TREATS Q & A:  D.A. PENNEBAKER

As one of the pioneers of Cinema Verite through his pop culture, political and rock ‘n’ roll documentary movies—“Primary,” “Don’t Look Back,” “Monterey Pop,” “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,” “The War Room”—D.A. Pennebaker changed celluloid forever. TREATS! talks with the iconic filmmaker about the genius of a hand-held camera, following Bob Dylan around the world, what his “almost perfect” film was & his new Lifetime Achievement Oscar Award.

by Harvey Kubernik

 

 

Hello, D.A., nice to see you. First off, what are your feelings about finally being given an Oscar Award?

It’s a little complicated. It’s like being given the champion pilot’s award when you don’t fly. I mean, I never thought the Oscars were a waste of time or anything. They helped a lot of industry and people who are actors and probably helped get a lot of films get seen that otherwise might have gone awry but…

 

You never moved to Hollywood and for over 50 years you didn’t make the predictable move into huge budget feature films. Now you are honored by Hollywood. Odd?

I never had the temptation. It was like I was an architect and somebody was saying, “We have a lot of need for water color pictures.” And I’m saying, “But I build houses and I don’t need work.” I saw it as a totally difference of dimension for me.

 

In terms of your career, it appears you found your true voice as an artist around the 1965 “Don’t Look Back” experience. Would you agree?

I learned to trust myself. Before I wasn’t sure I could make movies and it wasn’t until “Jane” that I knew I could do it. Then I felt like I just shot five 50-cent pieces. But I was in the zone for “Don’t Look Back.” Well, maybe Dylan was in the zone! I knew that once I got started I just had to roll and not plan anything. I didn’t try and be smart about anything. I never asked him a question. I didn’t want to know anything. I just wanted to get inside that camera and not come out. In 1965 I would look through my lenses and the words would drop on the music. I was just amazed at how anybody could produce that kind of electricity. To me that was what art was about.

 

 

Travel was a big thing in “Don’t Look Back.” Taxis, cars, trains…movement in general.

Yes. That’s what we did. I had shot transportation and car shots before. I think it’s like when people are watching television when they are driving cars, or driving in cars they become more absolute in some ways. They become realer. I like the information they give in those situations. So it’s a good place to get people especially if you want them reflective. They feel in charge of something and they don’t mind letting you in.

 

After “Don’t Look Back” didn’t Jim Morrison approach you about doing a film on The Doors?

Morrison had come to me a couple of times and he obviously was interested. He came and showed his student film. I was not impressed, but that didn’t mean anything. And I was interested in anybody who was a poet and wanted to make films. That was interesting to me. I didn’t look down like this was an amateur or anything like that. But the fact is that he was a boozer. And, you know, that’s a hard thing to make a film about. My father was a boozer. You can’t count on getting their real lives. You get something else. They put on a kind of a show.

 

Did you have the same feeling about Janis Joplin?

Yes, the drugs. And I had nothing against drugs because I didn’t know enough about them yet. I loved Janis and thought she was a fantastic person. And I always thought there was a film there and I shot a lot with her, but what was she was doing was so hard for her it was hard for me to film her.

 

 

However, you did film John and Yoko performing for the first time together at the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival Festival in 1969.

It was an amazing thing; it was the end of the Beatles. I remember John looking out and it was kind of scary and nobody was there. It was a funny moment. When they all left the stage I remember a piece of paper blowing across the stage and slowly the audience came to life. I thought, “My God. This is a fantastic wake.” Yoko was so crazy, but still, there was something so fascinating about what she did. You could see she did it with absolute conviction. What she was bringing to me was a kind of funeral cry for something that was lost. At the time I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. But I did welcome it.

 

What about Jimi Hendrix?

It was the same with Jimi when I first heard him at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. I thought he was chewing gum on stage but it was actually his flat pick. I thought, “This is not blues. This is bullshit.” But, you know, about the third song I saw that I didn’t understand and I began to dig it. And that was an amazing moment. And that’s why we shot every song that he did…because it kept growing in a way that we hadn’t expected.

