“Star Is Born’ Producer Bill Gerber To ‘Restore’ Neil Young To Woodstock Film
Now that “A Star Is Born” is in the rearview mirror and after more than a decade as an advocate for the project, producer Bill Gerber will bring Neil Young back to Woodstock.
photo: Neil Young, 1969. Photo Credit: Henry Diltz
Gerber attempted to bring “A Star Is Born” back to the big screen one way or the other, with names like Whitney Houston, Aaliya, Lauryn Hill and Will Smith in the mix as Gerber was a Warner Bros. executive. Now that the Bradley Cooper / Lady Gaga vehicle has gone through awards season, the producer is making a companion piece to the original 1970 documentary “Woodstock,” an historical film that somehow forgot to squeeze Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young onto the screen.
Gerber’s project will be released at the same time the original film is re-released, according to Deadline Hollywood. Woodstock’s 50th anniversary is in August.
“The film has new interviews and is also the Young Men With Unlimited Capital story of John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, these two young guy who started Woodstock as a capital raise to build a recording studio,” Gerber told Deadline. “There is also material no one has ever seen. Neil Young was not in the movie for a variety of reasons, until now.
“There is unseen footage of Janis Joplin and performance footage that hasn’t been seen. There are some great stories, like how Nelson Rockefeller was going to send in the National Guard to shut the festival down. Roberts and Rosenman had family in finance and banking and they got on the phone with the governor and pleaded with him to call off sending in the National Guard on that first Saturday. Otherwise, the festival never would have happened.”
