Schadenfreude is a powerful emotion, but is it strong enough to get you to watch two documentaries on the same subject? This week sees the release of dueling documentaries about the notorious Fyre Festival, the wannabe luxury music fest put on in the Bahamas that briefly took social media by storm when it collapsed into chaos in the spring of 2017. Attendees arrived to the fest only to find a gravel-filled construction site in shambles, repurposed FEMA tents in place of their promised luxe cabanas, and no way to escape. While some simply reveled in the imagery of privileged young people discovering they had paid thousands of dollars for the opportunity to temporarily experience life as refugees in a disaster zone, the flood of behind-the-scenes detail that soon became public exposed the event as the definition of hubris, a project of Sisyphean proportions manifested into jaw-dropping reality by an arrogant confidence man.
Netflix has Fyre; Hulu has Fyre Fraud. Both are roughly 90-minute documentaries laying out just went wrong in glorious, salacious detail. But if you have to choose only one to watch, Fyre is the better film—though given the additional layers of intrigue surrounding these films, there’s an argument to be made they work better as messy halves of a PR-damaged whole.
Whatever splash Netflix hoped to make with the release of Fyre, the film’s reception has been briefly upstaged by the battle waged between the streaming giant and its competitor Hulu, which released Fyre Fraud four days ahead of Fyre. The directors of both films have publicly leveled charges of ethically compromised behavior at one another, and both accusations have some merit. The first salvo came when Hulu’s Fyre Fraud producers were revealed to have paid Billy McFarland, the now-imprisoned con artist who masterminded the infamous festival, for an exclusive interview, something Fyre director Chris Smith said felt “particularly wrong” in explaining why he turned down a similar offer. (Fyre Fraud co-director Jenner Furst disputed the quoted price of $250,000, but anything in the six-figure range feels like grossly improper compensation to a man who scammed millions out of others to further his own megalomania.)
In response, Furst brought up a point made toward the end of his own film Fyre Fraud (co-directed with Julia Willoughby Nason): namely, that Netflix’s Fyre is produced by Jerry Media and Matte Projects, the very companies also responsible for promoting the Fyre Festival. “I feel like there’s a bigger ethically compromised position,” Furst said, “and that’s going and partnering with folks who marketed the Fyre Festival and were well aware that this was not going to happen as planned.” While neither side comes out looking especially great in this battle of who-stooped-lower, it’s not exactly a revelation that most documentarians at one time or another are forced to make dicey calls about their own role in telling a story, getting their sense of morality a little blurred in the interest of capturing some larger truth. Both movies fail to disclose their own complicity in their subjects, which is on them. Whether it’s worth it depends to a certain degree on the result—neither film is flawless, but the strengths of each help fill in the blanks of the other.
Ultimately, where Fyre excels over Fyre Fraud is Smith, a director with a razor-sharp point of view and eye for crafting a narrative that captures surprising, small moments of human foibles amid all the madness. (His résumé includes American Movie and 2017’s Netflix doc Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond.) Smith knows just how outrageous this story is, and lets his narrative be guided by the inside scoop from his parade of subjects, nearly all of whom witnessed firsthand this slow-motion train wreck of a music festival as it unfolded, whether as part of McFarland’s handpicked team of event producers or the luckless folks tasked with carrying out various aspects of his impossible vision. He expertly weaves in footage shot throughout the project’s lifespan, from grandiose pronouncements of the festival’s soon-to-be-greatness from “possibly complicit, possibly a sucker, likely a bit of both” McFarland partner Ja Rule, to little moments that perfectly capture the cynical mindset behind McFarland’s opulent Instagram-ready fantasies. (During an early business meeting, the con man explains the appeal of Fyre Fest: “We’re selling a pipe dream to your average loser.”) A rueful discussion with festival planner Marc Weinstein is a highlight, as the man relays each disastrous step he saw coming, yet frets about his own complicity in continually trying to fix it all rather than cutting ties and running.
What Smith nails is just how far McFarland’s bravado and snake-oil salesman shrewdness really took him before it all collapsed. By getting a bunch of the world’s biggest social media stars to promote his event for him, McFarland exploited the value of influencer culture in a way not many have. Despite a few closing minutes that pose generalities about the “Instagram lifestyle” that hoodwinked so many attendees in the first place, the film doesn’t need to make any larger points about the branding of millennial identity or how social media has changed the nature of grift—his stranger-than-fiction tale does it for him.
