Fyre Fraud *** / *****
Directed by: Jenner
Furst & Julia Willoughby Nason.
Written by: Lana
Barkin & Jenner Furst & Jed Lipinski & Julia Willoughby Nason
Hulu was
smart back in January of this year when they decided to release their Fyre
documentary just a few days before Netflix released their documentary –
virtually guaranteeing that many people would watch both documentaries for
comparison purposes. The two then got into an ethics-off of a sort –with the
Hulu directors accusing (not incorrectly) the Netflix people of working with
Fuck Jerry Media – which ran the marketing for Fyre festival, and have
questionable (at best) ethics in everything, and the Netflix people accusing
the Hulu people (again, not incorrectly) of paying Billy McFarland $175,000 for
an interview and footage for their documentary. Both are dubious, ethically, to
be sure – but I don’t think either fatally hurt either documentary. I also
think Hulu was smart to release their documentary at the same time, because it
is clearly the inferior movie overall – and had it come out later than the
Netflix documentary (like it did here in Canada – where we do not have Hulu,
and they eventually released it to other streaming platforms for rental. I
rented it wanting to see what they had that the Netflix documentary did not.
The answer really is not all that much – and it is has a jokier style that I
don’t think works as well. It’s an interesting documentary – and I think goes
well with the other film – but if you’re only going to watch one, watch the
other one.
The film follows
the same basic format as the Netflix documentary – first introducing us Billy
McFarland, and his previous companies and ventures – and how be made a name for
himself with his credit card for Millennials – before moving onto Fyre – which
was supposed to be a talent booking ap – and then spiraled into the music
festival in the Bahamas. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and
basically it all went wrong because of McFarland and his hubris – he just never
could convince himself to pull the plug on the venture, even when it should
have clear it was never going to come off.
Chris
Smith, who directed the Netflix documentary, really focused more on interviews
and footage from the island to make his documentary. He has great access, and
really does show you step by step how everything flew off the rails. The one
thing he didn’t have was access to McFarland himself – who refused an interview
because they wouldn’t pay him, like Hulu did. In the end, I’m not sure how big
a difference it ended up making – McFarland doesn’t really reveal too much we
don’t already know, and pretty much confirms what we do know – that he is a
pathological liar, who cannot be trusted, who really didn’t know how to pull
off what he wanted to pull off but kept pushing on anyway. Where it went from
being incompetent to being criminal is debatable – but it got there.
I do
think that Fyre Fraud does try to be a little too clever for its own good –
bringing in clips from The Simpsons and other pop culture touchstones to make
the whole thing funnier – jokier. The film doesn’t have as much time for the
real victims of the Fyre Festival – the locals who were never paid for the work
they did. The film just kind of breezes over them – and even, for the most
part, the attendees of the festival. It wants to stay more focused on Billy and
his team than anyone else.
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