Woodstock Anniversary Sparks Release of Music Films
Bob Strauss - Los Angeles Daily News
Aug 10, 2009
LOS ANGELES -- In honor of the 40th anniversary of the greatest rock festival of all time ... Vanessa Hudgens has a new movie!
But don't despair, all you graying and balding members of the Woodstock generation. Decent rock-music movies haven't been totally replaced by plastic box office juggernauts spotlighting those Miley Montana girls.
Friday sees the theatrical release of "It Might Get Loud," a fascinating inquiry into the art of electric guitar-playing with six-string superstars Jimmy Page, Jack White and U2's The Edge.
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock," a look at the epochal event through one individual's eyes, hits theaters at the end of the month.
And even "Bandslam," Friday's release starring "High School Musical" headliner Hudgens, isn't the "American Idol"-inspired pop puerility you might expect. Sure, it's about teenagers rehearsing for a talent contest, but the movie is infused with love for David Bowie, seminal punk rock and distinctive music making.
"I'm a musician and I've played in a lot of bands and was raised by two musicians," said "Bandslam" director Todd Graff.
"I like to think I'm pretty well-versed in rock, and I didn't want to compromise what happened musically in the movie.
"Amazingly enough, the studio let me go for it."
If the letters AARP mean as much to you now as LSD did back in the day, you still may want to skip "Bandslam."
Lucky for you, though, Los Angeles has even more celluloid music treasures available this month: The second annual Downtown Film Festival (www.dffla.com), which runs from Wednesday through Aug. 22, is spotlighting a series of music documentaries at the Grammy Museum. Spike Lee's film of the acclaimed musical "Passing Strange" is the opening night feature and the closing night gala is the recently rediscovered "Jackson 5 in Africa," filmed in 1974.
"We're not interested in films about engineered high school bands made up of movie stars," festival director Greg Ptacek said.
"We take filmmaking very seriously -- which doesn't mean that all the films are serious, but they've passed a certain threshold in terms of quality and personal vision.
"They're all guided by a creative muse that sometimes doesn't get translated into musical films that are made by committee from Hollywood studios."
In other words, the cultural world is not coming to an end -- even if the big music movie moneymakers are processed pablum aimed at 'tween girls.
And we'll try not to emphasize (too much) that cinema about the sound that changed the world peaked the year after the epochal New York festival, with the Oscar-winning documentary "Woodstock" and its dark twin "Gimme Shelter," about the violent Altamont concert that killed the Woodstock dream less than four months after its power flowering.
"Look at the slender pickings that have come along in the 40 years since," said "Woodstock" director Michael Wadleigh, whose groundbreaking film has been reissued in lavishly packaged 40th anniversary DVD and Blu-ray editions. "You don't see epic films like 'Woodstock' that deal with epic subject matter."
Of course, a half-million hippies peacefully gathering for three days of music, drugs and nude swimming doesn't happen every generation. Plus, Wadleigh's camera crew captured peak performances by many of the greatest artists of the era -- including the soon never-to-be-seen-again Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
But the very creative spirit that made Woodstock such a signature event is likely the main reason why the movie remains so special.
"In the 1960s, the idea was to compete and be famous because you were original and creative," Wadleigh said. "People wanted to be famous, no question about it, and they wanted to make some money.
"But now, instead of becoming famous via originality, it's much more about taking something that's popular and really driving it into the ground -- perfecting it, glamming it, glitzing it, blinging it or whatever you want to say."
Music-loving filmmakers are still seeking out those pioneering artists, though, if "It Might Get Loud's" once-in-a-lifetime lineup is any indication.
"There are a lot of great guitar players who can't talk about it," said the documentary's director, Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth").
"Jimmy, Jack and Edge can, and they're not just guitar players.
I think they're searchers, they're on a path as artists."
Page, the versatile British bluesman whose seminal heavy metal group, Led Zeppelin, has arguably never been topped, acknowledged that he's inspired lots of both great and not-so-great imitators.
Genius occupational hazard, that; but the 65-year-old legend just doesn't get the appeal of a Jonas Brothers 3-D concert film.
"Things like that and Miley Cyrus are all about big production," the longtime stadium-filler shrugged. "I don't suppose you could even sneeze without it being scripted. That's something totally different than three honest guys with mutual respect and commitment to the guitar."
Though a comparative child at age 34, White Stripes innovator Jack White hopes that his and younger generations are still capable of appreciating films like "It Might Get Loud" and the music it celebrates.
"The line's getting blurred. This has been the decade of people being famous for being famous," White said. "And there are so many distractions all around. There's so much media for a young kid now to, almost, battle against to try to get to something soulful."
Still, White has thrived in that environment (and starred in some of the artiest music videos ever made). And James Schamus, who produced "Taking Woodstock" and adapted the script from Elliot Tiber's memoir, has a thoroughly positive musicological view of the MP3 generation's listening habits.
"Even with all the Twitter and Facebook and texting and all that stuff, there's still an access among younger folks right now to that flow of experience," Schamus said.
"With iPods and all, music remains a sharing medium. If people hear a song that they love, they want other people to share it. And that's what 'Taking Woodstock' is about in a way. It's about that sense of community that's created in that ambience."
Although his movie is very different from Wadleigh's documentary, "Taking" director Ang Lee applied a rigorous aesthetic of his own, especially to the musical aspects of the film. Famous songs from the festival -- and some that weren't even played there -- were carefully chosen to enhance the emotional content and rhythm of scenes, and a faraway filtering was applied to others, evoking the fact that Elliot, like most Woodstock attendees, never got close enough to the stage to properly hear and see what was going on.
Then there was the issue that dogs most movies -- and discussions -- about classic rock: How much was it really better than contemporary pop, and how much of that perception is filtered through baby boomers' deeply indulged, self-centered nostalgia?
"My part of the job is to keep a balance," Lee said. "People have a certain need for the nostalgia part, and you use that. I can't deny that that is one of the movie's major attractions. But they also have the need to follow a story, so I have to stress the advantage of doing both, and reduce the problem.
"There's no set formula, like 60 to 40 percent," Lee shrugged.
"It's just to use your heart and your best judgment."
Wow man, that's the old Woodstock spirit. But even Wadleigh, who proudly recalls his film being compared to Chaucer and Cubist art at the time, realizes that nostalgia for great music and movies isn't all it used to be.
"I want to move on," said Wadleigh, 69. "I go to live music a lot, and when talented young guys and young women come along, golly, I love it.
"I don't want to live in the past."
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