D.A. Pennebaker

Rehearsal

Performing the Real | 107 they can in life.” Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that “Dont Look Back is the most effective presentation of the quality of youth attitudes that I have ever seen. It is also one of the best, if not the very best, portraits of a performing artist to be shown publicly and it is certainly a magnificent documentation of the poet-performer Bob Dylan. . . . As film, it is pure art, as a documentary of an artist it is pure poetry” (qtd. in Pennebaker, Bob Dylan 158). Reference to Dont Look Back as a documentary—even one that is “pure poetry”—raises an issue beyond nomenclature. The praise for Dont Look Back by a critic for Variety is premised on an interpretation of the film that reinforces generic boundaries. According to Variety, the film is a “relentlessly honest, brilliantly edited documentary” (qtd. in Hogenson 25). Pennebaker felt ambivalent about such a comment, denouncing critics who responded to Dont Look Back as a “documentary film.” In its resolute focus on “acting a life,” Dont Look Back avoids the informationalism that marks documentary. Speaking in 1970, Pennebaker pointed out that “I try not to [make documentary films]” (qtd. in Levin 234), and he acknowledged that “[m]ost people look at [Dont Look Back] and say it’s documentary.” However, he insisted: “It is not documentary at all by my standards. It throws away almost all its information and becomes purposively kind of abstract” (qtd. in Levin 243). In place of information, Pennebaker presents performance—a “guy acting out his life” (qtd. in Levin 240). In the case of Dont Look Back, the practices of performing the real—with its dual implication of a subject “acting a life” together with Pennebaker’s filmmaking performance—extend the range of approaches associated with the representational form known as documentary. Rehearsal Anything acted is, to varying degrees, rehearsed. Rehearsals provide a broad set of guidelines within which actors consider actions and responses relevant to the particular parameters of a specific production. Rehearsal implies repetition of known or recognizable actions, behaviors , and gests. Repetition as the basis of rehearsal may be a plodding reiteration of established dialogue and responses or repeated opportunities to improvise on and around a specific idea or theme. The irony i-xii_1-180_Beattie.indd 107 7/14/11 10:38 AM 108 | D.A. Pennebaker of the act of rehearsal and repetition is that realistic effects demand that the performance that is the outcome of rehearsals deny all signs of premeditation and repetitious display. In these terms, “good” acting (complicated, responsive, motivated—and rehearsed—action) is that which seeks to deny all traces of acting. Repetition in rehearsal provides a pattern through which an actor or performer understands and communicates a role. Repetition as the basis of understanding and communication is underscored in certain theories of signification. The cultural theorist Judith Butler has argued that signification is a “regulated process of repetition that both conceals itself and enforces its rules precisely through the production of substantializing effects. In a sense all signification takes place within the orbit of the compulsion to repeat” (145, emphasis in original). The insight is informed within Jacques Derrida’s analysis of J. L. Austin’s interpretation of performatives—utterances that “perform,” rather than describe, a particular action. (Austin exemplifies the process through reference to the practice of saying “I do” in a Christian wedding ceremony—a statement that brings forth and, in this sense, performs or enacts an action. Other examples of the process are the statement “I now declare this meeting open” and “I hereby launch this ship.”) Derrida asks, “Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a ‘coded’ or iterable utterance, in other words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way as a citation?” (320). For Derrida, the concept of citation is closely aligned with repetition. An iterable utterance is a replay or restaging of previous utterances and discursive practices. Rather than weakening the efficacy of a statement, it is via citation that statements achieve a communicative effect, which in turn holds the potential and ability to impact on action. Derrida’s insights into the operation of iterability and citation in discourse provide a basis for a reassessment of claims made for direct cinema. In direct cinema (so...