Original subtitles

MICHAEL WADLEIGH: It was a pretty simple decision.

This was the best there was.

There was no competitor at all.

It had a quick-change lens here, a super ing�nue lens.

And of course, I had a favorite, a very short wide-angle lens

that I'd start up here, and in just two or three moves,

in two or three seconds, you could quickly get the zoom off,

rotate the wide angle around and get on and...

Some people's favorite shots at Woodstock

-were done with that wide-angle lens. -You'd remove the 5.9.

Because you could get right very, very close to the performers,

and it gave you a tremendous sense of depth and being there

right on the stage with them,

and, of course, then you had this magazine back here

that came off in a shot, you know.

Its liability was if you didn't very carefully get the loop right, it could jam.

And you couldn't really hear it run out effectively.

You lived in fear and dread

that actually you'd put the mag on, threaded it up,

and you were running, but of course, with Hendrix and all those loud acts,

you couldn't possibly hear whether in fact you had a jam.

Unfortunately, it was really not well-balanced.

Your shoulder is way back here, so the bulk of the weight was forward.

(CHUCKLING) So I used to be fairly strong.

But it taxed you like a mother to really hold it that long.

But you couldn't get the shots with the tripods.

It was absolutely impossible.

It has a footage counter here that never seemed to work,

never seemed to be dependable.

But this idea that you could very quickly take on and off the mag.

And then you see down here at the bottom,

this is where either an AC motor or a DC motor attach.

So it's a beautiful modular unit.

I mean, you can even say today, this is a great, great beautiful design.

BELL: Everybody had to use �clair cameras

so that we had absolutely interchangeable equipment.

Everybody had to have 1 10-volt motors.

And where do you find, like, a dozen 1 10-volt motors

in New York City for �clairs? And you don't. It's almost impossible.

We needed 50 different magazines so that we could change film,

raw stock, under the stage.

The reason for the electric motor was,

all the cameras had to run in sync or else it would never be editable.

We even looked for, I remember one of the last things on my list

was to try and find an electronic clock,

you know, that spinned it over by seconds.

It would be big. And we could ask every camera guy on stage to,

at the top of his roll, at least, take a shot of that,

so that we'd have some common syncing point.

We could not find anything that we could use.

So eventually, the whole postproduction became a mess of trying to sync it.

Well, then, of course, we had a lot of equipment problems.

Especially when the rain came along. I remember this.

The camera, when you put this up on your shoulder,

the motor hits you right in the shoulder.

And we had to wrap towels around the motor

because it got so bloody hot.

At one point the AC that was being supplied

was nearly twice the voltage,

so we thought, "Well, it's gonna melt the damn coils,

"and the cameras will go entirely."

-But I remember real pain. -Yeah. And shock.

And agony and shocks, of course.

You know, just from the cameras.

BELL: Here it is Tuesday, now.

The music is gonna start on Friday. There is one missing ingredient.

The raw stock.

(LAUGHING)

Michael is on the phone, it's Wednesday,

and he's saying, "Where the hell is the raw stock?"

And I said I called Kodak on Monday. We're buying it. Where was the money?

He had not been paid yet for 30 Days to Survival.

That was the only source of the funds.

Got the $15,000, put it in the bank. We now had $17,000, right?

Just almost enough to buy the raw stock at the time.

So I called him on Monday saying we were going to place a large order

of 7241, 7242 and 7255.

And I didn't know exactly what the quantity was.

I said, "Do you have it all in stock?"

"Yes, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry. We've got it all in stock.

"Come Wednesday morning."

Now I've got the money in the bank. I can actually write a check.

And I called them and I said I want umpteen rolls of this and that

and the other.

And like ten minutes later they call me back and they say,

"All we have are two boxes worth."

We need 25 boxes in order to...

We calculated, if we've got five cameras shooting

and they're shooting for twelve hours a day,

we are going to need a hell of a lot of raw stock.

But I had only access to two boxes in New York.

When you see those helicopters in the movie coming in with

Arlo Guthrie and the performers,

they're carrying our raw stock all they way through on a staggered basis

until Saturday noon.

They were shooting it so fast,

and the helicopters were coming in and everything.

I mean, it was all we could do to get it to the assistants

who were under the stage in the mud.

It was unreal.

BELL: We asked Michael Lang and John Roberts to build a lip

on the front of the stage.

So that Michael and the other guys could, with his right hand,

put an elbow on the stage, stand on the 4x8 plywood

and have an absolutely ideal, perfect angle for this,

and then Ieap on stage if it was necessary.

And the tripod conveyed none of the energy.

The tripod fixed you in a position.

The ability for Michael and the other guys to get up on stage.

I mean, the one... When you see it in the director's cut,

the one sequence with Bob Hite of Canned Heat

is one entire magazine, uncut with the 5.9 lens.

It is just so gorgeous and such an exemplary manifestation

of not only Michael's eye and his agility,

but the camera's ability to register...

I mean, when the guy comes up

and reaches into Bob Hite's package of cigarettes

and takes a cigarette out and puts it back in,

I mean, you know you're right there all the time.

-I mean, it was marvelous. -Yeah.

For filmmaking, the uncut shots are really just fabulous, I think,

because it conveys a sense of linear reality.

And then what Dale is saying, with the wide-angle lens

which increases the impression of how close you are to someone

and what you can see around you, it's really like being there on the stage.

And, of course, now, the cameramen don't really get that kind of intimacy often

or they have to wear black and stay out of the shots.

So, of course, many times you see all of us in the frame.

But that's the spirit of the event. What's the difference?

(SINGING LEAVIN' THIS TOWN)

Yeah!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

MAN: Ladies and gentlemen, Canned Heat!

MICHAEL LANG: The lineup was the lineup.

I think it was pretty much as it happened,

except it happened on steroids.

We wanted everybody we loved, and everybody that we found along the way

that we thought everybody else would love.

(AT THE HOP PLAYING)

JOCKO MARCELLINO: As we were making a little buzz, Hendrix came down to see us.

John Bonham came down to see us and Frank Zappa came down to see us.

Kornfeld and Lang were hanging out,

and they said, "We're doing Woodstock."

And I had been hearing about this.

I knew the lineup was getting big.

Sly was going to be on it. Hendrix was going to be on it.

And I said to the manager, "Yes, go find that guy and tell him yes."

MICHAEL CARABELLO: I think we had played a few colleges

and stuff like that. Outdoor things.

And there was this thing going on in Woodstock.

No big deal to us. It was way too far from San Francisco anyway.

Somebody had called. It might've been Michael Lang,

who was producing the Woodstock thing.

Says, "Hey, we need a favor.

"We need you to get somebody else on the bill. "

And in fact, we weren't actually going to do Woodstock.

We were in the middle of a tour, and the agent said,

"They're doing this festival,

"they're anticipating probably 50,000 people.

"Would you like to do it?"

And when we heard what they were offering,

we turned it down.

But Frank Barcelona, our agent, kept on at us,

'cause he said, "You've got to do it, 'cause they've added Janis,

"they've added Jimi, they've added The Who,

"they've added Airplane."

So, in the end, we did it. Thank God we did.

LANG: We wanted to make sure that nobody was excluded from this event.

It was planned to be an Aquarian exposition

and all that that sort of entails

which includes sort of a new wave dealing with people,

sort of a new openness.

INTERVIEWER: What is it the musicians have

that they can communicate so well to the kids?

LANG: Music!

INTERVIEWER: I mean, they've always had music.

Music has always been a major form of communication,

only now, the lyric and the type of music

is a little bit more involved in society than it was.

LANG: Probably someone I wanted more than anyone was Roy Rogers.

I wanted him to close the show with Happy Trails,

'cause we all grew up with Roy Rogers singing Happy Trails to us at night,

or Saturday mornings, as it were.

But his manager didn't think it was a great idea.

It's about what's happening now,

and if you listen to the lyric and you listen to the rhythm

and what's in the music,

then you'll know what's going on with the culture.

I gotta split on you.

Great, groovy. Thanks.

BELL: There was an incident where I was looking over an invoice

that I had received from Technicolor,

who was processing all of the opticals

that were coming out of the optical houses.

And I noticed this invoice,

and it said that they were making two prints of the negative.

I called Technicolor with a really dumb, naive question.

I said, "Where does the second print go?"

"We always send the second print to New York to Warner Bros.

"to have them get a look at what we're producing."

You know, what we're printing for their client.

I said, "Great. Okay, great."

Next call, "Bob, we got a problem."

We got on the phone with our attorney

and we physically, at that point,

shut down our editing for all intents and purposes.

We brought all of the negative into our offices

and hired a 24-hour security guard with a gun.

And Bob flew to New York to negotiate with these people.

Once we got it resolved that Technicolor had absolutely no right,

since we were the client of record,

to make another copy or to get it anywhere else,

everything smoothed out again,

and the negative went back to Ed Richards.

Ed Richards, the negative manager.

And we continued to put new material into the optical houses

to get it processed.

We were that rigid.

We were that determined to maintain the integrity of this film.

MAN 3: Can those of you in the back hear well?

Raise your hand, please. It's all right? Thank you.

