Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 – The Perfect Storm

Factual America

28 Jul

Written By

Woodstock '99 was supposed to be a millennium defining celebration of peace, love and great music. Instead, the festival degenerated into an epic trainwreck of fires, riots and destruction.

Utilizing rare insider footage, and eyewitness interviews with an impressive list of festival staffers, performers and attendees, Netflix docuseries Trainwreck: Woodstock '99, releasing on August 3rd, goes behind the scenes to reveal the egos, greed and music that fueled three days of utter chaos.

Acclaimed filmmakers, director Jamie Crawford, producer Cassie Thornton, and executive producer Tim Wardle, join us to talk about 1990s nostalgia, the rock festival that went wrong, and why they thought there should be another documentary about it.

“Woodstock ’99 was like an experiment in anarchy: what happens when you put a large number of young people together with not many rules.” - Jamie Crawford

*NOTE: At the time of recording this interview, the announced title of the film was Clusterf**k: Woodstock '99, and the participants refer to the film by that title.

Time Stamps

00:00 - Guest introductions and the trailer for Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.
04:30 - What the docuseries is about and the original intent of the festival.
08:28 - The profit-driven agenda of Woodstock ’99 and how it led to chaos at the festival.
11:00 - How society has changed since 1969 and the impact of the 1999 festival's music line-up.
17:24 - How the festival degenerated into chaos, riots and assaults over three days.
21:45 - The difference in treatment between this documentary and HBO’s 2021 version.
27:20 - How willing the subjects were to talk about their memories of the festival.
33:00 - The excitement and challenge of making an archive-led documentary film.
38:50 - The discussions around the title of the documentary.
41:00 - What the filmmakers want the legacy of this film to be.
44:48 - What’s next for Jamie Crawford, Cassie Thornton and Tim Wardle.

Resources:

Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 (2022)
Raw TV
Don't F**k with Cats (2019)
Music Box: Woodstock '99: Peace, Love and Rage (2021)
MovieMaker Magazine
Innersound Audio
Alamo Pictures

Transcript for Factual America Episode 107: Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 – The Perfect Storm

Cassie Thornton 00:00
I'm Cassie Thornton, producer of Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99.

Jamie Crawford 00:05
My name is Jamie Crawford. I'm a Brit living in New York, and I'm the director of Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99.

Tim Wardle 00:12
My name's Tim Wardle. I'm one of the executive producers on Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99.

Speaker 1 00:20
It was going to be the biggest party on the planet. But that's not what any of us remember it for.

Speaker 2 00:31
What the hell happened?!

Speaker 3 00:39
It really felt like it was flower power and coming together in harmony.

Speaker 4 00:43
I've never seen as many people.

Speaker 5 00:44
It was peace and love and music. That was it.

Speaker 6 00:51
It felt like a crowd that could turn at any time.

Speaker 7 00:53
It was like this unleashing... all this energy.

Speaker 8 00:58
There was no control.

Speaker 9 01:00
The environment was just very male ego.

Speaker 10 01:04
I started seeing large groups of dudes surrounding women.

Speaker 11 01:07
There was a lack of respect.

Speaker 12 01:08
Given the climate of the guys there, I'm not surprised by it.

Speaker 13 01:13
Hey guys, give her some room. You're getting scary.

Speaker 14 01:16
What sort of set up do you have for accountability?

Speaker 15 01:19
How many security guards do you have on site?

Speaker 16 01:21
They were glossing over all of that.

Speaker 17 01:24
Big fat rip off.

Speaker 18 01:25
They're all about making money off us, and we're pissed.

Speaker 19 01:29
But the show was gonna go on.

Speaker 20 01:33
I think we need to see a whole hell of a lot more!

Speaker 21 01:38
When you see it with your own eyes, it is just ten times more shocking.

Speaker 22 01:43
Once you become part of a herd, you become like animals.

Speaker 23 01:48
Things are just getting out of control.

Speaker 24 01:51
And all of these people were acting like animals.

Speaker 25 01:59
We got fires everywhere look at this!

Speaker 26 02:00
Kerosene. Match. Boom!

Matthew 02:11
This is Factual America. We're brought to you by Alamo Pictures, an Austin and London based production company, making documentaries about America for international audiences. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood. Each week, I watch a hit documentary and then talk with the filmmakers and their subjects. This week, it is my pleasure to welcome Cassie Thornton, Jamie Crawford and Tim Wardle, the acclaimed filmmakers behind the Netflix docu-series Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99. Woodstock 99 was supposed to be a millennium defining celebration of peace, love and great music. Instead, the festival degenerated into an epic clusterfuck of fires, riots, and destruction. Utilizing rare insider footage and eyewitness interviews with an impressive list of festival staffers, performers, and attendees. This docu-series goes behind the scenes to reveal the egos, greed, and music that fueled three days of utter chaos. Stay tuned as we talk with the filmmakers about 1990's nostalgia, the rock festival that went wrong, and why they thought there should be another documentary about Woodstock 99. Cassie, Jamie and Tim, welcome to Factual America. How are things with you, Cassie?

