But a brilliant new documentary on Netflix, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, shows that the real victims of this ill-fated project were not the hoodwinked people who went, but the Bahamian people. And I was going through the hardest experience of my life. This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. As the chaos mounted, and people started to show up, she worked and worked, bringing employees in and forcing them to take all-night shifts in an effort to do something to keep people happy. Making me literally hold my breath in expectation for every next bit of information with a story that is too bizarre and hilariously insane to be fiction, this is a superbly edited documentary about what happens when you put too much power in the hands of a pathetic playboy. Fyre director Chris Smith ( American Movie and The Yes Men) has experience crafting stories about guys with big dreams and the capacity to pull off long cons, and he has a great instinct for. I actually wouldnt be surprised if, 10 years down the line, were hearing about Billy McFarland starting some kind of other adventure thats imaginative and gets some serious momentum, says Weinstein. Fyre (2018) - Fyre (2018) - User Reviews - IMDb The Netflix doc also captures the feelings of betrayal experienced by Fyre employees who were focused on developing the app and had nothing to do with the festival, but still wound up unemployed because of McFarlands recklessness. It is the documentary's great triumph to relegate the suffering of the organisers and guests below that of the Bahamian people left to pick up the pieces of an undeliverable dream. But Fyre Festival, which took place (in the loosest possible sense) on an island in the Bahamas over a weekend in April 2017, will forever be associated with two triangles of brown bread, a slice of clammy white cheese and a fistful of limp salad all presented in a white polystyrene box. The locals who built the site were never paid. 2023 Cond Nast. The film features archive foo. Then they were introduced to the Fyre band, which encouraged users to put over 3,000$ on an electronic band so they can pay for activities on the island despite already paying thousands of dollars on a weekend ticket. Stay up-to-date on all the latest Rotten Tomatoes news! guests below that of the Bahamian people left to pick up the pieces of an undeliverable dream. The account directed them to their Fyre Festival FAQ email, but the emails sent were never returned. But he is shown to be savvy about the culture, appearing very much aproduct of it himself, while constantly being embroiled in one shady promise after another. And the outcomes for the idealistic, high-achieving staffers in New York City who worked diligently for more than a year on a website that had promise are particularly touching. If this turns out to be true, one thing is not in doubt he'll find plenty of customers. So some decided to ask the Fyre Festival Instagram account some standard questions about their 1 to 2-week stay. This article is about the documentary. For the rest of us, , there was more than a hint of schadenfreude in watching the whole thing unfold in real time. A great example is his interview with Andy King, an event producer who is so loyal to McFarland that he admits he came very close to offering to give a Bahamian customs officer a blow job, at McFarlands request, so the Fyre team wouldnt have to pay customs fees for a bunch of 18-wheeler trucks filled with Evian water. He was unflappable but he was also entirely delusional. This statement during the jaw-dropping Fyre, a new Netflix documentary about the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival (and an interesting partner with the also-new Hulu documentary Fyre Fraud) really gets at the core of who Billy McFarland was during this entire crash-and-burn nightmare. Bounty hunter Sharkey tracks criminals across the galaxy in his converted, rocket-powered ice-cream truck -- with help from his 10-year-old partner. See our. McFarlands 2017 Fyre Festival, the Woodstock of the Millennial Generation (as someone calls it here), proved to be ascam borne in part frommonumental misjudgment, its FEMA tent accommodations and styrofoam sandwich dinners mere symbolsfor the vacuous nature of our contemporary illusion-driven online culture. The siren callof social media and the idea of perfection it peddles isfar too irresistible. The Netflix doc lasts an hour and 37 minutes, while the Hulu one runs for an hour and 35. McFarland and his cofounder, the rapper Ja Rule, are ruthless villainsas greedy as they are narcissisticand yet they manage to convince an incredible. Following Billy (a young entrepreneur) as he recruits big name performers like Ja Rule and worldwide models like Emily Ratajkowski, his big plan is to create the biggest music festival the world has ever seen. Breaking down the contenders in the seasons most unpredictable Oscar race. For his part, Ja Rule has been busy distancing himself from the ordeal,recently postinga message on Twitter claiming that he, too, "was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked, led astray". The Netflix documentary has received some backlash because it was produced by a company