#3. The Sub-Beacon on the Fyre Festival Documentaries
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The competing Fyre Festival documentaries — Netflix's and Hulu's, released days apart — produce the most unguarded enthusiasm JVL has ever expressed on this show: he says he has never derived more pleasure "in an emotional, spiritual, sexual sense" from a piece of filmed entertainment, admits he has already pulled the Netflix one back up several times just to watch five random minutes, and pencils it in as number one on his year-end top ten, because "there is no pleasure in life like watching bad things happen to bad people." The only people he exempts are the Bahamian restaurant owner who lost her savings and the camera operator who tried to warn Billy McFarland off. Sonny prefers the Netflix film on formal grounds — it has the actual promo-shoot footage of the Instagram models, which explains how anyone got hypnotized into believing the thing was real — but faults it for hiding the football on Jerry Media's involvement, while JVL objects to Hulu paying McFarland and then shooting him with a fisheye lens from the floor to distort his legs, since "you don't need to stack the deck against Hitler." Both marvel at McFarland inviting a camera crew in to watch him run a fresh ticket scam, at Magnises (a $200-a-year metal credit card plus clubhouse), and at Ja Rule's conference-call insistence that it wasn't fraud, just deceptive advertising. Sonny asks whether the influencers should be sued and lands on no — you can't sue Ray Liotta if Chantix makes your teeth fall out — and Vic ties the whole thing to a Citi commercial with Alicia Keys and an old Men's Health dispatch from Hedonism II edited by Greg Gutfeld. Around it: Sonny under coordinated Twitter attack from the Bohemian Rhapsody community and suspecting an Oscar-campaign botnet, JVL's confession that he spent years believing Rami Malek was related to Malin Akerman, Vic quietly going off his gout meds without telling a doctor while eating sweetbreads and Grand Marnier soufflé at La Chaumière, and JVL's closing revelation that he was a teenage concert guy who saw Primus headline over a mid-card Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza in Scranton.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode, sponsored by Calm, the Sub-Beacon discusses the competing (and complementary) Fyre Festival ...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00They just bought an island. Pablo Escobar's island. Oh my god. We're gonna throw a festival here. Within 48 hours. They sold out. These guys are either completely full of s**t or they're the smartest guys in the room.
Vic00:00:25Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon sponsored by Calm, the number one app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at a podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You will easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. I'd like to emphasize tell your friends because it turns out even now if you look at all these wonderful five-star reviews, you're going to find a lot of good reviews. There are people who are just discovering, rediscovering us now. Right, Sonny?
Sonny00:00:59Yeah, a lot of people did not know that we have started again, but we have.
Vic00:01:05And here we are on episode seven. JVL, how are you? I'm fantastic, Victorino. How are you? I'm doing well. What's going on in your life?
JVL00:01:15Is it cold enough for you? It's very cold outside.
Vic00:01:20Yes, lovely. No, everything's good. How are you? life been excellent? I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine, but I had a question for Sonny. Question. Why do you hate Rami Malek so much?
Sonny00:01:35I was going to bring this up too. Really? A lot of
Vic00:01:38synergies today. Please do.
Sonny00:01:40So I am under attack right now on Twitter. As you should be. From the BoRap community. The Bo, the B-O space R-H-A-P community. The Bohemian Rhapsody community. Is that code for something? A self-styled collective of Freddie Mercury and Rami. Friends of Rami? Friends of Rami. Coming after me. No, it's actually fascinating. I'm totally interested in this because I tweeted when Malek won the Golden Globe I tweeted something. A wonderful moment. As I'm like live tweeting, you know, the Golden Globes, you know, half-cocked at 10.30. At night, you know, kind of on my sixth glass of whatever. And I just was like, LMAO Rami Malek is going to win the Oscar for looking kind of like looking kind of like Freddie Mercury, isn't he? And so it was, and so like, whatever, I just tossed this off. Of course, it gets retweeted a bunch. And then the Bohemian Rhapsody community finds it. And it's an interesting mix of accounts tweeting at me. On the one hand, you have a bunch of, I think actual, like, real people who are just into Bohemian Rhapsody and who are like really into Rami Malek. There's like a whole subculture of
Vic00:03:11Rami Malek. A Rami Malek subculture.
Sonny00:03:12People, which is, I mean, I guess it makes some sense because every famous person has a subculture of fans kind of fawning all over them. But Malek himself is such a weird looking individual that I that it like, it it's even more amusing. But but this, so there's there's that group of fans. The people who are just like really into Rami Malek. And like, okay, fine. I get it. That that's neither here nor there. The far more interesting angle to this is that there's a significant subsection of people tweeting at me. Maybe 20% of the tweets I'm getting about this are from accounts that have been created in the last two to three months. November December 2018. A few January 2019s. Oh boy. That are extremely into Bohemian Rhapsody. You know, they've got Bohemian Rhapsody banner images. Their profile pics are either members of Queen or Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury.
Vic00:04:10I can't believe, JV, I can't believe you had so much time on your hands that you could do this.