Cassie Thornton 03:25
Things are great with me. Thank you so much for having us on today.

Matthew 03:29
Yes, and Jamie?

Jamie Crawford 03:32
Equally. I'm a few miles from Cassie, and I'm over in Brooklyn and it is very hot, but all good.

Matthew 03:38
Okay, and Tim, you're on this side of the pond, I think.

Tim Wardle 03:41
I am. I'm in London. Thankfully, it's a bit less hot than it's been recently. Yeah, really excited to be here.

Matthew 03:48
Okay; so, we can tick off the weather discussion. We've had that. So, thank you so much. Again, just to remind our listeners and viewers that we are talking about Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99, releasing on August 3 on Netflix. So, congratulations on bringing three days of anarchy and rage so vividly to our screens. So, well done. I've had the pleasure of seeing the - ahead of time; got the screener, but I know our listeners and viewers will enjoy this once they get a chance. With that in mind, since most our listeners will have not seen this yet, Jamie maybe you can tell us what Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99 is all about. Or give us a bit of a synopsis.

Jamie Crawford 04:38
I would say it is a nostalgic roller coaster that looks back at the 30th anniversary festival of Woodstock, a name that's become synonymous with music festivals, to examine and unpick how it all went wrong. It set out to be three days of peace, love and music, and ended up in fires, chaos, and looting.

Matthew 05:04
Yes. I think, yes. I mean, as you say, I think the film captures that brilliantly. I mean, maybe we can delve in a little bit more. I mean, probably a lot of our listeners are so young that maybe they're not even really that much aware of the original Woodstock. Tim, what was the original intent of Woodstock 99? Were trying to recapture something from 1969, weren't they - the organizers were?

Tim Wardle 05:05
I think so, yeah. I mean, you know, Woodstock 69, the iconic, definitive music festival, thirty year anniversary, they attempted to do a sort of revival of the festival in 94, which had been a partial success. They'd had a lot of rain. A lot of people who got in to the festival for free, and they haven't made any money; they lost money, I think, if anything, on it. So, 99, they were trying to do this end of the millennial celebration, and had big plans for it. And it went horribly wrong.

Matthew 06:06
And Cassie and so, in reality, what was happening leading up to this, I mean, as you say, it was supposed to be all about peace and love and music. And yet, it isn't just those three days, it was what was leading up to those three days that kind of led to those three days. What was happening with the organizers of this event?

Cassie Thornton 06:36
Well, I would say there's a few things. I mean, on a more like meta, macro level, the original Woodstock was supposed to be about peace and love. And there was an anti-Vietnam War movement that was going on. And I don't think that the intention was actually for it to be what it was. I mean, you know, there were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people; we don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of people, were actually there. And so, it was this lightning in a bottle moment-in-time in which everyone came together to take care of themselves, and to stand up against the government. So, flash forward to 1999, they were trying to recapture that feeling. But in fact, society had changed greatly. And the tone of the music and artists which we can get into, had changed greatly from the original Woodstock. So, to answer your question, then on a little bit more of a micro level, there was a panoply of factors that eventually led to three days of disaster in the actual planning of Woodstock that I think all started with sort of a idealistic view of what it could be in 1999.

Matthew 07:56
So, I mean, but the thing that struck me because you've got the original, one of the original, organizers of Woodstock 69, Robert Lang, and others. But the number of times, I mean, to be fair, I don't think he says this in the doc, but you have others, you know, they acknowledge all this, but then they say, But it had to make a profit. They keep saying it had to make a profit, which I don't think that was the mantra of the first one. Was it?

Tim Wardle 08:25
I think, they tried to combine, I mean, I think they were trying to combine the nostalgia and sort of the vibe of the first one with a kind of late 90s profit driven agenda. And the two of those just don't fit together particularly well. And the genesis of a lot of the problems that develop during the festival come from that. I mean, it's not unreasonable for them to expect to make a bit of money on a music festival. Most music festivals are profit making organizations. But the way they went about it and some of the decisions they made, for example, the venue that they chose, in pursuit of profits proved to be mistakes.

Matthew 09:07
Yeah. I mean, it is just a litany here. I mean, I guess.

Jamie Crawford 09:10
I think it's also....

Matthew 09:13
Go ahead.

Jamie Crawford 09:14
... I think it's a misconception that people assume that Woodstock 69 was not about making money because the original thinking about Woodstock 69 was that they were going to put on a music festival that would help them fund the building of a music studio in Woodstock. And they sold a whole load of tickets before it began. But what happened is the logistics got out of control. They didn't get around to building a fence and, you know, half a million people turned up. But at its heart, there was money put behind it, invested in Woodstock 69, with the idea that they would get their money back.

Matthew 09:44
I mean, I think that you've raised a very good point, here. I mean, there is such a mythology, some things are accurate, but there's such a mythology around Woodstock 69 that it just overhangs everything else, doesn't it?

Jamie Crawford 09:59
I think so. And I think also, it's probably to a great degree, they were kind of the victims of their own success in that sense, because the film of Woodstock 69 became this kind of mythological, utopian event that in reality is incredibly difficult to realize.

