Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Fyre Festival Fiasco

Transcript

The Fyre Festival Fiasco · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here with us too. So this is
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: a straight ahead episode of Stuff you Should Know, the
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: podcast That's right.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: And today we're discussing the Fire Festival, the festival that
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: never happened f y r of which there were two
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: documentaries made, and I'm pretty positive I saw both of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: them back when they came out.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Who la la. I only saw one.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Which one did you see?
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I saw the Netflix one?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I saw both of them because I
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: was like, I don't want to miss anything, right.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I think I got the gist of it
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: from the Netflix one. I saw it essentially when it
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: came out, so I haven't seen it in a little while,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: but I did an awful lot of reading about this
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and a lot of stuff back.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: That's right. We're going to kind of let it unfold
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: as it happened or as it didn't happen rather, which
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: means I guess we should start with the organizer of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: this musical festival that was not right.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, mister william Z, Billy McFarland, this guy Yeah,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: this guy, that's another way to put it.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was born in New York in ninety one.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: He's a millennial through and through, and he was essentially
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: a rich kid. I don't know that he was like
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: fabulously wealthy. I don't have that impression, but he was.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: His family is pretty well to do. They were real
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: estate developers in New York, which is really kind of
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: all you need to know. But he was brought up
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: in like a nice suburb in New Jersey and he
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: seemed to have had. What you need to know about
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: this guy is he is a business minded cat. Yes,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: that's what he wants to do. He wants to create
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: successful businesses, start up. She's got the whole dot com
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: bug essentially. And apparently so. There's an author, a journalist
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: named Gabrielle Bluestone who wrote a book on the Fire
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Festival and she she chronicles Billy McFarlane creating his first
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: company in the fifth grade, a web posting company whatever
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: that is, not web hosting, no posting. Yeah, so putting
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: stuff on the web. That was his business model, I guess.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: And he had He said that he had three full
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: time adult employees in India working for his company which
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: he was which he founded in the fifth grade.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: That's right. Apparently in that same book, in the name
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of the book, by the way, is Hype Colon inside
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the Fire Festival in the Golden Age of Grift. And
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: in that book she also says that he claims at
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: least that he sold start and sold three companies while
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: still in high school. H although that has been verified,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: but I wouldn't be surprised, because this guy most starting companies,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: it seems like.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the first verifiable company that he started was
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: while he was attending Bucknell University or buck Nail. He
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: dropped out in twenty eleven to work more on a
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: social media platform. It was an online ad platform that
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: actually had some pretty big advertisers. He called it Spling
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: sp l i NG And he dropped out, but not
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: before he got like a five thousand dollars like essentially
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: a little scholarship prize I guess for venture capital, like
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: five thousand dollars capital seed from Bucknhell University. He said,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: thank you very much, I'm dropping out, and then he
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: started generating investment from investors's divers as the CFO of
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: a pharma company to actual like private equity companies.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean the guy had a knack for drawing investors,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. I think if I'm doing quick math,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty four hundred and seventy five plus
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a little juice from Cornell, like four hundred close to
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: five hundred grand he got for this spling startup. Yeah,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and you know he did that for a little while.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I guess that was a couple of years, because in
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen he started something new. He abandoned splaying and
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: started and this is covered in the documentary the credit
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: card company Magnus's m A G N I S e S,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: which was a credit card. He was like, Hey, I'm
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: going to start a new credit card. No one's done
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: that in a while, and it's gonna be metal, and
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: it's going to look cool, and we're gonna kind of,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: you know, take from what the Soho House did, kind
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: of literally in that they opened a loft in Soho
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: in New York and said, you've got a membership here.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: You can come to these cool parties and you can
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: get like the whole the thing was beyond just having
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: this sort of fancy credit card that made you stand
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: apart from the crowd. In that crowd, you could also
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: supposedly get like advanced reservations when they were impossible to
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: get or get into the club that was impossible to
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: get into if you had this card.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like the Players with Yourself card.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: So here's here's the first flash of what you need
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: to know about Billy McFarland. The Magnus's card. It was
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: very cool. The whole thing was set up pretty neatly,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: but it was not a credit card. What it did
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: was you took your Bank of America or Wells Fargo
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: debit card and it copied the information from the magnetic
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: strip onto the magnetic strip you for Magnuss. So essentially
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: what you had was a cool, metal I believe black
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: version of your Wells Fargo debit card. And that's that
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: was it.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Well, aside from the membership in the SOHO loft and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: the supposed perks that came along to getting into the
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: clubs and things, that's why people got it.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Here's the problem with that. They weren't able to deliver
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: on what those perks were.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not at all. And this is you know, kind
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of the first in a series of stories about over
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: promising and under delivering to say the least.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: For sure. So here's also where it starts to become
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: a bit of a Ponzi scheme. Magnus seems to have
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: been like his heart was in that one, so he
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: was really he was spending a lot more money than
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: he was taking in. I think I saw at its
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: peak it had seven hundred members and that was it.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: But so he was just just spending way too much
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: money to keep that company afloat. So he's like, all right,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: I'm going to start another company and then I can
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: use the revenue from that company to keep Magnuses afloat
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: and keep my investors happy. And I'm going to call
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: this new company Fire Media FYR.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: And it actually was kind of a clever idea. It
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: was a talent booking app for anybody, Like if you
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: had the money, you could get in touch with say,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: off the top of my head Wrapper Jaw Rule and say,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: hey man, I'm throwing a really ill party and I
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: want you to perform there. How much do you want?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: He would say, this is how much I want, and
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: you would pay him and book him, and you didn't
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: have to use any promoters or you didn't have to
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: know anybody. All you had to do was have this
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Fire app And like, I think it was a good idea,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: but he created that almost exclusively to keep Magnuses propped up.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Keep that in mind.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm going to withhold judgment on whether or
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: not I think that was a cool idea. Okay, but
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you did.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Sure I said clever. I don't think I said cool.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Did I say cool? Oh?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: You said cool more than once?