Sonny00:04:13It's really impressive. And it is and it is, it is a coordinated effort, perhaps. Or maybe it's, maybe it's not. I don't know. But it's a very interestingly fine-tuned attack on anybody who is criticizing the movie and also fine-tuned praise for anyone who is praising the movie. So it is, it is, I would be willing to wager a small sum of money that there is some Oscar fluffer out there who has created a botnet designed to pump up the engagement for Bohemian Rhapsody and make it look like there's this real grassroots support for this movie. And look, and frankly, they don't even need to do this. This is a movie that grossed $800 million, right? It's like, the amount of money this movie has made and the amount of enjoyment people have gotten from it, you don't really need a faux grassroots campaign for it. But it is, there are other movies that this has been done for. A friend of mine, a critic who writes for the Washington City Paper and the Washington Post, said something nasty about Vice. And immediately heard from several accounts that either were created in the last few months or had been reactivated. So like, one account had been dormant for like five years and then had 50 tweets in a row about Vice. So I am convinced there's a PR company out there somewhere that looked at the 2016 election and was like, this thing that is breaking American democracy, that's exactly what we need to introduce into our Oscar campaigns.
JVL00:05:51Question? Yes. Why do you assume that it is a Hollywood PR company and not the Russians? Because it's possible Guccifer 2.0 saw the havoc that the Russian intelligence services were able to wreak on the American presidential election and thought that now it was time to strike at the true heart of America. The true heart of America. At the entertainment industrial complex. The entertainment industrial complex by monkeying with the most sacred award that we have. More sacred even than the presidency.
Sonny00:06:21I would say that's a fair assessment
JVL00:06:23of the Oscars. And throw it to Bo Rapp. Could we get Mueller on this? It's entirely possible
Sonny00:06:29that this is what has happened. I think we do need a federal investigation.
JVL00:06:33Can the special counsel expand the scope? If Mueller isn't already
Sonny00:06:38looking into the Russian bots pumping up the Bo Rapp community, then I don't know what's he even doing with his time.
JVL00:06:45Could we get a Sonny Bunch dossier on this that maybe we could hand over to people in the FBI somehow?
Vic00:06:51Are you also saying that you... Rami Malek, if he wins the Academy Award for Best Actor, you're saying that that will be tainted and it won't be strictly because of his sheer talent?
Sonny00:07:04I mean, it's hard to judge on these things. You know, you only really have to swing a few votes here and there. A few votes in the Hollywood Hills, a few votes in Malibu, and you do that.
Vic00:07:19Very good. In the crucial
Sonny00:07:21Waukesha County District of Hollywood.
Vic00:07:25And you said LMAO because you don't think he should get the Oscar for Best Actor.
Sonny00:07:30No. I mean, I think any reasonable person can look at that performance and realize it's not that impressive. JVL, you think he's going to get it?
Vic00:07:37You think he could get it? Yeah, that's why
JVL00:07:39I have a confession. For, like, years I believed for no reason that is intelligible at all that Rami Malek
Sonny00:07:51was somehow related to Malin
JVL00:07:53Ackerman. Like, my brain just transposed all the letters and basically turned them into
Vic00:07:59brother and sister. That was like some sort of weird dyslexic or anagramic.
Sonny00:08:03Like Corby Comer. Corby Comer, yes! So you thought that Rami Malek and Malin Ackerman were related?
JVL00:08:11Whenever I heard one of their names I transposed the final the last name either to Malek or Ackerman. You thought you were going to say Art Malek, the
Sonny00:08:18villain from True Life. You thought that the kind of goofy looking small person was related to the statuesque, like Scandinavian actress. Had you ever seen them together? Had you ever seen pictures of either of them? Had you ever seen either of them in any setting? I had seen them both but never together. Had I seen
JVL00:08:41them together, I would have seen the names on the chyron and my idiot brain would have stopped scrambling off the letters.
Vic00:08:48I hope Rami Malek gets the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was great as Fred Merrick. He worked his butt off. Anyway, I'm doing fine, Sonny. Did you shovel all the snow?
Sonny00:08:59I just wish there was no snow. I just wish Peter Robinson was here for every one of these bohemian rhapsody
Vic00:09:06interludes that you do. It's like a stake in the heart. I'm off my meds because I'm feeling fine. Which meds?
JVL00:09:16The gout meds?
Vic00:09:17The blood pressure meds? Oh no, I'm never going to get off the blood pressure meds. The xyloprim for the gout. Question. The gout watch.
JVL00:09:23Yes. Do you have
Vic00:09:25one of the little
JVL00:09:26seven plastic compartment medicine things with all the days a week so that you set them all up on Sunday night so you know what all of your meds are for the week so you don't get confused? And I also
Vic00:09:37have the pill splitter. You know the pill splitter? My wife actually suggested I get one of those and then she started laughing at me at her offering the suggestion of getting the Sunday to Saturday thing so I have it all set for my week so I don't forget because sometimes I'm like what am I taking this morning? You know? But no I'm off the meds Off the gout meds. Off the gout meds because I'm feeling good but part of me worries that it's like you know with people who are mentally ill and then they go I feel better now. I'll get off the meds because I feel better. When precisely they're feeling better because of the meds. Right. So we'll feel we'll see what happens Are you doing this under the supervision of a doctor? At the moment no. At the moment no. So you're just
Sonny00:10:23stop taking them of your own volition
Vic00:10:24I just started. I'm sorry I'm having this twitch now. I'm doing yeah I just decided you know what I haven't refilled
JVL00:10:31the prescription. And he got into Georgetown and I didn't
Vic00:10:33I'm just gonna wing
Sonny00:10:35it. We'll see. How far did Georgetown JVL make it in the brackets?
