It is such a pity that Universal Pictures got there first as Despicable Me would be the perfect title for the new Hulu documentary on the obnoxious conman Billy McFarland the fraudster behind the Fyre Festival debacle. With two competing films just released that set out to dig out the truth behind the biggest rip-off of 2017, we opted for Fyre Fraud by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason as it included interviews with McFarland. Also Netflix’s documentary was co-produced by Jerry Media and Matte Projects who were paid to produce promotion videos for the Fyre festival which they continue to do even when it was obvious that Fyre could never ever happen.
McFarland has been a con-artist all his life and even at school he found ways to raise funds to adopt the luxurious lifestyle he felt he deserved. Before the 27 year old had the idea to launch a Bahamian Coachella, McFarland tapped up wealthy investors to back Magnises promoted as an exclusive “black card” with social perks such as club membership, targeted at status-oriented millennials in certain big cities. He claimed that his Company was worth $90 million but in fact did only $60000 in business.
In 2017 McFarland teamed up with Ja Rule and had the rapper front what was to be Fyre Festival. The over-the-top performer was happy enough to take the credit for the idea and was often seen partying with McFarland in the documentary, but when it all fell apart and there was talk of fraud, He quickly distanced himself saying that he had no involvement with the event.
Furst and Nason traced the steps from the initial idea to the Festival itself and what was surprising was that all the professional event organisers that had been roped in, kept claiming that they told McFarland that it was impossible to pull it off on the very short time scale. He seemed oblivious and at the time of the glossy launch, he hadn’t even chosen the island that would be the venue. When he opted for Great Exuma the locals told him that the dates he had chosen were also the same time of their Sailing Races the biggest event in their calendar so there would be no hotels or cars available.
McFarland didn’t have either the money or resources to produce a Festival, something he would not admit to in the interview on camera, but allegedly it was common knowledge with everyone else. He resorted to his usual practice of selling something else to try and fund it with scary consequences. There is a scene in the movie when one of the local contractors said that the broke McFarland heavily in debt to all his suppliers, cajolled another $100K out of an investor, and celebrated by going jet-skiing rather than working out how to make the new funds work.
It was well reported all over the world about what the wretched festival goers faced when they eventually arrived at Great Exuma (not on private planes as promised) to find an unfinished FEMA tent city, disgusting and inadequate fast food and no musical acts. It was the total opposite of the luxury that these millenials had been encouraged to cough up huge amounts of money.
McFarland showed no signs of remorse or even accepted responsibility on camera but like any pathological liar kept tripping over himself when challenged with facts. Even when he was on bail awaiting trial for fraud etc. he couldn’t help himself. Holed up in his luxury Manhattan penthouse apartment he started another scam offering for sale tickets for exclusive events ……such as the Met Gala …..which are not available for love or money anywhere.
Asides from the inequities of McFarland himself, the other disturbing thing to come out of the doc was the eagerness of all the so called influencers who for a lump sum, or a free trip, would happily endorse this Event without even bothering to try and establish if it was legitimate or not. They need to bear some responsibility for writing it up and encouraging their unfortunate followers to being conned in such a despicable way.
Whether in fact Hulu’s Fyre Fraud is better than Netflix’s Fyre is something we will never know as we don’t have the stomach to watch another retelling of this obnoxious story
Labels: 2019, documentary
