The Lady Who Edited Woodstock

Michael Wadleigh filming Richie Havens

I'm kind of obsessed with the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Not just the movie and the music, but how the event came together in bizarre circumstances - how it was both a triumph and a disaster. Perish the thought, but if I was ever to appear on the quiz show Mastermind, this would be my specialist subject.

Here's a wonderful story from someone who was right there in 1969.

My favourite podcast is This Cultural Life on BBC Sounds. Fascinating interviews by John Wilson with artists, writers and film-makers and not one that I haven’t enjoyed over about 50 episodes. In this episode, Wilson interviewed renowned film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who has worked closely with Martin Scorsese for over 50 years.

Thelma, now 85, reveals the process of working with Scorsese in the cutting room and how, through him, she met her late husband Michael Powell, whose films with Emeric Pressburger, both she and Scorsese had so admired from childhood.

The most remarkable part of the interview for me - and my long-held fascination with Woodstock - is when Thelma recalls how she and Scorsese were part of the filming and editing team on the Woodstock festival movie, for which she received her first Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing - the first documentary ever to be nominated in that category.

Thelma with Wadleigh and the editing team

She tells how the team of documentary makers acquired a new editing machine that would allow them to have three images displayed at once. “We thought, why don’t we make a movie like this," said Schoonmaker. 

"With great bravery, Michael Wadleigh, the director, decided to go for broke and spend his own money to get us all up at Woodstock, filming. That was just an amazing experience."

What they encountered at the site of the festival was not what they had expected.

"We had rented motel rooms. We thought we would drive back there after the evening performances. But we couldn’t even get out. It was jammed with traffic and people. So for three days we didn’t have a place to sleep. We slept on the ground – tics in our hair – no food. Every once in a while, someone would come up with a frankfurter, if you were lucky."

Thelma said, "Marty felt we were going to be able to go out to dinner. He had brought cufflinks."

Although Woodstock was an ordeal, they found it tremendously exciting as the festival unfolded, with a bonded crowd of 400,000 young people entertained by many of the greatest acts of the 1960s. The film-makers' challenge was how to document it as closely as possible, in very difficult conditions.

"The Who kicked us off the stage"

"We had six cameramen on the stage; 15 out in the audience. We had no idea what we were getting. We were hoping it was OK because we couldn’t send the film out to be developed," said Schoonmaker.

"The main cameraman was Michael Wadleigh, who was looking through a lens for three days solid – no sleep, no food – doing these amazing shots of people like The Who."

Scorsese was helping Wadleigh decide what songs to shoot and negotiating with managers for the rights to do it. Sometimes they would get kicked off the stage.

"The Who actually kicked us off the stage, but then they didn’t even notice – they were putting on such a great show - that we snuck back on."

Thelma was mainly underneath the stage, trying to load the film magazines. "It was raining a lot and the cameras were jamming, so they would throw the magazine under the stage and we would try and reload it. It was a mammoth, absolutely back-breaking job, but so exciting.

“The great moment was the last day. It was dawn; we had been shooting all night, again. We were completely exhausted and then Jimi Hendrix came on. I thought, is this really him, or am I dreaming? And he did this incredible job of playing The Star Spangled Banner and massacre-ing it to show what was happening in Vietnam. It was a transformative moment.”

And then suddenly, it was all over.

Hendrix performing to a thinned-out crowd

"Everyone had left and there was just mud and detritus everywhere. We packed up and on the way home we stopped and ate. Michael Wadleigh was so tired his head just crashed into his spaghetti. When I got home, I had big whelts on my pants because I’d been wearing the same thing for three days.

In the BBC interview, John Wilson points to the visceral excitement that comes across in the movie, which Schoonmaker says was helped by the fact that she, as the editor, was there and she knew how it felt.

“Of course, we hadn’t seen all the footage we had of the people who were out in the field. There were so many wonderful interviews that we didn’t even know we had."

However, Warner Brothers were not interested in the film. "They said it’s a news event, just get it out quickly. We said no, you don’t understand, we have something very special here; a breakthrough in how to film festivals, how to film music."

It took an act of thievery to prevent them from cutting the movie back.

"A breakthrough in how to film music"

"We were supposed to bring the movie to New York City to show the press. Warner Bros were saying you have to cut the movie, you have to cut it down; we said no.

"Dale Bell, who was one of the producers, and I, stole the soundtrack from the vaults, to keep them from cutting it. So they had no choice but to send the version we wanted to New York.

"They had Pinkerton guards in the projection booth. I wasn’t allowed to go in, because they knew we had stolen the tracks. At one point I was standing watching the press reviewers and they were getting up and dancing in the aisles, which I’ve never seen. So we knew we had something special."

As the credits rolled, Ted Ashley, the head of Warners Bros, came up and touched Thelma on the shoulder. "OK, you’re right," he said. "We won’t cut it."

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

Also on this blog:

2-Tone and possibly my best gig ever

Queen's 1976 Free Concert in Hyde Park

Memories of the Reading Festival, 1975

Five Days of High Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

From Pinner to LA - Elton's Big Breakthrough, 1970

A Wizard, A True Star - my all-time favourite album

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak in the 1960s

 Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns