At age 93, D.A. Pennebaker will be the first to tell you he didn’t intend to make a documentary about Bob Dylan. In fact, the term “documentary” and the connotations that go along with it leave a sour taste in his mouth—perhaps a peculiar notion, considering that his large body of documentary work spans over a half century. Instead, he attributes his own filmmaking philosophies to that of American filmmaking pioneer Robert Flaherty, director of Nanook of the North (1922), which is considered the first commercially successful documentary. Flaherty was known for his less-than-conventional approach, often casting unrelated subjects to play family members and staging scenes to reflect a “more traditional” life of a specific culture. Even though his actions manufactured a seemingly false truth, his images were direct and spontaneous, with documenting a people foreign to most audiences the paramount objective. Flaherty was an explorer at heart; he brought the process of discovery to the craft of filmmaking at a time when the concept of documentary wasn’t defined. This process of discovery resonated with Pennebaker, who would spend his entire career exploring people and documenting their situations.
From the early to mid-1950s, Pennebaker directed several short-format documentaries heavily influenced by avant-garde filmmaker Francis Thompson and (in this author’s humble opinion) experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke. In 1959, along with filmmakers Robert Drew and Richard Leacock, he co-founded Drew Associates, a New York film collective looking to transform the shape of traditional documentary film. During that time, Drew and Pennebaker developed a revolutionary, lightweight 16mm camera with sync sound capabilities, allowing for mobility and spontaneity—the ability to capture something at a moment’s notice.
Drew Associates’s first major work, Primary (1960),—originally produced for Close-Up, a program on ABC—followed John F. Kennedy as he campaigned in Wisconsin for the Democratic presidential nomination. Having already worked closely with Kennedy, the crew was granted unlimited access to the White House and even the Oval Office while filming Adventures on the New Frontier (1961). To say other members of the press were irked at their inclusion when they were not granted access would be an understatement.
Even in his early experimental work, Pennebaker always had an affinity for capturing reality, and Drew, who migrated into film from LIFE magazine, was aching to tell stories with dramatic realism. Following in the footsteps of the film pioneers and explorers who came before (Rouch, Vertov, Flaherty, among others), the two are often credited with bringing observational cinema to America. Though Pennebaker never characterized his style as such, the approach became known to the masses as cinema vérité, a French term meaning “truthful cinema.” Sometimes called “direct cinema”—though, admittedly, there tends to be some dispute towards the synonymity of the two terms—the style is void of talking heads and conversations directed towards the camera. Instead, it is the simple capture of life as it is, as it unfolds. Another term used in the same stylistic mood is “fly-on-the-wall” filmmaking, implying that the filmmaker was unnoticed by the subject, the camera’s lens playing the part of voyeur. Pennebaker found this term disgusting, as he believed it would be impossible to capture intimate moments while the subject was consciously unaware of being filmed.
In 1961, Pennebaker, along with filmmakers Bill Ray and Gregory Shuker, told the story of David Allen, an addict and jazz trumpet player. The documentary, simply titled David, follows the young musician’s struggles with heroin over the course of one week at the Synanon House—at that time, considered a drug rehabilitation center in Santa Monica, California. Intense encounters permeate the film, most notably between Allen and his housemates during group therapy sessions. The camera stays a healthy distance away, unobtrusive, leaving the viewer feeling uncomfortable at watching something so intimate and personal.
Although Pennebaker’s own philosophies around capturing reality were fairly solidified in the years before, it was through David that he realized he didn’t need to go fishing for a story—the subjects would lead him to one as they guided him along in their own situations. He wanted his films to provide audiences with the grip of drama you’d feel from a stage performance, and the mood and realism he found in his subjects did just that.
Following a period directing and producing a string of programs for television, Pennebaker was looking to make a theatrical film. The answer came in 1964 when Bob Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, approached him with the broad concept of documenting Dylan during his England Tour. Eschewing bureaucratic formalities, the two scribbled down a rough contract agreement on a napkin and ended the informal meeting with a handshake. Pennebaker would put up the money and spend three weeks in England with Dylan capturing… what exactly? That was still unclear. Pennebaker knew as much about Dylan as Dylan knew about Pennebaker and filmmaking.
