FYRE - Netflix Documentary Film Review 18/01/2019 by Greg Wheeler How Not To Throw A Party Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is an engrossing, shocking documentary that sheds light on one of the biggest flops in festival history. when these dudes decided to create a Fantasy Island for millennial Instagrammers with little time or proper preparation. The Netflix doc lasts an hour and 37 minutes, while the Hulu one runs for an hour and 35. customers. 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. Ten gorgeous singles meet in a tropical paradise. 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. 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. McFarland and his cofounder, the rapper Ja Rule, are ruthless villainsas greedy as they are narcissisticand yet they manage to convince an incredible. 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. Its that of a woman who runs a restaurant near where this entire clusterf**k went down in the Bahamas. 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. Written and directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst, Fyre Fraud is much stranger than fiction, and yet it tells a story that makes perfect sense in the age of influencers and the general need to be seen. This is a story, similar to the documentary Three Identical Strangers, that has to be seen to be believed. Hulus competing, and less effective documentary. 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. So some decided to ask the Fyre Festival Instagram account some standard questions about their 1 to 2-week stay. . 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. They all speak candidly about how they were caught up and carried along. Brian Tallerico is the Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. But watching him actually doing it in the Netflix one because, of course, he hired a videographer to film it all makes it that much more outrageous. 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. FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened -- produced by Danny Gabai at Vice Studios, along with Chris Smith, Library Films and Mick Purzycki at Jerry Media -- premieres Friday . 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. 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. After all of these events, the people who decided to go were met with a barren wasteland with dingy tents. Fyre was surrounded by sketchiness before it was even released. Before it became a very real nightmare for all who had flown down to the Bahamas and spent thousands of dollars on getting a sunburn and flying back home,it was meant to be a paradise populated with everyones favorite musicians, social media riffraff and movie stars: Im talking Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Kanye West and G.O.O.D. Powerful Stories About Martin Luther King Jr. Popular YouTubers' Books for Kids and Teens. 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. Fyre is a document of a disaster, speaking to a number of the key players behind the scenes, although never McFarland himself (he is a part of Fyre Fraud, and this great piece by Scott Tobias details the controversy there). STOLEN YOUTH: INSIDE THE CULT AT SARAH LAWRENCE: A Nightmarish Documentary Of Pain, Trauma And Hope . Jason Statham and Aubrey Plaza do not seem like a match made in action-comedy-chemistry heaven, but it somehow works. These people were burnt by Fyre and are still trying to recover. 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. One day we'll stop making memes about Fyre Fest,but the sentiment behind fomo, and the obsession with following fantasy lifestyles to feel like we're a part of something, will proliferate and only lead to the next worst thing. Directed by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason, it premiered on January 14, 2019, on Hulu . Verified reviews are considered more trustworthy by fellow moviegoers. 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. 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. [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. 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. Cinemark Smith does a terrific job of stringing it all into a taut narrativebut the real revelation of Fyre is in the insider interviews. McFarland did nothave enough time to build the luxury villas, tents, and stage. After eight lawsuits were brought against him relating to Fyre Festival,he was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud. Billy McFarland bilked everyone he laid eyes on, even the people who were most loyal to him. 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. One doesnt happen without the other. Isn't that what social media does? Just leave us a message here and we will work on getting you verified. 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. 4.5/5. Fyre review viral festival disaster relived in shocking Netflix documentary. My spoiler-free review of the documentary 'Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened' from director Chris Smith and Netflix. As the documentary profiles McFarland in detail, he's proven to bea perfect match for the superficiality of influencer culture given his status as a compulsive liar and an updated dictionarys definition of a con man. The image perfectly captures the contrast between what had been promised by the organisers and what was delivered. Each daily disaster will ultimately culminate in the event itself, which is a failure of massive proportions. 