Taking Woodstock's Ang Lee and James Schamus on Filming the Perfect Acid Trip

The gang behind Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock gathered last night for the film's New York premiere, a tented affair beneath hot, unforgiving monsoon skies. I guess it was better than the last Lee event I attended here -- the Lust, Caution debut where the pushy Hong Kong press called me white trash (true story!) -- but Woodstock's much-improved vibes were bound to trump all red-carpet discontent. Especially for Lee and his longtime creative partner (and Focus Features benefactor) James Schamus, who both offered insights on how to best channel the free, permissive '60s spirit on film -- starting with an acid trip.

Woodstock's hero, Elliot Tiber (played by Demetri Martin), enjoys his hallucinogenic breakthrough about two-thirds of the way through film. He's already offered his parents' rundown Catskills motel to the titular music fest's promoters, and he's suffered the backlash of his townspeople for helping bring 500,000 hippies to their tiny community. By the time Elliot actually decides to decompress and check the concert out, he runs into a pair of VW-bound kids (Paul Dano and Kelli Garner) just over the hill who offer a more intriguing way to spend a few hours.

And thus begins an extended sequence returning Lee to visual experimentation we haven't seen since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Not that anyone flies or bounds about the nearby foliage, but it's a stunner nonetheless, overlapping pastel lighting effects, green-screen animation, shifting film speeds, lens trickery and undulating CGI in its glimpse at what's casually referred to as "the center of the universe."

But before Movieline could ask Lee if he'd ever been experienced, he confessed to conjuring the visuals the same way he does on all his films: He simply made them up.

"I'm embarrassed to say I've never tried it myself," Lee said. "My kids want me to try it; they'd think it's pretty cool. But I've made a women's movie, and I didn't go through a sex-change operation. But people around me gave me a lot of good ideas. After all, it's a movie development. It's a cinematic thing. I had to use whatever technique was available."

Schamus was a little more forthcoming when asked how one actually writes an acid trip. "I'll tell you, I wrote it the exact same way I wrote the fighting scenes in Crouching Tiger," he said. "I'd get there and and I'd write, 'They'd fight.' And actually, with the acid scene, I was inspired. I tried to pitch Ang a very different version from what you saw, which was based on a great movie that no one watches any more called Head. With The Monkees? To me, it's a masterpiece. It's one of the most subversive films."

Instead, Schamus continued, Lee cracked the books. "Ang's direction was to read every single piece of research on the physiology and psychology of the acid experience," he said. "And create the perfect experience. I was really supportive of it, but I thought young people might not relate to it that much because the pacing is really... acid-y. It's not trippy in a speed sense. And we found that younger people loved that sequence, which really blew my mind. I kind of thought young people might get bored."

But why?

"It's a sense of being perceptually present in the world," Schamus replied. "The older folks are too scattered; we're too short-term. Younger people really have much more patience in a way, and they just love being there. And I thought, 'Wow, Ang pulled it off!' That freaked me out."

Taking Woodstock opens Aug. 28.

[Ang Lee photo via WireImage]