fyre festival is going well

For those interested, Alex Gibney (the guy behind the Enron doc and the HBO Scientology doc) made a Theranos doc, which probably comes out this year: https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/the-inventor-a-documentary-about-theranos-and-the-psychology-of-deception-will-premiere-at-sundance/

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/fyre-fest-documentary-cook-fundraising-goal-782116/

The Theranos book by Carreyrou is extremely good.

Did the Hulu doc interview any artists who weren't involved in the "production" of this thing? That was something I missed in the Netflix doc -- I want to know what was promised the artists other than big bucks, if anything. I didn't mind that the Fuckjerry material was Fuckjerry material, because even when folks are doing everything they can to make stuff look sexy and desirable, dead eyes and looking away all the time are still dead eyes and looking away all the time and readable.

No artists were interviewed in either doc. The Netflix doc is much closer to the production team and there is a lot more covering the planning, booking, etc. I'm definitely of the mind that if you're interested in the story, watching both docs is worthwhile.

Netflix did interview Jillionaire of Major Lazer.

The major lazer guy is interviewed briefly in the Netflix one and that’s it as far as artists

Xp

Sorry, my miss. I stand corrected!

Fair enough about Jillionaire, and he was definitely one of the more interesting heads talking -- he didn't really get into the business end all that much, and functions in the doc a little more as "sane Caribbean voice #5" than talking about the music business end. And his interview is followed quickly by a poor put-upon Fyre droid having to deal with an annoying artist about font size -- and if you've ever been on the other side of that conversation, you don't end up with too much sympathy for the poor put-upon Fyre droid.

The Major Lazer dude actually had one of the most critical comments on "influencer" culture and hidden advertising, which the Netflix doc didn't touch too much otherwise. As for the other artists, I dunno what interviewing them would've gained? As mentioned in the doc, at least some of them were promised a significantly larger fee than they normally get from a festival date, what other explanation do you need why they chose to participate? And when their managers realised the whole festival was fucked up, they promptly cancelled. Can't imagine there's much of a story there.

If anyone has extensive experience with grifters it's band managers. As soon as the advance money doesn't show up or the required proof of a legit venue/equipment, they'll be the first to pull out.

I doubt many of the artists even thought much about it until they pulled out, just another date on the festival circuit.

what's still unclear to me is if any musical acts were still on the bill 48 hours before the start time, when attendees started traveling. Had everything been canceled or were smaller-font acts still set to perform? It didn't seem like there were any artists in the footage during the fiasco, though there was a stage.

xpost
Absolutely, there's a handful of festivals which have some cultural cache (Glastonbury/Coachella/Sonar etc) which artists will be keen to be a part of other than as a payday. Most will just be dates on a calendar.

these are the ones that fascinate me tbh: i think ILM shd crowdfund me to go on one (me and hercule poirot)

https://lastfm-img2.akamaized.net/i/u/ar0/f5a65f3ae32b35bcb1cfeb07ecdfe8fc

unrepentant mattress-pisser guy ended up being an unexpected loathsome punctuation point on the netflix doc

I found it interesting that the journalist view/occasional narrative voice contributions for *both* docs were provided by former gawker media writers Jia Tolentino and Gabrielle Bluestone (hulu and netflix, respectively)

Pitchfork claims this is the reason why no bands ended up on the island:

They also allegedly told the performers (including Migos, Major Lazer, Blink-182, and more) that the festival was canceled long before attendees were informed.

in the netflix doc, the one guy who was in charge (?) of booking at the ripe old age of 23 mentions that he went off script and cancelled the acts although it's unclear if it was right before people started arriving on the island or right after

I got the impression that everyone was arriving to the island on April 27, a Thursday, and the actual event was starting Friday. So that lines up -- people started to show, it was a disaster, and the booking guy told everyone not to show up friday/saturday

The bit that really had me hyperventilating was when people started putting thousands of dollars on those dumb electronic wristband prepay things.

