Ang Lee’s ’60s hippie rock-concert comedy — yes, a full-on comedy* — “Taking Woodstock” makes its world debut on Saturday, May 16 at the Cannes Film Festival.
Some new photos are out there which give us our first photo look at Eugene Levy who plays Max Yasgur, best known as the owner of the dairy farm where Woodstock took place (next to him is star of the picture, comedian Demetri Martin).
The Cannes page for the film has some new photos and some deeper details and reminds us that Danny Elfman is composing the music (which we had noted awhile ago, but had honestly forgotten). Some of the new photos aren’t great or of the highest quality, but hey, they’re something.
Here’s the largest and most official synopsis we’ve seen so far.
“It’s 1969, and Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin), a down-on-his-luck interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has to move back upstate to help his parents run their dilapidated Catskills motel, the El Monaco. The bank is about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn’t paid the insurance; and Elliot is still figuring how to come out to his parents. When Elliot hears that a neighboring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers, thinking he could drum up some much needed business for the motel. Three weeks later, half a million people are on their way to his neighbor’s farm in White Lake, NY, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and popular culture, forever.
“Taking Woodstock” opens August 14, 2009 in limited release via Focus Features. Here’s the tie-dye heavy poster and (somewhat goofy-looking) trailer if you haven’t seen them already. *PS, those that are wondering if the film is indeed a comedy, we saw at least two other magazine profiles where Lee stated it as such in no unspecific terms, but forgot to hold onto them or grab quotes.
