Ang Lee (李安) views his 1970s drama The Ice Storm as a representation of the disillusionment of the 1960s, the hangover of Woodstock.
Now director Lee has gone back in time a few years to capture the party that led to the hangover.
Taking Woodstock, Lee’s Cannes Film Festival entry, presents a loving glimpse of the behind-the-scenes hijinks that resulted in the gloriously sloppy music fest.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Set in 1973, 1997’s The Ice Storm was a portrait of suburban families unraveling amid adultery, casual drug use and the backdrop of the Watergate scandal. Taking Woodstock shows the summer-long buildup to the 1969 rock ‘n’ roll gathering that lured half a million free spirits to a rainy, muddy patch of farmland.
“[Woodstock] has a symbolic meaning to me. It’s the innocence of a young generation departing from the old establishment and trying to find a more refreshing way, more fair way, to live with everybody else,” Lee said on Saturday before the Cannes premiere of Taking Woodstock.
“It was dirty, filthy. It was actually a mess,” said Lee, a best-director Academy Award winner for Brokeback Mountain. “But you have to give those kids, those half a million kids, credit that, actually, they had three days of peace and music. Nothing violent happened. I think that’s something. I don’t know if we can pull that off today.”
Based on the memoir by Elliot Tiber, Taking Woodstock is the story of a dutiful son (Demetri Martin) who views the upcoming rock festival as a means to save his parents’ seedy Catskills motel from foreclosure. After Woodstock organizers lose their permit to stage the event in a nearby town, Elliot brokers a deal with the promoters to stage the event on the dairy farm of his neighbor Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) in Bethel, New York.
Taking Woodstock also features Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber, Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman.
It’s Lee’s lightest film since the mid-1990s, when he made the romances Sense and Sensibility, Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet.
The project landed on Lee’s desk by chance while he was promoting his last film, the dark World War II-era spy thriller Lust, Caution. Tiber was the guest following Lee on a San Francisco TV talk show. The two talked a bit and Tiber gave Lee a copy of his book.
“I was yearning to do a comedy-slash-drama again without cynicism,” Lee said. “It took me a long way to get there. I thought after 13 years, I sort of earned the right to do it, just be relaxed, be happy and at peace with myself and everybody else.”
With a 1960s-soaked soundtrack featuring The Band, Canned Heat, Joan Baez, Richie Havens and Country Joe and the Fish, Taking Woodstock is awash in period detail, from Volkswagen Love Bugs to hippie hair and sideburns, to a vintage Slinky toy commercial on TV.
Lee ran a hippie camp to teach the extras the right way to behave and carry themselves. The filmmakers said their hardest task was getting the extras to look like ‘60s youths.
Screenwriter James Schamus — who heads Focus Features, which is releasing Taking Woodstock, and who won the 1997 screenplay prize at Cannes for The Ice Storm — said there’s a different look to today’s young people, with their passion for fitness and disdain for pubic hair.
“When you think about it, a generation of people who weren’t fat, who weren’t staring at themselves in the mirror all the time and not shaving everything off down there, it captures the difference of 40 years right there,” Schamus said.
Hong Kong-based American singer-songwriter Khalil Fong (方大同) has passed away at the age of 41, Fong’s record label confirmed yesterday. “With unwavering optimism in the face of a relentless illness for five years, Khalil Fong gently and gracefully bid farewell to this world on the morning of February 21, 2025, stepping into the next realm of existence to carry forward his purpose and dreams,” Fu Music wrote on the company’s official Facebook page. “The music and graphic novels he gifted to the world remain an eternal testament to his luminous spirit, a timeless treasure for generations to come,” it said. Although Fong’s
China’s military buildup in the southern portion of the first island chain poses a serious threat to Taiwan’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, a defense analyst warned. Writing in a bulletin on the National Defense and Security Research’s Web site on Thursday, Huang Tsung-ting (黃宗鼎) said that China might choke off Taiwan’s energy supply without it. Beginning last year, China entrenched its position in the southern region of the first island chain, often with Russia’s active support, he said. In May of the same year, a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) force consisting of a Type 054A destroyer, Type 055 destroyer,
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was questioned by prosecutors for allegedly orchestrating an attack on a taxi driver after he was allegedly driven on a longer than necessary route in a car he disliked. The questioning at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office was ongoing as of press time last night. Police have recommended charges of attempted murder. The legally embattled actor — known for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代) — is under a separate investigation for allegedly using fake medical documents to evade mandatory military service. According to local media reports, police said Wang earlier last year ordered a
POLICY UNCHANGED? Despite Trump’s remarks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio assured that US policy toward Taiwan has remained consistent since the 1970s US President Donald Trump on Wednesday again refused to make clear his stance on protecting Taiwan from a hypothetical takeover by China during his presidency. Asked by a reporter during a Cabinet meeting whether it was his policy that China would never take Taiwan by force while he is president, Trump declined to give a definitive answer. “I never comment on that,” he said. “I don’t comment on it because I don’t want to ever put myself in that position.” Trump also reiterated that he has a “great relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and said that Washington welcomes good relations with
RSS