LANG: There were some pretty interesting announcements.

There were lots of "Meet your sister," and "Meet your brother," or

"Get to the hospital, you're having a baby."

Those kinds of things.

CHIP MONCK ON PA: Helen Savage, please call your father

at the Motel Glory in Wood-Ridge.

By the time, I was appointed MC

at 7:00 in the morning by the tap on the shoulder by Mr. Lang,

I had a feeling that it was going to be mammoth.

The Daily News, in rather large headlines, still costing 10 cents,

"Traffic Uptight At Hippiefest."

Well, he was there. He was articulate.

And I had forgotten to book anybody, so...

You could actually hear my knees rattling together.

When I first started on my announcements,

it was a very uncomfortable feeling.

It got smoother and got easier because I was frankly in charge,

and why should I be frightened?

Because I could do anything I needed to.

MONCK ON PA: Wheat Germ, Holly has your bag with your medicine.

Please meet at the information booth as soon as you can, please.

I think one of the doctors came up and said,

"If you can, let's see if we can get rid of this brown acid."

And for his hand to be on my back and just push me downstage,

which meant it was time to do it now.

MONCK: The warning that I've received,

you may take it with however many grains of salt you wish,

that the brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good.

That was a very difficult announcement to make,

because if you really stomped on it,

anybody who had taken it could, in fact,

really end up having a very unpleasant trip.

STALLINGS: Which acid did I take?

(LAUGHING)

The green or the brown?

And that took you to another place 'cause you were tripping.

So you immediately spiral downward

just from the announcements.

(CHUCKLING) I really didn't know how to do it.

That's why there were so many little colloquialisms and stuff stuffed in there,

"grain of salt," "be my guest,"

because I really wanted to try and soften it.

MONCK: It's suggested that you do stay away from that.

Of course, it's your own trip, so be my guest,

but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, okay?

I think you save the harsh ones for the time you need it.

So it's probably a good idea to be, certainly not soft and cuddly,

but at least courteous, you know.

Because some people, I suppose, could be easily offended

by a type of language or an approach.

So you have to be sort of careful in that.

I started to actually tune

and refine a skill that I had no idea that I had.

MONCK: Dr. Jack Maitland, please,

with full suturing equipment, your presence is requested.

You've got a delivery to make.

Both Chip and John Morris also did some announcing,

and they both did an amazing job. I mean, it was just...

It was totally, you know, surprising to me.

I had no idea they would be that good, either one of them.

But it's just one of those things,

like a lot of things about Woodstock, that worked out perfectly.

BELL: Warner Bros. had said they're going to open this film

in eight cities at the end of March, March 24 and 25,

and they needed to be able to see it.

We were still mixing the film on March 10, 11 and 12, mind you.

And they said, "We've got to see it, we've got to see it.

"The exhibitors have got to see it. We've got to know how long it is."

We had known all along that the standard length for a movie

is an hour and 50 minutes, 1-5-0.

And here we were, virtually double that length.

What he wanted was almost a four-and-a-half, five hour film.

And, in fact, his first cut was about seven hours or six hours.

They said, "We want a screening.

"Five of us, suits, will sit in the backroom of the projection booth

"over here on the Warner Bros. lot, and we'll take a look at your film."

And we said, "We'll call you back."

(CHUCKLING) We all looked at each other and said,

"Five suits looking at this film? They'll never get it."

The editors at that time were concerned

about "the studio."

Because the studio was doing, you know, big films,

we'd been in the business for years,

but they didn't have the "vision"

that the young hippies of those days had.

BELL: And we argued back and forth,

and finally we said that we had invited several hundred students

from UCLA and USC, other film houses,

to come watch the film with the Warner Bros. suits.

And we then invited them

and showed them the whole film at four hours in length.

They had to hop over people who were lying on the floor,

opening weeds in the back,

and from the first moment, it was rip-roaring, rocking.

The projectionists were absolutely perfect,

the suits were totally, totally overwhelmed.

WADLEIGH: After the screening, we were more confident than ever

that we had a hit on our hands.

We had a meeting the next day in which Warner Bros. said, "It's too long."

I just, you know, couldn't believe it. You know, Dale had to hold me down.

So the next morning we had a meeting.

And there were certain things that they said

that we had kind of thought among ourselves were going to be okay,

that we would have to drop some stuff,

'cause we'd had our own meeting after the screening,

and we'd felt even in putting them into the film

that maybe they weren't really working properly.

But where it came to be the most critical was at the end.

Warner's wanted the Jimi Hendrix sequence

cut down to three minutes

because they thought it was so sour, so dark.

They wanted people going out of the movie cheering, everything else.

And they thought that this whole rendering

of Jimi's Star-Spangled Banner, plus the Purple Haze that we had in there,

and all that garbage picking up and the whatever.

How could you end the movie with that?

WADLEIGH: I personally edited that last section

and felt very strongly that we should end on a disturbing note.

You know, that this looks like post-holocaust,

and you notice I put in the people with the crutches

and the casts on their arms and all the detritus.

It was meant to look like,

wow, you know, will all this good time end very, very badly?

And that's exactly what I wanted people to think about.

With this brilliant guitar playing,

it was really the perfect ending, aesthetically, as a filmmaker, for the film.

So I was ready to, you know,

absolutely go to the mat over that issue.

Of course, Michael and I butted heads in a lot of ways,

but it was always creative. He was really the creative maven.

And I was the guy from the studio.

There were really vicious remarks that were thrown back and forth.

We spent the rest of the day

ensuring that we had possession of the elements that would prevent them

from making a separate cut,

coming up with a two-hour version that the exhibitors wanted,

because they were saying the exhibitors wanna turn this film around.

They wanna sell more popcorn.

WADLEIGH: If they had not agreed with us,

we were prepared to at least threaten going berserk

and destroying everything if they didn't put out our version.

BELL: But what we finally arrived at,

we would cut down the Jimi Hendrix piece,

which I think was running at about 15 or 16 minutes,

down to a version that we felt comfortable with,

which we had to kind of determine would be nine or 10 minutes.

It was a compromise,

but only as to a certain amount of length with it,

which, by the way, now's been put all back into the director's cut.

But by and large, we ended up, I would say,

with basically what we wanted.

It took a while to get there.

But just two or three weeks beforehand, we were still screaming and yelling.

But Michael was brilliant.

I mean, you very seldom get a director who had the vision that he had,

who's able to shoot the film the way he told the people to shoot it.

And he was very instrumental in all that.

And as a filmmaker, I thought, "Wow. There's nothing I wanna change."

I didn't have any second thought, which is really, really nice.

BELL: The summer of 1969,

New York City was abuzz

with this whole idea that there was going to be, somewhere,

at a place yet to be determined,

a huge colossal music festival

called Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

In July of 1969, Michael Wadleigh knew very little about it,

because he was shooting a film with Paul Petzoldt

called 30 Days to Survival,

in which Michael survived and lost 20 pounds.

-True? -Yeah, it was my head...

-Right. -...that was lost.

Took a long time to re-find it.

BELL: As he came back at the end of July,

there was this whole pulsating in New York among the film community

about this festival.

And there was talk that the festival producers

were looking for filmmakers to be able to shoot this festival.

We heard this, and Bob began to sniff around

as to where were the rights to the festival.

At that time, I had just come in with the new Warner Bros. people.

It was Steve Ross and Ted Ashley had just taken over,

and they had brought me in to do the youth market.

Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records really had the music rights

and the film rights, all in a package for $100,000.

But there was no deal with anybody,

not with the producers, not with any of the performers,

certainly not with Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, nobody.

WEINTRAUB: It was really because of the persuasive efforts

of Artie Kornfeld, who I had known in the Village.

And he, with this great enthusiasm, convinced me, and we went from there.

After they turned me down cold, I went back and said, "I'm Ieaving."

They said, "Okay, Fred, it's only $350,000. Don't worry about it."

(SINGING WON'T YOU TRY)

The Saturday before the Friday when the music began,

Michael and I, and John Binder, and Larry Johnson, and Thelma,

we all went up to the site in about three cars,

and we got to Max Yasgur's farm at about noon.

And there were so much turmoil, but organized chaos going on at the site.

And that was the moment at which we all looked at each other

and said, "We can figure out how to get the people together,

"get the camera people together, get the gear together,

"get the supplies together,

"and get up to that site by Thursday morning

"before the music began on Friday. We can do this."

(SINGING SUMMERTIME BLUES)

JACK CASADY: In the beginning, access roads became so congested

that by the time we actually went in

for what was supposed to be a sound check or whatnot,

once you got in, you didn't Ieave.

It reminded me of a Cecil B. DeMille production movie,

of all the extras portraying the grandest army you ever saw.

We were standing on the curbs watching them come in last night,

all the townspeople.

It was just like an army invading a town.

-INTERVIEWER: Really? -It was hard to believe.

Rows and rows of cars on each side of the dirt access road

didn't leave quite enough room for one vehicle.

I was driving. I took the trim off both sides of the station wagon.

We went through about 200 cars

with the sides of the station wagon scraping the whole way, you know.

And it was... Sorry, folks, whoever owned those cars.

