Author Topic: Ang Lee's new movie: Taking Woodstock  (Read 11212 times)

Offline Kd5000

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • Brokeback Got Me Good
  • *****
  • Posts: 910
Ang Lee's new movie: Taking Woodstock
« on: April 23, 2008, 07:36:08 am »
I saw someone had posted this article on IMDB.com.  I don't know how gay themed Elliot Tiber's 2007 book, "Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life."   Anybody read the book?  Sounds interesting.  How come no other A-list directors are doing gay themed projects. Sean Penn is the exception with his film "MILK," about the late Harvey Milk?

ANG LEE, FOCUS TREK TO 'WOODSTOCK'

By Gregg Goldstein
April 22, 2008


NEW YORK -- Ang Lee is again teaming with Focus Features CEO James Schamus to direct the gay-themed Woodstock memoir "Taking Woodstock."

Focus will produce and Schamus will adapt Elliot Tiber's 2007 book, "Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life." It centers on the colorful life of a Greenwich Village-based interior designer and part-time Catskills hotel manager who headed the Bethel, N.Y., Chamber of Commerce. He issued the permit for the legendary 1969 concert on his neighbor Max Yasgur's farm.

Lee and Schamus' most recent collaboration was Focus' Chinese-language drama "Lust, Caution," which earned $66 million worldwide. The writing-directing pair had their breakthrough indie hit with the gay-themed comedy "The Wedding Banquet" in 1993, and Lee directed Focus' biggest hit, the gay Western "Brokeback Mountain," in 2005.

There have been several Woodstock docus but few narrative films touching on the music festival, one of the few being Tony Goldwyn's "A Walk on the Moon."

Tiber wrote his Square One Publishers memoir with Tom Monte.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i70aa3109f659b5ab635a93f59065cd26
« Last Edit: June 26, 2008, 04:51:33 am by Elle »

Offline MaineWriter

  • Bettermost Supporter!
  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 14,042
  • Stay the course...
    • Bristlecone Pine Press
Here's a review about the book:

From Publishers Weekly
A humble motel owner and his parents become the heroes in carrying off the momentous 1969 Woodstock rock concert in Tiber's occasionally improbable yet thoroughly entertaining tale. Tiber, né Teichberg of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, put on hold his personal ambition in the mid-1950s as an artist to help his aging Old World Jewish parents run their ramshackle resort motel in White Lake, deep in the Catskill Mountains. Hounded by the guilt that he can't live up to his parents' standards and driven by his own covert homosexuality, Tiber pokes fun at what he calls the Teichberg Curse, a scourge that won't allow the family to escape financial ruin. As head of the Chamber of Commerce in his small town, and possessed of the yearly permit to hold summer music concerts, Tiber gets wind of rock concert promoter Michael Lang's need for a venue to hold the Woodstock festival. A month of frenzied preparations ensues as Max Yasgur's farm is secured, the anticipated numbers swell, and tensions grow in the town. Yet the planning of the concert makes up only one part of Tiber's very human story, which includes affecting side chapters on brushes with artists (Mark Rothko, Robert Mapplethorpe) and standing defiant when the cops raided the West Village gay bar Stonewall.
Taming Groomzilla<-- support equality for same-sex marriage in Maine by clicking this link!

Offline MaineWriter

  • Bettermost Supporter!
  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 14,042
  • Stay the course...
    • Bristlecone Pine Press
They have an excerpt of the first chapter at amazon.com and I just read it. It's funny, looks like it could be a funny book.

L
Taming Groomzilla<-- support equality for same-sex marriage in Maine by clicking this link!

Offline Kd5000

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • Brokeback Got Me Good
  • *****
  • Posts: 910
Lee must have some interest in that time period. THE ICE STORM which was adapted from a book set in 1973, BBM which started in 1963 and now a film set during the time of Woodstock. It doesn't bother me as I like movies set in the late sixties or the early 1970's.  THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, I'm surprised Lee didn't take project up. 

Offline Brown Eyes

  • BetterMost Supporter!
  • BetterMost Moderator
  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 10,377
Re: Ang Lee to make Woodstock/Stonewall film
« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2008, 10:24:04 pm »

Thanks for posting this info. :)  Very interesting. :)

the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie

Offline Artiste

  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • ********
  • Posts: 15,998
Re: Ang Lee to make Woodstock/Stonewall film
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2008, 10:27:38 pm »
Is this for real ?

Offline Lynne

  • BetterMost Supporter
  • BetterMost Moderator
  • BetterMost 5000+ Posts Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 9,291
  • "The world's always ending." --Ianto Jones
    • Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts
Re: Ang Lee to make Woodstock/Stonewall film
« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2008, 10:57:09 pm »
This is excellent news!  I am always excited to have more Ang Lee projects to look forward to.

Lynne
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline optom3

  • BetterMost 1000+ Posts Club
  • ******
  • Posts: 4,638
Re: Ang Lee to make Woodstock/Stonewall film
« Reply #7 on: May 15, 2008, 11:57:06 pm »
This is excellent news!  I am always excited to have more Ang Lee projects to look forward to.

Lynne

Same here. I have always been fascinated by Woodstock.I have watched so much footage of it, and quasi documentaries,as well .To have Ang Lee tackle it and bring it to film.that really would be a treat.
I find that whole period fascinating,Haight Ashbury,woodstock.hippies,music,mystic religions,the whole nine yards.I would have loved to have been in my teens or twenties at that time.

Offline Artiste

  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • ********
  • Posts: 15,998
Re: Ang Lee to make Woodstock/Stonewall film
« Reply #8 on: May 16, 2008, 10:54:39 am »
When is this to be made ?

Offline oilgun

  • BetterMost 1000+ Posts Club
  • ******
  • Posts: 3,564
Re: Ang Lee's new movie: Taking Woodstock
« Reply #9 on: May 18, 2009, 12:18:05 pm »
The Time Out London Review of the film:

Taking Woodstock (2009)
Director: Ang Lee
 
Author: Geoff Andrew 2009-05-16 10:42:18
Time Out Online Cannes Film Festival 2009

Undoubtedly one of Ang Lee's lighter films, 'Taking Woodstock' is also one of his better ones, and a welcome return to form after the ambitious but deeply flawed 'Lust, Caution'. Based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, it finds the director working once again with his long-term collaborator James Schamus, whose script boasts enough funny one-liners to keep one smiling throughout and, at least in the case of this writer, to laugh out loud at regular intervals.

Set in the Catskills, it centres on Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin), a modestly arty, slightly geeky would-be painter who is also head of the local Chamber of Commerce and an overly dutiful son to Sonia (Imelda Staunton in often hilariously bellicose Jewish-mother mode) and the downtrodden and ailing Jake (Henry Goodman); their run-down (or ill-run) motel Elliot is trying to help keep afloat even as he strives to organise a small arts festival for the ultra-conservative locals. Suddenly, he learns that the planned Woodstock rock festival can no longer be held at a nearby village. Elliot makes his move, having no idea of how many tickets will be on sale, let alone of how his neighbours might react to the prospect of an influx of hippies.
[...]
Continues...
http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/87174/taking-woodstock.html