Happy 78th Birthday, Michael Wadleigh! Born today in 1942, this American author, film editor, cinematographer and film director is renowned for his groundbreaking documentary of the watershed countercultural movement that defined American history in the late 1960s.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Wadleigh, years later, entered films in his early twenties as a cinematographer on independently-produced low-budget films.
Most notably, this included American television and film director, film producer and screenwriter Jim McBride's 1967 American black and white drama/comedy drama mockumentary film 'David Holzman's Diary'. For the film, Wadleigh served as producer and cinematographer.
This also included the 1967 American independent black and white drama/romance film 'Who's That Knocking at My Door' (originally titled 'I Call First'). The film was also shot by Wadleigh (credited as Michael Wadley).
The film also happened to be Martin Scorsese's feature directorial debut, along with Harvey Keitel's debut as an actor.
Three years later, Wadleigh, then twenty-seven, led a seventy-person crew in undertaking the monumental task of documenting the film for which he is best known for co-editing and directing.
This was the groundbreaking 1970 American documentary/musical film 'Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music'.
On August 15, Wadleigh arrived on the site in Bethel, New York, with over one thousand reels of film and a crew of several camera operators.
The finished product was said to have consisted of about one hundred and twenty miles of footage which, over the next months, was edited down to one hundred and eighty-four minutes. Warner Bros., the film's primary financial backer, released it on March 26, 1970.
Held three days from August 15 – August 18, 1969, with an attendance of an estimated five hundred thousand, 'Woodstock' stands as a milestone in the documentary film field in defining a generation.
'Woodstock' premiered at the 23rd Cannes Film Festival in May 1970, but was not entered into the main competition.
The following year, it received an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. It was the film's only Oscar win, accepted by American producer Bob Maurice. This occurred at the 43rd Academy Awards in mid-April 1971.
'Woodstock' later received universal acclaim from newspaper and magazine critics in 1970. It was also an enormous box office smash.
Entertainment Weekly called 'Woodstock' the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made.
The edition of May 20, 1970 of Variety reported it was doing well in its third week in Chicago, Illinois and San Francisco, California.
In each of those metropolitan areas, the film played at only one cinema during that week, but many thousands showed up.
Eventually, after it branched out to more cinemas including more than one per metropolitan area, it grossed $50 million in the United States.
The budget for its production was just $600,000, making it not only the sixth highest-grossing film of 1970 but one of the most profitable films of that year as well.
Other notable co-editors of the film included Scorsese and Thelma Schoonamker (credited as T. Schoonmaker). She has since worked with Scorsese as his editor for over five decades.
Schoonmaker was also later nominated for an Oscar for Best Film Editing, a rare distinction for a documentary.
American sound engineer Dan Wallin and American film and music producer, director and editor L. A. Johnson were also nominated for the Oscar for Best Sound.
In his original 1970 review, Roger Ebert rated the film 4 starts (out of 4) and described it as "maybe the best documentary ever made in America.".
He added "The remarkable thing about Wadleigh's film is that it succeeds so completely in making us feel how it must have been to be there".
The 1970 theatrical release of 'Woodstock' ran one hundred and eight-five minutes. A director's cut spanning two hundred and twenty-four minutes was released in 1994.
Both cuts take liberties with the timeline of the festival. However, the opening and closing acts are the same in the film as they appeared on stage; Richie Havens opens the show and Jimi Hendrix closes it, with his searing rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner".
Four years later after the release of 'Woodstock', Wadleigh, this time, served as cinematographer for the 1974 American documentary/musical film 'Janis'.
The film, about the eponymous American rock, soul, and blues singer-songwriter Janis Joplin, gave Wadleigh another credit as cinematographer for his archive footage.
However, it would be seven years after the release of 'Janis' before Wadleigh received his next and, final, directorial credit.
In the early 1980s, Wadleigh returned to directing with the 1981 American crime horror/thriller film 'Wolfen'.
The film was later praised for its dreamlike nature and striking visual quality. However, despite a top-notch star turn from Albert Finney, turned out to have been too offbeat for the general public to achieve financial success.
Wadleigh also co-wrote screenplay, and has a bit part, credited as Terrorist Informer.
Wadleigh, who was consulted on the new edition, left the film business in disgust after directing 'Wolfen'.
In August 1994, twenty-four years after its original showing, a two hundred and twenty-eight-minute "Director's Cut" of Woodstock was released.
Three years later, another Woodstock-based documentary gave Wadleigh another archive footage credit for cinematography.
This was the fifty-seven-minute 1999 American direct-to-video musical documentary film 'Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock'.
In 2005, Ebert added 'Woodstock' to his "Great Movies" list and wrote a retrospective review.
He stated: "Woodstock is a beautiful, moving, ultimately great film...Now that the period is described as a far-ago time like "the 1920s" or "the 1930s," how touching it is in this film to see the full flower of its moment, of its youth and hope."
On June 9, 2009, an expanded 40th Anniversary Edition of 'Woodstock', released in Blu-ray and DVD formats, features additional performances not before seen in the film.
It also includes lengthened versions of existing performances featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival and others.
In a 2019 review, American freelance journalist Danielle Solzman described 'Woodstock' as "a film that everybody ought to watch at least once in their life", adding "If there's a better concert documentary out there than Woodstock, I haven’t seen it."
According to his personal life, Wadleigh ran a nonprofit educational corporation, primarily involved in global media production and distribution as of October 2004.
He had previously lived in southern New Hampshire and had also resided off-the-coast-of Maine. He also once worked as a transit bus driver in Akron, Ohio.
He currently resides in Wales, Great Britain, after having spent his life working on environmental causes and also previously living in Africa and Asia.
Also known as Michael Wadley, Wadleigh had been active from 1967–1999.
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