Taking Woodstock

Last night, I finally took Woodstock and I really enjoyed it. No, It was not a great film, but it was quite good. Having grown up not terribly far away from the original festival grounds (and having gone buckwild back in the time-trapped city's vintage shopping district), I have always daydreamed about what it would have been like to have experienced those three days of peace and music firsthand. My mother grew up not far away (1 hour to be exact) but was too young (or too afraid, as her college nickname "Two Beer O'Neill" would later imply) to attend the storied rock festival to both start and end all rock festivals. But such was life in the conservative shadow of West Point in the height of (gasp) hippie warfare.

I was able to catch Ang Lee on The Colbert Report discuss the film and his choice not to portray say, a droopy hatted, braless charicature of Janis Joplin espouse wisdom upon the starry-eyed organizers (like Jim Morrison's nude Native American spiritual guide, fantasized in The Doors and later parodied in Wayne's World 2, in Wayne's quest to build Waynestock, natch), which I respect, but I really would have loved to have felt more connected to the music of Woodstock for that is the reason we all fell in love with the idea and the message of Woodstock in the first place, even decades later. What would it have been like to see Hendrix, The Dead, The Who, Guthrie, Joplin, and even Sha-Na-Na(?) all in one place.

One can't help but think that the shooting complexities of restaging a 100k-strong audience and many a legal challenge in licensing the music (let alone the organizers' in-fighting on royalties due, humorously noted in the film) held Lee, admittedly exhausted from his heavy on the Kleenex latest offerings (Lust: Caution and Brokeback Mountain), to choose an easier route to get to the jam-packed sold-out concert two hours up the Thruway. It was oddly refreshing, in a way, though that Taking Woodstock was presented as a lighthearted comedy and not as anything more for all the tension the Vietnam-era typically conjures up in celluloid. (Emile Hirsch, by the way, does a fantastic job, as was to be expected, as a discharged vet, who even takes jokes at his expense in good humor.)

Despite the glaring (or blaring) omission of the live event, Lee expertly shows just what happens when an ambitious go-getter starts a revolution from his backyard, not an easy feat for anyone, let alone a broke motel owner in the Catskills just trying to stay afloat. Demetri Martin, in his first starring role, finely represents the titular concert organizer who holds it all together for his debt-raddled elderly folks while trying to make peace with his repressed homosexuality, in what Liev Schrieber's drag queen calls, the center of the universe.

I guess, if you really want to hear and see all that happened, watch the four hour Director's Cut of Woodstock (which was Marty Scorsese's first film gig, as assistant director/editor), just re-released to coincide with its 40th Anniversary, but don't write off the story of what it took to put on such a massive, world-changing event. In the end, what would it be like to experience those three days of peace and music firsthand? See for yourself. It doesn't have to be a daydream away.