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, Oh it's a cool idea, all right, I'll stand
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: behind that.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: All right, great, So you're right he was doing that
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: to keep Magnus's afloat. He was using those corporate cards,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: which again were just Reskin debit cards of his own employees,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of the employees of Fire to fund the Magnus events,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and they were left to put the bill. There was
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: this one guy in the documentary I think his name
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: was M. David Lowe, and he says that he was
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: left two hundred thousand dollars in debt and he was
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: an employee. So that should give you an idea of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: how this guy's going to end up treating concert goers
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: that he doesn't even know, which is what would kind
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: of you know, happen next. Essentially when he said, all right,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I need some more cash. Basically, fire media really needs
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: to take off in order to save magnuses and so
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a music festival. Those things make tons of money, right guys,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: That's a great way to make dough. So that was
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the next big idea.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So essentially, this fire festival, which is the crux
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: of our story, was an idea that was meant to
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: promote the fire app, which was created to fund and
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: keep afloat the Magnus's fake credit card.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: All right, so here we are in the fall of
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and he wants to throw this thing in
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the spring of twenty seventeen. So keep that timeline in mind.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: That's about six months to throw a major music festival
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: in the Bahamas. I don't know anything about throwing a
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: major music festival, so I'm a novice, but that seems
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: like a pretty short time span to me.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I actually don't really know much about throwing a music
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: festival either, but I did see in a few articles
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: covering this that experts, essentially people who have thrown them,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: say you want twelve months minimum to do this, or
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: maybe they said you need usually on average twelve months
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: from the outset, from the time that he decided to
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: do this, he gave himself the six months and then,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: as we'll see, he actually gave himself way way less
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: than that to actually organize this thing because the Fire
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Festival was built entirely on hype. In the first several
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: months of the project were given exclusively to figuring out
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: how to hype this project that hadn't even been planned
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: or organized yet. This is so fiery.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So he you mentioned jaw Rule, he was involved
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: in this as well hip hop artists. Jaw Rule was
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: he was sort of the main face of the thing,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: like definitely the biggest name that he got involved, I think,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: unless like you're really in the know as far as
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: like models and influencers go. And his co I guess
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: his business partner was another guy named Grant Margalin. He
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: was a VP of marketing, and right out of the gate,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: he started hiring PR companies because, like you said, he
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: wanted to create this hype, so he got legit companies.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: He got an ad agency named Jerry Media PR Firm
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: forty two West and a media company called Vaynermedia, and
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: in December of twenty sixteen, he was like, I got
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: to get something out there that people can actually see.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So we contract did with Matt m Att Projects to
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: film a promo video in the Bahamas where it was
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: going to be held. And that's about the only thing
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: he ever actually created.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like they really threw a lot at this.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: They hired a bunch of, like you said, Instagram models,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Kendall Jenner, Hayley Bieber, Chanelle Lemon, and several others. I
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: think there was like six like legit millennial supermodels who
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: came out to the Bahamas to shoot this this promotional video,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: and the Matt Projects company like showed up. They they
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: did a really good job creating this incredibly slick video.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: But by hiring these Instagram models, they also had a
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: built in way of just generating tons of hype when
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: that video was done, and actually even before the video
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: was done, they're like, Hey, why don't you take some
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: of these picks from the shoot and you know, put
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: them on post them on your Instagram account just to
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: kind of get people hyped up about the hype that
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: we're creating for the festival.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what you obviously don't see in that
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: hype video or the promo video was the reality of that,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: which the documentaries both cover. It was pretty chaotic. There
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: was some pretty funny scenes in there where they were
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: trying to get these models to get in swim in
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the ocean at night. You know. For the shot, Billy
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: referred to the attendees as your average losers, and it
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: was just you know, it was kind of a mess,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: but obviously the result was you know, beautiful people frolicking
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: in the beautiful Bahamas, right. They promised an immersive experience
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: on a private island once owned by Pablo Escobar, which
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: would turn out to be a pretty fateful mistake to
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: say that. But what they didn't include was stuff like, hey,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: who's actually going to be playing because they hadn't booked
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: any musical acts at that point.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: No, so if you look at this very slick video,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: none of all of the music acts are generic gets
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: all stock footage of like Ray or something like that,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: really well produced, good looking like stock footage, but not
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: real stuff. Right, But so it was all just kind
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: of suggested. And to give you another idea of the
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: way that they were promoting this, they were saying that
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Fire Festival will be a quest to explore beyond boundaries
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: like they used words like that, and the whole thing.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: The whole thing was essentially publicized as a complete luxury
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: event top to bottom. It was going to be the
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: most amazing, luxury exclusive music festival anyone has ever thrown.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: And that promotional video really kind of looked like it
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: so much so that that was what they used for
