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Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:20,729 --> 00:00:22,272 Okay. On you go. 2 00:00:22,897 --> 00:00:24,816 All right, Jason's here on Fyre Cay, 3 00:00:24,899 --> 00:00:26,651 showing him the newly purchased property. 4 00:00:26,735 --> 00:00:28,975 - I like it, man. - Getting set up for the Fyre festival. 5 00:00:29,029 --> 00:00:30,947 I like your life, man, I like what's goin' on. 6 00:00:31,031 --> 00:00:32,949 - Are you excited for April? - I'm ready, man. 7 00:00:33,033 --> 00:00:34,492 - Do I got my ticket? - You have. 8 00:00:34,576 --> 00:00:36,256 All right, cool, that's all I need to know. 9 00:00:36,286 --> 00:00:39,289 - Biggest event in a decade, I promise you. - I'll be there. 10 00:00:40,749 --> 00:00:43,418 When did you first become aware of Fyre? 11 00:00:44,335 --> 00:00:47,714 I started seeing people posting kind of the promo video. 12 00:00:47,797 --> 00:00:50,341 It was this very slick production that promised 13 00:00:50,425 --> 00:00:53,470 that it was Pablo Escobar's private island 14 00:00:53,595 --> 00:00:56,681 and that they were flying in thousands of people on private jets. 15 00:00:56,890 --> 00:01:00,101 It was just the coolest party that you'd ever seen advertised. 16 00:01:03,605 --> 00:01:05,315 My agency contacted me 17 00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:07,734 and was like, "Hey, there's this new festival coming up." 18 00:01:07,859 --> 00:01:09,486 It's really exclusive." 19 00:01:09,861 --> 00:01:11,613 The most insane festival 20 00:01:11,696 --> 00:01:12,697 the world has ever seen. 21 00:01:13,281 --> 00:01:14,532 All these models, like, 22 00:01:14,824 --> 00:01:16,159 in the Bahamas. 23 00:01:16,576 --> 00:01:19,037 Acts like Major Lazer, Disclosure, Tyga... 24 00:01:20,038 --> 00:01:22,749 This is the first weekend this has ever happened, 25 00:01:23,083 --> 00:01:24,667 so, literally, I was excited. 26 00:01:24,751 --> 00:01:26,628 But we didn't know anything. 27 00:01:26,711 --> 00:01:30,215 It's become one of the most talked-about dramas on social media. 28 00:01:30,298 --> 00:01:32,509 A glamorous, luxurious Caribbean... 29 00:01:32,592 --> 00:01:34,803 island getaway turned disaster... 30 00:01:34,886 --> 00:01:36,387 quickly spiraling into chaos. 31 00:01:36,805 --> 00:01:40,183 Now, the event's co-founder is facing up to 20 years in prison. 32 00:01:42,227 --> 00:01:44,771 Are you sorry? Do you have anything to say for yourself? 33 00:01:45,105 --> 00:01:47,732 Thank you, guys, I'll arrange a comment later. Thank you. 34 00:01:50,443 --> 00:01:51,443 Hey, Billy? 35 00:01:51,820 --> 00:01:53,738 There's a bunch of people who's filing lawsuits 36 00:01:53,822 --> 00:01:56,783 against you today in federal court. Did you hear about that? 37 00:01:57,367 --> 00:02:00,703 It just became much more than anybody ever dreamed it would be. 38 00:02:02,163 --> 00:02:05,625 I mean, you know the saying, "Desperate people do desperate things." 39 00:02:07,836 --> 00:02:11,172 And now I hope Billy doesn't go to prison for it, but I don't know. 40 00:02:22,767 --> 00:02:24,561 We are here at the Web Summit... 41 00:02:24,644 --> 00:02:28,481 I remember that it was a big deal that Ja and Billy 42 00:02:28,565 --> 00:02:30,692 were going to the Web Summit to talk about Fyre. 43 00:02:30,775 --> 00:02:33,069 It was the first real piece of press. 44 00:02:33,361 --> 00:02:37,031 Well, I'm gonna let my partner in crime here, Billy McFarland, 45 00:02:37,365 --> 00:02:40,160 give you all the introduction of what Fyre is. 46 00:02:40,243 --> 00:02:43,913 Billy and Ja met because Billy's previous company, Magnises, 47 00:02:44,247 --> 00:02:47,500 he would have parties and special events and invite the members, 48 00:02:47,584 --> 00:02:50,378 and one of the events, he tried to book Ja Rule, 49 00:02:50,461 --> 00:02:52,964 and apparently, that was a very difficult task. 50 00:02:53,047 --> 00:02:56,467 I went to Instagram and found this guy named Reggie Muscles 51 00:02:56,551 --> 00:02:59,179 and he says, "Give me 500 bucks and I'll get you Ja Rule." 52 00:02:59,262 --> 00:03:00,388 I paid Reggie Muscles. 53 00:03:01,598 --> 00:03:04,309 The next day, Reggie Muscles brings in a guy named Gunner. 54 00:03:04,767 --> 00:03:07,896 Gunner's a little smarter now, so Gunner asked for $1,000 and he said, 55 00:03:07,979 --> 00:03:10,732 "I'll get you Ja Rule." So, I gave Gunner $1,000. 56 00:03:10,815 --> 00:03:13,067 And Gunner called me a week later saying, 57 00:03:13,151 --> 00:03:14,569 "Ja Rule hates your offer." 58 00:03:15,486 --> 00:03:18,948 So one of the problems that we're really tackling is... 59 00:03:19,407 --> 00:03:21,993 the nasty business of booking. 60 00:03:22,076 --> 00:03:25,038 So, Billy actually pitched me the idea, let me know he was 61 00:03:25,121 --> 00:03:27,373 working with Ja Rule and they were recruiting engineers 62 00:03:27,457 --> 00:03:28,708 to build this marketplace. 63 00:03:29,083 --> 00:03:33,379 You go to the website, you can scroll through various types of talent. 64 00:03:33,463 --> 00:03:36,424 Somebody who wants to have Ja Rule at a birthday party 65 00:03:36,507 --> 00:03:39,802 could, through the app, book Ja Rule for that event 66 00:03:39,886 --> 00:03:42,805 and that's sort of the type of thing that you could never do before Fyre. 67 00:03:42,889 --> 00:03:44,289 What these guys did was identify... 68 00:03:44,724 --> 00:03:47,518 I think, a really beautiful "blindspot" in the industry that... 69 00:03:47,602 --> 00:03:49,771 The way the trifecta between the three of us worked 70 00:03:49,854 --> 00:03:53,858 is that I oversaw product, ran the design development of the app, 71 00:03:53,942 --> 00:03:56,611 Ja was the entertainment industry connection 72 00:03:56,945 --> 00:04:01,616 and Billy had connections through what he told us was VC funding. 73 00:04:01,699 --> 00:04:04,744 Every single thing that goes into the booking process 74 00:04:04,994 --> 00:04:06,162 is right then and there... 75 00:04:06,246 --> 00:04:09,165 I thought that this was a functioning platform, 76 00:04:09,249 --> 00:04:12,043 something that was really going... That had the opportunity 77 00:04:12,126 --> 00:04:14,504 to revolutionize the way, you know, the industry worked. 78 00:04:14,796 --> 00:04:18,466 The Fyre app had the potential to be a billion-dollar platform. 79 00:04:19,300 --> 00:04:22,929 After working on the app for three to five months, 80 00:04:23,012 --> 00:04:25,598 we were starting to figure out ways to promote it 81 00:04:25,682 --> 00:04:28,101 and in a meeting, I had actually mentioned, 82 00:04:28,184 --> 00:04:32,397 "Why don't we throw a festival, a concert for industry professionals?" 83 00:04:33,106 --> 00:04:37,110 That idea, Billy kind of hooked onto and then it morphed 84 00:04:37,193 --> 00:04:41,322 pretty dramatically outside of any input from me or Ja 85 00:04:41,406 --> 00:04:44,993 into what became the Fyre Festival. 86 00:04:45,076 --> 00:04:46,202 Let me fix you up, man. 87 00:04:46,661 --> 00:04:48,663 Let me fix you up a little bit, a'ight? 88 00:04:48,955 --> 00:04:50,290 A little sandy. That's a'ight. 89 00:04:50,373 --> 00:04:53,001 We're sandy 'cause we're on our fuckin' island havin' a good time. 90 00:04:53,084 --> 00:04:54,084 A'ight? 91 00:04:54,127 --> 00:04:55,878 Originally, when Billy called me, he said, 92 00:04:55,962 --> 00:04:57,714 "I've bought an island in the Bahamas 93 00:04:57,797 --> 00:04:59,674 and we're hosting a music festival down there." 94 00:05:00,008 --> 00:05:01,217 And I said, "What island?" 95 00:05:01,301 --> 00:05:03,428 And he said, "Pablo Escobar's island," 96 00:05:03,511 --> 00:05:05,054 and I said, "Oh, my gosh!" 97 00:05:06,139 --> 00:05:07,932 - A year and a half ago... - Talk to them. 98 00:05:08,016 --> 00:05:12,520 Ja and I were flying over the Exumas and we saw this unmanned runway. 99 00:05:12,603 --> 00:05:15,356 We tried dialing it and no one responded, so we landed there. 100 00:05:15,440 --> 00:05:16,941 Turns out it was Norman's Cay. 101 00:05:18,067 --> 00:05:20,361 When I met Billy, it was like, 102 00:05:20,445 --> 00:05:24,490 "Man, this guy is stinking rich. He's bringing all his friends down here 103 00:05:24,615 --> 00:05:26,617 and he's paying for everything." 104 00:05:27,160 --> 00:05:29,746 Four jet skis, four boats, 105 00:05:29,829 --> 00:05:32,123 and, you know, all having a wild-out time. You know. 106 00:05:32,206 --> 00:05:34,500 I think the idea just popped up in his head like, 107 00:05:34,584 --> 00:05:37,253 "Ping! We're gonna throw a festival here." 108 00:05:38,004 --> 00:05:39,644 They were going to have celebrities there, 109 00:05:39,672 --> 00:05:41,591 it would be this big consumer-facing thing 110 00:05:41,674 --> 00:05:44,010 and that they were going to do buried treasure. 111 00:05:44,093 --> 00:05:45,470 A real-life treasure hunt. 112 00:05:45,595 --> 00:05:47,930 Win a piece of land on the island, your own private island, 113 00:05:48,014 --> 00:05:49,599 right here, with the Fyre Cay team. 114 00:05:49,682 --> 00:05:52,268 From a pure concept standpoint, it holds water. 115 00:05:52,643 --> 00:05:55,480 An amazing experience in a beautiful location 116 00:05:55,563 --> 00:05:58,691 with beautiful people and great music. You can't ask for more. 117 00:06:03,488 --> 00:06:05,782 This is going to be the most incredible fuckin' shit. 118 00:06:05,865 --> 00:06:08,159 - The Magic Bird. - The Magic Bird. 119 00:06:10,495 --> 00:06:14,332 "The Magic Bird" is a phrase that me and Billy coined. 120 00:06:15,333 --> 00:06:18,878 The impact that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird had on the NBA. 121 00:06:19,462 --> 00:06:22,632 It changed the way people saw and thought about basketball. 122 00:06:23,091 --> 00:06:26,219 And me and Billy are going to change the way people look at 123 00:06:26,302 --> 00:06:28,262 a young tech entrepreneur 124 00:06:28,346 --> 00:06:32,934 and a hip-hop mogul come together and create something incredible. 125 00:06:34,018 --> 00:06:38,064 Billy was kind of nerdy, but clearly smart, 126 00:06:38,147 --> 00:06:40,441 clearly an incredible entrepreneur. 127 00:06:40,900 --> 00:06:42,360 We interacted a lot. 128 00:06:42,443 --> 00:06:45,696 He seemed very charismatic, very trustworthy. 129 00:06:46,072 --> 00:06:47,657 I thought that he had a vision. 130 00:06:47,740 --> 00:06:50,618 He was able to maneuver and conduct himself around investors 131 00:06:50,701 --> 00:06:53,287 and then build teams to build his products. 132 00:06:53,704 --> 00:06:57,250 We were hired to do all the advertising and marketing for the festival. 133 00:06:57,708 --> 00:06:59,877 They were hiring the best of the best in each category. 134 00:06:59,961 --> 00:07:02,296 Best talent, best distribution, 135 00:07:02,380 --> 00:07:04,048 best social media company. 136 00:07:04,132 --> 00:07:06,801 Fuckjerry had just launched a new marketing agency 137 00:07:06,884 --> 00:07:10,513 and we were hired by Fyre to basically run all the social media. 138 00:07:10,596 --> 00:07:12,098 We've got major news. 139 00:07:12,181 --> 00:07:15,476 Ja Rule just called us, basically said he wants us to pitch him 140 00:07:15,560 --> 00:07:16,894 for his new app, Fyre. 141 00:07:17,228 --> 00:07:19,063 - This is Fuckjerry? - Yeah. 142 00:07:20,940 --> 00:07:23,109 That was an amazing meeting. 143 00:07:23,192 --> 00:07:26,320 They just bought an island and they're going to have a party in April 144 00:07:26,487 --> 00:07:27,488 for 10,000 people. 145 00:07:27,572 --> 00:07:32,160 It felt like they were basically doing a music festival to draw attention to 146 00:07:32,243 --> 00:07:35,955 this bigger brand that would end up being the Uber of booking talent. 147 00:07:36,497 --> 00:07:38,499 Who was playing, what the food was gonna be, 148 00:07:38,583 --> 00:07:41,961 all the things that typically sell a music festival wasn't the sales point. 149 00:07:42,044 --> 00:07:45,590 This was like selling a dream, selling a vacation, selling a concept. 150 00:07:45,673 --> 00:07:47,175 We knew that there was a place 151 00:07:47,258 --> 00:07:50,261 and we knew that there was an idea of having a music festival 152 00:07:50,344 --> 00:07:51,762 and that was pretty much it. 153 00:07:57,768 --> 00:07:59,687 I directed the commercial. 154 00:08:00,104 --> 00:08:02,690 When I saw the call sheet, I was like, "That's crazy!" 155 00:08:03,232 --> 00:08:06,068 Basically, like, ten of the top supermodels in the world. 156 00:08:06,152 --> 00:08:08,362 It was the titans of the modeling industry - 157 00:08:08,446 --> 00:08:11,866 Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Hailey Baldwin. 158 00:08:12,283 --> 00:08:14,952 Supermodels, I'm talking about supermodels. 159 00:08:15,328 --> 00:08:19,165 I thought it was the best thing ever. "It can't get no bigger than this." 160 00:08:20,166 --> 00:08:21,834 He's recording us! 161 00:08:22,335 --> 00:08:24,545 One camera crew is shooting with the models, 162 00:08:25,046 --> 00:08:28,007 and they had a dedicated film crew, like, 163 00:08:28,090 --> 00:08:31,010 shooting the dialogue between Billy and his people. 164 00:08:31,219 --> 00:08:33,095 So, we ran into a little issue today. 165 00:08:33,554 --> 00:08:36,224 - Sorry, cut. Talk to me. - Okay. 166 00:08:36,307 --> 00:08:37,391 Start, one more time. 167 00:08:38,309 --> 00:08:40,561 - We ran into an issue today. - No. Start again. 168 00:08:40,937 --> 00:08:43,523 [Brett There was no, "This is the story we want to tell." 169 00:08:43,606 --> 00:08:45,316 There was just, "Capture everything." 170 00:08:45,399 --> 00:08:47,068 We need genuine shots. 171 00:08:47,151 --> 00:08:49,946 We need genuine people interacting, having a good time. 172 00:08:50,029 --> 00:08:51,864 I need a wide yacht shot. 173 00:08:51,948 --> 00:08:55,743 We have to do the cave underwater, we need the boats in a flying-V formation. 174 00:08:55,826 --> 00:09:01,374 Could we tell Herbie to have a big, big, big bonfire tomorrow night? 175 00:09:01,457 --> 00:09:03,167 Like a huge bonfire? 176 00:09:03,251 --> 00:09:06,128 Grant was a neurotic person. 177 00:09:06,212 --> 00:09:08,005 He was a... He's a smart dude. 178 00:09:08,089 --> 00:09:09,715 He was just overwhelmed. 179 00:09:09,799 --> 00:09:13,261 I'm our chief marketing officer. 180 00:09:13,344 --> 00:09:16,544 I wouldn't call myself a perfectionist, but everything must be perfect, you know? 181 00:09:16,597 --> 00:09:18,307 I mean, it was like a job of five people. 182 00:09:18,391 --> 00:09:20,601 And he had no experience in doing music festivals 183 00:09:20,685 --> 00:09:23,854 no experience in doing events. But he did work hard. 184 00:09:24,564 --> 00:09:28,776 So I know Billy wants to go see the pigs and this is the only way to make it work. 185 00:09:28,859 --> 00:09:30,653 But we can't shoot it, dude. 186 00:09:30,736 --> 00:09:32,154 Fair... So I... 187 00:09:32,238 --> 00:09:34,031 and you know we don't need to shoot it. 188 00:09:34,949 --> 00:09:37,702 Real talk. Like, we're spending a lot of fucking money. 189 00:09:38,327 --> 00:09:40,830 If we want to go fucking see the pigs, we go see the pigs. 190 00:09:40,913 --> 00:09:42,415 'Il find a way to make it work. 191 00:09:42,623 --> 00:09:43,623 That's it. 192 00:09:43,916 --> 00:09:46,627 If we wanna fucking see the pigs. The girls wanna go see the pigs, 193 00:09:46,711 --> 00:09:48,087 we go fucking see the pigs. 194 00:09:48,713 --> 00:09:51,132 It was like, "We're gonna scratch the pigs now 195 00:09:51,215 --> 00:09:52,592 and we're going to shoot it." 196 00:09:53,009 --> 00:09:55,011 We were the production company 197 00:09:55,094 --> 00:09:58,222 but we didn't have the authority to organize it like we were supposed to. 198 00:09:58,306 --> 00:09:59,974 Here go the shots, come on. 199 00:10:00,057 --> 00:10:01,601 Hey, yo. Catch this, get this. 200 00:10:06,689 --> 00:10:08,274 Billy didn't have no rules. 201 00:10:08,357 --> 00:10:11,319 He had everyone drinking, open bar 202 00:10:11,402 --> 00:10:15,156 wilding out. It was more of a party than a promotional shoot. 203 00:10:15,448 --> 00:10:16,866 Yeah, let me fly the drone. 204 00:10:17,908 --> 00:10:21,746 Our guys were partying non-stop. Sunup to sundown, gettin' loose. 205 00:10:22,580 --> 00:10:25,625 Billy fell asleep on the beach, literally, just broad daylight. 206 00:10:25,750 --> 00:10:26,876 Out like a light. 207 00:10:29,128 --> 00:10:32,340 I flew here with Billy, just for a holiday 208 00:10:32,423 --> 00:10:36,302 and now this has ballooned into a full production team 209 00:10:36,385 --> 00:10:37,803 of girls and cameras. 210 00:10:37,887 --> 00:10:41,515 There was this crazy pilot, Keith. He made the plane go zero gravity. 211 00:10:41,599 --> 00:10:42,679 I don't know how he did it. 212 00:10:43,184 --> 00:10:46,103 Near take-off, he's like, "I bought this plane six months ago, 213 00:10:46,187 --> 00:10:47,104 I just got my license." 214 00:10:47,188 --> 00:10:50,232 I ended up teaching myself and you can use Microsoft Flight Simulator. 215 00:10:50,316 --> 00:10:53,903 Microsoft Flight Simulator has lessons and it's excellent. 216 00:10:53,986 --> 00:10:56,155 Once in the air, I was like, "What are we gonna do?" 217 00:10:56,238 --> 00:10:59,278 He was pulling off the end of the runway and going straight up into the thing 218 00:10:59,325 --> 00:11:00,618 and killing the engine. 219 00:11:00,701 --> 00:11:02,703 You know, whenever I'm with Billy, I have to... 220 00:11:02,953 --> 00:11:04,413 do at least three zero Gs. 221 00:11:07,541 --> 00:11:09,919 Billy and Ja made their famous toast. 222 00:11:10,294 --> 00:11:12,421 That's when I was introduced to the toast. 223 00:11:12,505 --> 00:11:15,508 Here's to living like movie stars, 224 00:11:16,175 --> 00:11:18,260 partying like rock stars... 225 00:11:19,053 --> 00:11:19,929 Billy? 226 00:11:20,012 --> 00:11:21,722 And fucking like porn stars. 227 00:11:24,433 --> 00:11:26,936 It was definitely, like, a trying work environment. 228 00:11:28,521 --> 00:11:31,482 One night, they wanted to turn the bonfire 229 00:11:31,565 --> 00:11:34,110 into, like, the Billy and Ja party on the beach, 230 00:11:34,402 --> 00:11:35,653 and that's all on camera. 231 00:11:36,112 --> 00:11:36,987 Come on, baby. 232 00:11:37,071 --> 00:11:38,656 We about to create art. Get over here. 233 00:11:38,739 --> 00:11:39,865 Just get in the water. 