I don’t know about you, but I almost had a rage blackout watching the Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. The documentary tells the story of young entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule’s attempt at putting on a luxe music festival on an island in the Bahamas. Think Coachella on steroids.
For those who missed it, the 2017 festival was a disaster, and was cancelled before it began, but not before ticket holders paid thousands of dollars to attend and local Bahamians (some 200, according to the documentary) worked around the clock setting up the event, and never got paid for it.
Watching the whole festival fall apart on screen, it’s hard to feel sympathy for any of the event’s organisers, who rely on Instagram influencers, fraud (co-founder McFarland was subsequently sentenced to six years in prison), and braggadocio to create the event, seemingly forgetting that overnight festivals need things like plumbing and toilets.
The only sympathetic character in the whole documentary is Maryann Rolle, a restaurant owner who worked non-stop to feed festival-goers who descended on the island with no way of getting home.
“I had 10 persons working directly with me just preparing food all day and all night, for 24 hours,” Rolle told the documentary crew, while choking back tears. “I had to literally pay all those people. I am here as a Bahamian and they stand in my face every day.” According to the film, Rolle was never able to recoup funds from the Fyre Festival organisers and paid her workers with $50,000 of her own savings.
Now, a GoFundMe page set up to recover the money lost by Rolle has raised $50,000 and then some, with nearly $170,000 being donated to the restaurant owner.
“Back in April 2017 I pushed myself to the limit catering no less than a 1000 meals per day,” Rolle wrote. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner were all prepared and delivered by Exuma Point to Coco Plum Beach and Roker’s Point where the main events were scheduled to take place. Organisers would also visit my Exuma Point location to enjoy the prepared meals.
“As I make this plea it’s hard to believe and embarrassing to admit that I was not paid…I was left in a big hole! My life was changed forever, and my credit was ruined by Fyre Fest.
“My only resource today is to appeal for help.”
While Ja Rule has criticised the documentary, and claims that he was also scammed by McFarland, he did apologise to Rolle on Twitter.
“My heart goes out to this lovely lady… Maryann Rolle we’ve never met but I’m devastated that was meant to be amazing, turn out to be such a disaster and hurt so many ppl..Sorry to anyone who has been negatively effected [sic] by the festival.”
