PENNEBAKER, 85, ON DONT LOOK BACK WITH GREIL MARCUS
Since I can't for some reason get the video to come up here, I offer the URL (with thanks to Mick Gold, who notes 85-year-old Pennebaker's undimmed enthusiasm): http://tinyurl.com/6ktkuaf
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
posted by Michael Gray | 4:49 am
4 Comments:
Pennebaker fresh and interesting throughout. The story about Donovan and 'Mr Tambourine Man' was particularly revealing (and funny). I did find myself, I have to admit, fast-forwarding (or whatever the computer term is) most of Greil Marcus's contributions, athough his final comment, about the movie playing new each time you see it, was right on the mark (unlike his idea that Donovan went on to make 'fabulous records'...???)
Agreed. I always find myself admiring, and rather resenting, Greil Marcus' prophet-like, unshakeable self-confidence: his exuding of Wise Certainty, even when, as re Donovan's "fabulous" records, he's wrong.
Wrong, I mean, in the extravagance of his claim for, I assume, Donovan's early electic records, some of which seem to me quite good: 'Mad John', for example.
Similarly, I think Marcus too sweeping in his disparagement of the earliest Donovan material, as when he scorns the song Donovan sings just before Bob wipes the floor with it using 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'.
So I don't think, in other words, that Marcus has a judicious grip on Donovan at all.
Yet most of the other things he has to say about Dont Look Back seem to me interesting and often very acute, so that fast-forwarding past them might also be injudicious.
I agree that Marcus's belittling of the song Donovan sings in the hotel room was overdone, and more than a little mean-spirited. The song was unambitious but okay – indeed Dylan, surely without irony, praised it (not that that alone, of course, means it was decent).
Throughout the conversation Marcus did indeed make the odd decent point, but overall I didn't find what he had to say half as interesting as Pennebaker's contributions. There was a sharp contrast, too, berween Pennebaker's warm, unassuming manner and Marcus's ponderous, po-faced delivery.
Fair enough Marco, but the interviewee should be more interesting than the interviewer, surely.
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