Netflix and Hulu Release Brilliant Fyre Festival Documentaries
By Jack Murphy// A&E Editor
The Fyre Festival, notoriously, took the world by storm in late April of 2017, when reports, pictures, and videos started coming out on social media detailing a chaotic music festival in the Bahamas that left people stranded on a construction site. On the site, there were hundreds of soaked hurricane safety tents to stay the night with no lights, port-a-potties, no water, and no musical acts. It became an insanely popular subject for memes online and the internet dwelled in the insanity of the story and how funny it was watching drunk millennials sink into an environment being compared to “Lord of the Flies” as they dragged mattresses from tent to tent in the middle of the night, eating only cheese and bread sandwiches, with no musical acts… at a music festival! That’s just a very small summary of the events that unfolded and due to how outlandish and insane the story is, both Netflix and Hulu have created documentaries about the festival, its creation and aftermath, and the festival’s organizers, mainly Billy McFarland and Ja Rule. “Fyre Fraud” was released, unexpectedly, on Monday, Jan. 14, just five days before Netflix’s documentary “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” was planned to drop on the site. Both documentaries have gathered somewhat favorable reviews and many have questioned which one do to watch. The best way to do that is figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of both of them, and to, hopefully, give you an idea of which one you would enjoy the most.
“Fyre Fraud” is Hulu’s documentary on the festival and is the only festival to feature an interview from the main organizer and con-artist himself, Billy McFarland. “Fyre Fraud” takes more time to go over McFarland’s past and to give the audience an idea of he became a successful con man, even during his childhood. As the doc keeps revealing more about McFarland and the preparation of the festival, it shows how much of a pathological liar McFarland is. At one point, they feature a compilation of things McFarland has said throughout the interview and the documentary would have an immediate cut exposing the lie as what it is. “Fyre Fraud” does the same thing as the Netflix documentary in regards to giving inside footage of the festival. Hulu’s documentary has incredible stories from the staff in charge of the impossible task of setting up a music festival that should take at the very least a year in almost three months, and how they had no leadership willing to stop the festival when it clearly wasn’t going to happen. However, the explanation into why millennials fell for this was, in my opinion, not fully correct, and “Fyre Fraud” didn’t go into great detail of how this disaster fest impacted the actual workers on the island and how to this day, none of them have been paid by McFarland.
That is one of the things that “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” did so well, because along with all the stories that are just hilarious, that I’ll not spoil, knowing that people who live in the Bahamas, who needed this money, got nothing for ludicrous hours of construction and feeding workers. One of the women interviewed by Netflix, Maryann Rolle, was given the task of feeding all the workers and the first batch of guests for the Fyre Festival at her restaurant away from the festival site because they had no idea what to do. She said in the documentary she spent $50,000 in her own savings to pay her workers and for all the food, and yet she’s received nothing from anyone at Fyre. Stories like this one and countless others feature more depth and are more fascinating at times compared to “Fyre Fraud.” Andy King’s story of getting water back from customs and what McFarland asked him to do, the fact that McFarland got kicked off the first island. He wasn’t supposed to say the island used to belong to Pablo Escobar, yet in the first promotional trailer for the festival, it says the island belonged to Pablo Escobar, and he was promptly kicked off the island. Those are just two of many unbelievable stories from both of these documentaries that are just bonkers, to say the least.
Concluding with the question brought up at the beginning of which documentary should you watch? Honestly, everyone should watch both of them, as they both add to the entire story of the Fyre Festival and each of them does little things better than the other. However, I believe Netflix’s “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Was” is the more entertaining documentary and has some better stories and the interview from Billy McFarland, while it would’ve been the cherry on top if they had paid him to do it, it’s not necessary. I highly recommend both “Fyre Fraud” and “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Was” to anyone as they are incredibly entertaining, and give a detailed look into one of the most significant cases of fraud of all time.
“Fyre Fraud” was released on January 14th. “Fyre Fraud: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” was released on January 18th. Photo provided by Quartzy.com