Starring: Billy McFarland, Ja Rule & Seth Crossino
Hulu Original January 14, 2019
“You lost a box of keys to $2M worth of houses???”
The first shots of the year have been officially “fyred” by
Hulu in the war of streaming superiority. And although I’m sure the giant,
Netflix will survive, this particular shot hit its mark with perfect accuracy
and force. In case you missed it, Netflix has been airing a trailer for their
latest original documentary, FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED, set
for release on Friday, the 18th. The film is about 2017’s failed
exotic luxury music festival that eventually landed its founder, Billy
McFarland a 6-year prison sentence for fraud. But yesterday, only 4 days before
Netflix and without any fanfare or warning, in an act of beautiful disrespect
to the streaming behemoth, Hulu dropped their own doc on the same subject
matter. It’s very good.
The biggest thing that separates the Hulu doc from the
Netflix film is the exclusive Billy McFarland interview. To be clear, this
interview is not just a one-off tangential. It serves as the framing device for
the entire story. He is a fascinating character and by the end of the film, you
will likely be questioning your own judgement. He has a very specific charm.
Early in the film, someone characterizes him as a “used car salesman”. I don’t
find this to be a fair description at all. Used car salesmen don’t even come
close to emoting the brand of apparent sincerity that McFarland seems to have mastered.
The film seeks to marry today’s culture of social media “FOMO”,
fake news and memes with the millennial generation’s susceptibility of con-artistry.
The first 20 minutes or so are more or less dedicated to exploring the parallel
journeys of Billy McFarland’s rising business ventures with the explosion of
communication types and media. This new media age that we find ourselves in has
created an entire new and lucrative industry out of little more than hype. Hype
for hype’s sake that is created on the back of hype for the expressed purpose
of
I’m marking down the film’s editing as a positive as well.
Full of jump cuts to various memes and social media snapshots that do a great
job capturing what was in reality, such a brief moment in time. It’s also full
of pictures and video clips of McFarland and Ja Rule as they were planning the
fated festival. Ja Rule decided not to be contribute to the documentary but
unfortunately for him, that didn’t even come close to keeping him out of the
film. He would have likely served himself much more by agreeing to be
interviewed. At least he could have told his side of the story. In the age of instant, real-time documentation of a celebrity’s
every move, it’s hard to claim any sort of plausible deniability after the
dumpster “fyre” has already begun. It’s a bit of ironic poetic justice that the
same mechanism that these people rely on for the majority of their wealth
creation can so quickly be turned around to build an uncontrollable narrative about them.
To be fair to Netflix, I don’t get screeners, so
I have no idea how good their film is. It’s a great story and it’s in the hands
of AMERICAN MOVIE and JIM & ANDY director, Chris Smith. I’m still a little
interested in it but I think Hulu has sufficiently taken the wind out of its
sails…. Don’t worry, they’ll be fine. It is one of 5 original films they are
releasing on the same weekend.
Emery's Rating
4 out of 5 Stars
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