Our Man In D.C.: 'The Nation' Views 'Taking Woodstock'

Washingtonians were privileged Wednesday night to view a free advanced screening of the new Ang Lee film "Taking Woodstock" hosted by The Nation. Given the film's subject and the entity responsible for the promotion of this event, its safe to say that the audience which nearly filled the theatrer was the kind of people who ponder Woodstock with a whiff of mysticism. Through that misty veil of peace, love, and music, however, lies confusion and discord as to why the hell we're still talking about those three days in the August of 1969.

In a Q&A discussion that followed the film with Pete Fornatale, author of Back to the Garden, a confrontation between the author and a member of the audience erupted as to whether Woodstock was a political event. The movie-goer, who has probably spent a long time intellectualizing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," gave a long winded articulation that Woodstock represented a kind of "instinctual revolution" against the political drift of the country carried out through expression and sensual indulgence.

Fornatale was having none of it. Citing the incident where Pete Townsend cracked the activist Abbie Hoffman over the back with his Gibson SG for giving an impromptu address from the stage, he argued that Woodstock, if anything, was an attempt at something pure and free from the corruption that comes from an association with venal old politics.

Another aging hippie in the crowd waxed nostalgic about Woodstock being the first time that he felt he didn't belong to a subversive subculture but was, rather, a part of the new cultural paradigm that was growing out of the 60's.

This screening, it turns out, was likely the only free thing he has attended since Woodstock.

I was left wondering if these men had seen the same movie I had. The film doesn't depict Woodstock as some defining moment of history—but rather as the manic, disorganized freakshow that it was, where the activists organize, the business men haggle, the users use, and the drag queens pack heat. Yet somehow, and the film captures this beautifully, the confluence of all these people on that farm at that time produced a party like no other, featuring some of the most legendary musicians of all time.

Thankfully Mr. Fornatale had to catch a flight about 15 minutes into the Q&A, cutting it short before the subject became overwrought—which, on the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival, is by far the greatest threat to the legacy of a show at which, despite mud, rain and a shortage of porta-loos, 500,000 people managed to have the time of their lives.