called, F*ck Jerry, who worked closely on the production and social media advertising of Fyre Festival and filmed most of the candid footage seen in the documentary. Toward the end, it shows footage of McFarland on bail, yet living in a hotel penthouse, while a partner in his latest scam tries to persuade previous Fyre Festers to drop tons of cash on tickets to events like the Met Gala and the Grammys. You can help us help kids by The documentary plays like a thriller. Some festival-goers were even being yelled at over the phone being demanded to put money on their bands. But the Netflix documentary still unearthed details that made my jaw drop and my blood boil even higher than it did during the Hulu film. Where do filmmaker Chris Smith's sympathies lie? And who you can expect to see performing and presenting. Even though I watched both films, and recommend that the consumer watch both as well if you only want to watch one movie I would watch the Netflix documentary. 'Fyre' | Netflix Documentary Review - Ready Steady Cut Winner: Hey, guess what? Which means youre the real winner, because you get to watch both of these very good documentaries. So where did it all go wrong? At the end of the documentary we see an interview with Maryann Rolle, the restaurant-owner who lost $50,000, because of McFarland's arrogance. It's a Netflix documentary of the horrible failure of a modern social media tropical island event or a fraudulent scam. Yet more drinks are opened, people are hired and fired, advice is ignored. He said his surgery was a success, but he needs time to heal before he can tour again. It takes a lot for a Documentary to grab my attention, simply due to the fact that I prefer fictional stories over something that I can just read a news article about and get as much information as watching a film about it. Ive been called a lot of things since the festival, he initially says, then responds with, Youre calling me all these crazy things, man. Fyre review viral festival disaster relived in shocking Netflix documentary. The Netflix documentary is more professionally done. The Netflix documentary, "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened," investigates the infamous Fyre Festival and its co-founders Billy McFarland and 90s rapper Ja Rule. Viewers who may laugh loud and long at the "trials and tribulations" of the very rich people who were the marks of such an outrageous con man will certainly feel the poignancy of the many who were swindled out of time and money. It feels like the best that wecan do now is just soak up the cringe comedy, in which everyones arrival to the barren festival site is one of the Millennials darkest jokes yet. Honestly, I think this is the perfect viewing experience for young professionals who wish to make a name for themselves in ways like this. Fool's Paradise. Maryann Rolle, the owner of the Exuma Point Restaurant, hosted festival attendees when they arrived on the island and spent $50,000 of her personal savings to pay local workers who never saw a dime from Fyre Fest. "Any tent that was done is now unliveable. For all its, intrigue, Fyre Festival is really just an extreme example of the lie we are sold, when we start scrolling. I found myself disgusted when viewing what the guests had to go through once they arrived. It just seemed as if McFarland was doing the interview as a redemption piece so that people would see him as not as bad of a guy as this incident made him out to be, so people will begin to trust him again and his future projects. Season Review; THE LAST OF US Season 1 Episodes 2-5: Whoa, We're Halfway There. ", considered these stories when we gleefully shared images of a bad cheese sandwich? "There are mattresses all over the place getting soaked," says music festival consultant Marc Weinstein, reliving the final, horrific moments. You dont have to dig for contacts, you just go to Fyre and get a quote. So some decided to ask the Fyre Festival Instagram account some standard questions about their 1 to 2-week stay. Expect multiple scenes and videos showing models (and some celebrities) in revealing bikinis. Having watched both documentaries, I think its fair to say that Fyre Fraud is tougher on Jerry Media, also known as Fuck Jerry, and its efforts to promote an event that falsely advertised what it could deliver. Read more. A cheese sandwich should not be the defining image of a luxury music festival. The image is an example of a ticket confirmation email that AMC sent you when you purchased your ticket. The locals who built the site were never paid. Offscreen, he was one himself. The documentary is excruciating to watch. Catastrophic decisions stack up as fast as the bills, which amount to some $30 million. Profanity is frequent, including "s--t," "hell," and countless uses of "f--k." There's one frank conversation about oral sex, and people drink frequently (sometimes to excess) and smoke cigars. While that all seemed great, the budget they came up with and the gameplay they created, clearly wasn(TM)t thought-out enough, because the event itself slowly collapsed and the worst of it happened when the people actually were there to experience it. All rights reserved. McFarland did nothave enough time to