With the 40th anniversary of Woodstock right upon, us there is currently a great deal of looking back in time and remembering the culturally defining event that was the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Amidst the emphasis on the center of the festival itself comes a subtle and unique comedy that takes a deeper look into how the festival came to be and how it changed the lives of the people who were affected by it. Based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, a key player in the festival’s evolution, Taking Woodstock tells the story of one young man on the brink of a great change in his life and the journey he takes with his family as the one of the most significant events of our time takes over the place where they live. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with a few other bay area journalists and listen to some inside perspectives on how this film came to be.
Stand-up comedian Demetri Martin makes his feature starring debut as Elliot Tiber in this film and spoke with us a little bit about his background, his development of a character and the unfamiliar process that it was to him, and some of the parallels between the youth movement portrayed in the film and the changes occurring today.
When you see this film it reminds us of a time of youthful recklessness and whimsical behavior. What in your life would you describe as reckless and whimsical?
“Well, when I was in 5th grade I was really into break dancing. That was my first kind of passion in a weird way,” said Demetri Martin. “Then I got into skateboarding starting in sixth grade and I built half pipes for that in my backyard. That was a little more reckless than whimsical. I just loved, I still like skateboarding. I just love any activity that you’re just passionate about and it doesn’t really have a discernable goal or endpoint. It was just like a fun way to apply yourself and learn how to do something better and better hopefully. Those are the two things that I was really into. Then I started doing stand-up when I was 24, years later, again I don’t know how reckless it was. I guess in answering your question I’m realizing that I’m not a very reckless person because that’s really the closest I can get to it. I have a lot of food allergies and I don’t do drugs and stuff because I’m probably genuinely afraid that I’d have an allergic reaction to something like I’m afraid to try too many new substances or anything so I don’t end up being that reckless.”
You spent a week with Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton to try to form a little family. How important was that week and how did you get into forming that bond?
“That was during rehearsals where we were in our production offices not far from where we were shooting in upstate New York,” said Martin. “Before I met them I thought, ‘Oh wow, these are going to be really experienced actors here and I’m not, at all, so I hope I don’t mess up too many scenes.’ Those apprehensions aside, just meeting them, I was immediately put at ease because both of them were very warm and seemed excited to be working on the film. We talked about our characters quite a bit.
“Talking to each of them alone, it was interesting because Henry had a lot of ideas about his character and the back story between the father and son, and then Imelda had a bunch of ideas about how she would play the mom. There was no big focused effort to be like ‘How are we gonna be this family?’ as much as we were trying to understand the relationships, just individually. Then together it pretty much just came to life.”
In your development of your character how much did you concentrate on what his spiritual beliefs were and did you bring any of your own beliefs into that character and did that play a part in the character becoming ok with himself as a person?
“I read Elliot’s book and… he alternates between telling the story of Woodstock coming together and his family during those three weeks leading up to and into the festival, and… his personal journey into figuring out his sexuality and being closeted and being in New York at that time and then coming out and being afraid that his parents would find out,” Martin said. “Where spirituality really came into the story was almost in the social context where they were located. There was a pretty large degree of anti-Semitism I think in that community at least where they lived specifically. I don’t know how comfortable they were, even as Jewish as the Catskills is known to be and especially was in its heyday. At the same time I think there were people locally who just were kind of anti-Semitic. So when I saw the script and kind of the way Ang and James put this thing together, it seemed like spirituality was something that might have been a liability for Elliot’s family in that social context in a similar way that his sexuality might have been. But it wasn’t a particularly spiritual story or anything. It was just more like as parts of this guy’s identity, like what made him feel like an outsider, and I think those were two things that did.”
Did you do any specific preparation or research to play a Jewish character or more specifically a character whose parents, or at least whose mother has a survivor mentality (whether or not she came here before the war)?
“You know it’s kind of funny because I started doing stand-up in 1997 in New York, and have lived in New York for 13 years, and many times I have been in situations where I’m the only person who isn’t Jewish and often people think I am Jewish just because comedy has a pretty rich legacy with its relationship with Judaism or at least with Jewish people. I always felt like a guest amongst my Jewish friends.
“I’m Greek (Greek/American) and for Greek people and Jewish people there’s one interesting similarity where the ethnicity and the religion are kind of fused, if you’re American. Most Greek people end up being Greek Orthodox, not all of them, but a lot of them. If you’re Greek living in a town then you probably go to that church like all the Greek people go to that place. If you’re Jewish living in a town, especially where there aren’t a lot of Jewish people, then you go to that temple. How that relates specifically to Elliot, I don’t know, but in terms of Jewish culture, you feel like you’re in this little pocket and your ethnicity and your beliefs are kind of fused together.”
