Fyre Fraud makes a slightly more compelling case that the moment in which were currently living may eventually be known as the Great Duping of America. The documentary shows how the Fyre festival crumbled with each day leading up to launch, how the project team reacted to the demands with direct interviews, and how it slowly became clear how corrupt Billy McFarland is. And yet well look back at "Fyre Fraud"like we do The Social Network, as this is not so much a time capsule but a catch-up to where the beast of social media psychology is headed next. To most of us, the Fyre Festival, a high-profile debacle in the Bahamas in the spring of 2017, crystallized something about Internet culture. Brian Tallerico is the Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. STOLEN YOUTH: INSIDE THE CULT AT SARAH LAWRENCE: A Nightmarish Documentary Of Pain, Trauma And Hope . 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. First, a brief history. As comedian Ron Funches says in a clip from Conan thats included in Fyre, If you paid thousands of dollars to go on a trip to see Blink 182, thats on you. Luckily, Hulu's Fyre Fraud came through with the juice. Fyre 2019, Documentary, 1h 37m 93% Tomatometer 95 Reviews 86% Audience Score 500+ Ratings What to know critics consensus Fyre smolders with agonizing tension when a party in paradise goes. The image perfectly, captures the contrast between what had been promised by the organisers and what was delivered. The siren callof social media and the idea of perfection it peddles isfar too irresistible. ", the documentary becomes. 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. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix have broken up after he allegedly cheated on her with Raquel Leviss. The Fyre Festival Instagram was posting recycled pictures from the same photoshoot that was shot in Normans Cay, which was not factual. Expect multiple scenes and videos showing models (and some celebrities) in revealing bikinis. Its only right that a pair of documentaries focused on an event designed to exploit those who suffer from FOMO should elicit their own form of FOMO. McFarland had a crowd, now he just needed a festival. That is Darwinism at its finest.. You can often tell a great documentary from the care that is put intotalking head interviews, of which Fyre Fraud is a textbook example. What follows is a series of small calamities as a site is secured and plans are futilely attempted. Meanwhile, Netflixs Fyre lacks a sit-down with McFarland, but was co-executive produced by Elliot Tebele, founder of Jerry Media, the social-media agency that was a key promotion partner in Fyre Festival. (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.) It is a classic tale of hubris. Vogue may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Weve got romance, breakups, emotionally loaded dumplings this episode has a little bit of everything! And who you can expect to see performing and presenting. To promote the app, McFarland decided to throw a massive party which eventually morphed into Fyre Festival. [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. If youre seduced by models, Instagram influencers, and FOMO hysteria, this is what you deserve. [2][3][4][5] Jerry Media approached VICE with the idea of a documentary three months after the events. Spring Day Podcast with Kristen Teagarden and Leora Winter, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,, posted a burnt orange tile on their Instagram, 90% of tickets were sold in the first 48 hours, Future of LGBTQ Community at Reinhardt University. Families can talk about the intentions of documentary filmmaking: to inform, to entertain, to inspire, or to persuade. As one former employee explains, Fyre was meant to be "the Uber of booking talent". Those who like to laugh at rich white people and scoff at impressionable millennials will get the most bang for their buck on Hulu. McFarland and his team brilliantly marketed the event, using Instagram and multi-million-follower influencers like Kendall Jenner andFuckJerry (the latterof which their handler at the time, Oren Aks, speaks openly here), but were so detached from reality that they didnt perceive what a catastrophic disaster they were setting everyone up for. 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. The Hulu film, Fyre Fraud, 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. 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. with updates on movies, TV shows, Rotten Tomatoes podcast and more. That world isn't available to everyone. They areremoved from the nonsense of this saga and able to offer their clear perspective, diagnosing what influencers really mean to us, and what our fixation with their business hath wrought. the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. surprise dropped on Hulu earlier this week, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Fyre shows what happens when you take that to an extreme.. 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. 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. Fool's Paradise. [1], The film was co-produced by Jerry Media, the social media agency responsible for promoting the Fyre Festival and covering up the fraud, and MATTE Projects, the production company that directed the Fyre Festival's promotional shoot. The account directed them to their Fyre Festival FAQ email, but the emails sent were never returned. Adults-only dramedy revels in sex, lies, and manipulation. 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. 