having polio – it’s not clear you did from that.
GW: But you can tell I did.
MR: No. Can I tell you – truly I must have watched that 50 times – I just watch it on repeat – I love watching them.
GW: Apparently it puts you to sleep so that’s good.
MR: I interviewed Dan Doctoroff who does the same thing. There’s something very calming.
But I’m not someone who just casually watches. I did not know until I started doing my research that you had polio.
GW: I’m not objective about my appearance in there. It seemed to me I gave it all away.
MR: I just got the impression you really loved FDR.
GW: That’s also true.
Serenity Now
MR: This is just an interesting though I had – my dad just was talking to me about that essay “Civil Religion in America” from Robert Bellah. I really think that if America has a civic religion, you’re one of the apostles of it – like you wrote the canon. Are you religious?
GW: No.
MR: Do you have any religious practice?
GW: None at all.
MR: Do you meditate?
GW: Nope.
MR: Are you interested in any Eastern religion?
GW: I’m interested because I go to India – it has nothing to do with me.
MR: Do you believe in God?
GW: No.
MR: Do you believe in an afterlife?
GW: No.
MR: Do you have any transcendental moments?
GW: I don’t even know what that is.
Are you trying to account for what you called “calm”?
MR: Yeah.
GW: My dad was a sort of serene person. I'm not serene – I'm full of anxieties and everything – but there’s something about getting it down on paper and liking it when you’re through editing yourself that is calming. That’s what I meant about the draft. I feel like when I give Ken something, I'm really giving him something. I'm not saying, “What do you think of this?” Now, he has views, his own perspectives, and we go over things and we change things. But I feel when I hand it in that I've wrestled something to the ground, and that other people can therefore absorb the chronicle that I present to them.
Mr. Burns Likes Words
MR: How do you feel about that personal relationship? It’s like Marx and Engels or Lennon and McCartney. Is this the most important professional relationship in your life?
GW: Sure. We’ve been doing this for 40 years.
MR: Do you remember the first time you met him?
GW: Sure. I had just been fired as the editor of American Heritage. I was looking for work, and Ken called Heritage and a friend of mine answered the phone, and told me this guy in New Hampshire who nobody had ever heard of was doing a film on the Shakers. He wanted somebody to come up to Walpole, New Hampshire because of an NEH grant he needed to have one more warm body look at the film and say some things.
So I flew to Keene, which you could do in those days, and went to his place in Walpole. He and his then-wife were making the film all by themselves – the film was terrific. I made a bunch of mild suggestions without really any knowledge of film except I always liked documentaries.
He asked me if I'd ever thought of writing a film myself and I said no. But he said, “Well, I want to do one on Huey Long. Why don’t you try that?” So I went home and wrote a script. I’m simplifying a little bit, but not very much. He liked it, and he made the film, and it got into the New York Film Festival. I didn't understand what a great achievement that was – I thought that's where films were shown in New York. I had no idea. And we've been working together ever since.
We just hit it off. He likes words. And he likes history. Some of the other filmmakers I've worked with are made anxious by history. They remember their high school history class – dates and battles, boring. And so you spend your time pumping them up, telling them it’s going to be interesting. I've never once had that problem with Ken. He likes the complexity of it. He likes the give and take of it – you know, the people who are both awful and wonderful. All the stuff that historians like.
MR: Do you guys talk often?
GW: Almost always about the films. We don’t see each other much – he lives in New Hampshire.
MR: Do you text?
GW: Yeah, we text each other. We have political conversation sometimes on text.
MR: Would you say you and he share politics?
GW: Yeah.
MR: How would you describe your politics?
GW: I’m a lifelong liberal Democrat.
MR: It reminds me what FDR said – “I am a Christian and a Democrat.”
GW: You can drop the first one.
MR: You’re behind the scenes and don’t go after the limelight – is that intentional?
GW: It doesn’t interest me very much. Ken’s very good at the PR our films need. Being on a panel with him is sobering – he’s a great talker. I have two friends like that – Wynton is the other one. When I’m there, people just wait until the other guy talks. I’m very fond of both of them.
Sgt. Pepper’s Hot Five
MR: Do you go to concerts?
GW: Oh yeah. We’re patrons of Jazz at Lincoln Center and we go to Dizzy’s all the time.
MR: What would you say is your most-played album of the last couple of years?
GW: That’s hard. There’s an album by Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane – it’s the most beautiful ballad album I think I’ve ever heard. That’s just a great record.
Almost any Duke record – “Anatomy of a Murder,” Such Sweet Thunder.
MR: The scene in Jazz where it describes Duke at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival – did you write that?