LEO LYONS: Well, we drove up to what was then the Holiday Inn in Liberty.

And in the lobby there and in the coffee shop,

everybody was there. And, I mean, I knew most of the people,

Hendrix and Janis Joplin...

And so I got a bit of an idea what it was like.

MICHAEL CARABELLO: Everybody was outside standing,

going, "What the hell is going on?"

And all of a sudden, we see the National Guard,

and, "Is there a war going on? What's going on?"

The only way to get in there is by helicopter.

LANG: We booked helicopters before the weekend for emergencies.

As the traffic became more and more dense,

we realized that we were gonna have a problem getting performers in,

and so we booked more helicopters and we just kept doing that hourly,

(LAUGHING) adding helicopters.

MONCK ON PA: We apologize for the noise of the choppity-choppity,

but it seems there are a few cars blocking the road,

so we're flying everybody in.

RIC LEE: The helicopter arrived, and we were about to get on it,

and these guys pushed in front of us.

And I was gonna argue the toss with them, as I have a habit of doing.

And it turned out it was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Albert Grossman

going to do a recce of the site.

So we waited for the next helicopter.

So we took a helicopter down to the gig,

maybe three hours before we were due to play.

We could see that it was like some sort of war zone, really.

And it was about a 10-minute flight from there to the Woodstock actual site.

CARABELLO: I got to be in a helicopter with Jerry Garcia and Michael Shrieve.

Got up and got high in the sky and looked down

and saw all these people and just couldn't believe it,

with the door open, mind you. And Jerry just thought it was...

"Can you believe it? Look at all those people down there. "

It was just overwhelming, way, way overwhelming.

MARTIN SCORSESE: Michael Wadleigh and I had an idea to do a concert film

utilizing, of course, 16mm equipment.

I was in the motion picture workshop that summer.

There was this big event that was gonna occur,

some festival, a music festival up in the country somewhere,

a place called Woodstock.

Think of this. There are half a dozen of us working in this office

on 81st Street and Broadway, on the second floor of that building.

There is, in the icebox,

about ten boxes of short ends of raw stock.

There is about $2,000 in the bank.

The festival is going to begin in five days.

We have the chutzpah to think that we can put together this team.

THELMA SCHOONMAKER: Nobody could land the rights to do it.

There was no money being offered up front.

So Wadleigh just took a huge gamble,

and we assembled everybody we knew

(CHUCKLING) and went off into this mad, crazy world.

We had no idea what we were getting into.

I think that all of us felt that there was something happening there

that we would never regret.

Certainly, again, really,

I don't think we had the dollar sign first,

if we had, I know we wouldn't have done it.

I think we wanted the adventure of it,

and for me, I really, really wanted to carry out these experiments.

-And it was salivating to think... -BELL: Right, right.

...that this collection of rock and roll people was going to be there.

And as a filmmaker... "What the hell!

"Let's just go and film these legendary groups. "

BELL: It's Monday morning. Wads has gone up to the site.

We had discussed the people who we want to work on the project.

And remember, there are no faxes. There are no cell phones.

There are no FedEx. There are no computers.

There's no nothing but payphones.

So, Dick Pearce in Hartford, got him to get on his motorcycle.

Don Lenzer, David Myers, Stan Warnow...

Dale was mentioning the best cameramen on the East Coast.

-You know, we tried... -And on the West Coast.

-And the West Coast, too. -Right. Right.

With David Myers, who had come in on his own.

"David, you're going to get paid $125. It's going to be an adventure.

"Can you put it on your card and maybe we'll pay you when you get here?"

Or maybe we'll pay you after the fact. I mean, that's what it was.

Bob Maurice was scurrying around New York

trying to find out where the rights were and who was going on.

Just constant around the clock with me

and Sonya Polonsky and a couple of other people,

just making phone calls on time zones to coordinate it.

But, you know, I think this is a microcosm

of how the whole festival was pulled off really.

I think, equally, they just pieced it all together

and made that happen and that happen and that happen.

And like we were saying earlier, that's very hard to do today.

WADLEIGH: We had really first-rate, you could call them cameramen-directors,

who were very used to going out, taking an assignment

and bringing back the footage.

We'd have about four, call them "documentary teams,"

that would be wandering around, either on motorcycles or on foot,

going out into the non-music portions to try to get representative samples

of what sociological and psychological, and indeed, physical activities

were going on all around the stage.

WADLEIGH: We would send out people and have no idea where they were.

They would send back. We'd hear a request for film,

you know, or a battery, they were out of a battery.

We would try to communicate on a semi-regular basis.

First thing in the morning, we would try to talk,

the documentary team would talk,

I know I would with them and John Binder.

And we would try and find out, "What did you get?

"What have we heard is going to happen?

"It would be really good if you could get up to X by noon.

"Try and get back, send somebody back to us by noon,

"so we know what you've done.

"Because we may have something new for you to do in the afternoon."

(MAN PLAYING TUNE ON KAZOO)

Please walk on the grass.

Please walk on the grass.

Hold it.

Walk on the sides of the road if you're gonna walk through here.

SCHOONMAKER: And one of my jobs was to try and get Chip Monck,

who was lighting the show for the festival,

to please give us some more light at times when there were groups

that Wadleigh would scream to me,

he would be bent over that �clair camera,

"Get me some light, get me some light! I can't see them."

I would go over to Chip and say, "Could we have a little more light?"

And he would say, "I'm lighting for those people out there!

"I'm not lighting for your movie!"

(SINGING WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT)

SCORSESE: The lighting is not taking into consideration the camera.

It's lighting for a show, and that became a problem.

That became a serious problem for the cameramen, Michael and everyone.

She was trying to get Chip to give us more light,

and he was trying to make a show.

We kept asking the groups for their playlists.

And generally, they would give them to us,

"Here's the order and songs." So we'd say, "Oh, great!"

"Well, these are the songs we wanna do."

And then, we wouldn't start, and here would come a song

that we would want to do that was number five,

and they were opening with it.

And this happened time and again, so we'd all scramble, you know.

So after that, we sort of set a rule that

we would start shooting just the first few seconds,

and then I would either wave them off and say, "No, no, no, we're not gonna go,"

or we would continue.

(SINGING)

We couldn't afford just to film all the time.

It was simply impossible because the groups never would go off.

Once they came on, they didn't want to leave.

Who had ever played before such a gigantic audience?

So they just kept going and going, and going and going.

Thelma and I and others had talked about

how we would do these elaborate multiple image shoots

and how they'd be coordinated and...

-Wow! -With headsets.

-With headsets. Right. -With headsets,

and we would say, I had this idea that I'd say,

"I'm on wide, go tight, go tight, you know, now pan. Everybody, pan."

And the headsets failed.

Or there'd be just horrible feedback that would just blow your ears out.

Or no one could hear you,

because, of course, these groups were incredibly loud.

We had all these fantastic plans about how coordinated we would be,

as if we were like a TV shoot.

Again, it was more analogous to thinking about being

in Beirut or something, you know, with the bombs going off

and, "Pan left, pan..." "What?"

Everybody was really in a separate silo,

that phrase that we use today, but that's exactly where everybody was.

But they were at least positioned,

and they all had tremendous instinct.

WADLEIGH: Remember, guys and gals out there,

we've got two different physical objects,

one, a soundtrack, and one, film.

Nothing connects them at all. We're free-floating.

So you've got to get them together, because you don't wanna put

Santana's music with Hendrix's image.

SCHOONMAKER: We hired a large group of people

just to sync the dailies for months, by eye.

We weren't able to get slates, we had "beep lights,"

but again, things weren't working and...

(LAUGHING)

It was a nightmare.

Since there were no slates, no technical slates and no visual slates,

we would rent a single-headed Moviola, and a soundtrack player.

It did put us in a manic state at a certain point.

We'd be so excited, we'd be running out, "We got it in sync!"

We'd come back in, it was out again.

This is what was going on 24 hours a day with a team of about 40 people

in a space that was 2,400 square feet,

where each editing table was literally touching

another editing table.

Once we got sync on all of...

We only fed them every other day, because of...

-They didn't get too big. -I mean, it was unreal.

It was totally unreal.

You'd get a phone call at 2:00 in the morning

saying, "Where's the reel on Creedence Clearwater?" or whatever.

But systematic labeling, the systematic logging,

all of that were absolutely paramount.

No computers, no Excel sheets, it all had to be done by hand.

The festival was August 15, 16, 17.

The syncing was not completed until

towards the end of September, early October.

PENNY STALLINGS: We kind of knew that if you bring Hendrix,

if you bring Janis Joplin, if you bring The Who,

the entire axis of the planet is going to tilt.

Everyone's gonna try and get there.

MICHAEL LANG: This idea of Woodstock happening because it was a free show,

I think, is a little inaccurate.

I think most people were coming looking for places to buy tickets.

They couldn't buy tickets 'cause they weren't available anywhere.

We never got the ticket booths in place.

MAN: This is one thing that I was gonna wait a while before we talked about,

but maybe we'll talk about it now so you can think about it.

It's a free concert from now on.

SCORSESE: At one point, somebody told me, "Marty, come here, take a look."