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. It interviews people who were in direct contact with McFarland every day, for multiple hours a day, for around five months. The only good news is that, since the documentary, an online fund has been set up for Rolle. Yet if you had seen it you wouldve been like, Wow, what a great life this guy leads. 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. Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix have broken up after he allegedly cheated on her with Raquel Leviss. Through fraud, false advertising, and a man who really has done nothing but lie to his co-workers and employees, it really was a frustrating and unnerving experience to sit through. The Fyre Festival Instagram was posting recycled pictures from the same photoshoot that was shot in Normans Cay, which was not factual. 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. McFarland had a crowd, now he just needed a festival. Within 48 hours of the beginning of the social media hype, the event is 95% sold out -- with some packages topping $250,000. 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. By coincidence, presumably, these streaming movies are almost exactly the same length. Nick Allen is the Senior Editorat RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He'd left himself about eight weeks. All rights reserved. There are also several jokes at Ja Rules expense, and multiple uses of air-horn sound effects to convey ridiculousness. Ja Rule says near the end of the documentary"Nobody diedNobody got hurt." 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. 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. Why is it important to be aware of paid influencers' participation on social media? Its startling to see so many urbane, sophisticated, young creativesthe kind of cool kids our media economy reveresensnared in old-fashioned criminality. This password will be used to sign into all, A Timeline of How Fyre Festival Became a Massive Failure, 8 Takeaways From Hulus Surprise-Released Fyre Festival Doc, Fyre Festival Founder Billy McFarland Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison. "It really pains me when I have to talk about it.". (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.) Privacy Policy and But both movies are unflinching in their examination of what happened in the lead-up, execution (or lack of execution), and aftermath of Fyre Fest, and diverge just enough in terms of tone and information to make both worthwhile. Little did they know that the money on these wristbands would be going to pay off McFarlands debt and since there was little to no internet on the island, if the wristbands were legitimate, they wouldnt have worked anyway. 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. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. 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. [2][3][4][5] Jerry Media approached VICE with the idea of a documentary three months after the events. And yet he plows through with Fyre Festival with the help of investors and support from Ja Rule (looking to fall into success) and the absurd sidekick Grant Margolin (referred to as McFarland's Dwight Schrute). 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. A friend named Angelo Roefaro is hanging out with McFarland and tells the videographer to keep me out of your stuff. Roefaro has reason to make that request: Hes the press secretary for Senator Chuck Schumer and probably knows that his association with McFarland wont be a good look. Please reference Error Code 2121 when contacting customer service. 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. Breaking down the contenders in the seasons most unpredictable Oscar race. 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. Youve got some Janning to do! 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. The babies of the 80s and 90s may resent the stereotypes that rear their heads in the Hulu documentary, but it does raise provocative points about what makes portions of this demographic so susceptible to endorsements from Kendall Jenner and other, similar attempts at Insta-marketing. It all happened recently, and it's more powerful for that immediacy. For all its intrigue, Fyre Festival is really just an extreme example of the lie we are sold when we start scrolling. Videos FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. We wont be able to verify your ticket today, but its great to know for the future. (Or, at least, which one to watch first.) Your Ticket Confirmation # is located under the header in your email that reads "Your Ticket Reservation Details". Has anyone ever called you a compulsive liar? the filmmakers ask him. Come to Fyre Festival and party with supermodels on yachts while you listen to major DJs and other artists! 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. We already know that Billy McFarland, the young huckster behind the festival, a charlatan with a vacant smile, is a convicted felon. Excellent account of youngest FBI's Most Wanted. Families can talk about the intentions of documentary filmmaking: to inform, to entertain, to inspire, or to persuade. Please click the link below to receive your verification email. As more, such as queues of sad-looking rich kids waiting for their luggage the. and, all the while, the clock is ticking. Fyre is a story of shallow excesshow were in an era in which how something looks is more important than what it actually isbut its also a reminder that everything still has a cost. It is a classic tale of hubris. By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and 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. There is a brief window when there is still time to pull it off, but nothing ever seems to happen. The documentary never really reconciles that conflict, which is a shame because when Fyre Fraud gets serious, it asks some hard questions about modern advertising, social media, "FOMO" (fear . "He told us that. You dont have to dig for contacts, you just go to Fyre and get a quote. Throughout the film, director Chris Smith interviews the mostly sincere folks who tried to deliver what McFarland had promised. To promote the app, McFarland decided to throw a massive party which eventually morphed into Fyre Festival. The account directed them to their Fyre Festival FAQ email, but the emails sent were never returned. 