234 00:11:39,949 --> 00:11:43,160 If y'all don't want to put on a bikini, it don't matter. Let's get in the water. 235 00:11:43,244 --> 00:11:44,912 Hell, no, I'm not getting in no water. 236 00:11:44,995 --> 00:11:47,289 Yeah, get in the fucking water, Chanel. 237 00:11:48,374 --> 00:11:50,126 They wanted to get everyone in the water, 238 00:11:50,209 --> 00:11:51,919 So they made it sound as if it was a scene, 239 00:11:52,002 --> 00:11:54,004 but nobody was there directing that scene. 240 00:11:54,088 --> 00:11:56,424 Guys, what's the purpose of what you're trying to do? 241 00:11:56,507 --> 00:11:58,843 We're gonna jump in, then the girls will follow us in. 242 00:11:58,926 --> 00:12:00,344 This is the money shot! 243 00:12:00,428 --> 00:12:02,471 Us jumping after you? 244 00:12:02,847 --> 00:12:05,349 It was them partying with talent 245 00:12:05,433 --> 00:12:08,060 that didn't really know what they were there to do. 246 00:12:08,561 --> 00:12:10,438 But in the end, it didn't matter. 247 00:12:10,521 --> 00:12:13,149 We're selling a pipe dream to your average loser. 248 00:12:13,232 --> 00:12:17,069 - Selling a pipe dream to fucking buyers. - Your average guy in middle America. 249 00:12:17,153 --> 00:12:20,406 They were selling a vision of what people want. 250 00:12:22,199 --> 00:12:25,286 We should tell all the girls to post one picture of them on the beach today, 251 00:12:25,369 --> 00:12:27,997 or on jet skis, #fyrefestival before five o'clock. 252 00:12:28,080 --> 00:12:30,791 Could y'all, like, hashtag some Fyre Festival shit? 253 00:12:32,126 --> 00:12:36,005 The models posted a lot of their own pictures from the weekend 254 00:12:36,088 --> 00:12:37,673 that they spent shooting there. 255 00:12:37,840 --> 00:12:39,675 They need to be fucking tagging us. 256 00:12:40,760 --> 00:12:43,387 Why aren't these people tagging us? This is bullshit. 257 00:12:43,596 --> 00:12:45,765 One of the women had posted... 258 00:12:46,348 --> 00:12:48,017 the Mannequin Challenge that they did. 259 00:12:49,143 --> 00:12:51,437 And so Ja Rule is there and Billy was there 260 00:12:51,520 --> 00:12:53,856 and then ten of the top models... 261 00:12:54,565 --> 00:12:58,652 The power of celebrity really there was, like, "Whoa!" 262 00:12:59,195 --> 00:13:01,822 The press of the trip 263 00:13:02,072 --> 00:13:06,035 got picked up just by those girls being there all together as a group. 264 00:13:06,285 --> 00:13:09,830 So, The Daily Mail talks about how they're hashtagging "Fyre Festival" 265 00:13:09,914 --> 00:13:12,666 and that Shanina Shaik says, "It's lit." 266 00:13:12,750 --> 00:13:15,044 I knew it would do that, I knew with the buzz... 267 00:13:15,127 --> 00:13:17,963 If you're constantly going to be taking pictures here, 268 00:13:18,047 --> 00:13:20,925 make sure you fucking, "Fyre Festival," 269 00:13:21,008 --> 00:13:26,096 because it's gonna create a small buzz that can be a big buzz. It's free press. 270 00:13:26,180 --> 00:13:27,723 You can't pay for that kind of press. 271 00:13:31,769 --> 00:13:33,896 They captured a ton of footage that was just, 272 00:13:33,979 --> 00:13:36,190 really, from a marketing perspective, second to none. 273 00:13:36,857 --> 00:13:40,528 And it was the thing that gave all of the New York agencies 274 00:13:40,611 --> 00:13:42,530 some insight into what was happening down there. 275 00:13:43,739 --> 00:13:46,408 They would all have a tan and be smiling 276 00:13:46,492 --> 00:13:48,332 and talk about these experiences that they had, 277 00:13:48,369 --> 00:13:50,162 which almost gave us a little bit of like, 278 00:13:50,246 --> 00:13:53,123 We're wondering what we hadn't seen or what we're missing out on 279 00:13:53,916 --> 00:13:59,004 and Fyre very quickly became one of our most important clients. 280 00:13:59,380 --> 00:14:03,050 They were trying to tap into a culture and a zeitgeist that they believed in, 281 00:14:03,425 --> 00:14:06,595 and they were uncompromising when it came to marketing. 282 00:14:09,181 --> 00:14:11,350 Today's the big day. Five o'clock. 283 00:14:11,433 --> 00:14:12,935 We have what will be known 284 00:14:13,018 --> 00:14:16,063 as the best coordinated social influencer campaign ever. 285 00:14:16,146 --> 00:14:18,146 We have 400 of the biggest people around the world, 286 00:14:18,190 --> 00:14:22,069 influencers, models, comedians, artists, actors, actresses, 287 00:14:22,152 --> 00:14:26,574 all at the same time posting the ambiguous burnt orange Fyre tile. 288 00:14:26,866 --> 00:14:29,577 They came up with the idea of the orange tile. 289 00:14:29,660 --> 00:14:31,704 Fyre handled all of the major models 290 00:14:31,912 --> 00:14:34,498 and then we and a number of other agencies 291 00:14:34,582 --> 00:14:36,902 were reaching out to any influencer we knew in our network. 292 00:14:37,167 --> 00:14:40,170 And there's the caption saying, "Join me @fyrefestival.com," 293 00:14:40,254 --> 00:14:42,506 so we're expecting millions to come and visit our site, 294 00:14:42,590 --> 00:14:44,049 see the video, showing people that 295 00:14:44,133 --> 00:14:46,385 for three or four days, you can escape reality 296 00:14:46,468 --> 00:14:48,846 and come experience Pablo Escobar's old island. 297 00:14:49,388 --> 00:14:51,932 The commercial globally got launched while there. 298 00:14:52,224 --> 00:14:53,684 We had a whole edit team there. 299 00:14:53,767 --> 00:14:57,313 We were editing the commercial and had a launch strategy in the Bahamas, 300 00:14:57,396 --> 00:15:00,556 which is crazy, 'cause there's no internet and no infrastructure, nothing there. 301 00:15:01,066 --> 00:15:04,069 Billy was like, "Man, let's catch a plane to Nassau" 302 00:15:04,153 --> 00:15:06,030 and go on the phone and internet there, 303 00:15:06,113 --> 00:15:08,824 because Kendall Jenner is about to announce this live thing 304 00:15:08,908 --> 00:15:10,242 on Instagram. 305 00:15:10,743 --> 00:15:13,621 Kendall Jenner was paid, I think, $250,000 306 00:15:13,704 --> 00:15:17,124 by wire transfer just to post that one post. 307 00:15:18,667 --> 00:15:21,503 When I saw the video, my first reaction was confusion. 308 00:15:21,837 --> 00:15:24,131 I wasn't sure who was the target market of the festival. 309 00:15:24,214 --> 00:15:26,800 If you go, will there be Instagram models lounging around 310 00:15:26,884 --> 00:15:28,302 to feed you grapes? 311 00:15:28,385 --> 00:15:31,722 So, it was a combination of confusion and excitement. 312 00:15:32,556 --> 00:15:34,683 As soon as the models started posting, 313 00:15:34,767 --> 00:15:37,269 the Fyre Instagram account just started to blow up. 314 00:15:37,561 --> 00:15:39,605 Overnight, basically, 315 00:15:39,688 --> 00:15:43,567 this massive influx of enthusiasm and awareness, 316 00:15:43,651 --> 00:15:45,861 a PR storm like you've never seen. 317 00:15:45,945 --> 00:15:49,782 I had brand sponsors who had invested millions of dollars into Coachella 318 00:15:50,282 --> 00:15:53,786 asking if they could figure out a way to get their investment out of Coachella 319 00:15:53,869 --> 00:15:55,329 and put it over towards Fyre. 320 00:15:55,955 --> 00:15:59,249 They advertised these incredible ticket packages. 321 00:15:59,959 --> 00:16:04,672 They had the "rustic tent," that was supposed to be kind of like a Coachella, 322 00:16:04,755 --> 00:16:06,423 glamorous scenario. 323 00:16:06,840 --> 00:16:09,009 And then they had private homes 324 00:16:09,343 --> 00:16:12,429 and then it went up to like 250 grand for, 325 00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:16,517 you know, a private yacht with a private chef on board. 326 00:16:17,142 --> 00:16:18,602 Within 48 hours, 327 00:16:18,686 --> 00:16:20,771 they sold 95% of their tickets. 328 00:16:21,271 --> 00:16:25,693 I think people thought that this was one of the new hot things 329 00:16:25,776 --> 00:16:29,697 that was starting to take over the American and global market. 330 00:16:29,863 --> 00:16:31,281 So now, you know, 331 00:16:31,699 --> 00:16:34,034 we hope everybody comes and enjoys... 332 00:16:34,118 --> 00:16:37,121 the cultural experience of the decade, Fyre Festival. 333 00:16:41,583 --> 00:16:44,003 I remember I first heard about Fyre Festival 334 00:16:44,086 --> 00:16:47,006 at a music festival conference in Las Vegas. 335 00:16:47,089 --> 00:16:49,091 Ja Rule was a keynote speaker 336 00:16:49,341 --> 00:16:52,594 and he unveiled this festival that they were doing in the Bahamas 337 00:16:52,678 --> 00:16:55,597 and everyone at the table I was sitting with just started laughing. 338 00:16:55,973 --> 00:16:57,891 They were like, "Yeah, good luck, Ja Rule", 339 00:16:57,975 --> 00:17:00,394 build a music festival 'cause it's so easy." 340 00:17:00,477 --> 00:17:04,064 And there was this tinge of resentment, kind of humoring it and all that. 341 00:17:04,148 --> 00:17:06,191 The industry insiders were laughing. 342 00:17:06,275 --> 00:17:09,194 Fast forward two months later, before I was introduced to Billy, 343 00:17:09,319 --> 00:17:11,739 and I'm meeting with my friend Max at Matte Productions, 344 00:17:11,822 --> 00:17:14,116 who produced the influencer video. 345 00:17:14,324 --> 00:17:15,951 And when I when I saw that video, 346 00:17:16,035 --> 00:17:19,496 I was like, "These guys are either completely full of shit" 347 00:17:19,580 --> 00:17:21,373 or they're the smartest guys in the room." 348 00:17:21,915 --> 00:17:23,125 So, I spoke to Max... 349 00:17:23,625 --> 00:17:25,085 and I asked him what the deal was 350 00:17:25,169 --> 00:17:27,337 and he's like, "No, they're legit" 351 00:17:27,421 --> 00:17:29,548 and they sold out the festival." 352 00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:33,260 So, as a first-time festival producer to sell out your music festival, 353 00:17:33,844 --> 00:17:35,304 it's a huge accomplishment. 354 00:17:37,431 --> 00:17:41,977 So we tried to fit 800 people here and a concert for about 5,000 people. 355 00:17:42,061 --> 00:17:43,687 So, Norman's Cay is on this end. 356 00:17:44,021 --> 00:17:47,900 I knew the island. I've been going to Bahamas for the past ten years, 357 00:17:47,983 --> 00:17:51,945 so my role in the beginning was just to try to map it out and do the logistics. 358 00:17:52,029 --> 00:17:54,531 It's forty acres, right? So one inch is a hundred feet. 359 00:17:54,615 --> 00:17:56,492 So, this is about 200 feet. 360 00:17:56,617 --> 00:17:59,161 - You're going to write off... - Shit. My bad. 361 00:17:59,828 --> 00:18:02,289 On the floor plans. 362 00:18:02,372 --> 00:18:04,124 You ruined my sewage calculations. 363 00:18:05,709 --> 00:18:09,421 Instead of thinking about models, you have to think about toilets. 364 00:18:09,505 --> 00:18:10,714 We must buy lots of toilets. 365 00:18:10,798 --> 00:18:14,093 We gotta go to Home Depot and buy a thousand toilets. I mean... 366 00:18:14,551 --> 00:18:15,969 The number of tickets they'd sold, 367 00:18:16,053 --> 00:18:18,972 they couldn't physically fit that many people on the island, 368 00:18:19,056 --> 00:18:21,308 let alone build some sort of insane infrastructure 369 00:18:21,391 --> 00:18:24,937 that could support them from a bio-waste standpoint. 370 00:18:25,104 --> 00:18:28,273 I didn't think it was possible to fit over 1,000 people on that island 371 00:18:28,357 --> 00:18:30,692 so I had made a plan to get a cruise ship. 372 00:18:30,984 --> 00:18:34,655 The tricky part is getting drunk people off the island at night. 373 00:18:34,780 --> 00:18:37,491 To go to sleep on a cruise ship on a little dinghy. 374 00:18:37,991 --> 00:18:39,952 We're not doing a cruise ship anymore. 375 00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:41,703 You're not doing the cruise ship? 376 00:18:41,787 --> 00:18:43,789 Everybody is gonna be on the islands. 377 00:18:48,335 --> 00:18:49,920 I'm not kidding. 378 00:18:50,003 --> 00:18:52,422 - Okay. - They said it's possible. 379 00:18:53,590 --> 00:18:57,928 They really wanted to do tents, so what I did is I took my wife 380 00:18:58,011 --> 00:19:00,514 and we tried to sleep in a tent for one night 381 00:19:00,597 --> 00:19:03,308 and... it was so terrible, 382 00:19:03,392 --> 00:19:07,146 that, you know, this tent is just not going to be safe and it's so loud, 383 00:19:07,437 --> 00:19:08,730 so many mosquitoes, 384 00:19:09,106 --> 00:19:12,109 To do these tents without air conditioning is pretty brutal. 385 00:19:12,442 --> 00:19:14,862 It's just not possible, so I... 386 00:19:16,363 --> 00:19:18,991 I strongly recommended against the tents. 387 00:19:20,242 --> 00:19:22,870 Keith raised a lot of concerns about these things 388 00:19:23,078 --> 00:19:26,832 and then I think he was asked to no longer be part of it. 389 00:19:28,667 --> 00:19:32,880 It's just Billy at some point told me, "Listen, you need to step back. 390 00:19:32,963 --> 00:19:36,967 You know, we're going to go with different people and... 391 00:19:38,760 --> 00:19:41,471 "Yeah, thanks for your help so far and, you know..." 392 00:19:41,972 --> 00:19:46,185 I wasn't the only one that was changed out in February, March. 393 00:19:51,064 --> 00:19:53,192 They asked me to fly down to the Bahamas to meet them. 394 00:19:54,067 --> 00:19:55,652 And I flew down there. 395 00:19:55,736 --> 00:19:58,030 When I was introduced to them I was super excited 396 00:19:58,113 --> 00:20:02,326 to, you know, to participate in what could be a really special event, 397 00:20:02,409 --> 00:20:05,454 if it was even half of what they had promised their guests. 398 00:20:06,788 --> 00:20:08,665 Flying over the islands from Miami 399 00:20:08,749 --> 00:20:11,752 and you see this water and it was magic. 400 00:20:11,835 --> 00:20:13,837 I mean, I can't even describe it to you. 401 00:20:14,129 --> 00:20:16,256 We were contacted perhaps... 402 00:20:17,049 --> 00:20:19,676 forty-five days out. 403 00:20:20,385 --> 00:20:23,597 We were asked to take a shot at putting together a production for them. 404 00:20:24,097 --> 00:20:25,641 The timeframe was very short, 405 00:20:25,724 --> 00:20:29,019 but there was definitely a chance of putting it all together. 406 00:20:31,146 --> 00:20:34,107 Billy talked to us, talked to me and I loved his vision. 407 00:20:34,191 --> 00:20:36,902 I loved his ideas, his energy. 408 00:20:38,070 --> 00:20:42,282 We sat down and basically put together a budget for him in a day, 409 00:20:42,366 --> 00:20:43,700 presented to him the next day. 410 00:20:43,784 --> 00:20:46,745 "Here are your hard facts, here are your costs associated do this. 411 00:20:46,828 --> 00:20:48,628 And they said, "This is fine. We can do this." 412 00:20:49,122 --> 00:20:51,458 And so roughly, what was that number? 413 00:20:51,541 --> 00:20:53,669 I think it was maybe 38? 414 00:20:54,086 --> 00:20:55,629 - Thirty-eight million? - Yeah. 415 00:20:55,879 --> 00:20:59,049 Billy came and said, "Can you book the lineup for the festival?" 416 00:20:59,132 --> 00:21:04,471 I'm a 22, 23-year-old kid, I've never booked talent for... 417 00:21:04,554 --> 00:21:06,056 Forget about for a festival. 418 00:21:06,765 --> 00:21:10,060 I remember the first artist I got was Major Lazer. 419 00:21:10,560 --> 00:21:12,938 I mean, grossly overpaid. 420 00:21:13,522 --> 00:21:16,233 And then Disclosure, Blink-182. 421 00:21:16,817 --> 00:21:20,821 The talent alone was three and a half, four million dollars was spent. 422 00:21:21,238 --> 00:21:23,073 Most of the artists they were working with 423 00:21:23,156 --> 00:21:26,159 were expecting a certain level of production, 424 00:21:26,618 --> 00:21:28,120 a sufficient lighting package... 425 00:21:28,954 --> 00:21:30,622 a good enough sound system 426 00:21:30,706 --> 00:21:32,958 and, you know, we realized that 427 00:21:33,166 --> 00:21:37,713 they didn't really have any idea of what it meant to book the artists 428 00:21:37,796 --> 00:21:38,839 that they were booking... 429 00:21:39,298 --> 00:21:41,550 what it meant to put up a show like that. 430 00:21:41,967 --> 00:21:44,219 You know? "What did this Billy do before?" 431 00:21:44,845 --> 00:21:47,306 "He's the visionary behind Magnises." 432 00:21:47,472 --> 00:21:49,474 That's what they told me. 433 00:21:49,725 --> 00:21:52,060 "The visionary behind Magnises." 434 00:21:52,144 --> 00:21:53,562 What the hell is Magnises? 435 00:21:53,645 --> 00:21:56,315 Jessica, you're chasing the story about 436 00:21:56,398 --> 00:21:59,735 the millennials' version of the black card. What have you got? 437 00:21:59,818 --> 00:22:01,737 This is Magnises. 438 00:22:01,820 --> 00:22:04,156 It's the newest, coolest credit card. 439 00:22:04,239 --> 00:22:05,466 The original vision was simple. 440 00:22:05,490 --> 00:22:08,285 We were just kids, we'd figured out a way to turn 441 00:22:08,368 --> 00:22:10,454 boring, plastic cards into 442 00:22:10,537 --> 00:22:13,707 nice-looking, sleek, stainless steel credit cards. 443 00:22:13,915 --> 00:22:15,500 It was black, the thing was metal. 444 00:22:15,584 --> 00:22:17,836 It would make a big clank when you put it down. 445 00:22:17,919 --> 00:22:20,881 The girls were like, "Holy hell, what is that? What do you do?" 446 00:22:20,964 --> 00:22:22,299 We gained traction. 447 00:22:22,382 --> 00:22:25,135 We start growing across the 1,500-member mark. 448 00:22:25,260 --> 00:22:27,554 We then decided to turn it into a real membership club. 449 00:22:27,929 --> 00:22:31,058 Looking back to when I moved to New York, I was looking for a community. 450 00:22:31,141 --> 00:22:33,143 I wanted perks and guidance and, really, 451 00:22:33,226 --> 00:22:35,145 I wanted to be told what to do, where to go 452 00:22:35,228 --> 00:22:36,748 where to find great things in my city. 453 00:22:37,022 --> 00:22:38,690 So, we created Magnises. 454 00:22:39,024 --> 00:22:41,318 Billy really is one of the world's greatest salesmen. 455 00:22:41,735 --> 00:22:43,862 He can convince anyone of pretty much anything. 456 00:22:43,945 --> 00:22:46,990 Billy, I'm looking forward to the day when I'll be working for you. 457 00:22:47,074 --> 00:22:50,285 I've known Billy probably since he was 20 years old 458 00:22:50,369 --> 00:22:52,662 and Billy is an amazing entrepreneur. 459 00:22:53,455 --> 00:22:57,334 This is a young kid who figured out how to get these millennials 460 00:22:57,709 --> 00:22:59,086 and lock them in. 461 00:22:59,169 --> 00:23:00,879 So we take everybody who has a card 462 00:23:00,962 --> 00:23:02,839 and create a lot of networking opportunities. 