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: marketing from that point forward through the end of the festival.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: That was it. Everything came from that photo shoot and
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: video shoot.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: That's because that's all they had, right right, Literally, yeah,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: a good time for a break, I think, yeah for sure.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: All right, so that's a little setup of what's coming
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: or not coming your way, and we'll be right back
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: after this. Stars the sky. There was so much stu
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: all right. So in order to promote this video that
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: they had shot, they needed they needed people to see this.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: They needed tons of eyeballs so they could sell tons
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: of tickets. So they got together with Jerry Media and
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: they convinced all these influencers at the same time on
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: December twelfth, twenty sixteen, on their socials to post an
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: orange tile, just an orange square. I think they got
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: like four hundred plus people, and that would direct people
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: to the website and the promo video and everything, and
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of people did this, like athletes, musicians, models,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: and it actually went viral, like it really really worked.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: That was actually a pretty good idea, and people started
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: buying tickets, like thousands of people started plunking down money.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I saw that they were like ninety
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: eight percent sold out, like almost immediately. So it really
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: was a great idea, paying all those influencers to do that,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and so great, now we've got the Fire Festival ready
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: to go, Like, you got tickets sold, you've got the
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: promo materials out there, you have all these influencers generating
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: all this buzz. And he got one more boost. He
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: paid Kendall Jenner a quarter of a million dollars to
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: put one post on Instagram about it. And I didn't
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: see the post, but apparently she intimated that the like
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: she left it open to people's imagination, the possibility that
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Kanye West would be performing there, because remember he was
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: her brother in law at the time. Yeah, and of
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: course Kanye West never had anything to do with it,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: But if you were things a certain way, then can
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: leave it to people's imagination and let them think what
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: they want kind of thing, right, So that was like
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: the nail, the final nail. They're like, this is this
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: is great, We're going to do this and let's start
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: figuring this out.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and by figuring out, it was February. And remember
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: they were trying to do this thing in the spring, right,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: which I don't know if that means. I don't know
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: when spring is in the Bahamas. I don't know if
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: they consider May spring. But let's generously say they even
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: consider May spring. Okay, it's late February. And that that's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: when they started planning the actual logistics of this festival, like,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: how are we actually going to do this? They didn't
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: have accommodations at all. They promised luxury accommodations. These were
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: going to range from glamping tents to private villas. None
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: of these things existed yet because they didn't even have
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: a site secured because they had mentioned it was Pablo
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Escobar's Island at one point, this was Norman's k and
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the owner of that island was like, I don't like
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: you mentioning Pablo Escobar in association with my island, so
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: you can't have it here. So they didn't even have
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: a place in February.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Now they shot themselves in the foot and just not
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: putting on Pablo Escobar's private island or formerly belonging to
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: pabl Escobar. However, they said it, if they just had
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: not done that, this might be a completely different story.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Maybe at least it would have been a little bit
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: of a different story. It actually could have been worse, frankly,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: now that I think about it. But they finally found
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: a spot. There was another thing too, like if the
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: web archive has some of the pages of the original
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: fire festival site, and if you go on like the
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: packages thing, they're like up to a quarter of a
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: million dollar packages for like three nights on yachts and stuff,
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: and they even named the yachts. They had no bargains, deals,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: talks whatsoever with the owners of any of those yachts,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: and these guys were selling quarter of a million dollar
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: packages involving these yachts that they had no access to,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: right so they were really scrambling for all this, And
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: one of the first things they had to do was
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: find a replacement for Norman's k and they finally found
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: one on the charming area known as Roker Point on
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Great Exzema Island, in the Bahamas.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: That's right, it's not a private island at all, So
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: out of the gate, they've already under delivered. Sure, it
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: was an undeveloped plot of land. Apparently it was pretty rocky.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: It has been described as a gravel pit. And if
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: you see the documentaries in the actual footage, you know,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: it doesn't look like anything that's capable of hosting even
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: if you knew what you were doing, hosting a concert
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: event like this. And they had forty five days to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: do it, to build this like, you know, village essentially,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: they're you know, they're trying to replicate like the Coachella's
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and all these things that literally kind of go out
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere and build or like Burning
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Man and build a village. And they had forty five
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: days to do this. So he hired hundreds of locals
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: to put up you know, ikea furniture essentially and try
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: and get these things going, get these tents built, these
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: glamping tents. And I think what one of McFarland's big
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: errors that well, he started way too late first of all. Sure,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and who knows if he ever even you know, planned
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: on getting this thing off the ground to begin with,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: but he didn't realize there's something called island time. And
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: if you've ever been to the Caribbean or it's probably
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: like this at islands all over the world or just
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: beach towns in general. Sure, things just move slower. Like
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you can't go into a restaurant on a Caribbean island