Matthew 10:16
Yeah. But all that said, I mean, you know, people should watch the film, you document it extremely well, but it doesn't - I mean, it starts off fairly promising - it doesn't necessarily have to fall into what happens. I mean, you've got, these incredible line-ups, the bands that they've picked, but I think you've already alluded to, things have changed in thirty years, in terms of society and what, not even just what's popular, because maybe it's even more eclectic than it had been, but there is a certain style of music that lends itself to - well, I don't know, maybe I'm being - I'm not - I actually don't necessarily buy into that in the sense that there wasn't a unique, maybe they didn't quite have a feel for the kind of unique combination of bands they brought to the fore. Is that a fair enough assessment?

Tim Wardle 11:14
I think that's right. I mean, I think that the bands that they booked were the biggest bands in the world at the time, or certainly the biggest bands in the US. And those bands, tended to attract a particular type of audience, which was, you know, young white men, college age, and the music was very aggressive. And so, when you book those bands, I'm not sure they fully thought through what the demographics of the audience were going to be, and what the prevailing atmosphere of the festival was going to be like, and I think they were somewhat out of touch, the organizers who were, you know, older by this point. They were out of touch with what that music was. They just saw biggest bands in the world, Well, we'll book them because we're Woodstock. And they went out and got them. They didn't think through, they didn't know enough about the music or the bands. I don't think you can necessarily blame the bands for what happened. But there was certainly the fans of those bands came from a certain demographic, and it just skewed the make-up of people at the festival.

Matthew 12:23
Yeah, I mean, it's - Go ahead. Go ahead, Cassie.

Cassie Thornton 12:26
Oh, I was just gonna say that, as Tim was saying, I don't think you can blame the bands alone, which is something that's really interesting about this, because, yes, you bring certain bands, who bring a certain type of audience, but there were other concerts going on at that time with those bands. There was, you know, the smaller scale shows that would happen in the course of one evening, and you wouldn't hear about necessarily this type of mass rioting and destruction at those shows. And those shows were happening all the time. So, I think that the most interesting thing that we came across was analyzing, you know, all of those building blocks put together that sort of unraveled this utopian fantasy.

Matthew 13:10
Yeah. I mean, I'm of a - I mean, there's a very much a general - I mean, so, this film touches on a lot of different things, but there's very much a generational element, isn't there, to this, that you tap into, you've got the, for lack of a better way of putting it, got your boomers who are the organizers, and they're organizing a concert for their children who, since I now realize, teenagers at the time, they're kind of older millennials. And then you got a band full of Gen Xers like me, you know, and it's a very - it is an interesting dynamic going on. But, I mean, that's a bit cliche because, I mean, Willie Nelson was there. There were, like, there were all kinds of different styles of music there. But it was, like you said, this combination of the timing, drug fueled, everything that - you know, this perfect storm, if you will, of events and things that lead to what happened.

Jamie Crawford 13:11
Yeah, I think that's right. I think 'the perfect storm' is a very accurate way to describe it. There is no one single element that brought down Woodstock 99. There is any number of them.

Matthew 14:20
Okay, so it - I mean, it's an incredible - so, for people who are interested, I mean, you know, we've already mentioned a few bands; we've got Korn, we've got Limp Bizkit; you know, I don't know if the two Brits on the call, but, you know, you had this whole scene on the first night where Bush kind of helped settle things down; Gavin Rossdale, because you're worried about what's going to happen after that incredible performance by Korn. Then you got the next day. We've got Fat Boy Slim in there. We've got all these incredible bands. Wyclef Jean was in there. I mean, it was amazing. These line-ups... what's that?

Jamie Crawford 15:05
Kid Rock in there on Saturday.

Matthew 15:07
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, it's just - it is... I guess if you looked at the charts, or not even the charts, who were the biggest draws in 99. They're all there. And...

Jamie Crawford 15:18
You know, they've - interviewing Michael Lang; he told us that he was very specifically sort of setting out to kind of hand over the Woodstock baton and, therefore, he and John Scher worked to organize a musical line-up which was reflective of the music of that generation, not the previous Woodstocks. If you look at Woodstock 94, it was much more of a crossover, they tried to design a [inaudible] which would appeal both to the people who'd gone to the original and to come with their kids, hence, like, Joe Cocker was there and Bob Dylan played, and there's much more even mix of music. Whereas 99, there's only kind of a very small smattering of the original Woodstock flavor through the likes of Willie Nelson.

Matthew 15:24
Kind of a veneer. But... yeah, go ahead, Cassie.

Cassie Thornton 16:01
I was just gonna say also, yes, those were the biggest bands of the day, but they were actually the biggest bands of the day that would bring their audiences to the middle of New York for three days, because, actually, some of the other biggest bands of the day, which we touched upon, of course, you know, the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC; we had Britney Spears, you know, doing her thing at the time, and millennium tour of the Backstreet Boys was one of the biggest selling and highest selling shows of that year. So, you know, I think that also was part of the thinking. It wasn't just the biggest bands of the day, it was the biggest bands that were going to bring in the most people to buy overpriced tickets.

