In film circles D.A. Pennebaker is renown as a true innovator. His name synonymous with cinéma vérité - a rough and ready style of film making best seen in the Bob Dylan bio Don't Look Back that revolutionised documentary making. It's also been used in Hollywood by the likes of Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show etc) and Tim Robbins (Bob Roberts). Pennebaker has managed to record many defining moments of 20th Century American culture. Behind the scenes when John F. Kennedy was elected to the American presidency (Primary), front of stage when Bob Dylan went electric (Eat the Document), when Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding shot to international fame (Monterey Pop). Behind the scenes again during Bill Clinton's successful 1992 campaign (The War Room). The list goes on.

Down From the Mountain is a recent Pennebaker effort with partner Chris Hegedus that is a celebration of the acclaimed country, bluegrass and gospel O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. It follows renown record producer T-Bone Burnett as he stages a series of concerts featuring the likes of Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, John Hartford, Ralph Stanley and Alison Krauss.

Let me start by asking if you feel like Woody Allen's character Zelig. You've managed to pop up at many defining moments of 20th Century American culture.
I guess I feel more like the one turns into the robber that he meets. I kind of like that one. I feel like I'm a part of my era but I just reflected what a lot of other people have done within it. I think people look at a film about Dylan as being a film about Dylan not being a piece of filmmaking particularly.

I can't agree with that. Your name is synonymous with the cinéma vérité filmmaking style. Don't Look Back being just as famous for it's style as it's subject.
Yeah, that's true. We're not very well organised and we're kind of lazy. We never do second takes and we don't have a tripod. So you're right we do have a style of filmmaking that comes out of a method of observation that we didn't set out and plan but it came by way of thing that worked best for us and we stuck with it.

Down From the Mountain is akin to the Buena Vista Social Club film not so much in style but certainly in content. There's a genre of forgotten music with a forgotten audience waiting to lap it up.
I think they're quite different in the ways that we think about but most people don't see those differences. But I think in terms of finding an audience where nobody thought an audience was hiding that's probably true.

Do you think the music from O! Brother Where Art Thou? is more worthy than the film itself?
I think they're both pretty interesting in their own right. I mean the film is so off the wall that you don't know what you're watching. It's half comedy, half movie. It took me by surprise. I didn't know what to make of it when I first saw it but I did know that the music really got me. I thought it can ride on the music all by itself.

Most people hear a banjo and immediately think Deliverance.
Yeah. Except that was such a rough film. I mean that film went down hill dramatically in such a scary way that the music got kind of lost in it for me. I know what you mean. That opening thing where they do that banjo riff is an incredible moment in film.

It defines the music for most people. Do you think you've re-address that with Down From the Mountain?
I don't think you could set out to define music that's been around for a 1000 years coming down from family to family. I'm not sure you could put all that in one bucket and just hand it to anybody.

Deliverance did it.
There's a kind of history aspect to this music that's it like coming on one of the lost pieces of Plato or something. It takes your breath away because it's something from the past that could've gone by you and you could've missed. Normally in our cultures we're not encouraged to think about the past much and every ten years everything gets renovated. All the movies are remade with whoever the new famous people are, music is all re-sung by whoever momentarily celebrities are. I think the idea of anything which carries that quality of history in it that goes way back it does catch people. They may not expect it but it certainly catches and I know that's my great-great grandmother talking to me in some way.

How do you feel about filmmakers like Christopher Guest and Tim Robbins using and parodying your film style? Bob Roberts had numerous allusions to Don't Look Back.
I know and I was a little confused about why he wanted to do that. I didn't think the film was that fantastic and I don't think the allusions to Don't Look Back were going to help it any. I mean most people have never heard of Don't Look Back who went to see that movie. It was the first time I had one of my movies studied by anybody. It became peculiar to me. I can understand his being fascinated by Dylan and this is maybe as close to Dylan as he's going to get now. That movie threw me a little bit I have to admit.

The film of the behind the scenes machinations of the '92 Bill Clinton campaign (The 'War Room) seems to have spawn a plethora of TV shows from Spin City to West Wing. Do you think it served as a blue print for these new dramas and comedy shows?
I think that people get whatever their ideas are from wherever they see them. If they happen to see one of our films that's live bait. I'm not surprised that they could use something from it and I would myself. I'm the first to steal something if it really appeals to me and gets me started somewhere.

It's the old maxim of 'talent borrows, genius steals'?
That sounds a little Blakeian to me. It's possible yeah.

Can you tell us if Monterey Pop outtakes like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Grateful Dead are going to be released on DVD?
Yeah I think it's going to be released in the fall. We're making a three box set of Monterey Pop including two other films that we made from the outtakes - Jimi Plays Monterey and Shake on Otis Redding. As well as other outtakes so I think it's going to be an exciting release. We've gone back to the original film and re-mixed the music.

Do you find it fascinating that Bob Dylan - 1966 is an industry in itself.
He's one of the mysteries of our times. How he can stand like a tower yet you don't hear him on the radio very much. How he maintains that peculiar sovereignty over our minds is kind of intriguing. I don't know how to explain it but I know its there.

Can you tell us about the John Lennon/Bob Dylan taxi ride? Again that footage is almost an industry in itself...
It's not a taxi it's a limo but I know what you mean. I've seen it replicated after so many copies that it's barely recognisable. But it was early morning and it was part of making that film and John hung out with us and having those two talking together was vastly entertaining, vastly. It was just Bobby Neuwirth and I and John and Dylan.

Obviously Dylan is a very sick man. At one point he says, 'What if I vomit into the camera. I've done just about everything else into that camera, man.'
He was a little hung over at that point. It looked like he wanted to throw up on the camera so I was paying attention to him very carefully. It would've been a new experience for me.