Fyre Fraud (2019)

[EricSchulz]

Title: Fyre Fraud

Genre: Documentary

Director: Jenner Furst, Julia Willoughby Nason

Cast: Billy McFarland, Seth Crossino, Jia Tolentino, Vickie Seger, Diallo Osoria, Ben Meiselas, Delroy Jackson, Ava Turnquest, Austin Mills, Oren Aks, Michael Swaigen, Ja Rule, Wendy Williams, Dave Chappelle

Release: 2019-01-14

Runtime: 96

Plot: FYRE FRAUD is a true-crime comedy exploring a failed music festival turned internet meme at the nexus of social media influence, late-stage capitalism, and morality in the post-truth era.

 

[EricSchulz]

One of two documentaries debuting this month. Hulu jumped the gun to beat Netflix with this enthralling doc that has many discussions with the organizer Billy McFarland.

The Fyre Festival was to be this HUGE music festival on an island in the Bahamas, with big name acts announced and promoted by social media "influencers". It was a lot of big ideas, big money and...it was a huge scam. The producers had toyed around with the idea of making this a docuseries and I wish they had. The deeper they dug into the scam the more interesting and unbelievable it became. A great way to spend 90 minutes!

 

[JQuintana]

Watched this last night. Billy is indeed a mental case and a compulsive liar like the filmmakers commented on. He can't help himself at this point, it's a sickness. I doubt prison time will help him. His "interviews" overall were fairly pointless since he didn't say much of anything, just sat and stared into space like a zombie.

I didn't feel bad at all for all the narcissistic "customers" that signed up for the festival though.