WWTBAM Bored

D.A. Pennebaker, whose documentary films stretched across more than 60 years and touched on a plethora of charismatic and controversial subjects, none more so than Bob Dylan, died Thursday of natural causes. He was 94.

Dylan was the focal point of Pennebaker’s masterful 1967 cinéma vérité film “Dont Look Back,” a work part fact, part fiction, in which the line separating the two was often as elusive as rock’s poet laureate himself.

Pennebaker, described as “the grand old man of fly-on-the-wall filmmaking” by Times film critic Kenneth Turan, chronicled a who’s who of other pop music and entertainment world figures and icons over the course of his long career, including John Lennon, David Bowie, Jane Fonda, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry and the Monterey Pop Festival.

He also earned considerable acclaim, and shared an Academy Award nomination with his wife and frequent collaborator Chris Hegedus, for co-directing “The War Room” (1993), a deep look inside Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign that made media stars out of George Stephanopoulos and James Carville.