Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock": Finding the Extras

According to THIS WAPO Article, one of the most difficult parts of filming "Taking Woodstock" for Ang Lee was finding extras who were thin, but not toned, and still had their pubic hair, for the iconic naked-hippie shots.

"When you think about it, that was really a generation of people who weren't fat, but who weren't staring at themselves in the mirror all the time," Schamus observed, "or shaving everything off down there. It encapsulates the difference in 40 years right there."

Schamus has a point. There's a lot of nudity in "Taking Woodstock." Hippie nudity. Which means hairy nudity. And some baby boomer parents -- sorry, grandparents -- may find themselves having to explain to younger viewers that there was a time long, long ago, when most young people let their nether regions grow wild.

It is true that average American weighs more now (though there have always been fat people) and that the natural look wasn't just for your tresses. Still ladies, do you really think that the porn-star look is necessary? I think that it is interesting to see how time has changed our grooming as well as our average bodies, due to cultural shifts, industrial food culture, car-culture, etc. I think that I will check out "Taking Woodstock." I really like Ang Lee and I think that his interest in what it means to be American and _____ is a continuing theme of his work. Brokeback explored what it meant to be American, gay, and masculine. That scene where Heath Ledger and his wife/children are at a 4th of July fireworks display and the men in front of them are being loud and vulgar, he ask them to stop talking so crassly in front of the women/children, they're rude in reply, and he kicks their ass while the fireworks and images of patriotism flare in the background is over-done, yet perfect. The American male, masculine and defending women/children, yet also gay and closeted. The tension, the mixed nature of those identities swimming in his conscious and unconscious mind. The taciturn male of the Great West, speaking with action. I can't wait to see what he does with that great festival of the Boomers, they of enternal self-absortion yet idealism, very American. Who better than a foreign-born director who has studied our pop-culture and high-culture to direct this film that not only explores this emblem of a generation, Woodstock, but its grounding in ideals of love, peace, and equality? Though of course, hopefully he also addresses the racism, sexism, and other worty details as well.