So I went up, and I went to the lip of the stage,

and I saw this massive sort of impressionist painting.

I'm a paranoid New Yorker. There were times I got nervous,

"What if something goes wrong?"

(LAUGHS)

Yeah, but the interesting thing about Woodstock

is that it didn't, you see?

That was the beauty of it, I think.

What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000.

JOHNNY WINTER: Started to say wall-to-wall people,

but there weren't any walls.

It was just everywhere, as far as you could see,

-just people. -INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

WINTER: People, mud and rain.

The overall thing which was so big about it is

you had so many people there of all races and colors,

and there was no fights, and everybody got along,

and it got organized somehow.

LEE BLUMER: There have been many events

that have gathered many people, you know, in the last 40 years,

but realistically, they weren't all in the same headspace.

CARABELLO: It was about our generation getting together and showing them

that we didn't have to go to war, we didn't have to have jobs,

we were gonna play music and turn the world around.

MAN: (SHOUTING) No rain! No rain! No rain!

Joe Cocker arrived. Joe went on and played,

and I think we were gonna go on after him, and then, that's when the rain started.

MONCK ON PA: All right, everybody, just sit down, wrap yourself up.

We're gonna have to ride it out.

Hold on to your neighbor, man.

MAN: No rain! No rain! No rain!

-No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain! -No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain!

The next thing I know it was pouring down with rain,

I mean, it's turned into a torrential rain.

I remember 'cause I was freezing cold.

I had just a tank top on, you know, with no sleeves.

And it was very, very cold at first.

And they brought in great, big cardboard boxes of scraps of material.

It was like being on a refugee...

I imagine what a refugee camp was like, you know.

CHURCHILL: To me, it was a mini-tornado.

-It was, yeah. -Yeah, they didn't say it was,

but that was my introduction to tornadoes, of which I've been in two more.

LYONS: They had a VIP area at the side of the stage

where people could watch,

groupies and press and whatever you like could watch the band,

they had to close that down

to take the strain off the stage, because it was slipping down the hill.

And there is a clip in the movie

of this young kid running down towards the camera, and he says,

"This is the American government! They're doing this!

"They've been spraying the clouds, man."

BOY: I've got something to say.

I want to know how come the fascist pigs have been seeding the clouds?

Right, for the last hour and a half.

'Cause I've seen the airplanes going over twice

with all the smoke coming out of them, seeding the clouds,

and I want to know, you know, why that stuff is going down, man,

and why doesn't the media report that stuff to the people, man?

And with current events, you really have to wonder

if that, maybe, was the case.

'Cause I know the FBI and the CIA were very, very nervous...

-It's getting to conspiracy theories. -...of all that many people, you know.

Technically, it was a horror, you know,

(LAUGHING) because it stopped many things from working.

The wiring was flooded.

I remember, when we went on stage,

in between the wires, it was like water.

You can squeeze those two conductors together

and get a monstrous zap.

It goes through your mind, "Well,

"this could be our best and last show here."

There were just people every place, I mean, it just...

Started to say wall-to-wall people, but there weren't any walls.

It was just everywhere, as far as you could see,

-just people. -INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

People, mud and rain.

GRACE SLICK: Some of them were even playing in it.

And I thought, "Well, thank God you're young."

Take off your clothes and play in the mud.

HUGH HEFNER: I was glad I wasn't there,

(LAUGHING) but I don't think I would've enjoyed all the mud.

I'm very glad it happened, in hindsight,

because it was a wonderful settling event,

because you could look around and everybody looked the same.

Drowned rats.

That's really what was amazing about the whole thing,

is that the conditions weren't good at all,

but nobody seemed to care, you know.

KRAMER: When I think back on Woodstock, I just think,

"I'm gonna shut myself up in

(CHUCKLES) "this little eight by eight portion of this tractor trailer,

"and whatever happens, just try to get this stuff

"on tape as best as I can."

He couldn't see anything.

All he could do was to listen and guess,

"I hear something through that mike, it must be here."

KRAMER: As far as the gear was concerned,

literally, it was a 12-channel console

with a couple of Shure mixers stacked on top of it,

and one of the eight-track machines was in an orange crate.

It was hung together with wire and string and chewing gum.

And we were in the back corner of a tractor trailer,

literally, maybe eight foot by eight foot, if that.

And that's where I was stuck for the whole three days.

He did not have 24 tracks that we have today, or 32 or 68.

He had eight tracks,

one of which was devoted, thankfully, to our sync signal.

So, essentially, I'm dealing with seven channels of audio,

which includes the audience

and horns and vocals

and drums and bass and guitars and everything else, so...

(SINGING UNCLE SAM'S BLUES)

After the first number, the first act,

all communication was just in the toilet,

because who knew what was going on after that?

So we had to utilize the first song of each set

as the sort of trial by fire and trial by error.

(LAUGHING) It was complete chaos, but we did it.

I mean, you know, that was the challenge.

MAN 1: Ladies and gentlemen, the Sha Na Na! Harold, turn up the mike.

(SINGING AT THE HOP)

If we hadn't been at Woodstock,

I don't think Sha Na Na would've had any of the success it's had.

They were, I think, completely shocked when I booked them.

I think that they didn't really take it seriously.

I saw them at The Scene, Steve Paul's club,

and I thought, "You know, what a great light moment this would be! "

And you know, kind of a nod to the rock and roll roots that we all had,

so I thought it would be fun for everybody.

I mean, you can't get too heavy all the time, so...

Well, I have to say that the whole Sha Na Na career,

celebrating our 40th,

may not have ever happened.

So we owe a ton to it, I think, more than any other act that was there.

I've seen the world, and I've become very comfortable

and thankful that I had this career,

and it wouldn't have happened without Woodstock.

And there was only one Woodstock.

(SINGING WON'T YOU TRY)

And it did change my life in that sense that

the music also fixed me a certain way,

seeing it performed that way,

being right there with that music, hearing the sound go through you.

I'd always wanted to play music. I love music.

And so it was a major factor

in all my other work and my films and everything else.

That was an extraordinary cathartic situation with that music.

(STAMMERING) A very, very powerful, powerful feeling.

(SINGING)

FRED WEINTRAUB: Steve Ross and Ted Ashley had just taken over Warner Bros.

And they had decided almost in a funny kind of way

that with all the movies that they saw that they had when they took over,

that maybe they were gonna sell the studio.

And Woodstock basically saved the studio,

and became the fact that they made movies

'cause of what happened to the Woodstock film.

Well, several writers wrote that Woodstock saved the studio.

At the time, several, Variety and others,

said that this strange hippie piece and that...

And by the way, I will say,

one good thing was that once it became a hit,

I had a wonderful experience

traveling around the world with the film,

able to speak about its politics and cultural significance.

I didn't think any of the musicians there expected it to be anything.

And they just went along to play.

And stoned as some of them were on one thing or another,

there was no ulterior motive.

And the audience turned up, not expecting anything.

So the whole thing was a spontaneous thing,

and the energy was there,

and when you organize something,

that thing can never be captured, never ever.

That's the difference.

And I think that's why people find it fascinating.

(SINGING WON'T YOU TRY)

LANG: It's been very gratifying, you know.

I'm delighted to have been affiliated with it.

It obviously took the energies of lots of people,

and I'm certainly eternally grateful to all of them.

It was a very special time,

and I was thrilled to be a part of making it happen

and thrilled to be a part of it happening.

So, it's always been gratifying.

I mean, I've spoken to lots of people over the years,

and I can't tell you how many times people tell me

that it changed their lives in a very positive way.

So it's very gratifying.

It's a great, great festival.

One of the best there's ever been.

I think it is the most important rock and roll show in history.

It is the symbolism of Woodstock that is so much alive today

that can be carried forward

and it can be replicated, duplicated, implemented

by every individual, whether they went, whether they saw it,

whether they raise their hand saying they were there and they weren't.

Those people who are encased in the spirit, infused with the spirit

and the essence of what Woodstock represented.

I mean, it did have an impact. It had an impact.

And I think maybe it was because that many people gathered together.

They were all kind of the hippie culture, if you like.

And there wasn't that much trouble.

We think the people of this country should be proud of these kids.

Notwithstanding the way they dress or the way they wear their hair,

that's their own personal business.

But their inner workings, their inner selves,

their self-demeanor cannot be questioned.

I thought, "My God, we were just..."

Everyone was so sweet and nice, and what was so threatening about that?

But you know, people were smoking pot on camera,

and there were people who were undressed in the middle of a meadow

and bathing nude in a lake. But, come on, I mean, really.

Everyone was just having a wonderful time.

Woodstock was unique.

It was a unique place, time,

coming together of all of these various artists.

The fact that economically, socially,

it was a very, very traumatic time.

And look at all these people. Half a million kids,

adults, children coming together in one place at one time,

becoming a huge city virtually overnight. Peaceful.

The Summer of Love and Woodstock were the beginning

of a decade of celebration that was almost Eden-like.

And then we were kicked out of the garden.

Over the years,

there's a real sour grapes attitude

towards Woodstock, towards the time, towards the sensibility.