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and like start complaining that the service is slow. And
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: that's from like restaurants all the way to everything. Everything
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: just moves a little slower and at its own pace.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're meant to kind of downshift a couple of
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: gears as well, the kind of mellow apple supposed to point. Yeah,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: don't bring the agro like city stuff there.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Not to island time.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: No, So yeah, I think what you're saying, in a
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: very roundabout way is that the things that needed to
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: get done for the festival did not get done. Just
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: as a little aside that'll come up later. There's a
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: woman named Mary Ann Roll who owns a local catering
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: company that the fire festival hired to feed those workers,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: and she made as many as one thousand meals a
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: day during these I think forty five days while these
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: workers were working from day one up through I think
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: up to like the day before the fire festival. So
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: just put that in your hat and smoke it later.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So they are having big cash flow
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: issues despite the fact that all these people had paid
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: all kinds of money for these tickets already, and so
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: he starts what he calls the Fire Tour, these little
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: pop up concerts or supposed to be pop up concerts
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to promote the festival, right, but most of those don't
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: even go off. These are supposed to be in cities
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: all over the world. Most of those canceled, So you know,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: he's left without a source of income basically leading up
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: to the festival.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Which is crazy because they were selling tons and tons
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: of tickets. But he had raised so much money from
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: investors for this, and they were burning through so much
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: money that he was like it was gone before it
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: went to him, or like it was gone as soon
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: as it came in. From what I can tell, he
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: came up with another idea. He's like, Okay, we need
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: a new instant form of cash flow. How about this.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: We'll say that you have to use an RFID bracelet
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: to spend money there, and you have to preload money
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: on it, and you better do it now. So if
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: you want to be able to buy anything, say like
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: booze or whatever on the island, you have to have
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: this little bracelet kind of like Disney World or something, right,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: And they suggested you put at least three hundred dollars
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: for each day that you're going to be at the festival,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: and in the hopes that people would just start loading
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: their wristbands up. And I think it worked to some degree,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: but there was no amount of cash coming in at
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: this point to cover what the investors had put in,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: and apparently even to cover the anything that the festival
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: had delivered, except for there is a place in the
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Bahamas that we will try to get you to and
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: when you show up, that place will be there.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And it will be lit.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Ill, all right, So the festival is very close to
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: you know, the data is impending and people start noticing,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: tickets holders start noticing like, you know what, I haven't
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: seen anything on Instagram, like you know, usually when there's
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: something like that, it's like, hey, look at how great
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: this place is coming along, Look how awesome it looks.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: It's still just that one video that they had shot,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you know, back in I guess early part of the year.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: They can't get worse still, they can't get information about
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: their flights and their accommodations, like what tint am I
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: actually going to be in, or what villa am I
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: actually going to be in? I want to pick up
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: my room before I get there.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Right right, So people start questioning this. There's a guy
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: on Twitter named Calvin Wells who set up fire fraud
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: and just basically tracked all these like shady things that
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: were going on or like questions people have. People started
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: leaving comments on posts about, you know, hyping the fire festival,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: questioning the whole thing, and just basically saying this doesn't
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: sound legit at all. Those things got deleted by Jerry Media,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: who is running social media for the for the fire festival.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: And then starting finally the day before the festival, the
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: fire media people essentially reached out to their VIPs and
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: said just skip the first weekend. Come the second weekend,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: because there was one weekend at the end of April
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: and there was the next weekend at the beginning of
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: May that was a fire festival, two weekends. They're like,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: just come to the second one. The first one's going
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: to be a little we're figuring out the kinks, so
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: don't come to the first one. Their employees too, were
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: told like, don't come. But the employees were like, we
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: already are in Miami waiting to be shuttled down to
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: the Bahamas.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If you're telling the staff not to come, but
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: you've allowed the ticket holders to come, yes, then you're
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: doing things in the wrong order. And that's just my opinion. Again,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I've never thrown up music festival.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a really good point, Chuck. They didn't
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: tell the ticket holders not to come.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: No, they didn't. The night before the festival, their biggest act,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: or I guess their biggest rock act, at least blink
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: of one eighty two pulls out of the festival. Somebody
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: smartly in their camp was like, you don't want to
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: be you're already unfortunately associated with this, but you don't
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: want to be any any more of a part of
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: this than you already are.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: No, and there. Their their statement was classy too. They
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: just said they're not sure that they would have all
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: the resources they needed to put on a quality show
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: for their fans, so.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: They pull out and it starts to rain really heavy.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: It's sort of one of those moments in the documentary
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: where insult to injury starts happening, and employees are still,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, bless their hearts, they're still trying to set