JVL00:10:39I want to say to the Elite Eight Okay
Vic00:10:41But we're definitely on a gout watch because. Gout watch. Tuesday
JVL00:10:46Thank you Sonny
Vic00:10:48Tuesday had as I mentioned to you had a lunch with some friends of the Beacon at a wonderful place in Georgetown La Chaumier and I had sweetbreads. That's Oregon meat. If you're into glands it's delicious and then I had You take some amazing lunches while you're working Well it's work. You're not working. You're not working and they insist. They. I'm not gonna say who They insisted that I get the Grand Marnier souffle So that was a little bit of a concern. You couldn't say no No you know it would be a diplomatic. Because it was work It would be a diplomatic incident. You know I did go to Georgetown. I know about the diplomacy thing. You cannot
Sonny00:11:25Protocols. Protocols. Very important But I didn't know. It's like that scene in Temple of Doom
Vic00:11:30You must eat Oh you mean in the village. Yeah I'm thinking
Sonny00:11:35In the village. No no no
Vic00:11:37We did it before that. Earlier
Sonny00:11:38In the village. Yeah when the starving Villagers give cake. Sometimes it's that and
Vic00:11:42Sometimes it's souffle. So we'll See what happens. And The other weird thing is talking about gout Is how many more people now will Actually connect with me Either on social media or even in Person that they are also fellow sufferers And you'd be surprised Sonny. I'm not The only one suffering gout in this office Oh can I Guess who else is? Yeah sure One guess. You got one guess
JVL00:12:06Liz Harrington
Sonny00:12:07I'll go With Todd
Vic00:12:12Wow that was That was based on An age thing but no
Sonny00:12:18No it wasn't based on an age thing It was just because I see you guys talking sometimes Oh yeah well that's I just assume you're talking about gout The only thing I know about you Vic is that you have gout So whenever I see you talking with someone I assume the other person has gout too Steven
Vic00:12:31Yeah I know shocking And for him it's really bad because It's sort of like it doesn't have to be You know it's not in the same place for him I think it's like in the ankle So it actually is very painful On the heel if you're walking when it's In full flare he says it feels like He's walking on broken glass Speaking of glass over the Weekend glass from At the top of the box office with 19 million followed by the upside With 12 million And Aquaman in third place With 7 million really the first two Slots of the box office were paralyzed this Weekend but I guess that's Good news for M. Night Yes
Sonny00:13:10It's worth noting that the second weekend Numbers on glass are way lower than the Second weekend numbers for splits Audiences Not as into glass I just Want to note that Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse has held Extremely well I remember we were all kind of Disappointed that it had done about 30 million In its opening weekend and it is Now at about 170 Million it had only a 20% drop this Weekend it is holding Extremely nicely I believe we all said it would play
JVL00:13:40For weeks and weeks and weeks It had legs did it win the Golden Globe For best animated
Sonny00:13:45Yes I think so I think it did It might have been Tarzan
JVL00:13:51I don't know
Vic00:13:52At least for best song
JVL00:13:54You know who liked a tweet of mine this morning Amy Mann
Sonny00:13:59Did you tweet at her Did you tag her into it
JVL00:14:03Did she follow you It was about the piece I wrote about Chris Christie And she liked it Wait a minute so she follows you I don't believe so She may follow my wife She knows you're a fan
Sonny00:14:16Liberal Hollywood Chiming in in favor of the You know Well I can see what's happening here We should also note that Aquaman Is now the highest grossing DC movie of all time Because it's the best DC movie of all time Take that Dark Knight Rises Trash movie Aquaman New King Better than Man of Steel
JVL00:14:39Hey can we talk about Ben Affleck Ben Affleck out
Vic00:14:43Matt Reeves is Mr. The Superman Is the new movie The Batman Sorry wrong movie
JVL00:14:49Is that what's happening We're getting a movie called The Batman The Batman Starring Matt Reeves Directed by Matt Reeves
Sonny00:14:59Who directed Let Me In, Cloverfield And the two last movies In the new Planet of the Apes trilogy
JVL00:15:06Now I hope this will be an origin story To explain to audiences where the character comes from It's supposed to be a young Batman A young Batman That's great, we don't know where young Batman Batman year one Is that what this is Can we get a movie
Sonny00:15:19Where we see how Batman Begins
Vic00:15:24Could we get that please That's what I need And then I want to see him rising
JVL00:15:30So Sonny You have I have a real question for you, a serious question When you say that Ben Affleck Is your favorite Bruce Wayne
Sonny00:15:42I said maybe my favorite Bruce Wayne
JVL00:15:44Is that Like that tweet you did About the pothole in Roslyn Like this insanely cute Calculated troll where you know That saying that Ben Affleck Is your favorite Batman would be too much But if you just say he's your favorite Bruce Wayne it's almost Halfway plausible and you know people Is that what that is
Sonny00:16:06I don't discuss my methods On this show You know I have a very specific sort of tweet Formula that is designed to Drive engagement and increase Are you auditioning for Fuck Jerry Are we going to have to bleep that Every time we mention it It's a proper name It's a brand name We'll get to them in a minute Let's not use it Liberally Hold on So what happened to Ben Affleck Ben Affleck was going to be out Ever since Justice League tanked They're getting rid of Ben Affleck They're going to get rid of Henry Cavill If I could just explain to you why
JVL00:16:46Because Justice League was so Successful
Vic00:16:49That they
JVL00:16:52Realized it would be impossible To top themselves Artistically and financially Both artistically and financially And so they've decided to leave the stage In order to allow new creative talents To reinvent the franchise
Vic00:17:05Studios are so thoughtful
JVL00:17:06They really are
Sonny00:17:09Who's in the running? Who are they saying is going to be the next? No names yet Now the next six months is who's going to be Batman And there's going to be 50 stories a day On all the dumb nerd sites Just to Say, you know, do I think that He is the best Bruce Wayne? What I mean by that is I like that version of Bruce Wayne The kind of like old Older Drunk, snarly As opposed to the callow Young playboy Bruce Wayne I prefer the
JVL00:17:40If you like that flavor, why don't you like Michael Keaton? Michael Keaton Because Michael Keaton plays him as crazy
Sonny00:17:45And I love it Michael Keaton plays Bruce Wayne as a little bit more I mean, I think Michael Keaton is still possibly the gold standard I don't know, Michael Keaton and Christian Bale probably won too But they're also in the best of the Batman movies So it's hard to separate But I just, I like The The whole Ben Affleck as like the crossfit The crossfit Doing Angry, drunk, old man Leaving models in his bed So he can go wander around in his bat cave Batman, that's my preferred Batman
Vic00:18:20But I was going to say, you mentioned earlier F. Jerry, JVL And that brings us to What we're discussing mainly today, which is not Any of the movies in the box office But rather two very interesting Documentaries On Netflix and Hulu On the notorious Fire Festival Sonny, what's happening here?