This is your starring feature debut. How much attention was given and/or discussion was had about that fact that your protagonist was gay and not explicitly comic?
“It was cool to get cast in something that didn’t have to do with what I usually do,” said Martin. “As far as playing a gay character, I don’t know, it’s like when they say someone’s an artist or a black artist or a singer or a gay singer sometimes it seems like the distinction might not be necessary. That they could just be considered an artist or a singer or a person so that the task is more to just try to understand how a person can be three dimensional and as realistic as possible. And if a person’s sexuality is one of the parts or one of the dimensions of that person than just to try to portray that as accurately as possible. But it’s kind of a great way just to think about another person in as much as like, ‘Ok this isn’t me so how does this person go together like, this is different from me.’ I guess it makes you more compassionate if you can really try to think about how another person thinks and feels. Pretty tricky.”
Were you interested in the 1960s and the counter culture before the film?
“Yeah I love the 60s. I love the Beatles so that’s probably my entry point into the 60s. I actually saw a cool documentary called ‘Berkeley in the 60s’ and read a book by the same or a similar name, but learning about just what happened at Berkeley at that time I thought was really cool,” Martin said. Recalling George Harrison’s somewhat famous trip to San Francisco around the time of the “Summer of Love” and his disappointment in it really just being a lot of kids who were like, “Eh screw it, it’s a chance to take drugs and just go hang out,” Martin says, “I thought that was so funny because when you think about some of your heroes and an idealized version of a time that you wish you were a part of, you forget that people are just people and there’s probably some people who were completely what you hoped they would be and then some just like, ‘Oh, it’s a fad. I’ll just have long hair and it’s an excuse for me not to get a job…’ But the idea, I guess the best of 60s culture, was always something that attracted me.”
How do you think the films story and the character of Elliot are relevant to today’s culture, particularly our youth? Do you see any parallel with what went on back then to what’s going on right now?
“Yeah, I’d like to think there’s a parallel,” said Martin. “Emile [Hirsch] and I talked about that a bunch, especially in our first wave of press when we were in Cannes. I guess an easy thing to look to would be the election, President Obama’s election to office. It seems like the idea of hope, especially on the posters and everything, it’s right out there, the word hope. But I like the idea of a generation mobilizing and going out to the polls and stuff.
“I think one impediment is the existence of cell phones and ipods and personal entertainment devices. If you think of 1969 those things just didn’t exist so if you went somewhere you were just there. You could be in a room and just be totally present, like when my phone vibrates even if I don’t look at it, it just takes me out for a moment; but back then you just don’t have that, you just go somewhere and then you’re committed. It’s easier to commit to being present. So I think that’s probably the biggest challenge today for our generation, no matter what age people are today, even [with] older people I’m sure, it’s kind of seeped in to our culture and how we spend time with people.
“But when I think of the younger generation… the fact that there are a lot of bands and people expressing themselves and people trying to make things and they care about the environment; it seems like the more people care about something that’s larger than themselves, the more it has resonance to that time. Whereas now there’s a lot of self-promotion and selling oneself and you know, ‘tweeting,’ and updating your myspace and facebook, and your photos, and my preferences, my favorites, my this, you know, my my my my, me me me me, all that kind of stuff. You just don’t get that feeling, from what I saw and the research that I did, that people were like that so much. I’m sure there were some, but back then you’d be like, ‘Gees, what a jerk, you’re really promoting yourself man, settle down,’ and now it’s just like allowed and condoned and encouraged. It’s really weird. It’s different.”
Internationally renowned and Academy Award winning director Ang Lee also gave some insights into his inspirations behind making this film. Producer, screenwriter, and CEO of Focus Features, James Schamus too gave his memories of the time period surrounding Woodstock and the impact it had on his involvement in the film. Here are some of the questions we asked them together and the responses we received:
The film is about Woodstock but it’s not really set in Woodstock…
“Woodstock was not in Woodstock, that’s what the whole movie is about,” James Schamus and Ang Lee laugh and agree.
What were your thoughts in making the film with the festival being on the periphery and yet also in the middle of it and was that something you had planned on from day one?
“Pretty much from day one,” said Lee. “Over the years, I think Woodstock means so much more than a stage, even than music. I think the goer is probably more interesting to me than a singer. [I think the heart of Woodstock was how they held each other’s hand and made it happen.] That innocence, that hope, that love is precious, and it’s very hard to portray that. It’s something so humongous and vague and so symbolic. So I was very thankful when I ran into this story … It made it manageable through this little family drama. I had a real taste of what Woodstock is and really soak in the spirit.”