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: this stuff up. I felt so bad for the people
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: that worked for this, uh for Fire Media, because they're
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: they're trying to set up these tents still. They're unpacking loading,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: you know, shipping containers or unpacking mattresses, all this Freddy
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: furniture that they had bought at the last minute, and
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: work eventually halted because it was just you know, it
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: was a rainstorm. It was too bad. So there were
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: soggy mattresses left out on the ground everywhere, and it
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: was you know, it looked like it looked like a
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: hurricane had come through and wiped out what was once
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a promising thing.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So like imagine like a whole work site
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: of people getting ready for the festival the night before
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and they were really behind and everybody's working hard, and
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: then a whole mon soon comes and everybody runs for
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: cover and then never comes back. That's what the Fire
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Festival looked like when the first guests started to show up.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe a second break. I feel like we're right at the.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Precipice I think so too, man.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear Blink. Well, they already pulled out.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear the other musical acts. So
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: we'll be right back after this. Just like the number
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: of stars the sky, there was so much stuff.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, chuck. So it's festival day. It's April twenty eighth.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: And on the morning of April twenty eighth, some of
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: the people started showing up. There was supposedly private jet service,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: but actually it was just a small airline that was
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: shuttling people from Miami's airport down to the Bahamas. And
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: the first group showed up the morning of April twenty eighth,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: and the festival organizers were like, we have to figure
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: out what to do with these people. That's not ready yet.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: So they got them on a shuttle like a bus.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: They drove them to a local bar and said the
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: bar's open, everybody help yourself.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a school bus too, Just keep that in mind,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: not that it matters. A bus is a bus, but
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: they're nicer buss buses than others. True, especially in the Caribbean.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: And this was a school bus. Okay, maybe a bluebird,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: who knows those are pretty nice.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: The bluebirds are, Yeah, they're top quality, so.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: They send them there. They tried in Vain, I guess
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: to initially at least actually assigned tents to people because
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like there wasn't one tint set up. They
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: had gotten a little bit done, but there were hundreds
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of people there kind of wondering what to do and
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: where to go, and so much so that Billy who
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: was there, Billy mcfarney actually got up on a table
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and said, just go find a tint, pick up your
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: own tint and take it to a place and set
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: it up. And some of those people were game enough
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: to like, well it's not going off well, but at
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: least we can get a tent and find a good spot,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and so they tried starting to do that.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't remember from the documentary, but apparently there
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: was like that just opened the floodgates for people making
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: a mad rush to grab a tent before somebody else
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: grabbed it. For sure, and the tents, by the way,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: we should say, so remember you mentioned glamping, like not
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: everybody was buying the quarter of a million dollar yacht
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: package that you could get tickets for, you know, several
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars and that's what these tents were. But they
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: were supposed to still be like really nice tents. I
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: saw that they were leftover FEMA tents from Hurricane Matthew,
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: and that that's what had been set up for these people,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: and not even set up in most cases, like you said,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: they kind of had to finish setting these things up
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: themselves and drag the wet mattresses into their tent. So
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: this is how the fire festival is starting at this point.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't have their luggage, so they started inquiring
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: about that, and so they started, you know, just dumping
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: their suitcases out onto the beach from the shipping containers
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: and just other supplies, and basically it turned into complete chaos.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: They just started dumping supplies on the ground and saying
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: because people were revolting and saying take care of yourself,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: like there's the stuff, have at it.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It's frequently compared to like rich millennial Lord of the Flies.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: So one other thing that they were that the festival
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: organizers were doing was they were getting everybody super drunk.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: There was one thing and great supply and for free,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: and that was booze. They had like shot girls walking
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: around getting getting everybody super wasted on tequila, Like everyone
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: was starting to get really really drunk, and they were
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: doing that to kind of keep everybody distracted from just
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: how horrible this thing was.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's also not a great idea to add
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: alcohol to a bolatical situation.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly, No, it's not. It was a very irresponsible thing
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: to do, and it just shows all of the incredibly
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: short term thinking that went into every stage of this,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: including the actual festival itself.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So maybe the worst spout about all
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: this is they couldn't A lot of people were like,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: this is a disaster. I want to get out of here.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: They couldn't just get out of there because it was
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the same weekend as something called the National Family Regatta.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: It's a really big event, and you know, most of
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the hotels were booked up, most of the flights were
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: booked up, so people were basically stranded down there. I
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: think eventually they were even like locked in the airport overnight,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: like when everything was closed. It wasn't like one of
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: those airports it still has stuff open overnight, right.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: They were locked in with a chain and a padlock
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: and there was no ac They weren't left with any
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: water or food. And remember everybody by this time who's
