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Word on the street is that Focus Features has called up The Hudson Valley Film Commission to help find locations for the upcoming film, Taking Woodstock. The Hudson Valley Film Commission operates in conjunction with the Woodstock Film Festival to help with preproduction, production, and postproduction for filmmaking in the Hudson Valley and Catskill region. 

The film, Taking Woodstock, is to be directed by Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee’s, and is based on the memoir of by Elliott Tiber, whose parents owned a motel near Bethel. Taking Woodstock examines how Tiber kept his gay lifestyle hidden from his family, his involvement in the Stonewall Riot and the role he played with the 1969 concert. Tiber helped promoters of the 1969 Woodstock concert find Yasgur’s Farm, where they held the famous concert after being turned away from different locations.

According to PoughKeepsieJournal, a production designer and location scout from Focus Features have visited the Hudson Valley, checking on possible locations for Taking Woodstock, scheduled to start filming in August. The production designer and location scout will return to the region soon with Lee to visit possible filming locations. 

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News from Variety suggests that 34-year old comedian Demetri Martin will star as Elliot Tiber, in the upcoming Ang Lee film, Taking Woodstock. Taking Woodstock, set in NYC, is based on the life of Elliot Tiber, a 30-something, in-the-closet gay man working at his parents’ motel in the Catskills, who inadvertently sets in motion the generation-defining concert in the summer of 1969. Focus is eyeing a late August start date.

Martin is a well known comedian, having worked extensively with Comedy Central. 

Watch one of his routines here:

According to Reuters, Ang Lee, the award-winning director of the critically acclaimed film “Brokeback Mountain,” is set to direct a movie revolving around the Woodstock music festival. ”Taking Woodstock” centers on the amazing life of Elliot Tiber, a Greenwich Village-based interior designer and part-time Catskills hotel manager who headed the Bethel, N.Y., Chamber of Commerce. He issued the permit for the legendary 1969 concert on his neighbor Max Yasgur’s farm. The movie is based on Tiber’s memoir, titled, ”Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life,” which he wrote with Tom Monte.

Focus Features is producing the film. Focus was also behind Brokeback, and the upcoming Gus Van Sant film, ‘Milk’, based on Harvey Milk’s stranger-than-fiction life.