Trainwreck: Woodstock '99

 2022, 3 episodes - Netflix

I was 23 years old when Woodstock '99 occurred.  Leading up to it I was pretty wholly disinterested.  I had just graduated from university and had life to figure out, and some revival of old hippy shit with a gaggle of bands and artist that just weren't my music (I was deep indie at the time).  I did look on with a curious eye, recalling quite distinctly the moment where MuchMusic VJ Rick ("the Temp") was investigating the portapotty situation on day 2, which was a vile sight to behold (footage also used in this doc).  And yeah, clips of day 3 when idiots were embracing the "mud" which was so obviously comprised of portapotty runoff.  It was a literal shit show.

"Shit Show" would be a far more appropriate title than Trainwreck.

This three-part documentary, tackling sort of the behind-the-scenes and in-the-crowd perspectives of the three days of the concert, including the lead in planning and the post-event fallout, but still only scratching the surface.  It's a film letting its talking heads control much of the narrative and not necessarily having its own particular statement it's trying to slam home, other than "what a mess, right?"

If it's making points it's that the concert was put on by former hippie Boomers (who, as we all know, became rampant capitalists) who had no concept of what 1999's pre- and proto-Millennial youth were like tempermentally (they certainly weren't faced with the same unifying threats of getting conscripted into war and crusades for civil rights that defined late 60's youth turning them into peace-and-love advocates, it was the first wave of the "me-first, gimme-gimme, everyone's a winner" generation just reaching adulthood).  The event organizers, on camera, admit to not really knowing the music acts they were signing up, particularly aggro nu-rock acts like Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Kid Rock.  Though to go by this documentary one would think there only were less than a dozen acts centered around these three and the closing act Red Hot Chili Peppers, with acts like Jewel, Fatboy Slim, Wyclef Jean, Bush and Sheryl Crow also noted or interviewed, but treated as curious asides to these main four acts...in reality there were around 100 acts at the festival, but clearly the specific agg-rock headlines were the draw.  If this doc focuses on these four bands, it's because of the demographic they attracted -- an overwhelming amount of hetero young white men, full of anxious rage and absolute entitlement -- which is subliminally what the documentary is about.

A talking head defines 1999 as the peak of hypersexualized, hyperviolent, hypermasculine fratboy culture citing American Pie (in which an unsuspecting young woman is, without consent, triumphantly broadcast having a sexual encounter with another teen) and Fight Club as two landmarks of the culture of the era, neglecting to add that Girls Gone Wild should also have been in the mix.  For those who couldn't attend, there was a 3-day, $60 pay-per-view, and the outsourced crew filming it followed a very GGW track (at least in how this doc chose to represent it) focusing intently on the nudity and the fratboy hijinks.  A member of the crew is one of the talking heads, and the doc seems to skirt around condemning or criticising their choices. The doc also does this backhanded absolution with most of its talking heads, including the festival founders and producers who still seem be willfully oblivious to their role in the shitshow that went down.

But their role, others readily would like to point out, was integral to the event's downfall.  Shortsighted and capitalistic decisions were made - about the venue, about food services, about trash and human waste maintenance, about under-resourced medical staff and about security - all of which, alongside the decisions around the acts chosen, contributed to the hellscape of assault, substance abuse, injuries, arson, property destruction, and (unmentioned in the doc) death.  In their choice of venue (a military airbase), it was a wide and exposed tarmac, an environment that only accentuates the aggressive heat that weekend, and no shelters were available or provided to escape the sun.  Their decision to not allow food or drink (but no worries about drugs) on the premises meant that the kids in attendance were forced to purchase overpriced food and water (4$ a bottle) from the outsourced vendors.  Heat stroke was rampant.  Trash was not adequately picked up or disposed of, so the grounds, after day one, looked like a landfill, and during the concert on days 2 & 3 the airspace immediately above the crowd was a skyline of trash being lobbed about.  The portapotties weren't appropriately serviced, and at a certain point the free drinking water became contaminated with runoff.  The decision to hire untrained youth as "Peace Patrol" instead of any formal security, meant that security was direly lax, and certainly not an adequate percentage of the concertgoing population.  The fratboys very quickly realized that there were no rules and really no consequences for their behaviour, and as conditions on the grounds deteriorated, the attitudes of the youth became more and more extreme.  There was always going to be a white male entitlement that the festival was naturally going to serve, but in not actually serving them that entitlement became discontented rage.  

From the moment the festival starts within the documentary, there's is a pervasive discomfort that is never explicitly stated in the production, but is overwhelmingly there.  That white male youth crowd -- taken advantage of financially, their wellbeing disserviced, and confined with women who thought they were in a space where they could be liberal and free (read: topless... the producers seemed to want to hammer home that topless women were sort of inescapable) -- well, there really was only one way this was going to play out.  Sexual assault and exploding trailers.

The festival promoters tried throughout the festival (and in recalling the festival) to downplay every negative thing that happened, if acknowledge it at all.  By the way this doc details it, you would think that there was only a handful of assaults, and that, in context, was somehow acceptable, and that the real bad thing was the riot that ended the festival.  The truth is that even one is unacceptable, and that there were likely an exponential amount of assaults (many occurring on camera as women crowd surfing or sitting on shoulders are pawed at and groped in virtually every crowd scene) which the doc really doesn't account for.  Like during the Black Lives Matter movement, the media context was more on the property destruction, and not the actual human toll.

There's a whole undercurrent, a whole subtext to Woodstock '99 that this doc only implies but doesn't deign to explore, which is what sunk in for me.  In a cowardly fashion, it mostly tries to play the fesitival off as a laughable comedy of errors, but it should be talked about as something much uglier, much more severe.  What does it say about this culture, these people...of America 1999, versus America 1969, versus America 2022.  It could have, if it wanted to, drawn direct lines to where we are today...what the pre- and proto-Millennial white males have become in Trump era politics and what white mob mentality back then has translated into today.  There are many Chads and Karens of Woodstock '99 that seemed to think it was a great time, totally worth the destroyed lives, trench mouth, and broken bones, and would totally do it again.

Likewise, the film doesn't, at all, talk about how the hippie generation became the greedy consumerist generation and how that shaped the youth of the time.  There's a lot of critical cultural examination that is just glossed right over for the sake of sensationalism.  

It's a fascinatingly upsetting watch, in many regards.  If you only feel the nostalgia, then you're watching it wrong.