ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
The story behind Michael (Woodstock) Wadleigh’s ecological thriller, WOLFEN (1981), one of the most talked about films of the last 40+ years and the American maverick’s only Hollywood feature.

SYNOPSIS
In the decade since Michael Wadleigh’s defining rock documentary Woodstock became a cultural phenomenon, Wadleigh spent many years in Hollywood developing scripts that were never produced. Having seen Woodstock before it hit the screens, Orion Pictures executive Mike Medavoy took an interest in Wadleigh’s project, the war epic The Revolution, and asked him to consider doing a commercial feature first. The Wolfen was the book that Wadleigh chose, a best-seller by Whitley Strieber about a pack of superhuman wolves stalking parts of New York City that producers Alan King & Rupert Hitzig had read and optioned in galleys. Wadleigh abandoned the straight detective story of the novel in favour of turning it into an allegory about the decimation of society as we knew it.

Opening with the impact of Woodstock’s legacy and the exciting late sixties New York film scene he was part of with peers Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, the documentary will break down Wolfen’s making through the prism of real world issues that Wadleigh chose to develop the story with. Using interviews of surviving cast, crew and critics, along with extensive historical footage, the film will look at economics, ecology, inequality, technology and nature amid the social and political backdrop of 1970’s/1980’s New York. With the introduction of Native American Indians that were not part of Whitley Strieber’s book, Wadleigh broadened a story about the history of America and the coming of both the industrial and information age.

Pressured into delivering an accessible studio picture, Wadleigh, the leftist hippie idealist, confronted the corporate mechanics of the Hollywood studio during post-production. After a historic directors guild arbitration, the revolutionary filmmaker slowly begins to segway out of the entertainment business into becoming a campaigner for a more sustainable future.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature

DIRECTOR Stewart Buck
SCREENWRITER Stewart Buck
PRODUCER Stewart Buck
CO-PRODUCER Hank Starrs