Michael Wadleigh has only made two films as a director in his career, the fabulous music documentary WOODSTOCK, Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, and WOLFEN, one of the best horror films of the 1980s. His other credits include working on independent classics DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY and WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR?, as well as on the documentary JANIS about the singer Janis Joplin, whom Wadleigh had filmed already at the WOODSTOCK concert.
Although WOODSTOCK has been hailed as the music documentary, Wadleigh's only other film, WOLFEN, from quite a different genre, was not universally accepted upon its original release. This may be due to the fact that it had to compete with the similarly themed (and well-made) films THE HOWLING and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, released that same year. WOLFEN is superior to both, in artistic and intellectual terms. According to the IMDb, Wadleigh now works as a transit bus driver(!) in his hometown Akron, Ohio.