463 00:23:02,923 --> 00:23:04,591 And we're partners with local merchants - 464 00:23:04,674 --> 00:23:06,718 fashion stores, restaurants, gyms. 465 00:23:06,927 --> 00:23:08,595 They offer deals and discounts, 466 00:23:08,678 --> 00:23:11,431 and the big thing they had was this clubhouse in West Village. 467 00:23:11,515 --> 00:23:15,394 You could take dates and friends there and that's where they had the events. 468 00:23:15,727 --> 00:23:19,064 I helped Billy design wine tasting series and lecture series 469 00:23:19,147 --> 00:23:22,025 and many different things that brought these kids together 470 00:23:22,109 --> 00:23:23,527 with a sense of community. 471 00:23:23,902 --> 00:23:27,656 The parties were unbelievable. They had live music, booze and food... 472 00:23:27,739 --> 00:23:29,533 I saw Ja Rule a bunch. 473 00:23:29,866 --> 00:23:32,244 Ja Rule is taking his talents to a new business. 474 00:23:32,619 --> 00:23:36,581 The rapper lending his creative mind to an elite credit card for millenials. 475 00:23:36,706 --> 00:23:39,668 What we're doing with Magnises is growing very fast. 476 00:23:39,793 --> 00:23:43,630 We built on an app, went digital. We crossed the 10,000-member mark. 477 00:23:43,713 --> 00:23:46,425 We were taking in close to $2 million in membership fees. 478 00:23:48,427 --> 00:23:50,262 As we kept moving with Magnises, 479 00:23:50,345 --> 00:23:52,973 he wanted to penetrate the New York upper class. 480 00:23:53,181 --> 00:23:56,476 He thought that the Maserati and flying to meetings in private jets 481 00:23:56,560 --> 00:24:00,147 were necessary in his pursuit of changing his external image 482 00:24:00,230 --> 00:24:04,317 and he thought that image would also be a serious driver for the company. 483 00:24:05,152 --> 00:24:07,904 I hosted probably 40 events for Magnises 484 00:24:07,988 --> 00:24:10,949 and a lot of the members enjoyed being a part of that community. 485 00:24:12,159 --> 00:24:15,412 That audience, I think, was the audience that Billy was focused on 486 00:24:15,495 --> 00:24:17,456 as far as Fyre was concerned as well... 487 00:24:17,664 --> 00:24:20,709 but it was a vision that was so big... 488 00:24:21,376 --> 00:24:24,087 that it was not something that was going to be easy to pull off. 489 00:24:29,926 --> 00:24:32,095 Could you imagine trying to host a music festival, 490 00:24:32,179 --> 00:24:35,432 even on Miami Beach or in Boston or LA? 491 00:24:35,515 --> 00:24:39,144 Almost impossible without an incredibly big infrastructure. 492 00:24:39,227 --> 00:24:43,064 So, dial it up to a small island in the Bahamas. 493 00:24:43,565 --> 00:24:46,651 It would probably be the most difficult place you could do it. 494 00:24:47,777 --> 00:24:49,946 Billy called me and he said, "Listen", 495 00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:53,366 I need your help and I need you to get to the Bahamas as soon as possible." 496 00:24:53,783 --> 00:24:57,913 And I flew in, not in any role, except sort of subtly 497 00:24:58,288 --> 00:25:01,208 being the new leader and being kind of... 498 00:25:01,875 --> 00:25:03,084 Billy's whisperer. 499 00:25:05,170 --> 00:25:07,005 To do a proper music festival, 500 00:25:07,088 --> 00:25:09,341 I would say you should try to start the... 501 00:25:09,716 --> 00:25:13,470 the design and the fundraising, everything at least 12 months out. 502 00:25:13,553 --> 00:25:17,098 The true core team that came in literally had 503 00:25:17,182 --> 00:25:19,976 six to eight weeks to build this thing and put it together. 504 00:25:23,605 --> 00:25:26,608 Were you ever aware that they said they had bought an island? 505 00:25:26,691 --> 00:25:28,818 Yeah. 506 00:25:29,402 --> 00:25:30,654 It's like you couldn't... 507 00:25:31,112 --> 00:25:33,281 differentiate what was true 508 00:25:33,365 --> 00:25:34,950 and what wasn't true. 509 00:25:36,451 --> 00:25:37,911 I think we chose the right island. 510 00:25:39,538 --> 00:25:40,747 We got ours for ten million. 511 00:25:40,956 --> 00:25:43,124 Freehold land, no lease. We own the land forever. 512 00:25:43,416 --> 00:25:45,627 I think it was like, he had to put a million down 513 00:25:45,710 --> 00:25:48,922 and then pay the rest by a certain amount of time. 514 00:25:49,589 --> 00:25:52,008 I don't know if that million was ever paid. 515 00:25:53,009 --> 00:25:55,637 This was Pablo Escobar's island twenty-five years ago. 516 00:25:55,762 --> 00:25:58,932 So we're taking the dream for your average person in America 517 00:25:59,015 --> 00:26:00,935 or wherever they are and saying, "For three days, 518 00:26:01,017 --> 00:26:02,310 you can become Pablo Escobar." 519 00:26:03,353 --> 00:26:05,897 Billy was dealing with Pablo Escobar's lawyer, 520 00:26:05,981 --> 00:26:08,483 he was dealing with family members. 521 00:26:09,818 --> 00:26:12,529 Norman's Cay is rich in history 522 00:26:12,612 --> 00:26:15,907 with cocaine drug lords running their drugs through the Bahamas. 523 00:26:16,783 --> 00:26:17,951 The owner of the Cay, 524 00:26:18,201 --> 00:26:20,662 he wanted a new reputation for his Cay. 525 00:26:21,121 --> 00:26:23,623 They were told not to use the word "Pablo Escobar" 526 00:26:23,790 --> 00:26:26,293 and then they used that in the first social media tweets. 527 00:26:26,835 --> 00:26:29,546 The new owner saw the first video promotion 528 00:26:29,963 --> 00:26:31,881 and he kicked us off in one shot. 529 00:26:32,424 --> 00:26:34,259 Like, no questions asked. 530 00:26:34,884 --> 00:26:35,927 They were kicked off. 531 00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:38,054 Six or eight weeks out, 532 00:26:38,138 --> 00:26:40,724 he had to find a new location on a neighboring Island... 533 00:26:41,224 --> 00:26:43,268 and then start the whole process all over again. 534 00:26:44,603 --> 00:26:48,064 We were constantly trying to move, like, trying to find a new location 535 00:26:48,148 --> 00:26:49,774 and trying to find what fits. 536 00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:52,694 Man, it just started to get hectic. 537 00:26:53,111 --> 00:26:56,823 Then I went to another island, until you finally got to Great Exuma, 538 00:26:57,449 --> 00:27:00,368 where it was at least the biggest island in the Exumas 539 00:27:00,452 --> 00:27:01,995 so it had, you know... 540 00:27:02,787 --> 00:27:03,787 plumbing. 541 00:27:11,254 --> 00:27:15,800 American rapper, singer and actor Ja Rule, also known as Jeffrey Atkins, 542 00:27:15,884 --> 00:27:18,094 is in the Bahamas with his business partners 543 00:27:18,178 --> 00:27:21,473 to discuss the details of a concert next month. 544 00:27:22,557 --> 00:27:27,354 Fyre was like the thing of the island. Renting so much, rent-a-cars, 545 00:27:27,771 --> 00:27:29,773 big jets are flying in. 546 00:27:30,482 --> 00:27:33,735 Everybody was saying, "Hey, that's Fyre, they have lots of money." 547 00:27:33,818 --> 00:27:35,612 They could do anything." 548 00:27:36,404 --> 00:27:38,782 We hope this is the first of many steps 549 00:27:38,865 --> 00:27:42,786 to bring entertainment and bring value back to the Bahamas. 550 00:27:43,203 --> 00:27:46,706 I was waiting for some shit like this to happen in the Bahamas, to be real. 551 00:27:46,873 --> 00:27:50,168 You know, we never had that many American artists, 552 00:27:50,251 --> 00:27:51,753 you know, on one stage. 553 00:27:52,170 --> 00:27:55,382 This was supposed to go on for five years, every year. 554 00:27:56,132 --> 00:28:00,011 So, if you do good, you were asked for five years. 555 00:28:00,095 --> 00:28:03,682 You got the contract, so you wanted to live up to the expectations. 556 00:28:06,559 --> 00:28:08,061 They had the site. 557 00:28:08,395 --> 00:28:10,063 They let us onto the property... 558 00:28:10,438 --> 00:28:11,940 and we looked at it. 559 00:28:12,023 --> 00:28:14,234 And that's when some of the questions started to rise. 560 00:28:14,734 --> 00:28:15,734 The site... 561 00:28:16,152 --> 00:28:17,946 was on a hill... 562 00:28:18,238 --> 00:28:19,406 and at the base, 563 00:28:19,698 --> 00:28:23,576 what I saw was, pretty much, a housing development 564 00:28:23,660 --> 00:28:24,994 construction site... 565 00:28:25,453 --> 00:28:30,291 that was hazardous in many ways and that needed a lot of work. 566 00:28:30,667 --> 00:28:34,212 You know there's going to be hiccups, there's gonna be things to be addressed. 567 00:28:34,295 --> 00:28:38,216 It's a first-year festival on an island and you find solutions. 568 00:28:38,299 --> 00:28:40,176 We said, "Here's what you should think about," 569 00:28:40,635 --> 00:28:42,387 you know, here's what your tenting is, 570 00:28:42,470 --> 00:28:43,972 you know, the geodesic domes... 571 00:28:44,055 --> 00:28:45,741 "Here's what it's going to cost to set up." 572 00:28:45,765 --> 00:28:46,766 And... 573 00:28:46,850 --> 00:28:47,850 away we went. 574 00:28:51,104 --> 00:28:53,982 What's crazy is they booked the festival 575 00:28:54,607 --> 00:28:57,944 during the busiest weekend of the year on Great Exuma. 576 00:28:58,027 --> 00:28:59,227 It's like the Superbowl there. 577 00:28:59,279 --> 00:29:01,239 It's called the National Regatta, 578 00:29:01,448 --> 00:29:04,033 and the island basically doubles in population size 579 00:29:04,367 --> 00:29:08,288 and all of the hotels get booked months, maybe a year in advance. 580 00:29:09,372 --> 00:29:11,124 Billy had sold a villa package, 581 00:29:11,458 --> 00:29:14,043 and these people were essentially staying in an Airbnb, 582 00:29:14,836 --> 00:29:18,798 so we had to find houses all across the island for 500 guests. 583 00:29:19,924 --> 00:29:21,885 To make it worse, they had oversold 584 00:29:22,135 --> 00:29:23,845 their "Lodge" packages, 585 00:29:23,928 --> 00:29:26,097 which were these tents on the main site. 586 00:29:27,182 --> 00:29:28,822 And then the word comes down from the top 587 00:29:28,892 --> 00:29:31,644 that all influencers will get housing for free. 588 00:29:32,979 --> 00:29:34,272 So I start calling influencers. 589 00:29:34,355 --> 00:29:36,649 I was the first voice that they had heard 590 00:29:36,983 --> 00:29:38,318 since they posted. 591 00:29:38,401 --> 00:29:42,405 Each influencer, and there were about 250 influencers, 592 00:29:42,489 --> 00:29:44,240 were promised, for a post, 593 00:29:44,783 --> 00:29:45,867 for one post... 594 00:29:46,367 --> 00:29:49,537 a one-bedroom, three-person villa on the beach... 595 00:29:51,372 --> 00:29:52,582 that didn't exist. 596 00:29:53,958 --> 00:29:55,460 I started talking to Billy... 597 00:29:55,543 --> 00:29:57,212 and from the get-go, it was, you know, 598 00:29:57,295 --> 00:30:00,131 we were all running around, scrambling, every day to find new houses. 599 00:30:00,215 --> 00:30:02,634 "We need help from you guys, start to cut people." 600 00:30:03,009 --> 00:30:05,220 These people aren't paying for the experience. 601 00:30:06,137 --> 00:30:07,388 "Tell them not to come." 602 00:30:07,597 --> 00:30:10,725 And it was a constant battle because what they cared most about 603 00:30:11,309 --> 00:30:12,644 was the influencers. 604 00:30:13,353 --> 00:30:16,314 So I'm imploring them to cancel paying guests at this point. 605 00:30:16,397 --> 00:30:19,818 "They're not gonna have a place to stay." And the response from Billy was, 606 00:30:19,901 --> 00:30:23,071 "We're not a problems focus group. We're a solutions-oriented group. 607 00:30:23,154 --> 00:30:26,241 We need to have a positive attitude about this. We need a good attitude." 608 00:30:26,324 --> 00:30:30,453 And he was unflappable but he was also entirely delusional. 609 00:30:30,912 --> 00:30:34,874 So it was this constant battle in my mind between, 610 00:30:35,166 --> 00:30:38,086 "Is this guy a genius or is he a madman?" 611 00:30:38,253 --> 00:30:42,131 Because he just would not take "no" for an answer and he wouldn't take advice. 612 00:30:42,215 --> 00:30:44,133 Where do you stand now? 613 00:30:44,551 --> 00:30:45,551 He's a liar. 614 00:30:51,850 --> 00:30:55,478 Billy McFarland first got on my radar living here in New York. 615 00:30:56,563 --> 00:30:58,523 He was running a company called Magnises. 616 00:30:58,857 --> 00:31:02,694 I had a number of friends then that did get the Magnises card 617 00:31:02,777 --> 00:31:04,362 when they started offering 618 00:31:04,654 --> 00:31:09,492 access to elite tickets at a cost well below the market rate. 619 00:31:10,243 --> 00:31:12,078 The whole thing didn't make sense to me. 620 00:31:13,788 --> 00:31:16,207 People that I've spoken to that were cardholders 621 00:31:16,291 --> 00:31:19,502 recount having their reservations canceled at the last minute, 622 00:31:19,586 --> 00:31:21,629 so it seemed very hard for people to actually 623 00:31:21,713 --> 00:31:24,173 access any of the benefits that they were promised 624 00:31:24,591 --> 00:31:28,595 And so, this guy was always out there, just running hustles... 625 00:31:28,928 --> 00:31:30,513 that were sort of slick, 626 00:31:30,597 --> 00:31:35,184 but then not necessarily, in my mind, something that was by the book. 627 00:31:37,645 --> 00:31:40,940 I vividly remember the Fyre festival video. 628 00:31:41,608 --> 00:31:43,484 This video was everywhere on Facebook 629 00:31:43,568 --> 00:31:47,614 and I see a few of the bands that I actually work with 630 00:31:47,697 --> 00:31:50,450 listed as headliners for this festival. 631 00:31:51,075 --> 00:31:53,036 So I immediately called the agents and I say, 632 00:31:53,119 --> 00:31:55,455 "Hey, look, this thing doesn't make sense to me," 633 00:31:55,538 --> 00:31:58,458 and they start saying, "It doesn't make sense to us either. 634 00:31:58,541 --> 00:32:02,629 These guys are promising to pay two X what our market value is." 635 00:32:02,837 --> 00:32:05,632 I say, "Have they sent the money?" and they say, "Funny that you ask, 636 00:32:05,715 --> 00:32:07,592 No, they haven't sent the money for it yet." 637 00:32:07,675 --> 00:32:09,761 I say, "Okay. This is interesting." 638 00:32:10,637 --> 00:32:13,389 I take a more active role 639 00:32:13,806 --> 00:32:17,393 in investigating everything that was going on with Fyre Festival. 640 00:32:18,353 --> 00:32:23,358 What I realized was that they had rented an area north of Sandals Resort 641 00:32:23,441 --> 00:32:27,946 and then effectively photoshopped out the bottom portion of the map 642 00:32:28,029 --> 00:32:30,615 to make it look like they were on a deserted island. 643 00:32:30,698 --> 00:32:33,493 I thought, "The world's gotta know what's going on." 644 00:32:33,576 --> 00:32:38,122 So I create the now-infamous Twitter account, FyreFraud. 645 00:32:41,417 --> 00:32:43,836 I thought, "Okay, I'm going to put this out there" 646 00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:45,380 and people are going to see this 647 00:32:45,463 --> 00:32:47,298 "and everyone's going to know it's bogus," 648 00:32:47,382 --> 00:32:49,133 and nothing happened. 649 00:32:49,217 --> 00:32:53,346 I got maybe two or three clicks on Twitter and that was it. 650 00:32:53,429 --> 00:32:56,140 So I said, "All right, we gotta hit 'em a little harder." 651 00:32:57,850 --> 00:33:00,937 What we ended up doing was taking a plane down there 652 00:33:01,020 --> 00:33:04,273 and photographing the development and what they were working on. 653 00:33:05,233 --> 00:33:07,193 One of the things that really struck me 654 00:33:07,276 --> 00:33:09,612 was that they were erecting these dome tents 655 00:33:09,696 --> 00:33:12,615 that were pitched as "luxury villas" that I realized 656 00:33:12,699 --> 00:33:15,743 were leftover hurricane tents from Hurricane Matthew. 657 00:33:17,328 --> 00:33:21,749 That is a far stretch from a luxury villa on a deserted island. 658 00:33:22,333 --> 00:33:25,169 I realized very quickly that there was no way 659 00:33:25,294 --> 00:33:28,006 that these guys were going to be able to pull this off. 660 00:33:34,929 --> 00:33:36,806 We were building a city within a city 661 00:33:37,181 --> 00:33:39,225 in terms of waste disposal, 662 00:33:39,308 --> 00:33:41,602 in terms of restrooms, water. 663 00:33:42,186 --> 00:33:43,604 It was a fucking shit show, 664 00:33:43,938 --> 00:33:46,899 but we were doing everything that we could possibly do. 665 00:33:47,191 --> 00:33:50,361 They're frantically building the site. 666 00:33:51,279 --> 00:33:55,324 You know, 100 day laborers working around the clock, no sleep. 667 00:33:55,533 --> 00:33:59,203 It was just this mass, big crew of local workers. 668 00:33:59,579 --> 00:34:03,291 Billy paid them off and then he was like, "You know, we need more guys. 669 00:34:03,624 --> 00:34:04,959 We need more workers." 670 00:34:05,043 --> 00:34:07,545 Billy paid them for the next three days and then... 671 00:34:07,628 --> 00:34:10,548 Billy's like, "Bring more workers. We need more workers." 672 00:34:10,631 --> 00:34:13,301 And then it was starting to get too much for me to handle. 673 00:34:13,384 --> 00:34:17,055 They had every living soul on the island of Exuma 674 00:34:18,222 --> 00:34:21,309 who could lift a towel, working. 675 00:34:21,976 --> 00:34:26,147 My gosh, there had to have been, probably at some point, 200 people. 676 00:34:26,564 --> 00:34:28,649 I had to feed all the staff. 677 00:34:28,733 --> 00:34:33,821 Basically, that was taking on the whole Fyre operation under my wings. 678 00:34:34,864 --> 00:34:37,325 I'd gone down to the Bahamas with some friends 679 00:34:37,575 --> 00:34:42,080 and just coincidentally we actually ran into Ja Rule and Billy down there 680 00:34:42,163 --> 00:34:46,501 and then they offered to take us on a little tour of the site. 681 00:34:47,919 --> 00:34:51,547 It was beautiful, you know, but it's just like a big giant bluff 682 00:34:51,631 --> 00:34:54,842 overlooking the ocean. There are no buildings, there's no... 683 00:34:55,426 --> 00:34:59,347 access to electricity or running water or any of that type of stuff. 684 00:35:00,223 --> 00:35:01,599 We were just kind of like, 685 00:35:01,933 --> 00:35:04,769 concerned, really, there was no infrastructure in place, you know, 686 00:35:04,852 --> 00:35:08,064 but at the same time, they sounded fairly confident 687 00:35:08,147 --> 00:35:11,317 about their ability to get this thing done. 688 00:35:14,362 --> 00:35:16,405 How is it non-negotiable? 