We’ve sourced some of the most interesting and thought-provoking D. A. Pennebaker Quotes. Each of the following quotes is overflowing with creativity, and knowledge.
I think the process is one of using the camera and sound in the way a detective uses a magnifying glass: to find the clues. They’re discovery devices, not performance devices – you’re watching things the way a cat does. You’re not judging. You’re there to witness something.
We’re actually thinking about distributing ‘Moon Over Broadway’ on-line. It’s tempting, because when you go to a major studio, it’s sort of like a farm, you know? They make all the money, since it’s kind of a buyer’s market.
The very first thing I ever did, I was doing some work for the French Cultural Center. They wanted a little recording set up. And I got wire. A wire recorder. The wire came off spools, and to cut and edit, you tied it together in little square knots. Can you imagine?
I heard the new film, ‘Tangerine,’ was filmed entirely on iPhones. No cameras were involved!
You don’t necessarily need a script or actors to tell a compelling tale. Finding a person at a key moment in his life and rendering the truth as you see it – that’s the truest form of drama.
I think of all my movies as home movies! It’s just that some are more expensive than others.
Theater is where you go to find out something new that you don’t know. It goes through somebody’s brain and comes out in a comprehensible way that is beautiful, that’s really interesting.
Nobody would let us do ‘Crisis’ again.
When the fearsome foursome of rock music, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, decided to show up in Toronto for a rock and roll festival, I knew we had to go there to try to get them all on film.
It was interesting to shoot history as it happens, without anyone demanding a huge story.
Before the camera, you only had secondhand takes – someone had to tell you what they saw or draw a picture of it or sing a song. Because of the camera, sometimes to our horror, we now know everything that happens in the world – things that before we were sheltered from.
Two of my sons are themselves filmmakers, and we can’t afford them nor they us. They work in the real world and earn money and are pretty good at it.
If you’re filming somebody doing something they really want to do, you’re probably not very high on their list of problems to deal with. You see James Carville on the phone – he’s like that whether you have a camera or not. He isn’t doing it just for you, and that’s hard to explain.
A film is made in somebody’s head – out of their determination to do it at all.
Well, it is curious what lasts and what doesn’t. Publishing empires and whatnot would pay anything to figure it out. But they can’t figure it out.
Somebody like Bowie was so interesting because when you got him off stage, he was like a businessman. But on stage, he was just dazzling. It was like watching butterflies grow.
Animals are companions on this planet, not necessarily our feedbags.