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: made it to the airport has been drinking all day,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: so now they're starting to sober up, and they're hungover,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: locked into this hot airport without any food or water.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: So it's a really bad jam by this point. Even
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: before that, when they started, when it became clear like
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, there's a lot of stuff wrong here. Remember,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: these kids are like all on Instagram and Twitter and
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: all sorts of social media, and they immediately started alerting
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: the world Fire Festival is a total fraud. And one
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: of the most iconic photos that came out of this
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: is a styrofoam to go container opened up with a
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: slice of bread, a piece of cheese, a skew on
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: that slice of bread, another slice of bread, a skew
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: on the piece of cheese, a pile of lettuce, a tomato,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: and some sort of oily condiment covering the lettuce and tomato.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: And they said, this is the star catered food that
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: we were supposed to get. This is the food that
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: they're giving us at fire Festival.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, by this point they had already officially
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: postponed the festival. They came out and said it's due
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: to circumstances out of their control. They had, which the
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: only thing of which that happened that was out of
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: their control was the rain, I suppose. But they officially
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: did postpone it, but word had gotten around via social
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: media and at least I think a lot of people,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: you know, canceled their plans and didn't actually make it
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: down there. Yeah, but you know, people started poking around
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: about Billy McFarland and what really happened. The media got
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: involved and they were like, hey, this is more than
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: just an idea that, you know, good idea that didn't
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: work out, Like we think, actual crimes have been committed.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: So over the course of a couple of years they
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: realized that he had committed actual financial crimes and that's
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: what he ends up going to prison for. Billy McFarlane
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: served prison time for this.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: He did so the ticket holders, and I said before
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: that they were generally portrayed as rich millennials who like
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: to go to music festivals. There were definitely plenty of
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: those there. This is like meant to be an instagrammable event,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: but there are also plenty of people who like just
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: weren't rich, and they went because actually, in some cases
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: it was a good deal. For like eight or nine
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars, you could get eight friends together and cover
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: air travel, food, accommodations, and three days of music at
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: a music festival. It's actually not a bad deal. So
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: some people like really spent like money that they needed
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: on this and they got screwed. Over all the vendors,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: the people who who worked all those people went unpaid.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: But it was the investors who were the ones who
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: the court ordered people to pay or court ordered McFarland
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: to pay back.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I know at the time, it
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: was it was it seemed funny to make fun of
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: this and the people that you know, these like you
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: would you say they were rich millennials, but like they
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: spent money and they deserved to have a thing go
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: off like they wanted to, and that's the way they
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: wanted to spend their time. It's not my deal. But like,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's funny that anybody gets scammed out
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: of money, you know.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, there was a tremendous amount of shod and
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: frauday by people who are not rich millennials or on
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Instagram or just hate that whole Instagram life kind of thing.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: There was a there were a lot of memes that
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: came out of it that basically portrayed this as like
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: it immediately descended into anarchy and they started eating each
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: other and yeah, again kind of Lord of the Flies esque.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: But again it was just the investors who were meant
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: to be paid back. I think says quite a bit
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: about a lot of stuff. He actually was taken down
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: on securities in Exchange Commission SEC charges, so he had
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: a federal beef against him, and essentially what the court
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: concluded is that he built eighty investors out of twenty
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: four million dollars just for the fire festival. I saw
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: that he was on the hook for another ten twelve
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: million dollars for the other stuff, including the Magnesis scams. Essentially,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: so if this guy is basically like, you have the
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: rest of your life to pay this back, and that's
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: what you're going to have to do. And on top
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: of it, he was sentenced to six years in federal
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: pri Yeah.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: So you know, he did this by allegedly lying about
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: almost everything financially related to this whole thing, and including himself.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: He said he had two million dollars in Facebook chairs. Personally,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: he had about one thousand dollars worth. He said the
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: fire media app was taking in millions of dollars a month.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Over the whole lifetime of the fire Media app, that
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: made about sixty thousand dollars. So in addition to him
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: being on the hook, like you know, with the law
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: and like the sec, he's on the hook with personal lawsuits.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: So a lot of people there was a class action
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: lawsuits for one hundred million dollars. Like everyone got together
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: of course and sued them ticket holders, and then they
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: were like, hey, we should suit these ad agencies too,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: because they're collaborating with these people. They're putting out like
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: literal false information and in some cases they're deleting negative
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: comments about the truth of this thing. So a lot
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: of these lawsuits got dismissed. Others did go through and
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: were successful. I think the class action the ticket holders
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: were reimbursed. Who knows if they ever got it, but
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: at least they were awarded seven thousand dollars each, which
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: is you know, pretty good.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they did not get it, and they probably never
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: will get it because as part of the federal sentencing guidelines,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: the investors are to get every penny of their twenty
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: four million dollars back first before anybody else starts to
