Soapbox: No Smoking Whitefish

The dream: I'm glued to a chair watching Oprah. There on the screen, sitting across from her, is one of my nonfiction authors. “But it is the truth,” he is saying over and over again. She is glaring at him, and then I awake in a cold sweat, mumbling, “It is the truth.” I think to myself, Did I do enough? Do I have all my documents in order? Can I change the channel?

Running a nonfiction publishing house is stressful enough. When did paranoia become part of the job? For me, the seeds were planted in 2004, before Oprah knew authors could fib.

When I was first approached by Elliot Tiber to publish his memoir about the role he played in the 1969 Woodstock Festival, I knew very few details about what had taken place. So when he told me that he was the guy who granted the concert promoters a permit to hold the festival, he got my attention. The story he told me was amazing. I wasn't sure if my small publishing company was right for the project, but I decided to take a chance.

Before sending a contract, however, I wanted to make sure Elliot was telling the truth. Having started out as a textbook publisher, I knew how important fact-checking could be. I Googled “Elliot Tiber Woodstock” and found pages of Web site listings about Elliot and his role at Woodstock. But I wanted more proof. Elliot had given me the name of Roy Howard, an old friend of his who had been there when the concert promoter's helicopter landed on the lawn of Elliot's motel. Howard vouched for Elliot. I sent the contract to Elliot and his co-writer, Tom Monte, in late 2005.

In January 2006, Oprah Winfrey aired her now famous show in which she lambasted author James Frey for making up parts of his memoir, A Million Little Pieces. The debacle made me think that perhaps I should go a little further in my own investigation of Elliot's project, now titled Taking Woodstock. I called him, asking for further proof of his story. He told me that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had recently held a screening of the 1970 documentary Woodstock. At that screening, AMPAS had asked Elliot, Woodstock festival co-creator Michael Lang and several others to take part in a discussion and recount their Woodstock involvement to the audience. Elliot had kept a video recording of the discussion. “That's good,” I said. “How about the permit itself? Do you have that?” He didn't. Although the AMPAS video certainly added to the facts, it wasn't hard evidence. I still wasn't convinced, and we were getting closer to the book's publication.

A year later, by pure chance, filmmaker Ang Lee and Elliot met in the green room of a San Francisco TV studio as they waited to be interviewed on a local talk show. Seven months later, in 2008, a movie deal was announced: Taking Woodstock was to be Ang's next film project. Of course, the studio required due diligence, so Focus Features contacted us for whatever proof we had on Elliot's story. We provided the evidence we'd gathered; two months later, after the studio had conducted its own investigation, the project was okayed. Why was I still uncomfortable? Once the movie deal was publicly announced, an article questioning Elliot's role appeared in an upstate New York newspaper. If only we had more solid proof of Elliot's involvement.

Finally, last fall, we received a box of VHS tapes from Elliot's friend Roy Howard. For years, Roy had been taping TV segments related to anything Woodstock related. After watching hours of Roy's videos, Square One's director of marketing and publicity, Anthony Pomes, informed me that there was a segment I had to see. In 1994, the ABC news program Turning Point had aired a show on the “Woodstock '94” festival with a look back at the '69 concert. At one point, a document filled the entire screen. It was the original concert permit. On the bottom of the license was the signature of one Elliot Tiber. Finally, I had my hard evidence.

With the movie set to premiere August 28—on Woodstock's 40th anniversary—I am certain that stories questioning Elliot's pivotal role will make their way into the media. But we have done our homework. At the very least, we know Elliot has nothing to fear from Oprah.