Matthew 16:48
But you would have had a riot on Friday, if you'd had Backstreet Boys show up. You wouldn't have waited till Sunday to kick off! I mean, just what I remember of those days. But as you say, it's so - I mean, what I will say is, it's really, you know, 'show don't tell' is what they say about film, isn't it? So, we're not going to try to describe these scenes, people just need to see this incredible footage that you guys have. But it is sort of - it just degenerates into this, I don't know, Apocalypse Now meets Lord of the Flies sort of environment. And, I think, hence the title literally becomes a clusterfuck, doesn't it?

Jamie Crawford 17:35
I think that that - I mean, that was one of the words that one of our interviewees used, and it is in very few letters in one word is a good summation of where things ended up. I think even people with the most positive take on the events in those three days would concede that some elements were indeed a spectacular clusterfuck.

Matthew 17:59
Yeah, I mean, it reminds - we had a, you may have - we had a doc called Class Action Park on a while back, you know, if you're familiar with it, but it was all - it's kind of same thing: 90s nostalgia, but horrible things that went wrong at an amusement park in New Jersey at the time, and, you know, I remember the guy who, one of the producers behind it, I said, You know, all you can do - there's this nervous laughter that comes with describing these sorts of events. And I felt a little bit bad about it and he said, Well, but it's only natural, because that's the human reaction when you don't know what else to say. Or how to react to something, the natural, what we all tend to do is kind of - and I think a lot of your interviewees do this, don't they; they just kind of, like, put their heads in their hands and just can't, you know, what else can you say about what happened that led to these, you know, to these events?

Jamie Crawford 18:58
Yeah, I think we - sorry, go Tim.

Tim Wardle 19:02
No, no, I was just going to say, I think there is an element of sort of schadenfreude as well as watching these kind of things. Like, it's, you know, there's something fascinating about watching people who have a very clear plan of, like, what they want to do, and then, and making money and everything we've discussed, and then watching that kind of fall apart in a slow motion train wreck or something, just - it's kind of hard to take your eyes off it. And there's something, there's a sort of perverse entertainment that can be taken from watching the best laid plans kind of fall apart.

Matthew 19:34
And I think as you've already kind of mentioned, I mean, and Cassie has, for all that, and there's, oddly enough, there is a bit of a celebration of youth culture, and that comes in at the end with how people said, yeah, they would go again or their memories of it. There were many horrible - Cassie, there were many horrible things that happened there besides burning and mayhem; I mean, especially to young women.

Cassie Thornton 19:58
Absolutely. And I think it was really important to all of us to showcase that, and to make sure that people understood that it wasn't just, you know, light hearted elements that were going awry. There were a lot of things that are much deeper than that that would impact people's lives forever more.

Matthew 20:20
Yeah, so I think, and it's - I mean, to say there were scenes there that were just absolutely hellish, I don't think's over - you know, is exaggerating, but actually, maybe let's give our listeners a bit of a break as they mull this all over. So, we'll be right back with Jamie Crawford, Tim Wardle, and Cassie Thornton, the acclaimed filmmakers behind Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99, releasing on Netflix on August 3.

Factual America midroll 20:49
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Matthew 21:08
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with Jamie Crawford, Tim Wardle, and Cassie Thornton, the acclaimed filmmakers behind Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99. It's releasing on Netflix on August 3. Now for listeners if you're having a bit of a sense of deja vu, thinking, Wait a minute, wasn't there another Woodstock 99 doc that came out? Jamie, what made you think it was - you needed another film about Woodstock 99? I mean, I've enough interaction with people in documentary film, that's one of the first things they do; they google it and say, Oh, there's already been one made. Maybe we'll pass on this one. What was going on with this?

Jamie Crawford 21:52
I think we probably mutually discovered that we were both covering this story at the same time, because we're in production at the same time. But, no, I think it's, you know, there's a great zeitgeist for the 90s, and I think it's - I'm a huge fan of people covering the same story in different ways. There is no single narrative that - well, particularly with this, there is no single narrative that describes the events of Woodstock 99. And we, you know, we actively set out to approach it from a very different standpoint. I think the HBO doc, which we all saw, I think did a really great job of sort of drawing a kind of - some cultural insight into that decade through the various sets that took place at the festival with a kind of bird's eye view on events. And, by contrast, you know, our golden rule, really, was that we only wanted to interview people who had been there on the ground and lived it and seen it. And secondarily, that we were interested in sort of pulling back the curtain on the production itself, and talking to as many people who worked on the festival as possible, to try and uncover in a kind of detective case, what were the elements that brought this thing tumbling down and left it in a burning, smoky mess.

Matthew 23:08
Okay...

Tim Wardle 23:09
That's right. It's, you know, what differentiates our treatment of it is very much a kind of ground level, immersive kind of retelling of events, kind of play-by-play as they unfold. And we focus quite heavily on the young people who were working the festival, who were kind of caught between the organizers and their somewhat grandiose ideas for the festival, and the young people who have come to experience this festival and are having a hard time. And these guys got caught in between, the junior - some of them not junior, but very young - festival staff; it felt like the tension in their story, was really central to what we wanted to tell, about these guys trying to mediate between these two competing demands.