 

And this was done with concerns about having enough film to shoot Jimi as well as all the other artists at the festival, right?

It burns a little hole in you, but at the same time what was so marvelous and just sitting on the stage with our legs hanging over with Janis, and saying “What do you think will happen to you next?” and trying to see ahead into the future. And this woman has got such a future if she doesn’t blow it that I just want to be part of it.  Otis Redding was stunning. It’s a great film, almost a perfect film. He had a pretty good band, I was editing, or re-editing the section of his for ‘Monterey Pop’ in late ’67 and changed the film a little bit when he went in to the lake and I remember that’s when I got in to all that stuff of doing things with the lights and I know at the time I felt, ‘Gee, what am I doing? This is crazy.’ But I left it that way because I felt so bad that he kind of died on us.

 

 

When you view your David Bowie “Ziggy Stardust” movie what strikes you now?

Well, we had no idea of what we were going to find there. We got there the day before the concert. We just saw the next to the last concert and we could get an idea of the lighting in the theater of what we were gonna run into. And I did see him perform and we were only going to film a half an hour for RCA. And there were just three of us so I said, “This is a movie here. Do you think we can do it? Do we have enough film?” We sort of figured out what we needed. David Bowie surprised us at every turn. And, boy, that was exciting to film. Because you had no idea what was coming next. I had put signs around the lobby saying, “Bring your camera with light bulbs and shoot all the film that you want.” What he had was the whole theater was a backup for him. They all sang backup for him. That was amazing. I had never heard that before. So I wanted that place to just be alive. You know, the girls singing along on “Moonage Day Dream.”

 

What was Bowie like at that time?

There was a lot of kinetic energy around Bowie. He was like an orchestra leader. I was a fan of the “Ziggy” album and we used to play it all the time when I was mixing that film. I had actually set up a real Dolby and we showed it in this little room where the sound was fantastic, and that was the sexiest film you ever saw.

 

What has happened in the last decade or two with the increase in film festivals and films schools?

I think it’s like the rise of the electric train. I think nobody at the beginning of the century had any thought that a child would want an electric train. When Lionel or who ever invented it, when they came out with something that resembled the real world and in a very artistic way, it was really well done. He trains were not realistic exactly, but they were kind of beautifully crafted and all the scenery. So a person could create a whole kind of thing just because they existed. And so everybody got one for Christmas. The idea of making your own is a contagious notion. It isn’t just a home movie. You’re getting an audience of people, who in a way pay to see how good you are. And it’s a shootout.

 

 

Do you go to festivals?

Yes and when I go to festivals every show is sold out. Why is this? Why are people so fascinated to see documentaries? Well, at first I thought they were getting a kind of news that they didn’t get from theatrical films and that they certainly didn’t get from television— because television limited itself to the news that promoted them. But now I’m not so sure. I think it’s become the electric train.  And they want to see it. And they want to see it run. And it’s different from the movies they pay to see and craftsmanship on Hollywood Films.

 

Finally, what are the main things young filmmakers ask you at these festivals?

Actually, I think a lot of students, because nobody knows what to teach, they don’t know where to start. But I think that in the film world, where we go and some students gather, and want to hear some kind of wisdom and they are considering their own careers and how to begin them, they start off with questions taken from the various wisdom from Hollywood. Things like, “Don’t cross the line.” Whatever that means. And they’re not sure whether there are any rules. And I tell them there are no written rules that I know of. I don’t have any myself, you know. I wait and see what happens in the lens of the camera and then I kind of go with it if I can. And that leaves them wondering why they are in school. They can learn this at the drug store!

 

Los Angeles native Harvey Kubernik has been an active music journalist for 40 years and the author of 5 books, including This Is Rebel Music (2002) and Hollywood Shack Job: Rock Music In Film and On Your Screen (2004), published by University of New Mexico Press. In 2009, Kubernik wrote the critically acclaimed Canyon of Dreams The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon published by Sterling, and in 2011 he co-authored the highly regarded A Perfect Haze: The Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival published by Santa Monica Press.