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. Then the Fyre Festival Instagram account, rumored to be run byGrant Margolin, started deleting all questions, flagging specific words and blocking users from commenting on posts at all. Such is the feeling inspired by Netflixs gripping, supremely entertaining, and troubling documentary Fyre, which debuts on the streaming service this Friday. Which means youre the real winner, because you get to watch both of these very good documentaries. If youre in the mood to laugh at the Fyre Festival debacle, report directly to Hulu. This isn(TM)t a film that will make you feel good about yourself in any way, but rather expose those who do things without fully comprehending the magnitude of what they are creating. See our. All rights reserved. Fyre Fraud provides a vivid sense of the mentalities that would be wooed by this nothing festival: for the head honchos who knew that if they looked like they built it, Millennials would come; and for the consumers themselves, who would spend a mind-boggling amount of money, to star in such a reverie. In educating about an event where the worst implications at least at the film's start are manifested in false advertising and unsavory conditions by festival guests, Fyre sometimes borders on feeling downright morbid. How Has The Reinhardt Experience Been For Students This Semester? 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. Breaking down the contenders in the seasons most unpredictable Oscar race. That world isn't available to everyone. Smith also does a more affecting job of capturing the degree to which McFarland preyed on a wide swath of marks beyond those who got swindled into attending Fyre Fest. It really pains me when I have to talk about it, so I just wipe it away.. Fyre Fraud spends a bit more time with social-media influencers who show up ready to par-tay in the Bahamas and are immediately appalled by the disaster-relief conditions that greet them. And then it starts raining. eight lawsuits were brought against him relating to Fyre Festival,he was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud. Schadenfreude on Twitter is fun and all, but the spectacle of white moneyed elites defrauding a Caribbean workforce makes our delight at what happened at Fyre seem small. If youre watching either of these documentaries to get another hit of enjoyment at the expense of conspicuous consumers misery, honestly, you cant go wrong either way. Mattressesand tentsfor attendees of Fyre Festival. Shania Twain Gives Rare Update on Her Ex-Husband and Ex-BFF. Fyre Fraud lays out more information about McFarlands background and his pre-Fyre endeavors, including a failed, exclusive credit-card company that targeted millennials and should have served as a red flag that Fyre, an app that basically functioned as an Uber for talent booking, and its related fest might not come together as planned. Fyre, on the other hand, drills down in a more linear fashion into the way the festival evolved from an insanely expensive concept, to an infamously enticing promo video featuring Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski, to a sold-out event that was definitely not coming together, and, ultimately, to a botched endeavor that sucked cash out of peoples wallets and forced attendees to fly away from the exclusive island that was supposed to supply them with the experience of a lifetime. Short staffing: No one wants to work, but why. Hulu casually dropped their own Fyre documentary, Fyre Fraud on Monday, apparently just to flex on Netflix's previously announced . 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. Throughout the film, director Chris Smith interviews the mostly sincere folks who tried to deliver what McFarland had promised. McFarland . So where did it all go wrong? The image perfectly captures the contrast between what had been promised by the organisers and what was delivered. Titled Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, Chris Smith's film is a fairly straightforward accounting of the failed event that triggered a maelstrom of social-media schadenfreude in. 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. 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. customers. Terms and Policies (Or, at least, which one to watch first.) If these people would have noticed the signs beforehand, they would not be as upset when they watched the other poor souls on the island that had to sleep on wet beds from the storm the night before. 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. Fyre Fraud is an American documentary film about the fraudulent Fyre Festival, a 2017 music festival in the Bahamas. 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. To launch the app, McFarland envisions the biggest, most luxurious music festival of all time. All rights reserved. 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. In other words, both are relatively concise, which is a good thing if you plan to do a double feature. Honestly, I think this is the perfect viewing experience for young professionals who wish to make a name for themselves in ways like this. And it worked. It interviews people who were in direct contact with McFarland every day, for multiple hours a day, for around five months. and the I do not like that the films have also been giving more attention to the perpetrator in question, Billy McFarland, which is exactly what he wanted to receive from his multiple business ventures and scams, such as Fyre Festival and Magnises, to get more publicity then find more investors to give him money to make another scam. 