Last night, the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock began with the screening of Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music (The Director’s Cut) at Scotiabank Theatre.
The actual festival may have been a colossal money loss, but Michael Wadleigh‘s finely-made documentary certainly turned it into a real cash cow over the years, as with each new technological format change comes a new “collectors edition.”
The newly-titled director’s cut DVD is a Blue-ray version with added performance footage in the extras that includes Creedance Clearwater Revival and Grateful Dead. Makes you wonder what Wadleigh was thinking in the editing room when he cut these two seminal 60s bands in favour of groups like the Sha Na Nas.
This re-release is a prelude to the Woodstock revival machine kicking into high gear this August when Ang Lee opens his historic dramatization Taking Woodstock.
Check the trailer to judge for yourself, by my first impression isn’t a positive one. Maybe Eugene Levy will save the film, playing Max “Angel of Woodstock” Yasgur, the upstate New York farmer who opened his land to the masses.
America’s ongoing obsession with this 60s landmark had me wishing there was a definitive Canadian Woodstock, a concert gathering we could point to as symbolic of the era.
It might not have the same pedigree but a recent DVD release called John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band: Live in Toronto ’69 could be as close as it gets.
This DVD is a shortened version of the original D.A. Pennebaker film called Sweet Toronto, a documentary of the one-day Rock and Roll Revival festival held at Varsity Stadium in September ’69.
The film opens with the Lennons being escorted from the airport by a friendly Canadian motorcycle gang called the Vagabonds, but beyond that we don’t get to see much of late-60s Toronto.
If you check the original handbill, you’ll notice Lennon and his makeshift band, which included Eric Clapton, weren’t even listed. The Doors were the headliners and Lennon, who decided to play the show the night before, a surprise late-entry.
Pennebaker, who made the masterful Bob Dylan tour diary Don’t Look Back, captures lightning in a bottle in this film, but if only he’d indulged to the lengths Wadleigh would go – giving us more of the context, the people, the city, the atmosphere. Wadleigh made his film more about the culture surrounding the event rather than strictly the performances, which is why Woodstock is a subject of continuing re-examination (not to mention profit), while Pennebaker’s film remains an archival curiosity.
Check out details of the Rock and Roll Revival at this Beatles fansite.[rssbreak]