By contrast, Fyre Fraud (Grade: B) is interested in the macro story of What It All Means. While directors Furst and Nason actually provide a more traditional, almost biopic-style account of McFarland’s life, they want to use it to say something meaningful about the way social media distorts and weakens millennial culture, and that push for gravitas ends up hampering the film with a tone that at times comes close to a blithe dismissal of contemporary youth. It’s admittedly fun to include a smirking takedown of self-professed influencers—who, when pressed to define what they mean by their “brand,” end up stammering out a few words about positivity, as though they’d never considered the question before—but it gets awfully glib. Fyre Fraud has cultural critics like The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino weigh in on how the festival debacle can be seen as a symbol of modern identity, but given these people’s total distance from the actual events of the film, it never gains much traction.
What the film does have, though, is McFarland himself. Before he was sentenced to six years in jail for fraud, he sat down with the filmmakers and held court in his most earnest tone of voice to convey just how hard he worked to make his dream a reality, and just how little responsibility he seems to accept for not only its failure, but also for the ruined lives and hollowed-out bank accounts left in his wake. The directors confront McFarland with his own lies, but it’s debatable whether the pay-to-play tactic was worth it, given the film’s own insistence that the man is “a pathological liar.” Almost better is the account of Oren Aks, a former Jerry Media employee who broke ranks with his old company to dish on just how much they all knew Fyre Festival wasn’t what it seemed long before the crisis unfolded. Whereas Fyre gives Jerry Media and Matte Projects a wide-eyed defense of “it’s not our fault we worked with a crook who lied to us,” Aks bluntly recounts the company’s inside knowledge, and suggests culpability for not going public the way other Fyre Fest skeptics (like investor Calvin Wells, present in both docs) did.
Fyre Fraud, despite its efforts to go after the larger picture, ends up being a frothier and more light-hearted affair, replete with stock photo and cartoon cutaways overlaid with jaunty music cues, overemphasizing the absurdity Fyre has the confidence to know is hardwired into its narrative. Yet it does serve the useful task of demonstrating how the Netflix doc is a cautionary tale about noting who pays for a story to be told. 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.
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My main takeaway from Fyre Fraud was that if I need to market something, I’m hiring Jerry Media or Oren Aks’ company. These guys created an insane amount of buzz selling the dream of a Blink 182 concert in a FEMA camp. Imagine what they could do with a real product
The problem I see there is if it was a real product, then they would, kinda have to tell the truth. Because they started marketing this festival before they even had any idea where or what it was going to be they literally just made shit up. I am surprised early viral marketing didn’t say you were going to get to fight real dragons on the beach wearing Iron Man armor built by Elon Musk while getting a blow job from a super model. I mean how was Jerry Media not to know that wasn’t gonna happen, they are as much a victim as everyone else*(except they got paid and are getting a ton of free publicity from both these docs)*Note: Sarcasm
If it’s @fuckjerry then they probably stole all of the promotional material from Reddit
Right? I remember before word got out about its descent into Lord of the Flies and thought, Blink 182 with “luxury tents”? Who the fuck are these guys?
“These guys created an insane amount of buzz selling the dream of a Blink 182 concert in a FEMA camp.”Yeah, but uh…that’s not what they sold.
I’m now accepting backers to fund “Fyre Sale” where I make a documentary exploring the two competing “Fyre Festival” documentaries.If anyone wants to come up with a competing documentary to that (working title you can have: Ready… Aim… Fyre… let’s do it.)
I don’t have time right now, but can I slot myself in to make the documentary about your documentaries misuse of funds.
Perfect, I’ll give you full access to the catering blimp.
Only if you call it Heart of Regardless.
“The Fyre Festival Cinematic Universe”
Based on Hulu’s rush to release Fraud, I’d say “Ready…Fyre…Aim” is the better title.
that’s like fighting Fyre with Fyre.
Dibs on Fyre in the Hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2XlSXcwJ3o
Such a Fyrebrand aren’t you?
I’ll be an anti-influencer for your documentary doumentary.