Sonny00:18:42So, Hulu and Netflix Released Competing documentaries about the Fire Festival Within a couple days of each other Last week, was it last week? Or the week before? But it's totally fascinating Because the two movies Are pretty similar Insofar as they are both about The myriad ways in which Social media And the hype machine And everything else is conspiring To destroy America But looking at These two documentaries in tandem Is also Fascinating because it's an interesting way To think about how documentaries Themselves work So the Netflix documentary was produced In cooperation I guess with the Jerry Media Or whatever There's a social media influencer company Who they go by the moniker Fuck Jerry I guess And they are They worked in concert With Netflix to make a documentary About the Fyre Festival They have a bunch of the footage From the initial commercial shoot Which we'll get to in a second And There's a lot of interviews With those guys and members of the team And also They do a really good job The Netflix documentary does a much better job Of interviewing the actual people on the island Where this Fyre Festival was supposed to take place The Hulu documentary Their big gambit here Is to have the guy Who founded the Fyre Festival Billy McFarlane He's on camera Talking about His life and his childhood And also what went wrong with the festival And how he just dreamed too big Etc V1 Fyre Festival V1 Was a failure Again we'll get to all that So Fyre Festival was marketed to millennials As like the new Coachella It's going to take place But more exclusive More expensive It's going to take place on an island that Pablo Escobar owned That they owned That they owned The Fyre Company bought an island That was owned by Pablo Escobar
JVL00:20:57And it should be said that Fyre itself Is an app
Sonny00:21:00Fyre itself Well this whole festival was designed to promote The Fyre app Which is basically like
JVL00:21:06The Uber of booking talent
Sonny00:21:08Literally what they said
Vic00:21:11Swipe left or swipe right for birthday party
Sonny00:21:13Okay So to promote this festival They put together a video with a bunch of basically supermodels They get, you know, Emily Ratajkowski And Bella Hadid
JVL00:21:23Those are Instagram models, not supermodels
Sonny00:21:26I think Emily Ratajkowski has transcended To supermodel status I will reserve judgment on the other ones How dare you
Vic00:21:32I actually paid McFarlane I actually paid McFarlane money for Fyre Festival Even watching the documentary because I saw Emily Ratajkowski
Sonny00:21:42He was like, oh I can go to an island with Emily Ratajkowski Alright, V2
Vic00:21:46I paid him money and I didn't even realize what happened That had already happened Let's go to a Bernie24
JVL00:21:512020 rally, you can get it for free
Sonny00:21:53So the So anyway, this festival Was promoted with this really slick looking Commercial of all of these models Swimming around on this Deserted island, all of these models Slash, as one of the Interviewers puts it, and some random White dudes in the background That's the outrage And this was Such a, this was then Promoted by the Instagram Models on their Instagram pages With this Orange tile The idea of the orange tile is to catch Your eye as you're scrolling through your Instagram feed You're like, what is this, why are all of these orange Tiles showing up on my Instagram feed The whole thing is such An epic disaster Of society But it's actually really smart Marketing, because people are stupid We have to remember that people are stupid, and that they Will do anything to Make their lives marginally better, make their Miserable, meaningless lives Marginally more entertaining And if you're some Trustafarian, if you're some rich kid Who doesn't really have to do anything with his life What could possibly be More fun than going to an island with a bunch Of models, and hanging out and watching Blink-182 Except of course when they get there So once they get there, it's a disaster, we all remember what happened With the Fyre Festival, you know, people are They've paid tens of thousands of dollars For this luxury, for these luxury Accommodations, and they get there and it's FEMA tents With mattresses that have Been soaked by the rain and also urine And The meals are pieces of bread with cheese On them, I mean it's like Prison food basically So anyway It's a big disaster and now everyone Is suing them, blah blah, so The two documentaries again are very fascinating Because they're kind of in Conversation with each Other but also in competition with each other There's a very snarky tag at the End of the Hulu documentary That's like the F. Jerry Guys are you know Are working on Their own documentary About the Fyre Festival And it's interesting It's interesting to watch The thing that strikes me the most About both of them is The utter The wanton Criminality of Billy McFarlane On camera Especially in the Netflix documentary You get much more of this than the Netflix There's a whole bit at the end where he is Literally Invites a camera crew in To watch him try to defraud people Invites a camera crew in to watch Him and his cronies Sell tickets to events That they don't have The NYC VIP To the red carpet for the Met Gala To the Victoria's Secret runway show To you know The Super Bowl or whatever, the Grammys Yeah Like private concerts with Beyonce It's insane The total, the balls on this guy I can't tell if he's incredibly Brave or incredibly stupid
JVL00:25:01Again, it's the sucker born every minute No, he is not brave I mean, he's pathological and stupid
Sonny00:25:07He's just He's a stupid person
JVL00:25:10And had he been caught and severely Punished somewhere early Because I bet you anything, this kid was running Like plagiarism scams in middle school And cheating And cheating on tests and all this And my guess is that the system Just sort of, you know, nobody Just passes him on Well, you know, like someday he'll go to Bucknell And he'll get a middle management job somewhere
Sonny00:25:32Yeah, him being a Bucknell kid was One of the least surprising aspects of it
JVL00:25:35You know, when, I would say this
Sonny00:25:38JVL
