Fyre (AKA Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened)

Dir: Chris Smith

2019

****

I have to admit that I felt pretty grubby watching Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. Released in January 2019, it is the documentary everyone is talking about but I would bet my left arm it’ll become forgotten within weeks. I vaguely remember the Fyre festival hoo-ha from a couple of years ago, I remember it failed badly and many memes were created in response but I didn’t appreciate just how much of a shit show it really was. It was basically fraud committed by someone who didn’t know how to complete. Billy McFarland was the man behind the festival, a guy from a wealthy background whose parents were successful real estate developers. He attended an expensive private college and had been brought up to be confident and to never give up – two valuable lessons for you and me – but when the wealthy adopt those values, it’s usually only for their own gain, everyone else be damned. You say confidence, I say despicable arrogance. However, just being an ‘entrepreneur’, no matter where you got your start up money from, is seen as desirable by those who don’t know what it means. Precocious is the new word for prodigy, I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Chris Smith’s documentary explores where McFarland’s success and notoriety came from (something to do with metal credit cards - I really don’t understand any of it) and we meet various twenty-something computer nerds who are full of enthusiasm and the ‘possibilities’ that their rather bland sounding ideas could lead to. By possibilities, I believe they mean money. None of them look like they’ve ever climbed a tree or eaten real food and I suspect that most of them have rickets. The computer nerds, events planners and marketing people all merge into one, they seem to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing – but I guess I’m wrong, because they’re raking it in, selling dumb apps to dumb kids. The youth movement is dead, this is the new revolution and it’s about as soulless as it gets. It’s why I felt grubby about watching it. I laughed at the memes that mocked them but I did so on social media sites that they made and still profit from. I hate them and I hate myself and its their fault, and yet here I am blogging. Anyway, somehow this failed festival warrants not one but two documentaries made about it. I went with Chris Smith’s documentary for ethical reasons. The other documentary, Fyre Fraud, paid McFarland a ton of money for a series of interviews. Also, I have Netflix and I don’t know what Hulu is – I’m guessing it is what Betamax was to VHS but I’d have to ask Jeeves. The two films are the same apparently, except the Fyre Fraud delves into the murky world of promotion, on-line influencers, the shadowy people who fund such projects and all those other things I don’t understand that the kids are into these days. It features McFarland and others who where ‘there’. Smith’s documentary doesn’t have interviews with McFarland but it has more footage and is said to be prettier. Most of the interviews come from the app developers from where the idea for a festival came from, as well as the people from the promotional and media companies that were hired. These people work for companies that were also indited in the fraud case and each individual was involved in the festival. They play the violin well, but I’m afraid I have no sympathy for them. However, the film also focuses on the many people who worked on the festival at ground zero. Basically, the festival, sold as being the first of its kind, was to take place on Pablo Escabar’s Island in the Bahamas. For the promotional video, McFarland and ‘business partner’ Ja Rule hired twenty of the world’s leading super models to dance around the Island’s beach and drink cocktails. They promised luxury camping, sexy villas, personal chiefs and yachts galore, and of course the best music acts the world had ever seen. I believe the intention was to create such a dream festival but it didn’t happen and everyone knew it wouldn’t happen but McFarland carried on with it anyway. They lost the Island after breaking the only rule they had in order to play there, that was ‘Don’t mention Pablo Escabar’s name’. It was literally the first thing said in the promotional video. They ended up in a disused housing estate on the main island with hurricane tents that were left over from the previous storm. The personal chiefs were never hired - people made do with two slices of bread and a slice of cheese if they were lucky – and as night fell the scene turned into Lord of the Flies with people fighting over tents and mattresses, even destroying surrounding tends so they could have some privacy. Again, little sympathy for these kids – clearly a nasty bunch of brats with too much money and very little taste. It was the poor Islanders who worked night and day for months building the site that I feel sorry for. Not one of them got paid and at the end of the day, they are the ones that suffered. Credit due to Smith’s film that addresses this. We laughed at the rich kids who had paid thousands of dollars to see Blink 182 and we laughed at the greedy kids who cheated them but the hard-working poor are the ones we should be thinking of. It would probably be more entertaining if it was a film where horrible people screwed over horrible people and got screwed as a result – and much of the film is just that – but real people who weren’t horrible got screwed most of all. Unbelievably, McFarland began his next fraudulent project while out on bail, selling tickets to major events that he didn’t actually have. I think the water incident is all you need to know about to really know who these horrible people really are. When the Island’s customs withheld the festival’s container full of Evian water, McFarland begged his long time friend and business confidant to ‘take one for the team’. This guy had taken many hits for the team already and had said many nice things about McFarland throughout the film – even though McFarland asked him as their “gay leader”, to go to the customs guy and give him oral sex to get the water. Unbelievably, he was ready to do it. He didn’t have to of course because customs officials, like most people, are professional. They wouldn’t withhold water as it was essential for the crowds of people that were attending, they just needed a promise that it would be paid for at some point after the festival. This is how these people’s minds work and yet they are successful. The media companies that were ‘duped’, but were also somewhat responsible, co-produced this film and that is why it has so much exclusive footage, so now I feel even more dirty for watching it. It’s a well structured film and Chris Smith goes from strength to strength but the more you know about the whole thing the more upsetting and disturbing it all becomes. What I thought would be a film about laughing at stupid people soon turned into the realization that these stupid people are quite powerful, thanks to the many more stupid people who idolize them. Stop the world, I want to get off.