I’m now accepting backers to fund “Fyre Sale” where I make a documentary exploring the two competing “Fyre Festival” documentaries.If anyone wants to come up with a competing documentary to that (working title you can have: Ready… Aim… Fyre… let’s do it.)
Mine will be an in-depth look at the planning behind the documentaries and the crews working on each. Working title: Fyring Squad.
I’ve watched the Hulu doc and I’m curious to see the Netflix version now
Yeah I plan to give it a watch this weekend. I honestly kinda like the idea of two different docs from different perspectives. Like when doing research about historical info, the best thing you can do is read multiple sources and try to figure out fact from fiction.
TBH, I kind of liked what the writer here criticized about Fyre Fraud – the way that it tied overall millennial culture and the social media nightmare in which we’ve all entrapped ourselves into the Fyre Festival phenomenon. I know everyone’s tired of think pieces about how millennials are killing this or that, but I don’t think the doc takes an unsympathetic view on the subject, and it is entirely relevant to explore the genesis of the social media influencer economy and how pervasive it’s become, given that that’s pretty much the engine that drove the entire enterprise.
I also liked the examination of social media, but I feel like it really sidestepped the fact that people have bullshat their way into money by promising people high status and a cool image long, long before social media existed.
Yeah, what struck me was how few of the tactics MacFarland uses are actually new. Being seen with high profile rich/famous people to trick other rich people into giving you their money is a classic con game that was big in the early 20th century, and using a big personality and unbelievable amounts of hype to trick people into paying for something that doesn’t exist was P.T. Barnum’s whole thing. Social media is at best a new wrinkle, not a causal factor.
“People are dishonest on social media” just seems trite at this point, and if it’s essentially this doc’s thesis, I’m significantly less interested in watching it. I think a doc like this could be interesting in a an “anatomy of a train wreck” sort of way, but I’m not sure there’s any grand statement about how it reflects who we are as a people that’s not going to feel like a reach.
It’s not the doc’s thesis. It’s a bit on what factored into making MacFarland’s con work, but it’s short, and a very small part of the overall doc.That said, while a lot of MacFarland’s tactics aren’t necessarily new, I think saying that the modern era and its technology hasn’t injected them with proverbial turbo fuel is myopic at best and disingenuous, at worst. P.T. Barnum could not reach literally millions of people with a message in seconds, nor was he putting out a message on a medium that reached a mass audience with zero filter or oversight. I understand nobody likes to hear old man yelling at cloud about technology, but if you can look around at today’s world, at our political and economic landscape, and shrug your shoulders at the idea that social media has made a dramatic impact, I don’t even know what to say to that.The point the doc makes here is that MacFarland was an emperor with no clothes from Day 1, but that the mechanisms that he and Fuck Jerry were expert at manipulating facilitated the illusion far, far longer than it otherwise might have lasted if they didn’t exist. The hype around Fyre was a social media phenomenon. To not examine social media’s role in it, and in creating the kind of culture in which it could be born, would be kind of weird, in my opinion.
“that the mechanisms that he and Fuck Jerry were expert at manipulating facilitated the illusion far, far longer than it otherwise might have lasted if they didn’t exist.”
I don’t really buy this. Gregor MacGregor pulled a version of this same con in the 1800s, except because there was limited access to good geographical information, he was able to fabricate the existence of the entire island instead of just some luxury cabanas. And while MacFarland is probably done now that a Google search of his name will tie him to this forever, MacGregor was able to keep selling stock in his fake island even after being convicted for fraud and actually killing a bunch of people. Barnum’s career lasted decades. Because all it took in the old days was just moving on to the next town.
My point here isn’t that social media didn’t make this easier for him in some ways; it’s that its relationship to this kind of hustle is more complicated than that, and that “the internet did this!” seems like a low effort hot take more than a trenchant analysis of social media’s role in society.
