tagged w/ Max Yasgur
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Click here to read the CNN iReport: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-312359
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These were my hastily-written memories, because I was so sick -- the days before the 40th anniversary of Woodstock -- of the hundreds of negative articles and emails I was seeing plastered everywhere. What got to me the most was that of all those people who wrote ABOUT Woodstock -- and how bad, ugly, awful, scary, dirty, blah, blah, blah, it was -- not one of those folks had actually BEEN at Woodstock!!!! That just pissed me off.
Hell, I even recently heard a woman neighbor of mine telling her 11-year-old daughter that Woodstock was the ultimate "filth experience," and that most of the girls who attended were raped and got pregnant that weekend.
Um.......... this was the era of..... FREE LOVE!!!!!!! No damn REASON for rape! And we had diaphragms and IUDs and The Pill, so there were no more "unwanted" pregnancies than in any other city a half a million strong.
So anyway, I threw together this rundown of my ACTUAL experiences around Woodstock. The next day, CNN called me and had me come to the studios to do a live, on-the-air, on-camera report. Before all that, maybe for the 20th anniversary, I'd done lengthy interviews with Jack Curry, who subsequently wrote a book about Woodstock, and two of the chapters were named my name. Damned if I can remember the name of that book, though! Then, because of THAT, for the 25th anniversary, ABC (New York) gave me a call and sent out a crew to interview me for "Turning Point," which was a one-hour weekly news program. Then, last year -- in preparation for this year's 40th anniversary -- a film crew flew in from Germany and interviewed me for their 90-minute documentary, which still hasn't been released here in the States, but got good airing time in Europe.
These experiences -- while not in the least mind-blowing -- were good for me, because I got to re-live a great deal of my happy time during Woodstock.
There really will never be another Woodstock... nor SHOULD there be.
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Click here to read the CNN iReport: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-312359
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Click here to read the CNN iReport:... more
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If I was to be completely honest about it, I’d have to say that my disappointment at not being able to attend Woodstock had less to do with the possibility of experiencing the performances of Joplin, Hendrix, The Who, et al, than with my fourteen-year-old, hyper-hormonal self missing the opportunity to see a real, live nekkid hippie chick in the flesh.
Ang Lee’s TAKING WOODSTOCK isn’t anywhere near as adolescently single-minded in its obsessions, but in a similar way, music isn’t really an issue for the film. The main character, Elliot Tiber — played by Demetri Martin and based on the real-life guy who was instrumental in bringing the fest to Max Yasgur’s farm — never gets a chance to witness the fest, despite several abortive attempts. Instead, Woodstock is both a front-and-center catalyst for the film’s drama and tangental influence for changes the characters, Elliot prime amongst them, will go through. Director Lee latches onto the almost universally familiar iconography — mostly as was conveyed by Michael Wadleigh in WOODSTOCK — to give us an alt-view of events from the perspective of the locals, exploring how that chaos percolated down to affect small yet profound (Ang Lee, remember?) changes in those observers.
It’s broad in its way — there’s a theater group that sheds its clothing at the slightest provocation, and Liev Schreiber turns up as an ex-marine-turned-quite-burly-transvestite (interestingly, comic actor Eugene Levy delivers a shrewd, nuanced performance as Max Yasgur) — but it’s in the service of a sweet and somewhat yearning examination of a period when people could dream of the world being better, and could imagine the steps that might be taken to make it so.
Click on the link above to hear my interview with Ang Lee.If I was to be completely honest about it, I’d have to say that my... more
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