‘Benjamin Franklin’ is about ‘the tensions between American definitions of freedom,’ filmmaker Ken Burns says

“I’m so excited that I’m not sitting down talking to you, I’m just pacing,” says Ken Burns, 68, when I called him recently at his Walpole, N.H., home to talk about his newest project “Benjamin Franklin.”

The five-time Emmy winner’s two-part, four-hour documentary, premiering on GBH April 4, explores the life of the Boston-born Franklin: a writer, publisher, inventor, diplomat, and Founding Father whose 84 years spanned most of the 18th century.

What you may learn watching “Franklin” is that you actually didn’t know the complicated and contradictory figure at all.

Franklin enslaved people, as the documentary points out, and didn’t advocate for abolition until later in his life. He once was — and raised his son William to be — loyal to the British crown. He wasn’t exactly a stellar family man.

Born on Milk Street in Boston in 1706 to Josiah Franklin and his second wife, Abiah (the couple had 10 children together), Franklin grew up by the Charles River. His family could only afford to send him to school for two years; he attended Boston Latin School.

His brother James founded The New-England Courant. Benjamin worked for him as an apprentice — also writing a popular column under the name “Silence Dogood”— before running away as a teen to Philadelphia.

Franklin is voiced in the film by Mandy Patinkin (”Homeland”). Paul Giamatti — who played John Adams in HBO’s “John Adams” — voices Adams. From vaccinations to politics, Franklin’s story, Burn says, shows there’s nothing new under the sun.

“This is a film about the tensions between American definitions of freedom— what I want may be different from what we need,” Burns says. “This is about inoculation, the nature of democracy, science versus religion. Everything that’s going on now is happening in Benjamin Franklin’s life.”

Q. Watching the documentary, I realized I didn’t really know much about Benjamin Franklin.

A. Me neither. I certainly had no idea he enslaved people. I had no idea that the lightning didn’t have to strike the kite. If you think he’s the epitome of the $100 bill because he’s pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, make-as-much-as-you-can — you’ve got half a hundred dollar bill. At the heart is this sense that doing together is better than doing alone.

Q. Growing up in Boston, he worked at his brother’s newspaper, then started his own in Philadelphia.

A. He’s a great stylist. He’s the best American writer of the 18th century. He’s the inventor of American humor. When he goes to Pennsylvania, everything explodes. It’s a middle-class guy realizing we don’t have to take everything from the elites. It doesn’t have to come down from Cotton Mather. We’re capable of having thoughts.

He started The Junto [tradesmen and artisans who met to discuss morals, politics, philosophy]. Out of The Junto comes hospitals, lending libraries, and the University of Pennsylvania, volunteer fire departments.

Q. In the clip you posted online, we learn Franklin was a proponent of vaccines even before his 4-year-old son Franky’s death from smallpox.

A. That’s the tragedy. He’s doing what any parent would do — let’s wait until Franky’s better from his cold before we [vaccinate] — and Franky gets smallpox in the intervening time. It’s so tragic.

Q. Franklin wrote about women’s education.

A. He sees the energy of these young women, he’s promoting their education, and at the same time has no interest in his own daughter Sally’s advancement. He’s very much about family values, but he’s away from his wife the last 15 of 17 years of her life.

Q. The film points out that he failed his family in ways. He estranged himself from his son William and they started out so close.

A. He’s grooming William to be exactly what he’s supposed to be — an upwardly mobile citizen of the British Empire. But when Franklin makes his break [William stays loyal to the crown.]

Decades before the Revolution, Franklin thought there was common interest between colonies. He proposed the Albany Plan of Union, with the famous saying “Join or die” and the segments of the snake. He understands, ahead of anyone else, there could be this other thing: not a colonist, not a subject of great Britain, but an American.

He comes to that; William doesn’t. There’s this meeting where William [hopes to reconcile] and Benjamin can’t do it. He says: you betrayed me and my cause, and oh by the way, you’re ceding your property in the US, and I’m taking your son Temple with me. You can’t make this up. This is such classic drama and tragedy.

Q. We know he was an inventor, but I didn’t know he also came up with the idea of gulf stream.

A. He began to test the currents and temperatures, to map and chart. He wondered: why did it take longer going one way than the other? He’s the Isaac Newton of his period. The lightning rod saved thousands of lives. The terms “negative,” “positive,” “battery,” “charge” — all those are words Franklin used.

Q. It’s interesting he came late to the Revolution, and late in his own life to abolition.

A. He’s actually early in the scheme of things with abolition, but late morally. [At that time] there’s nobody talking very much about abolition. When he becomes head of the Abolition Society, and proposes [abolition] the Senate ignores it, the House votes it down. He goes back to what he did as a teen in Boston — writes this satirical essay. He puts [opponents’] arguments in the mouth of a North African Muslim justifying why he has to enslave white Christians. The absurdity of the arguments — he’s just so fantastic.

Q. Mandy Patinkin voiced Franklin — how did that come about?

A. I was watching “Homeland” with my youngest and all of a sudden I went: Oh man. Saul Berenson.

When we sent him the finished film, he was so happy, he said it’s in the top three things he’s done: “Sunday in the Park with George,” “The Princess Bride,” and this. I said, what about Saul Berenson?

Q. You’ve told me before your movies are about “us” lowercase and “US” capitalized. How does Franklin fit?

A. He invented both the idea of “us” — that there could be something these disparate colonies share in common — and the US. He helped forge the compromises that created the US. And that’s been, for all its flaws, a pretty great place.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

The film will also be available to stream on PBS.org and the PBS Video App. Learn more at kenburns.com.

Lauren Daley can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1.

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