The Fyre Festival documentaries have arrived—Fyre Fraud and Fyre from Hulu and Netflix, respectively.
Each documentary is a wild ride into the fail known as Fyre Festival, co-founded by Billy McFarland and Ja Rule. There are a lot of aspects from the festival that’ll make anyone’s blood boil, but the most egregious was how negatively it affected the natives of Exuma, Bahamas. Specifically, many workers on the island went unpaid.
MaryAnn Rolle, who both runs and caters for Exuma Point Bar and Grille was a particularly notable interview from Netflix’s doc, her frustrated tears bearing into the hearts of the audience. Because of McFarland’s gross incompetence, Rolle lost $50,000 of her own money to make sure her workers were paid. As OkayPlayer noted, she created a GoFundMe page to raise recuperated funds of $123,000. The campaign quickly went viral and succeeded its goal, at over $160,000.
Aside from going on a Twitter rant to absolve himself from any accountability, Ja Rule took to Instagram to apologize to Rolle and others negatively affected by the fest.
However, Rolle rightfully prefers that the apology comes in Bahamian dollars.
“If he is sorry then he should be donating something to me because sorry is more than a word. It’s an action. So I hope he puts his sorry into action,” Rolle told TMZ.
Exactly.
So, I binged both documentaries, starting with Hulu’s Fyre Fraud. There was no rhyme or reason to the order outside of Hulu dropping theirs first (their surprise drop was really a boss ass move), but I’m glad I did because of its perspective. I recommend both documentaries— Hulu offers great background on the festival and has direct access to McFarland while Netflix’s iteration of Fyre provides more on-the-ground footage of the actual festival and a more intimate look at how the Bahamian locals were affected.
The docs were a riveting look at social media influencer culture (and how segregated it is—I realized I never saw any of that initial promo and only found out about the event once the failure blew up on Twitter) as well as the narcissism and sociopathy of rich white boys, the black men who support and want to be them, and a raw look at just how important competent event planners are.
As for the most memorable moment? Five words: Andy Motherfucking Dick Sucking King.
If you haven’t watched these films, please go watch. Grab snacks. Preferably snacks that are better than the bullshit that were served at Fyre Fest.