I hope to watch this in the coming weekend, but I wanted to say that the issue with social media isn’t that it exists and allows this to happen. As you say, scammers existed long before the rise of social; just ask the Nigerian Princes’ who need your help over email. The issue with social media is that its so overwhelmingly pervasive in a way that has never existed in terms of a communications channel that almost everyone is plugged into
…I feel like saying, “The problem isn’t that it exists, it’s that it’s so pervasive” is weird, as that’s kind of the whole point. No one, in this doc or elsewhere, would give two poops about social media if no one was using it, because then it wouldn’t even have a chance to affect our cultural conversation. There’d be no point in talking about it. Side note: It amazes me how defensive people are getting, here and elsewhere I’m seeing Fyre Fraud discussed, over social media culture being attacked. Like, didn’t we just witness a catastrophic election that we are all pretty much in agreement was negatively influenced by social media and its ability to deliver a fire hose of bullshit 5,000 times a day? Fyre Fraud spends literally five minutes of its running time talking about how performative social media is as a medium, the digital FOMO it inspires (they’re not the first place to call that out, either), and its effect on an entire generation – with a *great deal* of sympathy, I might add, for said generation – and yet I’ve seen multiple reviews and comments dismissing it as if it’s a) the central thesis of the film, which it’s not, and b) an attack on our Instagram is an attack on ourselves. Sheesh, y’all.
You summed up how I feel re the defensiveness. People just need to do better; don’t believe everything you see online. Use your brain or ask someone what they think about something before you go all in. Basically, make it a little harder for people to trick you.
It’s a bit disappointing that both of these are proper documentaries, and not suspiciously-expensive 90-minute shots of some dilapidated tents.
“We’re selling a pipe dream to your average loser.”
Heh – for anyone who went, that’s got to be a low blow on top of everything else. Fyre Fest is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
I think the douchebag who won $5 million after suing really cares about being called an, average loser.”
Dude needs a shirt. There is no cause to show that much flab.
my takeaway is not to watch either documentary, and not subscribe to either company, as it’s the only way to prevent my money from enabling grifters and con artists
Also turn off your computer and stop using electricity or driving anywhere or eating food that doesn’t grow in your climate zone, you charming little iconoclast you.
See ya on Mars, I guess.
Schadenfreude is a powerful emotion, but is it strong enough to get you to watch two documentaries on the same subject?Probably yes. I’m kinda terrible.
I liked Fyre Fraud (haven’t gotten to see Fyre yet) but the bit near the end where they shove a Trump mention in is a bit forced. Not because it’s unwarranted or wrong, Trump very much is a con artist, but just because it’s kind of out of nowhere and then they don’t dwell on it nearly long enough before getting back to McFarland and then dropping all the Trump stuff immediately.I do like every bit featuring Aks in FF, just a POV from a guy who was hired to do some social media wish, kept going evenI after thinking it was a scam because he had a job to do, and who ultimately got burned because the assholes he worked for designated him to be the fall guy for their complicity.
It’s a contrast. People like Trump made Billy McFarland possible.
Like I said, I get the parallel, but in the context of the movie, no one brings up Trump until like 1 hour+ into the movie. It’s a good point but it doesn’t fit into the movie very well.
They’re just talking about the larger culture of con artists and how easy it is for people to buy into them. In context, it makes perfect sense.
I don’t know if that’s a “this is why we have Trump” joke but scam artists are as old as time. Trump and Billy are the same fucking person. One just got busted and arrested on his scams is all. (Not for nothing, they are both the children of NYC real estate developers.)
Here’s a fun exercise while watching Fyre Fraud – count the number of times the talking head interviewees use the word “like.” I’d say to make it a drinking game, but you’d be dead of alcohol poisoning in the first half hour.
Neither. My Fyre doc is the best, and for a mere thousand dollars, you and a guest can see it as part of a weekend long event to be held on an an exotic private island!
Easy. Whichever one has Toby Jones as the narrator is clearly the lesser of the two.
Underrated comment.
Moratorium on using “schadenfreude,” please. 5th Article this week.
As scummy as it sounds to pay money to a grifter so he can publicly defend his image it was honestly worth every penny. Watching him go from boasting about his ingenuity of scamming people from elementary school on to the long silences after he gets questioned on why he didn’t come clean that he lost a box of god damn keys to the mansions people spent tens of thousands of dollars for is probably the highlight of the film.
I have to give credit to Fyre for being such a massive shitshow that I am engrossed by even the drama surrounding the production of the documentaries about it
The cultural angle Fyre Fraud tries to peddle was so annoying to me. I also grew up with the internet and I’m a millennial. It has not turned me into a scammer. It takes them almost 50 minutes to even say the word “white.” This guy didn’t fail upwards because he’s a millennial, he was able to pull this off because of white privilege. The documentary even talks about other “millennial” scammers but doesn’t mention the one thing they all have in common: the privilege of whiteness.