Matthew 23:58
Okay, so, I mean, and to be honest, I haven't seen the other one, so, we're not even comparing it with that one. But it is interesting. And, as you say, it's - Jamie - there's more than one different way of approaching your angle to a story. So, how did this, I mean, so...

Jamie Crawford 24:15
There's 200,000 people there.

Matthew 24:17
Yeah, well, at least, yeah. And so, how did this get started? So, unbeknownst to you, there's this other project going on, but somewhere there, someone had the idea to make a doc about Woodstock 99. Whose idea was that?

Tim Wardle 24:32
So, the origin of the project, Netflix actually bought it to Raw. They'd been approached by BBH, the advertising agency, who were trying to move into documentary TV production and had, I think, an idea for a sort of anthology series, loads of different ideas. One of the stories they were interested in was the story of Woodstock 99, and Netflix said, Well, we need to pair you with some people who've got experience actually making documentaries. And so, that's where we came on board. And we discovered, as Jamie said, through the course of production, that there was another film being made at the same time. So, it was sort of slightly awkward, and the pandemic was on at the same time, and we're sort of interviewing the same people. But, I think, you know, ultimately, what we decided was that we weren't going to try and race them to production. It was more important to us to kind of take our time, and really craft and work the stories, and just make sure that the series was as tight as it possibly could be, rather than trying to get into a sort of crazy rush to get first out the gate.

Matthew 25:37
Is that something that's happening more often - that, like, someone like Netflix will then come to a production company and say, we've got this idea, instead of the other way round, pitching ideas to Netflix?

Tim Wardle 25:49
It's a two-way street; you know, it's sometimes, we pick ideas - you know, I've worked for much smaller independent production companies than Raw, and they're, you know, in that position, you're generally, obviously, much more pitching to them, and trying to convince them to do your stuff. Whereas, you know, Raw have a track record with things like, I don't know, Tinder, Swindler, Three Identical Strangers, Don't Fuck With Cats, that they, you know, Netflix know that, you know, we're going to deliver a quality series, so, we're sort of one of the first ports of call, I think, when they get an idea like this.

Matthew 26:20
Okay. And so, I mean, you're - so, yeah, there's this other production going on, and you said, sometimes you're interviewing the same people, but, Cassie was it - I mean, there were no challenges gaining access, it seems like everyone, almost everyone involved, was very willing to talk, they may have very different memories of the events, but all seem to be very willing to share freely with their view of what led to all this.

Cassie Thornton 26:46
Well, that was one of the best things about working on a show like this is that people were actually very willing to talk about it for a multitude of different reasons. And actually, we could only include a small fraction of the people that we spoke with during casting, and there were lots of people involved in that. But there were so many poignant memories that people had. I mean, even, you know, two decades ago, where people would recount scenes with such vivid memory, and recall that you thought, you know, it had happened last week. So, I think that was one of the most fascinating parts of being involved in this, is that people were always going to share their perspective. And from there, we could get that whole picture view and immersive view about what was really happening on the ground.

Matthew 27:31
And then, as you said, you focused on the people who were actually there. And one, I think, one of the elements of it, that's really I find very, well, very poignant is how did you find those concert goers and focus on these? These aren't like celebs, you know, they, I mean, okay, you had your choice of two hundred something thousand people to track down, and you could have picked them, but I thought it was very, I liked the ones you focused on.

Cassie Thornton 28:01
I'm so glad that you asked about this, because I loved finding and speaking with concert goers. I probably spoke to dozens and dozens of concert goers. And you actually found them through sort of like a chain of reaction, a chain of friends, you might have found one person who posted on the Woodstock 99 Facebook group, and you spoke to that person. And then they were like, Well, you really should talk to this person, and you really should talk to that person. And so, actually, a lot of people were discovered through referral, if you will, because there were so many groups of friends, we found, that went to Woodstock. And even within that friend group, they had totally different experiences. So, actually, Keith and Tom and Sarah were all friends from high school. And there was even more of that involved in Woodstock, and had their own experiences and some with equally great stories.

Matthew 29:00
Yeah.

Jamie Crawford 29:02
Well, as a Brit, being over here was to discover how baked into our generation's DNA, Woodstock 99 is. I mean, our generation within the US. In the UK, I was 22 at the time of Woodstock 99, and we kind of had echoes of it over here, over there. But over here, like, everyone I speak to knows about it. One of the colleagues I'm working with now as a production assistant on it, as I've just discovered, and then just as I started the project, I was talking to my neighbors downstairs on the stoop, they going, What you up to? I'm getting into this crazy story about this music festival Woodstock 99. They're like, No way! We were there. And then one day, we're about to sit down to interview Ananda Lewis, and the night before our interview - with her MTV footage; and in the MTV footage is a moment where one of the hosts is with a crowd of girls and goes, It's really hot out here. You know, what sunscreen are you wearing? And it goes down this line of girls and then this young woman says, I'm Patti from Ohio, I've got 30 - and I was like, Hang on a second, that's Patti, my neighbor! Just amazing. It is just amazing how everybody here knows about it, or has a story to tell about it. In a way, you know, it's like our generation's 69 because everyone has a story to tell about - of that age - has a story to tell about Woodstock 69, many of which are, I never got there, but I wanted to. And it's similar how that echoes in our generation.