JVL00:25:39I am not Terribly sympathetic to most Of the social justice Stuff But whenever you hear people talk About white privilege And you see a guy like Billy McFarland You have to stop and say Yeah, okay I mean, yeah, okay The way, way far left Has a point here A guy like that just getting passed off And passed off and passed off Until there are
Sonny00:26:11You know, other stupid Rich white people handing him checks for Hundreds of thousands of dollars And there's a bit in the Hulu documentary Where An African-American gentleman is like Yeah, I spent some time in prison And I was trying to explain it to Billy And he was just like, no, I'm not going there That was the Netflix one
JVL00:26:29That was the camera guy
Vic00:26:32Who was fantastic
JVL00:26:33Victorino, did you have a Did you prefer one to the other?
Vic00:26:41You know what Which did you watch first? I watched the Netflix one
JVL00:26:45I think that's the correct order
Vic00:26:46And I was reluctant to watch the Hulu one After I read our friend Paul Crookston's review of it Where he reviewed both And he said the Netflix one was better But for the purposes of the show I temporarily subscribed to Hulu Remind me to cancel that Anyway, so I watched the Hulu documentary But you know what, the Hulu one was actually not that So I had lower expectations for it What's really interesting about the Hulu documentary And the interview with McFarlane Is that Part of it is obviously what he says But I love these pauses Where they just have him looking in silence Out into space And clearly I'm imagining that they just muted The guy behind the camera asking him some questions Or talking and he's just staring there Contemplating his actions But I don't know I kind of like the idea of Magnesis, I'd like to be a part of that We haven't even discussed Magnesis Let me tell you about Magnesis
Sonny00:27:41Magnesis is It's a strip of metal That is the size of a credit card That you imprint your other Credit cards on And for the luxury of using This hunk of metal You pay a couple hundred bucks a year And then you also get access to a townhouse Where you can hang out with other people Who are stupid enough to pay $200 For a piece of metal that works In place of their credit cards
JVL00:28:07And cable news bookers Had him on television To talk about this
Sonny00:28:13We can get to that in a minute
Vic00:28:16I was going to say One of the things that I enjoyed If that's the word I believe in the Netflix one They interviewed the poor guy Who aside from the logistical nightmare That he had to deal with In the end they suggested Well that's okay you can deal with all these masses of people there Because you're their yoga instructor That one That was Netflix As if all these people needed meditation at that moment
JVL00:28:40Speaking of which JVL Yay I get to talk about our friends at Calm Calm.com is a Meditation, relaxation And sleep application That you put on your phone Calm.com We use it all the time At my house We are long time users of Calm and way predating Their sponsorship of the show And it's fantastic I cannot imagine our lives without it We use it primarily for our kids And we use sleep stories They have children's sleep stories They have an ever expanding Library of these and what they are is They are short-ish, some as short as like 12, some as long as maybe like 35 minute stories read to you By people with amazing voices Which then help your children Fall to sleep. I would like to Show you boys what we did the other night My two girls Do not share a room, they each have their own room But for some reason When they had to share a room It was a source of endless conflict and we gave them Separate rooms and now they sleep together in the same room All the time. I don't understand it So they normally Sleep with Favorite in the bottom bunk and Little E in the top bunk And the other night they Both crawled into the bottom bunk together because they said Daddy we just want to cuddle for a couple Minutes and then We will, I will get up Little E said and I will go to the top bunk And I said okay and so I put On The Magic Wand By British actress and storyteller Anna Acton Hello
?00:30:19My name's Anna
Guest00:30:21And tonight I'll be reading you a special Bedtime story
?00:30:27Called The Magic Wand
JVL00:30:30So I leave the room I come back five minutes later And this is what I see Look at it, knock them out It's like ass to ass It was as if you would Hit them in the neck with a blowgun dart With like you know Brazilian Toad venom or whatever that just
Vic00:30:49Bam I was going to say prob-a-fall
JVL00:30:51This is what it is like for our kids Every damn night It is amazing If you are a parent who have kids Who have trouble with sleep Which is like 95% of all kids You should get Calm.com, it's amazing For a limited time The great people at Calm are going to give Our listeners 25% Off of a premium subscription To Calm.com If you just go to Calm.com Slash Sub-Beacon That's C-A-L-M dot com Slash Sub-Beacon They are going to give you 25% off It gives you access to all of their sleep stories All of their meditations It's sensational, I personally pay full freight For this, I don't get the 25% off And it is worth every penny If they double the price We would still be paying for it So if you have kids out there, subscribe to Calm.com And even if you don't, actually The little siesta meditations are quite good I'll talk more about all those Other things the next time But Calm.com is fantastic Calm.com slash Sub-Beacon Thank you, JVL
Vic00:31:56You texted us While you were watching the Netflix documentary, did you do it in the same order? Netflix and Hulu? Yes And you enjoyed this documentary
JVL00:32:06I would say first I believe this is a case Where the two Productions are actually Complementary Complementary Complementary They are not in tension with one another You feel, you get a better Sense of the whole having watched them both The Netflix one Is a better narrative Exercise in terms of Explaining to you exactly what happened But They clearly are hiding the football On the F. Jerry stuff In ways which are Below board By not saying up front Hey, just so you know, this is, because I found Myself like, so where are they getting all this footage?
