Home : Daybreak Express : D.A. PENNEBAKER

D.A. Pennebaker was inspired to become a filmmaker when he met Francis Thompson and saw his film N.Y., N.Y. Soon this Yale-educated engineer and former Navy man hit the streets with an old windup camera he picked up at a pawn shop and a super-wide-angle lens made from war-surplus equipment, and DAYBREAK EXPRESS was born. In a project designed to further film as a journalistic medium, Pennebaker joined several contemporaries to produce the highly acclaimed and revolutionary "Living Camera" series of documentaries. Beginning in 1964 with the Bob Dylan tour film, DON'T LOOK BACK, Pennebaker and his partner Robert Leacock began documenting the prevailing cultural phenomenon of the times -- rock music. After the two produced MONTEREY POP and KEEP ON ROCKIN', Pennebaker went solo with a television documentary of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company" and a theatrical concert film of David Bowie. In 1977, he began a collaboration with Chris Hegedus, who later became his wife, producing THE ENERGY WAR, a three-part documentary about the Congressional fight over President Carter's proposal to deregulate natural gas. It aired on PBS. TOWN BLOODY HALL captured the infamous "Dialogue on Women's Liberation" at Town Hall in New York City. Their collaboration continued with an array of documentaries on a wide variety of subjects, including composer Elliot Carter, automobile entrepreneur John DeLorean, the band Depeche Mode, Jimi Hendrix, Branford Marsalis, professor of choreography Bessie Schonberg, and Carol Burnett. They documented the staging and performance of Samuel Beckett's ROCKABY. They created DANCE BLACK AMERICA for Thirteen/WNET's GREAT PERFORMANCES series. They went behind the scenes of the Clinton presidential campaign to make the 1994 feature-length film THE WAR ROOM. Questionnaires were sent to each artist participating in REEL NEW YORK -- Season Four. Below are the artist's written responses.

	D.A. Pennbaker
	Daybreak Express
	What inspired you to make this piece? I wanted to make a film about this filthy, noisy train, and its packed-in passengers that would look beautiful, like the New York City paintings of John Sloan. I wanted it to go with one of my Duke Ellington records -- "Daybreak Express."  From DAYBREAK EXPRESS. Tell us a little about the process involved in making this work. I didn't know much about film editing, or in fact about shooting, so I bought a couple of rolls of Kodachrome at the drugstore, and figured that since the record was about three minutes long, by shooting carefully I could fit the whole thing onto one roll of film. Of course that didn't work, since I couldn't start and stop my hand-wound camera that easily, so I ended up shooting both rolls and even a few more before I was through. It took about three days to film, and then sat in a closet for several years until I figured out how to edit it and make a print that I could show on a projector.  From DAYBREAK EXPRESS. Do you have any interesting and/or amusing behind-the-scenes stories about the making of this particular work? I took it to the Paris Theater to see if they would run it. They offered me $25 a week rental, but said that since their movies only played a week or so they would buy it for $250. Since it had cost more than that to make a 35mm print for theater projetion, I went for the weekly rental. By pure chance it ended up with the Alec Guiness comedy, THE HORSE'S MOUTH, which ran there for nearly a year. Since I had a large collection of jazz records, I figured I had found a way to break into the film business with music films, and it did get me started, but I was never able to make another film like DAYBREAK. Is there a relationship between your work as a video/filmmaker and life in the New York metropolitan area? I think whatever I do is going to reflect the atmosphere in which I live. How has the burgeoning independent movement affected your life and work as a video/filmmaker? It's provided a few companions along the way and convinced me I was doing the right thing, but I don't think it affected my determination to make the kind of films about reality that interest me.

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