FYRE: O Festival que Nunca Aconteceu

I cannot handle documentaries like this that use so much B roll and unrelated clips. Well, related only in the sense of a key word. It's that "stylized montage" from Reality Bites that I can never get out if my head. The one with the pizza spinning around like a record player. That's my definition of irony. The actual documentary looks like the awful, fake documentary in a fictional movie. Ugh

I was very interested in the Fire festival fiasco when it broke in the spring of 2017. I watched the Netflix documentary first, and then Hulu's Verizon. Overall, I think the Netflix version has a more linear story progression and I like how it focused on the victim impact more so than the Hulu version. This Hulu doc also simply seems more amateur than the Netflix doc. I'm surprised no other reviews have mentioned it, but in this documentary when they want to relay informtaion from a court filing or statement, they have it read by one of those awful computer reading services which just sounds incredibly hokey and is frankly distracting. I've never seen that "artistic" choice in a film before. However, it you are very interested in all the details of this scandal, I would recommend both documentaries as they both contain distinct information. If you're trying to choose between them, then I would recommend the Netflix one over this.

Two documentaries about the Fyre Festival debacle came out days apart, Netflix's Fyre and Hulu's Fyre Fraud, and each shines in different ways.

The Netflix documentary approach is a methodical chronology. It describes what happened as it happened and how people saw it at the time. It really puts you into the day-by-day experience.

Fyre Fraud takes a different approach. It actually sketches out the basics of the entire thing in the first 15 minutes, then builds upon the various components to create a whole.

The titles actually hint at the different approaches. Fyre describes the Fyre Festival as a slow-mo disaster, only at the end fully revealing the shadiness of Fyre's charismatic creator, Billy McFarland.

Fyre Fraud, on the other hand, immediately establishes Billy as a sleazy con man, and portrays Fyre as a series of shady transactions. Netflix portrays the festival as a disaster, Fyre Fraud as a crime.

Fyre Fraud spends a lot of time framing the Fyre Fraud hysteria within the current culture. It's the sort of pundit "hot take" that is easy to poke holes in, but it's sometimes persuasive. Fraud also has an interview with Billy, although the guy is to slippery to offer much satisfaction.

If you only wanted to watch one Fyre documentary, go for the Netflix one. But after you've seen it if you want more details and a different angle, Fyre Fraud is well worth your time.

7/10 - interesting documentary reveals some truths about the much talked about Fyre Fest

When it rains it pours. Both Netflix and Hulu decided to come out with documentaries about the Fyre Festival at almost exactly the same time.

The Netflix film is definitely a superior documentary, with broader coverage of the story, but this is worth watching for the interviews with McFarland himself, which Netflix doesn't have.

Unfortunately, it seems like in exchange for the interviews, they kind of soft pedal what a thoroughly loathsome human being McFarland is. Yes, the make it clear he lied to a lot of people, but you could still walk away from this thinking he's still a basically decent guy who just got in over his head. He's not. He's a pathological liar and a sociopath.

For example, they leave out the fact that he started a new ticket sales scam *while he was out on bail* for the Fyre fraud charges.

The biggest flaw in this documentary is they don't even mention the biggest victims of the scam; namely, all the Bahamians who worked round the clock to try to try to make this happen, and then didn't get paid.

Still, the main takeaway from both documentaries is just how easy it is to separate people from a *lot* of money if you're willing to lie with a straight face, and when i comes to that, there's really no substitute for letting McFarland tell the story in his own words.