Last weekend’s visit to the original Bethel, N.Y. site of the Woodstock Music & Arts Fair led me to think about buying the 245-minute director’s cut DVD of Michael Wadleigh‘s Woodstock. This led me to Warner Home Video’s Bluray version of this cut, which will come out on June 9th. This same cut will open Roger Ebert‘s Overlooked Film Festival on 4.22.
So between the possible Cannes showing of Ang Lee‘s Taking Woodstock next month, the Woodstock Blu-ray on June 9th, and the commercial release of Lee’s film on August 14th, the coming summer will definitely have a persistent Woodstock-nostalgia vibe.
Not to mention Michelle Esrick‘s Saint Misbehavin’, a doc about Woodstock star and onetime Merry Prankster Hugh Romney (a.k.a., Wavy Gravy) that….uhh, won’t be coming out this summer. The doc has played at the recent South by Southwest and the Full Frame Film Festival, but Ira Deutchman, who’s handling distribution, is wondering about competition from Lee’s film and thinking about waiting for the fall.
It seems to me that most people will be in the mood this summer to re-experience (or freshly experience) the old 1969 hippie-tribal vibe, but come Labor Day it’ll be on to other moods and discoveries.