689 00:35:16,489 --> 00:35:19,117 When you guys are not the headlining act at a bigger festival, 690 00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:22,703 you guys don't get top of billing. I mean, in our contract... 691 00:35:24,747 --> 00:35:27,834 I understand. I mean, it's a font size. 692 00:35:29,252 --> 00:35:31,963 You had people working 24 hours a day. 693 00:35:32,171 --> 00:35:35,550 I had to work basically two days in one because of Fyre Media 694 00:35:36,008 --> 00:35:37,635 and then Fyre Festival. 695 00:35:37,927 --> 00:35:41,389 I noticed the people that were involved in going back and forth to the Bahamas, 696 00:35:41,472 --> 00:35:44,058 in the planning, they were becoming growingly frustrated. 697 00:35:44,142 --> 00:35:45,518 They would come to me and like, 698 00:35:45,601 --> 00:35:47,496 "What are you working on with the booking platform?" 699 00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:50,314 I can't wait to get back on this side of the business 700 00:35:50,398 --> 00:35:53,151 "because the festival stuff is just becoming chaotic." 701 00:35:53,317 --> 00:35:56,821 We just knew very little about what was happening on the festival side, 702 00:35:56,946 --> 00:35:59,907 except, you know, the persistent feeling of growing dread. 703 00:36:00,074 --> 00:36:02,952 Every single day, it got endlessly more tense. 704 00:36:03,161 --> 00:36:06,372 We would be at standstill sometimes for weeks 705 00:36:06,455 --> 00:36:09,059 not being able to get that final sign off or move through on things 706 00:36:09,083 --> 00:36:12,795 because he was completely, you know, succumbed to the festival needs. 707 00:36:13,296 --> 00:36:16,465 Spending money at an outrageous cost and speed. 708 00:36:16,674 --> 00:36:20,636 I wasn't sure if it was startup woes, just like "unorganization", 709 00:36:20,761 --> 00:36:24,640 or if it was actually financial trouble, but sometimes payments would be late. 710 00:36:25,766 --> 00:36:27,268 Friday afternoon, 711 00:36:27,351 --> 00:36:31,147 our favorite topic is, "Did you get paid and was it for the right amount?" 712 00:36:31,772 --> 00:36:36,777 and Michael once was like, "Yeah, I got paid, but it was in a bag of cash." 713 00:36:38,112 --> 00:36:40,406 I knew that cash flow was becoming an issue, 714 00:36:40,698 --> 00:36:43,034 but Billy handled all the finances. 715 00:36:43,784 --> 00:36:44,702 At that point, 716 00:36:44,785 --> 00:36:47,872 Billy had said, "Listen, we're into this for 25 million bucks." 717 00:36:47,955 --> 00:36:50,333 I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, Billy, jeepers." 718 00:36:51,500 --> 00:36:55,171 The word from people that knew Billy was that he was a magician fundraiser 719 00:36:55,296 --> 00:36:57,048 and he just kept pulling money in, somehow. 720 00:36:57,798 --> 00:37:01,052 Billy would get on a jet, he'd fly to New York and he'd come back 721 00:37:01,135 --> 00:37:03,262 and somehow have another three million bucks 722 00:37:03,346 --> 00:37:07,183 in his pocket to pull off the next level of needs. 723 00:37:08,434 --> 00:37:10,853 Carola was one of the many investors. 724 00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:13,189 She was a big believer in Billy. 725 00:37:13,439 --> 00:37:17,735 She was there from his earliest venture, Magnesis, and then Fyre. 726 00:37:18,152 --> 00:37:20,821 She had always been around, always supporting this kid 727 00:37:20,905 --> 00:37:24,617 and always believing in his ability to become the next big entrepreneur. 728 00:37:24,951 --> 00:37:28,120 We can figure out how to make an extra three, four, five million dollars. 729 00:37:28,663 --> 00:37:30,790 Whether it's higher-tier artist passes, 730 00:37:30,873 --> 00:37:33,876 food and alcohol passes, VIP party passes, 731 00:37:34,043 --> 00:37:37,296 the Kendall Jenner yacht party for $10,000 a head for 100 people. 732 00:37:37,380 --> 00:37:40,716 Billy had a vision, you know, and he was definitely thinking 733 00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:45,096 of every little twist that he could come up with 734 00:37:45,179 --> 00:37:46,973 to raise the money to make it happen. 735 00:37:47,056 --> 00:37:50,476 One, an audience who has cash, 736 00:37:50,559 --> 00:37:52,645 and us, we have the celebrity, we have the island. 737 00:37:52,728 --> 00:37:55,248 There's ways we can monetize both, we're gonna make that happen. 738 00:37:55,314 --> 00:37:56,732 I overheard a conversation, 739 00:37:56,816 --> 00:37:59,318 "Let's put up a cabaña for $50,000 740 00:37:59,402 --> 00:38:00,987 and see if anyone buys it." 741 00:38:01,821 --> 00:38:04,021 And I remember thinking, "Do you have a cabaña to sell?" 742 00:38:04,073 --> 00:38:07,076 Because I'm feeling concerned that you're not thinking about that 743 00:38:07,159 --> 00:38:10,454 "before you are putting it live on the site for someone to buy." 744 00:38:17,962 --> 00:38:21,632 So, this website came out. It was, like, "fyrecay.com." 745 00:38:22,008 --> 00:38:25,386 And the site's sole purpose was to destroy this festival. 746 00:38:25,803 --> 00:38:28,514 It was getting fed direct information and photos 747 00:38:28,597 --> 00:38:30,808 of the site that was totally unfinished. 748 00:38:31,267 --> 00:38:33,436 News that was happening by the day that only 749 00:38:33,519 --> 00:38:36,522 pretty senior people in the festival knew what was happening. 750 00:38:38,274 --> 00:38:39,900 It was almost like WikiLeaks. 751 00:38:39,984 --> 00:38:43,362 We were having these confidential meetings and then things from that meeting 752 00:38:43,446 --> 00:38:45,364 were actually getting out, word for word. 753 00:38:46,824 --> 00:38:49,410 So we knew someone actually in the meeting had been wired up. 754 00:38:49,702 --> 00:38:52,413 So we were all called to the war room to have a meeting 755 00:38:52,705 --> 00:38:54,874 and it was basically a witch hunt meeting. 756 00:38:55,166 --> 00:38:57,543 It was, "If you are the person" 757 00:38:57,835 --> 00:39:01,005 or people that are sending this information to this website, 758 00:39:01,339 --> 00:39:03,132 we will pursue legal action, 759 00:39:03,299 --> 00:39:05,509 you will leave this island, you will not get paid 760 00:39:05,593 --> 00:39:06,927 "and we'll come after you." 761 00:39:07,345 --> 00:39:10,639 The guy that put together Fyrecay was extorting Billy. 762 00:39:11,057 --> 00:39:12,892 Billy wanted him to take the website down. 763 00:39:12,975 --> 00:39:16,354 He said he would only do it if the Fyre Festival 764 00:39:16,437 --> 00:39:19,315 started releasing actual photos of the campsites. 765 00:39:19,398 --> 00:39:21,108 And I just kept saying to Billy, 766 00:39:21,192 --> 00:39:26,947 "We need to get the messaging out now that this is not a luxury music festival." 767 00:39:27,031 --> 00:39:29,367 People aren't staying on yachts, at least, most aren't, 768 00:39:29,450 --> 00:39:30,910 many are not staying in villas 769 00:39:30,993 --> 00:39:34,705 "and if you can get that messaging out now, we will be able to manage expectations." 770 00:39:34,789 --> 00:39:36,624 You know? Like here's the reality. Just do it 771 00:39:36,999 --> 00:39:39,335 and people will make their own decisions on it. 772 00:39:39,418 --> 00:39:40,961 But you have got to be honest. 773 00:39:41,045 --> 00:39:43,506 Here's what it is. Here's the tents, you know? 774 00:39:43,589 --> 00:39:45,800 People are going to find out sooner or later, so, like, 775 00:39:46,008 --> 00:39:47,676 why are you walking around... 776 00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:50,304 trying to dodge the inevitable? 777 00:39:54,767 --> 00:39:57,061 We were gearing up. We were ready to go. 778 00:39:57,144 --> 00:40:00,064 We're, like, going to the gym, having this grand old time. 779 00:40:00,815 --> 00:40:04,318 We would go on these jogs every morning to get ready for Fyre Festival. 780 00:40:04,402 --> 00:40:07,822 Like, powering around town. "We're going on this great vacation." 781 00:40:07,905 --> 00:40:09,323 We're going to have such a blast. 782 00:40:09,407 --> 00:40:11,534 We're going to meet all these people and have this... 783 00:40:11,617 --> 00:40:13,786 "just truly fantastic experience." 784 00:40:13,869 --> 00:40:15,538 I mean, it was so exciting. 785 00:40:18,958 --> 00:40:21,377 On April 22nd, I get an email. 786 00:40:21,836 --> 00:40:24,672 "I noticed you hadn't created your Fyreband account yet." 787 00:40:24,755 --> 00:40:27,716 It is your wallet for the weekend, so load it appropriately. 788 00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:31,470 The majority of our guests have added $3,000 for the weekend. 789 00:40:31,929 --> 00:40:36,225 But if you want to reserve tables or take part in the add-on experiences, 790 00:40:36,559 --> 00:40:38,519 "you will want to put on much more." 791 00:40:38,602 --> 00:40:44,150 Billy wanted the engineers to set up payment through this RFID bracelet. 792 00:40:44,233 --> 00:40:48,654 We all said that was insane based on the wireless communication issues. 793 00:40:48,737 --> 00:40:50,739 I mean, this was never tested out. 794 00:40:50,865 --> 00:40:53,993 The urgency wasn't, "Let's make this a cashless experience 795 00:40:54,076 --> 00:40:55,911 for our festival attendees." 796 00:40:55,995 --> 00:40:58,998 It was, "We can't put on the Fyre Festival because we don't have any money." 797 00:41:00,291 --> 00:41:03,252 I received a call from a woman 798 00:41:03,377 --> 00:41:06,547 asking me, I would say, very aggressively 799 00:41:06,630 --> 00:41:09,592 to put money on my wristband. 800 00:41:09,675 --> 00:41:13,554 They wanted you to buy jet ski things, a private plane. 801 00:41:14,221 --> 00:41:16,140 It was a staggering amount of money. 802 00:41:16,223 --> 00:41:18,100 The first batch of kids had loaded... 803 00:41:19,852 --> 00:41:23,189 $800,000 on these wristbands. 804 00:41:23,272 --> 00:41:25,232 You know, you've spent all this money on a ticket, 805 00:41:25,316 --> 00:41:28,194 and now the same amount of money on the wristband, it seemed... 806 00:41:28,277 --> 00:41:29,278 sort of peculiar. 807 00:41:32,156 --> 00:41:35,868 So now we're down to probably ten days left to the festival at this point. 808 00:41:36,202 --> 00:41:40,915 They didn't have enough tents and 350 people would have nowhere to stay 809 00:41:40,998 --> 00:41:43,959 and by the way, houses that we sourced weren't getting paid. 810 00:41:46,212 --> 00:41:49,298 So this was now becoming clear that there wasn't any money. 811 00:41:49,590 --> 00:41:52,635 Because homeowners were like, "You sent me a wire... 812 00:41:53,010 --> 00:41:55,387 five days ago and I haven't received any funds." 813 00:41:55,596 --> 00:41:58,557 I had an explicit phone call from one of the management team 814 00:41:58,641 --> 00:42:01,352 to stop telling Carola about the housing situation, 815 00:42:01,435 --> 00:42:03,562 because they were trying to get more money from her... 816 00:42:04,104 --> 00:42:06,106 and that my emails were alarming her... 817 00:42:06,482 --> 00:42:09,151 and they outright told me to be dishonest. 818 00:42:10,569 --> 00:42:13,781 And you have to realize I got paid 30% of my fee, so they're hanging... 819 00:42:13,864 --> 00:42:15,866 My fee's not due until the day of the event, 820 00:42:15,950 --> 00:42:19,119 so they're hanging 70% of my fee over my head like a carrot. 821 00:42:20,329 --> 00:42:22,623 Every day, something else would happen. 822 00:42:22,706 --> 00:42:24,792 Every hour, something else would happen. 823 00:42:25,376 --> 00:42:27,127 Every minute, there'd be another obstacle. 824 00:42:27,836 --> 00:42:29,505 We had a $6 million contract 825 00:42:29,588 --> 00:42:31,674 with Star Catering to handle all the food service 826 00:42:31,757 --> 00:42:34,301 and we only had $1 million allocated. 827 00:42:34,385 --> 00:42:36,178 And Billy fired them over the phone. 828 00:42:36,262 --> 00:42:39,306 And then he hung up the phone. I stood there and he said... 829 00:42:40,266 --> 00:42:41,559 "Can you salvage this?" 830 00:42:41,642 --> 00:42:44,395 And I said, "Oh, my gosh, I have two weeks to come up..." 831 00:42:44,728 --> 00:42:48,566 with food service for 6,000 kids? This is going to be fascinating." 832 00:42:50,025 --> 00:42:51,527 Grant, who was on the call, 833 00:42:51,610 --> 00:42:53,737 pulled out the proposal from Star and said, 834 00:42:53,821 --> 00:42:56,574 "I told them I wanted sushi chefs coming in," 835 00:42:56,657 --> 00:42:59,743 and, "I needed to see Indian cuisine," 836 00:42:59,827 --> 00:43:03,247 and I thought, "Gosh, Grant, you've missed the boat here." 837 00:43:03,497 --> 00:43:06,500 We are not spending $6 million, we can only spend $1 million 838 00:43:06,584 --> 00:43:08,669 "and I'm eliminating all of that." 839 00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:13,299 At this point in time, 840 00:43:13,382 --> 00:43:16,051 there had been no progress pictures, no updated videos. 841 00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:19,471 They were using the same footage and photographs 842 00:43:19,805 --> 00:43:21,849 from that first promotional video 843 00:43:21,932 --> 00:43:25,102 in all of the subsequent promotional content. 844 00:43:25,269 --> 00:43:27,313 The media and marketing companies in New York, 845 00:43:27,396 --> 00:43:31,275 we didn't have any visibility into what was happening on the production side. 846 00:43:31,859 --> 00:43:36,822 We're building out this vision that was based around this kind of visual facade. 847 00:43:37,740 --> 00:43:41,577 We noticed quite quickly that all of the original sketches of the rooms 848 00:43:41,660 --> 00:43:44,079 that we had signed up for got taken off the page. 849 00:43:44,413 --> 00:43:48,250 That was sort of when we started trying to dig a little bit more and see, 850 00:43:48,792 --> 00:43:51,420 "Oh, can you send us pictures of the accommodations?" 851 00:43:51,712 --> 00:43:55,758 You had people asking very legitimate questions on Instagram. 852 00:43:56,342 --> 00:43:59,762 They were trying to book flights, trying to understand logistics. 853 00:44:00,638 --> 00:44:03,557 We just started getting bombarded with all these questions. 854 00:44:04,558 --> 00:44:07,102 Grant was trying to use our employees for customer service, 855 00:44:07,186 --> 00:44:09,355 but that wasn't what we were hired to do. 856 00:44:09,980 --> 00:44:12,983 The only thing we could do was to just keep telling people, 857 00:44:13,359 --> 00:44:16,654 "Email concierge@fyre.com." 858 00:44:16,862 --> 00:44:19,073 And then we would get another request saying, 859 00:44:19,156 --> 00:44:20,908 "concierge@fyre.com didn't respond." 860 00:44:22,368 --> 00:44:25,204 The unanswered questions turned to people criticizing... 861 00:44:25,663 --> 00:44:27,331 It was very annoying. 862 00:44:27,498 --> 00:44:29,375 I was like, "This is terrible customer service. 863 00:44:29,458 --> 00:44:33,045 They need to know better. They're throwing this luxury festival..." 864 00:44:33,629 --> 00:44:36,090 And then you'd have Grant reaching outand saying, 865 00:44:36,173 --> 00:44:37,675 "These comments are killing us. 866 00:44:37,758 --> 00:44:40,260 What do we do about all the people that are talking shit?" 867 00:44:41,220 --> 00:44:45,349 The decision was to screenshot all of the legitimate questions 868 00:44:45,432 --> 00:44:47,434 and forward that over to the Fyre team 869 00:44:47,768 --> 00:44:50,270 and then delete all of the negative comments 870 00:44:50,354 --> 00:44:51,980 that were degrading the brand. 871 00:44:52,690 --> 00:44:54,692 I saw them actively deleting comments 872 00:44:54,942 --> 00:44:57,152 and then turning comments off entirely 873 00:44:57,528 --> 00:45:00,406 so that you wouldn't have 3,000 people saying, 874 00:45:00,489 --> 00:45:04,034 "Hey, I don't have my flight information. Where do I need to go?" 875 00:45:12,751 --> 00:45:15,754 So as me and Billy was riding back towards the site... 876 00:45:17,297 --> 00:45:21,051 You know, he was like... Kinda like panicky look, you know? 877 00:45:21,552 --> 00:45:22,552 So he's like, 878 00:45:22,886 --> 00:45:26,140 "What do you think? You think we can get this done? 879 00:45:26,348 --> 00:45:27,725 I said, "What do you mean?" 880 00:45:27,808 --> 00:45:30,644 "You think we can get everything done before Thursday?" 881 00:45:31,395 --> 00:45:32,229 So... 882 00:45:32,354 --> 00:45:34,314 Me saying to myself right there, I say, 883 00:45:34,773 --> 00:45:37,776 "You want to lie to him or you just want to speak the truth?" 884 00:45:37,860 --> 00:45:40,821 'Cause sometimes the truth can come pretty, 885 00:45:40,904 --> 00:45:43,282 and then sometimes the truth can just come ugly. 886 00:45:43,449 --> 00:45:44,616 So, I was like, 887 00:45:45,784 --> 00:45:48,412 "Billy, being honest, I think we could do it." 888 00:45:48,495 --> 00:45:51,206 But we need some more time. We need to do some overtime 889 00:45:51,373 --> 00:45:55,169 "and we need to just push... We need to do more hours." 890 00:45:57,463 --> 00:45:59,590 Every day we met, every day, we would talk about, 891 00:45:59,673 --> 00:46:02,426 "Okay, should we pull the plug or should we keep this thing going?" 892 00:46:02,509 --> 00:46:03,927 And every day, Billy would say, 893 00:46:04,011 --> 00:46:07,055 "We can't pull the plug. We've got to keep this thing going." 894 00:46:07,139 --> 00:46:10,934 "You can't have people come, this is not going to work." 895 00:46:11,018 --> 00:46:13,145 Verbatim. It was like... 896 00:46:13,228 --> 00:46:15,105 "If you want to leave, you can leave. 897 00:46:15,272 --> 00:46:18,358 If you're not going to leave, we're here to find solutions." 898 00:46:18,442 --> 00:46:21,570 And I would step outside, right after each meeting, 899 00:46:21,653 --> 00:46:25,365 literally go out on the porch and burst into tears. 900 00:46:25,741 --> 00:46:29,828 Never in my career did I ever do this, but there I would be, thinking, 901 00:46:29,912 --> 00:46:30,996 "Holy shit." 902 00:46:32,164 --> 00:46:33,165 So I sent an email. 903 00:46:33,665 --> 00:46:35,334 "Guys, we're running out of time." 904 00:46:35,417 --> 00:46:39,129 I've tried to warn you multiple times, but my words have fallen on deaf ears. 905 00:46:39,713 --> 00:46:42,382 We are one day out without enough beds to safely house 906 00:46:42,466 --> 00:46:45,219 our staff, our VIP guests and our paid customers. 907 00:46:45,594 --> 00:46:48,388 "You need to cancel more guests, immediately." 