It's easy to make fun of because it was kind of the last time when

a group so large, a demographic so large could be so sincere

and uncynical about what they were doing.

BLUMER: The legacy of Woodstock is the legacy of possibilities.

What Woodstock proved is that human beings

are capable of so much more

than they ever, ever reach into themselves and do.

I just think in any of these anniversaries,

and I think as you get further away, now at 40,

and you look back at it, it just shows the importance of it.

It's still important.

LANG: I think that they will get a glimpse of a time that was very hopeful,

in a world that was very much like the one we're living in today,

you know, unpopular war,

and the Earth being wounded as it is today.

All the things that the '60s sort of brought to the fore

seem to be coming back to haunt us now,

'cause we didn't listen then.

Yes, it did have a huge impact on the world, I think.

And I think the movie gives an example, a taste of what it was like in that era.

CARABELLO: I think the legacy of Woodstock

was that it was a peaceful event.

That we showed, even though we were revolutionary and stuff,

that we showed that you didn't need guns and you didn't need power.

And all we needed was music and to dance and to love one another.

(LAUGHING) Of course, it's changed nothing.

We've still got world wars going on and poverty and one thing and another.

But we thought we could change the world, yeah.

We hoped we could.

And I think, to a certain extent, we gave a lot of people hope.

(SINGING SEE ME, FEEL ME)

WADLEIGH: We had shot everything with 16mm,

but we knew we wanted to go to the 70mm format,

because we had experienced 70mm sound,

where you had four channels behind the screen

and two in the rear.

So we wanted to take advantage of that.

Well, we worked out with Eastman and other people

how we could go from 16 mm,

blow up to 70 in the most efficient way possible,

which was a miracle in itself.

Imagine! 16mm is just tiny.

And here, we were going for a 70mm release.

The KEMs enabled us to do that,

because, how do you mark where you want an image to go?

Let's say you don't even want a full frame of one of your 16mm images,

let's say the left frame.

But you want to select a portion of that.

Well, we simply figured out an XY grid.

For vertical numbers, we had one through 20, or whatever,

one through 80.

And then, horizontal numbers.

And then, you would simply write, it was a description,

from this point, this sized image.

We then wanted to blow it up to the 70mm

in that quadrant of the 70.

And of course, it was not that precise.

So we would give it to the optical people, they'd give it a try

and then we'd do readjustments from there.

The technicians at the time,

these old guys who were now our age, right?

Seventy years old and so on,

who had been around the movie industry all their lives.

They just loved it, and they were so helpful to us.

They loved the challenge of being able to do,

with rock and roll and these modern young kids,

to take this technical challenge of how to get it to the theater

so that it looks really cool.

But from front to back, it was all an experimentation.

No one had done what we had done with those machines

or with the shooting up until that point.

And of course they then devoted

a whole issue of American Cinematographer to us.

Many other technical journals just describing

how, technologically, Woodstock had come about.

But then, of course, what all of us were going for was an aesthetic.

The technology was a means to producing

what we felt was going to be a real involving experience.

It broke all sorts of new ground, and the critics loved it,

and, you know, we were able to really pioneer multiple image

and a new way that rock and roll and documentaries were shot.

We mentioned that, you know, Roger Ebert said

maybe it was the greatest documentary ever made,

and others did as well.

I thought it was overwhelming.

Yeah, I think one of the things that

is most fortunate, is that

that film exists

that captured the real sense of that remarkable weekend.

And it's a phenomenal documentary.

Pauline Kael was head of the Critics Association,

so she came in to see the movie,

and she was no hippie at all.

And we were all like, "Oh, my goodness, you know, she's a super-critic."

Well, she loved the thing, I mean, just thought it was great filmmaking,

and slow but surely, a number of people came and gave us...

Not that we lacked the confidence, but I have to admit, I was really nervous,

because it's like having a hit on your hands,

and are you gonna blow it, you know, are you just gonna make it worse?

What surprised me was how well they captured it.

That that movie really, in three and a half hours,

gave you a good sense of what that weekend was like for us.

And it wasn't just from sort of a typical documentary point of view,

it really brought you in.

I think once it came and we saw it at the movies,

you know, the opening of it, which we saw in New York,

it was very interesting because

it was the first time that they used three cameras.

It's a damn good documentary, you know.

It's a good piece of reporting.

It's not journalistic, you know, to me, it doesn't appear to have a view,

you know, from the director's point of view.

Many people also talked about point of view,

that it was a revolutionary way to convey filmmaking,

you know, from the documentary and from the musical points of view,

that it gave you a real sense of, not only being there,

but also making intellectual connections

and emotional connections between material

through the use of the multi image.

Because like, why would 300,000 or 120,000, 60,000,

70,000 people come to anything just because it's music?

I mean, was music all that important? I don't really think so.

People don't know. They don't know how to live,

and they don't know what to do,

and they think that if they can come here they can find out,

you know, what it is, or how to maintain with it.

It's just like people are very lost, I think.

I'd been up to the editing lot

when they were in New York several times

and watched this unbelievable amount of footage,

trying to get reduced into

what ended up being, I think, three and a half hours.

It was a monumental task, and they did a brilliant job.

Even though we ran out of film, you know, a bunch of times,

and had to conserve, not shoot so many acts

or at least the totality of some of the acts they should've shot,

but given the circumstance and given what they had to do,

it was phenomenal.

I was certainly bent on not just making a music film,

and as you know, every single song was put in for its lyrical value,

you know, not just its musical value.

We didn't select songs that were hits,

we tried to use the lyrics as poets would to tell a story.

CHURCHILL: In America, it was a gigantic movie,

and the theaters were full every night that it was on.

People started sitting down, but then, as soon as the image came on,

"Been a long time coming," or Sidney Westerfeld saying...

My name is Sidney Westerfeld.

I'm the owner of this antique tavern in Mongaup Valley, New York State.

The whole theater would get up en masse,

and they wouldn't sit down for three hours.

It was amazing. Just amazing.

Watching the film was really wonderful.

I was standing in the back, watching people's reactions

and the sequences, the edited sequences.

The music is so wonderful.

And people really reacted strongly.

It was almost like being at the festival again, in a way,

but in a more comfortable position.

(LAUGHS)

It had become another myth.

We had our own myth that we communally experienced.

And then there was the movie, which was magnificent.

It is the essence of Woodstock, too.

If another film director had been there, who was strictly interested in the music,

and who had simply done the hits,

you know, it really could have been quite a different sort of movie

that wouldn't have had the kind of outreach,

but because I was a documentarian and,

well, I had photographed Martin Luther King

and Bobby Kennedy and the great movers and shakers of the '60s

then, all of that kind of resonated,

and hopefully, showed up in the movie.

People were dancing in the aisles at this press screening,

which validated what we were saying.

And I'll never forget Ted Ashley, the head of Warner Bros.,

came up behind me, and we were at such a war at that point that...

And he touched me on the shoulder, and I jumped,

and he said, "You were right."

Which was great. Yeah.

And then, of course, the film did become very successful.

STALLINGS: To look at those people, in their prime, now,

I certainly do think it holds up.

It's a wonderful document.

LISA LAW: The Hog Farm commune were a bunch of misfits

all living together, helping each other out, experiencing life together.

It was a beautiful commune.

WAVY GRAVY: We were approached by Stan Goldstein.

And Stan, "Well, how would you like to do

"this music festival in New York state?"

And we said, "Well, we're gonna be in New Mexico."

And he said, "That's all right. We'll fly you in an astro-jet."

And we figured he was like one toke over the line,

and we thought nothing of it.

The phone rings, and it's Bonnie Jean Romney

saying they want us to come with the Hog Farm

and to work there at Woodstock

and help with the food and all that stuff they do.

The Hog Farm, in a way,

set the vibe for all of these people.

So everybody kind of had the same easygoing, non-authoritarian attitudes.

WAVY GRAVY: We set up a free kitchen that we were feeding,

not the multitudes in any way,

but we were able to cover the people that were really stuck

and didn't have anything.

LAW: I got a truck and I went to the nearby farmers

and bought their entire farm.

I said, "Give me that row of cabbage.

"Give me that row of corn. Give me that row of tomatoes."

JEAN NICHOLS: After Woodstock got started

and we realized how many people there were,

we had to go back and forth to New York and get more food.

Having come totally unprepared

and having just turned 16,

I became hungry and was right there at the free kitchen.

We were doing maybe 5,000 people a meal

with bulgur wheat, with salad, stuff like that.

SIPP: If you were coming to eat, you were also gonna help out.

And I loved it. I loved being part of that group.

And they became my family, too.

The Hog Farm did set up what we called "freak-out centers."

People who had taken acid for the first time or something like that.

We already knew in the Hog Farm experience that

you could always talk somebody down.

We didn't want them giving the trippers Thorazine,

because if you give somebody Thorazine, it stops their trip and knocks them out.

We wanted them to finish their trip.

SIPP: As soon as somebody was able to be verbal again,

they would become the doctor for the next person.

What happened in these freak-out centers, at the free kitchen,

was that in the same way the early volunteers had come

and just pitched in and kind of become Hog Farmers,

the people who got over their demons with LSD

or came to the kitchen,

they basically wanted to stay and help.