GW: Yeah – I wrote that whole show.
MR: The writing describing “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” [15:27 into Episode 9 of Jazz] – it’s one of my favorite scenes. I think you’re really one of the best screenwriters of all time. It’s poetic as an art form.
Swing ‘n Roll
MR: What about rock music?
GW: I’m not there. I was in India until I went to college. So my whole teenage years were in India, where rock didn't happen in the 50s. The Beatles are largely lost on me. I’ve been a jazz fan all my life – since I was 10 years old.
MR: Is there any rock music you're like?
GW: Nothing that jumps out at me.
MR: Gene Krupa?
GW: Yeah.
MR: Who’s your favorite sax player?
GW: Ben Webster.
MR: He and Oscar Peterson is some of my favorite stuff.
GW: Great stuff.
My father was an academic and very reserved. There are two things that made him cry in music. One of them was deep choral Russian music – the Red Army Choir. And anything by Ben Webster. As soon as he heard a ballad by Ben Webster he’d tear up.
MR: Do you tear up at anything?
GW: “West End Blues,” still.
MR: Schaap also has such a reaction to that record.
GW: There’s something – I don’t want to say spiritual because I don’t believe in any of that – but there’s something special about that. It encompasses more than anything I ever heard.
Pixie Dust
MR: What’s the funniest thing you’ve come across with Mohammad Ali?
GW: There’s a wonderful opening scene with him and his infant daughter where he’s making her look out the window and then stealing her food. It’s just hilarious and wonderful and makes you love him.
MR: Are you a boxing fan?
GW: Yeah.
MR: Were you a Tyson fan?
GW: Fan, but not admirer. He was a great fighter. I was a Sugar Ray Robinson fan – that was my fighter when I was young.
MR: Do you watch this MMA – the mixed martial arts?
GW: No. I have no interest in people sticking their fingers in each other's eyes. That’s not an art.
MR: Do you have a thought about what Ali's legacy is today in terms of the activism?
GW: It’s interesting because that’s one of the things the film is about – which is huge popularity, alloyed with racist stuff, then a period when white folks basically dislike him when he won’t go to the war, and then by the time it’s through he’s beyond loveable. It’s interesting just to watch the reputation change.
MR: Do you have any athletes today that you admire?
GW: They would be fighters and they're not like that. I like Canelo Álvarez. Shane Mosley was a good fighter. But really nobody in any sport quite has the scale of personality of Ali. You can't take your eyes off him. There's no footage where you don't just stare at him. I don't care who else is onscreen. He’s got that thing.
MR: Is there anybody today who’s got that thing?
GW: I’ll tell you a musician who’s got it – Jonathan Batiste. From the time when I first saw him when he was a 17- or 18-year-old Julliard student – the minute he walked on the stage you just looked at him – no matter who else was playing with him.
There is something – Franklin Roosevelt had it. This guy has it. Wynton has it. You can't define it or account for it. It’s just something – like pixie dust – that some people have. Jonathan certainly has it.
Who’s On First
MR: What about other sports – what do you think about baseball?
GW: Well, you know, I wrote a book on the history of baseball, which the New York Times called “definitive.” That made me realize then how ridiculous critics are because I know nothing about baseball, I care not at all about baseball, and I knew nothing when I started.
Ken said he wanted to do baseball. I said I wanted to do jazz. He said, “It’s a deal.” Sort of.
I loved Jazz; I loved every moment of doing that. Baseball for me was like studying up on Egyptian hieroglyphics. I had no idea what anybody was talking about and didn’t know any of the people except Babe Ruth.
The reason I didn't know was that my father was an omniscient fan. He knew everybody's batting average back to the Civil War. He was a fanatical Cleveland Indians fan. He was so omniscient that he was no good at getting me involved. He was a wonderful father, but he couldn't get back to the basics that you need to bring a little kid along.
I think I was 44 or 45 when Ken asked me to do this, and I called my dad who was the most encouraging father.
MR: He lived to be like 96 or 97.
GW: 96 [knocks on wood].
And I called him and said, “Hey, pop, guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do nine shows on the history of baseball.” My father had encouraged me in everything I ever did in my life – he was the world's greatest dad. But there was this pause at the other end. And he said, “Boy!” – I was 45 years old – “Boy, you don’t know a goddamned thing about baseball.” But he liked the show – so that was my great moment. He said we didn’t do enough about Tris Speaker. I have no idea who Tris Speaker is anymore.
MR: Do you remember any of the baseball stuff?
GW: Not a thing. But I pulled it off because the Times gave it a great review and the people who watched the show liked it.