908 00:46:48,472 --> 00:46:52,309 I was basically like, "I know that you're worried about press blowback", 909 00:46:52,601 --> 00:46:56,939 but imagine a scenario where 350 people arrive onto a remote island, 910 00:46:57,022 --> 00:46:59,066 are herded onto yellow school buses, 911 00:46:59,149 --> 00:47:01,318 brought to a festival site that's unfinished 912 00:47:01,401 --> 00:47:03,278 and realize they've no place to sleep 913 00:47:03,529 --> 00:47:06,114 and to make it worse, they have no way to get home, 914 00:47:06,198 --> 00:47:08,784 because we don't have any charter flights booked back for them. 915 00:47:08,867 --> 00:47:13,247 "I know you're worried about the press, but there's no worse situation than that." 916 00:47:13,914 --> 00:47:15,040 And the response? 917 00:47:15,541 --> 00:47:16,583 The response was, 918 00:47:16,750 --> 00:47:19,586 "At least they'll see your smiling face and yoga skills." 919 00:47:21,338 --> 00:47:23,882 'Cause I was supposed to be the yoga instructor for the event. 920 00:47:25,259 --> 00:47:26,260 Okay. 921 00:47:26,385 --> 00:47:28,720 Like, what am I supposed to do? You know? Like, I'm... 922 00:47:30,472 --> 00:47:31,472 "All right, sure." 923 00:47:37,312 --> 00:47:39,815 Billy was under such immense financial pressure 924 00:47:40,190 --> 00:47:42,526 that he effectively had to put this festival on 925 00:47:42,609 --> 00:47:44,945 because otherwise he wasn't going to be able to repay 926 00:47:45,028 --> 00:47:48,907 any of the factor receivables that he had raised money from. 927 00:47:49,575 --> 00:47:52,953 It's the same thing as an individual going to a loan shark. 928 00:47:53,537 --> 00:47:56,498 No matter what happened, this money was going to be owed. 929 00:47:57,541 --> 00:48:00,419 They had told investors who had already given money 930 00:48:00,502 --> 00:48:03,213 that, in the event of a cancellation, that they would be covered 931 00:48:03,297 --> 00:48:04,548 when in fact they weren't. 932 00:48:04,631 --> 00:48:08,552 And they didn't have festival insurance, so canceling really wasn't an option. 933 00:48:09,928 --> 00:48:11,805 I mean, this was truly a disaster. 934 00:48:12,306 --> 00:48:14,099 And events always feel like a disaster. 935 00:48:14,182 --> 00:48:17,352 They always feel like everything's going wrong and you're putting out fires. 936 00:48:18,061 --> 00:48:23,525 The draw, the appeal was to be part of creating something that was special. 937 00:48:23,609 --> 00:48:29,114 And that desire overcame my inner wisdom, which was like, "This is a mess." 938 00:48:29,823 --> 00:48:32,701 The atmosphere that was cultivated there was that... 939 00:48:33,076 --> 00:48:35,662 nobody, no matter what, 940 00:48:35,746 --> 00:48:38,290 was able to cross them and tell them, "No." 941 00:48:38,916 --> 00:48:41,627 Had we not pulled off these kind of crazy things 942 00:48:41,710 --> 00:48:45,505 like Andy finding this caterer with no time left, 943 00:48:45,797 --> 00:48:47,341 then there would've been no festival. 944 00:48:47,841 --> 00:48:50,260 It's possible that by solving problems, 945 00:48:50,344 --> 00:48:55,015 we were just enabling them to continue to create this monster. 946 00:49:00,437 --> 00:49:03,148 Did Andy ever tell you how he had to get the water out? 947 00:49:03,690 --> 00:49:04,690 Oh, yeah. 948 00:49:05,609 --> 00:49:07,778 Did Andy tell you how they had to get the water out? 949 00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:09,320 Yeah. 950 00:49:09,821 --> 00:49:12,783 It was, like, fucking crazy. 951 00:49:13,492 --> 00:49:15,702 I'm not going to talk about that. 952 00:49:15,786 --> 00:49:17,621 Let me tell you something. We had... 953 00:49:17,704 --> 00:49:19,998 four containers filled... 954 00:49:20,082 --> 00:49:24,002 Four 18-wheeler trucks filled with Evian water, 955 00:49:24,086 --> 00:49:26,213 but I had left the week before for two days 956 00:49:26,296 --> 00:49:28,423 to go to meetings in Bermuda for the America's Cup. 957 00:49:28,507 --> 00:49:32,177 And when I came back, I'd missed the big meeting with Customs, 958 00:49:32,260 --> 00:49:34,596 and of course Customs had said to Billy and the gang, 959 00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:38,725 "You need to pay us $175,000 in cash today 960 00:49:38,809 --> 00:49:40,477 for us to release the water." 961 00:49:41,728 --> 00:49:42,729 I went down. 962 00:49:42,980 --> 00:49:44,106 Well, Billy called me. 963 00:49:44,272 --> 00:49:46,483 I'm gonna speak completely, you know... 964 00:49:46,817 --> 00:49:49,069 This won't go that far, I'm sure, but... 965 00:49:49,277 --> 00:49:52,614 Billy called and said, "Andy, we need you to take one big thing for the team." 966 00:49:52,739 --> 00:49:53,740 And I said... 967 00:49:54,449 --> 00:49:56,868 "My gosh, I've been taking something for the team every day." 968 00:49:56,952 --> 00:50:00,872 He said, "Well, you're our wonderful gay leader", 969 00:50:01,081 --> 00:50:03,709 and we need you to go down. Will you... 970 00:50:04,251 --> 00:50:05,251 suck... 971 00:50:05,544 --> 00:50:06,544 dick... 972 00:50:07,170 --> 00:50:08,922 "to fix this water problem?" 973 00:50:09,006 --> 00:50:11,925 And I said, "Billy, what?" And he said, "Andy, 974 00:50:12,009 --> 00:50:14,553 if you will go down and suck Cunningham's dick, 975 00:50:14,636 --> 00:50:16,388 who's the head of Customs, 976 00:50:16,722 --> 00:50:20,517 and get him to clear all of the containers with water, 977 00:50:20,809 --> 00:50:22,269 "you will save this festival." 978 00:50:22,352 --> 00:50:26,231 And I literally drove home, took a shower, 979 00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:28,775 I drank some mouthwash. 980 00:50:28,859 --> 00:50:31,778 I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm really..." And I got into my car 981 00:50:31,903 --> 00:50:34,948 to drive across the island to take one for the team... 982 00:50:35,323 --> 00:50:39,202 and I got to his office, fully prepared to suck his dick. 983 00:50:39,953 --> 00:50:42,122 He couldn't have been nicer. He's like, "Andy, listen", 984 00:50:42,622 --> 00:50:45,459 I will release all the water, I will let you serve it, 985 00:50:45,625 --> 00:50:48,378 but I want to be want to be one of the first people to be paid 986 00:50:48,462 --> 00:50:52,549 this import fee for what you're doing," and I said, "Okay, great." 987 00:50:52,632 --> 00:50:55,969 And I got back and I had all the water that we needed. 988 00:50:58,013 --> 00:51:01,099 Can you imagine, in my 30 years of a career, 989 00:51:01,516 --> 00:51:03,351 that this is what I was going to do? 990 00:51:03,435 --> 00:51:06,688 I was going to do that, honestly, to save the festival. 991 00:51:08,398 --> 00:51:11,276 Major news in the vlog today. Tomorrow morning, 5:30, 992 00:51:11,359 --> 00:51:14,571 half of the Jerry Media crew is going to Fyre Festival in Bahamas 993 00:51:14,738 --> 00:51:16,031 on a remote island. 994 00:51:16,114 --> 00:51:18,176 We've been doing their marketing for the last couple of months, 995 00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:19,720 so excited to see this thing take off. 996 00:51:19,785 --> 00:51:21,203 I think it's going to be f... epic. 997 00:51:22,621 --> 00:51:24,956 We went down with about four of the teammates 998 00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,000 the day before the festival. 999 00:51:27,292 --> 00:51:30,295 Mick, the good news about this plane? If we want to leave, just... 1000 00:51:30,670 --> 00:51:32,798 take the window off and just head out. 1001 00:51:32,881 --> 00:51:34,925 This is great. This is a great flight. 1002 00:51:35,008 --> 00:51:38,386 I remember the feeling, getting off the plane, we were so excited. 1003 00:51:38,470 --> 00:51:40,180 "Finally here, this is happening." 1004 00:51:41,765 --> 00:51:43,892 There's literally no cars on the island. 1005 00:51:43,975 --> 00:51:47,270 We couldn't rent one. They didn't hook us up with one, so... 1006 00:51:47,521 --> 00:51:50,732 this is us. We're hitch-hiking for the next couple of days. 1007 00:51:50,941 --> 00:51:52,526 I was down there yesterday 1008 00:51:52,818 --> 00:51:56,279 and I said, "Man, this ain't gonna be finished for no Friday." 1009 00:51:56,613 --> 00:51:58,907 So much work, so much things! 1010 00:51:59,658 --> 00:52:00,992 And so little time. 1011 00:52:01,493 --> 00:52:03,620 So, none of this was here. All this sand is new. 1012 00:52:03,703 --> 00:52:05,872 - This was all put down... - Yeah, I can tell. 1013 00:52:05,956 --> 00:52:07,457 A few days ago. Can you? 1014 00:52:09,501 --> 00:52:12,546 It's all peaking on this last day because it's going to happen. 1015 00:52:12,629 --> 00:52:14,923 We all know now that this is an inevitability, 1016 00:52:15,006 --> 00:52:17,551 that this event is going to happen, no matter what. 1017 00:52:18,009 --> 00:52:19,386 I'm working with this Navy SEAL 1018 00:52:19,469 --> 00:52:21,471 who's telling me this is like a clusterfuck. 1019 00:52:21,596 --> 00:52:24,224 That's what he called it. "An elephant of a clusterfuck." 1020 00:52:24,307 --> 00:52:26,852 He's laughing and not even laughing, 1021 00:52:26,935 --> 00:52:31,148 just disturbed at how fucked up this is and... 1022 00:52:31,731 --> 00:52:34,359 and he's a Navy SEAL, like, come on! 1023 00:52:34,442 --> 00:52:37,237 The last 24 hours were unbelievable. 1024 00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:39,990 All I kept thinking about was Woodstock. 1025 00:52:40,407 --> 00:52:42,200 Think of that music festival. 1026 00:52:42,284 --> 00:52:45,412 Does anybody talk about the hundreds and hundreds of cars 1027 00:52:45,495 --> 00:52:47,706 that were stuck on the thruway for days? 1028 00:52:47,956 --> 00:52:50,041 Does anybody talk about the mudslides? 1029 00:52:50,625 --> 00:52:54,713 How many people died of drug overdoses? Does anybody talk about the lack of food? 1030 00:52:54,796 --> 00:52:55,797 Almost no water. 1031 00:52:55,881 --> 00:52:58,383 Absolutely not. And I thought, "You know what?" 1032 00:52:58,466 --> 00:53:02,888 If Woodstock could get through that and, from a publicity perspective, 1033 00:53:03,388 --> 00:53:04,848 land where it did, 1034 00:53:05,265 --> 00:53:06,641 "FyreFestival can make it." 1035 00:53:07,642 --> 00:53:09,811 Well, actually we didn't sleep that night. 1036 00:53:09,895 --> 00:53:13,064 'Cause I remember exactly what happened, so... 1037 00:53:13,148 --> 00:53:16,735 we're standing outside on the porch of this mansion, 1038 00:53:16,860 --> 00:53:19,779 looking out at the ocean and it's a full moon or something 1039 00:53:20,238 --> 00:53:21,364 and it starts... 1040 00:53:21,448 --> 00:53:23,158 pouring rain. 1041 00:53:24,451 --> 00:53:25,535 Pouring rain. 1042 00:53:26,411 --> 00:53:27,537 Thunder and lightning. 1043 00:53:28,705 --> 00:53:30,290 And we just start laughing. 1044 00:53:31,166 --> 00:53:33,210 Like, belly laughs... 1045 00:53:34,753 --> 00:53:37,005 and look at each other and... 1046 00:53:37,589 --> 00:53:39,174 To this point, I'm so delirious 1047 00:53:39,257 --> 00:53:42,886 that I still am not sure that this is 100% entirely true, 1048 00:53:42,969 --> 00:53:45,096 but I remember one of our group saying, 1049 00:53:45,180 --> 00:53:47,307 "At least they won't get away with it now." 1050 00:53:47,766 --> 00:53:50,477 I honestly remember that and I don't know that that's... 1051 00:53:50,727 --> 00:53:52,103 But that's what I remember. 1052 00:53:53,146 --> 00:53:55,565 So you have to realize the site's unfinished. 1053 00:53:55,815 --> 00:53:59,361 There's mattresses all over the place getting soaked. 1054 00:53:59,903 --> 00:54:02,781 Any tent that was done is now unlivable. 1055 00:54:03,156 --> 00:54:04,783 And the guests are still coming. 1056 00:54:05,200 --> 00:54:06,826 And we have nowhere to put them. 1057 00:54:07,035 --> 00:54:09,287 The rainstorm that morning killed us. 1058 00:54:09,829 --> 00:54:13,083 Because I know the work we had done that morning and... 1059 00:54:14,084 --> 00:54:15,252 I could have cried. 1060 00:54:16,336 --> 00:54:17,587 I think I did. 1061 00:54:18,421 --> 00:54:21,424 The other funny thing that happened was we were laughing and we were like, 1062 00:54:21,508 --> 00:54:23,718 "Well at least nothing is on time in the Bahamas. 1063 00:54:23,802 --> 00:54:25,679 At least this rain... The guests will be late." 1064 00:54:25,762 --> 00:54:29,140 They were supposed to come at 6:50, the first flight got there at 6:20. 1065 00:54:29,224 --> 00:54:30,433 It was like a sick joke. 1066 00:54:31,893 --> 00:54:32,894 So... 1067 00:54:33,645 --> 00:54:36,314 So... 1068 00:54:39,901 --> 00:54:41,486 Fyre Festival, baby. Here we go. 1069 00:54:42,988 --> 00:54:44,781 About to go to... 1070 00:54:45,573 --> 00:54:46,573 Miami. 1071 00:54:46,616 --> 00:54:49,828 Miami for, like, four hours. And then where are we going? 1072 00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:52,163 - Bahamas. - Bahamas. 1073 00:54:52,247 --> 00:54:53,540 Check out my ice, baby. 1074 00:54:54,124 --> 00:54:56,835 Bahamas. We're coming for you, baby. 1075 00:54:57,502 --> 00:55:00,714 We are here in the... "private jet." 1076 00:55:01,089 --> 00:55:03,359 We thought we were going to get on one of those propeller planes, 1077 00:55:03,383 --> 00:55:04,743 like a tiny little propeller plane 1078 00:55:05,176 --> 00:55:07,095 that was in all of the video footage. 1079 00:55:07,178 --> 00:55:11,433 I didn't realize what plane we were going to be on until we were boarded. 1080 00:55:11,516 --> 00:55:13,101 And, I mean, it was like a 737. 1081 00:55:13,184 --> 00:55:17,439 My understanding, it was supposed to be this "branded jet experience," 1082 00:55:17,522 --> 00:55:19,024 which I think was a... 1083 00:55:19,232 --> 00:55:21,860 I don't know where they got it from. It was just... 1084 00:55:22,193 --> 00:55:25,322 "Oh, let's slap a logo on it and call it a day" type of thing. 1085 00:55:25,822 --> 00:55:28,408 It's actually worse than, like, really... 1086 00:55:28,491 --> 00:55:31,661 Like being low economy class. 1087 00:55:31,745 --> 00:55:34,080 It was about 4:30 when we're getting on the plane, 1088 00:55:34,164 --> 00:55:36,624 and that's when my friend looked at his phone and said, 1089 00:55:36,708 --> 00:55:38,752 "Blink-182 just pulled out. 1090 00:55:38,835 --> 00:55:41,129 Do you still want to get on the plane?" 1091 00:55:41,212 --> 00:55:43,298 And their reasoning wasn't anything like, 1092 00:55:43,590 --> 00:55:45,258 "Don't go, it's a disaster." 1093 00:55:45,342 --> 00:55:47,719 It was just like, "We don't think we can put on the show" 1094 00:55:47,802 --> 00:55:49,512 that our fans would deserve." 1095 00:55:49,596 --> 00:55:52,640 I've never been to a Blink-182 concert so I don't even know what that means. 1096 00:55:52,724 --> 00:55:55,268 So we were like, "It will be fine." 1097 00:56:00,148 --> 00:56:03,651 We all got off and landed on this beautiful island. 1098 00:56:03,735 --> 00:56:05,236 Still, nothing seemed amiss. 1099 00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:07,280 I do remember being presented a choice. 1100 00:56:07,364 --> 00:56:10,867 "Do you want to go to the campsite or do you want to go to this restaurant, 1101 00:56:10,950 --> 00:56:12,030 this beachside restaurant?" 1102 00:56:12,077 --> 00:56:14,996 An executive decision was made, I don't know by who, 1103 00:56:15,080 --> 00:56:17,665 but it was to essentially close down the campsite 1104 00:56:17,749 --> 00:56:20,752 and to reroute all of the new attendees 1105 00:56:20,835 --> 00:56:21,961 to a separate bar. 1106 00:56:22,420 --> 00:56:26,966 It was never planned. I knew of it, like, maybe 25 minutes 1107 00:56:27,050 --> 00:56:29,094 to them coming down to the restaurant. 1108 00:56:29,469 --> 00:56:32,889 Tons of buses, bussing in hundreds of their guests. 1109 00:56:32,972 --> 00:56:35,683 And they were asking, "Is this the Fyre Festival?" 1110 00:56:35,934 --> 00:56:38,520 They all thought that they were at the first step 1111 00:56:38,603 --> 00:56:40,980 of what was going to be a very exciting experience. 1112 00:56:41,272 --> 00:56:44,109 It's on this, like, beautiful beach. 1113 00:56:44,192 --> 00:56:45,735 A dock goes all the way out, 1114 00:56:45,819 --> 00:56:47,987 people are just dangling their legs, having tequila. 1115 00:56:48,071 --> 00:56:51,491 I'm looking around and I'm like, "This is the greatest decoy of all time." 1116 00:56:51,574 --> 00:56:54,327 The music playing, and the guests was just cheering on. 1117 00:56:54,411 --> 00:56:56,621 They were dancing and having a good time. 1118 00:56:56,871 --> 00:57:00,125 There was a lot of smiles and a lot of happiness over at this other bar. 1119 00:57:00,208 --> 00:57:03,503 Quite frankly, it was probably the best part of the entire experience. 1120 00:57:03,586 --> 00:57:06,297 What was happening on the campgrounds was the exact opposite. 1121 00:57:06,673 --> 00:57:09,467 Oh, my God. 1122 00:57:10,343 --> 00:57:12,262 They're soaking wet! 1123 00:57:12,637 --> 00:57:16,141 The tents are soaked, mud is sliding on the carpets. 1124 00:57:16,224 --> 00:57:20,270 What was already this kind of very loosely put together festival, 1125 00:57:20,353 --> 00:57:22,605 which was over-advertised, 1126 00:57:22,689 --> 00:57:25,817 has now devolved into something much worse. 1127 00:57:25,900 --> 00:57:28,486 We didn't have enough drivers, we didn't have enough houses, 1128 00:57:28,570 --> 00:57:31,114 we didn't have enough beds, we didn't have enough site, 1129 00:57:31,197 --> 00:57:32,407 we didn't have enough staff. 1130 00:57:32,490 --> 00:57:35,034 It was just... We were overwhelmed. 1131 00:57:35,118 --> 00:57:37,179 So I'm getting phone calls. I'm trying to charge my phone, 1132 00:57:37,203 --> 00:57:40,165 and the calls are to get me to the blue production house. 1133 00:57:40,248 --> 00:57:43,918 So I get there and it's mayhem. People are scrambling everywhere. 1134 00:57:44,002 --> 00:57:45,722 They're still outside trying to build stuff. 1135 00:57:45,795 --> 00:57:47,714 Grant was like, "You got the paper bags?" 1136 00:57:47,797 --> 00:57:50,592 Because he's like hyperventilating in the bedroom. 1137 00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:53,011 People are crying and it's all these emotions. 1138 00:57:53,094 --> 00:57:54,929 I was like, "Okay, get your shit done." 1139 00:57:55,013 --> 00:57:56,806 I'm literally getting now physically pulled 1140 00:57:56,890 --> 00:57:58,570 in different directions by the assistants. 