build the luxury villas, tents, and stage. A group of young adults share their last week of . There is a brief window when there is still time to pull it off, but nothing ever seems to happen. After eight lawsuits were brought against him relating to Fyre Festival,he was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud. People bought tickets because they, wanted to live like the Instagram stars they follow online. and, all the while, the clock is ticking. Shania Twain Gives Rare Update on Her Ex-Husband and Ex-BFF. Kendall Jenner was reportedly paid $250,000 to do this. For other uses, see, List of original films distributed by Netflix, "Get ready to binge: Here's what you can expect from Netflix in 2019", "8 Takeaways From Hulu's Surprise-Released Fyre Festival Doc", "The social media company behind Fyre Festival lost more than 200,000 Instagram followers after being accused of plagiarizing its posts", "Netflix's 'Fyre': Inside the Millennial Scam of the Decade", "Both Fyre Fest Documentaries Have Issues (But, Yeah, We're Obsessed Anyway)", "Fyre Festival Was a Huge Scam. McFarland, now a convicted felon, in happier times. [7], On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 92% approval rating with an average rating of 7.7/10, based on 93 reviews. While I would never personally run an event of this scale or really share any real relation to people who do this kind of thing, I felt terrible for nearly everyone involved in this story. And Billy left her high and dry, not paying her or her employees. "There are mattresses all over the place getting soaked," says music festival consultant Marc Weinstein, reliving the final, horrific moments. To launch the app, McFarland envisions the biggest, most luxurious music festival of all time. FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened - Netflix #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/I8d0UlSNbd. Hopefully, through the documentaries, McFarland does not bring up new business ventures, such as he was trying to do in the past with the 2017 Fyre Festival. Catastrophic decisions stack up as fast as the bills, which amount to some $30 million. What Do I Do About the Ex Who Is Slandering Me (And Our Relationship) Online? Netflix's FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened Review Regal Again. Dont worry, it wont take long. But despite this, people still decided to go. And the guests are still coming.". The Hulu film, . Cinemark LOL, right? And what of McFarland? The film gives audience members a deeper insight into the inner workings of Fyre Festival and provides a definitive timeline to when the idea of Fyre and Fyre festival came to be and the disaster that was created in the Summer of 2016. Billy McFarland was always a con manit really just took the Fyre Festival to expose it. By creating an account, you agree to the After Dax Shepard asked her about her musical chairs relationship situation. How many of us considered these stories when we gleefully shared images of a bad cheese sandwich? Terms of Service apply. In FYRE: THE GREATEAT PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED, it's 2016, and entrepreneur-on-the-rise Billy McFarland has secured the partnership of rap star Ja Rule in his efforts to create an app that will be the ultimate booking service: a one-stop site to schedule big stars for every occasion. Ithas already reached $160,000. Fyre (film) - Wikipedia Theres something to be said for people who forge on, pushing past adversity and jumping the hurdles placed in front of them by life. Hustler Billy McFarland first started working with Ja Rule on various projects from membership cards to an app to book lesser celebrities. Promising flights to the island in the Bahamas that it will be held at and luxurious accommodations, it truly would look like something that(TM)s not to be missed for those who could afford to attend. From Fyre Fraud, a stable narrative arises of where that came from,like with his steel credit card company Magnises, (which only provided the image of having a fancy credit card) further poking holes into the facade that some of the most successful have any idea of what they're doing. Fyre Review: Netflix Documentary Takes on Influencer Cultureand Hulu The Netflix documentary interviews multiple people who were involved with Billy McFarland at any point in time, whether it be from his former company, Magnises, or the employees who worked directly with McFarland on Fyre Festival itself. It promised guests happiness and then made them miserable. Further complicating things, Netflix director Chris Smith revealed to The Ringer that Fyre Festival mastermind Billy McFarland was paid by Hulu to appear in their documentary. Fyre Festival Documentary Summary and Review, The film gives audience members a deeper insight into the inner workings of Fyre Festival and provides a definitive timeline to when the idea of Fyre and Fyre festival came to be and the disaster that was created in the Summer of 2016. Thousands of wealthy young people traveled to an island in the Bahamas for a weekend that was heavily marketed as a "luxury" trip of partying and music, only to find that it was a gigantic disaster perpetrated by a corrupt "entrepreneur" with