New Trailer for Ang Lee's 'Taking Woodstock'

For his next trick, director Ang Lee is going back to 1969 and covering the most famous concert of all time. Taking Woodstock is not about the music so much, but rather the nearly impossible task of putting together a concert that size in the middle of nowhere.

The plan was executed by Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin), who saw an opportunity for the concert to save his parents' motel. One giant field and a hundred thousand of your closest friends later, the legend was born. It does not look like any of Ang Lee's recent work, and maybe that's a good thing for him. He always bounces from one style to another, and maybe working in an ensemble comedy will open up some new doors for him. Take a look at the new trailer:

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Ang Lee Goes to 'Woodstock'

It would be inaccurate to say that Ang Lee has ever been a lazy filmmaker. One of the very few successful directors to genuinely roll the dice every time he makes a movie, Lee is now set to take on one of the seminal moments in American pop culture history. It was 39 years ago that Woodstock forever changed the course of rock n' roll, at once the apotheosis of 1960s counter culture and effectively the end of it. But for three days in August of that year, hippies and music lovers congregated on a farm in upstate New York by the hundreds of thousands to hear performances by The Who, CCR, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Sha-Na-Na (?), The Grateful Dead, and more. Lee will dramatize the events leading up to that fateful weekend in his next film, and his longtime collaborator James Schamus recently outlined the production to Rolling Stone. "It's an amazing bunch of people. You look around and I can't believe we're getting away this," said Schamus of his "insanely fresh" cast: Liev Schreiber, Paul Dano, Emile Hirsch, comedian Demetri Martin, and Eugene Levy. Levy will play Max Yasgur, who offered his farm as a performance grounds, and Martin will portray interior designer Elliot Tiber, who let concert organizers use his family's hotel in the Catskills as a headquarters. So if you'll take out your Ang Lee scorecards, that's Crouching Tiger, Hulk, Brokeback Mountain, Lust, Caution, and now the offbeat Taking Woodstock, which probably will be more comedy than drama. There is, naturally, the question of music in the film, but Schamus downplays the possibility that this will be a living soundtrack. “Ang and I are score-oriented,” Schamus said. “It’s in the early stages, but I can tell you it’s not going to the be the usual collection of obvious needle drops. It will be of the time, and of the spirit of the time. It’s whatever works dramatically.” We don't have any real plot specifics, but Schamus, who also runs a little studio called Focus Features, did give us a glimpse into Martin's character, who never quite makes it into the festival. “Put it this way,” said the Oscar-nominated producer. “He gets waylaid by an acid trip and a three-way.”