Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 is an investigative documentary series released on Netflix on 3 August 2022. It is directed by British filmmaker Jamie Crawford, director of The Hunt for Ted Bundy and produced by Cassandra Thornton & Sasha Kosminski. Executive produced by Tom Pearson, Tim Wardle, William Swann (BBH Ent), Casey Feldman (BBH Ent) and Amani Duncan (BBH Ent).
The series investigates behind the scenes to reveal the egos and music that fueled three days of mayhem at the Woodstock 99 festival. There are three episodes in total, each running about 45-52 minutes. It utilises rare insider footage and eyewitness interviews that were part of this festival.
Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 Review
Woodstock 99 was supposed to be a millennium-defining celebration of peace, love and great music. But what became of it is nothing less than a train wreck. The first episode of the series starts off with the bizarre visuals of the venue’s ground, where the festival had taken place over the weekend.
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The roads and ground are filled with trash, all the barricading walls are torn down, vehicles are burned down to ash, still fuming and just more destruction. A completely different scenario than one had expected when they imagined the Woodstock festival, which first happened in 1969. Festival of 69 was advertised as the uncomplicated, unhurried, calm days of peace & music.
And it rightly was like that as well. The founder of the festival, Michael Lang, had tried to recreate the same kind of event in 1994, but things didn’t go too well and didn’t create much profit. He then decided to revive it in 1999 with his partner John Scher, and they had clear goals of making enough profits this time.
They chose the Griffiss Air Force Base located in Rome, New York, as their venue. It is some 3000 acres of area which worked as a base in the war, but has been inactive. The space was enough to hold a large number of people and had all the amenities on-site as well. With beautiful paintings and art installations everywhere, they definitely tried to create a vibe.
So what really went wrong? Well, for starters, the cost-cutting by the organisers definitely made things difficult for everyone. There weren’t enough sanitation workers to pick up the piling trash, and the ones working weren’t doing the job well. They signed a contract with the external caterer, who raised the prices, making everything too costly.
The security even took away the water bottles at the bag check, thus the goers had to buy all the pricey things. Then comes the drugs, alcohol and everything else that added more chaos. And the scorching hot weather didn’t make things any more fun. So if you add everything and go through it for 3 days straight, you are bound to go insane.
Also, if you have a crowd rounding up 250,000, there will be all kinds of people. From music lovers to party ravers to miscreants, it’s a big bunch of mixes which can go wrong if not planned well. But what angers me is that the organisers to this day play the blame game, where everything else is at fault except them.
From blaming the Rock and Roll music acts to the unruly audience and even each other, there is no end. Even when things were going out of control, they were painting a completely rosy picture in the media and not doing anything to stop the chaos.
Summing Up
The documentary series is an eye-opener and shows us how the worst demons of human nature can come out in various situations. It definitely serves as a lesson for other festival organisers, although it didn’t stop the Fyre festival, many others can still learn. Bad planning, greed to make money and no regard for audience experience are some of the reasons for its aftermath.
They hired 18-year-old part-timers as security personnel to control a crowd as large as a small city population. They were even called Peace Patrol (what a joke). There were a few interviewees who had attended the event, and they all agreed to come back to Woodstock if it happened again. But I am sure many other attendees are rather traumatised by the experience.
Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 is streaming on Netflix.
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