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. 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. 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. Coming Soon, Regal For the rest of us, , there was more than a hint of schadenfreude in watching the whole thing unfold in real time. In particular, staff members Andy Hill and Marc Weinstein offer unexpectedly open, personal recollections. Your AMC Ticket Confirmation# can be found in your order confirmation email. Kendall Jenner was reportedly paid $250,000 to do this. As more images emerged such as queues of sad-looking rich kids waiting for their luggage the sniggering amplified. 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. People bought tickets because they wanted to live like the Instagram stars they follow online. In what way(s) is this movie a cautionary tale? Isn't that what social media does? . Who is adversely affected by the misbehavior of Billy McFarland? The festival wasn't a comedy at all, So where did it all go wrong? Chris Smiths Fyre deftly understands this, never turning into the millennial schadenfreude it easily could have become. It promised guests. "Fyre" - Netflix's version of a pair of dueling documentaries - is positively bonkers, a feature-length look at the planned Fyre music festival that went spectacularly awry . It is a classic tale of hubris. Astonishingly, it wasnt long beforeMcFarland and his team were using the Fyre Festival email databaseto try and sell tickets to other exclusiveevents depressingly, with some success. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! It promised guests happiness and then made them miserable. So, how can you decide which Fyre Festival documentary is most suited to your interests? The Hulu Documentary interviewed a former worker of F*ck Jerry, who told them that they had a bigger hand in Fyre Festival than the current production company led you to believe, and they werent as ignorant to the ongoings of Fyre as the Netflix documentary led you to believe. The Best (and Most Anticipated) Movies of 2023 So Far. Common Sense is the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of all kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century. FYRE: The Greatest . Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, the organizers of Fyre. Show me one thing I said thats not true today. At that point, Fyre Fraud runs through a litany of falsehoods that hes uttered over the course of the interview. Fyre Festival Documentary Shows 'Perception And Reality' Of Infamous Concert Flop Then on Monday, like a surprise Beyonc album, an entirely different Fyre Festival documentary dropped on. Basically, Fyre is more thorough when it comes to capturing the extent and depth of the personal damage McFarland has done. Luxury lodgings and the finest cuisine was also pledged. The Netflix doc lasts an hour and 37 minutes, while the Hulu one runs for an hour and 35. Each daily disaster will ultimately culminate in the event itself, which is a failure of massive proportions. Its a tie. (Chris Smith, the director of Netflixs Fyre, told Tobias that McFarland claimed to be getting $250,000 for participating in Fyre Fraud, though Furst said they paid less than that for the interview.). "[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". Do you think social media/the internet should bear significant responsibility for the disaster? Winner: Hey, guess what? It was like all beautiful beaches and sunsets, festival consultant Marc Weinstein says in the Netflix film, describing his social-media feed while working on the event. By coincidence, presumably, these streaming movies are almost exactly the same length. Parents need to know that Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is a documentary that details the events leading to the Fyre Festival, a 2017 music event that was over-hyped, sold out and a complete fraud. Excellent account of youngest FBI's Most Wanted. Yet more drinks are opened, people are hired and fired, advice is ignored. Smith's interviews in Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened are compelling, insightful, and rigorous. Cinemark Then the Fyre Festival Instagram account, rumored to be run byGrant Margolin, started deleting all questions, flagging specific words and blocking users from commenting on posts at all. 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. As one former employee explains, Fyre was meant to be "the Uber of booking talent". Why is it important to be aware of paid influencers' participation on social media? (There is essentially a Fyre Festival going on in the West Wing, one commenter says toward the end of the Hulu documentary.) This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google The cost of Fyre wasnt to investors and credulous hipsters who wanted to party with Major Lazer and Blink-182 on a white-sand beach. Is Netflix's Fyre Documentary a Scam, Too? 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. ", "Netflix's Fyre Festival doc beats out Hulu's version for best documentary Emmy nomination", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fyre_(film)&oldid=1116129066, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 15 October 2022, at 00:02. 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. If you wanted, say, supermodel Gigi Hadid to attend your party, you could. Having said that, whats notable about Fyre, and perhaps makes it an interesting counterpoint to Fyre Fraud, which I have not yet seen, is that its not Billys face that I remember. 