Matthew 30:29
I mean, that's interesting, because I think, one thought I had was, I mean, might there be a few who may not want to admit being there? Because it could be under threat of prosecution of some sort. But, you know, did you find - you were, you know, I wonder if, you know, everyone says, what, how many people were actually at Woodstock and there probably a million people who claimed to have been there. Is this one where 250,000 were at Woodstock 99 but maybe only 150 admit to being there? I don't know. But, I guess not. I mean, it seems it - as you say - it's hard baked in.

Tim Wardle 31:06
It is quite funny, though; it is worth mentioning that, I mean, some of our contributors are, you know, lawyers and professional people these days, and that's one of the reasons that we went for first name only in the captions. Some of them insisted on that, and we just went with it across the board, because it feels - it's more intimate as well. But it was just funny, because, you know, you look at all these people who were there, and, you know, in the midst of all that craziness, and they're now grown ups with serious jobs and families. You know, as Cassie said, I think people are broadly happy to talk about it, but they're also conscious that they have professional lives and, you know, responsibilities these days, and wanted that protected.

Jamie Crawford 31:45
I think the only people who didn't talk about it were the people whose jobs wouldn't let them, even though they wanted to, if I remember correctly.

Matthew 31:51
Yeah, that's interesting.

Jamie Crawford 31:52
I think actually in contrast to Woodstock 69, there is very accurate tally of how many people were there. Because they actively sold tickets to it, and there was a massive fence around the whole venue, meaning you couldn't get in if you didn't have a ticket. So, they knew how many people were in by how many tickets they'd sold.

Matthew 32:10
I think someone in your doc literally said it was like a refugee camp. And indeed, it's very much what it looked like.

Jamie Crawford 32:18
Yeah, I mean, there were a few sort of holes in the fence. I think that people snuck through by the end or perhaps snuck out of.

Matthew 32:24
Okay. I mean, yeah, it's a very good point. I mean, if my kids ever listen to this, they'd be surprised; yeah, their old man has been in a mosh pit before, and, you know, these things. I've more memories of 94 than I would 99. But still...

Jamie Crawford 32:40
We should have interviewed you!

Matthew 32:42
... no, no, no, there's nothing interesting about me, but I mean, I think - but 250,000 people in a mosh pit? I mean, that's, I mean, maybe Jamie, what about that - there's some amazing footage looking out into the crowds. Well, not just some, I mean, the doc is littered with it. How much of it was archival? How much is stuff that you guys have exclusive access to in terms of - and then, what it was like for director putting that all together? Because these are things that will never be replicated, I would imagine.

Jamie Crawford 33:18
I think that one of the great things about making it primarily archival lead film is that it's this incredible treasure hunt, good material, right? I mean, particularly with this story because this is pre-phones on your cameras. This was an age when people, you know, as we discovered, as we started to talk to people; normally, there was one person in a group who might have had a kind of clunky camcorder. And the great excitement about this was that although we had access to a lot of the official footage, you know, the festival coverage, and the big wide shots and the booms and that kind of stuff. The really, really visceral tangible stuff was the dusty cassettes in people's attics that we were, you know, through the grapevine, eventually able to turn up and it's those that really, like, put you on the ground in a very sort of first person way that you just simply can't recreate with other stories. And we, you know, we had discussed using other kinds of forms to tell the story. Obviously, a classic way of telling a retrospective story is to do some sort of dramatic reconstruction. But we got so - we were sort of sucked in by this amazing wealth of archival material. And also because it's real, it only lends further credibility to your storytelling, because those are the actual events.

Matthew 34:38
Yeah, I think that's a very good point. You've got some great, you know, handheld shots people made on their own, and with the time date stamps that none of us could ever figure out how to get out of... and that was purely just going on to the web and getting on to Facebook groups and tracking that kinda stuff down. I mean, I imagine some of the people you interviewed had access to, you know...

Jamie Crawford 35:04
It was a great bonus if somebody comes with a really good story to tell, and some way of showing it, too. And I think that was one of the joys of it as well, is that through the archive, you know, one of the producers that we interviewed, she had very actively - she was a daughter of Woodstock 69ers, who had photographed Woodstock 69. So, when she is employed - Pilar Law - she's employed to work on the festival, she sets out to actively document her experience on her camcorder. And the great thing is, you get these, you know, you get these - all this sort of fantastic footage of these 20 year old kids who are now sitting down in the interview chair as 40 something year olds, looking back on their younger selves.

