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Coming Soon wrote:Focus Features will begin production late this month on Taking Woodstock, written by James Schamus and to be directed by Ang Lee.

The film is an adaptation of the memoir of Elliot Tiber, who played a role in helping the historic 1969 music fest unfold on his neighbor's farm.

Demetri Martin ("The Daily Show with Jon Stewart") had already been set to play Tiber, an aspiring interior designer in Greenwich Village obliged to run the family business, a Catskills motel. In summer 1969, he found himself 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.

Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman will play Tiber's parents, and Jonathan Groff will play Woodstock organizer Michael Lang; Emile Hirsch will play a recently returned Vietnam vet, Eugene Levy will play Yasgur, and Liev Schreiber (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) is in talks to play a transvestite named Vilma.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen) is set as a closeted married man having an affair with Tiber, while Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan play a hippie couple attending the concert. Dan Fogler will play a local theater troupe head, and Mamie Gummer will play Lang's assistant.

Fiery Angel wrote:Does anyone know why this didn't open this past weekend on the actual 40th anniversary, instead of next week?

tavernier wrote:So how about not opening it at all?

cdnchris wrote:"Yeah, hippies and terrorists are the same thing."

oldsheperd wrote:I don't know what is so great about Woodstock. I once went to a Santana concert and stood in a muddy field surrounded by a bunch of drunk and stoned people. It wasn't some amazing experience.
Ugh! The whole Summer of Love/Woodstock/Hippie myth is the most overblown, over-rated thing ever.
Like I told my Pops: "I'll take Altamont over Woodstock anyday!"
At least Altamont was had all the gloss and fake peace garbage stripped away from it and showed what most hippies for what they truly were: a bunch of drugged-out, over-sexed, lazy, classless, self-obssessed trust fund kids.
I don't want to cast too many aspersions though.

oldsheperd wrote:I'm only miserable when I see a pachuli-scented hippie. To quote Patton Oswalt pachuli smells like "dirt that's been f#cked by a hobo."
And to quote Stiv Bators, "I want to punch the next hippie I see."
Hippies turned on, tuned in and dropped out in the 60s then turned on, tuned in and voted for Reagan and for the past 20 years I've been oversaturated with how great the hippies were and how they changed America. They didn't do shite.
I think my Dad was the only one who voted for Carter in 1980 and he wasn't a hippie.

Fiery Angel wrote:I thought you didn't like Mamet's dialogue!