36 Quotes by D. A. Pennebaker

A film is made in somebody's head - out of their determination to do it at all.

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.

People don't really want reality. They want theater, and that's different.

I wanted James Carville to never die. I wanted Dylan, the poet, to not die. I wanted to put these people in a place where they would be inviolate. It wasn't enough to have a still life of them. I wanted to surround them with the lives they led.

I didn't know Jack Kennedy that well, but Bobby was a hero to me.

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.

I think, in general, independents don't have a lot of access to really good scriptwriters or actors or actresses, so they're very limited in what they can do.

To make theater out of real life, you need to catch dialogue when it happens.

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.