I think Burns' focus was to celebrate and communicate the creative
process and to stimulate it within the viewer.
     I see the show as a paean to "the call of the wild heart" disguised as a
documentary. And, as Sam's words speak to the private humanity in each of us,
we are educated.
     Burns invokes the spirit of Twain by celebrating his life and was not so
much bound by academic structure as by an implicit promise to faithfully
model the inexhaustible energy of a creative giant.
             Howard Harrelson