a big smile and an endless supply of audacity. Netflix's 'Fyre': Inside the Millennial Scam of the Decade The saga of Fyre festival - examined in Netflix's documentary Fyre - is, on one level, a classic tale of hubris in 2017 internet speak: a charismatic man, Billy McFarland, recruits the. Both documentaries purport to tell the "real" story behind the Fyre Festival debacle of 2017, in which the charlatan Billy McFarland ripped off customers who had bought into an Instagram-fueled. Basically, Fyre is more thorough when it comes to capturing the extent and depth of the personal damage McFarland has done. He is a modern Jordan Belfort, the criminal played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Streetthe kind of person whose story is too fascinating to ignore but also heartbreaking when you consider all the great pain hes caused. But despite this, people still decided to go. It was incredibly seductive. It's a story that inspired a documentary gold rush(we'll be reviewing a second Fyre Fest doc from Netflix on Friday), but in the case of "Fyre Fraud," it has made for an often hilarious andincisivetreatise on Millennial hubris. Overall, this is a film that needs to be seen, due to the fact that people ned to know that things like this happen on a daily basis. And then it starts raining. (We just burnt all of our money, laughs one attendee, ruefully, as a school bus pulls up to the site, where people who paid thousands of dollars realize they will be sleeping in flimsy FEMA tents.) As one former employee explains, Fyre was meant to be "the Uber of booking talent". There are also several jokes at Ja Rules expense, and multiple uses of air-horn sound effects to convey ridiculousness. Whether or not you'rehip to those names and terms like "FOMO,"you should tune in: like taking all of your clothes and putting them on your bed after a visit from Marie Kondo, "Fyre Fraud" offers whopping perspective in its summation of our online culture, displaying everything at once while showing just how unsustainable so much of it is. Fyre movie review & film summary (2019) | Roger Ebert The pair started the festival in 2016 to promote their new talent booking agency with the same name, Fyre. McFarland shares a similar interviewsetting for those who have gotten into his orbit, whether it's lawyers, former employees, or social media types,who speak in big spacesthat look like someone forgot to fill in. Both of the documentaries consider what the Fyre Fest debacle says about how Americans, particularly a subset of wealthy millennials, live according to aspirational values. "[8] Metacritic, which uses a normalized average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Fyre | NETFLIX Documentary Review | The Greatest Party that Never Copyright Fandango. He promises luxury accommodations, first-tier entertainment, first-class food, and unending fun. Fyre. There is definitely storytelling overlap in these documentaries, which both cover the mix of hype and lack of infrastructure that lead up to the last weekend in April 2017, when Fyre Festival-goers arrived on Great Exuma Island to discover tents, mattresses sitting on the side of the road, and slapdash sandwiches instead of the glamp-y villas and gourmet meals they were promised. We at Vulture wont even charge you a quarter-million dollars for the exclusive privilege of reading this review. Just below that it reads "Ticket Confirmation#:" followed by a 10-digit number. Weve got romance, breakups, emotionally loaded dumplings this episode has a little bit of everything! Smith and his crew successfully capture the often hilarious, often shocking, and sometimes sad outcomes associated with this mega-disaster of a non-event. Not that many lessons seemto have been learnt, however. FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened - Netflix Such is the feeling inspired by Netflixs gripping, supremely entertaining, and troubling documentary Fyre, which debuts on the streaming service this Friday. So what if these people had been defrauded, lured with the promise of a luxury music festival that never came to be? That world isn't available to everyone. And it worked. Who has the better Fyre Festival documentary, Netflix or Hulu? FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED - Film Inquiry By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Excellent account of youngest FBI's Most Wanted. All rights reserved. Fyre is the stronger, more worthwhile documentary, but its counterpart is a helpful reminder that, like so many stories, one account can't contain the whole truth. focused more on telling both sides of the story, from people who supported McFarland, such as himself and his significant other, as well as talking with people who worked on Fyre as well. By coincidence, presumably, these streaming movies are almost exactly the same length. First, a brief history. It is the documentary's great triumph to relegate the suffering of the organisers and. In other words, both are relatively concise, which is a good thing if you plan to do a double feature. How Tyrel Jackson Williams Brought TikTok Cringe to, Its sort of a newer version of the L.A. actor ride that Kyle is on the first two seasons, but its worse.. From