Oscar-nominated director Ang Lee continues to make eclectic choices in his filmmaking with his latest work, the dramatic comedy Taking Woodstock.

Ang Lee is an Oscar-winning filmmaker. But his latest opus, Taking Woodstock, is unlikely to take him back to the podium at the Kodak Theatre.

The film, a dramatic comedy that pokes around the edges of the famous Woodstock Music & Art Fair of 40 years ago, is too lighthearted and lightweight to be a serious Academy Award contender.

Yet that is exactly why Lee wanted to do it. Not that he hates being Oscar-honoured. Five of his films have generated at least one nomination and twice he been personally nominated as best director. But the lighthearted part of Taking Woodstock appealed.

With humour, as well as pathos and sentimentality, it tells the true story of an aspiring fashion designer and closet homosexual who helped Woodstock promoters stage their festival at Max Yasgur’s farm near Bethel, N.Y. The promoters had been banned from Woodstock itself and kicked out of nearby Walkill. Reluctant local Elliot Teichberg held a festival permit in Bethel and offered his parents’ dilapidated Catskill motel as a festival base. The rest is Woodstock history. But the new movie only depicts the behind-the-scenes adventure, with TV comic Demitri Martin playing Elliot. He never gets near the concert stage and doesn’t much care because he is finding himself.

“I have made six tragedies in a row for 13 years,” Lee explained after Taking Woodstock, which opens in theatres Friday, made its premiere at Cannes. “I was yearning to do a comedy-drama again — without cynicism.”

His last such film was his sterling version of Jane Austen’s classic English novel, Sense and Sensibility, an acclaimed 1995 production. Lee collaborated with screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson. She won an Oscar for her writing and earned a nomination for her performance.

“It took me a long way to get there again,” Lee says now, “but I thought, after 13 years, I had earned the right to do it, to just be relaxed and zone out and be happy and be at peace with myself and everybody else.”

Taking Woodstock also underscores another truth about Ang Lee’s storied career: He has established himself one of the most extraordinarily diverse — but not perverse — directors working in America.

Including the new film, the 54-year-old Lee has made 11 features since 1992. Despite a recurring theme of personal alienation that unites many of the characters in his films, it is impossible to imagine a more varied collection of subjects, interests, actors and obsessions. While most have been made in America (where Lee has lived since 1979), he has gone back to China (where he was born), and to Taiwan (where he was raised), to shoot films.

Throughout it all, Lee has maintained a calm, even serene manner. He is incredibly soft-spoken. Do not mistake that for weakness, says Taking Woodstock co-star Imelda Staunton, who plays Elliot’s mentally damaged mother. “Ang Lee is a very thoughtful, sensitive, deep thinker,” she tells Sun Media. “He doesn’t have to become loud to control 300 people on a film set. He will just be himself, quietly going around doing his job.”

This time, that job meant staying straight, not doing drugs. Taking Woodstock has an acid trip sequence that ex-hippies think is absolutely far out — and authentic. Lee says he did not have to do LSD to shoot the scene.

“I did have that thought,” he admits. “I was tempted, of course. It stopped when my kid — my boy — said, ‘Daddy, you should try it!” And his wife, a microbiologist whom Lee married in 1983, also teased him, suggesting he should try to trip out.

He shot back, “But I didn’t go through a sex change to do those women’s movies! And I’m not going to start with this. So stop teasing me!”

Lee smiles. He is still having the most movie fun he’s had in years.

Martin, Hirsch reflect on ‘Woodstock’ roles

In Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, Demetri Martin and Emile Hirsch play friends whose lives take a positive turn during the Woodstock festival of 1969.

Neither actor was even born when Woodstock actually happened. Martin, a New Yorker, is 36. He plays the real-life Elliot Teichberg, who wrote the autobiographical book Taking Woodstock under the name Elliot Tiber. Hirsch, a native of Palms, Calif., is 25. He plays the fictional Billy, a shell-shocked Vietnam vet who benefits from the good vibes surrounding Woodstock.

Hirsch says Taking Woodstock is clever because it does not try to capture or recreate the experience of the real festival. Neither Elliot nor Billy even get to see any performances.

“The film is making a statement,” Hirsch says. “It is just making a statement about something different, that Woodstock was an idea, a concept. It was about a change in lifestyle. I thought that, in a weird way, it is so much more thought-provoking to not get to the concert.”

As a TV star with his own comedy show — Important Things With Demetri Martin — Martin says he first had to get over his “nerd” issues before he could fully appreciate the freedom of playing a role in an Ang Lee movie. Once he did, he was thrilled to see how Elliot fit into the Lee canon.

“I think Ang likes to tell stories where people might not be that comfortable in their own skin. He likes the story of somebody who is a bit of an outsider.”

Both his Elliot and Hirsch’s Billy fit into that category, Martin says. “Clearly there are grounds for being an outsider. So you find a bond between these two guys.”

List of Ang Lee films

Pushing Hands (1992): A retired Taiwanese tai-chi master finds himself caught between his traditions and American lifestyle when he moves in with his son’s family in New York State.

The Wedding Banquet (1993): A gay Taiwanese-American agrees to marry a female Chinese immigrant who needs her U.S. green card, but overseas parents complicate the cozy arrangement.

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994): As Lee’s first movie shoot in Taiwan, this delicious film chronicles the tribulations of a master chef who lives with his three daughters in Teipei.

Sense And Sensibility (1995): Marriage and social status rule the lives of young women in early 19th century England.

The Ice Storm (1997): On Thanksgiving weekend, 1973, an American family struggles with inner demons while an ice storm threatens.

Ride With The Devil (1999): This fascinating U.S. Civil War story tracks the fates of guerrilla fighters whose exploits ride the razor’s edge between honour and despair.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000): Lee triumphed with his made-in-China martial arts thriller, which artfully uses the Chinese wuxia tradition to weave a fantastical tale.

Hulk (2003): Lee tries his hand at the comic book superhero genre, but is stung by mediocre reviews as his Hulk runs riot.

Brokeback Mountain (2005): Two modern American cowboys, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, become secret lovers in a relationship that both thrills and depresses them. Lee wins his best director Oscar.

Lust, Caution (2007): This underappreciated masterwork, shot in China, is a sexy thriller set in Shanghai during the repressive Japanese occupation of WWII.

bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca

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