In other hippie news, Taking Woodstock had its NY premiere Wednesday night! The new film from director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) is a recounting of how the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival came to be, based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, the kid, at the time, who inadvertently helped make it all happen. As some of you may recall (not us, how old do you think we are? heh) Woodstock was basically a hippie fest of free love, music and YOGA! That’s right, Swami Satchidananda famously lead the high-flyers as the first speaker at Woodstock ’69. Sadly though, judging by the trailer, the movie seems it’s based primarily around those first two bits: hippies and music (oh and drugs surely). Whatever.
The cast stars Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, and Emile Hirsch to name a few. Unfortunately we hadn’t heard of any casting calls for yogis on this one. Not even as extras! Wonder if YAMA will be the new source for something like that? Also, no word who or if anyone gets to play Swami Satchidinanda.
Hm, that’s fine then. We have Wanderlust! Or, kinda. YD pal Joelle Hann adeptly points out from the NYTimes article, that the yoga+music fest of today is not exactly your parents’ hippie pow wow. We just think the kids these days don’t smoke nearly enough reefer to match the summer of ’69.
Taking Woodstock opens in select cities August 14th.
Earlier…OK Everybody Make Fun of the Hippie Dippy “E-I-E-I- Yoga” Farmer
i agree… i dont think that there is enough smoking going on but maybe its not as important to us than it was our parents??
and hey cost have gone up.. maybe we should blame the ecominic situation for smoke being too pricey..
“Are Today’s Yoga Hippies Smoking Enough Weed?”
no, we’re not….;)
I was in college in San Francisco at the time. I did not go to Woodstock, but it got so much coverage back then, I’m still kind of sick of it all. To me it was the turning point that showed the distinct limitations of hippie culture, namely, that it too decends into chaos without some standards of human behavior and decency.
I was oblivous to the Yoga, which seemed like fake importation of another culture. The Beatles themselves seemed like big phonies to me. I was interested in Woodstock primarily for the sometimes great music that happened there. The muddy event itself was a turnoff to me, not a milestone in human history.
Bob W.
Yea Super Swami Satchidananda! I’m pretty sure his chanting “Om Shanthi” with all those kids at the beginning of the festival helped set the tone for a peaceful, fun time. I mean, just think, it could have gone terribly wrong. But it didn’t. He told the hippies “the whole world is watching”. He totally loved and believed in the hippies, even when his rich New York society followers call us “pigs”. He had the most loving heart. Swami Satchidananda was the bomb.
If you know anything about yoga you would know that intoxicants are frowned upon. Smoking pot is not part of any spiritual practice and associating yoga with hippies and pot is simply ignorant.
Swami Satchidanada may have helped set the tone. But there were rumours about inappropriate behavior that were confirmed by many female disciples.
And let’s not forget… The hippies of the ’60’s grew up to be the yuppies of the ’80’s. Whatever peace and love they believed in gave way to avarice.