Fyre (2019) Reviews

• 21st century morality tale

  con_au2019-01-27

  At some point the life we actually lead has become less important that the life we want others to think we lead. Social media allows us to cherry pick the images and moments that amplify the sweet spots and eliminate the dark ones and the kings and queens of social (influencers) do this best of all. They confect a fairytale life and monetise it by selling their influence to convince us mere mortals to buy products and experiences that maybe bring us a tiny step closer to their higher plane. So it was with Fyre - music festival experience that could never in fact have been achieved, but was imagined so fiercely that thousands of people signed up for it. Fyre was a Ponzi scheme of finance, and also of dreams. Billy McFarland is the Bernie Madoff of influence Ponzi schemes, convincing investors, social influencers, marketers, promoters and entertainers to both believe and spread the dream, even when their eyes and minds were telling them that 10,000 millennials on a scrappy bit of dirt on an island in the Bahamas was never going to be a reality. That, in spite of McFarland's scams that bookend the Fyre Festival debacle, and his subsequent 6 year jail sentence, some people are still believers speaks a lot for both his charisma and their gullibility. The documentary is shameful list of the scorched earth McFarland left behind, from exploited construction workers all the way through to his faithful inner-circle. It's jaw-dropping stuff, but a salient reminder that if even smart, successful people can be blinded by a good showman, our kids are at daily risk of having their faith, self-esteem, mental health, credibility and financial security threatened by the smoke and mirrors of social media. I'm sure other people will see a different side to McFarland et al, and they may also criticise this documentary for its perspective, but for me it was both entertaining and a reminder that fairytales are almost always morality tales as well.

• Biting, surreal look behind the scenes of a disaster

  jehosaphet-588032019-01-21

  It was almost palpable, the sense of unease that you feel as the concert goers began to realize just how much of a disaster they'd signed up for...even though you knew it was coming. This was a very well told story, and aside from that, the best thing I could say is that it was told very to-the-point. It wasn't a long, rambling documentary...it said what needed to be said, yet also gives the viewer a nuanced view of just how some of the people behind this promotion were able to be dragged in over their heads. You can't help but feel for some of these guys, as they were taken for just as much of a ride as the festival attendees, but lost more than just the cost of a ticket. There's currently a Gofundme page set up for the owner of a restaurant who worked tirelessly to provide food for everyone, giving up her life savings in the process. Apparently she was very reluctant to speak on camera, as the issue is still very hurtful for her, but hopefully it'll end up being worth it for her having done so. If you don't know much about this event, this is one heck of a story insofar as the difference between what was advertised and what was eventually produced, the dichotomy itself provided quite a bit of entertainment value with its "wow" factor. Great documentary on a very interesting part of our zeitgeist, a testament to the power of social media as well as its potential for abuse and the superficiality it helps foster.

• Doesn't matter if Hulu or Netflix did it better

  Maralzo2019-01-19

  Netflix's take on the Fyre Festival fiasco has a more grounded vibe than Hulu's more montage-driven version. But ultimately both platforms do well in building up what the Fyre disaster was all about, both before and after it all. We can debate on the ethics of what occurred behind the scenes of each doc, at the end of the day there was little bias to be had as the message was the same: Billy McFarland was a delusional fraduster. The real entertainment is seeing wealthy people predictably buy into the facade of luxury only to experience first world problems as if they have it worse than the middle class. When the "worst 24 hours of your life" involves a botched Bahamas vacation because some huge festival party you paid thousands for didn't happen, it just looks ridiculous compared to people going through real issues like years of no clean water in Flint, MI. No one deserves to suffer, but there is hilarity in seeing self-important narcissistic party socialites who never worked a day in their lives get scammed because they put their trust in some circle of wealthy social media models and "influencers"...for some luxury party. This documentary illustrates the perfect analogy of the social media illusion with the Fyre fest disaster. Some things are just too good to be true, and may even be a facade of something much much worse. It is an important documentary to raise awareness of the problems of social media and the concept of understanding what it takes to do something seemingly impossible.

