Rachel72

It illustrates how shallow and grotesque the whole enterprise was, doesn't it? Oh, yes, drug lords are soooo glamorous! Never mind the multiple murders and corruption and consequent human wreckage they leave in their wake. One of the things the Hulu doc does better than this one is explicitly pointing out (through the interview with the ex-Jerry Media guy) that Escobar was actually a vicious murderer, and how disturbing and callous the emphasis on "you can BE Pablo Escobar for a weekend!" was - I mean, why would you want to? He said he was getting calls from family members of Escobar's cartel's victims after the promotion went live. The Netflix doc only obliquely alludes to it through the references to the island's owner being emphatically against any reference to Escobar in promotions, and this being a condition of using the island in the first place, and while generally I appreciate the filmmakers' trust in the audience to work this out without being hit over the head with multiple explanations of the same concept (yes I'm talking to you, Hulu doc), this was one instance where I thought - out of respect to Escobar's victims if nothing else - they could have made it a bit clearer to anyone watching who was unaware of the history why this was so offensive. I'd wager it wasn't a stuff-up - they deliberately made it a feature of the promo regardless of the owner's conditions. McFarland most likely arrogantly assumed that the owner wouldn't do anything about it. This is the bloke who allegedly tried to get the National Regatta on Great Exuma moved to accommodate him, rather than change the dates of the festival. He's the living embodiment of entitlement.

Heh, I probably should have said "closer to middle-aged than young". I had to concede that I definitely was no longer part of the "young" demographic when a woman at work was going on about "Insta stories" and I had to think about it before I got what she meant. When I was watching these docs and realised that - although I thought I'd kept reasonably au courant with musical trends - I had not heard of any of the acts listed apart from Blink 182, I thought, "Wow, maybe I really am officially An Old".

Oh yes, me too! I was cringing in recognition. I work in the public service and on a regular basis we keep getting these "we're solution oriented" tossers waltzing in and imposing policies and restructures with zero understanding of the work we actually do, raking in ridiculous salaries then taking off to lucrative positions in private companies or as "consultants". We had this absolute knob in charge of facilities (nicknamed "futilities" during his tenure) who constantly dismissed any criticism with, "I don't want to hear problems, let's talk solution." He gave himself a nickname, which sums it all up really. Now we have another complete douchebro in an executive management position who has a fancy title but what he actually does isn't overly clear, who uses made up words like "bounce-back-ability" without irony and is cut from the same oleaginous cloth as McFarland and Margolin (he even looks a bit like them, which is unsettling).

I think you're right on the testing boundaries thing. There isn't a shred of evidence that the Customs official even wanted something like that, or that it was offered, but looks like McFarland certainly implied it. My interpretation of the whole sordid episode was that while Andy had been away, the meeting with Customs had not gone well and the officials were sick of McFarland's and the rest of the Fyre lot's empty promises. The imported water (because of course a "luxe" festival has to have brand name water, even if the running water on site was potable) was subject to a massive import tax and despite the Ponzi-type scams McFuckknuckle was running, they did not have the money to pay it. So when Andy comes back, McFuckknuckle is basically telling him, "We need to get the water released without paying upfront, do whatever it takes, even give him a head job if you have to", but focusing on the sexual aspect because he's a creepy manipulative arse who probably got a kick out of the fact that he could say these outrageous things to people and get away with it. The fact that Andy was gay is no accident - he didn't pick any female staff (if there were any - it seems like a heavily male-dominated enterprise) for this task, he wanted to see if Andy would tell him to go boil his head or agree to do it. It was a douchebro power move as well as sexual harassment. I infer from what we did see that the meeting went perfectly professionally - Andy must have gone in there saying, "Look, we need that water. Unfortunately we do not have the funds to pay the tax now. What will it take for you to release it if we undertake to pay it as soon as possible?" and as he said, the official was like, "Fine, I'll let you take it and serve it provided you assure me that the tax will be paid as a priority" with no allusion to sex acts or anything like that. It illustrates the sheer desperation at that point that Andy was prepared to go that far if it came to it. Their working environment was bonkers - McFuckknuckle had convinced him - someone with a thirty year career - and others that he was this legendary "entre-pren-EWER" and the business equivalent of the Second Coming, and they were utterly in his thrall. It's up there with the gross bullying of the models during the promo shoot when they wanted them to get in the water at night.

