Inside Fyre: How a lux­u­ry music fes­ti­val went up in smoke

“We’re sell­ing a pipe dream to your aver­age los­er,” boasts the now-incar­cer­at­ed fes­ti­val promoter/​techpreneur Bil­ly McFar­land dur­ing Fyre, Chris Smith’s new Net­flix doc­u­men­tary about the epony­mous 2017 music fes­ti­val. Across more than 90 min­utes of behind-the-scenes footage, staff inter­views and pre-fes­ti­val social media cov­er­age, we see Fyre’s vision of lux­u­ry excess burned to the ground as fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty implode in an embar­rass­ing spec­ta­cle of soak­ing wet tents and processed cheese. But how did it go so wrong?

Footage of the festival’s flashy pro­mo­tion­al video fea­tur­ing celebri­ties and super­mod­els like Kendall Jen­ner and Bel­la Hadid loung­ing on expen­sive yachts proved how easy it is to sell an idea in the age of influ­encers and hash­tags. With­in just 48 hours of going live, the fes­ti­val had offloaded 95 per cent of its tick­ets (approx­i­mate­ly 5,000) with prices rang­ing from $1,500 to $12,000, and some atten­dees report­ed­ly fork­ing out as much as $250,000 for deluxe VIP packages.

Guests were promised per­for­mances from Skep­ta, Dis­clo­sure, Major Laz­er, Blink-182, Migos and oth­ers as well as ​“first-class culi­nary expe­ri­ences” and ​“enter­tain­ment add-ons” that includ­ed the chance to rent your own pri­vate yacht. It was billed as an unmiss­able event primed for #liv­ingmybestlive oppor­tu­ni­ties. At one point in the film, we see fes­ti­val co-organ­is­er Ja Rule crude­ly rais­ing a toast to ​“liv­ing like movie stars, par­ty­ing like rock stars, and fuck­ing like porn stars,” while the gap between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty con­tin­ues to widen.

Because it’s not easy build­ing a lux­u­ry fes­ti­val vil­lage from scratch on a remote island with just a few months’ notice. The vicious storm that tore through the Bahami­an island of Great Exu­ma just hours before the guests were due to arrive didn’t help mat­ters either. Back in April 2017, the world watched the chaos unfold in real-time; a mael­strom of angry tweets, dis­as­ter relief tents and viral images doc­u­ment­ed the festival’s down­fall as many of us soaked up the schaden­freude at home.

The film shows atten­dees arriv­ing on the island with nowhere to go, before being plied with tequi­la for six hours on the beach while the fes­ti­val site is still being built. How­ev­er, there is only so much alco­hol one can phys­i­cal­ly take and pret­ty soon the would-be rev­ellers begin to ask ques­tions. After being piled onto bus­es, guests are final­ly tak­en to the fes­ti­val ​‘site’, which doesn’t quite live up to their expec­ta­tions. All hell breaks loose, with reports of atten­dees loot­ing mat­tress­es and toi­let rolls like some kind of post-apoc­a­lyp­tic mil­len­ni­al dis­as­ter movie.

While all this is hap­pen­ing, moments of pure Shake­speare­an tragi­com­e­dy reveal the truth behind the sham­bles. A ​“22-year-old kid” who has nev­er booked a fes­ti­val is asked to secure Fyre’s A‑list line­up. The world-class cater­ers are fired because the fes­ti­val under-bud­get­ed by five mil­lion dol­lars. We can only cringe as a bot­tle of beer is care­less­ly knocked over a map.

“You’ve ruined my sewage cal­cu­la­tions,” says a pro­duc­tion man­ag­er. Every­one laughs. ​“You have to stop think­ing about mod­els and start think­ing about toi­lets,” he tells them. He has been com­ing to the Bahamas for 10 years and strong­ly rec­om­mends against putting guests in tents for mul­ti­ple rea­sons. After rais­ing too many con­cerns, he is dropped from the fes­ti­val team.

On being warned by the logis­tics man­ag­er about the very real dan­ger of incom­ing guests being left strand­ed on the island with nowhere to sleep, the festival’s mar­ket­ing direc­tor, Grant Mar­golin (who again had no pri­or expe­ri­ence of putting on events or fes­ti­vals), responds in kind: ​“At least they will still see your smil­ing face and crazy yoga skills!” You get the impres­sion that some of the organ­is­ers of Fyre are not tak­ing things very seriously.

The extent of the festival’s brazen exploita­tion of the local work­force hits hard. Labour­ers worked round the clock to help realise McFarlane’s ​“pipe dream for losers” and yet many of them were nev­er paid. The most heart-wrench­ing tes­ti­mo­ny comes from Maryann Rolle, the restau­ran­teur tasked with feed­ing 1,000 guests a day, who reveals that she was forced to use some of her own sav­ings to pay her work­ers. Many of the festival’s dis­grun­tled guests will have been able to brush off the dra­ma and car­ry on with their lives, how­ev­er, Rolle’s has been changed forever.

McFar­land is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a six-year jail sen­tence hav­ing plead­ed guilty to charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing and wire fraud. He has been ordered to pay back the $26 mil­lion he admit­ted to steal­ing from investors. Two atten­dees were also award­ed $5 mil­lion in dam­ages. The moral of the sto­ry is clear enough: Don’t fuck with rich peo­ple. Of course, it’s hard to feel sor­ry for rich peo­ple with seem­ing­ly more mon­ey than sense. Come­di­an Ron Funch­es said it best. ​“If you have thou­sands of dol­lars to go on a trip to see Blink 182, that’s on you,” he told Conan O’Brien. ​“That is Dar­win­ism at its finest.”