one instance to another, this is a film that exposes the worst side of a business that has plummeted to the ground. Fyre Festival Documentary Summary and Review - The Eagle Eye If you had a pulse and an internet connection when the Fyre Festival turned from fantasy tropical concert into overpriced, disastrous failure last spring, then you already know the basics of the story told in two new documentaries about one of modern historys greatest moments in schadenfreude. Here was the toxicity of social media for all to see: a sunbaked scene of disaster tents, soaked mattresses, and millennials with roller bags looking wide-eyed and dehydrated. Mesmerizing mature drama with just a bit of sex, violence. TikToks Favorite Celebrity Couple Is Kim Kardashian and Michael Cera. And weve seen much of the footage the filmmaker Chris Smith has assembled to tell his story: the bikinis-and-boats sizzle reel with the likes of Emily Ratajkowski, Hailey Baldwin, and Bella Hadid that Fyre created to hype their festival; the smartphone footage shot by appalled attendees. In particular, staff members Andy Hill and Marc Weinstein offer unexpectedly open, personal recollections. The Hulu documentary seems as if they were picking up the scraps that the Netflix documentary left over and even though they had the opportunity to interview McFarland, it didnt add anything to the story. The Netflix documentary interviews multiple people who were involved with Billy McFarland at any point in time, whether it be from his former company, Magnises, or the employees who worked directly with McFarland on Fyre Festival itself. when these dudes decided to create a Fantasy Island for millennial Instagrammers with little time or proper preparation. Yet if you had seen it you wouldve been like, Wow, what a great life this guy leads. eight lawsuits were brought against him relating to Fyre Festival,he was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud. Fyre Festival Documentary Netflix vs Hulu: Which Version Is Better Isn't that what social media does? The festival, he insists, must go ahead. Directed by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason, it premiered on January 14, 2019, on Hulu . [2][3][4][5] Jerry Media approached VICE with the idea of a documentary three months after the events. As people around him scrambled to put together a music festival that could never really happenin a matter of months, McFarlands blind refusal to admit that it was going to be a disaster just amplified the inevitable pain. Nick Allen is the Senior Editorat RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. Because Fyre Festival seemed like the ultimate vacation for people with too much disposable income, when the whole thing imploded, a lot of internet observers were amused, to say the least. With its exclusive, paid-for interview, Fyre Fraud enables McFarland to incriminate himself by appearing on-camera and refusing to directly answer key questions the documentarians pose. Marvel Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer, Jurassic Park Movies Ranked By Tomatometer, The Most Anticipated TV & Streaming Shows of March 2023, Pokmon Detective Pikachu Sequel Finds Its Writer and Director, and More Movie News. They startwork on Fyre Fest a mere four months before the first arrival, dumping the on-the-ground responsibility on hired workers and Bahamians who worked day in and day out. Fyre Fraud goes a few steps further, not only placing the idea for the festival in a broader historical context but acknowledging the parallels between McFarland and other high-profile grifters, including one who had risen to the highest office in the land at the same time Fyre Festival was being planned. 'Fyre' review: Netflix documentary torches 'influencer' culture behind Is Netflix's Fyre Documentary a Scam, Too? If you chose to provide an email address, it will only be used to contact you about your comment. This is why I encourage audience members to watch both films to get both sides of the story. It interviews people who were in direct contact with McFarland every day, for multiple hours a day, for around five months. Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. For the rest of us, who were either not as rich or foolish enough to spend thousands of dirhams on a ticket, there was more than a hint of schadenfreude in watching the whole thing unfold in real time. The only good news is that, since the documentary, an online fund has been set up for Rolle. Hes living in the Bahamas and going to beaches all day. The interview was just him back-pedaling, contradicting himself, and making excuses. It's tempting to say that things went "predictably wrong" but they went wrong in unpredictable ways too. But Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened has other serious things to say about the society we live in. In one moment of breathtaking stupidity, McFarland and his team decide to host the festival on the same weekend as a popular sailing regatta in the Bahamas, meaning the majority of accommodation in the country is already booked up. That is Darwinism at its finest.. For all its intrigue, Fyre Festival is really just an extreme example of the lie we are sold when we start scrolling.