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04/07/2006

D. A. Pennebaker, by Michael Gray

The second in a series of exclusive extracts from Michael Gray’s important new book, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (Continuum, 2006).



Pennebaker, D.A. [1925 - ]

Donn Alan Pennebaker was born in Evanston, Illinois on July 15, 1925. A designer of power stations and owner of an electronics company, he worked through films for the YMCA and the Boy Scouts, and shorts like Daybreak Express (1953) to become a pioneer of cinéma vérité and 'direct cinema', making films that characteristically avoid voice-overs and interviews but merely 'watch' their subjects - in Pennebaker's case mostly musicians - with a hand-held camera and available light. In other words, he pioneered the kind of fly-on-the-wall documentary now so commonplace on television.

When Robert Drew, another pioneer, founded Drew Associates in 1960, Pennebaker and Richard Leacock were among his select group of filmmakers, but in 1963 they left to form their own film production company, Leacock Pennebaker Inc. Accounts vary greatly as to how Pennebaker came to be commissioned to film Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of Britain (see Don't Look Back and Alk, Howard) but film it he did, in black and white, and achieving an unprecedented intimacy of access to an artist who has always maintained his mystery. Pennebaker was almost 40 when he was filming, and Dylan was just turning 24; there must have been some misalignment of communication, but this may have kept everyone on their toes and helped to make Pennebaker's film the great achievement it is. He was not so lucky the following year when, no longer the auteur director but clearly the hired hand, he filmed in colour footage of Dylan's 1966 UK tour, and then had to hand it over to Dylan and Howard Alk, who had been an assistant on Don't Look Back, in whose hands the film turned into Eat the Document.

Pennebaker never worked with Dylan again, but moved on to make other films, including what turned out to be the historically invaluable Monterey Pop (filmed in 1967 and released in 1968), Sweet Toronto
(filmed 1969, released 1971) and the 26-minute documentary Keep On Rockin' (released 1972), which featured performances by LITTLE RICHARD, CHUCK BERRY, BO DIDDLEY, JERRY LEE LEWIS, JIMI HENDRIX and JANIS JOPLIN (and would have featured JOHN LENNON and Yoko Ono had their scenes not been deleted), and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973).

From 1977 onwards, Pennebaker has worked with the much younger Chris Hegedus, whom he married in 1982 (and who calls him Penny). Their collaboration began with a 5-hour, 3-part documentary, The Energy War (1977) and then with her discovering his old discarded 1971 footage of a stormy evening's confrontation that April between Norman Mailer and various eminent feminists at a public meeting in New York. She re-worked this material into Town Bloody Hall, the 1979, by which time it already seemed to document a bygone age and, for some commentators, in an equally dated style. Subsequent Pennebaker Hegedus Films' documentaries have included 1993's The War Room, following two of Bill Clinton's advisors around during his first presidential campaign, and Down From the Mountain (2000), about the musicians who performed in the film O Brother Where Art Thou?. Co-directed by Pennebaker, Hegedus and Nick Doob, this documentary is co-produced by BOB NEUWIRTH - whom Pennebaker first came across as Dylan's 1965 sidekick (but who had also helped with lighting, filming and even editing on Don't Look Back) - and Donn's son Frazer Pennebaker.

D.A. Pennebaker, now 80 years old, still lives in New York City.




© Michael Gray 2006

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