Storm Area 51 gets the ‘Poop Cruise’ treatment on Netflix
It’s among the silliest things to ever happen in Southern Nevada. Now, the fiasco that ultimately became known as Alienstock ranks alongside some of the most ridiculous news stories of the millennium as part of Netflix’s “Trainwreck” docuseries.
From the people who brought you the viral “Poop Cruise” documentary, “Trainwreck: Storm Area 51” takes viewers back to the summer of 2019.
On June 27 of that year, Matty Roberts, a 20-year-old working at a vape kiosk inside Valley Plaza mall in Bakersfield, California, created a Facebook event called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.”
“If the government won’t tell us anything about it, what if every fool on the internet converged on Area 51? What would they do, shoot everyone?” Roberts says in the two-part documentary. “It just seemed like a hilarious idea to me. Jokes are funnier when they’re edgy.”
By July 15, more than 1.2 million people had pledged to “see them aliens” by storming the secretive military facility at 3 a.m. Sept. 20. That was only the beginning of the crush of attention from around the globe.
Attendees with names like Reckless Ben, Rackaracka and Unicole Unicron breathlessly recount their adventures for the filmmakers. (Unicole, the Review-Journal reported at the time, provided tips for communicating telepathically with aliens, for a suggested $25 donation, during the gathering.)
One of the most surprising interview subjects is Alice Little, who was seen just last month in A&E’s docuseries “Secrets of the Bunny Ranch” talking about how HBO’s “Cathouse” influenced her career in sex work with the late Dennis Hof.
Capturing a wild summer
If you were living in Las Vegas that summer, nothing in “Trainwreck: Storm Area 51” is terribly surprising. Most everything was covered extensively by the local media, including the Review-Journal.
The documentary spends plenty of time with Connie West, the owner of the Little A’Le’Inn. It’s the only commercial establishment in Rachel, the nearest thing to Area 51 that resembles a town.
The diner and 10-room motel along Lincoln County’s Extraterrestrial Highway were thrust into the spotlight, despite being roughly 100 miles from the proposed rallying point in Amargosa Valley.
It also focuses on West’s uneasy alliance — and eventual feud — with Roberts over Alienstock, which was announced as a four-day music festival at the Little A’Le’Inn. “You’ll get to witness some incredible performance (sic) from headlining artists!” the event’s website initially promised. “Many of whom can’t be named due to festival radius clauses … but we’ve been contacted by huge names wanting to play for the crowd!”
Joerg Arnu, the Rachel webmaster who led the local resistance to the event, is also featured. “I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent upgrading my property defenses,” Arnu told the RJ ahead of the event. “We fully expect it to get ugly.”
Then there’s the growing realization that staging a festival in a remote area 45 miles from the nearest gas station and more than 80 miles from the closest emergency room wasn’t the best idea, whether it attracted 100 people or a million.
Bracing for the unknown
Until the weekend of Sept. 20, neither attendance number would have been a surprise in the community of just 56 people.
In addition to the possibility of a large-scale humanitarian disaster, county, state and law enforcement officials had to prepare for the very real chance that some of the festivalgoers would attempt to access the secretive military base and be met with a deadly response.
At the time, Col. Cavan Craddock commanded the 99th Air Base Wing, which provides support for Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test and Training Range that includes Area 51. Chris Tomaino was captain of the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center. Both men prepared for the worst while assuming the event would be denied the proper permits and would quietly go away.
They didn’t count on Lincoln County Commissioner Varlin Higbee, who’s also featured in the doc — with his cowboy hat, vest, bolo tie and horseshoe mustache played up to make him look every bit the part of a riverboat gambler. Much to their dismay, Higbee allowed Alienstock to proceed.
Tomaino blames “local yokels” for not stopping the event. “They don’t deal with crazy every day,” Craddock says of Lincoln County officials. “They’re normally dealing with the theft of a cow.”
The leadup to Sept. 20 was marred by bad blood, financial disagreements, at least one lawsuit and rumors of cancellations. As the fateful day approached, whether West would pull the plug on Alienstock became one of the biggest “will they or won’t they” scenarios since Ross and Rachel on “Friends.”
In the end, the idea of violently storming Area 51 morphed into something that wasn’t that far removed from what we wrote that July 15, when the Review-Journal first contacted West.
She said three or four bands had approached her that day, asking if they could bring portable stages and play on her property.
“What had sounded like an invasion began taking on the air of a celebration,” we wrote. “An extraterrestrial Woodstock, if you will.”
“Trainwreck: Storm Area 51” debuts July 29 on Netflix.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence @reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.
