Ken Burns brother, Ric Burns who along with him produced such stunning work as the the PBS series "The Civil War" with his brother Ken, has in the can, a new fake bullshit documentary about the Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. which is paying for the film, has editorial control and is overseeing the project through its marketing department, a Goldman spokesman said. Ric was at one time was an upstanding film maker has now produced a film bankrolled by Goldman Sachs..
Oh Gee..why am I not surprised?
Could it be that by all accounts any other efforts to save the failing CEO, Lloyd Blankfein have failed? Could it be that Goldman Sachs and Ric Burns (who sold his soul to the devil to make a few bucks) is the the new and improved and only 'Public Relations Director' that Goldman Sachs can manage to find now that every other Public Relations scam-a-rama has failed. Oh.................so sorry Lloyd, but we ain't buying what you are selling, you and the fucking fucks that fucked us and are continuing to fuck us. You thought if you bought a dirty filthy fucking 'hippy' it would help? You got that wrong, assholes.
Why do I have the feeling that Ric Burns, is now in the exact same place where most of America is?
Which is this:
What the Fuck happen to our moral principals, and if you pay enough, in the end, nothing else matters?
Mr. Burns, who didn't return phone calls seeking comment, was approached by Goldman in 2007 and has been tackling the documentary on and off since then. The company's history goes all the way back to the day in 1869 when German immigrant Marcus Goldman opened a one-room office on Pine Street in lower Manhattan, near the firm's new headquarters. Already in the can are interviews with numerous past and present Goldman employees. Goldman's leading man, Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd C. Blankfein, is likely to appear in the film. Given the company's starring role in the financial crisis, some filmmakers are skeptical about Mr. Burns's movie. "It is very unusual for a documentary maker of his stature to take on a project like this, and especially one with strings attached," said Robert Greenwald, whose 2005 documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," cast an unflattering look at the retailer. "It goes against everything we fight for as documentary makers."
Barbara Kopple, whose films include a documentary about the Dixie Chicks, says the Goldman film could be a worthwhile project even though Goldman is bankrolling it. "How many times do you get a view into the inner workings of Goldman Sachs?" she says. The film's cost and expected completion date couldn't be determined. Standard Oil Co. financed "Louisiana Story," the 1948 film by documentary legend Robert Flaherty that depicted a boy's idyllic life in oil-drilling country and is considered sympathetic to the oil industry. It received an Oscar nomination. Susanne Craig tells us about the documentary film-maker Ric Burns is making about the history of Goldman Sachs, including who's backing the firm. It might surprise you.
Goldman was cast as a villain in Michael Moore's anti-Wall Street documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story," where the filmmaker confronted employees of the firm, demanding they give back money Goldman got during the crisis. (The company later repaid its $10 billion in taxpayer-funded capital.) Mr. Blankfein got less-than-rave reviews for his testimony in an 11-hour Senate hearing shortly after the company was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in April for fraud. Now that Goldman has settled the suit with a $550 million payment, Mr. Burns could have a harder time coming up with memorable plot twists. Will Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman employee on paid leave after being accused of fraud in the SEC suit, go back to the trading floor? Will the documentary actually include the tongue-twisting words Abacus 2007-AC1? The documentary is for employees only, meaning YouTube might be the only chance that other people will have to see the film.
http://online.wsj.com/...
Of course, Ric Burns will not 'return phone calls.' He has been humiliated (probably by his brother Ken) who probably has said things to him, that you and I have said a million times to everyone else that collected a pay check, as the American middle class goes down the drain...
As Matt Taibbi said it so well..
What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain - an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam... All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going. The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.
The basic idea isn't hard to follow. You take a dollar and borrow nine against it; then you take that $10 fund and borrow $90; then you take your $100 fund and, so long as the public is still lending, borrow and invest $900. If the last fund in the line starts to lose value, you no longer have the money to pay back your investors, and everyone gets massacred.
And what, now our 'Great President, who worked to get elected by promising to restore 'Main Street' and the Middle Class..... is not going to support Elizabeth Warren, for the Consumer Protection Agency? Or lend any credibility to her counterpart Neil Barofsky for the 'truth' of what is happening in our nation?
The Lie About TARP? Or the continuing national 'cover up' of what William K. Black, has had the courage (and so many others to point out).......OMG..............even Paul Volcker?
We are like a nation of sheep, being led to slaughter, like lemmings being happily going over the cliff...
In denial, in repudiation of those that led us here, and still.....
We believe? I fail to understand, on this site, that if corruption is still in the very hands of those that have led us into extreme poverty in our nation, without any jobs plans on the horizon, without standing up for our citizens, for our Unions, for our way of life, that are putting millions of Americans on the streets everyday, that somehow, this level of continued corruption, is:
A:OK...as long as it a a Democrat President. I will not but that shit anymore....
Never let it be said that we were not warned, when we are being 'starved' out of our own nation, by the same that did this to my own ancestors...the Irish. The Brittish had more food than they could hold in their warehouses, to tax those, that they wished fought against them...
Let it never be said, that we did not fight back against a government that ignored us as citizens, when we were hungry, when they ignored us, when the Oligarchy took over, and betrayed us, and when we kept voting for them over and over again, and then in the end, we have nothing, but what we paid for in the end:
Those that have the best of everything:
As NYeve has said, and slinkerwink and bobswerve, and OPOL, and so many other have said over and over again, those that have turned their backs on Americans in their deepest point of need....
Those that sold our jobs to all the Corporations.........and that is why there are no jobs programs....and will not be (for the next 20 years) those that understand, that if we do not stand up now, we never will, and those that understand, that we have about 5 or 6 'New and Better Democrats' that are completely overwhelmed by the same system' that we keep buying into...which of course if the definition of insanity:
Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results:
So thanks Ric Burns, for 'not returning any phone calls' and thanks, President Obama, for not supporting the one fucking person in our nation, that stood up for the Middle Class, when you would not.
At least I think I know where we stand at this point, and at least I think I know where to go from here....
This is a video of one of the greatest films I've ever known...I'm a screenwriter and it reminded me of what my granny, from Ireland always taught me........never forget where you came from, or how you got there...thanks to you, my nana... Elizabeth Kelly, where ever you are now.
The name of the film and the play is called: The Field, and it was and is the finest work that Richard Harris and John Hurt ever did in their lives....such a great fortune to be an actor, to have done these roles:
I cannot embed it, but that great film reminds me, exactly of where we are now as a nation...I urge you all to rent the film or watch it on Utube...it is stunning. What I would call, one of the greatest films of all time, what reminds us all, of where we are, as a nation, which is in a complete state of denial and insanity.
Wish it were not so, but I look at the landscape, and I know different. Reality Bites, as they say.
Bless you all, and BTW, fuck you Ric Burns, and Fuck your Goldman Sachs Film.............I hope it goes down in flames and I hope your brother Ken, never talks to you again, for the sellout you are....
Hope you can sleep soundly tonight Ric, I know I will.
B.