Live Chat Transcript continued...
Claire: Are you flattered that many of the techniques you pioneered are now being used in programmes like Survivor?
DAP: I'm very flattered and I understand the cheque is in the mail!
Mal Williamson: How do you feel about interactivity? Will a non-linear narrative ever develop the entertainment power of the linear narrative? Have you considered producing interactive films?
DAP: I'm interested in new things. We were just at a festival where we saw films made after the 9/11 catastrophe.A lot of the film were not done by pros but by people who just happened to have little cameras - we're at the dawn of a new documentary era which may last 50 years. This guy with a little camera happened to be filming Kennedy when he got shot - by accident, not a pro. That's going to happen a lot more now. Like pictures of Vesuvius exploding - and they're going to have to try and find a way to show their films to people. 25-30 years ago that was seen as avant garde - now it's just new documentaries.
Rollie Fingers: I love Down From the Mountain. Country music’s the new rock ‘n’ roll isn’t it?
DAP: I agree, it's nice. The people who play it are fantastic musicians who are really good.
William: Have you been tempted to take your cameras onto the streets of New York since 11 September?
DAP: No. We haven't had time really. We've been thinking about it. Suddenly it will happen and we'll do it.
There are a lot of people filming but they don't know what to do with what they get. With 9/11 people realised that if you had film, people wanted to see it.
CH: We just went to a festival that programmed a series of films about 11 September in NY. There are so many people that shot footage because they felt that they should do something to memorialise it in some way. I think this footage will feature in many movies. Seven Days in September is a movie that someone gave me - about the week after. It's all incredibly moving.
Jonathan Bond: In Don't Look Back, in the party scene with Donovan, is the gentleman that threw the glass out of the window and incurs Dylan's wrath the actor Malcolm McDowell?
DAP: No. It wasn't. It was one of the Pretty Things. It wasn't a glass that you drink out of - I think it was a glass shelf, or something. I'm not even sure what it was.
CH: No one has ever admitted to that glass after all these decades!
DAP: Many people tell me it's Malcolm McDowell and I don't even know him! I'd like to find out.
Chris Gardiner: When can we expect a DVD release of Monterey Pop?
DAP: Ah! Any day now... I think it's September. We've been working on it for about the last year.
CH: It'll be a three-disc set with Jimi Plays Monterey, the whole show, original materials and remixed soundtrack.
DAP: It even has an off-the-cuff performance from Tiny Tim who was underneath the bandstand with his ukele, playing! It was dark down there and we had to film with a cigarette lighter!
Sam: Do you prefer making films about music or politics?
DAP: Either!
CH: When you've been in one world for a while it's nice to jump out and go to the other. It was really fun making Startup.com but then going onto Down from the Mountain was great.
Michael B: Occasionally we'll be arrested by something like When We Were Kings - but is there really any room left at the movies for documentary makers? Doesn't TV have them all now, and by definition impose/require lower standards of them?
CH: It's a challenge to get films into the movie theatres but we really believe in them and think they should be viewed by an audience. It's the only way to get a critical response in the States. It's viewers that write TV reviews.
DAP: Music films look and sound so great in the theatre, not on your old falling-apart TV! They're meant to be witnessed by a group of people, a joining of the brains, there's an intense reaction and you just know that people are digging it - or not! It's crucial for those films to work. Sitting alone, it's not the same film.
CH: Also, in the US, watching a film on TV means it's constantly interrrupted by commercials and not viewed in the same way. At the theatre, the audience are more agreeable to letting the story unfold.
DAP: There's a difference, when you go to a concert, play or show you're part of an audience, joined at the hip with everyone and you look at what you want to look at. In a movie, the camera watches - not as the audience - but as part of a production. It does what it's been told to do - it's watching itself, in a way. We film as if we were an audience watching and it's a different take - particularly at concerts. We don't get locked into mechanical motions or certain movements. You're seeing the concert in quite a different way. People feel the difference, but nobody's quite figured out the why of it yet.
BBC Host: We're coming to the end of tonight's chat with DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, just time for one more question...
Julia: Can you both come to the National Film Theatre in London please! It would be good you hear you both speak (maybe when Only the Strong Survive comes out?)
DAP: We always try to get there. Jane Balfour, our worldwide rep and godmother of our youngest daughter lives there - we love to hang out with her. But we can't take our dog with us! When we go to Cannes, we might get to London.
CH: I'm sure we will get to London and maybe the Edinburgh Film Festival. Europe is an appreciative audience for this kind of soul music.
BBC Host: That is all we have time for. Thanks very much to both of our guests tonight for joining us this evening from New York.
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