History Film / Fyre

* BittersweetEnding: Billy is sent to jail for six years due to his scams and wire fraud, but left some of his employees in truly massive amounts of debt and royally betrayed everybody who loved and respected him. The patrons who went to Fyre did win the case that condemned Billy as a scammer, but they will probably be mocked by people who misunderstand their plight for a long time to come. The story becomes more bitter when Billy was released in August 2023, making perfectly clear after six years in prison that he is incorrigible.

* BittersweetEnding: Billy is sent to jail for six years due to his scams and wire fraud, but left some of his employees in truly massive amounts of debt and royally betrayed everybody who loved and respected him. The patrons who went to Fyre did win the case that condemned Billy as a scammer, but they will probably be mocked by people who misunderstand their plight for a long time to come.

The festival was meant to promote the new Fyre music booking app, and they hired celebrities and models from Instagram to be part of the promotion, including no less than socialite Kendall Jenner, model Bella Hadid, model and actress Creator/EmilyRatajkowski, and others. The advertising promised luxury villas and gourmet meals for all attendants, as well as performances from Music/Blink182, Music/MajorLazer and others.

The documentary details the long, long series of bad decisions and carelessness on the part of the organizers, mostly [=McFarland=], and the weekend itself, where the luxury villas were ''disaster relief tents,'' and the gourmet meals were unappetizing, pre-packaged cheese sandwiches. One of these sandwiches was posted to Twitter, went viral, and turned the festival, its organizers, and the attendants, into an internet laughingstock.

!!Tropes found in ''Fyre'':

* AnswerCut: Billy's videographer Kindo mentions that during Billy's post festival scam, he was accompanied by a guy named "Angelo". Kindo claims he didn't know who Angelo was, other than he was "well connected". We then cut to a shot of Angelo talking to Billy...
-->'''Caption''': Angelo Roefaro - [[spoiler:Press Secretary for Senator Chuck Schumer]]

** Billy built the entire Fyre Festival on lies, but it's even worse when, after having pleaded guilty to defrauding his investors and ''awaiting sentencing for that crime'', he tries to pull a second scam selling "exclusive tickets" for events like the Met Gala (which does not sell tickets - its guests are handpicked by Anna Wintour), meet-and-greets with Music/TaylorSwift (who does not do meet-and-greets), and the 2018 Victoria's Secret fashion show (which hadn't even been cast at that point). And he did all this ''on camera''.[[note]]He successfully took in nearly $100,000 in sales of worthless fake tickets, but was promptly arrested. So at least most of those scammed got most of their money back.[[/note]]

** One of the interviewed organizers mentions a moment in which he was sent a first draft of Fyre's letter attempting to apologize for the whole mess and he went utterly ballistic when he noticed that it started by saying that this happened "because of reasons beyond our control". As he says, they always had control and they still allowed the Festival to become a crap-fest.

** Financier Calvin Wells saw straight away that the festival was a disorganized mess and documented the evidence all over Twitter, and even got the Wall Street Journal to cover it. The festival still continued towards disaster.
** Marc Weinstein qualifies as well, as his voice was among the loudest raised in protest at how poorly organized and planned out the festival was. The day before the festival he sent an email to Billy and Grant imploring them to cancel guests and then proceeded to describe ''the exact situation that would occur the following day'': 300 people arriving on a remote island, shipped to a site that is nowhere near finished, and coming to the realization they have no place to stay and are effectively stranded on the island.[[note]]Fyre did not book any charter flights back to the US for the first night of the festival.[[/note]] Billy's response?
--->'''Billy [=McFarland=], Fyre CEO''': [[DramaticallyMissingThePoint At least they'll see your smiling face and yoga skills!]][[note]]Marc was slated to be the yoga instructor for the festival.[[/note]]

* ConMan: Billy [=McFarland=]. A man born from the upper-middle class obsessed with being part of the New York's elite who creates two companies--Magnises, an "elite" membership card company that granted "exclusive privileges", and Fyre, the company responsible for the Fyre App. What the two companies had in common is that both over-promised and both underdelivered (or delivered nothing) yet Billy claimed that both companies were worth millions of dollars via the falsifying of documents in order to get investments from third-parties, and he would use that money to live a lavish lifestyle and make connections with plenty of rich people such as Ja Rule.

** Ja Rule denies that what they did was "fraud," and instead explains "I would call it 'false advertising.'" False advertising is a form of fraud.
** Subverted when Billy terminates his employees, in that he's talking as though there is no difference but there in fact is. He tells his employees they aren't being "terminated", but there just isn't any payroll and they aren't officially employed anymore. As someone in that very phone meeting points out, since the employees are not actually being terminated, they cannot receive unemployment benefits and Billy does not have to pay them severance.

