First Look: Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock

Advocate.com's
exclusive first look at Ang Lee's new film
Taking Woodstock

includes this photo of Liev Schreiber, who plays Vilma, a drag
queen who serves as a bodyguard during the Woodstock festival.
The film is based on the memoir by Elliot Tiber, the gay man
who made one call and a few weeks later managed to stage one of
the most defining cultural events in American history.

In this scene,
which takes place about halfway through the film,
Vilma is showing Elliot -- played by Demetri Martin -- a photo
of himself and his lover when he was a marine in Korea.

James Schamus, the
screenwriter of
Taking Woodstock

and CEO of Focus Features, which is releasing the
film, says Lee, whose previous credits include
Brokeback Mountain,

describes Vilma as a sort of angel for Elliot,
"someone who's going to be watching over him and helping
become who he needs to be."

Schamus phoned from a
sound-mixing session to tell Advocate.com a little bit about
the new film and why the studio that brought us
Brokeback Mountain

and
Milk

is going to impress us once again.

Advocate.com:So Mr. Schamus, tell us a little bit about the film.James Schamus:

Demetri Martin plays our hero Elliot Tiber, and he's a gay
interior designer who's living in Greenwich village, but he's
gotten flat-broke and he's at that horrible moment where you
have to move back in with your parents for the summer. And his
parents are the most nightmarish Jewish parents imaginable who
run a crappy little motel in the Catskills in the middle of
nowhere. It's just a shit hole, and the bank is about to take
it over. They're behind on the mortgage, and he goes out there
to help them out. And he's trying to come up with schemes to
figure out how to make money and save the hotel for them, and
they always fail. And up in this Catskills town he's actually
the president of the chamber of commerce because there is no
real commerce; it's just a bunch of old folks sitting around.
But every summer he gives himself a permit to hold a music
festival on the front lawn of the motel.