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: get paid, vendors, ticket holders, anybody else. So one question
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: that I saw that was not asked almost anywhere. I
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: think I found one article that asked it because I
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: was looking to find out what happened? Where did all
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: the money go? He certainly did not spend twenty four
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: million dollars on the fire festival, not by a long shot.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: And in the documentary they basically portray it as like, well,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: he was just living it up, and he was, for sure,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: I still would guess not twenty four million dollars in
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: six months living it up. So I can't help but
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: wonder if he's got money stashed somewhere or if he
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: really did just blow through twenty four million dollars in
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: six months creating this fire festival that was totally fraudulent.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not going to speculate. I don't want to
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: get sued.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I'm not speculating. I'm questioning. I really do
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: wonder what happened.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, who knows, But that's a lot of dough, that's
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: for sure. After he was arrested while he was out
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: on bail, he started another company called NYC vip Access.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: He was like, I can't be the face of this
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: thing because everyone knows what I look like in my
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: name by this point, right, So we hired a guy
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: named Frank Tribble to kind of be the face of
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the company, and he used the Fire Festival mailing list.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: You know, a mailing list can be a very valuable thing.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Sometimes companies are bought just because they have an extensive
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: mailing list, and they'll just shutter the company and use
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: that contact point. But he actually used the Fire Festival
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: mailing list, offering tickets to things that don't even celtickets
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of times, like the met gala in New
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: York City Fashion Week. And I think that Fire Festival
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: mailing list may have been as undoing there because that
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: was added to his list of criminal charges as well.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: That VIP access scam.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah it was again. It was another scam. And this
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: guy who he hired to front at Frank Tribble, he
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: still lists himself as the CEO of New York NYC
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: vip Access on Instagram, I believe, and he also offers
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: discounted AirPods in the bio of his Instagram account.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Nice get a good deal in some AirPods.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: So Billy McFarlane, I think he served four of his
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: six years. He was definitely let out early. He was
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: also transferred to a low security prison in Ohio.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he tried to get out of prison when COVID happened.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Is what they call it, like a medical benevolence release
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: or whatever, because he said he had asthma and that
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: COVID would probably kill him, and so they moved him
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: into solitary during that time. Did not let him out then,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: And he did get COVID oh really while he was
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: in prison, but he didn't die.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: He did some other solitary stints for breaking the rules,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: like he smuggled the recording device into the prison and
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: then used it to launch a podcast. I guess, assuming
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: that they the warden didn't listen to podcasts.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Low Hanging Fruit.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was released early. I don't know how
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: many years early. He was sentenced to six years, and
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: I think it did four, maybe five, But he definitely
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: got out early. And the first thing he did when
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: he got out, almost the first thing was he announced
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: that there would be a fire festival two.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Fire I has not happened, but he did finally
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: host and organize, and I guess successfully pull off a
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: music festival last year on Utilla Bay. He loves these
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: shortened sort of misspelled things. I guess he chose Phoenix, Yeah,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: pH NX. I assuming because the phoenix rose from the ashes,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, much like Billy McFarland did. But that one
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: actually went down. I went and looked at it, and
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of a single performer. But that doesn't
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: mean that they were not noteworthy. It's just there's tons
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: of music out there now that I don't know about,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: so they may all be great. Well.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: So the one that I saw that I recognize the
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: name of it was French Montana, and he's a pretty
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: big name. He was a big big fish land and
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: he did show up and he did perform. But I
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: was checking it out too. There was a live stream
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: that you could pay for ninety nine to watch this
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: music festival, and so it's all very highly documented and
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: you can see there's like handfuls of people who are
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: attending this music festival. Like when French Montana is like,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: you know, somebody say yeah, like he gets nothing in response,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: and like it was just yes, it was not good.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: They were apparently letting in locals. This is in Honduras,
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: letting in locals for free and encouraging to come for free,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: just to kind of fill out the crowd a little bit.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: So but like you said, he did successfully hold the
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: music festival, but I saw that he's out of the
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: fire Festival game because he sold the brand.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Did you see anything on that, Well, I saw that
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: he sold the brand. He sold it on eBay chuck
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: for like a couple of hundred grand or something.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like I think two hundred and forty grand. He
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: sold it on eBay, and he sold it to lime Wire,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I think, one of the original music download disruptor apps.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so yeah, LimeWire owns the fire Brand now.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: And if you want a Firebrand mug or a Firebrand hoodie,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: you can go look up fire Festival and LimeWire and
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: their site will come right up.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I am quite sure that to where a fire Festival
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: hoodie at this point, this many years later would be
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: a very ironic sort of fun thing to do.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Definitely. I think that's kind of what Lime going for.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: It's they acquired the Mad Magazine of music festivals.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure if you. I don't know about
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: that now that I think about. No, I'm not gonna.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: You don't want to sell you mad magazine?
