One thing I've learned about HDTV (and large screens) is just how telegenic most humans truly are. That is, not very. Facial pores at that size . . . well, "lunar baedeker" isn't just a poem to me anymore.
At least I feel better about the prominent, throbbing veins in my temple now that I've seen Steve Carell sporting a couple.
Recently, I watched the Woodstock film again, only the second time I'd seen it since the original theatrical run. (Even I was struck by the fact that virtually none of the tech I was using--a laptop, using a wireless router to access work files on a remote office computer; HDTV; satellite receiver--existed when the concert took place.) The Woodstock Experience CDs I've encountered (Sly, Janis, Airplane), which pair the artists' contemporary albums with their 'stock performances, take advantage of tech advances to offer better sound, and are presented in vastly superior packages than any previous releases.
Now that I've heard some of the music in enhanced editions, seeing the film again makes me wonder, why haven't they upgraded it?
As I said, I saw the movie on its first run (yeah, that pegs me as an antiquity) and, at the time, watching the vast numbers of music- and scene-lovers assemble, space out, groove to the tunes, and generally refuse to go Lord of the Flies, was a novelty. It could even be uplifting. In all the spectacle and "bad brown acid" announcements and "wow, man, that cat is wasted" (and prototype twirly dancing), the music is often treated as secondary.
While I'm not suggesting Woodstock is deficient as a documentary film, it sure ain't an exemplary concert film. Of its contemporaries, perhaps only Gimme Shelter* employs worse camera angles of the performers. (* That would be the film that features a performance by The Flying Burrito Brothers that manages to, not once, show more than a glimpse of Gram Parsons. From the back.)
It was maybe five minutes into looking up at Alvin Lee's rubber-lipped facial contortions that I wanted to ask the filmmakers, would it have killed you to, oh I don't know, put a camera on the same level as the band? I mean, if I want to look up a lead singer's nose, I'll buy festival seating tickets and risk my life in front of the stage at a live show. Why bother filming a view no better than the one from the mosh pit?
And why am I looking at Lee's face through maybe nine minutes out of ten during "I'm Going Home"*? It was a star-making performance not for facial expressions so grotesque they must have inspired the career of Jim Carrey. Why don't we get more than a few glimpses of how he's throwing off several thousand notes per minutes from that guitar?
* As a lifelong superfluous keyboard player, I had to laugh in sympathy at poor Chick Churchill, Ten Years After's fifth wheel on this performance, whose B-3 chording is audible only briefly, and appropriate in this song, not at all.
Concert presentation has made leaps as incredible as the one from VHS to Blu-Ray.
What Woodstock deserves is a new cut as a concert film. Lose everything but the performances, use performances that didn't make the cut, in favor of mud slide shots. There were some peak performances (Sly & the Family Stone were reportedly never better; Hendrix and Janis were debuting new bands; Santana introduced their fresh take on Latin-flavored rock and roll) by several of the defining performers of the past forty years. There has to be more, and better footage lying in the vault.
Maybe the quantity and quality of modern concert films, and hearing the remastered discs, have made the existing Woodstock film a frustrating viewing experience for me. Maybe the "oh, wow, man" hippietude" wafting over it like patchouli in a head shop brings out the fist-shaking old man in me now. Maybe I could never relate to most of the concertgoers, and can even less forty years on.
Whatever the reason, just about every second of Woodstock that isn't spent on the music is like an eternity in line for a Port-A-Potty for me.
[Just to show I'm not a total crank, I do think it's wonderful that the couple pictured on the cover of the original Woodstock OST were recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning, still together.]
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