And I think that's what happened at Woodstock

is that everybody respected everybody else.

Once you're a Hog Farmer, you're always a Hog Farmer.

Even if you were only a Hog Farmer for a week at Woodstock,

you're still always a Hog Farmer.

HEFNER: I came out to California

and in '68 and '69 did a show called Playboy After Dark.

It was a syndicated variety show.

The premise of which was that

instead of doing a variety show on a stage in front of an audience,

it appeared to be my apartment.

It appeared to be a party in my apartment.

And we devoted one entire show to Woodstock.

We got a response to the Vietnam War, we got the civil rights movement.

And all of that came together with the Summer of Love.

And that gave us Woodstock.

And Woodstock was a celebration of all of that.

The flower children, the hippies

and, you know, the corny

but still very pertinent notion of "Let's make love, not war."

And that, in combination with the music, is what Woodstock was all about.

As you may have overheard,

we're going to have a kind of a special evening tonight.

A lot of our people here, our guests, are into the contemporary scene

and a few of them, well ahead of it.

But to really top the evening off,

we're going to have clips from Woodstock, the film.

In preparation for that show, for Playboy After Dark,

and knowing that we were going to be devoting a show to Woodstock,

because I had not seen the movie and I had not been at Woodstock.

I was going with a young lady who was a regular on the show

named Barbi Benton,

a relationship that lasted for about eight years.

And we went out to a post-midnight show

and saw it the night before we did the Playboy After Dark show

so that I would be prepared to do the interview.

(ALL APPLAUDING)

All right, that is one brief clip of several we're going to show tonight

from what I consider to be

one of the really remarkable documentaries of our time,

Woodstock, which is a film by Mike Wadleigh,

who is here with us tonight.

-And I'm delighted to have you here, Mike. -Thanks a lot.

And most of you have probably not had a chance to see the film yet.

Barbi and I went in and saw it a few nights ago.

And I want to say in front, before we talk about the film, that...

I think you've all heard about Woodstock.

Woodstock was, as you know,

the most spectacular love-and-music festival of our time.

And the film that Mike and his people have managed to make from it

is unbelievable and, I think, really sets a new precedent

for what documentary films ought to be all about,

because both cinematically and from a sound point of view,

it's a real experience.

And it must've been something else trying to do it.

Well, it was, in a way,

but the best thing about making films like this

is that you're participating.

I mean, it's not a sense of doing a job or making a constructed Hollywood film,

where you have scripts and makeup people and all that.

I mean, you just go there, participate and do it.

And come away with a sense of vitality or a sense of reality of being there.

And in every way, we were trying to make an experience film,

the kind of substitute experience

for those people who were there or who weren't there.

It didn't matter.

I don't think anybody knew beforehand, however,

just how much of an experience it was going to be.

The whole phenomenon of opposition to the war

and a celebration of the music and a celebration of love

was one of a kind.

I mean, there's never been anything like it before or since.

And I think that it was a moment in history that is remembered clearly,

not only then, but now, or we wouldn't be talking about it.

HEFNER: And you, before the fact, must've had a notion

it was going to be something special or you wouldn't have been there, but...

Well, just like you saw in this film clip, I think what attracted most of us there

was the idea of holding a rock festival on a big farm.

I mean, it was like going to your uncle's farm on a weekend, okay,

(ALL LAUGHING)

and with a big transistor radio in the form of 36 rock groups.

HEFNER: The farm looked a little different after it was all over.

What, it was something between 400,000 and 500,000 people

congregated in the area.

Well, they say that better than half a million more

tried to make it there.

I understand they were blocking the highways

100 and more miles away

to stop the people from getting there.

Exactly. They closed...

The New York State Thruway is eight lanes wide,

and they closed it all off and turned them all back in the other direction.

I have a strong music connection.

And the show itself featured

a combination of both jazz and rock and roll.

And music was key to what the show was all about.

It was a variety show that had humor and some conversation,

but music was key.

One of the most remarkable things about this particular event,

beyond its just incredible size,

was also the fact that these kids got together

under rather incredible circumstances.

Because of the size of the crowd,

there was completely inadequate living conditions,

food, sanitation, and they also ran into bad weather.

No, I was glad I wasn't there,

(LAUGHING) but I don't think I would've enjoyed all the mud.

And the actual circumstances

of living there for those several days

was pretty rough and ready, and I'm not an outdoor guy.

I created the magazine and my life as a celebration of the great indoors.

But I think that the message, in terms of Woodstock,

was something I very much believed in.

And there was a very open and permissive attitude

towards both drugs and sex during the period they were staying there,

-and yet there was no violence. -Right.

-No violence at all. -Well... Excuse me,

it was like one of the guys says in the film.

There are a couple of adults arguing and one of them says to the other,

"Now, can you imagine 50,000 adults getting together

-"with beer at any place..." -Right.

(ALL CHUCKLE)

There was a beautiful interview with a local police officer

who said he thought the kids were swell and everybody was behaving themselves

and having a good time.

And the interviewer said, "Well, isn't that kind of a funny idea

"or a funny attitude for a cop?"

And he paused a moment, and he said, "I'm not a cop. I'm a police chief."

(ALL LAUGHING)

That got an applause, I must say, at the theater where I was at.

You know, the kind of things, including the rain

and the circumstances that they faced out there in the country,

not only didn't get in their way, it seemed to add to the fun.

Yeah. I mean, most people...

This is what it means to make this kind of a film.

Because most guys would've run for cover and put their cameras away.

But our people got out in the mud and, as you know, there are later shots

where the cameraman actually slides with his camera,

point-of-view shots.

But that was the whole thing that I mean about participating.

There wasn't a separation between the people who were making the film

and the people who were in front of the cameras.

I mean, it was all a rapport situation.

You were very good about showing both sides,

but an amazing number of people in the community,

the people there pitched in when they found out

that kids were there and didn't have anything to eat.

They pitched in and brought food to the kids,

set up additional sanitation facilities.

The love-festival aspect of it and the spiritual aspect of it,

-I think, did come across. -WADLEIGH: And...

HEFNER: How much footage did you shoot?

We shot a quarter of a million feet,

(ALL GASP)

which is about 120 hours.

And then the film is three hours long, but with all the multiple images added up,

it's really eight hours long.

So, we used a lot of footage.

Well, the one thing that I alluded to at the beginning

that I wanna really say again is that I think that this,

not only is the most remarkable documentary

done on this particular subject

that I have ever seen, but I think it also sets a new precedent

in terms of what one can expect in the way of documentaries in the future

in terms of excellence of photography and sound.

-Thank you. -This is the first time that we've had

a chance to meet, and I want to thank you for coming this evening

and for bringing this film and allowing us to show it on the air.

Because I think that the kids enjoyed it here

and the folks at home enjoyed it.

And I want to personally recommend to everyone, young and old,

this film which I think is one of the most important motion pictures

you're going to see in quite a while.

One of the things that is most fortunate

is that that film exists that captured the real sense

of that remarkable weekend.

And it's a phenomenal documentary.

I think the two seminal events from 1969

were the moon landing and Woodstock, one could say.

And they were both such romantic, improbable,

glorious, innocent events in some sense.

We were in Bethel.

By that point, we took over a small motel for a while.

I got us a television so we could watch the moon landing.

WADLEIGH: I certainly remember where I was.

I was making a mountain-climbing film at the time, way out in the mountains,

and I came out of the mountains

just in time to see the guys landing on the moon.

And we were in a bar in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

And, God! We'd go out and look up at the real moon

and look at the TV and think, "Oh, my God!

"Isn't this just remarkable?"

NEIL ARMSTRONG ON RADIO: That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

BUZZ ALDRIN ON RADIO: That looks beautiful from here, Neil.

STALLINGS: Being this group of conspiracy-theory,

counterculture, nothing-is-what-you-see people,

no one believed it was happening.

And I had gotten them the television to watch a thing that

they felt was being done in a sound studio.

But that was kind of wonderful, too.

WADLEIGH: And then just a little while later,

there I was, standing on the stage at Woodstock.

And I remember when each day the New York Times banner came in,

and we got the biggest...

We got as much width as the moon landing got, right.

And of course, it's a famous story that the New York Times

carefully analyzes whether you're worth the whole width or not.

Well, we got the whole width.

And I just remember,

for me, standing there looking at the moon and so on

and standing there looking at all those people

and those incredible musicians.

And isn't it interesting that, equally, we have not had another Woodstock

and we have not had another moon landing.

And maybe, again, the economics of it all and the dream

and the idealism and so on that drove both events, I would say,

maybe now with money being so much tighter

and with calculation being so much tighter,

it's harder to launch those kind of idealistic endeavors.

But, boy, were they great.

The Woodstock Festival was going to take place

in Woodstock, New York, till they were kicked out.

Well, there wasn't an original location until down the road.

I mean, we were looking for quite a while.

BELL: They had been moving around.

I mean, these festival guys,

you know, had had three prior locations

announced on the radio, starting in March of 1969.

We finally settled on Wallkill at the end of March,

out of desperation, really.