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: No, Yeah, yeah, they they do offer. Those hoodies are
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: two hundred and forty thousand dollars apiece.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Oh that's a good price.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Uh, you got anything else?
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I highly recommend at least watching
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: one of the documentaries. They're both about the same, I
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: would say, although we should say that both of those
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: documentaries came under scrutiny, yeah, because they both I think
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: one of them paid Billy McFarland for an interview which
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: everyone thought was pretty untoard and give that guy any money.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: And the other one that was partnered by one of
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: the PR companies who had scrubbed social media of negative
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: comments and they had partner and they don't cover that
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: in the documentary, and they were partnered in that documentary.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: So that one was also untoured.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the net Netflix documentary didn't have Billy McFarlane.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: They approached him to be in it and he's like,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: you have to pay me, and they're like, no, it's
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: not ethical, but Hulu is like sure, yeah, so okay,
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: So that's it. That's all we have to say about
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Fire Festival and Billy McFarland, and I think then it's
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: time for a listener mail. Chuck.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: I'm going to promise this is the last mcguffin email,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: just because I like to torture you. But I think
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: this one had the best definition that it finally clicks
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: in for everybody.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: We'll see.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: The idea that made it click for me, guys, was
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that an item is a mcguffin if that item can
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: be substituted with almost anything else without making any changes
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: to the plot of the film. That's a pretty good definition.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: That mysterious briefcase could be a flash drive with important documents,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: or a diamond necklace belonging to the royal family, or
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: any number of vaguely valuable things. The point of the
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: film is the action that unfolds around that central item.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: If the plot is centered around something, it isn't about
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: that thing, it is a mcguffin. And this way both
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: definitions actually fit. The existence or the state of the
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: object is what moves the whole plot, but the object
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: itself doesn't actually matter. I just thought i'd throw in
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: my two cents because before I took this film class
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: that taught me this. I felt the same about mcguffin's
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: as Josh seems to. Thanks for a great show, guys,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: been listening for over ten years, learn so much and
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I have had so many great conversations inspired by stuff
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: you should know. And that is from Anna hell Camp.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks Anna, thank you very much. I saw that definition
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: essentially something like that here there still don't understand, really no,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: it doesn't. Okay, Well then what isn't a mcguffin? What
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: is not a mcguffin?
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: I have to know, I don't even know what that means.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: What isn't a mcguffin then, is something that if you
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: could change it would actually change the plot.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: What give me an example? What give me a real
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: life movie example of what's not a mcguffin that I
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: will be able to understand the difference between mcguffins and
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: things that aren't mcguffin. I demand it.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: All right, Well I'll have to go do some research
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: on that then, all right, so we will do another
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: mcguffin email somewhere or maybe you know, like the murder
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: weapon that's not a mcguffin, because that actually matters to
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: the plot. A murder weapon couldn't be just some other thing,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yes, but how does this
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: we're searching We're searching for the gun that killed them
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: the whole movie. They're searching for the gun that killed
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the person, because that is the central piece that would
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: actually land the person in prison. Okay, and you can't
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: substitute that for a can of coke.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: But okay, then how does the where again does that
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Maltese falcon fit in there? No one is doing anything
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: if the.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Maltese Maltese falcon, so I can't comment.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: But you can replace the Maltese falcon with a giant
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: ruby or a flash drive, which would have been weird
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: in that era.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: But I think that's why everyone calls it a mcguffin.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Right, but it's not the maguf Okay, all right, Maybe
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: it is starting to dawn on me a little bit.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks to who that's Romana?
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: All right, thanks Sanna. I do want to hear a
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: specific example from a movie of what is not a mcguffin.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'm going to find a movie where
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: there's someone's searching for a murder weapon, because that's a
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: great example.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: I think in the meantime, if you want to be
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: like Anna and send us an email where you try
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: to crack through my thick skull, I'm up down for
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing. You can send it off to
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.