Taking Woodstock

When a young and up-and-coming man in a local no-name town convinces the town council to have a bigger summer concert, he suddenly becomes overwhelmed by the response. A son of Jewish immigrants who operate a run-down motel just outside of town, Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin), serves on the town council and with a little left-hand behind the back transaction uses the permit to schedule some of the biggest names in music.

After making arrangements with local dairy farm operator Max Yasgur (played by American Pie father Eugene Levy), the organize the festival to use his farm and plans start rolling fast. Jake spends the next couple of weeks getting the hotel and field ready, but as the day approaches, the town soon becomes overwhelmed by hippies and the locals are not happy. Originally scheduled to be a concert requiring tickets, common-sense led them to change it to a free concert. There was no way they were going to be able to control the mass of people that showed up. The festival finally arrives and Jake experiences life at Woodstock and learns more than he ever learned at college.

Also staring in this movie are Imelda Staunton as Jake's mother, Henry Goodman as Jake's father, Live Schreiber as a transvestite (yes, you read that correctly), Dan Fogler as a head of a local theater troupe, and Emile Hirsch as Jake's friend who recently returned from Vietnam.

I'm no historian on the Woodstock event, but this is totally how I pictured events as they played out. Thousands of hippies. Dozens of naked people. Acid. Camping. Rock music. And more naked people.

Directed by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Taking Woodstock is Rated R for nudity, drugs, and yet more nudity. And the movie comes in right at 2 hours.

I liked Taking Woodstock for the seemingly obvious reasons. Not only is it funny (Jake's mother is hysterical), but there's also that good quirky small-town dialog. Not an Academy-Award winning nominee, but not too bad. I give Taking Woodstock 3 stars.

Some interesting facts - the concert was actually in the town of Bethel, New York, about 43 miles from the actual town of Woodstock, NY. Performers at the festival included Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, John Sebastian (Welcome Back Kotter), Canned Heat (Goin' to the Country), Mountain, Grateful Dead. Creedance Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Ten Years After, The Band, Blood Sweat & Tears, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Sha-Na-Na, and Jimi Hendrix. Can you imagine that concert today? It wouldn't happen. Too many stuck-up greedy bands. This was quintessential 1960's.