got a strong vibe that many of the attendees willing to be interviewed were part of the um, less sympathetic contingent? the balding guy who was in both docs has a shtick and I'm willing to write him off due to his entire attempts at metacommentary since he has an "ironic influencer" thing going

but in the netflix doc we have the mattress-pisser guy and the ginger guy who, at one point, says "we're trapped there with who knows what kind of people" and I'm thinking.. maybe you should have thought out your phrasing there

there were a few people interviewed at the time of the festival who didn't appear in either doc who implied that they'd bought the cheapest tickets -- still expensive, but in an all-inclusive resort kind of way -- and attending was a bit of a reach. that demographic is completely absent in the doc

Demographic with just enough money not as ripe a target as demographic with too much money.

looks like part of ambiguity in the reporting about ticket prices is related to the fact they kept dropping "sold out" ticket tiers and adding increasingly more expensive ones

so at some point they had day tickets for $500. not sure what the lowest tier that involved transportation to/from the island and the crappy tent was at, but some reports put it at $1200

I've only seen the Netflix one, want to see the Hulu one too. The whole thing is even more batshit than I expected, there are a few real jaw-dropping moments in the film even if you followed all this at the time. It almost doesn't need saying, but this is such a readymade parable of the Trump age that it almost seems made-up.

I thought the woman who was a developer on the Fyre app who seemed really no nonsense came off well, about the only one

I was waiting for everybody interviewed in the Netflix doc to die in a fire but instead they all just make out like Bloaty McFarland is the big supervillain. not enough schaudenfreude to go around imo.

the one real question no one answers in either: where's Grant?

he was seemingly the right-hand man and does an amazing job of skulking in the back of most shots and seems to have successfully ghosted

I was aghast at the arc in the netflix doc of the guy brought on who had (supposedly) actual music festival consulting experience but was willing to smile through everything. If you're wondering what he's up to:
Weinstein is now working in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain and also continues his work as a yogi on the side.

i thought they said Grant was an EMT and laying low at the end of the Hulu one? He's wise(perhaps for the first time) to stay the fuck out of all of this imo.

i've also read rumors that he works at chipotle

the very telling moment for me is the post-festival conference call in the netflix doc with fyre employees. on the large screen in the room, you can see everyone has their webcam turned on and all their faces are in motion reacting to whatever excuses billy's spewing, except for Grant who has his webcam off so you just see what looks like a professional head shot

I thought the woman who was a developer on the Fyre app who seemed really no nonsense came off well, about the only one

She did, which is why the whole time I was thinking "You seem sane, why the fuck were you working for that cretin in the first place?"

well, no one will interview a startup developer who left a job on their resume before six months or stayed longer than two years

What a wonderful world.

unspoken point throughout was that almost all these guys were waiting to be paid; as a contractor myself, i know that pain.

I was wondering what counts constructively as a layoff in NY after McFarland did the "no one is fired, but we will not be paying payroll" and someone asked "so you're saying we're not being laid off so we can't file for unemployment?"

got a deep "labor law genius" vibe from the guy who probably got a two minute briefing from a lawyer before trying that

I think it was even “there will be no payroll in the short term,” or something really technical and weasely like that.

No payroll in the short term, but family vibes galore.

I did enjoy the "no such thing as bad publicity" rationalizations in the immediate aftermath, like they could brainstorm another angle to keep the scheme rolling.

the difference between doing the right thing and the wrong thing? if what you're doing is truly wrong, the court system will convict you. no conviction, you're still good. no pending case on what you're specifically doing this minute? still good

I thought the woman who was a developer on the Fyre app who seemed really no nonsense came off well, about the only one
She did, which is why the whole time I was thinking "You seem sane, why the fuck were you working for that cretin in the first place?"

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, January 22, 2019 10:58 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've had friends in similar situations w/dev and i think part of it is no matter how much of a trashpile an app/game/whatever is, there's having something that shipped on your resume, as opposed to 2 years with no final product...i def know ppl who stayed in bad situations holding out that *something* would be released no matter how bad

unrepentant mattress-pisser guy ended up being an unexpected loathsome punctuation point on the netflix doc

― mh,

Came here to post this. There were so many terrible people in both documentaries, but out of all them nobody made me quite as angry as that guy. I hope he lost a fortune.

