Woodstock - Patrick Fryberger
The one thing that stood out most for me about the Woodstock documentary was the amount of people present at the event. First of all, the way the event somehow overcame the risk of fighting, rape, murder, overdose, people getting sick, STDs, and all the people who could get arrested for various offenses was amazing. Not say that some of these things may have happened in specific instances, but the concert as a whole was just as advertised--3 Days of Peace and Music. I felt the documentary's straight presentation was a little dry, but what I did find interesting was the exploration of the organization (or lack thereof) of the concert by those behind it, as well as the individual accounts of young kids who took to be interviewed. The clichéd, '60s stoned-out-of-their-mind persona was not so much seen and a lot of the kids had some at least decent and interesting things to say. The music was predictably good, especially the late night performances when nothing could be seen but blackness from the stage. But backtracking to the mass of people, I simply cannot imagine having to tell people to "move away from the towers" and other such things. The danger of someone somewhere getting hurt was just so high considering the amount of people and the drugs and many other factors involved, but for the most part they seemed to make it through. Kudos to those guys behind it for handling the unraveling of the concert with what more or less was grace. Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was particularly powerful seeing the scattered, tattered crowd and just the second-tier trashiness of it all. It was a moment held by those who stayed and endured and waited through the elements. It was a payoff for them, and a deserved one at that. In the end, Woodstock really was a cornerstone of a cultural event, on a scale that America had never experienced before. I have no idea if I would've gone or not if I was alive and of the age at the time, but I know I might regret not going in retrospect. All in all, the video, while occasionally boring, was nonetheless eye-opening to the grandiose cultural event that was Woodstock--3 Days of Peace and Music.