This film is a hoot to watch, especially if you are into schadenfreude. In case you're on the fence about whether or not our species is getting dumber by the day, this documentary about the failed Fyre Festival of 2017 will help you understand once and for all that it is. Directed by Chris Smith and released on Netflix in January of this year, it shows in stunning detail how people are slowly losing, or have already lost, the ability to think clearly, think for themselves, or even think at all.
Today's younger generations, let's say people under the age of 40, seem to be little more than farm animals who follow the herd, revere the shepherd, do as they are told and willingly drink whatever flavor Kool-Aid is proffered. Through interviews with many of the people who worked on the project, Fyre Festival: The Party That Never Happened depicts the events leading up to the eponymous monumental failure, which involved fraudulently selling tickets to an event that simply never came together. It is both shocking and amusing, and like a car wreck at the side of the road, it's almost impossible to look away.
The Fyre Festival was billed as a fabulous concert like none other, located on a private island in the Bahamas. Concert-goers were given a choice of staying in luxury suites, private waterfront villas or fully-furnished, over-the-top, carpeted tents on the sand, all including incredible meals from top chefs and three days of music by a standout list of performers. For all of that they paid handsomely. Only they got none of it.
This being a documentary, everyone we meet is a real person, which is hard to believe. The 27-year-old mastermind, a man named Billy McFarland, is now serving six years in prison. Using live footage shot by someone hoping to document the next Woodstock, we see in vivid detail every misstep made by those blinded by McFarland's boorish bluster -- enough to go and work for him. The bait was a promotional video showing 20 or 30 of the world's top supermodels, these days called "influencers," cavorting on a fabulous yacht in teeny, weeny bikinis, who allegedly would be present and who maybe would become your new best friends if you went to the festival.
Once each of the influencers posted information about the festival on her individual Twitter account, things really took off. The concert was an instant sell-out, even before a final venue had been located. In fact, tickets were sold to more people than could even fit on the island that was finally chosen as the site.
Watching the film, surely with your mouth agape, it's hard to tell who is dumber: The concert's wealthy backers who invested millions with McFarland based on nothing but his outrageous chutzpah, or the vapid young adults gleefully boarding crummy, no-name airplanes -- certainly not the first-class accommodations they had been promised -- in search of three days of sunny, tequila-fueled, drug-stoked island bliss. The only similarity it all had to Woodstock was the pouring rain, which made a very bad situation even worse.
Today's younger generations, let's say people under the age of 40, seem to be little more than farm animals who follow the herd, revere the shepherd, do as they are told and willingly drink whatever flavor Kool-Aid is proffered. Through interviews with many of the people who worked on the project, Fyre Festival: The Party That Never Happened depicts the events leading up to the eponymous monumental failure, which involved fraudulently selling tickets to an event that simply never came together. It is both shocking and amusing, and like a car wreck at the side of the road, it's almost impossible to look away.
 |
| The disgraced mastermind Billy McFarland, leaving court. |
This being a documentary, everyone we meet is a real person, which is hard to believe. The 27-year-old mastermind, a man named Billy McFarland, is now serving six years in prison. Using live footage shot by someone hoping to document the next Woodstock, we see in vivid detail every misstep made by those blinded by McFarland's boorish bluster -- enough to go and work for him. The bait was a promotional video showing 20 or 30 of the world's top supermodels, these days called "influencers," cavorting on a fabulous yacht in teeny, weeny bikinis, who allegedly would be present and who maybe would become your new best friends if you went to the festival.
Once each of the influencers posted information about the festival on her individual Twitter account, things really took off. The concert was an instant sell-out, even before a final venue had been located. In fact, tickets were sold to more people than could even fit on the island that was finally chosen as the site.
Watching the film, surely with your mouth agape, it's hard to tell who is dumber: The concert's wealthy backers who invested millions with McFarland based on nothing but his outrageous chutzpah, or the vapid young adults gleefully boarding crummy, no-name airplanes -- certainly not the first-class accommodations they had been promised -- in search of three days of sunny, tequila-fueled, drug-stoked island bliss. The only similarity it all had to Woodstock was the pouring rain, which made a very bad situation even worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment