Netflix Documentary exposes the Fyre Festival scam

(And no, the attendees did not meet Bella Hadid.)

Have you ever attended a music festival— and was it worth the hype? If your response is an unenthusiastic “sort of,” consider yourself lucky because you weren’t an attendee at Fyre Festival. In 2017, entrepreneur Billy McFarland dreamt up an app called Fyre to help people book famous musical artists and entertainers for their own events. To promote it, McFarland conceptualized a music festival. Fyre Festival would be the event where people could party alongside the celebrities they could book on the app, all on a luxurious private Bahamian island. The star-studded musical line-up and the promo videos graced by models like Bella Hadid sold to many attendees. But while the attendees expected to step into the novel world of “The Great Gatsby”, they actually stepped into “Lord of the Flies”.

Chris Smith, American film director of the 2019 Netflix documentary “FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” captures the epic fail that was Fyre Festival. The cast includes the many people who were exploited by event creator Billy McFarland, such as his event organizers, marketing team members, Bahamian service workers, and festival attendees. The viewer can watch interviews with these people and footage from their months working with McFarland— and marvel at the lengths McFarland went to make Fyre possible. To McFarland, “the show must go on” meant putting construction and food service workers on 24-hour working shifts without pay, lying to investors, and pressuring an event organizer to sexually exploit themself to make up for not paying a company. Thankfully, the company postponed their fee deadlines instead. But still, nothing was too far for McFarland.

The documentary tells the story of Fyre Festival from the perspective of these people that were so convinced of McFarland’s promise and so charmed by his confidence that they followed him until the end. The end of the Fyre Festival was the arrival of attendees who saw that their ‘luxury villas’ were tents put up—like those in refugee camps or hurricane displacement victim camps—but with worse mattresses. There were no musical artists, no food or water, no electricity, and no security. There were also no private jets nor private islands— that much was a lie as well. And while this apocalyptic end was in sight, McFarland’s team propelled toward it with a hope that blinded them of it.

“You know, you just go with somebody’s…it’s that energy, and the belief system, and you just go and you go and you go. And then when do you stop? And no, I never thought it would end like this.”

The candidness of the interviews is what makes the Fyre Festival documentary by Chris Smith so captivating, human, and even relatable. While we could laugh at the music festival that went down as an epic fail— watching its downfall through the hopeful eyes of the exploited team reminds us that we have been there too. We have all believed so much in something and taken blows and punches for it because of our undying hope that it might just work. Be it a relationship, a friendship, a goal, or a dream, we refused to turn our backs on it because we had already gone in too deep