** Early on, [=McFarland=] inadvertently clues the viewer in on his worldview, when he casually remarks, "We're selling a pipe dream to the average loser."
** Early on, Ja Rule and Billy [=McFarland=] make their notorious toast... "Here's to living like movie stars, partying like rock stars, and fucking like porn stars."[[note]]"...Quickly, and with dangerous consequences." - Eli Bosnick of Podcast/TheScathingAtheist[[/note]] Before long, it becomes obvious that [=McFarland=] couldn't care less what happened tomorrow, as long as today he was living out that toast. This ended up biting everyone on the ass as the festival started to go pear-shaped.
** Keith van der Linde, one of the [[IgnoredExpert organizers]] who had an early part in setting the festival up, is trying to show Ja Rule and [=McFarland=] some of the planning and logistics they need. At one point, someone spills a beer on Keith's charts. An exasperated Keith deadpans, "Great, you just ruined my sewage calculations." The others laugh it off, showing they have no idea what they're doing... and don't care.
** Keith is discussing getting people to and from the island with Grant Margolin, one of [=McFarland's=] right-hand men (who, like most of the others, is in way over his head). He asks Margolin for help in figuring out a way to safely transport drunk guests off the island and back to a nearby cruise ship. Margolin interrupts, saying no one will stay on a cruise ship; everyone will be staying on the island. [[OhCrap Keith's face]] shows that he now knows that the top people on this team -- namely, [=McFarland,=] Ja Rule, and Margolin -- are completely incompetent.

* HopeSpot: Ironically, many of the organizers saw the rain storm that occurred the night before the festival as a gift from God, as it gave them an understandable excuse to cancel the event, citing the flooded tents and ruined festival grounds as proof that the festival couldn't happen. Then, to the absolute astonishment of Marc Weinstein, Billy decided to push ahead with the event anyway, effectively dooming everyone involved to the disaster.

--> ''"...and then one kid with probably 400 followers posted a picture of cheese on toast that trended, and essentially ripped down the festival."''
* IRejectYourReality: Post-Fyre Festival, Billy [=McFarland=] refused to even consider the possibility he'd go to prison for his fraudulent activities, and continued living large and running the same kind of scams he did with Fyre and Magnesis. Those who knew and worked with him openly wonder if he was delusional, didn't comprehend the deep trouble he was in, or genuinely couldn't help himself.
* IWarnedYou: Many of the interviewees recount how Billy [=McFarland=] just kept insisting on the festival moving forward, even when everyone -- from the contractors and the talent booking agent, all the way down to the caterers -- insisted that the whole situation was a mess and that Fyre could not be done at all, let alone within the deadline that Billy had insisted on. One organizer, Marc Weinstein, mentions how he tried to get Billy to pull the plug and come clean about the problems going on behind the scenes, especially when the soon-to-be attendees began pointing out problems with Fyre's customer service, only for Billy to order his workers to delete all negative comments on the related social media posts in a vain attempt to cover the whole thing up. Several reporters and bloggers that obtained factual proof (including going to the festival site to record the tents) were told to stop their reporting, or they'd be prosecuted.
* JustFollowingOrders: Discussed. Calvin Wells believes (as is argued in ''Fyre Fraud'') that Jerry Media and the other agencies hired to promote the festival should also be held responsible for their part in the mess. Those responsible for the promotion claim they were just doing their jobs and ultimately were misled about Fyre's ability to actually pull off a festival of this scale. These employees also knew that this event would be a failure and tried to persuade Billy to scale it back or cancel it altogether, but were unsuccessful, and many of them (including Andy King) felt guilty about playing a role in the disaster by misleading people, unintentionally or otherwise.
-->'''Brett Kincade, Director, Matte Projects''': If you get hired to do a BMW commercial and that BMW then has a faulty engine, how the fuck can you possibly know whether or not they're gonna do good on what they said they were gonna do? That's like saying that the sound guy and the DP and the location scout has to do due diligence on whether or not something's actually gonna happen.
-->'''Shiyuan Deng, Product Designer, Fyre''': How could we ask the models to have the kind of awareness of the Fyre Festival that I myself didn't have, being an employee of Fyre Media?
* KarmaHoudini: Ja Rule, who despite being Billy's right hand man in this whole mess, barely suffered any consequence aside from becoming a subject of mockery on the internet.
* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: Billy is released on bail, but sent to jail when he proceeds to try to run another scam on the same people he had scammed with the Fyre Festival while out on bail.
* LaughingMad:

* NoDelaysForTheWicked: With "the wicked" being ''schadenfeude''. The night before the Festival it rained and damaged the campsite, and everybody was hoping that the flights would be delayed even if just by half an hour so they could think what to do. In the Bahamas during the Regatta, this was pretty common, it's mentioned. [[FromBadToWorse The Fyre Festival flights arrived half an hour early]].
--->'''Marc Weinstein, Music Festival Consultant''': It was like a sick joke. So... [[BrokenRecord so...]] (''[[LaughingMad starts laughing as he tries to continue with the interview]]'') so....