Tim Wardle 35:44
I have to say the challenge of it, as well as just the vast amount of archive and, I mean, the editors almost crying going, I just need more time to, like, look through all this, you know, despite it being months and months and months, you know, every time we went back and, like, looked through, you'd find something else that you missed or some other key, great bit of footage, just scrolling through looking for, I don't know, a shot of the sun going down, you'd find, I don't know, something else incredible. And so, it's a constant process of discovery. But also, you had to sort of on one level accept, there's just too much footage to watch every frame. We just had too much. So, it was like, you had to accept that you were going to miss some shots that were probably out there somewhere.

Jamie Crawford 36:25
Probably, what, 400 hours-ish, something like that, of material, somewhere around that figure.

Tim Wardle 36:31
And when you add in all the stills as well, I mean, it was the most archive I've ever seen on a project I've worked on. It was crazy.

Jamie Crawford 36:38
And actually, by, you know, by continuation of that, the other big challenge is through interview, because in order to access, you know, in order to access really visceral moments, [inaudible] out of people's sensory memories, you have to sit down for a long time and talk about it. Because as you start to talk about it, and you probe with questions and more questions and more questions, it brings up these kind of memories, and somebody suddenly goes, Oh, my god, yeah, I have this memory of this smell, you know. I think one of the aims of this is you kind of want to be able to smell the venue, even though you're watching the doc. And it takes a lot of hours, and a lot of interviewees to get to that. So, the same time as having many hundreds of hours of archive, we've got probably 100 hours of interview to try and piece together this huge sort of battlefield painting of what went on.

Matthew 37:30
Well, you certainly do that with the, you know, leading up to the body surfing in the mud, you know, and all the stuff that was associated with that...

Jamie Crawford 37:40
I think that was one of the great things about it was that Cassie and the rest of the team were able to find this amazing, this kind of - the entire, the full gamut of interviewees in order to [inaudible] all of these different perspectives on the same moment. So, when we cover Limp Bizkit on Saturday night, which, you know, we go Friday, Saturday, Sunday through the episodes and that occupies probably almost twenty minutes of Episode Two of the Saturday, thanks to this amazing array of people and everyone is telling you their account of that same moment from a different - I'm in the mosh pit, and I'm on the side of the stage, and I'm playing on the mixing desk. And I think that's where these stories really, really come to life. And you're hopefully watching it kind of swallowed up by the experience.

Matthew 38:30
I mean, one thing I was going to ask, and I guess Cassie, l'll direct it to you. I mean, we've already heard sort of where the inspiration for the title came. But how did you all settle on that as the title? What does Netflix market research - because I know - I've heard filmmakers on before, and we don't have Netflix on the call right now, but they, you know, they've said, Oh, well, Netflix came back to us and said, No, this is the title you should use and we ran with it. But how did that - did it just become obvious that this is what you should do? How did that work out?

Tim Wardle 39:09
Cassie? Shall I answer this one just because I was...

Cassie Thornton 39:12
I was gonna say I'm gonna pass this one to Tim.

Tim Wardle 39:17
She's got a great knowledge of the in depth making of it. So, the title was one - there were a number of titles that were being considered. And it actually, it came from BBH and Netflix who had originally, you know, brought the project to Raw. So, it wasn't a Raw generated title. I think it's a provocative title. And I think it's an accurate one. And I think that, you know, Netflix and everyone looks for titles that will get people watching and I think, you know, in this case I don't feel it's salacious; it's accurate to what went down there, you know, and you can see with other titles they've had in the past, like Don't Fuck With Cats, which was a series that Raw made, you know, I think when that was first mooted as a title, and that was from Raw, that title, there was a lot of nervousness about how that would play. But actually, you know, it did very well. So, you know, I think it's an accurate title that will hopefully appeal to the widest possible audience.

Matthew 40:22
I mean, it certainly grabs your attention. And as you say, if a title is just - what you get is what you see written on the tin, then I think it certainly does that. I mean, in terms of this film, it's a - I mean, I can only imagine how, in many ways, how much fun this was to work on for the last few years. But what, I mean, what do you want the legacy of this film to be? I'll direct this at all of you. I mean, you know, less about how did this happen, because I think we've discussed it, and you document it, but what do you want us to take away from this film, besides a little bit of 90s nostalgia, the obvious, the point that the 90s weren't just completely nostalgic, there was all kinds of things going on back then. Cassie, do you want to maybe lead on that?

Cassie Thornton 41:21
Sure. I mean, I think it is the perfect fishbowl look at what was going on in society, as told through a music festival. I think it was, a little like The Truman Show, you know, how do we behave when we're being watched? Or how did we behave when we were being watched? As well as how do we behave when we don't think anyone is watching. So, I think that would be my, hopefully, my takeaway.

Matthew 41:50
Fellas, do you have anything to add on that?

Jamie Crawford 41:53
I think what I really wanted to take away from it is - or people to take away from it - is there's a whole generation of people who (a) either didn't exist, or were way too young to have been at an event, which was pre-social media, pre-cellphones, pre on WhatsApp, Snapchat, TikTok, every moment of your life. And it's, I think, I'm really looking forward to seeing the reaction of a younger audience who look at this thing, which was kind of like the Wild West of cultural moments in the 90s, and go, Oh, my goodness. And they will look at their teachers who were in their 20s back then in a very different way.

