"Woodstock 99: Peace, Love & Rage'"" (2021 release; 110 min.) is a documentary about the Woodstock 99 music festival that derailed into chaos and violence. As the movie opens, it is "August 15, 1969" and we see Michael Lang, co-founder of the Woodstock festival, goofing around at the original festival. We then go the "July 23, 1999", where following a Woodstock festival in 1994, a third edition is held on a closed military basis, on a blazing hot weekend, and with a line-up fill of bands like Limp Bizkit, Korn, Kid Rock, and Creed (no, really!).
Couple of comments: it absolutely blows the mind what a horrible event Woodstock 99 was. From the inherently wrong site (Woodstock on a military basis?), to the artist choices, to the shortages of water and other essential resources, to the debauchery leading to multiple sexual assaults, it all results in a music festival molotov cocktail the likes of which we haven't seen since and maybe never will again. The documentary makers do a good job providing "highlights" of that weekend with perspectives from various talking heads now 20+ years later, including various attendees who were then in their early 20s and now well into midlife, but also the organizers (who continue to maintain that "mostly" things went great) and experts (such as Spin Magazine's Maureen Callahan, who comments that Woodstock 99 was the "Woodstock nobody asked for"). The last 30-45 min. Of the documentary, when things completely derailed, are very grim, with scenes of sheer violence, anarchy and lawlessness. Things were "mostly" ok? Right! Then there are moments like Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst practically inciting a riot right then and there. But of course he wasn't the root of it all, but just a symptom (just like Trump isn't the "root", but just a symptom of a GOP gone horribly wrong). Tickets for Woodstock 99 were $180 (about $300 in today's money) and bottles of water cost $4 (about $6.50 in today's money). Corporate greed gone wild indeed. Amazingly, only months after Woodstock 99, the very first Coachella music festival took place in California, and as it turns out, it was the REAL Woodstock survivor...
"Woodstock 99: Love, Peace and Rage" premiered this weekend on HBO and is now available on HBO On Demand, HBO Max, Amazon Instant Video and other streaming services. If you have any interest in Woodstock, or more general in rock history, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.
