Dead Presidents
By Anthony Bergen
E-Mail: bergen.anthony@gmail.com
Brotherhood — our documentary on local war veterans from the American Legion in Union, Missouri — is ready to be premiered for those vets tomorrow night. Keith and I are pretty proud of the film we made and happy with the cover art we designed for the DVD packaging, as well. Hopefully, these will all be sold over the Memorial Day weekend!
Here is the trailer for Brotherhood, which you can also watch on our Kickstarter page. Please share the Kickstarter page with your friends and family, consider making a contribution, and check out the incentives for those contributors who do offer support.
This documentary is more than a film; it’s an appreciation and a way to preserve for history the stories of those veterans who served and sacrificed, from World War II to the War on Terror.
No, unfortunately, I do not know where you might be able to get the American Experience: Presidents Collection on DVDs that are compatible with your region. However, PBS is so awesome that they have many of the full documentaries up on their website so that you can watch them from your computer.
(By the way, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that PBS and NPR — two wonderful, trusted American institutions — were the result of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which means Americans can thank Lyndon Johnson for that, as well.)
In the last answer, I mentioned checking out the George H.W. Bush documentary from the PBS American Experience series, but for the best deal (and more hours of documentary goodness), you might want to do what I did and pick up the American Experience “Presidents Collection” box set. It’s something like 35 hours worth of those kick-ass PBS documentaries on a few of the most important and influential Presidents of the 20th Century: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, The Kennedys (a look at the whole family), Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. The shortest of the documentaries is almost 3 hours long and a few of them clock in at almost 5 hours long.
Now, some people might wonder why you would need a collection of documentaries about Presidents that are anywhere from 3 to 5 hours long, but those people probably aren’t read this right now. Those people don’tgetus, do they? Nope. See, we just made a connection there, you and me, and anyone who doesn’t want to watch 5 hours of LBJ can suck it.
Anyway, PBS does an amazing job with their American Experiencedocumentaries and I was very happy when I got my box set, so I wouldn’t lead you down the wrong path. The American Experience episode on Bill Clinton that came out earlier this year (four hours of Clinton!) isn’t in the box set, but you could probably find a good price on it if you package them together.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve watched PBS’s new, four-hour-long documentary of Bill Clinton twice in the past week. Because it was so good, it reminded how good the other PBS American Experience documentaries about Presidents are, so I started watching some of the other editions that I have on DVD, thanks to the awesome The Presidents Collection boxed set.
The Presidents Collection is a boxed set of feature-length documentaries on some of the most influential 20th Century Presidents from PBS’s American Experience. It contains 15 DVDs and over 35 hours of documentary goodness on Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, The Kennedys, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.
I spent most of the evening watching the Woodrow Wilson documentary (2 discs/165 minutes long) and almost halfway into the 194-minute-long documentary on George H.W. Bush. I’ve watched these before, but I always forget how good they are. They are detailed and definitive, rich with historic video footage and photographs, and accompanied by commentary from our finest historians and historic figures. Even the reenactments aren’t cheesy like reenactments can so frequently be.
I highly recommend checking out The Presidents Collection, and the boxed set of 5 DVDs from the 2000 series, The American President, which features shorter documentaries on every single President up to Bill Clinton.
(By the way, do you know what is a really amazing piece of historic footage? The grainy video of the U.S. Navy submarine Finback pulling a 20-year-old George H.W. Bush from the Pacific Ocean a few hours after he was forced to parachute into the water from his crippled plane when it was shot down by the Japanese. It’s unbelievable that was caught on film. Oh, and that’s another reason why I include George H.W. Bush near the top of the list when people ask me which Presidents were badasses.)
I’m watching the entire new four-hour PBS American Experience DVD on Bill Clinton…again. I rarely watch something twice, and certainly not twice in the same week. If you haven’t seen the Clinton documentary, it’s a must-see — as all of PBS’s American Experience documentaries tend to be.
If you haven’t seen it, go order it right now.
