A return to Woodstock
Friday, August 07, 2009
We’re going to Woodstock tomorrow.
This is the first time since 1997 and yet I still feel like a lemming, always making our pilgrimage north around the anniversary of the concert (which was in Bethel, not Woodstock) as if I need to reconnect with some vital part of my life left behind with the changing society.
And I was never at the concert, simply flew over in a helicopter while my friends squirmed around in the mud below.
We to Woodstock the first time in 1994 for the 25th anniversary, and now, we return for the 40th, (organizers holding this instead of a 50th, fearing people will be too old to come if they wait.)
Joel Lewis mentioned as much in 1994, when he said the 25th anniversary of such events are the important celebration. Most people are dying by the 50th. Unlike World War II or Pearl Harbor – which are the other singular moments in history to which the previous generation related, our mere half million cannot stand the significant loss of people without becoming something of a joke.
Becoming part of history takes some doing. Although we all have a memory of where we were when JFK got shot, the anniversary doesn’t have the same significance as Woodstock or Pearl Harbor. In fact, for most of us, the next big event will be the 25th anniversary of 9/11 – which I will hopefully live to see. I would have to live to be more than 100 to see the 50th, which I also hope to see but most likely won’t.
Going back to Woodstock, however, means taking account of changes in our lives since the place is bound to be different from the last time we visited it, and certainly from the first time.
Like Cape May is to the Victorians, Woodstock is to the Summer of Love generation, one of those Meccas to which we must gravitate in order to restore our beliefs. While Cape May is a personal and family icon, my honeymoon in 1990 repeating the honeymoon of my grandparents from 1926, Woodstock becomes our marker of where we are in our generation. We look around to see who has survived, and to determine if we are still all okay.
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John Hughes is dead at 59.
What an incredible personal loss on several levels.
Although he supposedly directed films geared towards the 1980s, he touched me acutely with “The Breakfast Club,” which in many ways symbolized my life in high school.
I was the so called rebel, acting out my troubles at home by pretending to be tougher than I was. I recognized myself in the character the first time I saw the film, and realized that Hughes – being close to my own age – helped shape this out of a history common to both of us.
With I had less personal relationship to the rest of the Brat Pack films, Petty in Pink stands out because it was one of the films I took my daughter to see during those days when we reunited. We used to go to several stores before the movie, including a health food store, and we would sneak in healthy snacks instead of buying the crap the theater sells. I cannot remember the other films, but Petty in Pink stands out because somehow it Molly seemed to reflect my daughter at the time.
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Spielberg is doing “Harvey” what a surprise. Not!
I’ve long realized how much Spielberg’s tastes reflect my own from the 1950s, all of those great b-movies I watched on TV or in the theater from “Them” to “Topper,” aching to get more. Harvey was among my favorites, although I never imagined Spielberg choosing to redo it.
I always thought he would try to redo “Forbidden Planet,” and perhaps he may still someday.