GAB Archive/RedfernsBill Gerber, one of the producers of the Academy Award-nominated 2018 remake of A Star Is Born, is working on a new film focusing on 1969’s Woodstock festival that reportedly will be included with a 50th anniversary reissue of the Oscar-winning 1970 documentary about the historic music event.
Deadline reports that, according to Gerber, the forthcoming companion flick will feature “material no one has ever seen,” including footage of Neil Young playing with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash and of Janis Joplin both on and off the stage.
Of particular interest would be the scenes with Young, who performed with Crosby, Stills and Nash at the festival but did not appear at all in the 1970 Woodstock movie. Neil has said in interviews that he was annoyed by the filming and told the cameramen to stay away from him when he was playing.
Gerber tells Deadline that the new movie also will focus on the story behind two of the festival’s organizers, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, whose goal in putting on the event was to raise money to build of recording studio.
In addition, the producer says the film will feature new interviews, as well as interesting unheard stories about Woodstock, including how then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller had intended to call in the National Guard to shut down the festival but was talked out of it by Roberts and Rosenman, whose family was the finance and banking business.
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place from August 15 to 18, 1969, in Bethel, New York.
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