Woodstock Director's Cut on DVD

August marks the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival an event that left an indelible mark. Three bright days of love and peace may have dimmed with the current reality of what the 60s really entailed (assassination on a scale never seen before or after, a protracted unpopular war) but rock concerts have never been the same. Later this summer an Ang Lee film, Taking Woodstock, presents its own version of the festival although centering on characters in the nearby town and not the actual concert. Some of the magic still hovers in the air.
Warner Brothers won’t be re-releasing the 1970 concert film theatrically but it’s safe bet that a three-hour documentary would go unnoticed by today’s short attention span theater crowd. Fortunately however Woodstock has been released on DVD in a director’s cut that runs just under four hours. An extras disc with a couple hours of bonus concert footage is available with the deluxe edition.
If you’ve seen the original Woodstock you be pleasantly surprised at a few of the changes director Michael Wadleigh introduces. The film still captures the event like a true documentary alternating between wandering footage of the crowd with straight-on music performances. Much of the film is seen in tri-panel imagery. The biggest difference occurs in the last hour with previously unseen footage of Janis Joplin. Joplin was not included in the original film and her presence electrifies the screen. The original film ended with Hendrix playing “The Star Spangled Banner” but that’s been replaced by an even longer Jimi Hendrix closing sequence featuring familiar songs as well as a lengthy solo jam.
The extras disc contains over two hours of concert footage from other artists that for reasons involving rights or time was left on the proverbial cutting room floor. Some of the filmmakers who worked with Wadleigh (and also seen in interview snippets) include assistant director Martin Scorsese and assistant director and editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
Wadleigh and associate producer Dale Bell provide background stories on everything from hijacking the negative from Warner Brothers after they found that Technicolor was making a duplicate negative for the studio to the methods they used for getting some of the best cameramen of that era to essentially work for food. Another extra and it’s a hoot features an interview with 1970s era Wadleigh (looking every inch the cosmic cowboy he was) on the Playboy After Dark show.
The extra concert footage delivers 18 songs from 13 bands. Among them Mountain, Creedence Clearwater Revival (Fogerty was so vital then), an alternative edit of The Who songs seen in the feature, Johnny Winter, and an amazing 30-plus minute “Turn On Your Love Light” from The Grateful Dead (fearlessly psychedelic). The Who, when seen in the feature version play the "See Me" segment of “We’re Not Going To Take It” in triple screen close-ups, which is followed by Townsend smashing his guitar and tossing it to the audience. On the extras we get single frame takes of the entire song, adjusted to allow more medium shots of the band. Plus the Gibson destruction actually occurs at the end of “My Generation” also seen in its entirety.
No doubt many reading this article weren’t alive when the festival went down and this 40th anniversary edition sets the record straight, provides pure entertainment and acts as a vital document.