Burns' War Epic Starts Tomorrow

After 7 years and $13 million, Ken Burns' historical documentary The War will start airing tomorrow on PBS. The film centers on people rather than politics or weaponry, the Seattle Times reports: Celebrities and guns can "distract you from an experience of war, of what it was like to be in that war," says Burns, who likes "to see the larger, more complicated thing."

He opens The War with an unidentified photo of his dad, seeing it as "a quiet way" to honor the WWII lieutenant. And the admitted workaholic filmmaker is already planning a doc on prohibition and an update of his acclaimed Baseball documentary - all with PBS, with whom he has just signed a new deal. "I'm leaving the dance with them that brung me," Burns says. (More World War II stories.)