Thursday, February 20, 1997
FILM:
Documentary of Isle of Wight Festival reveals turmoil of
counter-culture movementBy Trinh Bui
Daily Bruin Contributor
Talking to Oscar-winning director Murray Lerner is hearing the
history of ’60s and ’70s music and the hippie movement told by a
man who didn’t just live during the time, but knew and filmed the
artists that shaped the era. With his current documentary opening
Friday, "A Message to Love," Lerner shows through the eye of the
camera a time of reckless youth and music.
Lerner began making documentaries during his school days at
Harvard. He and a group of friends formed a film society and
started to film the world as they saw it. For Lerner it was the
beginning of a journey to capture the counter-culture movement of
his time. In 1970, his trek eventually took him to the largest and
last great tribal musical festival of its kind  the Isle of
Wight Festival in England, which "Message to Love" chronicles.
The four-day festival showcased that era’s best performers
including The Who, The Doors, and Jimi Hendrix. Lerner had done a
year of planning and coordinating before the start of the festival
since the event would attract a large crowd, but never the numbers
that actually came.
Lerner says, "It was quite an involving and hectic process
picking the crew and getting the equipment and lighting. Plus, we
had no idea 600,000 people would come. We thought maybe 150,000
would show up, even the promoters never thought that would happen.
It created a lot of tension between the two sides."
The conflict between the promoters and the radicals in the
audience, who refused to pay for tickets, contributed to the
26-year delay of "Love" and the immediate financial failure of the
festival. Of the more than half million people that ferried their
way to the island, only 50,000 paid the three pound admission.
Because of the money issue, Lerner anticipated a confrontation
between the two groups, especially from the people trying to break
the corrugated steel barrier.
"I expected a lot of tension partly because I have been involved
in marching in certain demonstrations in American-political
demonstrations on a big scale. I was teaching at Yale and there was
a big demonstration," says Lerner, " It taught me about crowds and
the dangers of crowds. I thought ‘yeah this could happen at Wight’
but not to that extent. I didn’t think there were going to be that
many people and I didn’t think there would be an encampment of so
many radical people."
The battles being waged between the commercialism of the
festival and the audience struck an ironic cord with Lerner. The
festival captured the social dynamics that went into the shows and
the power of money. But the festival was more than just the battles
between big business and idealism. In the case of many
festival-goers, the Isle of Wight symbolized a holy excursion and a
place to meet others.
"The festival was a massive religious event centered around
music," says Lerner, "The kids were looking for a way to get
together with other kids. They wanted to have a cohesive community
that they didn’t have at home, while focusing on music."
The festival offered its audience the home that they wanted as
well as the music. Even in the face of potential violence, the
music the people came for didn’t let them down. Every artist that
appeared lived up to the audiences’ expectations. Artists like
Jethro Tull and The Who torched the stage with dynamic performances
on the island. The sets by The Doors and Jimi Hendrix were
particularly poignant since they were their last filmed
performances. Hendrix’s festival show lacked his usual theatrics,
causing some people to speculate that it was a precursor to his
death.
"It was fantastic and very sad. I cried when I heard that
Hendrix died because I was so close to him and it was exciting to
be that close and afterward the wasted nature of their dying so
young was absolutely stupid," says Lerner, "Hendrix’s death was so
immediate, that was very upsetting and they thought it was so
stupid that this could be happening to such great talent."
With the music onstage often brilliant, Lerner tried to
juxtapose the music with the behind-the-scene and crowd tension
that plagued the entire festival. The mounting tension was so great
at times that it affected the musicians. Lerner recalls Kris
Kristofferson leaving the stage and Joni Mitchell almost canceling
her performance. To Lerner, the chaos of the festival was an
accurate picture of what the counter-culture movement was
struggling with, more accurate than what Woodstock portrayed.
"I made the film because I disagreed very strongly with
Woodstock. I think Woodstock was totally the opposite in its
viewpoint. Woodstock didn’t look behind anything. It just said that
everything was beautiful, peace, love and all that stuff. I believe
all those things weren’t true at Woodstock," says Lerner.
Though Lerner surrounded himself with the hippie movement and
its music, he never thought he was among them. Lerner never got
into the specifics of the hippie society.
"I looked at the festival from the outside, I never had the
courage to become a hippie," says Lerner, "I expressed a lot of
sympathy for the hippie movement. I felt that the sudden
interjection of nonconformity on society was really exciting and
that was what these kids were."
The whole Isle of Wight experience for Lerner was creating a
story with these distinct characters and exposing the social
conflicts that erupted during the show rather than just filming a
festival.
"I want people to enjoy the music and learn about how things
work and to know the pressures on people when they try to express
themselves. I pride myself on being able to press the right buttons
at the right time,"Lerner says.
FILM: "Message to Love" opens this Friday.
Strand ReleasingStrand Releasing
The chaos of the counter-culture movement affected several
artists, including Joni Mitchell, (top) who almost canceled her
performance, and Jim Morrison, (right), shown here in Murray
Lerner’s "Message to Love."
"I made the film because I disagreed very strongly with
Woodstock."
Murray Lerner