Oh and neither doc really got into how the locals dealt with broken contracts and lost wages. I was hoping one of them would go into the damages/bankruptcies that occurred on the island but Fyre Fraud just provided a one sentence wrap up.
You should see if The Root is hiring.
What?! ‘White Privilege’?!You may not be a scammer, but you are easily scammed, especially politically. How quintessentially millennial of you.
^^^^^THIS
IMO, one of the most effective moments in Fyre was toward the end, when the woman who ran the restaurant on Great Exuma was talking about how because she was never paid, she had to pay her workers with $50K of her own savings. She kept repeating how she doesn’t like to think about it because it’s so upsetting. It wasn’t just rich kids and tech company employees getting fucked over. But I agree that it could have gone more into that area.
There was a gofundme set up for her, so finally she was remunerated, but by individuals horrified at the actions of the shitheels that hired her, not by them realizing they’re complete garbage and making good.
I liked Fyre Fraud more, but I agree that it’s cultural analysis fell short. It falls into the trap a lot of people do of using “Millennial” to specifically mean rich white young people, who usually live in New York. I did appreciate that it did want to put the Festival in a larger context—not just “millennial” culture, but also McFarlands other failed businesses.
Personally, I preferred the Netflix one, as that one (at least to me) showed how the sausage was made and how Billy even attempted to continue to scam people while on bail and how he couldn’t seem to help himself. He even called one of the locals as the Netflix doc was being filmed. Heck, there were Fyre staffers (and local contractors) who tried to warn them but were either fired, walked away, such as the one who saw shark-infested waters as an omen, or had their complaints outright dismissed.
Agreed. For most of Fyre its sort of painted as an ambitious idea that got out of hand. People The best intentions but they were in over their heads etc etc. But the bit at the end where Billy is committing just blatant fraud while out on bail is the crystalizing moment where you really go “oh, this guy is just a POS conman. He did this all on purpose.” it makes the whole doc.
The Netflix doc spoke to a few locals, notably J.R. who brought day laborers to work on building the site, only for Billy to leave him hanging and J.R. had to relocate after people confronted him at his house and Maryann, who did catering at one of the nearby businesses. She had to clear out her life savings to personally pay the employees that worked with her after Fyre et. all reneged on their payments.
Yeah, I guess I just wanted more info there. It was nice that they spotlighted a few people, but this took place during one of the busiest holiday weekends there. It seems like the impact would be bigger.
Also, the Netflix doc noted that many of the production crews had rented houses from some of the locals for Billy and the main production crew but once Billy had split, all the houseowners took the keys and demanded immediate payment. At the least Maryann finally received her financial restitution via a GoFundMe page.
YES! That was something I thought was totally overlooked. There were influencers and production people who actually got houses, but clearly those contracts weren’t honored. I wonder if they were protected by Airbnb or HomeAway or something.
There were no protections since the houses weren’t sold through Airbnb, they were offered directly through the Fyre website & app. The ones who got houses were mainly the production people as the one Fyre staffer who handled the talent booking insisted that they cancel some reservations and packages due to lack of space, which Billy et all. ignored. I personally liked how it showed locals who were directly affected in the immediate before and after the festival left town. The locals were left hung out to dry and make amends of circumstances beyond their control.
lol.. “white” ya ok
Yeah, I really don’t like how people act like this is how ALL millennials behave. I’m a millennial and neither me nor any of my friends even knew about Fyre Festival until it showed up on the news. We don’t all sign up for weird elite credit cards nor do we aspire to be influencers. I’m a freaking high school teacher, and I’m happy as can be. The Fyre attendees are an extremely small subset of a very specific millennial.
You must not have stayed to the end of Fyre because they specifically talked about the money screw-overs and how the white folks sneaked out of town. quite despicable but we knew that.
There were plenty of niggers and chinks at play, too. Don’t put it all on whitey, you stupid faggot.