1141 00:57:58,641 --> 00:58:00,685 "Marc, this person arrived, that person arrived. 1142 00:58:00,768 --> 00:58:02,103 We need to find them houses." 1143 00:58:02,187 --> 00:58:03,771 I thought something was wrong 1144 00:58:03,855 --> 00:58:06,941 after they held us on the beach for six hours. 1145 00:58:07,025 --> 00:58:08,860 Kinda funneling tequila down our throats. 1146 00:58:12,155 --> 00:58:13,406 They started asking, 1147 00:58:13,490 --> 00:58:15,992 "Where can I go? Where do we go?" 1148 00:58:16,075 --> 00:58:18,578 "How are we getting to the campsite? Where is the campsite? 1149 00:58:18,661 --> 00:58:19,662 Where's my luggage?" 1150 00:58:19,746 --> 00:58:20,746 And I was like, 1151 00:58:21,539 --> 00:58:23,124 "What do I tell them?" 1152 00:58:23,208 --> 00:58:26,044 You know, Billy would be in the room and he'd be kind of the CEO, 1153 00:58:26,961 --> 00:58:27,879 calling the shots. 1154 00:58:27,962 --> 00:58:31,007 Every now and then, he would walk out, go get on his four-wheeler, 1155 00:58:31,341 --> 00:58:33,801 and just ride really fast in, like, one direction. 1156 00:58:33,885 --> 00:58:35,220 Just take off. 1157 00:58:35,303 --> 00:58:38,806 And then he would come right back and walk back in without, you know, 1158 00:58:38,890 --> 00:58:42,560 a lot to talk about, but you could see he just had like bottled up energy. 1159 00:58:42,810 --> 00:58:44,646 It's time to let people in 1160 00:58:44,729 --> 00:58:46,606 and kind of see how it unfolds. 1161 00:58:53,488 --> 00:58:56,658 There was no one from Fyre Festival on the bus. 1162 00:58:56,741 --> 00:58:59,619 The bus driver just knew where to go, and he's telling us, 1163 00:58:59,702 --> 00:59:03,998 "Oh, yeah, they didn't start construction on any of this until maybe a month ago." 1164 00:59:04,082 --> 00:59:08,169 Or, "Oh, yeah, you're really in for something." 1165 00:59:08,253 --> 00:59:11,798 Just wait until you see what you're getting yourselves into." 1166 00:59:11,881 --> 00:59:15,593 Which is a very concerning thing to hear when you're on a bus 1167 00:59:15,677 --> 00:59:18,137 to you have no idea where 1168 00:59:18,221 --> 00:59:20,723 after taking a plane to God knows what island 1169 00:59:20,807 --> 00:59:22,559 with who knows what people. 1170 00:59:22,642 --> 00:59:23,642 No! 1171 00:59:26,312 --> 00:59:27,730 Turn around! 1172 00:59:27,814 --> 00:59:30,900 Turn this bus right around! 1173 00:59:31,234 --> 00:59:36,322 We see this sea of white little tents. 1174 00:59:38,241 --> 00:59:40,118 There was a disbelief on the bus. 1175 00:59:40,201 --> 00:59:43,496 A lot of people thought, "Maybe we're passing through this area. 1176 00:59:43,580 --> 00:59:45,331 Our villas are just on the other side." 1177 00:59:45,415 --> 00:59:49,961 And it was the bus driver who said, "Oh, no. That's where you're staying." 1178 00:59:50,044 --> 00:59:52,880 It was like, "Oh, my God!" 1179 00:59:52,964 --> 00:59:56,426 - Look at the beds! - Oh, Jesus! 1180 00:59:56,509 --> 00:59:59,387 This festival is never happening again, I hope they know that. 1181 00:59:59,470 --> 01:00:01,556 They kinda drive us around the little lagoon 1182 01:00:01,639 --> 01:00:04,851 and we get to that blue house that I guess was their headquarters, 1183 01:00:04,934 --> 01:00:07,145 and there was just a line of hundreds of people. 1184 01:00:07,228 --> 01:00:09,897 We have literally been standing here for, like, an hour. 1185 01:00:09,981 --> 01:00:12,108 We didn't know what we were standing in line for, 1186 01:00:12,191 --> 01:00:13,401 but we kept standing there, 1187 01:00:13,484 --> 01:00:16,279 and some people just had bottles of liquor. 1188 01:00:17,739 --> 01:00:21,117 Billy came up to me and told me to just blast the music. 1189 01:00:22,410 --> 01:00:24,579 As loud as I possibly could. 1190 01:00:24,662 --> 01:00:29,000 That's one of the most annoying parts. You could just hear this pulsating noise. 1191 01:00:29,083 --> 01:00:31,753 And, you know, every five minutes it would be... 1192 01:00:31,836 --> 01:00:34,631 Like, one of the hostesses or one of the staff that would come, 1193 01:00:34,714 --> 01:00:38,426 "Please, we cannot hear anything as we're trying to check in these people." 1194 01:00:38,509 --> 01:00:40,136 And so we would lower the music. 1195 01:00:40,219 --> 01:00:42,597 After five minutes, Billy would come back. 1196 01:00:42,680 --> 01:00:44,891 "Raise the music." 1197 01:00:45,433 --> 01:00:48,186 Everyone was, like, arguing, you know? 1198 01:00:48,269 --> 01:00:51,105 Everyone was making noise or like, "Where I'm gonna stay? 1199 01:00:51,189 --> 01:00:53,316 What am I gonna do? What am I gonna eat?" 1200 01:00:53,733 --> 01:00:58,071 The attendees were looking towards anything, anyone for direction. 1201 01:00:59,405 --> 01:01:00,865 Guys, stay here. 1202 01:01:01,783 --> 01:01:04,035 Billy McFarland stood up on a table. 1203 01:01:04,118 --> 01:01:07,830 So I just kind of walked up and I said, "Where do you go if you have a villa?" 1204 01:01:07,914 --> 01:01:10,792 And he said, "Everybody that has a villa, just go grab a tent." 1205 01:01:10,875 --> 01:01:12,585 And so this whole mass of people... 1206 01:01:12,710 --> 01:01:14,420 I was like, "It's a free-for-all." 1207 01:01:14,962 --> 01:01:18,341 Everybody started sprinting, running to their tents, grabbing bags. 1208 01:01:18,424 --> 01:01:19,342 We heard this voice, 1209 01:01:19,425 --> 01:01:21,386 we heard this rush, then we heard the screaming. 1210 01:01:21,469 --> 01:01:25,390 We walked out and there was just this mass of people going to tents. 1211 01:01:25,473 --> 01:01:27,934 It's an absolute circus. I don't know what's going on. 1212 01:01:28,017 --> 01:01:30,577 I'm not getting off this ship until I know what's going on there. 1213 01:01:30,645 --> 01:01:35,191 It's 8:36 and people are now just getting their luggage. 1214 01:01:35,358 --> 01:01:37,568 These are the lockers that are just being set up. 1215 01:01:37,652 --> 01:01:41,489 They're taking off the plastic that are supposed to hold our valuables. 1216 01:01:41,864 --> 01:01:44,992 There was no one who planned out luggage tags. 1217 01:01:45,076 --> 01:01:47,412 They brought out the luggage in two big containers. 1218 01:01:47,495 --> 01:01:50,373 Like truck containers. Eighteen-wheeler containers. 1219 01:01:50,456 --> 01:01:53,835 They just said, "Everyone, grab your bag." And it was just a frenzy. 1220 01:01:54,252 --> 01:01:56,254 Everyone was just looking for, you know, 1221 01:01:56,337 --> 01:01:58,715 their black bag amongst a sea of black bags. 1222 01:01:58,798 --> 01:02:00,341 And if they had to climb over you 1223 01:02:00,425 --> 01:02:03,177 and stomp over you to get their piece of luggage, so be it. 1224 01:02:03,553 --> 01:02:07,306 This is an absolute disaster. 1225 01:02:07,932 --> 01:02:09,809 Where do you... Yo! 1226 01:02:14,063 --> 01:02:16,691 We do not want to be on the perimeter, I promise you. 1227 01:02:17,108 --> 01:02:18,359 We didn't want neighbors. 1228 01:02:18,443 --> 01:02:20,737 Our strategy from there was to kind of ransack 1229 01:02:20,820 --> 01:02:22,238 all the tents around us. 1230 01:02:22,321 --> 01:02:24,615 Just started poking holes and flipping mattresses. 1231 01:02:24,699 --> 01:02:26,659 My buddy pissed on a few of the beds. 1232 01:02:27,452 --> 01:02:28,494 Shit got crazy. 1233 01:02:28,578 --> 01:02:31,497 People was just walking with mattresses on top of their head. 1234 01:02:31,914 --> 01:02:34,250 Walking from this one around to that one. 1235 01:02:34,333 --> 01:02:36,502 It became this looting mentality. 1236 01:02:36,586 --> 01:02:40,298 One woman had a whole pallet of toilet paper. 1237 01:02:40,381 --> 01:02:44,010 Somebody else had this whole giant box of pillows 1238 01:02:44,093 --> 01:02:46,512 that she was lugging back to her tent. 1239 01:02:46,596 --> 01:02:49,682 It became very barbaric, in a sense. 1240 01:03:04,155 --> 01:03:09,202 Driving around, it was the most eerie feeling in the world. 1241 01:03:09,285 --> 01:03:10,578 There was no lights. 1242 01:03:11,287 --> 01:03:13,164 It looked like a horror scene. 1243 01:03:13,247 --> 01:03:16,375 People were scattered throughout that area and spent one night. 1244 01:03:16,459 --> 01:03:18,669 My guess is most of them never went to sleep. 1245 01:03:19,670 --> 01:03:21,464 Some woman came in 1246 01:03:21,547 --> 01:03:24,884 in a panic at one point in the dead of night. 1247 01:03:24,967 --> 01:03:26,803 She couldn't find her friend. 1248 01:03:26,886 --> 01:03:30,181 She was lost, she seemed like she was drunk. I mean... 1249 01:03:31,849 --> 01:03:34,185 But there's nothing you can do to help a person like that. 1250 01:03:34,268 --> 01:03:36,354 You know, I don't know where I am either. 1251 01:03:36,938 --> 01:03:40,233 And there was a definite turning point, I would say, 1252 01:03:40,316 --> 01:03:41,776 when the sun went down, 1253 01:03:42,151 --> 01:03:43,903 when the camaraderie was over. 1254 01:03:44,862 --> 01:03:46,823 All I know is that, by the end of the night, 1255 01:03:46,906 --> 01:03:48,324 all of the tents were full. 1256 01:03:48,407 --> 01:03:51,160 And this is with one-third of the guests we were supposed to have. 1257 01:03:52,078 --> 01:03:53,788 I remember just leaving this place 1258 01:03:53,871 --> 01:03:56,415 and looking at this image of the campground 1259 01:03:56,582 --> 01:04:00,795 for the first time feeling what an epic failure really is. 1260 01:04:06,843 --> 01:04:09,178 So, as I was tweeting about the event, 1261 01:04:09,262 --> 01:04:11,389 just to be like, "This is what's going on." 1262 01:04:11,472 --> 01:04:14,517 I mean, "Here's the lockers, here's the concierge stand." 1263 01:04:14,600 --> 01:04:16,477 This is what Fyre Festival is." 1264 01:04:17,311 --> 01:04:19,772 The tweets just started going viral. 1265 01:04:21,649 --> 01:04:25,194 It was just kind of the perfect thing to consume in real-time. 1266 01:04:27,905 --> 01:04:30,741 Then I saw the Twitter post. 1267 01:04:31,617 --> 01:04:32,827 The cheese sandwich. 1268 01:04:34,996 --> 01:04:37,623 That was when I knew this was done. 1269 01:04:40,126 --> 01:04:42,295 I remember The New York Times came out with an article 1270 01:04:42,378 --> 01:04:44,098 that talked about this entire Fyre Festival. 1271 01:04:44,171 --> 01:04:45,798 They talked about it very matter-of-fact, 1272 01:04:45,882 --> 01:04:47,174 from an operational perspective. 1273 01:04:47,675 --> 01:04:50,803 What they didn't talk about, which I think was something that was missed, 1274 01:04:50,887 --> 01:04:54,557 was a couple of powerful models posting an orange tile 1275 01:04:54,640 --> 01:04:57,727 is what essentially built this entire festival, 1276 01:04:58,060 --> 01:05:01,022 and then one kid with probably 400 followers 1277 01:05:01,105 --> 01:05:03,441 posted a picture of cheese on toast 1278 01:05:03,524 --> 01:05:06,235 that trended and essentially ripped down the festival. 1279 01:05:06,527 --> 01:05:10,031 All I know is that people were stoked to watch this thing go down. 1280 01:05:17,079 --> 01:05:19,040 There definitely was kind of like 1281 01:05:19,123 --> 01:05:21,751 almost a gleeful response on social media 1282 01:05:21,834 --> 01:05:23,085 from people that weren't there. 1283 01:05:23,169 --> 01:05:25,588 The way that it seemed like it happened is funny, you know? 1284 01:05:25,671 --> 01:05:30,134 A Lord of the Flies situation with, you know, Instagram's top influencers. 1285 01:05:31,636 --> 01:05:35,264 Grant was still calling orders and asking us to do things. 1286 01:05:35,765 --> 01:05:38,768 I said, "No, Grant, we're not posting any more promises." 1287 01:05:38,851 --> 01:05:41,479 We're not trying to propel this vision any further." 1288 01:05:41,562 --> 01:05:43,856 You know, "This thing is dead." 1289 01:05:44,315 --> 01:05:47,693 Then I think, like, three minutes later, I get a text from Grant 1290 01:05:47,777 --> 01:05:51,113 introducing me to their new social media team. 1291 01:05:51,197 --> 01:05:53,407 "Can you please send him over the credentials?" 1292 01:05:55,159 --> 01:05:57,870 I just remember calling Ja - he wasn't even there yet - 1293 01:05:57,954 --> 01:06:01,082 and saying, like, "There's, like, no way this is happening. 1294 01:06:01,165 --> 01:06:04,460 I'm sending out the email. I really don't care at this point." 1295 01:06:04,543 --> 01:06:07,088 And then I told Billy I cancelled the acts 1296 01:06:07,171 --> 01:06:10,675 and at that point, he knew everything had fallen apart already. 1297 01:06:11,676 --> 01:06:15,221 And he was pacing back and forth out on the terrace. 1298 01:06:15,304 --> 01:06:17,640 I could see that there were tears in his eyes, 1299 01:06:17,723 --> 01:06:20,935 but that was the first time that any of us had seen that. 1300 01:06:21,018 --> 01:06:22,436 Through thick and thin, 1301 01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:25,564 he stayed so positive and it wasn't until that day... 1302 01:06:26,357 --> 01:06:30,444 that things started to crumble, that he really started to get it. 1303 01:06:31,529 --> 01:06:34,073 I mean, he went from, two days before, 1304 01:06:34,156 --> 01:06:36,575 thinking he was the entrepreneur of our decade 1305 01:06:37,118 --> 01:06:41,288 to essentially being a massive viral disgrace and joke. 1306 01:06:41,580 --> 01:06:44,542 I go into the production house, and, like, Grant's crying 1307 01:06:44,625 --> 01:06:48,671 and Carola just looks like she's been like hit by a truck. 1308 01:06:49,213 --> 01:06:53,384 Grant stayed and he was talking about drafting up their official response 1309 01:06:53,467 --> 01:06:57,471 to what had happened, and it was like, "Due to circumstances out of our control," 1310 01:06:57,555 --> 01:07:01,809 and I remember Jorge looks at him and he's like, "Do not lie again." 1311 01:07:02,018 --> 01:07:04,437 This is your chance to tell the truth. 1312 01:07:05,354 --> 01:07:08,774 "Don't say 'out of our control.' This was perfectly in our control." 1313 01:07:09,233 --> 01:07:10,234 Major update. 1314 01:07:11,736 --> 01:07:14,572 Fyre Festival is officially cancelled. 1315 01:07:16,657 --> 01:07:18,951 - Just got the news, guys. - Officially? 1316 01:07:19,035 --> 01:07:20,911 - Is it really? - It's what Mick said. 1317 01:07:21,245 --> 01:07:24,206 Apparently, there's no food on the island. They're not letting people in. 1318 01:07:24,290 --> 01:07:26,917 People who just landed here have to go back to Miami. 1319 01:07:27,376 --> 01:07:29,837 They were just trying to get out at that point. 1320 01:07:30,004 --> 01:07:33,257 Part of the problem was that there weren't planes to take them out 1321 01:07:33,340 --> 01:07:36,886 and the airport was totally overwhelmed with all these people 1322 01:07:36,969 --> 01:07:39,013 and they eventually locked them in 1323 01:07:39,096 --> 01:07:42,349 and kept them overnight without any food or water. ♪ 1324 01:07:42,433 --> 01:07:44,643 Okay. How long until water comes? 1325 01:07:45,686 --> 01:07:46,687 And food. 1326 01:07:47,104 --> 01:07:48,731 When do we get our money back? 1327 01:07:49,356 --> 01:07:51,525 It was just this sort of real-time saga 1328 01:07:51,609 --> 01:07:54,153 that started at six o'clock in the afternoon. 1329 01:07:55,112 --> 01:07:57,907 And in the morning, the media started picking it up. 1330 01:07:58,407 --> 01:08:01,619 This morning, the organizers of the failed Fyre Festival 1331 01:08:01,702 --> 01:08:02,787 are feeling the heat. 1332 01:08:02,870 --> 01:08:05,498 We took a big jump here, a big risk, 1333 01:08:05,581 --> 01:08:07,374 and V1 has failed. 1334 01:08:07,458 --> 01:08:10,169 People were making fun of it, making fun of us. 1335 01:08:10,252 --> 01:08:13,672 Do you feel bad for the people that did spend money and go to this... 1336 01:08:15,216 --> 01:08:20,846 If you had thousands of dollars to go on a trip to see Blink-182... 1337 01:08:22,515 --> 01:08:25,559 that's on you. That is Darwinism at its finest. 1338 01:08:29,146 --> 01:08:32,149 At that point, all of their promises started to collapse, 1339 01:08:32,233 --> 01:08:35,986 so the car rental companies came and took the keys, 1340 01:08:36,070 --> 01:08:40,991 the house owners came and demanded that their properties were returned. 1341 01:08:41,075 --> 01:08:44,161 One of my head construction guys came to me and said, "Andy", 1342 01:08:44,245 --> 01:08:46,372 I need $26,000 in cash, 1343 01:08:46,455 --> 01:08:47,998 "and I want it right now." 1344 01:08:48,082 --> 01:08:50,960 He was a big guy and he followed me. 1345 01:08:51,252 --> 01:08:53,838 And then I went back to the tent and he followed me. 1346 01:08:53,921 --> 01:08:56,590 I had the head of the Bahamian Tourism Board, 1347 01:08:56,674 --> 01:08:58,634 the Minister of Finance 1348 01:08:58,717 --> 01:09:02,138 and the head of the University of the Bahamas 1349 01:09:02,221 --> 01:09:05,558 waiting for $1 million that they wanted to be paid. 1350 01:09:06,475 --> 01:09:10,146 There was a huge workforce of people that had been working under the sun 1351 01:09:10,229 --> 01:09:14,191 for, you know, a month, a month-and-a-half without being paid... 1352 01:09:14,275 --> 01:09:16,694 that as soon as realized that, you know, 1353 01:09:16,777 --> 01:09:19,113 all of this was collapsing, 1354 01:09:19,196 --> 01:09:22,491 started, rightfully so, demanding their payment, 1355 01:09:22,575 --> 01:09:25,703 so there was a sort of a strike. 1356 01:09:26,328 --> 01:09:29,790 And we get word that there's an angry mob of locals 1357 01:09:29,874 --> 01:09:31,584 coming down through the gates. 1358 01:09:31,917 --> 01:09:34,128 They're pissed off and they want their money. 1359 01:09:35,713 --> 01:09:38,382 And it's now, like, five of us in the production house 1360 01:09:38,465 --> 01:09:39,508 There was about, 1361 01:09:39,592 --> 01:09:42,469 I don't know, I want to say 30 people coming down. 1362 01:09:43,929 --> 01:09:45,764 And Billy is nowhere to be seen. 1363 01:09:46,307 --> 01:09:49,101 There were constant rumors flying around of where Billy was. 1364 01:09:49,185 --> 01:09:51,896 He was like Dr. Evil. It was like, "Billy's on a yacht." 1365 01:09:51,979 --> 01:09:53,981 "Billy's been at the Grand Isle the whole time." 1366 01:09:54,064 --> 01:09:55,691 "Billy's in Miami." "Billy's in jail." 1367 01:09:55,774 --> 01:09:58,110 Like, everyone was kind of like guessing where Billy was. 1368 01:09:58,444 --> 01:10:00,487 I didn't even know where Billy went. 1369 01:10:00,571 --> 01:10:04,116 I went to the house and it was, like, literally cleaned out, 1370 01:10:04,200 --> 01:10:06,952 and I was like, "Yo, where's Billy?" 1371 01:10:07,411 --> 01:10:10,664 After the locals realized they weren't going to get paid, 1372 01:10:10,748 --> 01:10:12,750 some of them started putting hits out on people, 1373 01:10:12,833 --> 01:10:14,877 either to take them hostage and then get ransom 1374 01:10:14,960 --> 01:10:16,712 or just to hurt and injure. 1375 01:10:16,795 --> 01:10:18,672 The management team looked left and right 1376 01:10:18,756 --> 01:10:24,011 and suddenly it was sort of... The "save yourself" mode kicked in. 1377 01:10:24,428 --> 01:10:27,223 And I literally traded clothes 1378 01:10:27,556 --> 01:10:30,643 with one of the employees that had been working with me 1379 01:10:30,726 --> 01:10:32,186 and I hid behind a urinal. 1380 01:10:32,269 --> 01:10:33,938 Someone pulled up in an old car, 1381 01:10:34,021 --> 01:10:36,398 I jumped into the back and lay down on the back seat 1382 01:10:36,482 --> 01:10:38,651 so I could at least get out of the village. 1383 01:10:38,817 --> 01:10:40,736 Because I couldn't play Mother Teresa. 1384 01:10:40,819 --> 01:10:42,404 I couldn't fix this problem. 1385 01:10:42,488 --> 01:10:45,950 But I needed to go somewhere and find safety. 1386 01:10:46,617 --> 01:10:50,579 When they realized this thing came to an abrupt stop, 1387 01:10:50,746 --> 01:10:53,791 they all leave those rent-a-cars running 1388 01:10:53,874 --> 01:10:55,834 with the keys in the ignition. 1389 01:10:55,918 --> 01:10:59,505 I talked to one guy who said the door couldn't get open, 1390 01:10:59,588 --> 01:11:03,759 so a lady kicked the door and ran to the airplane. 1391 01:11:03,842 --> 01:11:06,845 So they knew that trouble was ahead. 1392 01:11:10,099 --> 01:11:11,684 People started to come to me 1393 01:11:12,142 --> 01:11:13,644 for, like, money. Like... 1394 01:11:14,645 --> 01:11:15,688 "You owe us. 1395 01:11:16,063 --> 01:11:17,064 Where's the money?" 1396 01:11:17,940 --> 01:11:20,985 "I don't know, but they're gone. I don't know what to do." 1397 01:11:21,485 --> 01:11:26,073 I called Billy, I was talking to Billy. Billy said, "Don't worry, I'll handle it." 1398 01:11:26,198 --> 01:11:29,535 Day after day passed. You know, people were pulling up to my house. 1399 01:11:29,618 --> 01:11:32,496 They were getting mad for this money. Like, literally mad. 1400 01:11:32,997 --> 01:11:36,083 I thought it was going to end up in some blows getting thrown. 1401 01:11:37,042 --> 01:11:39,503 I was like, "Fuck this, I'm out." 1402 01:11:40,170 --> 01:11:43,799 I packed my shit and I was fucking on the next boat. 1403 01:11:43,882 --> 01:11:45,926 You know? "I can't handle it no more." 1404 01:11:54,059 --> 01:11:57,938 I definitely had a post-traumatic syndrome, 1405 01:11:58,022 --> 01:12:01,191 like many of us did, for weeks and weeks 1406 01:12:01,275 --> 01:12:03,777 and a lot of it was a guilt feeling of, 1407 01:12:03,861 --> 01:12:05,821 "Did I abandon everybody?" 1408 01:12:07,698 --> 01:12:10,159 I was the one that would continue to say, "Listen", 1409 01:12:10,242 --> 01:12:12,411 I have been working with Billy 1410 01:12:12,953 --> 01:12:15,247 for four or five years now. Trust him. 1411 01:12:15,331 --> 01:12:18,751 "This kid is amazing and I think we can pull this off." 1412 01:12:19,209 --> 01:12:22,796 And we didn't, and I felt definitely, 1413 01:12:23,255 --> 01:12:25,716 as I was able to reflect when I got home, 1414 01:12:25,799 --> 01:12:30,721 that I had probably led a lot of kids on. 1415 01:12:32,389 --> 01:12:34,975 You know, you just go with somebody's... 1416 01:12:35,351 --> 01:12:38,270 It's that energy, and the belief system, 1417 01:12:38,354 --> 01:12:40,606 and you just go and you go and you go. 1418 01:12:40,689 --> 01:12:42,983 And then when do you stop? And no, 1419 01:12:43,609 --> 01:12:45,652 I never thought it would end like this. 1420 01:12:46,278 --> 01:12:49,448 I don't think anybody did. If we did, we wouldn't have done it. 1421 01:12:56,080 --> 01:12:58,207 First, I just want to give 1422 01:12:58,290 --> 01:13:01,919 a big apology for how the festival turned out. 1423 01:13:02,503 --> 01:13:05,130 This is obviously the exact opposite 1424 01:13:05,214 --> 01:13:08,050 of what we were all striving for. 1425 01:13:08,133 --> 01:13:09,510 I made it back home Monday, 1426 01:13:09,593 --> 01:13:11,095 and came to the Fyre office, 1427 01:13:11,178 --> 01:13:13,180 and that's when we had the teamwide meeting. 1428 01:13:13,847 --> 01:13:15,808 We have to rebrand the platform. 1429 01:13:16,100 --> 01:13:19,061 My orthodontist has read about the festival. 1430 01:13:19,228 --> 01:13:21,355 And he asked me what I did on the festival. 1431 01:13:21,688 --> 01:13:25,609 Right now, yes, we are the fucking laughing stock of everything. 1432 01:13:25,692 --> 01:13:27,820 We are the "Scam Fyre." 1433 01:13:27,903 --> 01:13:32,157 But that might not be the case after we fucking put our plan in play 1434 01:13:32,241 --> 01:13:33,826 and start to spin it. 1435 01:13:33,909 --> 01:13:38,288 They used Samsung as an example of how, you know, "This is just some bad PR." 1436 01:13:38,497 --> 01:13:41,250 "Samsung's out here blowing people's faces off with cell phones, 1437 01:13:41,333 --> 01:13:43,085 but they're still selling cell phones." 1438 01:13:43,168 --> 01:13:46,046 They were kind of trying to make it seem like we would overcome this. 1439 01:13:46,130 --> 01:13:48,507 We can't dwell on how we fucked up. 1440 01:13:48,590 --> 01:13:50,843 We can't dwell on what made it go wrong. 1441 01:13:50,926 --> 01:13:53,345 We gotta dwell on how we make it better in the future. 1442 01:13:53,429 --> 01:13:57,349 The vast majority of us on this phone call were not involved with the festival, 1443 01:13:57,433 --> 01:14:00,686 and then... Or actively told not to be involved. 1444 01:14:00,936 --> 01:14:01,936 So it was... 1445 01:14:02,271 --> 01:14:04,606 painful to be honest. We put, you know, 1446 01:14:04,690 --> 01:14:07,860 a big, very talented team, 1447 01:14:07,943 --> 01:14:10,404 put a ton of hours into that software. 1448 01:14:11,572 --> 01:14:13,615 The reality is that I just believed in the core app 1449 01:14:13,699 --> 01:14:14,992 that we're building so much, 1450 01:14:15,075 --> 01:14:17,703 that I was blind to a lot of what was going on internally 1451 01:14:17,786 --> 01:14:18,829 with what we were doing. 1452 01:14:18,912 --> 01:14:22,416 I mean, it was something that we worked on for an entire year. 1453 01:14:23,375 --> 01:14:28,255 And because of the festival, we lost everything within seconds. 1454 01:14:29,006 --> 01:14:31,258 Is there any way that the product can be built 1455 01:14:31,341 --> 01:14:35,095 - while we take a step back? - No. Absolutely not. 1456 01:14:35,762 --> 01:14:39,433 He was saying, "We are a family, it's time for us to band together." 1457 01:14:39,516 --> 01:14:42,853 And I was feeling like that was so manipulative. 1458 01:14:42,936 --> 01:14:45,522 We're not a family, you won't even tell me anything! 1459 01:14:45,606 --> 01:14:48,192 You've completely violated all the trust that we had 1460 01:14:48,275 --> 01:14:51,028 in the product, in the company, in the brand and in you 1461 01:14:51,111 --> 01:14:55,240 and public reception is a separate and almost unrelated problem. 1462 01:14:55,574 --> 01:14:56,574 Come on, guys! 1463 01:14:56,783 --> 01:15:00,412 There's a lot of smart people on this fucking phone call, man. 1464 01:15:00,871 --> 01:15:03,749 Let's think of how to dig ourselves out of this shit, man. 1465 01:15:04,500 --> 01:15:07,252 We didn't kill anybody, nobody got hurt. 1466 01:15:07,336 --> 01:15:09,838 We made a mistake, we'll get past it. 1467 01:15:10,422 --> 01:15:12,090 I mean, granted, nobody died, 1468 01:15:12,174 --> 01:15:15,594 but we did flat-out lie to the public about what we're giving them. 1469 01:15:16,094 --> 01:15:17,346 I mean, that's fraud. 1470 01:15:18,472 --> 01:15:21,725 Like, and that's not okay as a company operates. 1471 01:15:22,309 --> 01:15:23,519 That's not fraud. 1472 01:15:25,145 --> 01:15:26,313 That's not fraud. 1473 01:15:26,939 --> 01:15:30,192 That is, uh... I would call that... 1474 01:15:30,275 --> 01:15:31,652 "false advertising." 1475 01:15:35,322 --> 01:15:36,949 As we were getting on the plane, 1476 01:15:37,032 --> 01:15:40,786 I think I tweeted something like, "See you later, Fyre Festival. 1477 01:15:40,869 --> 01:15:43,413 You'll be hearing from Stacy Miller, my lawyer." 1478 01:15:43,497 --> 01:15:45,707 I thought to myself, "That's a little strange." 1479 01:15:45,791 --> 01:15:48,377 So I looked on Facebook and Facebook was going crazy 1480 01:15:48,460 --> 01:15:52,422 with this Fyre Festival, of which I had never even heard about. 1481 01:15:52,506 --> 01:15:54,675 And, the day after, it was announced 1482 01:15:54,758 --> 01:15:58,011 that there was a $100 million class action lawsuit that was filed. 1483 01:15:58,220 --> 01:16:00,389 In my experience with class action lawsuits, 1484 01:16:00,472 --> 01:16:03,350 it was not going to get resolved anytime soon. 1485 01:16:03,433 --> 01:16:05,310 So we decided to file independently. 1486 01:16:06,186 --> 01:16:08,272 The suit was for committing fraud 1487 01:16:08,355 --> 01:16:10,899 saying, "Look at how great, this is going to be," 1488 01:16:10,983 --> 01:16:13,694 when they knew all along it was going to be 1489 01:16:13,777 --> 01:16:15,946 nothing close to what was advertised. 1490 01:16:16,530 --> 01:16:18,156 I feel very strongly that 1491 01:16:18,240 --> 01:16:19,908 if I had bought tickets to the festival, 1492 01:16:19,992 --> 01:16:24,162 I'd name every single one of the people that advertised for it in the lawsuit. 1493 01:16:25,831 --> 01:16:27,874 What made this so interesting 1494 01:16:27,958 --> 01:16:30,002 was they made it all look organic 1495 01:16:30,085 --> 01:16:33,088 and, like, a bunch of celebrities and famous people 1496 01:16:33,171 --> 01:16:35,507 were planning to attend this music festival. 1497 01:16:35,591 --> 01:16:39,678 And that's why the impact and reach, in my mind, was as great as it was. 1498 01:16:40,887 --> 01:16:42,639 That was a big criticism of people. 1499 01:16:42,723 --> 01:16:45,183 "How could you market something that wasn't real?" 1500 01:16:45,267 --> 01:16:46,643 You know? But it's like... 1501 01:16:46,727 --> 01:16:49,855 everything was real. Everything looked real. 1502 01:16:50,939 --> 01:16:53,942 If you get hired to do a BMW commercial 1503 01:16:54,026 --> 01:16:56,403 and that BMW then has a faulty engine, 1504 01:16:56,486 --> 01:16:58,405 how the fuck can you possibly know 1505 01:16:58,488 --> 01:17:01,283 whether they'll do good on what they said they were gonna do? 1506 01:17:01,533 --> 01:17:04,786 That's like saying the sound guy, and the DP, and the location scout 1507 01:17:04,870 --> 01:17:07,122 has to do business due diligence on whether or not 1508 01:17:07,205 --> 01:17:08,565 something's actually gonna happen. 1509 01:17:09,541 --> 01:17:11,877 How could we ask the models 1510 01:17:11,960 --> 01:17:15,005 to have the kind of awareness of the Fyre Festival 1511 01:17:15,088 --> 01:17:18,425 that I myself didn't have, being an employee of Fyre Media? 1512 01:17:21,136 --> 01:17:24,431 We certainly wanted to send the message to influencers 1513 01:17:24,514 --> 01:17:26,558 that when you post a photograph, 1514 01:17:26,642 --> 01:17:29,478 and you don't say "#advertisement," 1515 01:17:29,561 --> 01:17:32,981 there is some level of responsibility. 1516 01:17:33,815 --> 01:17:37,778 The government, because of this incident, has been cracking down more and more. 1517 01:17:37,861 --> 01:17:41,198 Bella Hadid is now apologizing to her fans. 1518 01:17:41,281 --> 01:17:43,408 "I initially trusted this would be an amazing 1519 01:17:43,492 --> 01:17:45,702 and memorable experience for all of us." 1520 01:17:45,786 --> 01:17:49,581 I don't think that they knew or were malicious in their intent. 1521 01:17:50,165 --> 01:17:52,751 I don't think anybody fully appreciated 1522 01:17:52,834 --> 01:17:55,462 the extent of Billy's fraud 1523 01:17:55,545 --> 01:17:57,381 and where he was gonna go with this. 1524 01:18:01,009 --> 01:18:02,386 They all kept working, 1525 01:18:02,803 --> 01:18:04,930 I think, a week or two after the festival, 1526 01:18:05,013 --> 01:18:07,265 and then Billy scheduled an all-hands meeting 1527 01:18:07,349 --> 01:18:10,477 where he was going to debrief everyone and explain what was happening. 1528 01:18:36,253 --> 01:18:38,338 The fact that he let, you know, 1529 01:18:38,422 --> 01:18:43,301 20 to 30 people just get completely let go with zero remorse... 1530 01:18:44,302 --> 01:18:46,555 goes a lot to show you what type of person he is. 1531 01:19:02,028 --> 01:19:05,532 An FBI agent showed up at the door of my parents' apartment building 1532 01:19:05,615 --> 01:19:07,743 and gave his card to the doorman 1533 01:19:07,826 --> 01:19:09,786 and said, "I'm looking for Marc Weinstein." 1534 01:19:09,870 --> 01:19:11,872 He's not in trouble, but have him call me." 1535 01:19:11,955 --> 01:19:13,331 I was happy to talk to him 1536 01:19:13,415 --> 01:19:15,959 because I felt that there was some justice happening here. 1537 01:19:16,042 --> 01:19:17,878 I spoke to the FBI, yeah, of course. 1538 01:19:18,128 --> 01:19:20,422 That was the first time I really understood 1539 01:19:20,756 --> 01:19:22,007 what Billy had done. 1540 01:19:23,049 --> 01:19:25,886 But I couldn't believe what they were showing me. 1541 01:19:28,430 --> 01:19:29,973 Billy was... 1542 01:19:30,056 --> 01:19:32,601 frauding investors who invested in Fyre Festival 1543 01:19:32,684 --> 01:19:35,479 based on how well we were doing as a company 1544 01:19:35,562 --> 01:19:36,772 within Fyre Media. 1545 01:19:37,898 --> 01:19:40,066 My understanding is, he'd been telling investors 1546 01:19:40,150 --> 01:19:42,527 that he booked Drake for $100,000, 1547 01:19:42,611 --> 01:19:44,529 which never happened. We never booked Drake. 1548 01:19:44,613 --> 01:19:46,281 You know, he was lying to investors, 1549 01:19:46,364 --> 01:19:48,617 making it seem we were making money when we weren't. 1550 01:19:49,785 --> 01:19:53,872 The original report showed about $1.5 million in offers. 1551 01:19:53,955 --> 01:19:57,501 The report that was doctored under Billy's instruction 1552 01:19:57,584 --> 01:19:59,878 showed closer to $35 milion. 1553 01:20:00,670 --> 01:20:03,924 Billy claimed that they had been given an island in the Bahamas 1554 01:20:04,007 --> 01:20:06,635 worth $8 million, when, in fact, they had not. 1555 01:20:06,968 --> 01:20:08,303 Billy falsely claimed 1556 01:20:08,386 --> 01:20:11,348 that he had more than $2 million in Facebook stocks, 1557 01:20:11,431 --> 01:20:14,351 when in fact he had about $1,500. 1558 01:20:14,434 --> 01:20:17,229 Billy McFarland charged with wire fraud 1559 01:20:17,312 --> 01:20:18,730 in federal court. 1560 01:20:18,814 --> 01:20:21,316 McFarland allegedly sent fake documents 1561 01:20:21,399 --> 01:20:23,735 claiming the company made millions in revenue. 1562 01:20:23,819 --> 01:20:26,696 He'd only earned less than $60,000. 1563 01:20:28,365 --> 01:20:29,366 I knew Billy, 1564 01:20:29,449 --> 01:20:32,577 but I never knew he was capable of doing something like that. 1565 01:20:33,036 --> 01:20:36,790 This guy really made me feel like he was part of my family. 1566 01:20:36,873 --> 01:20:39,042 I invited him to dinners with my family, 1567 01:20:39,125 --> 01:20:41,628 and for him to do what he did, you know, 1568 01:20:41,711 --> 01:20:46,341 I lost that judge of character in people that I thought, you know, I had, 1569 01:20:46,424 --> 01:20:49,052 and that was really difficult for me. 1570 01:20:49,135 --> 01:20:53,223 He really leveraged your existing emotional investment in this team 1571 01:20:53,306 --> 01:20:56,601 and in this product to extort you to investing even more. 1572 01:20:56,685 --> 01:20:57,936 This was Billy's charm. 1573 01:20:58,854 --> 01:21:01,314 Like, Billy could just sell you on anything. 1574 01:21:01,648 --> 01:21:03,900 He's an operational sociopath. 1575 01:21:03,984 --> 01:21:06,319 The reason he racked up millions of dollars 1576 01:21:06,403 --> 01:21:09,155 on the Fyre app AmEx card 1577 01:21:09,239 --> 01:21:12,617 was to pay for Magnises tickets 1578 01:21:12,701 --> 01:21:14,786 for his Magnises users. 1579 01:21:15,036 --> 01:21:16,746 He got almost all of it paid off, 1580 01:21:16,830 --> 01:21:19,749 except for the remaining $250,000, 1581 01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:23,628 which now I'm being sued by AmEx for. 1582 01:21:24,212 --> 01:21:30,302 He left $150,000 of outstanding bills 1583 01:21:30,385 --> 01:21:33,763 on my personal American Express because of the festival as well. 1584 01:21:35,056 --> 01:21:38,018 We lost a lot of money. A lot of money. 1585 01:21:38,435 --> 01:21:39,561 A lot. 1586 01:21:39,644 --> 01:21:42,397 Hundreds of thousands of dollars, without a doubt. 1587 01:21:42,898 --> 01:21:44,774 A lot of people didn't get paid. 1588 01:21:45,233 --> 01:21:47,360 A lot of my workers didn't get paid. 1589 01:21:47,861 --> 01:21:49,279 He kept on saying, 1590 01:21:49,654 --> 01:21:52,073 "The money is coming, J.R., the money is coming." 1591 01:21:52,157 --> 01:21:53,325 It never reached. 1592 01:21:53,408 --> 01:21:56,620 So there was a group of Bahamian locals that built the festival site. 1593 01:21:57,454 --> 01:21:58,830 They were never paid. 1594 01:21:59,331 --> 01:22:00,582 The estimate that I heard 1595 01:22:00,665 --> 01:22:04,169 was a quarter of a million dollars was owed in day wages to them. 1596 01:22:04,753 --> 01:22:07,839 I had ten persons working directly with me, 1597 01:22:07,923 --> 01:22:12,010 just preparing food all day and all night, 24 hours. 1598 01:22:12,510 --> 01:22:16,556 I had to literally pay all those people. I am here as a Bahamian. 1599 01:22:16,640 --> 01:22:19,100 And they stand in my face every day. 1600 01:22:19,517 --> 01:22:22,812 I went through about $50,000 of my savings 1601 01:22:23,271 --> 01:22:25,440 that I could have had for a rainy day. 1602 01:22:26,858 --> 01:22:30,320 They just wiped it out and never looked back. 1603 01:22:31,947 --> 01:22:35,784 Personally, I don't even like to talk about the Fyre Festival. 