Ang Lee!
And thanks to the good folks at onlocationvacations.com for the pictures.
Also, I’ve finished reading Taking Woodstock. If you want some details on the characters, just keep reading. They’re just some comments about the characters that have been cast and who they are in the story – no plot spoilers and just some details of the story. But if you want to know nothing about the characters or story, consider yourself warned and stop reading!
Elliot Tiber certainly leads an interesting life. The book follows him from a very miserable childhood and ends just after Woodstock. It’s about events leading up to the concert, but it’s also about realizing as an adolescent he’s gay and learning to accept that he’s worthy of love and not just anonymous, violent sexual encounters.
Emile Hirsch plays a Vietnam vet. This character isn’t in the book. My guess is he’ll be one of the concert goers who showed up in town weeks before the concert started and stayed at Elliot’s hotel.
Liev Schreiber – in the book his character Vilma is a grandfather who served in World War Two. So they’ve made him younger. (He’s a transvestite in the book as well!)
Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character is interesting. He’s just mentioned in passing, about 100 words in total in the book. But what a great choice he made taking this role. And brave. This isn’t Denny Duquette and it sure as hell isn’t the Comedian. (In some fanfic, it may be John Winchester:) )
Elliot is into hard core S & M sex and his bungalow at the hotel is outfitted as a dungeon. This is the only reference to JDM’s character:
"I had other diversions, however. One of them, whom I’ll call Bill Smith, was married and co-owner of one of the largest and most exclusive hotels in the Catskills. He was gay and needed an outlet. I was the outlet. He’d come over to my place and we’d spend an hour or two in my dungeon bungalow. Every so often, he’d call to make a date."
If you’ve seen Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (or even Brokeback Mountain) you know he doesn’t shy away from explicit sex scenes. So it’ll be interesting to see if they stay true to what’s in the book. Elliot’s draw to S & M is rooted in learning early to associate sex with abuse just as a child he learned to associate love with abuse, so I think they need to keep it in.