Sonny00:32:51100%, I was thinking the same thing It wasn't until I saw the end of the Hulu documentary, I was like, oh, that must be where They got all that stuff from
JVL00:32:58I don't have a huge problem With Vice News Getting with F. Jerry In order to make this documentary, I don't even hold The F. Jerry people in All that much blame for all of this I mean, look, they're a contractor, they're doing Their thing, however, for them to Never acknowledge Their part, never acknowledge that the guy who's the lead On the account wound up quitting after the fact And he then becomes, in the Hulu documentary The principal witness against F. Jerry That, I find Troubling and disheartening at the end I will I will say this I do not believe I have ever derived more Pleasure In an emotional Spiritual Sexual sense From watching a piece Of filmed entertainment Than I did from watching the Netflix Fire, since watching it Three days ago, I have, hand to God Pulled it up a couple times On Netflix, and just Fast forward to a random scene And just watched it for five minutes And then turned it off Makes you feel better Because everybody, save for The one Jamaican Woman who Runs the restaurant, who lost Her savings I'm sorry And then the one camera guy Everybody
Vic00:34:23Is
JVL00:34:25Horrible, and to have horrible Things happen to, you know Victorino What have I always said to you, since we were 22 years old There is no pleasure in life Like watching bad things Happen to bad people And watching all Of these things unfold And watching these horrible people Screw one another It's
Sonny00:34:48It's something else I mean Speaking of the FDR guys It is pornographic In the pleasure it delivers It's kind of hard to explain To people what these people do Who they are They're basically social media Advertisers They create buzz for things on social media For instance, here is a tweet That was sent out this morning by Taylor Lorenz At Atlanta Just a story Scoop Jerry Media, who had been working with the world record Egg on Instagram in an unofficial capacity Pitched a non-profit On the egg cracking To reveal the words Impeach Trump As Donald Trump popped out doing the chicken dance Now, that is a bunch of gobbledygook I defy 90% of people to know What the world record egg is The world record egg is It's a picture of an egg that went viral on Instagram and has the most likes of all time But this is like what this company does And what this company did for Fyre Festival was Convince all of these Instagram models To Pay They paid all of these They paid all of Kendall Jenner got a quarter of a million dollars Kylie No, I'm pretty sure it was Kendall One of the younger Jenners Now the most famous of the Jenners
JVL00:36:17And the social The non-F. Jerry social media girl In the Hulu documentary said And that's a bargain A quarter of a million dollars is a bargain The influencer The influencer manager
Vic00:36:30So this is all about the influencers
JVL00:36:32These are what people do They influence This is clearly what Rome looked like Right, I mean this is We've entered the final
Vic00:36:43Decadent stage
JVL00:36:44If you think that there's a quarter million dollars Of value Being delivered by an
Sonny00:36:50Instagram post She's got 98 million followers
JVL00:36:53So what? JVL, you don't understand how influence Do people not understand opportunity costs? As a modest influencer myself
Sonny00:37:01You are an influencer yourself, Sonny, it's true I often am deluged with offers To influence people On a per pay basis And I turn them down because my feed is not for sale But some people's is
Vic00:37:12Are you big on Instagram, Sonny?
Sonny00:37:14I don't even have an Instagram account
Vic00:37:16I can't do it I'm not much of an influencer per se I'm a twit
JVL00:37:21Question Aside from Billy McFarland Who did you hate most? Which character in the two documentaries did you hate most? Victorino, go The woman with the beauty mark on the airplane
Vic00:37:33Who says we're on our private plane And of course she was joking about What do you do for a living? Who are you? He was the worst outrage He didn't find this out in the Netflix documentary But in the Hulu documentary She didn't end up in the tent They gave her a lift She was either on a boat or something That was the outrage
JVL00:37:51And the Hulu, this was great They had her saying we felt really bad about it And then they cut to something she posted on Instagram Where she's running around and dancing in the villa I really did not like her She was bad She was the one who was like It's worse than the lowest economy That stuck in my mind All of these people The only way That these documentaries could have been better Is if at The Fyre Festival All the people there had been doused in napalm And burned alive While a tsunami then Swamped the beach and pulled them Sucked them back out into the ocean But somehow they burned to death while drowning While drowning, I was going to say Something like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark
Vic00:38:34It was all gone It was amazing
JVL00:38:37And in the Netflix one The red haired guy with the Vineyard Vines shirt Who was like That was sad That was sad He's in both of them But in the second one he's only in video You can see him in the background of video On the school bus
Sonny00:38:55No, he gives an interview too I'm pretty sure that guy gives interviews in both But he's super annoying
JVL00:39:03Sonny, do you have other favorite villains From the documentaries?