I've now seen both docs several times (having been perversely fascinated by the whole saga). I saw somewhere that the Hulu film was originally intended as a 4 part series, and they truncated it to feature length in order to get it out before Netflix's dropped. If true, it explains why it seemed to me to be a bit rushed and disjointed. It has some great moments though. Things I particularly liked: The more detailed insight into McFarland's previous scammy enterprise ("Magnum Penises"), and I enjoyed Emily Boehm's interviews about what sounds like a chaotic and tiresome working environment particularly. The revelation about the wealthy investor who turned out to be a shonk himself was new to me. The excerpts of the character reference from his mum said so much about the kind of environment he grew up in - always being told he was special and seemingly, rarely told "no"; The attempt to put this sorry saga into a wider societal context (although I think the results were mixed), particularly the emergence of "influencer" as a job and identity in itself. I mean, Kendall Jenner can command a quarter of a million USD for one IG post, and that's considered a bargain?? The fatuous, seemingly clueless Alyssa Lynch garners half a million followers for doing ... not very much? (Although I found her and Austin Mills rather insufferable, it was revealing how they could not readily articulate what their "brand" was, apart from some generic platitudes about "positivity" and "lifestyle" - which shows that the whole notion of a personal "brand" is arguably meaningless.) However in general this might have been more successful had the film been a miniseries. Greater clarity in relation to the role of the FuckJerry douchebros in marketing this thing (Oren Aks was a really good get for the filmmakers and I thought he came across reasonably well); Jia Tolentino. She is a terrific presence, probably the most compelling outsider talking-head on the programme. Hearing from different people caught up in the whole clusterfuck was also interesting. I'm glad that like the Netflix one, they featured local voices - Ava Turnquest, the Bahamian journalist, made a really good point about the unsavoury colonial aspect of it, which of itself would merit an entire episode to explore. Things that irritated the bejesus out of me: McFarland himself. Not the film's fault (although the decision to interview him for payment raises questions), but old mate is thoroughly unpleasant. How he managed to attract so many enablers staggers me. I really hope the money he was paid ends up with his victims - I assume there's an asset confiscation process that can restrain it? However the interviews illustrated just how much of a pathological liar and sleazebucket he is. Robot narrator. What. Was. That? The social media strategist with the vocal fry and description of influencers "taking one for the team" (er, not sure that phrase means quite what you think it means) rubbed me the wrong way, though she did have good points to make about ethical obligations of marketers confronted with this sort of situation, to be fair; The constant, constant, cutaways to random clips of other shows (some of which the interviewees obligingly name-dropped), ads and so on to illustrate what they had just explained perfectly clearly. Yes, we got what "FOMO" means the first time. The guy from Mic was helpful enough to explain the acronym in his interview. We didn't need what appears to be some sort of ad telling us what it is again, complete with heavy-handed, "So you're like, a millennial?" Trust me, WE GET IT. Oh look, here's some more tweets spelling it out in case you missed it. I was born in the '70s and was close to middle-aged when social media really took off - I don't do Twitter, I don't get the appeal of Instagram, so the whole influencer culture baffles me. However, the implicit snarking at "millennials" and their silly obsession with phones and WhatsChat and InstaFaceTweets or SnapTumblr, instead of Reading a Good Book, came across as a tendentious boomer or Gen X curmudgeon sighing about the "yoof of today" in a thinkpiece. It would pay to remember that previous generations whinged about "the yoof of today" when I was a kid in the '80s and young adult in the '90s. There's a letter from a 16th century middle-aged aristocrat (can't remember the name) banging on about how feckless, irresponsible and caught up with silly new trends his kids and their friends are, rather than focusing on sensible intellectual pursuits and learning how to run the estate. If I recall correctly, Edward I of England cracked it over Piers Gaveston and his mates swanning off to go jousting (the music festival of the early 14th century?) instead of going to fight a war the older generation had started like they were supposed to. Socrates fucking whinged about "the yoof of today" although not in those precise words. It's not original or clever, and it does annoy me to see previous generations - including mine - sneering at younger people for adopting technology that the previous generations invented and marketed to them. The minimal focus on how the locals were ripped off, and McFarland's complete absence of acknowledgment of what he did to them (like many criminals, he's more regretful about the effect on his family, friends and investors) - I thought that should have merited more examination. I mean, we had predominantly Black people working ludicrous hours on minimal sleep to try to bring together a vanity project for a gaggle of rich white guys, and most of them never got paid. In fairness to the filmmakers, this might have been a result of condensing it into a single film. I raised eyebrows at how the ones they did interview were captioned as "local fixers", which has a bit of a shonky connotation. I wasn't sure what to make of the inclusion of McFarland's girlfriend - was she intended as another character reference, an illustration of someone else he's conned (the intercutting of the interview with the psychologist about con artists suggested this), or what? Those segments sat oddly with the rest of the film. Overall I think it's worth a watch, but as a piece of filmmaking, Netflix's is much better at letting the interviews and first-hand footage speak for itself. Watching both is valuable - a series comprising the best elements of each would be even better, though I doubt that's a realistic hope.

Oh good God yes. It may have been the edit, but he was making my skin crawl, it was that creepy. I'm glad we've finally moved on from those bloody cookies, though the anti-climactic caught-in-a-rip sub-plot threatened to take their place for a moment (yes Luke dear, you're a hero, keep telling yourself that). People chucking a tantrum because the vote didn't go how they wanted always amuse me. As if you weren't planning to do exactly the same to someone else, Tara, so get over your sense of entitlement and suck it up.

This is the first Australian Survivor I've managed to watch since its reboot (the less said about the half-arsed first attempt about 15 years ago the better) and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. Luke's contrived batshittery grates on me, he's much more bearable when he's not talking up his perceived genius. Did anyone realise that Mark W spent 16 years in the armed forces and was in special ops? Wow! Never heard THAT before! I really don't think they've mentioned that often enough.