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. Little did they know that the money on these wristbands would be going to pay off McFarlands debt and since there was little to no internet on the island, if the wristbands were legitimate, they wouldnt have worked anyway. Yet more drinks are opened, people are hired and fired, advice is ignored and, all the while, the clock is ticking. Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. 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. Link Copied! So, how can you decide which Fyre Festival documentary is most suited to your interests? 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. Excellent film depicting the power of social media, celebrity status and hyperbolic culture that allows mediocre business people to play pretend with real life dire consequences. More persuasively, it's adamnation of the mentality that helped make it possible, calling out a culture that progressively puts more value into how you make yourself look online. Which category (or categories) does Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened fit into? begins to be exposed, McFarland refuses to change course. Fyre Fraud is an American documentary film about the fraudulent Fyre Festival, a 2017 music festival in the Bahamas. 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. Coming Soon. 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. the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. So where did it all go wrong? 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. We at Vulture wont even charge you a quarter-million dollars for the exclusive privilege of reading this review. We want to hear what you have to say but need to verify your account. (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.). It really pains me when I have to talk about it, so I just wipe it away.. "They just wiped it out and never looked back," she says, her voice cracking. The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic, HBOs Rain Dogs Finds Humor, Despair in the Working-Class Mum at its Center, Berlinale Highlights, Part Three: Hummingbirds, Concrete Valley, Afire, The Oneness of All Things: On Sofia Alaouis Animalia, New York International Childrens Film Festival Opens Window to the World. 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.. For each of them, including unpaid Bahamian workers, it was a financial fiasco and a commitment unfulfilled. 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". Common Sense and other associated names and logos are trademarks of Common Sense Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (FEIN: 41-2024986). Things you buy through our links may earnVox Mediaa commission. Mature doc about outrageous scam is funny, sad, instructive. McFarland speaks in a room that's revealed to be large and empty, and perhaps staring into the abyss he has made, calls itominous. The image is an example of a ticket confirmation email that AMC sent you when you purchased your ticket. Adults-only dramedy revels in sex, lies, and manipulation. 90% of tickets were sold in the first 48 hours, with prices ranging from $450 to $100,000. Copyright Fandango. 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. This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. 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. Those who like to laugh at rich white people and scoff at impressionable millennials will get the most bang for their buck on Hulu. Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened is a 2019 American documentary film about Billy McFarland and the failed Fyre Festival of 2017. If you wanted, say, supermodel Gigi Hadid to attend your party, you could log in to Fyre, pay your money and she'd be there. Fyre also gets more granular as it recounts the festivals eye-popping budget ($38 million on building stages, $3.5 million to pay performers) and shoddy logistics, like how the event ended up on a gravelly patch of Great Exuma, rather than Normans Cay, an island famous for its connections to drug lord Pablo Escobar, because McFarland and his colleagues were kicked off the latter location. The siren callof social media and the idea of perfection it peddles isfar too irresistible. "[10], In April 2019, Netflix reported that 20 million households had watched the film during its first month of release. 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. But the Netflix film spends a fair amount of time on similar moments, even using the same school bus footage to capture the initial moments of Fyre horror. If you wanted, say, supermodel Gigi Hadid to attend your party, you could log in to Fyre, pay your money and she'd be there. As one former employee explains, Fyre was meant to be "the Uber of booking talent". TikToks Favorite Celebrity Couple Is Kim Kardashian and Michael Cera. 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. 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.
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