Local author Elliot Tiber stands in front of the Cinema Paradiso, where his film, ‘Ticket to Freedom: Woodstock,’ will be screened April 1. (Photo by Juan Carlos Rodriguez)
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By JUAN CARLOS RODRIGUEZ
Thursday, March 27, 2008
New York author Elliot Tiber lived the hum-drum life of a closeted Jewish gay man from Brooklyn during the 1950s and ’60s. During his early years, he worked in Manhattan during weekdays and spent weekends helping his parents run the El Dorado, a dilapidated motel in Bethel, N.Y., a remote mountain town in the Catskills.
There was no clue back then that his simple beginnings, surrounded by yentas and rednecks, would place the young window designer in the path of history. But Tiber stood in the crosshairs of two major cultural events that helped shape modern society.
The first event was the Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village in June 1969, where Tiber found himself in the midst of the demonstration, which is regarded as the opening salvo of the gay rights movement.
“We didn’t know it was the beginning of gay pride,” says Tiber, who now lives in a condo on the New River in Fort Lauderdale. “We were just doing it. We didn’t know it was an event until we read it in the paper.”
Two months later, he played a more critical role in Woodstock, the seminal music festival that defined the wild side of the Baby Boom Generation. By all accounts, Tiber is regarded as the man who rescued the festival after its original plans fell apart. The town council of Wallkill, N.Y., refused to grant a permit to festival producers about six weeks before the scheduled opening.
When he heard the news, Tiber sprang into action as he stood in his parents’ motel, the El Dorado, in Bethel, which is about 50 miles away Wallkill. Tiber had a valid permit in place for an outdoor music festival. He had been organizing a threadbare music festival at the El Dorado for three years.
He contacted Michael Lang, the embattled producer of the Woodstock Festival and brought him to Bethel. The Woodstock people ended up using Tiber’s permit. Since the event was too big to hold at his parents’ hotel, Tiber suggested his neighbor Max Yazgur’s farm up the road. The festival worked out a deal with Yazgur, and the rest is pop cultural history.
“Without me, there would not have been a Woodstock,” Tiber says.
Woodstock would set off a barrage of events and introduce Tiber to a long list of people that would take the once awkward and chubby young man to a life as colorful as the tie-dyed shirt he wears when promoting his book, “Taking Woodstock.” The book spawned a docu-comedy, “Ticket to Freedom: Woodstock.” Based on Tiber’s life, the film will be screened at Cinema Paradiso on April 1.
Tiber’s most personal memory of the three-day Woodstock festival is of opening performer Ritchie Havens improvising “Freedom,” the final song he would perform that day.
“When he sang that song, I felt it was my freedom too,” Tiber says. “I was not afraid to come out of the closet. I was not afraid be gay.”
Another image that helped shape his perspective was watching a mass of youthful humanity clog State Route 17B in VW Bugs and hippie buses when Woodstock finally opened.
“I was in tears,” Tiber remembers, watching the impassable road. “Suddenly there were more of us than there were of them.”
It was the beginning of a new life. About a year after his father died, Tiber convinced his mother to sell the motel. Soon he was free.
In 1971, Tiber began a long-time collaboration with Belgian stage and theater director Andre Ernotte. Over 27 years, the two worked developing theatrical productions and film projects. In 1977, Ernotte’s “Film High Street” was a Belgian foreign film entry for the Academy Award.
While in New York, Tiber socialized with Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. He encountered photographer Robert Mapplethorpe at the Mineshaft, an underground Manhattan nightclub. He even boasts of meeting Rock Hudson at a sex party in Los Angeles.
Tiber explains it in his typically colorful, direct manner. “I’ve had many pieces of pie,” he says.
As the film and book make waves, Tiber is getting ready for his 73rd birthday. He takes a moment to ponder the meaning of his journey from mundane beginnings to fabulousness.
“What it says is you have to believe in yourself,” Tiber says. “Woodstock made me believe in myself. If you see something, you have to go after it.”
Tiber says he feels good about having participated in both Stonewall and Woodstock.
“I felt proud to be instrumental,” he says, “not just to be an observer.”
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