Sha-Na-Na
The story behind the classic movie musical. The programme examines the original stage musical in the early 1970s, which starred a young Richard Gere, and the changes that occurred between stage and screen, including the addition of several new songs and toning down the original show's darker elements. Plus, a look at some of the actors who could have played the roles made famous by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
WOODSTOCK: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT is Michael Wadleigh's Academy Award-winning documentary about the 1969 Woodstock music festival, with an additional 56 minutes, a freshly remixed soundtrack in an enhanced digital format, and previously unseen footage of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane in concert. The original WOODSTOCK, released in 1970, featured memorable performances by Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Country Joe and the Fish, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Ten Years After, Santana, and The Who, all of which are rendered intact in this extended film. Moreover, the original, which included among its editors a young Martin Scorsese, brilliantly, and often humorously, captured the makeshift community of that end-of-the-60s occasion, whose innocence now looks almost quaint.
An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.