1604 01:22:36,284 --> 01:22:40,830 Just take it away and just let me start a new beginning. 1605 01:22:41,289 --> 01:22:43,959 'Cause they really hurt me. 1606 01:22:47,796 --> 01:22:49,839 I am really hurt from that. 1607 01:22:53,134 --> 01:22:56,972 To see nobody return to say, "Let me take care of what she's done, 1608 01:22:57,055 --> 01:22:58,640 we know she has done right." 1609 01:23:03,269 --> 01:23:06,189 I just leave it alone, 'cause it really pains me 1610 01:23:06,272 --> 01:23:09,943 when I have to talk about it so I just wipe it away. 1611 01:23:19,119 --> 01:23:20,453 Are you sorry? 1612 01:23:20,537 --> 01:23:22,956 Thank you, guys. I'll arrange a comment later. Thank you. 1613 01:23:23,039 --> 01:23:27,002 He was released on Saturday on $300,000 bail. 1614 01:23:27,085 --> 01:23:28,420 He claims he is broke. 1615 01:23:28,503 --> 01:23:30,922 He has apparently moved back in with his parents. 1616 01:23:31,214 --> 01:23:34,300 Fortunately, I think Billy is currently living in the basement 1617 01:23:34,384 --> 01:23:36,469 of his parents' New Jersey home. 1618 01:23:36,553 --> 01:23:38,179 He's no longer in his penthouse. 1619 01:23:38,263 --> 01:23:41,224 He's no longer riding around in Maseratis 1620 01:23:41,307 --> 01:23:43,268 and flaunting the wealth that he stole. 1621 01:23:51,860 --> 01:23:53,903 Coming back to the Fyre Festival for a second. 1622 01:23:53,987 --> 01:23:56,614 You should make a Fyre Festival game, dude. 1623 01:23:56,698 --> 01:23:57,949 'Cause you're going through... 1624 01:23:58,033 --> 01:24:00,076 They did the Fyre Festival on Saturday Night Live. 1625 01:24:00,160 --> 01:24:01,411 I know! 1626 01:24:01,911 --> 01:24:03,955 You could turn this into so much. 1627 01:24:04,039 --> 01:24:06,082 You just gotta accept the Fyre Festival, 1628 01:24:06,166 --> 01:24:10,045 and you could turn this shit into gold, like, a pot of gold and then run with it. 1629 01:24:10,128 --> 01:24:11,046 I'm not allowed. 1630 01:24:11,129 --> 01:24:13,006 - Wait, really? - Angelo, help me. 1631 01:24:13,089 --> 01:24:14,424 Wait, why aren't you... 1632 01:24:14,507 --> 01:24:17,510 I hadn't spoken to Billy since he was... 1633 01:24:17,594 --> 01:24:20,055 arrested and released on bail. 1634 01:24:20,138 --> 01:24:21,931 So he asked us to come down 1635 01:24:22,015 --> 01:24:24,434 to this hotel where he was staying at, 1636 01:24:24,601 --> 01:24:27,270 and he asked us if we could bring our video equipment, 1637 01:24:27,353 --> 01:24:28,855 we can do all of that stuff. 1638 01:24:28,938 --> 01:24:31,274 And we didn't really know what we were gonna be filming. 1639 01:24:31,357 --> 01:24:33,902 Yeah, just film around the clock. 1640 01:24:33,985 --> 01:24:36,705 The one thing I've learned from this is the more footage, the better. 1641 01:24:37,280 --> 01:24:39,491 How was he living while he was out on bail? 1642 01:24:39,574 --> 01:24:40,742 He wasn't living like me. 1643 01:24:41,201 --> 01:24:44,204 Billy was living... He was living large. 1644 01:24:44,287 --> 01:24:45,872 That penthouse was beautiful. 1645 01:24:46,706 --> 01:24:49,709 I just had a little bit of a confused face. 1646 01:24:49,793 --> 01:24:52,670 Like, "How are you able to pay for all of this?" 1647 01:24:56,716 --> 01:24:58,343 There was a guy named Angelo. 1648 01:24:58,426 --> 01:25:01,471 And I don't know if it was Billy's PR guy, 1649 01:25:01,554 --> 01:25:03,723 but I know that this guy was very connected. 1650 01:25:04,057 --> 01:25:05,892 That is the... 1651 01:25:10,855 --> 01:25:13,775 Just try to keep me out of your stuff because my... 1652 01:25:14,275 --> 01:25:15,902 I can't say anything. 1653 01:25:16,361 --> 01:25:18,238 We're not saying anything bad. You can talk. 1654 01:25:18,321 --> 01:25:19,989 You know, you can give me advice. 1655 01:25:20,824 --> 01:25:23,284 We talked about my experiences 1656 01:25:23,368 --> 01:25:24,744 in the legal system 1657 01:25:24,828 --> 01:25:27,872 and I'll never forget what he said to me. 1658 01:25:27,956 --> 01:25:30,583 He looked me dead in my face and said, 1659 01:25:31,167 --> 01:25:32,669 "I'm not going to jail." 1660 01:25:33,419 --> 01:25:36,756 Well, I was like, "This man either knows something that I don't" 1661 01:25:37,340 --> 01:25:39,676 or he is certifiably insane." 1662 01:25:44,305 --> 01:25:46,766 NYC VIP Access 1663 01:25:46,850 --> 01:25:50,311 was a company that reached out to me 1664 01:25:50,395 --> 01:25:52,480 December 15th, 2017... 1665 01:25:53,064 --> 01:25:56,860 with an offer to the 2018 Masters tournament. 1666 01:25:56,943 --> 01:25:58,319 It was from a guy named Frank. 1667 01:25:58,403 --> 01:26:01,197 It just said, "Hey, we've got these tickets" 1668 01:26:01,281 --> 01:26:04,784 to the 2018 Masters. It'd be great for you or your clients. 1669 01:26:05,160 --> 01:26:06,411 "Let us know if you want." 1670 01:26:06,494 --> 01:26:10,123 And so I texted my friend Morgan, "Did you guys get this Masters email?" 1671 01:26:10,206 --> 01:26:11,206 "Yeah. I got that too." 1672 01:26:11,249 --> 01:26:12,750 And so I'm like, okay, clearly 1673 01:26:12,834 --> 01:26:16,004 somebody's targeting the Fyre Festival email list. 1674 01:26:17,422 --> 01:26:21,050 December 19th, "Gift the gift of private flights." 1675 01:26:22,093 --> 01:26:26,055 December 21st, again from NYC VIP Access, 1676 01:26:26,139 --> 01:26:30,435 "Coachella 2018 VIP passes for $500." 1677 01:26:30,518 --> 01:26:33,646 "Please email me or call phone number to reserve. Frank." 1678 01:26:34,105 --> 01:26:35,690 January 2nd, 1679 01:26:35,773 --> 01:26:40,486 "Meet Ed Sheeran, Demi Lovato, DJ Khaled, Taylor Swift and more." 1680 01:26:40,570 --> 01:26:42,864 We want to one-up your New Year's resolutions 1681 01:26:42,947 --> 01:26:45,200 by making your dreams become a reality. 1682 01:26:45,283 --> 01:26:48,203 "Please email or call to reserve. Frank." 1683 01:26:48,620 --> 01:26:50,246 "Burning Man, 2018." 1684 01:26:50,330 --> 01:26:52,498 "Courtside at MSG 1685 01:26:52,582 --> 01:26:54,125 and dinner with LeBron." 1686 01:26:54,209 --> 01:26:57,587 "Victoria Secret Fashion Show," "Met Gala, 1687 01:26:57,670 --> 01:26:59,422 red carpet and gala tickets. 1688 01:26:59,505 --> 01:27:02,133 Please email, text or call me to reserve. 1689 01:27:02,217 --> 01:27:04,552 "First come, first serve. Frank." 1690 01:27:05,970 --> 01:27:06,971 So we're basically 1691 01:27:07,055 --> 01:27:10,975 selling 2018 Grammy tickets. VIP Access, baby. 1692 01:27:12,435 --> 01:27:13,645 What's the next number? 1693 01:27:15,271 --> 01:27:18,650 I first started hearing about the NYC VIP Access emails 1694 01:27:18,733 --> 01:27:19,651 in December. 1695 01:27:19,734 --> 01:27:23,029 When I realized that multiple people who had attended the festival 1696 01:27:23,112 --> 01:27:24,906 were getting the emails, 1697 01:27:24,989 --> 01:27:27,951 that was when I really started to look at it more seriously. 1698 01:27:28,409 --> 01:27:30,620 Met Gala tickets can't be purchased 1699 01:27:30,703 --> 01:27:34,290 and anyone who attends has to be approved by Anna Wintour in advance. 1700 01:27:34,499 --> 01:27:37,210 The Victoria's Secret Show hadn't even been cast yet. 1701 01:27:37,293 --> 01:27:39,754 Taylor Swift, she's very open about the fact 1702 01:27:39,837 --> 01:27:41,464 that she doesn't do meet-and-greets. 1703 01:27:41,547 --> 01:27:43,967 Burning Man told me that they had not sold any tickets 1704 01:27:44,050 --> 01:27:47,262 and that there were no sponsors who would have tickets available. 1705 01:27:47,428 --> 01:27:50,014 Pretty much everything that they offered was debunked 1706 01:27:50,098 --> 01:27:52,141 through just a quick phone call or a Google search. 1707 01:27:59,607 --> 01:28:01,401 That's fucking hustling right here. 1708 01:28:02,652 --> 01:28:04,654 The first time I met Frank Tribble 1709 01:28:04,737 --> 01:28:06,364 was at the hotel. 1710 01:28:06,447 --> 01:28:08,074 I had never seen him before 1711 01:28:08,157 --> 01:28:11,119 and usually the people who are around Billy, I'm familiar with. 1712 01:28:11,202 --> 01:28:15,331 The strangest thing was he actually had on a Magnises hat, 1713 01:28:15,415 --> 01:28:17,500 he had on, like, a Fyre sweater. 1714 01:28:17,834 --> 01:28:22,422 Frank is, I think, 22 or 23, and Billy had reached out to him 1715 01:28:22,505 --> 01:28:24,716 and said, "I'm starting this company", 1716 01:28:24,799 --> 01:28:27,927 but I'm kind of in some hot water related to Fyre Festival, 1717 01:28:28,011 --> 01:28:30,513 "so I need you to be the face of it." 1718 01:28:30,596 --> 01:28:31,723 Hi, is this Zachary? 1719 01:28:32,515 --> 01:28:35,643 Zachary, this is Frank calling from NYC VIP Access. 1720 01:28:35,727 --> 01:28:37,770 The reason I was actually giving you a call, 1721 01:28:37,854 --> 01:28:41,566 the Grammys are gonna be held in New York City on Sunday January 28th, 1722 01:28:41,649 --> 01:28:42,942 in Madison Square Garden, 1723 01:28:43,026 --> 01:28:45,320 and we're actually selling VIP tickets for that event. 1724 01:28:45,445 --> 01:28:48,698 According to the FBI, 15 people gave him 1725 01:28:48,781 --> 01:28:51,159 over $100,000 for those tickets. 1726 01:28:51,451 --> 01:28:54,203 Josh, Frank is gonna call off the list. 1727 01:28:54,287 --> 01:28:56,331 If they don't pick up, you send them an email. 1728 01:28:56,414 --> 01:28:58,583 I'll write a script for you right now, okay? 1729 01:28:59,959 --> 01:29:01,210 What are you recording? 1730 01:29:02,795 --> 01:29:07,300 It's hard for me to say if these guys didn't know what was going on. 1731 01:29:07,717 --> 01:29:11,929 But I also know that Billy is really good at keeping a level of information... 1732 01:29:12,472 --> 01:29:13,931 below and above. 1733 01:29:14,432 --> 01:29:17,352 For every call, call twice in a row if they don't pick up. 1734 01:29:17,894 --> 01:29:19,854 Everybody picks up on the second ring. 1735 01:29:24,734 --> 01:29:26,235 Let's cut for now. Thanks. 1736 01:29:27,153 --> 01:29:29,572 On June 12th, I published an article 1737 01:29:29,655 --> 01:29:32,658 outlining all the crossover between Billy McFarland 1738 01:29:32,742 --> 01:29:34,452 and New York City VIP Access, 1739 01:29:34,952 --> 01:29:36,913 and about six hours later 1740 01:29:36,996 --> 01:29:41,000 Billy was rearrested and charged with five felonies. 1741 01:29:41,334 --> 01:29:43,920 They included fraud, money laundering, 1742 01:29:44,337 --> 01:29:47,256 identity theft, and witness intimidation 1743 01:29:47,340 --> 01:29:51,177 after he warned at least two people not to talk to the FBI 1744 01:29:51,260 --> 01:29:54,639 and to pretend that they were represented by legal counsel 1745 01:29:54,722 --> 01:29:55,848 when they were not. 1746 01:29:58,518 --> 01:30:01,270 I mean, the idea of him doing this 1747 01:30:01,354 --> 01:30:04,065 while he's out on bail is mind-blowing to me. 1748 01:30:04,148 --> 01:30:07,693 Because you're already under the biggest microscope, 1749 01:30:07,777 --> 01:30:10,905 and then you're gonna go and commit another scam. 1750 01:30:10,988 --> 01:30:15,118 Like, I just don't understand why he didn't just stop. 1751 01:30:16,869 --> 01:30:19,205 You said Billy asked you about going, what... 1752 01:30:19,288 --> 01:30:21,165 What was he asking you about jail? 1753 01:30:22,166 --> 01:30:26,379 Well, unfortunately, I had a misstep in my past, 1754 01:30:26,462 --> 01:30:27,462 and, um... 1755 01:30:28,172 --> 01:30:30,508 I unfortunately experienced it. 1756 01:30:31,050 --> 01:30:32,802 And I was in there for two months. 1757 01:30:32,885 --> 01:30:36,639 And, you know, he just flat out asked me. He was like, "What was it like?" 1758 01:30:36,722 --> 01:30:40,059 And I was like, "It's 23/1 for the first seven days." 1759 01:30:40,143 --> 01:30:41,686 He was like, "What's 23/1?" 1760 01:30:42,270 --> 01:30:45,273 "You're in a fucking cell for 23 hours." 1761 01:30:45,815 --> 01:30:47,525 And then they let you out for one. 1762 01:30:48,067 --> 01:30:49,777 You better stretch your legs, walk around, 1763 01:30:49,861 --> 01:30:52,572 do whatever you need to do, but you're in there 1764 01:30:52,780 --> 01:30:56,033 until you're processed. After that, they put you where they need to put you, 1765 01:30:56,117 --> 01:30:58,119 "until you get sent up north." 1766 01:30:58,202 --> 01:31:03,249 And I remember the energy off of him. And it was just like... 1767 01:31:04,667 --> 01:31:08,379 That shit was so far away from what he knew 1768 01:31:08,629 --> 01:31:10,798 and what he experienced in his life, 1769 01:31:10,882 --> 01:31:13,551 that the cognitive dissonance just led him to say, 1770 01:31:13,634 --> 01:31:15,052 "I'm not going to jail." 1771 01:31:25,938 --> 01:31:27,440 I reflected on myself 1772 01:31:28,232 --> 01:31:30,818 and I was questioning to what extent was I guilty, 1773 01:31:30,902 --> 01:31:33,237 to what extent was I complicit in all of this. 1774 01:31:33,654 --> 01:31:36,491 And I looked back at my posts on social media 1775 01:31:36,574 --> 01:31:39,285 and it was like all beautiful beaches and sunsets. 1776 01:31:39,952 --> 01:31:41,037 You know? And... 1777 01:31:41,537 --> 01:31:44,582 And I was going through the hardest experience of my life, 1778 01:31:44,665 --> 01:31:47,084 and yet if you had seen it, you'd have been like, 1779 01:31:47,168 --> 01:31:48,728 "Wow, what a great life this guy leads. 1780 01:31:48,753 --> 01:31:51,964 He's living in the Bahamas, going to beaches all day." 1781 01:31:52,048 --> 01:31:55,635 And Fyre shows what happens when you take that to an extreme. 1782 01:31:58,137 --> 01:32:01,599 I've said this multiple times - the real Fyre Festival happened twice. 1783 01:32:01,682 --> 01:32:02,767 It was the shoots. 1784 01:32:03,643 --> 01:32:06,354 What the commercial was was what everybody wanted. 1785 01:32:06,437 --> 01:32:07,480 The shoots were parties. 1786 01:32:07,897 --> 01:32:10,900 It just happened to happen for 60 people versus 6,000. 1787 01:32:12,193 --> 01:32:13,193 It was epic. 1788 01:32:13,236 --> 01:32:17,031 It was nothing I never saw before in my whole entire life. Like... 1789 01:32:17,114 --> 01:32:20,368 I'm from the Bahamas, man. We're used to small island stuff. 1790 01:32:20,451 --> 01:32:24,330 That was like... That put me up on a new level, a higher level. 1791 01:32:25,373 --> 01:32:28,501 We're living in this influencers society, you know? 1792 01:32:28,584 --> 01:32:31,796 Everybody wants to have this online clout, 1793 01:32:31,879 --> 01:32:34,090 people want to have access 1794 01:32:34,173 --> 01:32:36,259 and they want exclusivity. 1795 01:32:36,968 --> 01:32:40,429 Fyre was basically, like, Instagram coming to life. 1796 01:32:40,513 --> 01:32:42,932 It actually dovetails really interestingly with 1797 01:32:43,015 --> 01:32:45,184 just random news stories that have come out since. 1798 01:32:45,268 --> 01:32:47,395 I was reading about a company in Russia 1799 01:32:47,478 --> 01:32:51,649 that now will sell people like three hours to do a photo shoot 1800 01:32:51,732 --> 01:32:54,026 on a private jet that's just parked on the tarmac. 1801 01:32:54,110 --> 01:32:55,611 They never actually leave, 1802 01:32:55,695 --> 01:32:58,155 but they get to take the picture looking out the window, 1803 01:32:58,239 --> 01:33:00,533 and pretending that they're living this lifestyle. 1804 01:33:00,616 --> 01:33:03,452 And, like, they're successful. People are using it. 1805 01:33:03,786 --> 01:33:07,456 Billy seemed really invested in that whole lifestyle. 1806 01:33:07,790 --> 01:33:11,419 Yo, I wanna say happy birthday to my brother, 1807 01:33:11,502 --> 01:33:15,756 my partner Billy in the building. Happy birthday, Billy. 1808 01:33:15,965 --> 01:33:19,468 I think it was important to him not just to be on a plane with a model, 1809 01:33:19,552 --> 01:33:21,804 but to feel like that was his life. 1810 01:33:21,887 --> 01:33:24,765 That he belonged there. And not because he owns Fyre, 1811 01:33:24,849 --> 01:33:26,434 but because that's who he was. 1812 01:33:26,892 --> 01:33:29,770 He was completely out of his depth, and he's, 1813 01:33:29,854 --> 01:33:33,107 unfortunately for himself, a compulsive liar. 1814 01:33:33,941 --> 01:33:37,278 And someone that at the end, you know, should be held accountable. 1815 01:33:38,779 --> 01:33:40,656 He has a massive debt, 1816 01:33:40,740 --> 01:33:43,659 not just to the people who invested or to the concert-goers. 1817 01:33:43,743 --> 01:33:46,037 I think he has a larger debt to the employees 1818 01:33:46,120 --> 01:33:48,456 that were reporting and working with him. 1819 01:33:48,789 --> 01:33:51,542 The only way, in my opinion, a guy like this learns his lesson 1820 01:33:51,626 --> 01:33:53,085 is actually going to jail. 1821 01:33:55,254 --> 01:33:58,299 I don't think that we've heard the last of Billy McFarland. 1822 01:33:58,382 --> 01:34:00,384 I mean, if there's anything that guy is good at, 1823 01:34:00,468 --> 01:34:02,762 it's separating consumers from their cash. 1824 01:34:02,845 --> 01:34:05,097 And if there's anything that this country 1825 01:34:05,181 --> 01:34:07,224 celebrates more than that, I don't know. 1826 01:34:08,643 --> 01:34:12,605 Billy has a presence where, you know, there's something behind the smile. 1827 01:34:13,773 --> 01:34:15,816 I wouldn't be surprised if ten years down the line, 1828 01:34:15,900 --> 01:34:17,360 we're hearing about Billy McFarland 1829 01:34:17,443 --> 01:34:19,654 starting some kind of other venture that's... 1830 01:34:19,737 --> 01:34:21,781 you know, imaginative and, uh, 1831 01:34:22,156 --> 01:34:24,200 and gets some serious momentum 1832 01:34:24,700 --> 01:34:27,328 and, you know, this all happens in some form again. 1833 01:34:27,453 --> 01:34:28,453 [laughs} 1834 01:34:59,026 --> 01:35:00,026 It's Billy! 1835 01:35:01,070 --> 01:35:02,196 What's up, Billy? 1836 01:35:03,114 --> 01:35:05,282 I'm in front of the cameraman. I'm talking... 1837 01:35:05,574 --> 01:35:06,992 I'm good. 1838 01:35:08,285 --> 01:35:11,539 Yeah. I'm putting in some good words. 1839 01:35:12,415 --> 01:35:14,917 You want me to say anything on the camera for you? 1840 01:35:17,128 --> 01:35:18,128 All right. 1841 01:35:22,258 --> 01:35:23,676 All right. Action! 157870

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