Sex, Drugs, NO Rock ‘N’ Roll…
What started as a dream to recreate that Woodstock magic and the profits brought in from the subsequent movie and soundtrack…by our friends in the mob, became a courtroom battle fueled by bigotry, racism, antisemitism, and the downright fear of tens of thousands of “dirty stinking hippies” invading the small idyllic town of Middlefield, Connecticut.
THE BACK STORY
In the summer of 1970, riding on the heels of Woodstock’s success a year earlier, a small ski resort in the sleepy town of Middlefield, CT was set to host the Powder Ridge Music Festival. The weekend’s artists included Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, Little Richard, Van Morrison, Grand Funk Railroad and more. And the photographer covering it all was the legendary Magnum Photographer, Leonard Freed.
A lot has been written about Powder Ridge, but most of what people know about it is WRONG…
Here are the major players:
In one corner you have Ray Filiberti, a mob-connected promoter, a dreamer with the heart of a con man, who believed only in cash transactions and never keeping books. One of his lawyers was the infamous Roy Cohn. His sometimes partner was Syd Luft (third husband of Judy Garland), who helped Filiberti secure a four-picture deal in Hollywood, with the first of those films being a Woodstock-like documentary on Powder Ridge. Filiberti had fifty thousand tickets printed for the festival, which, according to the contract with the venue, had an official maximum capacity of eighteen thousand. Add to that the fact that those beautiful, embossed tickets were most likely re-printed and sold three or four times…that’s over 150,000 tickets sold!
In the second corner you have Lou Zemel, owner of the Powder Ridge Ski Resort. Zemel was a known Communist who argued his right to travel to Cuba all the way to the Supreme Court in a trial known as Zemel v. Rusk. He was also a fervent supporter of the Black Panthers, allowing a Panther rally at Powder Ridge earlier in 1970, around the time of the infamous Bobby Seale murder trial just miles down the road in New Haven. It should be noted that the body of Alex Rackley, the man Seale was accused of ordering a hit on, was dumped in the town of Middlefield, not far from Powder Ridge.
In the third corner you have forty thousand plus music fans looking for the next Woodstock experience: a lot of sex, even more drugs, and wall-to-wall rock and roll. Call them “dirty stinking hippies,” as did the flyers warning them to stay away, or simply “freaks,” as many of them labeled themselves. They were an army of young, uninhibited, socially conscious, war-protesting people looking for the party to end all parties.
And finally, in the last corner, there is the sleepy town of Middlefield whose thirty-five hundred residents were predominantly white and ultra-conservative. To say that the powers that be in town disliked Zemel and all he stood for was not an exaggeration. They wanted nothing to do with communists, or the Black Panthers, or the mob, for that matter. And they really did not want tens of thousands of hippies destroying their idyllic town and corrupting their children.
Problems quickly arose…
The festival sold out completely. But the town had never actually given the New York-based promoters permission for the festival to take place. The residents of Middlefield rallied, together with their elected officials, and wasted no time in getting a court injunction to ban the event. Zemel soon found himself between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The town was shutting down the festival. The promoters and all the cash from ticket sales were suddenly nowhere to be found. And thousands of kids were arriving from every direction, setting up camp on the slopes, still expecting some live rock and roll.
On threat of arrest, a vastly outnumbered contingent of state and local police successfully turned back all but one performer and as many concertgoers as they could. However, by Friday, July 31 — the planned first night of music — 40,000 kids were still in attendance for their promised Woodstock experience. Instead, they were met with a dead venue – the city, in their infinite wisdom, had cut power to the resort. The attendees were left stranded for three days with little food, little water, and no music.
So, the concertgoers turned to what they had left in abundance: sex and drugs.
PROGRESS SO FAR
We began production on this film in the fall of 2021, four years later we’ve amassed over 75 interviews with participants including Melanie (the only performer), Anthony Filiberti (the son of promoter Ray Filiberti), the step-children of Powder Ridge owner Lou Zemel, as well as his son, who all witnessed the organizing and falling apart of the festival, the promoter’s office manager, three members of Cosmic Lab (the Wavy Gravy & Hog Farm-like group who kept the peace), members of the film team hired to document the festivities, the local historical society, and over fifty attendees. We have access to over 3500 never-before-seen still photographs, as well as over 3 hours of never-before-seen Super-8 film of the event.
But the icing on the proverbial cake is that we recently signed a deal to use photographs from Magnum Photographer, Leonard Freed’s collection. These shots are amongst the most iconic images taken of the festival and have appeared in numerous magazines over the past 55 years.
We still have more interviews to film. We’d really like to include more of the scheduled musicians, sound genius Bill Hanley, and film PA Martin Scorsese in the mix.
We hope to play the film festival circuit in 2027, with a DVD and streaming release planned for later that year.
Written & Directed by Gorman Bechard
Produced by Gorman Bechard, Sophia Rokas, Abby Richards
Associate Produced by Kaity Bolding
Edited by Sydni Frisch
Music by Dean Falcone
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Watch our Trailer (Warning: NSFW)