Sonny00:39:07No, I mean Billy McFarlane In the Netflix documentary In the bit at the end where he is He's running the ticket scam Which We find out in the Hulu documentary He had done before Fyre Festival Which again gets back to JVL's point That nobody at any point Stopped this guy from doing his stuff Until he was like running up 40 million dollars of charges To various people on an island In the Bahamas The whole thing is just Amazing
Vic00:39:38Both of you guys, what are your thoughts On Ja Rule, JVL
JVL00:39:42I'm so glad We haven't even mentioned Ja Rule Ja Rule is the guy I hate second most Please elaborate Ja Rule who has an IQ of what Yeah man What up dude And we gonna My brother Billy is gonna Magnesis And I'm a mogul
Sonny00:40:09And so I got to rule New York City Oh no this reminds me My favorite part I think my favorite part My favorite part in both documentaries Is the conference call after Fire Festival happened Where someone's like I think the FBI's getting involved They're talking about fraud And Ja Rule's like no it wasn't fraud It was just deceptive advertising Or something
JVL00:40:30I was like no that's fraud You're a dumb person That was fantastic When he said that I was laughing out loud And it isn't really even Ja Rule that I hate It is the world in which Everybody knows that this guy Is a moron But then like Puts him up on stage at a TED talk Or has him on Bloomberg TV Or Fox Business Or CNBC or whatever And just puts a camera on him And pretends that yeah no He's a business guy who understands business And is doing an interesting product You do not have to have any sort of Special insight into How the world of finance works You do not have to be a genius Anybody with half a Brain of common sense Could look at all this and have said No this is, none of this works This is a fraud, it's like the Theranos thing It's like The one guy, actually the one guy The hero of all this is the Millennial finance guy Who becomes a fire fraud Who creates the Twitter account fire fraud Who starts like you know putting up actual like maps Of the island with the things like Look here's the Sandals Resort right here They don't have any running water This isn't possible This isn't going to happen That's really The willful Disregard of any Because you know We're in our own reality, YOLO I just, I hate it
Sonny00:41:58Well why would they charge us $10,000 for a villa If they didn't have a villa to sell us $40,000 at the end
Vic00:42:04Oh we're not out of tens, we're going to go up to the $40,000 level
Sonny00:42:07Why would I not pay $125,000 for a VIP package To the Instagram island model concert They clearly have All of these things set up and ready to go
JVL00:42:17My favorite line In the whole Three hour mashup of the two Because I now sort of in my mind think of them together As one product I think it might be the very last line Of the Netflix documentary where somebody says I mean the truth is There really was a Fyre Festival And it was that shoot When we went down with the models And it happened twice because we did two shoots And that was the Fyre Festival And it's right, I mean this is Yeah The people who got to enjoy the Fyre Festival were the scammers The scammers who went down to film They created their own mini Fyre Festival For 30 people, they got to do it twice
Vic00:42:55And then they got paid on top of it The best part was also The other great part was In the Netflix documentary they showed The great clip of Dave Chappelle Making the joke about Ja Rule Like I gotta know what Ja thinks, oh my gosh What does Ja Rule think And that really summed it up Sonny
Sonny00:43:12I mean just again From a formal On a formal level of Talking about the art of filmmaking I do think that the The Netflix The Netflix one is better Because it has better footage Because it has that footage From the actual Fyre Festival As we're saying, you know, from this photo shoot They've got the photos of them They've got video of the models just kind of running around And doing their thing And that is, that actually helps I think that helps I think that helps I think that helps Understand how people could get Hypnotized into this idea That yeah, this is a thing that will happen We can do this We can will this into existence We've done it once, we can do it again And I Also, I just kind of Prefer the interviews We haven't even mentioned the gay Event planner Who At one point Who at one point is told that he is going to Have to give pleasure To a Bahamanian official In order to get their Trucks of Evian water Out of lockup And he's like I was ready to do it
Vic00:44:26Okay, so I heard the story Ahead of time before I saw the documentary And my first thought was This is some terrible thing, this guy This is the worst thing ever And then you watch the documentary And I actually really felt bad for that guy And he was like He was going to take one for the team But here's the way Here's my crazy thing Here's my question Was it McFarlane who suggested that he do this? Yeah Okay, to the Bahamian guy So McFarlane has this assumption That the Bahamian guy would want that That's what I want to know From the old guy From the 50-something year old guy He would want that Without touching, so to speak, the issue itself I'm dancing around the subject here But that's the weird thing Oh, just because he does it, you'd want it
Sonny00:45:12Look, who Who's to say Who's to say who would turn what down
JVL00:45:19That is a bad assumption to make
Vic00:45:20You know, the guy said no
JVL00:45:22I have two things To his credit So I have, once or twice in my career Been Settle down, Vic
Vic00:45:31Look at Sonny squinting like where's his question Settle down
JVL00:45:34Been approached by people Who were obvious con artists With jobs And it was In both Once I was quite young, once I was a little bit older And it was Yeah, come to this fantastic job You're gonna get paid a lot of money And it's gonna be great And I went to meetings with these guys And I listened and I just said to them But how would you do this, how would you do that This doesn't make any sense One of them was for a magazine that was gonna be starting up That I was offered to come and be like the deputy editor of As a 24 year old or something stupid like that And you know And the guy was like yeah, no, it's great And you know I might buy you guys Porsches after our first anniversary