Tim Wardle 42:31
That's right, I think it was like, I almost see it as like an experiment in kind of anarchy. It's like, what happens if you put a large number of young people together in a place with not many rules, and there were good things that happen, and there were very bad things that happen, and I think there's a lot of lessons that can be learned from it, and that society has learned from, you know, from that kind of cultural moment and what was going on then. So, I think, although it's a cultural artifact, and it sits in this kind of hermetically sealed, weird period between, I don't know, the birth of social media properly, and, you know, the, I don't know, the hippie paradise of Woodstock, 69. But I think there's a lot that we can learn from it in terms of how our society is today and what has led us to the society we have today. And some of it, a lot of where we are now is a reaction against the kind of behavior that we see at Woodstock 99.

Matthew 43:30
Yeah... go ahead.

Jamie Crawford 43:32
You can see from a very practical perspective, in terms of the way that music festivals are organized these days, you know, a good lesson in how not to do things.

Matthew 43:40
Yeah, well, certainly, if you don't want to know how not to run a music festival, watch this film. But watch it for more than that. I think you mentioned social media. There was another point - a good point - that one of your interviewees said, that, you know, these days if there had been, if you'd had Snapchat or, you know, TikTok or whatever, people would have been complaining right from the beginning, and it would have gone viral and people would have said, Wait a minute, there's something - in an odd way people, you know, social media gets a lot of bad rap these days, but it seems that would have been an outlet; that's where some of the outlet for this would have been directed rather than being pent up and then just exploding on at the concert there.

Jamie Crawford 44:25
That was the outlet of Fyre festival right?

Matthew 44:27
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Well, so, I think our time together is actually coming to an end, so, thank you so much, but before we depart, you know, I think - what's next for the bunch of you all through Raw. What have you've got going on? You've got varied backgrounds, some have some scripted backgrounds. What's next? I mean, you're still focused on getting, well, it is going to be released and probably you're doing the dog and pony show around that, but what's next?

Tim Wardle 45:06
So, I'm an employee of Raw, the production company that made this, so, I am working on various other things for Raw both in scripted space and have a feature documentary I'm execing about the origin story of women's boxing in the US in the 70s and 80s.

Matthew 45:22
Wow, that sounds really interesting.

Tim Wardle 45:26
It's a really good story. It's, yeah, it's another one of these kind of untold histories. But it's a fascinating, it's not the story you expect is what I would say.

Matthew 45:36
I definitely look forward to that because I'm of an age when all of a sudden women's boxing was in the Olympics, and I was like, Wait a minute, where did that come from? You know, so it'd be - and then Clint Eastwood makes the movie, you know, and all that. But you know, that would be very interesting. So, well, if we haven't scared you off, hopefully have you on again to discuss that. Cassie, what's next for you?

Cassie Thornton 45:58
Yeah, so, I'm an independent producer, but I absolutely love working with Raw. So, I was just working with Tim on that boxing documentary that he was mentioning. And then I'm currently working on a three part Netflix documentary series.

Matthew 46:13
Okay. That you cannot name at the moment. So, that's...

Cassie Thornton 46:17
Not yet!

Matthew 46:18
Not yet. Okay. Well, maybe, we'll hopefully have you on again. And then Jamie, how about you?

Jamie Crawford 46:23
Yeah, I am not working with Raw currently. I've done some good Raw stuff prior to Woodstock, before moving out to New York, but I am in the last two weeks, technically, two weeks from picture lock on a feature length doc about a scandal. But I don't think I can say more about it at the moment, because I don't think it's been officially launched. So, to err on the side of caution, I won't say any more, but that's coming out in the next few months.

Matthew 46:54
Okay, so we've got three projects that we hopefully can have you guys back on again to discuss, even if it's individually, so, thank you again. Cassie Thornton, Jamie Crawford, and Tim Wardle, the acclaimed filmmakers behind Clusterfuck: Woodstock 99, releasing on Netflix on August 3. So, thanks again, guys. Really, really appreciate you coming on, and thoroughly enjoyed the film and highly recommend that our listeners and viewers go and check it out.

Tim Wardle 47:27
Thank you.

Cassie Thornton 47:28
Thank you so much.

Matthew 47:31
I'd like to give a shout out to Sam and Joe Graves at Innersound Audio in Escrick, England, in deepest, darkest Yorkshire. A big thanks to Nevena Paunovic, podcast manager at Alamo Pictures, who ensures we continue getting great guests onto the show. And finally, a big thanks to our listeners. As always, we love to hear from you. So, please keep sending us feedback and episode ideas. You can reach out to us on YouTube, social media, or directly by going to our website, www.factualamerica.com, and clicking on the Get in Touch link. And as always, please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family, wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America, signing off.

Factual America Outro 48:13
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, specializing in documentaries, television, and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today's episode, our guests, and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @alamopictures. Be the first to hear about new productions, festivals showing our films, and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk

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