Fairy tale only

Suzanne 2022-01-15 08:01:30

Generally speaking, a memoir of Woodstock should include the following content: how to initiate, how to organize, how to develop, how to end, what historical status and so on. Each character is condensed into a small symbol in the course of history. After reading it, I can only remember a string of numbers: August 15-17, 1969; one location: White Lake, Bettel Town, New York; one historical significance: music creates love and peace.

Thanks to the development of history, writing specific historical events from a personal perspective has become the mainstream. Elliott, the original author of "Making Woodstock," did just that. Originally, this music festival did not have much to do with him. He was neither a promoter nor a funder, and even later participated in the organization of the music festival, and he played little meaning.
The Elliot family runs a long-term loss-making motel in the White Lake area. He saw the newspaper saying that the Woodstock Music Festival had been kicked out of the previous venue, so he wanted to bring the festival to his own home. Such a big music festival has a lot of visitors and can make some money from it. Later, it developed into an unprecedented super-scale, which no one had ever imagined.
It's such a simple thing, the Woodstock Music Festival from the perspective of a hotel owner.
But there are millions of participants in Woodstock. There are books from hoteliers, as well as college dropouts, artists, veterans, government inspectors, stage builders, and so on. All American social actors have their own Woodstock history. What's so interesting about Woodstock's history of an innkeeper? You are not a core organizer, nor a trend leader, nor a rock star on the stage.
So Elliott spent a long time in the book about his personal growth --- the history of a gay man's sexual development. Ever since he was molested by a man in a movie theater when he was a child, Truman Capote gave him oral sex, doing his best to gossip. There are gimmicks and eyeballs. At the same time, he put his personal growth in the context of the human rights demands of gay organizations in the twentieth century, and described in detail the gay riots in Stonewall Pub in June 1969 and its historical significance.
This part of the content was drastically deleted by Ang Lee. It only took a short call to explain, Elliott’s friend, the owner of Stonewall Bar, called and said that he had been released from the police station. In the future, he will continue to organize gay parties and invite Elliott. Come and play.
This kind of material choice is definitely not because Director Li is not interested, "Brokeback Mountain" is still towering. So why does Ang Lee want to delete this kind of brilliant and outstanding bridge? It's very simple. Ang Lee just wants to make a relaxed and simple fairy tale movie. In fact, the meaning of Woodstock is also a modern adult fairy tale.

Two characters in the original book were merged into one in the film: the transvestite Baron Verma played by Levi Schreiber. The director's intention came out in the process of choosing this role.
Baron Velma is also a strong transvestite in the book, wearing a women's military uniform. TA tied a pistol to the upper end of the stockings on the inner thigh. When the gangster threatened the Elliot family to stop cooperating with the festival, Velma scared the gangster away with a gun. Imagine a six-foot-two sturdy woman, in order to cover the stubble, the foundation is thicker than the wall, and she pulls a pistol from her stockings to threaten the gangster. Such a wonderful segment did not appear in the movie. The Baron Velma in the movie is a simplified version of Jill.
Jill in the original book is a three-hundred-pound lesbian who is proficient in Zen and psychotherapy. After coming to Woodstock, apart from preaching and healing, I often chatted with Elliott’s dad, healed the scars of his heart caused by the distress of his life for a long time---the ravages of a father by long-term loss-making operations Is fatal. In the end, the father reconciled with his son. The book said, "Dad is getting older and older. But then one day when he smiled at me, I realized that he knew I was gay, and he loved me and was proud of me." But Jill did not appear in the movie, and the part of her conversation with Elliott was added to Baron Velma.
The choice of these two roles and plot points can show Director Ang Lee's pursuit of pure fairy tales.
Although the scene where Baron Velma draws his gun to deter the gangster is wonderful, it is too serious, too practical, and too violent. It's not that violence can't appear in fairy tales, but the violence that appears must be ridiculous and deconstructable, so that parents can tell the children on the bedside without worrying that the little baby will have nightmares and leave a psychological shadow. So Velma's gun scene will not appear in the movie.
The other scene of violent conflict mentioned in the original book, which is different from Velma's gun scene, is also preserved in the movie. The local snake came to the hotel to collect the protection fee, and the Elliott family went into battle. Mom hugged the little hooligan. Dad hit the inside of the little hooligan’s knee with a baseball bat. Elliott kicked the little hooligan out of the hall. This kind of typical funny fighting scene is suitable for both young and old in fairy tales.
Jill's identity in the original book is a Zen and psychotherapy instructor. He gave Elliott the courage to face his homosexuality, and finally dared to come out and kiss the man in front of his parents; he also cured Elliott and his father. Barriers to emotional transmission between. If we want to describe this role, we must show the Zen thoughts and hippie thoughts of the 1960s, which were basically ideological domains in the 1960s. Once the performance begins, it is bound to fall into a heavy, no fairy tale. Ang Lee successfully avoided these heavy social and historical burdens, making the relaxed pastoral atmosphere sustainable.

