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This chapter analyzes the film career of D. A. Pennebaker. Pennebaker's key word is “interesting.” In numerous interviews, he has referred to events, subjects, and topics that have a certain “attractive” quality, in the sense that they demand attention, as interesting. In this way, he has insisted that a filmmaker “must shoot only what interests you.” His diversity of interesting films encompasses hybrid forms in which components of “documentary” mix with heightened dramatic elements associated with fiction film. These films include Daybreak Express (1953–57), an avant-gardist look at New York City; Jane (1962), a study of the actress Jane Fonda; Depeche Mode 101 (1989), and Only the Strong Survive (2002).

The combination of Direct Cinema and folk music was most fully realized in D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary of Bob Dylan’s British tour, Dont Look Back (1967). But during that time, Dylan was in the process of making his epochal shift to folk-rock, which helped generate the music of the late sixties counterculture that became known as simply “rock.” This music, including Jimi Hendrix and other African American components, became the subject of more complex concert films by Pennebaker that documented the counterculture’s chief utopian ritual, the rock festival: Monterey Pop (1968) with Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix, and Sweet Toronto (1970).

By the early 1970s in the United Kingdom, the utopian hopes of biracial, Anglo‐American rock ’n’ roll were in disarray, and British studios of the glam rock era marketed narratives of rock ’n’ roll’s dystopian integration with corrupt business and political interests. Anticipated by Privilege (1967), Peter Watkins’s portrayal of rock culture as quasi‐fascist, these included two films starring David Essex that narrated the emergence and decline of English rock ’n’ roll: That’ll Be the Day (1973) and Stardust (1974). Meanwhile, D. A. Pennebaker made a documentary about the era’s most enigmatic performer, David Bowie; Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973) seemed to exploit all the dire predictions about rock ’n’roll’s suicide, while paradoxically reasserting the communitarian bonds between performer and fans.

This chapter presents an interview with D. A. Pennebaker conducted by Jonathan Marlow in March 2006 during a tribute to Pennebaker at the Documentary Film Institute. Topics covered include his film Daybreak Express as one of the most stunning shorts ever made and at what point he decided to use Ellington as the springboard; the experiences that made him decide to pursue a career as a filmmaker; how he met Robert Drew; how much of his work with Drew, Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles was a matter of being in the right place at the right time; the unconventional editing for Dont Look Back; and the appeal of working with artists during a transitional stage in their careers.