The production still tells it like it was during Woodstock. Although I was very young at the time, I sense the picture says it all — wide-eye and open to the new culture of free love, drugs and human be-ins!
A generation began in his backyard…. From Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), comes Taking Woodstock, a new comedy inspired by the true story of Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was.
It’s 1969, and Elliot Tiber, a down-on-his-luck interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has to move back upstate to help his parents run their dilapidated Catskills motel, The El Monaco. The bank’s about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn’t paid the insurance; and Elliot is still figuring how to come out to his parents.
When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers, thinking he could drum up some much-needed business for the motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor’s farm in White Lake, NY, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever.
A generation began in his backyard…. From Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), comes Taking Woodstock, a new comedy inspired by the true story of Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was.
It’s 1969, and Elliot Tiber, a down-on-his-luck interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has to move back upstate to help his parents run their dilapidated Catskills motel, The El Monaco. The bank’s about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn’t paid the insurance; and Elliot is still figuring how to come out to his parents.
When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers, thinking he could drum up some much-needed business for the motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor’s farm in White Lake, NY, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever.
A man working at his parents’ rundown motel in the Catskills inadvertently sets in motion the generation-defining concert in the summer of 1969. Demetri stars in the film, which he offers an introduction to the trailer from “Important Things with Demetri.”
Production of Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock begins late this month.
Lee’s ensemble cast includes Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton and Liev Schreiber and more as you read this post below. It’s going to be an outstanding film. I am very excited.
The movie is based on the memoir of Elliot Tiber, who played a role in helping the historic 1969 music fest unfold on his neighbor’s farm.
Contingency plans have been put in place in case SAG strikes in the event that work stoppage occurs because of a strike. With that in place Lee’s film is going into full production.
Demetri Martin (”The Daily Show With Jon Stewart”) is all set to play Tiber, an aspiring interior designer in Greenwich Village obliged to run the family business, a Catskills motel. In summer 1969, he was at the center of a generation-defining experience when he volunteered the motel to be the home base for Woodstock concert organizers after his neighbor, Max Yasgur, made his farm available for the event.
Staunton and Henry Goodman are set to play Tiber’s parents while Jonathan Groff is set to play Woodstock organizer Michael Lang. Hirsch will play a recently returned Vietnam vet, Eugene Levy is set to play Yasgur, and Schreiber is in talks to play a transvestite named Vilma.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan is set to play a closeted married man having an affair with Tiber, while Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan play a hippie couple attending the concert. Dan Fogler is set play a local theater troupe head and Mamie Gummer is set to play Lang’s assistant.
