One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away. D. A. Pennebaker More Quotes by D. A. Pennebaker More Quotes From D. A. Pennebaker You can't point a camera at someone and find out what's in their head. But it does the next best thing - it lets you speculate. D. A. Pennebaker nextcamerasdoe I would never say no to anything that sounded interesting! The thing I like about making films is that the adventure just begins when you pick up the camera. D. A. Pennebaker camerasadventureinteresting ...candid still photography had taken over... What was interesting was that the photographs came without any intention of instructing you... You're like a cat looking out the window. You don't have to even know what you're watching, but you're watching it, and you're watching it very accurately. D. A. Pennebaker catphotographytaken We're a family operation. There's not many of us. We have a couple people who come from time to time who work with us. Two of my sons are themselves filmmakers, and we can't afford them nor they us. D. A. Pennebaker couplepeopleson After love, the most sacred gift you can give is your labor. D. A. Pennebaker sacredlaborgiving I think nowadays people are so used taking the camera to the family picnic - so people are less surprised by films made of them, like home movies. D. A. Pennebaker homepeoplethinking I guess I think that films have to be made totally by fascists -- there's no room for democracy in making film. D. A. Pennebaker democracyroomsthinking 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. D. A. Pennebaker camerathinkyouway People don't really want reality. They want theater, and that's different. D. A. Pennebaker differentwantrealitypeople 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. D. A. Pennebaker growwatchingyouinteresting 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. D. A. Pennebaker wellanythingcuriouspay I think the films we see, the Hollywood films, which are basically entertainment, will still be there, but they'll be in a totally different category. People won't take them seriously. They'll kind of end up the way comic books have. A side view of things. D. A. Pennebaker viewthinkpeopleway 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. D. A. Pennebaker goodmoneyworkworld Nobody would let us do 'Crisis' again. D. A. Pennebaker againusnobodycrisis When I did 'Don't Look Back,' I no longer had Time-Life looking over my shoulder, so I could kind of do it as I wanted, and it was like I was really correcting 'Jane.' D. A. Pennebaker lookingbacklikelook If you're setting up lights and tripods, and you've got three assistants running around, people will want to get you out as fast as they can. But if you go the opposite way, if you make the camera the least important thing in the room, then it's different. D. A. Pennebaker cameralightsyoupeople I think of all my movies as home movies! It's just that some are more expensive than others. D. A. Pennebaker moviessomethinkhome 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. D. A. Pennebaker pictureyousongworld A film is made in somebody's head - out of their determination to do it at all. D. A. Pennebaker headsomebodyfilmdetermination 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. D. A. Pennebaker youbrainbeautifulway
