Documentary lets Twain speak for himself

HANNIBAL, Mo. -- Samuel Clemens' hometown has grown accustomed to Mark Twain mania over the years. But even in Hannibal -- a town of 18,000 which draws a half-million Twain tourists annually -- there's eager anticipation about Ken Burns' new documentary.

An advance viewing of "Mark Twain" drew a standing-room-only crowd in this northeast Missouri town 100 miles north of St. Louis.

"I deal a lot with the general public's perception of Mark Twain," said Henry Sweets, director of the Mark Twain Museum. "I think this is going to be a very powerful, very pleasing presentation for the general public."

At the Twain historic sites here, visitor enthusiasm never really subsides. Still, Hannibal tourist officials expect an uptick in attendance once people across the country see the four-hour film that airs on PBS today and Tuesday at 7 p.m.

What captures the attention of Burns turns the head of America as well. His documentaries, including "The Civil War" in 1990, "Baseball" in 1994 and "Jazz" in 2001, have drawn millions of viewers; the war documentary was the highest-rated series ever on public television.

Burns said, "I have essentially been making the same film over and over again, which sort of asks the deceptively simple question, 'Who are we?'"

"You know Mark Twain once said, 'I am not an American. I am the American.' To me, he just demands to be done. He's a person who seems to embody all of our contradictions," Burns said.

Tragedy and success

It's those contradictions that fuel much of the documentary.

Burns is telling the story as a tale of two men: the real-life Samuel Clemens, who lost family members to tragedy and was forced to tour the lecture circuit after making bad investments; and his alter-ego Mark Twain, the wildly successful writer whose work has been heralded by many as the birth of distinctly American literature.

"Samuel Clemens had more ups and downs than anyone you could imagine," Burns said. "He had deaths. He lost nearly everyone and everything that he held dear and still managed to survive.

"And meanwhile Mark Twain was the most conspicuous person on the planet, being funny for a living, and in addition producing literature that, as Ernest Hemingway said about Huck Finn, was the beginning of American literature."

Burns said Twain's writing still resonates. He was struck by Twain's gift to reflect back at his audience, "good and bad, ugly and beautiful, right and wrong ... and did so with an art that will last thousands of years."