You know the saying about a great book: “I couldn’t put it down.” That’s how I felt about the documentary I watched last night.
I didn’t intend to spend ninety minutes watching it: I was going to bed and, out of curiosity, thought I’d watch a minute or two. But I watched it, spellbound, until the very end.
The documentary is “The Greatest Party That Never Happened”, and you Netflix subscribers can watch it. Here’s the trailer:
You may remember in 2017 the disastrous Fyre Festival, but this documentary tells the tale of serial fraudster and compulsive liar Billy (yeah, a grown man goes by “Billy”) McFarland and his partner in crime, the not-very-smart self-proclaimed “mogul” Ja Rule.
It’s an absolutely fascinating ride. Mr. McFarland is definitely the bad guy – – VERY bad guy – – whereas Ja Rule isn’t convicted but definitely lacks a moral compass (a favorite line near the end when they’re all on a conference call discussing the disaster……..one of the team, in a rare moment of self-awareness, states that what they’ve done is fraud, to which Ja Rule replies, after some thought, that the didn’t commit fraud, just “false advertising.”)
Anyway, the image of hundreds of young, douchey music-loving hipsters stranded on a mosquito-infested island and finding themselves in a Lord of the Flies kind of hellscape is amusing enough, but far more interesting is watching the unbridled chaos going on behind the scenes. I highly recommend it.