Schamus adds, “We mediate our cultural memories of Woodstock really through the music and the documentary which is kind of bizarre because you’re right at that stage, the center of the universe as Micheal Lang called it; but really the story always is about that number 500,000, that guy at the periphery; but he is the center and everybody is the center of the universe. That was the reality. They were there. That was Woodstock.”
After the film did you talk to the real Elliot and what was his response to the film version?
“Before, during, and after,” Schamus said. “I was full of anxiety,” said Lee, “We gave him a screening and he watched the movie all by himself. At the ending I went in and he just came out of the bathroom to try to get more tissues. I think he cried his eyes out. The first thing he said to me was ‘I saw my mother, I just spent time again with her. And I saw my father too,’ and then he went on from there. It was a very personal and intimate story.”
This entire story is about a transformation that occurs in the character of Elliot. What things about Woodstock, such as the spirit and energy, played into people’s ability to transform themselves?
“Finding freedom,” said Lee. “I think Woodstock, when you look at it, so many kids, they represent half of the population in America which is leading the free world. The kids leave their parents, history turns the page, they go away, like the father said, ‘They don’t even know where they’re going, but they’re gone and you’re one of them’ so I think that’s how the personal story connects with the big party… I think that family’s drama and what happened to Elliot personally is a miniature of the bigger picture: Woodstock.”
Schamus adds, “Underneath all the comedy in this movie are emotions, and meditations on what it means for people to transform themselves.”
You have such a diverse body of work with your film. How do you connect with each movie since they’re so different? Is it something going on in the world or is it something relevant in your personal life?
“It’s more like I feel I am connected with a subject matter, I wonder why, then I make a movie and try to find out… That’s the way I learn about the world and about myself,” said Lee. “I don’t find a way to connect, it’s connected to begin with, and it’s a mystery like religion and I have faith in it, I’ve got a reaction, and something I’ve got to do about it. Then I express them and find a way to make them.”
How did you battle nostalgia and wrestle with presenting the event in its original context of the 60s now that we have all the more current documentaries that have done a lot to make it not seem like the great gold moment that it was?
“We made a celebratory and affirmative, a positive and not a critical, image of that trip” of the kids hitting the road and heading into the country together, said Schamus. “I really felt as if it was important to bring a positive voice and not a cynical voice to that moment because part of what that moment was expressing… was that moment of [political] critique too. It incorporated that. You don’t always have to be in that negative zone. In a way what was weird to us was going back to Woodstock and preserving what was so miraculous and amazing about it and really being honest at the same time and not cynical. Here’s a fact, Bethel, New York for that weekend was the third largest city in New York and yet there wasn’t a single reported instance of violence the whole weekend.”
Regarding the Emile Hirsch character, it’s a small part but he represents something else from the 60s. He comes from a much darker and much more damaged place than the rest of the kids. How important was that character to the story?
“I think you cannot talk about that year without portraying a character like that,” said Lee. “I think that side of the story is very important: the Vietnam Veterans. They’re the same age as the kids going to the party but are traumatized. They feel like outsiders. Very much like Elliot himself but different reasons. He’s gay and he’s an artist so society doesn’t treat him that well. So they lost their souls, they couldn’t find peace. To me it’s very moving to see him [Hirsch] get somewhat of a cure, an embrace, and company from the hippies, the concertgoers, and the big happening. I think he should be included.”
What did you ultimately want to say about the counter culture and youth back in the late 60s?
Rather than making the film as a lesson for kids today about “how to change and put something together,” Schamus said, “I think in a way the film is almost a gift to us from a younger generation that really has started making changes” (referring to the recent election). “There is a lesson from Woodstock but it’s a lesson that we were able to articulate only because young people today created that context. The lesson really is that it’s one thing to vote but it’s also something to connect your own happiness and your own joy to the possibility of change without cynicism. In a way, what we really want to get across is you have to also try to be happy because if you aren’t making that effort than the rest of the efforts aren’t going to work anyhow.”
“The party’s not over, for me,” said Lee. “The counter culture actually planted a lot of seeds for today’s culture and we’re actually still developing. I don’t know how long it’s going to be but we’re still going down that path.”
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 am
I had no intention of going to this movie, that is until I read this review. The review was so well done that it invited me to see a movie that I would normally not be interested in seeing. I am now looking forward to going to it with more insight than I ever have had when going to movie that I had not been previously interested in seeing. The questions that he asked were ones that I was so interested in knowing the answers to, and that makes it much more interesting. Jeremy did an excellent job of reviewing this movie and I look forward to reading his future reviews! Thank you for the great insight!
August 25th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Thank you so much Janet. With the help of some questions from other journalists in the area I believe we had a very good and, as you said, insightful look into this upcoming movie. I am glad to hear you’re looking forward to checking it out. I thoroughly enjoyed the film and believe you will too.