Ang Lee's next... - Directng Woodstock drama

[jack]

From Entertainment Weekly:


Director Ang Lee and his writing/producing partner James Schamus (Brokeback Mountain, Lust, Caution) have chosen their next project. The duo will conquer the true story Taking Woodstock, a comedy based on Elliot Tiber's memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, A Concert, and a Life.

The tale centers around Tiber's unexpected role in making the 1969 Woodstock festival into the iconic happening of its time. Tiber, an interior designer and part-time manager of his family's Catskills motel, had become the local town's issuer of event permits. When he heard that the planned Woodstock concert had been denied a permit in a nearby hamlet, he offered his own. Soon, half a million people were on their way to Tiber's neighbor's farm in upstate New York.

Schamus is currently writing the screenplay. Back in March, Lee told EW that he was looking to make a movie based on some lighter material. Taking Woodstock seems to fit that bill.


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I also got this article on the project from Darkhorizons, so I think there's more to the movie than the above article suggests.

From Darkhorizons:


"Brokeback Mountain" helmer Ang Lee will direct the gay-themed Woodstock memoir "Taking Woodstock" for Focus Features reports the trades.

James Schamus will adapt Elliot Tiber's 2007 book set in the Summer of 1969 about an in-the-closet artist helping his aging Old World Jewish parents run their ramshackle resort motel in the Catskill Mountains.

He's also the head of the Chamber of Commerce in his small town, and possessed of the yearly permit to hold summer music concerts - which he grants to promoter Michael Lang's then low-key Woodstock festival to hold on his neighbour Max Yasgur's farm.

The ensemble drama is not going to be about the famed concert itself, but will probably use music from the period. The book also deals his encounters with other famed artists, and standing defiant against the raid of the West Village gay bar Stonewall.

Schamus is aiming to head into production before year's end on a $5-10 million budget.