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Bob Dylan didn’t know documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker when the singer-songwriter’s manager, Albert Grossman, asked Pennebaker to accompany them on an early 1965 tour of England and film everything he saw.
And D.A. Pennebaker didn’t know much about Bob Dylan or his music, other than hearing Peter, Paul & Mary’s version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and reading a review in Time magazine that said Dylan wasn’t a very good folksinger.
But together Dylan and Pennebaker made “Dont Look Back,” which was released in 1967 and became one of the most influential films ever made about folk and rock music and musicians. Pennebaker went on to have a long and distinguished career, making many films about music and politics, including “Monterey Pop” and “The War Room.” As for Dylan, well, that’s another story.
Pennebaker talked enthusiastically about Dylan, their film and more in a recent telephone interview from New York about the new release of a spectacular new DVD “deluxe edition” box set of “Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back” (two discs, Docurama, $49.95, not rated).
Not only does the set include a digitally remastered version of the original film, it comes with the 1968 companion book to the film; a flip-book of photos from the movie’s famous opening credits (where Dylan holds up cardboard cards with excerpts from the lyrics to “Subterranean Homesick Blues”); two alternate versions of these opening credits, and five uncut audio tracks. Most importantly, the DVD presents a new one-hour film, “Bob Dylan 65 Revisited,” consisting of Pennebaker’s outtakes from the original movie.
Pennebaker, now 81, says he’s pleased with the new DVD edition, but admits that “I sort of went to it dragging my feet because I didn’t want to make `Dont Look Back 2.’ But when I started looking at the outtakes and saw the performances, I was really kind of struck by what I had missed because of the kind of film I had made before.”
The original film of the tour to about a half dozen English cities captured Dylan at a crossroad in his career. He was still performing solo acoustic sets consisting of his original love songs and topical material like “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” while also introducing audiences to new, generally longer and more complex songs such as “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” But simultaneously, Dylan had just released in Britain his first rock `n’ roll single, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a harbinger of his soon-to-come switch to performing and recording with a rock band.
Although Dylan’s performances throughout the English tour were extraordinary, Pennebaker did not want to make strictly a concert film. He decided not to include any song in its entirety and to spend as much time recording fly-on-the-wall scenes of Dylan in transit and in his hotel room.
“I want people to think that they’re seeing behind the music,” Pennebaker says on the audio commentary to “Dont Look Back.”
As a result, “Dont Look Back” features remarkably candid scenes of Dylan sparring with the press, riding in cars and on trains, bantering with fans before concerts, playing guitar and piano in hotel rooms, hanging out with Joan Baez, tour manager Bob Neuwirth, manager Grossman and various guests such as Alan Price (formerly of the Animals) and Donovan, and even getting angry with a hotel visitor.
But 40 years later, Pennebaker acknowledges that “I hadn’t really thought about the nature of his performances, which were so charismatic and so amazing. I thought that as music they were going to get in the way of the character I was trying to write a play about. But now as I look at them, I understand how crucial they are in understanding Dylan.”
The director says that when he found the old footage, he decided to answer those critics of the original film who complained about his not showing any complete songs by putting them in the new movie. So viewers can now see what was left out of the original performance of “Hattie Carroll” as well as complete versions of “It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” and rarities such as “If You Got To Go, Go Now” and “I’ll Keep It With Mine.”
Pennebaker said that while looking at the outtakes he also noticed “how generous (Dylan) was to the kids who came and surrounded him. ... It wasn’t a fake thing that you sometimes get from celebrities.”
Pennebaker graciously answered some questions this critic had long had about “Dont Look Back”:
During his visit to London, Dylan met with the Beatles. Were you able to film that meeting?
“I did shoot them, but not very well,” he says. “I didn’t want to get them riled up, because they’d get very riled up when you filmed them. They kept saying that the Maysles had taken advantage of them. (In 1964, filmmakers Albert and David Maysles released `What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A.’) I also think it had to do with money. ... So I didn’t want to do that. Also, I didn’t want (the movie) to be about Dylan meeting celebrities like the Beatles.”
What happened to Joan Baez, who was a major presence during the first half of “Dont Look Back,” but then almost disappeared? Interviewed decades later in Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan,” Baez said she was surprised and disappointed that Dylan never invited her onstage with him, though on a previous tour they performed together often.
Pennebaker says that “maybe she had some expectancies about going on stage” with Dylan, but he also points out that Baez left the tour for several days to visit the famous English alternative school Summerhill. “She may have taken off out of frustration,” Pennebaker says, “but that’s not what she told me.”
Why no apostrophe in “Dont Look Back”?
“Just mark it down as a peculiar obsession,” Pennebaker says, explaining that he was influenced by George Bernard Shaw’s efforts to simplify the English language.
Finally, we talked about why he thought Grossman (with Dylan’s obvious approval) had asked him to make the film in the first place and what Dylan’s reaction to the final product had been.
“Dylan had seen a couple of (my films),” the director says. “He asked me if this was the camera I used in Hungary to film (cellist Pablo) Casals, which we did for CBS. He knew I did funny films, and he wanted to see what filming was like.”
Pennebaker says that while Dylan didn’t tamper with the finished film—other than requesting that he take out the famous scene where Dylan berates a hotel visitor; Pennebaker said it was important to the movie and Dylan acquiesced, saying, “Yeah, I thought you’d say that”—he was bothered that he revealed too much about himself.
“I don’t think he thought it would come off that way,” Pennebaker explains. “You’ve got to understand that I’m running around with a homemade camera and I had a friend of his doing the sound with a tape recorder. And that’s all. There was no crew, we never came in with lights or the equipment I think he assumed films required. So (the idea that ) what we were doing was somehow going to end up on a theater screen was something I don’t think ever occurred to him.
“But I wasn’t too sure myself, either.”
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BOB DYLAN: DONT LOOK BACK—65 TOUR DELUXE EDITION (two discs)
CAST: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Donovan, Alan Price, Albert Grossman and Bob Neuwirth
DIRECTOR/CINEMATOGRAPHER: D.A. Pennebaker
DISTRIBUTOR: Docurama
Not rated