Are you saying you would have been a con artist if you had been born white and issued all the secret financing passwords at birth?He failed upwards because idiots with money parted with it willingly. In fact, this is an essential process for dismantling inborn privilege, that wealth in a ruthlessly capitalist system inevitably disperses from mediocrity.Also, Ja Rule was totally his accomplice.
I’m much more interested in the details of what happened than “What does it all mean?” pontificating. Thanks!
Having seen both and had a few hours to think about them, I respectfully disagree. The Netflix movie has more details of the festival itself, but the Hulu one goes into more of the economic details of the scam. The Hulu one paid McFarland for an interview, but they used that access to absolutely go for the throat, after first buttering him up with some “Tell us about your childhood ‘cran’ [god I fucking hate that pronunciation of “crayon”] fixing business” softballs. The Netflix one is full of a lot of insincere wide-eyed unpologies, which we know from the Hulu one are disengenuous bullshit. I enjoyed them both, and if you have both streaming services you should definitely watch both as a sort of 2 sides to the same coin, but I think the Hulu one was the better movie.Also, fuck that idiot gleefully recounting how he and his “bros” pissed on tents because they “didn’t want neighbors”. If you wonder why working-class Gen Xers such as myself rolled our eyes and made sarcastic jerkoff motions when this disaster hit social media, that asshole is Exhibit A.
Tey are the people who go into national parks and cut down trees.
Yes. The guy who bragged about destroying tents because he didn’t want neighbors was actually the worst person in the Netflix documentary! Imagine if you had to sleep outside because of that. I hope he feels dumb about bragging about that behavior on film.
I agree about the movies—the Hulu one is better, but the Netflix one compliments it really well and is worth a watch.However, I want to comment on the “working class gen Xer” thing. ‘Millenial’ is supposed to refer to an entire generation, but in practice is mostly used to conjure images of rich white people, who got their money from rich white parents. Middle and working class people of all generations were all over watching rich people lose their minds over cheese sandwiches in FEMA tents.
I’m aware of that, having plenty of friends who are a decade-plus younger than I and who laughed just as hard (if not harder) at this debacle. That’s why I didn’t condemn all Millennials (a cohort of about 80 million Americans) in my comment or conflate them with the kinds of spoiled trust fund brats that were Fyre Fest’s main sucker.
Yeah, that comment about destroying the tents, followed a few minutes later by someone saying that all of the tents were full, once it got dark, really angered me, since that meant some folks had to sleep in pissed on tents/mattresses. Everyone there should have tried to be, oh I don’t know, kind, to each other, considering the situation they were in. But that guy and his friends only thought of themselves, and were assholes. He totally missed the fact that they were then no better than the assholes who put them in that situation to begin with.
Yeah, there was certainly no irony lost on me while watching a bunch of sheltered, well-off white kids descend into such selfishness and savagery, when they’re probably the first to scoff at poor people for being uncivilized. Hopefully some of the learned some life lessons from the whole ordeal, but probably not.
They are both really excellent—at perpetuating the fraud, with both of them financially benefiting the perpetrators. I mean, just how broken do you need to be to think it’s okay to profit off the misery your fraud caused others. People act like it is no big deal because only rich kids got hurt. But hundreds of Bahamian people never got paid and McFarland left his employees with hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal debt. Now he’s making bank telling the story of his fraud? Is that even legal? Aren’t their laws to prevent criminals from profiting from their crims?
And what is wrong with Hulu? This guy loves to be in front of the camera. For god’s sake, he filmed himself commiting new fraud while he was awaiting trial for the first fraud. They could probably have gotten him to pay THEM for the privilege of being in their show. Sociopath’s gonna sociopath. Hulu didn’t have play along with it.
Every penny of profit made from these documentaries should go to victims. This is outrageous and the fact that the perpetrators are still at it should be the story—not which one of these fraud perpetuation vehicles has better production values.
