Ang Lee Threatens Fowl Play in Taking Woodstock

Posted by Rob Hunter (rob@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 7, 2008

Director Ang Lee You have to give Ang Lee credit for being a wily and unpredictable filmmaker. He’s moved somewhat seamlessly from low-budget dramedy (The Wedding Banquet) to classic period piece (Sense and Sensibility) to infidelity drama (The Ice Storm) to ignored western (Ride With the Devil) to much maligned comic book film (Hulk) to gay love story (Brokeback Mountain) to a dirty Asian spy thriller (Lust, Caution.) Now it appears Lee’s making another genre jump with the new film Taking Woodstock.

Taking Woodstock centers on a kidnapping gone awry, and will be told with a mix of live action and animation. Per Variety, the story follows a group of children who must put aside their petty differences and join forces to recover a kidnapped bird. The tale alternates between action and relationship drama as the kids deal with issues such as unrequited ginger love, masochistic tendencies, amateur psychiatry, and hair loss as a result of chemotherapy. The children, the bird, and a beagle airplane pilot will be presented with CGI reminiscent of the recent Garfield films starring Bill Murray, while the other characters and settings will be filmed with live actors. Shooting begins this month with Emile Hirsch as Charlie, Eugene Levy as the bird, Liev Shreiber as the beagle, The Daily Show’s Demitri Martin as the Little Red Haired Girl, and Tim “James” Booth as all of the children’s teachers.

No more than a few words in the preceding paragraph are true, but I prefer them over the real plot for Taking Woodstock anyday. Based on a memoir by Elliot Tiber, the film follows his effort to organize the 1969 Woodstock festival on a farm in upstate New York.

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daniel herrera (DDOG)

I DONT GET IT

Dan

OH GOD, I seroiusly LOL'ed when I read the story.Some sick f**k is playing with my favorite comic strip, and I love it.The only reason I even ended up on this site is because the film is in production in my hometown of New Lebanon NY.

jason

good day, im addict of your film director ang lee, brokeback mountain, crouching tiger and hidden dragon and lust caution, those movies are really great and you have a classic touch i really love it, i hope you remake the movie about â€œmarkovaâ€ the comfort gay,The movie centers on the life of Markova a homosexual. His struggles during his younger years with his brother who canâ€™t accept him. The sexual abuse he experienced during the second world war and the dilemma of being alone during his old age.
The movie is both funny and touching. It also show the horror of war.
i hope you remake that movie in future, im willing to undergo a audition for casting call i hope im the markova coz i want to be famous in hollywood or in the world,

danny bloom

Friday, September 26, 2008
Ang Lee is "Taking Woodstock", but how did this movie come to him?

Ang Lee is "Taking Woodstock", but how did this
movie wind up in his hands?

by Dan Bloom

TAIWAN -- Taiwan-born film director and Oscar winner Ang Lee is
tackling a new movie project, a comedy this
time, about America's famous Woodstock music festival in 1969. Titled
"Taking Woodstock", and adapted by longtime Lee collaborator James
Schamus, the movie stems from a book of the same name by U.S. writer
Elliot Tiber.

Tiber's memoir, co-written with Tom Monte, was published with in 2007
and subtitled "A True Story
of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life".

It's set for a premiere in New York on June 26, 2009,
just in time for the 40th anniversary of the famous Woodstock concert .

What does the title of the book, and the movie mean? Inquiring minds
on both sides of the Pacific want to know, and one industry insider
told what he knows to this reporter.

"Taking Woodstock'" means two
things: Taking stock of your life and, in a sense, control of your
destiny -- and also taking the experience of Woodstock, and what that
cultural event meant, with you for the rest of your life, according to
the industry insider. A marketing maven at the publishing house in New
York came up with the phrase, he added.

How did a book that few people had even heard about wind up in Ang
Lee's hands? Was it fate, karma, serendipity?

"It might sound like something out of a Hollywood drugstore story
where the pretty girl is 'discovered' by a savvy scout, but it really
happened this
way," says one of the few people who knows about the genesis of the
book and the movie. "Eliot Tiber was scheduled to appear on a TV show
in San Francisco in 2007 to promote the book, and while he was waiting
in the green room to go on the show, Ang Lee sat down beside him, by
complete chance. Lee was also scheduled to appear on the same show to
promote his current film at the time, 'Lust, Caution'. Tiber, who had
never
met Lee before but knew his name, struck up a conversation with the
Taiwan-born helmer and then spent the next thirty minutes or so
chatting about his book. Lee had asked what the book was about, so
Tiber told him."

"Later, when Lee went on the show, the host asked him where he usually
gets his ideas for his movies, and Lee said that he really doesn't go
looking for stories, that they seem to come to him. And with that he
turned to Tiber, who was sitting across from him on the TV set, and
gave him a wink," the insider told this reporter.

"Fast forward to nine months later ... Lee finally had read the book,
loved it, and felt there
was a very good movie there, so he headed to upstate New York to visit
the farm where Woodstock took place in 1969. That's the inside story
in a nutshell: fate, karma, destiny," the insider added.

------
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dan Bloom is a columnist for RUSHPRNEWS, based in
Taiwan. He lives not far from Lee's hometown in southern Taiwan

faraimpresii

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Ang Lee Threatens Fowl Play in Taking Woodstock

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