After purchasing 16mm film, packing his gear, and landing in London, Pennebaker still didn’t have a clear outline from Grossman for what the film was supposed to be. He figured Grossman was more or less looking for publicity footage, maybe a by-the-numbers concert film. But two days into shooting he noticed that Dylan’s manner of speech—the way he would form sentences—was a bit backward. Unclear if this was by accident or design, he thought Dylan was a man whose language was poetic. Messy, but fascinating. As Pennebaker stated in a 2015 interview for the Criterion Collection, “I saw him as a poet who hasn’t quite understood what poets are, or that he was that but understood that he was special.” This instinctual assessment of Dylan couldn’t have been more accurate, as one of Dylan’s major influences on his own work was poet Allen Ginsberg. The two shared similar ideologies and philosophies, and had collaborated on a handful of projects, close enough to consider each other brothers.
The revelation of Dylan’s thought process certainly aligned with his own somewhat-unorganized process. He knew the completed film would be important, because Dylan was important, “special.” To dive into Dylan’s character, Pennebaker avoided asking questions on- or off-camera, a direct contrast to how a “typical” filmmaker would traditionally approach such a subject. He was interested in observing Dylan in an attempt to capture the intimate, organic moments of an artist’s euphoric rise to stardom.
Pennebaker thinks of film as a dream. Not necessarily in an analytical sense—in finding meaning in aspects formed from the deepest parts of our unconscious—but solely in construction. Dreams are a collection of images, feelings, emotions, sometimes without explanation, sometimes literal. Pennebaker’s own way of constructing this film—through photography and editing—is messy and instinctual. At times he’d linger on moments so void of drama and conflict you might wonder why the scene was kept in, and at other times, having become so absorbed in the music, Pennebaker would remain in a close-up on Dylan for several minutes. There wasn’t much thought that went into photographic decisions, as his biggest technical hurdle was just keeping up with Dylan and company.
Dont Look Back certainly toes the line between truth and reality while still portraying a person or situation accurately, through a genuine lens. Bob Neuwirth, Dylan’s tour manager, openly admits to staging some situations for the film out of his own curiosity without ever feeling he was creating a falsehood. Did the camera’s presence alter the truth of the situation? If so, did it matter? Pennebaker never concerned himself with his subjects potentially performing for the camera. Instead, he considered them to be playing their roles in whatever situation they found themselves in. He never took it upon himself to decide whether someone was acting or not. He was simply capturing a moment of time in a given environment, trying to construct it in a way that was truthful. The final film focuses on Dylan’s charm and contradictions, while also highlighting his sophisticated arrogance and callousness; some press even accused Dylan of emotional abuse. When a handful of London papers label you as the “antichrist” at the age of 24, one must find the humor in life and let it roll off their back. Pennebaker claims Dylan was good -tempered and friendly, not gruff, throughout the tour. A poet still discovering himself and finding his voice, Dylan challenged people’s viewpoints, playfully forcing people to defend their own positions. He wanted people to be truthful—to him and to themselves.
This truth carries over into Pennebaker’s long career, much of which was built on happenstance, on being in the right place at the right time. He had been interested in making a film about Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential run, but after the candidate’s assassination, he put the idea of documenting another political campaign on hold. In 1992, Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, his partner/collaborator, were approached about creating a film about the Clinton campaign. With Clinton polling so poorly during their quick pre-production period, Pennebaker and Hegedus were nervous, fearing they wouldn’t have a film in the end. After all, who would want to see a film about someone who didn’t become president? By chance, they ran into James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, the campaign manager and communications director for the Clinton campaign. Suddenly, their concept of the film shifted to focus on the behind-the scenes process. Carville, initially resistant to the idea, confronted Pennebaker and Hegedus, wanting to know why he should let them film. “Because you want to,” Pennebaker replied. The War Room (1993) plays like a political buddy-picture, featuring two unlikely stars. It’s almost impossible to imagine what the film would have been if a happenstance hadn’t diverted their attention away from merely following the campaign.
Heavily influenced by Flaherty, Pennebaker learned to closely watch his subjects. Flaherty never set out to tell his audiences everything there was to know about a specific culture, and Pennebaker applied the same methodology to his work. Show; don’t explain, don’t interpret. That’s up to the audience. In a 2002 interview, Pennebaker commented, “Just watching somebody do something that he does well or knows how to do, I think that’s the highest kind of effort a camera can make.”
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