Dueling Docs: Woodstock '99 vs. Woodstock '99
Netflix provides a summary where HBO goes into the trenches
This piece shares details about both Woodstock ‘99 documentaries. Feel free to enjoy this later if you don’t want spoilers.
A few years ago I compared Seduced and The Vow for The A.V. Club. I’m obsessed with documentaries and happy to watch multiple films about the same topic. Why not put that to use and share my thoughts with people who don’t want to spend multiple hours watching stuff about cults and crime. So, this is Dueling Docs! A semi-series comparing documentaries that take on the same topic or have similar themes. Here’s what’s on the list:
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (Netflix) vs. Keep Sweet (Discovery+)
The Con (ABC) vs. Generation Hustle (HBO Max)
Fyre (Netflix) vs. Fyre Fraud (Hulu)
Hoarders (A&E) vs. Hoarding: Buried Alive (TLC)
Angels and Demons: Victoria Secret (Hulu) vs. White Hot: Abercrombie and Fitch (Netflix) vs. The Curse of Van Dutch (Hulu)
This week is about HBO and Netflix’s rival Woodstock ‘99 documentaries and it’s free! If the others interest you, this rest of the series is for paid subscribers, so sign up!
I knew very little about Woodstock ‘99 prior to watching Music Box: Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage (the HBO one, to keep things clear, I’ll refer to it as Music Box). I understood it was a capitalist reimagining of the ‘69 festival, so I expected an investigation into the failures of cost-cutting and profit. It seemed like the original Fyre Fest: ignorant, out of touch organizers, kids who had no clue what they were doing, greed.
Pretty soon into Music Box, it’s clear things are far more sinister when they introduce the journal of 24-year old David DeRosia, the film’s central narrator. DeRosia’s experience brings you into the trenches. He writes about the constant drum circles and electronica that made it impossible for anyone to sleep and started fights. His excitement over boobs turns to horror when he sees women being groped and assaulted. He mentions drugs, the heat, and the cost of food and water. The details shared show how widespread Woodstock '99’s issues were.
DeRosia’s journal ends with him excited to see Metallica, where he’s determined to get in the pit. I was eight that year, but my older siblings loved KoRn, Metallica and other acts on that random assortment of a line up. It’s easy to imagine them attending, eager to get as close to the action as possible. I learned to play “Nothing Else Matters” on guitar in sixth grade. If I’d been old enough (and if my actual teenage years are any evidence), I absolutely would’ve been in that pit too. David would eventually be rushed from the pit to a hospital where he died of heat stroke. He died doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing at a show, the thing any of us would’ve been doing. It shows how easy it would’ve been for something bad to happen no matter what precautions you took.
HBO brings in concert organizer John Scher, just like Netflix does and he is absolutely horrible in both. On Netflix, he dismisses accounts of sexual assault by saying you can only expect that to happen in a crowd that big. But, on HBO, he refuses to address DeRosia’s death and does not accept responsibility for it. Since the deaths happened at hospital and not on the grounds, he saw no reason to take accountability. With that, HBO makes its thesis clear: this was a dangerous festival put on by people who prioritized greed over human lives.
Netflix’s synopsis is less clear. Their version is more focused on providing an overview of each day’s events from the perspective of the bands and event organizers. It isn’t concerned with details and makes no mention of DeRosia or any deaths. But, leaving them out feels like it validates Scher’s idea that their deaths were removed from the actual event. While Netflix does push Scher on the way women were treated, they only mention a few assaults and gropings witnessed by event staff. There’s no mention of the online website and database survivors created so people could self-report events. The HBO documentary speaks with the person who attended and created the database who says they saw hundreds of reports come in; far more than the Netflix doc or Scher admit to.
HBO’s interviewees range from people who would do it again to survivors whose lives were changed forever by events that weekend. They speak with musicians and organizers. It’s a diverse group that depicts a 50/50 chance on Woodstock ‘99 being the worst or best time of your life. Netflix bring in some people who attended, but they mostly fit the show’s narrative: excited white dudes. At the end, even the white women interviewed say they would do it again, as though that outweighs the reports mentioned in the HBO documentary. On the talent side, Netflix does talk to Ananda Lewis, a black MTV VJ who was groped repeatedly, but the audience is depicted as mostly white.
