3 of the Most Disgusting Revelations from Netflix’s ‘Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99’
The new Netflix docuseries, Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, takes a look at the 1999 music festival that originally hoped to encompass the feelings of peace and love from its predecessor of the same name. What most expected to be an outdoor concert featuring some of the hottest bands of the ’90s became a nightmarish three days of absolute chaos. Here are three of the most disgusting revelations to come out of Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.
The lack of responsibility taken by the music festival’s organizers
From the footage shown in Netflix’s Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, the festival appears as an unmitigated disaster from day one. While the original Woodstock attendees camped out on lush green fields, the 1999 version was a sea of asphalt. The people attending Woodstock ’99 featured some of the worst examples of humanity, and organizers like Michael Lang and John Scher seem fine sweeping it under the proverbial rug.
On the last night of Woodstock ’99, Lang passed out 100,000 candles to the crowd. He hoped they would have a peaceful candlelit vigil as the Red Hot Chili Peppers played “Under the Bridge.” Despite none of this being approved by the local fire marshal and assistants telling Scher they couldn’t do this, the men went ahead with the plan. (When has handing out actual fire to 100,000 people ever seemed like a good idea?)
Festival-goers burned everything to the ground on Sunday night after getting agitated with the way organizers had price-gouged them over the weekend. However, if you only heard from Scher and Lang, one might think the entire event was a raging success. The men seem delusional as they discuss the incidents. Plus, neither seems to take responsibility for the horrible incidents that occurred.
Netflix’s ‘Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99’ features a staggering amount of sexual assaults
Plenty of Woodstock ’99 attendees leaned into the whole “nudity is unity” mantra. Women and men walked around topless, pantsless, and fully nude. However, several of the female concert-goers reported being assaulted as they body-surfed through the crowd. A.J. Srybnik, the Rave production manager, saw a young teen girl unconscious in the back of a van with her pants around her ankles while a man pulled up his shorts next to her.
Colin Spier, a member of the organizing team, tells cameras, “I started seeing large groups of dudes, hanging out, surrounding women and chanting in their faces to take off their bikini tops.”
Scher mentions the body-surfing, saying, “I think from Saturday on, I heard some reports that the women were pushed around.” He adds, “But there were a lot of women who voluntarily had their tops off. And then you get into a mosh pit, and you get crowd-surfed. Could somebody have touched their breasts? Yes, I’m sure they did. What could I have done about it? I’m not sure I could have done anything.”
Pilar Law, Lang’s assistant at the time, talks about getting a call from the mother of one of the girls who attended the festival, “So, after the festival, when I got back in the office, I started getting phone calls. It was a hysterical mother talking about how her daughter had been raped.”
One news station reported four rapes and multiple sexual assaults. John Scher said, “Woodstock was like a small city, you know? All things considered, I’d say that there would probably be as many or more rapes in any sized city of that.”
Netflix’s ‘Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99’ shows people swimming in raw sewage
The water situation shown in Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 might make you gag. The overwhelming amount of people caused port-a-potties to overflow and the raw sewage leaked into the mud. The docuseries shows clips and photos of attendees covered head to toe in what they thought was mud. In reality, had a disturbing amount of feces mixed in with it. People lined up at water stations to quench their thirst in the brutal July heat. However, when the lines grew too long they looked for other sources.
One attendee interviewed in Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 developed a case Trench Mouth. She told cameras she woke up with a “very sore throat, cold sores all over my lips, ulcers all over my tongue, my gums and in my mouth.”
Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 is now streaming on Netflix.