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. Season Review; THE LAST OF US Season 1 Episodes 2-5: Whoa, We're Halfway There. This article is about the documentary. Hulus competing, and less effective documentary. And what should you take from this documentary? Nearly every interview in Fyre produces another WTF revelation from the gentleman who was asked to perform a sexual favor to get the water bottles needed to keep people hydrated through customs to the Fyre employees ordered to put money on wristbands that would ostensibly be used at the festival but were clearly offsetting rising costs. 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. 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 finding the most damning anecdotes. The interview was just him back-pedaling, contradicting himself, and making excuses. The fact that (1) McFarland asked him to do this because he considered King their gay leader, and (2) King continued to work for the guy afterward is utterly astounding. Coming Soon. Luxury lodgings and the finest cuisine was also pledged. The only good news is that, since the documentary, an online fund has been set up for, If this turns out to be true, one thing is not in doubt. Cinemark A young entrepreneur called Billy McFarland was working withrapper Ja Rule on an app called Fyre, which was designed to let ordinary people book talent. 4.5/5. The fact that there are two of them, raising the possibility that you might experience some level of regret depending on which one you opt to view, is apropos. They all speak candidly about how they were caught up and carried along. ", "Who has the better Fyre Festival documentary, Netflix or Hulu? To promote the Fyre Festival, he brings a dozen of the world's most famous models to the Bahamas to film a video of beauty, partying, and luxury that will go viral. For all its, intrigue, Fyre Festival is really just an extreme example of the lie we are sold, when we start scrolling. McFarland bought an island in the Bahamas, Normans Cay, and promoted it to consumers as Pablo Escobars former island. He'd left himself about eight weeks, . The history of the Fyre Music Festival, from its creation through its unraveling. 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. We at Vulture wont even charge you a quarter-million dollars for the exclusive privilege of reading this review. 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. Mature doc about outrageous scam is funny, sad, instructive. And one restaurant owner claims she spent about $50,000 (Dh184,000) of her savings paying staff, whose wages should have been covered by the festival organisers. The worse it gets, the more entertaining the documentary becomes. That's human nature; it's why we love watching comics flop, Fyre Festival, built entirely on social media buzz, is the physical representation of the chasm between the real and the fake, the haves and the have-nots. To promote the app, McFarland decided to throw a massive party which eventually morphed into Fyre Festival. He previously suffered a brain aneurysm on February 18, and was ultimately taken off life support. Were you aware of the term "influencer"? 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. Here(TM)s why I believe everyone should check out Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. He said his surgery was a success, but he needs time to heal before he can tour again. These people were burnt by Fyre and are still trying to recover. And the guests are still coming. After all, theres nothing quite like watching through the gaps between splayed fingers as the privileged and entitled stumble and fall, especially if its straight into a muddy puddle. The developments in McFarland's con story are truly baffling, and yet you can see clearly how this scheme came together, and pressed on cringing-moment-by-cringing-moment until there was nothing left to hide. Just confirm how you got your ticket. "It really pains me when I have to talk about it.". Privacy Policy and From all of these suspicious actions, these consumers should be reasonably concerned, and hopefully, they would ask for a refund after theyve smelled a scam, but the majority of people just wrote it off as a weird incident and decided to still go on the trip. A young entrepreneur called Billy McFarland was working with rapper Ja Rule on an app called Fyre, which was designed to let ordinary people book talent. One thing that the audience should take away from the film is DO NOT go to a festival without doing proper research and see the signs of a scam. The image is an example of a ticket confirmation email that AMC sent you when you purchased your ticket. Videos FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. 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. , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. It was directed by Chris Smith, and produced by Danny Gabai and Mick Purzycki and was released on Netflix on January 18, 2019. It was, Scores of celebrities and influencers were paid (or offered a free ticket) to post a cryptic orange tile, with a link to the Fyre Festival website, on their Instagram feeds. Just because it never happened doesnt mean they cant get back together. #fyrefestival pic.twitter.com/I8d0UlSNbd. In the months leading up to the festival, Fyre Media even paid numerous celebrities and influencers to tout the festival on their social media accounts, including a reported $250,000 payment to.