And it was a site that I always hated.

It had the virtue of being there and being available, so we went for it.

We lost Wallkill.

It was kind of miraculous the way that happened.

We lost Wallkill on the 14th or the 15th when the town council decided

that they were not going to approve our permit,

the permit they invented for this event.

And I found a better one on the 16th, a day later.

Well, we wound up there because somebody named Elliot Tiber called me

and said, "I have a site and a permit, and we want you."

Met Elliot at the El Monaco Motel

right in the middle of the town of White Lake.

And Elliot led us down to a field behind the motel

that he and his parents operated, which from the rim looked beautiful.

As we walked down into it, it began to get squishy,

(CHUCKLING) and then it got squishier,

and then we wound up in mud to our knees.

And Elliot had bugged out, Elliot had simply disappeared.

And that was the end of that site.

MEL LAWRENCE: I received a call through Elliot Tiber,

who said that there was this man, a fixer,

someone who's a go-between,

who puts this guy together with this guy and they make a deal.

And he knew a man who had a farm.

We got in this big Buick and we went driving through the countryside.

Michael and I drove up and we got there and we met Max.

And we drove out in two cars, the fixer and Max in one car,

Michael and I in the other,

and he took us to this enormous field, very flat but very big.

And there it is.

And, like, I looked at Michael and I said, "Boy, you know, it's big,

"but this would make a parking lot.

"We need some elevation, we need something,

"because people have got to see the stage."

And we said, "Do you have anything that has some roll to it, some contour?"

"I have a field, alfalfa."

And we go out and look at it.

So we drove out, and it was raining, drizzling,

and there was a mist everywhere,

and we were on the top of what is now this famous amphitheater, you know.

And the mist started to rise, and there was the lake,

and here was this perfect amphitheater.

LANG: There it was. We stopped the car. You know, "This is it."

Sort of we were congratulating each other,

and then Michael took Max to the side

and very quickly they made a deal.

And he'd heard what happened to us in Wallkill

and thought that we were railroaded.

And so he was politically, if you will, on our side.

...and felt that we had been treated unfairly,

that a special case was being made,

and that he was gonna stand up for what was right.

Max and I went off into the field,

and I said, you know, "This is it.

"We really want your field. This is where we need to be."

And we made a deal, right there on the field.

GOLDSTEIN: Max was a Yankee in the very best meaning of the words

and a true believer in the American dream.

I'm a farmer. I don't know...

(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

I don't know how to speak to 20 people at one time, let alone a crowd like this,

but I think you people have proven something to the world.

Not only to the town of Bethel or Sullivan County or New York State,

you've proven something to the world.

The important thing that you've proven to the world

is that a half a million kids,

and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you are,

a half a million young people can get together

and have three days of fun and music, and have nothing but fun and music,

and God bless you for it!

LANG: Max was an amazing guy.

Max was, you know, one of those sort of real American

wholegrain kinds of guys,

very straight, very honest, very conservative in a lot of ways,

but a real man of his word

and someone who thought that people had the right to do

whatever they wanted to do

as long as it was not adversely affecting the people around them.

I think that turning point was when, by Wednesday, I think,

we had 40,000 or 50,000 kids sitting in the field.

So, we'd sold 120,000 tickets in advance,

and if that's any indication of what's coming,

we knew we were well over the 200,000 we'd planned on.

I think the turning point, actually,

for the whole thing was when it got near to the festival,

and people then started to break down the fences that they'd put up,

and they had to declare it a free festival.

MONCK ON PA: It's a free concert from now on.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

CHURCHILL: I think the first time I realized something was going on was,

you could only get in by helicopter.

And I suddenly thought, "What's this?" And then you flew over the audience.

It was just amazing to see.

Up until that point, it was just another gig, another festival.

Around this period, there were a lot of festivals going on,

and all the groups were traveling to these festivals, you know,

and you'd see everybody at all the festivals.

It was like a bunch of gypsies going around at the time, so,

actually, when Woodstock happened,

it was another festival that was going on.

Nobody knew that it would be

the size or the volume of people that it was.

They were all on pot.

-INTERVIEWER: Well, whatever it is... -It never should have happened.

If pot makes them happy and no trouble, maybe we ought to put

-all the adults on pot. -How about the morals?

You want a 15-year-old girl sleeping in the field in a tent?

What are you, out of your mind? It never should have happened.

Do you feel bad about the kids who were killed in Vietnam?

-This has nothing to do with Vietnam. -That's the same thing.

Nothing at all to do with it. There's no comparison.

I thought that this was going to sum up the generation,

that it had an opportunity to do that.

Even when it was only gonna be 50,000 or 100,000 people that came there,

I still thought, "Wow!

"Being on a farm, going back to land,

"Woodstock, you know, all this mix

"and these great musicians who were singing political songs, you know. "

Anyway, this is an organizing song,

and I was happy to find out

that after David had been in jail for two and a half weeks,

he already had a very, very good hunger strike going

with 42 federal prisoners, none of whom were draft people, so...

WADLEIGH: These were not just pop groups.

I'm very happy to say

we think the people of this country should be proud of these kids.

Notwithstanding the way they dress or the way they wear their hair,

that's their own personal business.

But their inner workings, their inner selves,

their self-demeanor cannot be questioned.

They can't be questioned as good American citizens.

That's kind of surprising coming from a cop.

I'm not a cop. I'm a Chief of Police.

Festivals happened and big shows happened

and corporate rock happened, but that was a special time.

Nobody got rich at Woodstock. Nobody. That's cool.

We had all agreed

that bringing over this new KEM, the KEM editing machine

from Frankfurt, Germany,

was an absolutely essential ingredient to the whole thing.

Yeah, that enabled the multiple images to be cut effectively

so you could preview them without going to an optical stage,

which none of us could afford to do.

At the time, we didn't have that much money,

and it was a lot of money for me to lay out.

I think it was 15 grand

-or something like that. -Yeah, 15 grand.

In those days, $15,000 was a great deal of money.

And I was really interested, intellectually, in multiple image work,

and also trying to figure out how to beat the bank,

how to do it simply and effectively and economically.

So I'd read about this company that had designed

this three-headed monster.

Three, I mean, you could put up

three images and one soundtrack, or two soundtracks and two images.

It was just a breakthrough for us, particularly for me

in the documentary footage,

it meant I could buzz through large quantities of footage.

I could have three images up all the time

and be looking for ways to intercut things.

It struck me as just a magnificent machine,

so we particularly went to the factory,

and we got the very first one that came to America.

-And... -I'm gonna tell that little story,

because it's really hilarious.

Francis was building, in San Francisco, American Zoetrope.

He had all of his dubbing machines in San Francisco at Zoetrope,

but he did not have any of the editing machines.

Peter Wolfert, at KEM in Frankfurt,

had said that one of his machines was going to land at JFK

on a pallet, you know, like tomorrow morning.

And I got on the phone with Francis

and said, "We would like to rent your KEM machine,

"because we understand it's in New York,

"and we're doing this film called Woodstock, and blah, blah, blah."

And he said, "No, you can't possibly."

I said, "Francis, Francis! " And I begged, begged.

We all begged Francis to let us have this one.

And we worked out a rental agreement,

and we got Peter Wolfert to send Francis a second one

almost immediately thereafter.

But the very first one that Francis wanted and was expecting

landed in our editing place.

WADLEIGH: But that machine was an absolute godsend.

They were everything we thought they were.

It was super German engineering.

They really worked,

they were wonderfully, wonderfully thought out.

It was a wonderful machine, quiet, beautifully designed,

and that's what I was working on,

originally, when we were cutting the Aretha Franklin footage

that inspired the idea of multiple images.

Then I aggressively went after multiple image ideas in film

to increase this kind of point of view potential.

Michael was showing me things as we went along.

One day, he said to me, "Fred, I'd like to do split-screen."

And I said, "Mike, I hate split-screen.

"If there's anything I hate, it's split-screen."

I said it usually never works.

He said, "Well, let me show you this, okay?"

And he showed me two 16mm cameras together, right,

and he showed me the section that he'd edited with them.

And it blew me away. It really got me so excited.

We were approached at the end of July of 1969

by David and Al Maysles and Porter Bibb, their producer,

who had heard that we had this technique,

and we brought them into a screening room,

and in the screening room, which was, maybe, 20 feet by 20 feet,

there were three projectors, Graflex projectors,

on three projector stands,

a three-image, two-track film

that was about 15 minutes in length.

Certainly, some of that footage proved to us

that if you had a great performer, and a great set of circumstances,

that this would add not just a gimmick,

but a real, new kind of way of perceiving events

and performances that enhanced it.

And this occurred, like, every time that we invited new people in.

We had so revolutionized Hollywood by importing

the first flatbed editing tables that they had ever seen.

The '60s generation is often called the Woodstock generation.

I don't think the decade had a name

before Woodstock happened,

but it enabled our media-driven society

to be able to put a symbol next to a feeling.

The '60s was a feeling among people.

At the time it felt like something that was just very important.

They were the first generation that really believed

that they could actually make a monumental difference.

And they were getting conflicting messages from the establishment.

