Patti Smith is half of rather odd couple

PASADENA, CALIF. — It's not that the film "Patti Smith: Dream of Life" is so unusual — although it is a fascinating portrait of the punk rock queen.

But how the film came about was, well, sort of odd.

Almost 15 years ago, fashion photographer Steven Sebring asked Smith a rather casual question: "Has anyone ever filmed you?"

And then he spent the next nine years doing just that.

"I didn't plan it to be a film on a movie screen, really," Sebring told TV critics in August. "I was just gathering and documenting footage of her. Just getting to know Patti."

("Dream of Life" airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on KUED/Ch. 7.)

What made it even odder is that Sebring was not a fan. As a matter of fact, he first heard her music "maybe, like, about two weeks before I met her."

He was not a punk rock fan growing up — his taste tended more toward Led Zeppelin and Def Leppard.

"My wife was in shock that I was going to photograph Patti Smith," Sebring said. "So I went there not knowing a thing really about her. … But I tend to like not knowing too much about people when I meet them, anyway. And I think immediately Patti knew that I didn't know much about her, and I think that was part of our connection. So it all worked out.

"Now I know a lot about Patti Smith."

"Now you know too much," Smith joked.

They quickly formed a bond. And their trust extended to those around Smith.

"Steven and I are like siblings. He's like my new brother," she said. "And the band warmed up to him. My children liked him. He's an easy guy to warm up to."

There is one scene in the film — which won the prize for best cinematography at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival — when Smith tells Sebring he'll have to stop filming. But she said it was the only time in nine years she did that. And it was very early in the filming when she was preparing to perform in Europe for the first time in two decades.

"It was very rare that I was bugged by the camera," Smith said. "I liked Steven. … And he wasn't invasive at all because he had no crew. It was just him with a camera on his shoulder. He had no lights, a little sound pack on his belt.

"And if I was in an agitated mood or something and asked him not to film me, he stopped immediately. And if my children didn't want to be filmed, he never pursued them."

And "Dream of Life" is not just a rock 'n' roll movie. If anything, if focuses more on her family, her poetry, her political activism.

"I never told Steven what part of my life to center on. It was really Steven who made the choice. It's really Steven's film," Smith said. "I didn't tell him to focus on poetry or to make certain that we have anti-war rallies. He just became part of what we did, and he made the choices as to what areas interested him.