Liking with blinkers on

Sometimes you don't really want to know how the sausage is made.

I saw the Netflix documentary Fyre this week, and it immediately became my #1 movie of the year. That's a bit of a joke, as I've only seen three movies this year. But I did really like it, and "love" would not be too strong a word.

Of course, it was then that I remembered the controversy I hadn't quite heard about, but did have delivered to me in secondhand form when the film was recently discussed on the Slate Culture Gabfest.

You see, both this film and its less distinguished cousin, Hulu's Fyre Fraud, have been made with the intimate participation of some of the very people responsible for the dumpster fyre that was the stillborn April 2017 island music festival, Fyre Festival.

While Fyre Fraud features the Svengali at the heart of this scam, Billy McFarland, as a core interview subject -- for which he was allegedly paid $250,000 -- Fyre lists as a producing partner Jerry Media, the outfit responsible for publicizing the event, who are considered complicit in its failure as they likely knew festival goers wouldn't be getting anything close to what they paid for, and did nothing about it.

I'm told I should hold these things against these movies, but I don't know. I really, really enjoyed Fyre, even if it doesn't in the least point the finger at Jerry Media. As I'm not a subscriber to Hulu, I have not seen Fyre Fraud, and won't prioritize it as people I trust say it's not in the same league as Chris Smith's film. (Yes, that Chris Smith, who made the classic documentary American Movie.)

If I'm only using half the available information to analyze it, though, it seems to me that Fyre's sin is a lot less dire. I don't think there's any way to say that Jerry Media is equally responsible for the disaster as McFarland, and sometimes, documentaries make strange bedfellows. You'd likely want to make a documentary about the Fyre Festival without any of those responsible allowing themselves to look innocent or directly profit from it, but how else would Smith have gotten all the priceless footage Jerry Media was able to provide? That includes behind-the-scenes of the shoot for the initial promotional video with its bevy of models frolicking on the beach. That's a necessary part of this story.

And Fyre is nothing if not great storytelling. It's tight yet feels complete, and it unspools the story in terrific fashion, holding back choice nuggets of information for the exact moment of their greatest impact. I don't know how it's possible not to be completely rapt while watching this movie. It's also got a number of great interviews with people around the margins of McFarland's empire, not to mention that now-famous scene featuring Andy King. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch the movie -- it's worth getting the surprise, as I did.)

Plus, Fyre Fraud gave $250,000 to a man who knowingly defrauded lots of good, hard-working Bahamians and lots of maybe not-as-good, but still generally innocent millennial concertgoers.

Although you'd wish documentaries could be made with the full measure of their journalistic integrity intact, these two movies provide good examples of how that's not always possible. Methinks Fyre Fraud (sight unseen) crossed a line but Fyre didn't. You can only sell your soul up to a point. Though maybe I'd watch Fyre Fraud and think it was a useful document too.

As long as a movie has the ring of truth and entertains the hell out of me, I'll keep those blinkers on.