"You gotta be this way. You've gotta do things."

And the establishment wasn't being this way

and wasn't doing these things.

My group wasn't buying that.

They weren't buying into the American dream,

as it had been presented.

We were more into changing things.

We were more into the revolution of changing.

We're not gonna do this, we're not gonna have jobs,

we don't wanna go to school, we don't wanna do any of those things.

I think we all meant to change it very, very, in a very peaceful way.

WADLEIGH: Well, of course, the ecology movement got started then.

The consciousness for what's happening to the planet

began during that era.

Anti-war, you know, here we are to Iraq,

well, it was Vietnam then.

This horrible war going on that nobody wanted any part of.

It was unpopular, but it was going on,

and everybody knew it was pretty much the wrong thing to be doing.

MONCK ON PA: The United States Army has lent us some medical teams

and giving us a hand.

(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

They're with us, man. They are not against us.

They are with us. They're here to give us all a hand and help us.

We, the youth of the time,

felt like we were sort of backed into a corner,

and at the same time, we were huge.

Woodstock showed to the world

all these people who had been against Vietnam,

against the new sexual mores,

all the things that were happening in the '60s

all came together at Woodstock.

It was not only anti-war, it was love in the broader sense.

It was a breakdown of racial boundaries, something that I very strongly feel.

I felt then, feel today.

Until 1965, you could go to a soda fountain in South Carolina

and not be allowed to sit next to someone who wasn't your color.

Also human rights, you know, gay rights,

women's rights, black rights, and so on,

that took off during that time.

It was a breaking down of of all the various boundaries

that separate men and nations.

That was a very rapid change, that had really affected everything

that was what we call the Woodstock generation.

All of those sort of things had a sort of mini-revolution.

And there it was for people to see,

and they could see these wonderful people,

and, you know, you'd been hearing about hippies and all the terrible...

And here they are, these wonderful, joyous people

having the greatest time of their life.

This was, you know, a show of force,

for everybody to say, "Okay,

"things are changing, and we're gonna change the world."

And you really felt at that time

that there was a difference being made here

just by the show of people.

I think that this event culminated that decade

and somewhat culminated that feeling.

Somebody was saying this was the second largest city in New York.

There's been no police. There's been no trouble.

INTERVIEWER: You said a moment ago that this wasn't the end of this festival,

that this was a beginning. What do you mean, a beginning?

ARTIE: (LAUGHS) Well, look at it.

MICHAEL: This is the beginning of this kind of thing.

ARTIE: Of this kind of thing?

Worldwide, I don't feel that anyone thinks that another generation,

even right up to now,

has even come close to starting a revolution

like the Woodstock generation did.

So, I'm sort of proud and excited to be part of it.

I'm very proud to be of that generation,

and I think we stopped the planet for a year or so.

Woodstock was like the... It was the wraparound that said,

"This is the Woodstock nation."

And because that weekend we could all cooperate,

there was a birth, a death, there was a cosmos there.

And we did, we all cooperated. I stayed out there for three nights.

Can't remember it all, but we were very much a part of it,

so it was an important cultural landmark.

MONCK: There were technical issues continuously.

The ineffective cabling on headsets

and trying to keep in touch with the crew, with the operators.

The roads got overcrowded

and the mechanical systems couldn't possibly work.

LANG: Constantly getting bands ready to get on stage, getting equipment,

getting everybody in one place at the right time

to be able to go on with the show was another...

GOLDSTEIN: The pump trucks for sanitation couldn't get out

and couldn't haul things away.

There were always these little things that kept coming up.

Things, which days before the show,

we were told we couldn't possibly do, was utterly illegal.

Mike, what's the worst part of running one of these things?

I don't know. I don't know.

It was continuous. It was...

As I said, there's no single incident that stands out that way.

It was just one after another after another.

EDDIE KRAMER: I remember seeing the sun coming up over the stage.

People were hammering and sawing and things were going on.

I mean, this was Friday morning and it started in about five hours.

And as I got closer to the stage,

I realized, "My God, how much work still has to be done. "

You know, we were kind of on the fly.

And the idea of the stage was a round stage cut in half, so to speak,

so that the first half would be the first band,

and then the back half would be the second band

with their gear ready to go.

And the idea would be, once the first band finished,

they would turn the platform,

and then the secondary band would be in position.

The whole thing was kind of jerry-rigged.

MONCK: There were so many people on stage

watching the existing act that was on and performing.

The problem was that they all stood on the turntable,

which was far more weight than they ever intended to support.

When I was there and something was wrong,

and someone said...

"Get off the turntable elevation because it's over loaded."

They attempted to turn this platform and all the wheels fell off.

(MIMICKING WHEELS DROPPING)

(LAUGHING) And it just sat like that for the entire three days.

MONCK: Yeah, I mean, Grace and Janis and everybody was standing on it,

and you know, you can't really just sweep them off with a broom, you know.

The best laid plans of mice and men.

MARCELLINO: I don't even know how they kept the power on,

because it really rained on Sunday.

MONCK ON PA: Please move away from the towers.

Please move away from the towers.

Because the ground was wet,

and because the cables did run into the audience to the towers...

Some people, at one point, thought that the power to the towers

was becoming exposed, the cables were becoming exposed,

and that because there was a field of wet people

that we were suddenly about to electrocute a half a million people.

I was frightened to death every second. I didn't want anyone to get hurt.

And then, to hear the stories of how the stage was sinking.

When we played, the stage was collapsing,

people screaming, "The stage is collapsing, the PA is out! "

Everybody was getting shocks.

It was not necessarily the safest place to be.

You know, things like that would come up, and you'd have to

sort of suss them out and see what the reality was,

and then go deal with it.

I think we can be very, very proud

of what we accomplished in the face of enormous obstacles.

There were so many things that could've been disastrous,

you know, but it all just made it, it all just made it.

I know I slept in a pile of velour under the stage at one time.

I had a trailer down at the lake

which was my lighting booth for Newport, about a 40-footer.

We slept in the back of the tractor trailer on the floor.

If you could call it sleeping,

it was a few hours, if that, every night.

Some of the guys in the band, I think, actually went back

to whatever facilities they had for performers to stay at.

But I figured, as long as I was there, I was gonna, you know, just sort of dive in.

(CHUCKLING) I might as well just stay dirty, and be part of it all, yeah.

When you see the brown acid announcement,

you can tell by my fingernails and the color of my hands that, you know,

we didn't get anywhere close to any water.

I did not, for the record,

I did not go and swim naked in the lake. Period.

I think skinny-dipping is just beautiful if you want to do it, if you can do it.

But some people can't

because their environment made them, you know, feel that it's wrong.

LISA LAW: We had discussions about

how we were gonna feed these people that were coming.

And we were out scrounging around some aluminum pots and this and that,

and I looked at the whole scene

and I said, "We don't need to scrounge."

The Hog Farm was able to get bushels and bushels of brown rice.

Now, that's what they served at the food booths.

I ended up buying 160,000 paper plates, forks, knives and spoons

and about 30,000 paper cups.

And it's a good thing I did, because they all went.

Everything went.

So that's how I figured that we fed between 160,000 to 190,000 people

at the Hog Farm free kitchen.

They would come up and we were frantically trying to keep things going,

and someone would just stick a hot dog in your mouth.

That was about, maybe one or two hot dogs

(CHUCKLING) was about what we ate that whole time.

But we didn't care, because we knew it was something fantastic.

LANG: At one point, the "Food for Love " guys, who were our concessionaires,

were running low on hamburgers.

So they raised the prices from a quarter to a dollar,

and that displeased a bunch of people, so they went up and burned them down.

Now, there's a guy up there, some hamburger guy,

that had his stand burned down last night,

but he's still got a little stuff left,

and for you people that still believe that capitalism isn't that weird,

you might help him out and buy a couple of hamburgers.

So I went around, making sure that there was enough food

for the cooks to use,

and then I would check on the medical tents.

I was trying to get some rest in that tent,

there was a couple of other people in there with me.

At which point,

one of the medical personnel came around.

The nurses came around and said, "Anybody want a shot?" "Okay."

So they gave us this really painful vitamin B shot

right in the ass.

And I tried to explain, "I can't, my arms..."

He just gave me a shot of B12.

Oh, Jesus, God, did that hurt!

But it helped, you know.

(LAUGHING) Don't know what it helped with, but it definitely helped something.

I felt great.

(LAUGHING)

There was a performers' pavilion.

Then, all of a sudden, all that went to hell,

because they needed it for emergency, you know.

I had to stand up to one of the older producers

and say that we had to have the crew tent,

which was where we were supposed to eat.

We had to convert it into a hospital, we had no choice.

A lot of kids in town didn't have anything to eat.

Word went out that everybody should contribute food.

We went over to the park

and the village permitted them to camp there.

A police car went up the street here with a loudspeaker

and told the kids to come up there.

We fed them Saturday night, all day Sunday.

MAN 1: If you got food, feed other people.

Bugsy, to the pink and white tent. Keep feeding each other...

Pretty soon, everybody was taking care of everybody else,

and that's what Woodstock was about.

...and if you're too tired to chew, pass it on.