Woodstock 99 Documentary
 

Hey Guys,

I haven't been to the Woodstock '99 festival (it happened a year before I was born). But I've always been interested in any counter-culture/musical stuff that was happening anywhere, anytime and anyhow.

So, I'm watching the HBO documentary film about Woodstock '99, and I jus can't keep myself from getting frustrated how much his documentary seems forced, and idiotic.

I mean, first of all, they are applying 2021 values to judge a 1990s festival (they even try doing this in he film with the Woodstock '69 festival – which seems even more absurd):

1. Like there's a 10min part about a concert by a rapper named DMX or something, and he's singing a song where he word "******" is being shouted by the crowd. And the commentators in he documentary are all about "how the black minority at the estival must've felt, when their white friends were shouting '******'". Like... what?

1.1 When you see both white and black people dancing and singing the word. Or you can see just pictures from the event, where here's plenty of people of any skin colour having fun together.

2. There's a 5-10min part about how women were topless at that festival and how hat is showing us how the 90s culture was all about making women feel inferior, or that they were only sexualised objects (and not real participants).

2.1 Even though on the photos/videos from the festival the are shown in the film, you see men and women laughing and having fun, and not caring about touching breasts or whatever (on most of the videos shown from the concerts, you even get the idea, that the men touching those breasts are boyfriends or whatever of the girls).


The point here being that the documentary wants to impose some sort of interpretation of those events on me, but it does so in showing me elements that were actually good (not bad).

This goes on.

The documentary also shows many people taking about what an awful experience the whole event was. How everything went wrong. There ain't a single thing that was good about it apparently.

In my opinion (based on the documentary itself) the film shows only a fractured picture of the festival, and is trying to make that event seem like a "lesson from the past", but art the same time it's incapable of doing so (as you see all these people having fun, and dancing, singing, etc).




The doucmetntary leaves me with a distaste.

But not with a distaste for the festival, but for people making documentaries at HBO or any other big american company.
It all makes no sense.

1. How come you can see all these happy people having fun, and yet saying it was a nightmare?
2. How can you say it was all a nightmare, but then show photos and videos of people having immensely a lo of fun?
3. Why would you do this documentary in he first place? Why not show me archive footage (apparently there's plenty of it), and let me decide for myself was I a nightmare or no?

Also, most of the stuff the authors are saying where awful (like: mud everywhere, the showers not working, the toilets being overused, people having and using drugs), would seem to me perfectly normal and fine. Like...where do you thin you're going to? A corporate yoga class? It's a 90s hippie-ish festival! What were you expecting?



My point is:

Are there any Woodstock '99 attendees around here? Can anyone tell me they actually thought of this festival as a "nightmare"? Or was it the other way around? Or was it something in the middle?
Was it worth it? Was it not worth it? Say your thoughts on it (and on thee documentary, iff you will)!

Speak up!
Educate me, please

This document leaves me only with thoughts of how low people would go in order to make some sort of "politically correct" propaganda (I'm no sure if this sound well, but I'll be glad to explain more thoroughly if someone would feel offended).





The worst part of the documentary is this guy called Morris or something. He's a journalist for he New York times apparently. Every time he speaks I just wan to get up front he couch and punch the screen in. Like what the hell are you talking about man?

I wasn't at Woodstock '99", but I certainly remember the coverage on MTV. I don't know about much of what you're saying. I do remember the shock of Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit more or less inciting a riot and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were left to pick the pieces up. Did the documentary mention anything about the conditions at Woodstock? Word has it that the promoters didn't think ahead in terms of supplies and facilities and there was a lot of price gouging for basic necessities like water. It pretty much set up a tempest for Durst to exploit and the end result wasn't pretty.

It may have been different for those that were actually there.

I'm watching the film right now, I'm about in the middle.

Haven't seen the riots or the Peppers yet, so dunno


I was just sharing my thoughts on how the thing is covered here, and wanted to get some feedback on people who attended the thing.

Because it's just hard to believe it was as bad as this documentary tries to tell me it was
(especially when half of the things that the film says "where bad", I would actually find quite good and fitting for a festival of this sorts [like baking tin mud and overall nudity)

I don't remember it being considered all bad. The news reports said it had started out rather peacefully and only got out of control a bit later. Again the living conditions were poor and that was said to have been a factor in the eventual violence but the initial intentions were certainly good.

Lotta people got raped. I imagine most people aren't interested in footage of that.

Documentaries are too connected to cinematic standards to be fully accurate, don't expect them to be.

I just watched it last night. I enjoyed it. There were plenty of interviews with people who were NOT comfortable with how the crowd was behaving. Some of the talking heads did seem pretty biased towards PC culture though. There was specifically one female speaker who seemed like she just wanted to seem outraged at anything. Other than that, I thought it was well done.

1999 the good ol days pre 9/11 were white guy and his black friend could jam out at a concert and both shout the n word and spit the DMX lyrcis live

We had different 1999s.

I don’t expect the documentary to show me footage of people being raped. Just a documentary made without ideology behind it. They could just show footage made at the festival and have some sort of off-screen narration from time to time (if they wish to have a message being sent by this film).
But here, when watching it, I just felt like someone wants to sell me an idea, and not facts. Like listening all the time to people who were saying it was **** (because you had mud next to your tent, or because the showers were not functioning, or because people got raped — and it’s all literally just shoved in together)

well, documentaries are supposed to be documents of the time; facts not fiction

So, expecting them to be accurate isn’t much of an expectation

How so?

Was it the one that said:

„One of the most offensive things about Woodstock ‘99 was that these guys, who were relics of the 60s, felt that this was something that Gen Xers needed. That we somehow needed our own experience of what they had”


Like, dafuq is this supposed to even mean?
Geez, let’s make the festival’s organizer’s pay for wanting to do something cool and fun and important for the attendees.




Or just a moment later:

"The Rave hangar was very cynical, very soulless. Let's shove in some DJs and some drugs and some kids and keep this going all night. It made no sense to me whatsoever. There is no crossover, there is no world in which a kid who's there for Limp Bizkit is also, like, looking to go do extasy in thee rave tent and phase out to Moby. It's just not happening."

Is she retarded? What is she even saying there? "There is no world" where's that possible? Really?

And what does cynicism have to do with Limp Bizkit fans trying to dance to rave music?

I'm not big on joining rock and electronic music during one estival myself. But come on...do you think there won't be people who enjoy it?

Sick hangups bro

They rarely are though, so it's an unrealistic expectation.

what are 'hangups"?


(I'm not a native English speaker)

Unnecessary emotional investment.

Like damn, you disagreed with an interview subject in a mediocre doc, let it go.

I guess it's just the way I am, you know
Because I crave for the truth and I have to spend my time somehow.



This could be the definition of any emotional involvement really

I don't remember white people freely using racials slurs with their black friends and everything wound up being peachy.

Speak for yourself, me and my urban-style friends and cohorts have engaged in some radical struggle sessions to address, confront and expunge the toxic legacy of white supremacy holding sway in our society, and boy did we proudly and loudly reclaim that one famous word together in the spirit of solidarity and liberation, you know the word I'm talking about...

Violent J sexually assaulted some old country singer while on a motorized scooter at that Woodstock.

They barely included them for some reason. I wanted to see more ICP!

The analysis...it's so good

If all these bands are "basically ICP" then how come so few of them have ever produced anything as epic and iconic as Piggy Pie? Riddle me this!

A man of culture I see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4oX2EW-MOE