I mostly agree with these reviews (I’m going to use Netflix vs. Hulu instead of typing Fyre and Fyre Fraud until I’m confused). Netflix is probably the “better” documentary from a narrative and editing standpoint and Hulu has some cultural commentary noise that isn’t really that effective but Hulu adds several elements and I’d argue should be watched first since Netflix places blame for marketing the event on the influencers more so than the agencies who hired and coordinated the promotion right up until it was officially canceled—among the very long list of parties who “should’ve known and done something” is Jerry Media who sort of come off as innocent bystanders in Netflix whereas Hulu has the ex-employee who gave details that are conspicuously missing in Netflix. Hulu gives McFarland more than enough rope to hang himself and, issues of paying a participant in a doc aside (it’s not an unheard of practice in documentary filmmaking but he’s also profiting from a crime so I get why it makes people uneasy), he makes himself look every bit as bad as the others do. Hulu also has bits of Ja Rule comically playing victim and co-founder/visionary at the same time (he gets off way too easily in both). I found the most interesting additions in Netflix to be footage and interviews with the film crew that made the promo, more interviews with employees of the app, more post-event coverage of McFarland’s subsequent scams with the second film crew, and a bit more coverage of the effect on the locals. If you can only watch one I think you’ll get the same story since many of the same people are interviewed as narrators in both.
if they were able to sell blink 182, why didnt they just market it as “Lord of the Flies, but with Supermodels, and also Blink 182″
Having just watched both, I agree that “Fyre” is a much better documentary. I appreciated that it included more people who worked on the Festival and for Fyre Media, as well as some of the Bahamians who worked on the Festival as well, and unfortunately, ended up being even more victimized by Ja Rule and McFarland. Those who bought tickets have money, or at least their parents do, and they have gotten over it; those business owners are still suffering and may never recoup the money they lost.The other sad thing I took away from “Fyre” is that McFarland will get out of prison one day, probably sooner than his sentence states, and he will eventually end up scamming people once again. Even though the postscript stated that he agreed to never serve as an officer in a company ever again, he won’t have to hold that type of job to wreck havoc on people’s lives. Someone will back him in a future business venture, and it too will be a disaster that will make McFarland money, while hurting those dumb enough to do business with him.
The Netflix documentary conveniently leaves out that Jerry Media produced the documentary while being a party to the Fyre Festival disaster.The Hulu documentary does go into Jerry Media a little bit.
I liked Fyre Fraud better. I thought it gave a better, more comprehensive look at how it happened and how it wasn’t just one guy’s doing. I think some of the criticisms are valid, especially the payment to McFarland but McFarland’s participation in the movie doesn’t do anything to save him. (Besides, even it’s $250k, he’s not likely to see much benefit from it.) That’s a helluva lot different than the Jerry Media guys being producers of Fyre. And so there they are, just guffawing about they just can’t believe they got scammed, too, man. Bullshit. If a viewer didn’t know anything about Jerry Media (or otherwise if not for Fyre Fraud), then they might come away from the movie believing it was all this mastermind McFarland. It wasn’t. Just like Enron wasn’t just Ken Lay. And no other massive fraud or Ponzi scheme is just one person. With Fyre, McFarland’s co-conspirators are making the movie.
Just watched both yesterday. Totally agree with the assessment here that “Frye: The Greatest Party that Never Happened” is the better of the two.“Frye Fraud”’s talking heads, as mentioned, are largely people who weren’t connected directly with the festival (Oren Aks notwithstanding). “Fyre” gives a better overview of the entire process without the “kids, get off my lawn” moralizing. That doc also has the grating tricks of cutting in pop cultural clips and other dumb gimmicks like using Siri’s voice to read court transcripts and other writings. And, seriously, what was the point of the McFarland interview, anyway? There are at least 20 more questions I thought to ask during the film. They only occasionally ask probing questions of him and he just deflects or flat out doesn’t answer. The inclusion of the subject himself oddly adds nothing of value to it.That said, I do think it’s best to watch both, as they do compliment each other very well.
I just watched both and I have to say I they really do compliment each other. As a Gen X leaning tweener, I appreciate the “kids get off my lawn” aspect of the Hulu doc. Kids are fucking stupid, that’s what is great and terrible about being young. I just wish they did a slightly better job of explaining that this is HOW millennials are getting conned, just like the Xers and Boomers, etc all did before. I also think the McFarland interview is a net positive. Even if they had to pay him, I’m glad I got to see how the devil works. I know it is bad that he gets to continue to try to profit off this, but the ethical cost is worth the lesson to me. I think the unedited full version of that video should be shown to every person in High School. Maybe that would make us just a little less stupid in our lives.
I just cannot bring myself to believe all of this really happened.