• Cringeworthy escalation to the inevitable

  plpregent2019-01-22

  I remember seeing the infamous promotional video for this festival (not that I'm wealthy enough to attend this kind of event, but some friend sent me the link, so I could "contemplate" the "dream" that other people were going to live). I remember feeling confused about this: what is it, exactly? It's some music festival, but all we see is this Caribbean landscape with a yacht, jetskis and girls in bikinis. Not that this seemed just like a lure, but clearly this was just pretty archetypical promo that could have been just one of a thousand meaningless "influencer" videos in this Instagram era where people are more busy turning their life into a promotional object than living and enjoying it. I also remember reading the Vice article documenting the extent of the disaster the actual event was. That article is what got me to understand that this was actually supposed to be a music festival (I did not bother looking into that sort of detail after being sent the initial promotional video, as it seemed like your typical, meaningless Instagram garbage). Then, over a year later, I see this thing in the Netflix menu, and decide to watch it. This is an interesting story where what one would initially perceive as pure naivety clearly turns into plain deceit, and where the expectations of grandeur for the "dream" being sold were artificially inflated through social media. And on that last point, I think this documentary does a pretty decent job of mocking how social media and "influencers" (still can't believe that's how these parasites are called), in today's world, is all about style over substance, expectations vs. reality, and the culture of appealing people with luxury items and "lifestyle" while having an empty bank account or being in major debt. How many of these stories have we heard over the years, of people living the "good life", only to go bankrupt a few year later? This is the new "15 minutes of fame" concept, one heavily filtered picture at a time. The documentary gathers a satisfying amount of interviews with people who worked on the event, of on-site footage before and during the event, and of other significant moments that show you the true colors of Billy McFarland and Ja Rule - the founders of this scam. You do get some insight on their mentality throughout, as Ja Rule and McFarland have no grasp whatsoever on reality and won't take no for an answer, regardless of whether what they want to do is within the realm of possibility or not. It does not matter to them. They're in the Caribbean, they always got a beer in their hands, and they couldn't care less about the logistics - until the very last second, when they got their back against the wall, but will take their customers' money regardless. As I mentioned before, at first, it seems like they really are doing their best to materialize the vision they had. That vision, however, is soon enough unveiled as something that obviously won't happen, with mountains of financial and logistical challenges that just can't possibly be climbed, as could have easily been predicted, had the founders not been so short-sighted and stubborn. The structure of the documentary quickly turns into a countdown to the event, and boy it's not short on cringey moments, let me tell you that. It obviously escalates as the event approaches and you know the ship is about to hit the iceberg, big time. While it may be hard to feel pity or sympathy towards rich kids who can afford to spend 25K on that kind of weekend getting ripped off, "Fyre" somewhat debunks a mentality that plagues North American society and reveals the emptiness behind each lavish lifestyle picture posted by these "influencers" on Instagram to a much wider scale by giving a prime example of an empty shell that was created and promoted on social media. Overall, this "anatomy of a modern day disaster" documentary is very well put together, one cringeworthy moment after another. Worth watching if you've heard of this fiasco and you're curious about how it all went down.

• Interesting case study on social media

  t-s-ltpie2019-01-19

  I remember hearing about Fyre Festival through friends on social media talking about how it looked like the coolest thing ever. I watched the promo video and it all seemed way too good to be true, but then I'm a cynic and I thought "Hey, maybe I'll be wrong". Yeah, not a chance. This documentary in a lot of ways is a brilliant insight into social media & its influence on modern society. The entire festival was built up from promo videos posted on social media and posts from 'influencers' (a term that I absolutely hate and this documentary shows why you shouldn't trust 'influencers') that detailed an idealistic experience that every Instagram and Facebook obsessed kid would dream of. The funniest thing is that in reality, these kids didn't actually want to attend the festival, rather they wanted to be seen attending it - they wanted to post about it on social media to show that THEY had been there. The whole festival was about the image, and that was a great marketing factor in the 'organisers' favour (I say 'organisers' because as you see in the documentary, it doesn't look like anyone organised anything here). The beauty of this is that everything about the festival was surface level. There was nothing underneath. No-one had bothered to actually engage anyone with real business acumen in the festival planning industry until too late in the piece. It's probably one of the best examples of why money isn't necessarily the answer to everything. The co-founders had a lot of money and it didn't save anything. There needed to be some actual business development here and no-one really bothered to give that its dues. The worst thing is that, while I didn't like the concept from the start, this type of festival could really have worked. Sure, it's still a complete shining example of the social media craze amongst our society but there was still potential. If there had been an actual plan from the start, and it wasn't throw together based on a promo video and 'influencer' posts, then we could have seen some revolutionary event that everyone wanted to attend, even if they didn't want to admit it. But we didn't see that. What we saw instead is a bunch of idiots thinking that their great ideas will just work because they're really passionate about them. Be careful of your obsession with your image, otherwise you might end up like ol' Billy.