** At one point, the event's water supply was held up in customs, and Billy asked Andy King, his openly gay long time business associate and personal friend, to give the customs official a blowjob in order to clear it without paying. According to King, [[ExaggeratedTrope he actually repeated the offer to the official with complete sincerity]], but the official released the water with merely a promise they'll get compensated.

* SceneryGorn: The Festival's actual camp, with FEMA relief tents, soaked beds, half-finished construction, shoddy lockers, dingy port-a-potties and lemonade stand-quality Concierge desks.

* {{Stupid Crook|s}}: Billy, post-Fyre festival, to the point where his few remaining friends and associates started questioning his sanity. While out on bail for the Fyre fraud and under intense scrutiny from authorities, he set up a new company called NYC VIP Access and attempted to sell tickets to exclusive events like the Met Gala, Coachella, and the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show (events he couldn't possibly have access to, let alone tickets). To sell them, he used the same email and phone lists from the Fyre Festival. In other words, Bily tried to scam the exact same people he scammed months earlier, many of whom were involved in a massive class-action lawsuit against Fyre Media. Even worse, Billy hired a film crew to videotape himself and his new business partners making the calls and sending the emails, oblivious to the fact that the authorities could (and did) subpoena the footage to use against him in court.

-->'''Passenger''': Turn this bus right around!

** It's not really surprising, but it still hits home. At about the thirty-minute mark, Marc Weinstein, one of Fyre's employees, talks about how he came to realize the festival was spiraling completely out of control. He went to Billy [=McFarland=] to warn him about it, and [=McFarland=] ignored him. At the time, Weinstein says he didn't know if [=McFarland=] was "a genius or a madman." When asked what he thinks now, Weinstein says, without hesitation, [[TakeAThirdOption "He's a liar."]]
** There's another one a bit earlier in the same segment, which acts as foreshadowing both towards the failure of the festival, how out of depth Billy is and the fact that he's a con man. The festival was booked during the National Regatta (which is the ''busiest weekend of the year'' on Great Exuma) making the finding of houses on the island for those who bought the "Villa Package" a practical impossibility. And then Marc is told that all the social media influencers who posted the promo video to kick off the social media campaign were going to get free housing.
--->'''Marc Weinstein, Music Festival Consultant''': Each influencer, and there were about 250 influencers, were promised, for a post, for ''one'' post, a one-bedroom, three-person villa on the beach... ''that didn't exist.''

* HopeSpot: Ironically, many of the organizers saw the rain storm that occurred the night before the festival as a gift from God, as it gave them an understandable excuse to cancel the event, citing the flooded tents and ruined festival grounds as proof that the festival couldn't happen. Marc Weinstein was stunned when Billy insisted the event go forward anyway.

* IRejectYourReality: Post-Fyre Festival, Billy [=McFarland=] refused to even consider the possibility he'd go to prison for his fraudulent activities, and continued living large and running the same kind of scams he did with Fyre and Magnesis. Those who knew and worked with him openly wonder if he was delusional, or simply didn't comprehend the deep trouble he was in.

* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: Billy is released on bail, but sent to jail when he proceeded to try to run another scam on the same people he had scammed with the Fyre Festival while out on bail.

** At one point, the event's water supply was held up in customs, and Billy asked Andy King, his openly gay long time business associate and personal friend, to give the customs official a blowjob in order to clear it without paying.

* TraumaButton: The restaurant owner who supplied catering to the Fyre Festival (and lost all of her life savings paying her coworkers when Billy ran away with the money) makes clear as the interview ends that the Festival has become this to her and she wishes to never speak again about this mess.

* TraumaButton: The restaurant owner who supplied catering to the Fyre Festival (and lost all of her life savings paying coworkers and supplies) makes clear as the interview ends that the Festival has become this to her and she wishes to never speak again about this mess.

The festival was meant to promote the new Fyre music booking app, and they hired celebrities and models from Instagram to be part of the promotion, including no less than socialite Kendall Jenner, model Bella Hadid, model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, and others. The advertising promised luxury villas and gourmet meals for all attendants, as well as performances from Music/Blink182, Music/MajorLazer and others.