Taking Woodstock

This IS the Woodstock backstory. If you want the concert music, watch the documentary!
This was a real treat. Being an extreme Woodstock-phile I know alot of small behind the scenes facts and details. The Michael Wadleigh documentary is simply the holy grail of doco's! I was under the assumption parts of this were made up for the movie and I refused to go to the theatre to see it. I was sooo wrong! Not only is it factual, they nailed so many details taken and recreated from the documentary!Like the nuns being filmed while flashing a peace sign! The Earth Light players! Hog Farmers!

All of the people who whine that it's a movie about a concert with no music in it, GO WATCH THE MICHAEL WADLEIGH 4 HOUR DOCUMENTARY! In fact, if ya wanna make a weekend of it, watch them back to back! This tells the background of the concert and the local politics. You don't need a movie with the music in it...The documentary already exists and more people need to become hip to it. This movie just made my heart jump when the first helicopter lands at the El Monaco motel...

re-Taking Woodstock
The 60's memoir Taking Woodstock is a story about how 20-something Elliot, son of a Jewish couple, was able to lure backers planning a music festival into the area where his parents run a `resort' motel. The story begins in a conservative rural community of farmers and small town folk in scenic New York countryside. The narrative hub revolves around the relationship between Elliot and his aging parents who own the El Monaco Resort Motel, a deteriorating business on the verge of foreclosure. His mother is a bitter character who oversees the finances and ordering of the household. His father is a withdrawn, tired man bent from years of bearing the weight of silent compliance before his wife while attending to the motel's maintenance. The townsfolk are a stagnant traditional group ekking out daily sustenance while news about the Viet Nam war, Arab-Israeli conflict and moon landing catch their attention in the background.

Into this languid summer come two key folk - Michael...

Great film, great performances, and a brownie-serving drag queen!
I was lucky enough to see this movie in an actual theatre (remember those?) this past September, and it really was a delight. Watching with a small group of friends and loved ones, I felt a kinship with the central character and his simple desire to do something, anything, to change his fate while the world seemed to be changing its tune - for those three days, at least. Being both a musician and a fan of all things European, I really liked the look and the pace of Ang Lee's film. While the book on which the film is based bubbles and froths madly and delightedly like a late Seventies hot tub, Lee's film presents a place and a time that feels alive and gentle like a spring leaf but also has the sullen gravity of the fallen leaf once the autumn comes. Demetri Martin comes across like a slightly-stoned Pinocchio, hoping - through his 11th-hour involvement in helping to save Mike Lang's Woodstock festival from cancellation - to become a real boy. (It's not coincidental that the actor who...

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