Baron Dave Romm
Taking Woodstock
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater podcasts
Three in a row
I didn't mean to write three Woodstock related columns in a row. Honest. They just sort of bubbled naturally to the surface.
Indeed, in retrospect the Ang Lee movie pushed remembering the 1969 festival onto an easy slide. PR people were getting paid to generate buzz. The conservative news media had a Hollywood hook.
And we Baby Boomers can waive our collective walking sticks at the young whippersnappers. It's all good.
Taking Woodstock
Taking Woodstock is a new film, directed by Ang Lee and starring Dmitri Martin. The Woodstock Music & Art Fair itself is not the subject and only glimpses are ever shown. Instead, the film follows how Woodstock wound up in Yasgur's Farm, how the locals reacted and how the instant city worked. The complex subject matter is handled with a gentle yet deft touch. Very few characters are one dimensional. The humor derives from the situations; no easy jokes about hippies or dumb townies. Not many, anyway.I chuckled throughout. Very few guffaws, and very few laughs at other people's expense. The situation developed, and the real events are pretty amusing. The acting is good overall, and Ang Lee gives all the characters shape and direction. The film is a character study more than a comedy, and a cultural study more than a character study. The cultures clash, but generational differences are only one element and do not drive the plot.
Taking Woodstock deserves its R Rating. And not for violence. Various bits of nudity and sexual situations abound, but aren't dwelled upon. Some hippies are, quite simply, not ashamed of their bodies and are perfectly willing to challenge the shame in others. The drugs and drug experiences are handled well. Taking Woodstock is not a film for children, but it's also not a film for the Woodstock generation. Well, not only a film for the Woodstock generation: Any intelligent adult will understand.
I grew up in Middletown, New York, the original proposed site, about 35 miles from the setting of the film. The city of Middletown is in the township of Walkill. The film never mentions Middletown, but the people in the township of Bethel are constantly ripping on their southern neighbor. I remember minor and usually good natured jabs at the Catskill resort area to our north, though the people in Bethel seem very familiar to me. I've never been to the site, but I've probably been in and around the immediate region. In any event, the highways and highway signage, the wood used to make the dilapidated cabins, the creeks, the terrain, the foliage, the languid August sun and the people all felt like the area I knew. I could almost smell the Catskills.
Digression: One of the reasons I wound up in MInneapolis was that it's in the same temperate zone. The grass is the same color as in Middletown. Middletown, NY was incorporated as a village in 1848, then incorporated as a city in 1888. Meanwhile, Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867. The buildings are from roughly the same architectural period. In many respects, you can go home again.
At the time of Woodstock, my father was editor of the local paper, the first cold-press offset daily newspaper in the country, the Middletown Times Herald-Record. Two pages of the Record are shown, briefly, in Taking Woodstock. They flash by too quickly for me to have read the byline, but if they used a real person then I probably knew him. (The credits mention that the two pages were altered for filming, which is odd. Were they trying to avoid a lawsuit or just being honest that they dummied up what we saw?)
Taking Woodstock got the locals right. Our area of the country is extremely conservative. Not just the rah rah nationalism and support for our troops (West Point is closer to Middletown than Bethel) but the racism, sphincter conservatism and anti-semitism that is part of the shame of the right. On the other hand, the movie gets Max Yasgur right. He was quite conservative, but a real small-l-libertarian who didn't like hippies but was more than happy to take their money if they cleaned up afterward. The state police were also done right: Conservative but intelligent. They knew which battles to fight, and when. Keeping order was more important than "busting the heads of some hippies". I wasn't there, but they seem to have gotten the news media right: My father had the only daily reporting from on the ground. TV crews and such didn't get very close, and were relegated to spot interviews well away from the concert.
The Catskills (and most of the area northwest of the immediate New York City suburbs until Albany) was an odd combination of rednecks and free-spirited artists. That's why Bob Dylan moved to the area in the first place. As long as people left each other alone, we all got along. Our cities were not in flames over civil rights; West Pointers recognized the rights of anti-war protestors and anti-war protestors honored the bravery of our soldiers.
Digression: As I recall, our Congressional district went Republican in every election (which is why my parents were registered Republicans: To vote in the primaries) except once. Probably from the Johnson landslide, or thereabouts. The Democratic Representative was then the only one in Congress to vote against a law that would have made wearing a US flag illegal. His reasoning: Every state already had such a law, so making it a federal offense would be a waste of time and money. A true small-l-libertarian stance that ran against the capital-C-Conservative nature of the area. The flag-wavers pounced on the issue and he lost the next election.
As mentioned here, I was 14 when Woodstock took place: The music was not mine. Later learned to appreciate Jefferson Airplane, the Incredible String Band, Santana, Crosby Stills & Nash, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Arlo Guthrie, etc. At the time I didn't care. The music in the background of Taking Woodstock is partially from the concert. If you could hear the music, it was probably pretty good. As one of the last major events not to have the full media circus (and media coverage), much of the music has never been released, certainly not as a concert set. The music is well represented.
I wasn't there, so I can only report from remarks made by attendees later: They got the drugs and drug usage right. Almost everyone was enjoying themselves. There were a few problems, which were handled. For an instant city of half a million, there was less misuse of recreational drugs than in Vegas. The equivalent of the drunk tank was small. Further, they got the nudity and the "shtupping" right.
Sex, drugs, rock and roll. A good script, some fine acting and intelligent direction. What more could you ask?
I even like the title. Both meanings come through: Many people were taking in the Woodstock experience (which was different for everyone) while others were taking stock of their lives because they were in the whirling vortex of an international event.
On the Shockwave scale of 9 to 23, where 23 is best, I'd give Taking Woodstock about a 21, though a point or two is for being in my backyard.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog maintains a Facebook Page, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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