Overall, I'd agree with a lot of what has been said here. The Hulu documentary was way more trashy in its presentation which made it a much funnier watch at times. My wife, who didn't really know much about the festival was laughing pretty hard at some bits (the pirate ship!) We watched that one first. We barely laughed at the Netflix one, probably because we knew what to expect and also because they focused on how devastating it was for the people of the island which was hard to see.

There were a lot of people in the Netflix one that should have known better and did have us asking why they continued to be involved with Billy even up to the day of the festival. That goes for some of the people who actually went to the festival. There was that one guy who had been talking about how excited he was until the weeks leading up to it where there were all these red flags. He told some story about doing research into all the negative coverage and getting really worried (about flights, lack of updates, the Fyre Fraud Twitter feed etc) but yet he still ended up going! I mean, at that stage why would you even get on the plane?

As others have said, for all this "Billy was so charming and could talk his way out of anything" talk, I didn't see much evidence of any of his charm/charisma. It looked more like what people really meant was he threw great parties and always gave us free beer.

I mean, what's your defense in the next interview? "Well, I thought this startup that was creating an app for rich people was a scam." Many (most?) are, to some extent, scams. Uber's net income was something like negative $750M for 2018. And McFarland had a shitload of good press up to and including the month the festival bombed

Now, "I quit because it was a well-publicized disaster owned by a federal criminal" is a little more of a sell

random pondering: are Manhattan-based scams of a distinct flavor compared to other scams? something seems very social-climbing in a particular way about the whole townhouse/card thing

I'd also echo kitchen person's sentiment about the Hulu doc showing a lot more of the actual sales pitch compared to the Netflix one, probably because they kept adding more shit to upsell prospective attendees and no one at jerry media wanted to hand over the in-office footage of them saying "ok, we have to add something about a pirate ship to the website.."

FWIW, we watched the Netflix one with our 14-year old daughter as a lesson in why she should not trust everything she sees on Instagram, and esp. the perniciousness of sponsored posts, celebrity endorsements and "influencers." She seemed quite aware of the situation, which kinda troubles me. It's just the way things are for her and her friends, but I don't know what to make of that sort of transcendental cynicism.

"You seem sane, why the fuck were you working for that cretin in the first place?"

In fairness, ridiculous hubristic techbro manbabies are par for the course in her industry.

There were a lot of people in the Netflix one that should have known better and did have us asking why they continued to be involved with Billy even up to the day of the festival.

This was so completely baffling to me. There were people Billy would task with fixing a major (and completely avoidable) problem, and they'd shrug, "Welp, how much crazier can it get?"

Like the Evian situation. Why on earth wasn't Andy King's immediate reaction, "You want me to WHAT?! Nope, we're done here, go fuck yourself" ?

Had to lol at King's "Nobody remembers the mud and the traffic and the lack of food and sanitation at Woodstock!" Yes they do. That's like 1/4th of the fucking movie. Shots of stranded cars are longer than the Santana drum solo, ffs.

My daughter had never heard of Woodstock!

damn, I guess Fred Durst died in vain

This was so completely baffling to me. There were people Billy would task with fixing a major (and completely avoidable) problem, and they'd shrug, "Welp, how much crazier can it get?"

here is an important thing to know about con artists imo - the definition of a mark is not a well-meaning person that gets conned by the con artist due to ignorance, happenstance, etc. Con artists target marks who are greedy enough to think they can outsmart the con artist. The ideal mark is the one who thinks *they* are the con artists, that they will somehow come out on top of the con, that they are the ones who actually have the inside track on the scam. And that is exactly what all these people working for McFarland and all the attendees were - they were thinking, deep down, that somehow *they* would come out ahead if they could just fool everybody else long enough to getting some free, expensive shit and "be legends". I hated absolutely everybody in the Netflix doc except for the hapless Bahamaian laborers, who were just doing what they always have to do to survive, which is hustle to get some scraps from rich white assholes.

Had to lol at King's "Nobody remembers the mud and the traffic and the lack of food and sanitation at Woodstock!" Yes they do. That's like 1/4th of the fucking movie. Shots of stranded cars are longer than the Santana drum solo, ffs.

also lol yeah this was my immediate reaction as well

xp

at least the Bahamaian catering woman is apparently taking in some cash from a GoFundMe, I felt so shitty for her situation