This does a disservice to the rampant racism present that weekend. Netflix foregoes DMX’s performance entirely, but HBO uses it as a centerpiece for that weekend’s boiling tensions. As a sea of white men start saying the n-word with DMX, black attendees talk about the fights they witnessed break out and the fear they felt in the crowd. One interviewee mentions how angry he got seeing a white friend say the n-word whom he never imagined would do that. This wasn’t just an event people let go of over the course of the weekend. It created dividing lines and broke friendships.
Is that the fault of festival organizers? Without mentioning the DMX performance, the Netflix documentary sort of says yes. They do talk about the organizers’ disconnect from that generation and the nonsensical lineup that angered KoRn and Jewel fans alike. But, it’s the context HBO provides that shows the gravity of those consequences. Netflix presents it more as a joke: the old guys didn’t listen to the young dude who tried to tell them. That is true! It’s just that Woodstock ‘99 ignores how much of an issue that caused.
Beyond the greed and rampant capitalism, the festival stoked the flames of a generation that was angry and tired of being mistreated. Both documentaries do a great job outlining the generational shift from the original Woodstock to ‘99. Yet they land at different conclusions. Netflix’s Woodstock ‘99 seems to shrug and say “Well, we just wanted to give a new generation peace and love, but we didn’t realize white men got worse.”
It’s as though nothing could’ve been done to address the inherent rage and douchebaggery inside the people who set fires and hurt people. If Netflix’s Woodstock ‘99 does have a thesis, it’s that all this mess was just a clash between two different generations who didn’t understand each other. This is summarized in a clip where a volunteer from the original Woodstock comments on how this younger generation is acting out because they just need love as a group of men destroy an art piece behind her.
HBO’s Music Box points the blame at festival organizers by bringing up other festivals that had a similar demographic and went off without issue: Ozzfest ‘99, Coachella ‘99, and Warped Tour ‘99. Sure, this generation was angry, but it turns out they’re pretty chill if you provide adequate security, don’t charge $4 for water and don’t host your festival on a hot black tarmac. This wasn’t generational discord over ideas like love and peace, it was a specific group of people exploiting the Woodstock name to make a profit off of kids and twenty-somethings. Maybe Netflix had to go easy on Michael Lang to get him to participate, but it seems to think he had good intentions even though he was the one who decided on an Air Force base. Even in its final moments, Woodstock ‘99 lingers on Lang’s empty chair and ends with a note about his death.
Lang was still alive when Music Box aired, so they didn’t have such a note to end on (it came out July 2021, Lang passed away this past January), but I don’t think they would’ve been as courteous. Music Box instead spends its final moments looking at the financial impact on the city of Rome; another detail Woodstock ‘99 glosses over.
So, what’s my final verdict:
Do You Need To Watch Both? Not necessary, HBO’s Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage covers everything Netflix’s Trainwreck: Woodstock ‘99 leaves out and it’s shorter!
Who’s On the Pod This Week?
Jon Gabrus and Adam Pally! That’s who! We’re talking about 101 Places to Party Before You Die, dead dads and more! Go listen!
i really enjoyed this writeup and the av club one too!
i haven't watched the woodstock 99 docs yet but, the comparison to ozzfest and warped tour is apples and oranges. i didn't go to woodstock but i've been to both ozzfest and warped tour. those were typical tours spread across the country with many different dates and locations. not a single multi-day destination festival where people came from all over to essentially live there for three days. it was just a concert - you went, saw some bands, went home. they also both had distinct themes and bands to match, there weren't such disparate groups of fans like woodstock 99. water (and everything else) absolutely was outrageously expensive as it always is, and it was HOT. i have a distinct memory of laying underneath a bus with friends at one point at one of them because they held it at a racetrack and there wasn't shade anywhere, at all. and it was 100+ degrees. but it was just a handful of hours in one day. if we had been stuck there for days on end, you know, who knows.
basically, it seemed to me like the planning of woodstock 99 didn't go beyond what you would do for a regular one day affair full of mostly locals and people with similar interests. it was a terrible, terrible mistake and negligent oversight from the jump.
i also hate when people try to say things like sexual assault are just ~bound to happen.~ my whole young life was going to shows, when i was young and cute and smashed in nutt to butt with countless strangers and i never, not once, got groped or hit or grabbed or worse. people after all this time need to take some responsibility for the shit show they created and the specific circumstances that made it that way.