For the author, the book "Making Woodstock" is not only his memory of Woodstock, but also a half of his autobiography. As a complex of a gay designer in New York and an operator of a loss-making motel in White Lake for many years, Elliott was tortured and scarred on both sides.
Before 1969, homosexuals suffered from discrimination and were unable to obtain love for rehabilitation and salvation. The author blames the promiscuity of homosexuals on the original sin caused by social discrimination: "Being homosexual means that in the deepest area of ​​your existence, in some of the essences of your acknowledgment as your softest and truest self, you are a Criminals are born guilty.”
In the White Lake area, due to the short-sightedness of Elliott’s parents, and more because of his mother’s business mistakes, their family of motels has lost money for 14 years and has become a well-deserved financial black hole. Elliott used the money he earned as a designer to subsidize hotels year after year. Even his sister advised him to leave his stupid parents alone and get out of the financial swamp as soon as possible.
This kind of life is dark for everyone, but Woodstock changed everything. Nearly one million participants allowed the hotel to make a fortune and get rid of financial difficulties. The hippies of all walks of life also changed Elliott's mind. He successfully came out and got his father's forgiveness. Then he met true love and went to Europe to start a new life together.
Ignoring the die-hard die-hard Elliott's mother, the original book can be said to be a super happy ending. But because of this, this book only embodies a fairy-tale beauty, and lacks practical significance. Ang Lee was keenly aware of this, and simply ignored all the ugly and heavy reality in the movie, and devoted himself to creating an adult fairy tale.
There were millions of people participating in Woodstock, and not much money was made from it at the time, even the organizers were huge losses. If the Elliott family did not get financial benefit from Woodstock, it is obvious that Elliott’s parents would have a strong disgust for such a large foreign hippie group. The Woodstock Music Festival was kicked out of the previous venue because of the resistance of the indigenous people. No small town would welcome the destruction of its own life by millions of outsiders, not to mention that these outsiders are, in their opinion, hippies who are often naked, drug-addicting and group sex.
So Elliott's change is based on a very small probability event. The motel made a fortune because of the Woodstock Music Festival, and the family had cramps after counting the money. On this basis, Elliott’s parents were finally able to get out of their long-term loss and bleak mood, and have an intimate relationship with foreign hippies. Attitude, not so psychologically resistant. Only then can there be reconciliation with the parents, so can there be a confident remodeling and a new life.
Many years of dormancy has created Ang Lee's insight into human relations, so he knows that Woodstock can only be a fairy tale, not history. The seriousness and darkness that Elliott wrote out of his own growth history in the book was drastically deleted by Director Li, perfecting a purest fairytale-like Woodstock.

Speaking of the Woodstock Music Festival itself. Forty years is enough for many people to step down the altar, and at the same time to create more fairy tales, people must have some sustenance. Free, music, love, peace, marijuana, drugs, alcohol, mud, youth, nudity. These elements make a perfect musical fairy tale. Behind this fairy tale is a loss of up to 2 million US dollars.
US$2 million in 1969 is at least equivalent to US$20 million today. Now if you spend 20 million US dollars to host a free music festival, I can't say that it will surpass Woodstock, at least not inferior to it by an order of magnitude. But there is no longer a bold angel organizer like Mike Lang and a wealthy man like John Roberts. However, the favorite of history is accident. Because no one can tell the origin and cause of accidental events, their vague nature is most conducive to future generations' arbitrary interpretation of meaning.
What made later generations of pseudo-hippies talked about was that even marijuana and drugs were free at Woodstock. You know, these were never provided by the organizer, but were bought in advance by the flower girl and hippies from all over and shared with you. It can be said that there is someone who pays the bill behind all fairy-tale events, and is always subjectively ignored by the communicator or the viewer.

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Extended Reading
  • Albina 2022-03-25 09:01:18

    This freedom is too crazy~~

  • Ophelia 2022-03-26 09:01:11

    Couldn't find anything from Woodstock inside, which, after all, doesn't exist where the naked eye can see it. I do like it. But under the strong doubt of Akui, I decided to give four and a half stars.

Taking Woodstock quotes

  • Vilma: You should see what I'm packing up here.

  • Carol: Everyone with their little perspective. Perspective shuts out the universe, it keeps the love out.