Sonny00:46:17And I just kept saying Okay, but
JVL00:46:20But who's the audience, how are we gonna get distribution And I was able to say No, I will stay at my crappy job Answering phones at this other place Because what you're selling Is insane And not real, and you're a huckster It is not hard To identify con men It really isn't, it's not rocket science Because they're all insane And This is why I got so All of those people in the Netflix documentary Who went along with it
Vic00:46:50They're all willing Every one of them
JVL00:46:53And I hate it And the one complaint I have about the Hulu The side fact that I thought it was a little bit Sort of overly produced In the sort of B-roll footage and shots Of animation and stuff like that I did not Like the way they treated McFarland on camera Precisely what you say With the long pauses They're stacking the deck against him And my fear is that that makes him Look like 1% sympathetic And you don't need to stack The deck against Hitler And let's be honest, Billy McFarland is essentially worse than Hitler It was also
Sonny00:47:32So did you notice how They shot him Yes, the fisheye, that itself They shoot him a fisheye lens That must have been, the camera must have been On the floor Yes, I did not like that at all And I was just like, that's not necessary You don't need to do that And it's clearly designed to make him look like A big galoot Because it distorts his feet His legs look enormous The whole thing is weird and awkward And like I wondered while I was watching If they had two cameras set up simultaneously If they had one down there And then they had the one that he's supposed to look into
JVL00:48:11I believe they had three Cameras roll Yeah Three cameras set up There was the fisheye lens on the bottom A head-on one that they're saying, here, look into this building And then a profile one And I didn't like that And I thought The reason I didn't like it is because you don't need to stack the deck against him
Vic00:48:27Also, I thought they didn't
JVL00:48:29Make use Didn't make as good use of him as they could have Like I I don't know what the rest of the raw footage looked like But I think you could have gone after him Harder than they did That said, it was Still very interesting There was a bunch of stuff in that But Hulu also paid him
Sonny00:48:47Did they?
Vic00:48:48Yes, but he claimed, as our colleague Paul says He claimed I think he was trying to get back to Netflix To let Netflix know that he was getting paid $250,000 He was trying to play Hulu and Netflix off each other And then Hulu was like, we did not pay that For him
JVL00:49:06That is amazing
Sonny00:49:08Yeah, he's getting paid Everyone's getting paid except for the people who Paid to go to it So here's one parting question I think Do you guys believe Do you think that the Instagram models should be sued For partaking In this, for advertising it, for Lending their names To this and convincing people to go JVL
JVL00:49:33I don't think you can blame The Instagram models any more than you Could blame the cameramen The people I think might Be culpable, might be The F. Jerry guys who are Actively deleting Not even like The information Deleting information From the account, which was not like Not abusive, but people Raising legitimate questions
Sonny00:50:00People asking like, what are our flight numbers
JVL00:50:02People who are saying, I need to have some Information about this and Destroy, that all of a sudden I think becomes, maybe it's not legally dubious It probably should be, right, I mean if You are a contractor for You are then That seems like an active attempt to defraud
Sonny00:50:19People. If you're shining people on In an effort to get them to Come to this, if you're sending them emails Saying, you need to put money on this wristband You need to put, this is going to be a cashless Festival, you need to send us thousands of dollars
JVL00:50:31But that's not F. Jerry
Sonny00:50:32That was Right, right, right, I'm just Saying like, but it's all part and parcel Because at the same, these two things are Happening in concert with each other Okay Did the F. Jerry guys get paid?
Vic00:50:46I agree, they didn't know about They weren't even there for the actual Thing, so they weren't in on the Forget about the decisions, they weren't there on the For the lack of decisions about How are we going to supply all these things
JVL00:50:58They're just contractors, do you Sonny, do you Please swerve on this Please swerve on this
Sonny00:51:05I don't feel bad for the Instagram Models and the influencers, obviously And I'm glad that this Whole event In some minimal way exposed what a fraud The industry is, that they profit From, but I Like, you can't sue You can't sue a spokesman Because the product wasn't any Good, I mean, like You can't sue the e-cig Company because, or, wait, what's The Marlboro Man? No, no, what's Ray Liotta Pitching now? Oh yeah, Shantix You can't sue Ray Liotta If Shantix makes your teeth fall out, you know
Vic00:51:42Let me tell you something I see that commercial with Ray Liotta, he needs to be selling something else Whatever it is, he needs to up the dosage I have two final Thoughts on fire, one is You know, the old Saying about if it's too good to be true Then it's not, and I remember Back in the 90s Men's Health Did a great story about Hedonism 2, where, you know, it's like Oh, you look at this, this place is gonna be amazing You gotta go check out Hedonism 2 Or it might have been in the early aughts, so they sent A writer down there, and of course it's like 70% Divorce guys, you know At least, 30% women And maybe 10% Younger than 50, you know And that's what they arrived at, at Hedonism 2 And the funny thing is, I believe the editor Of Men's Health at the time was Greg Gutfeld I believe it was, that was a great Gutfeld kind of story Classic his story, he was such a great editor And the other thing is this In terms of where our society is going And how this happened, when I watched the fire Documentaries I was reminded, years Ago, maybe 7-8 Years ago, when CityCard did a commercial For their new, like, get the credit card And the city pass, and the commercial Is available, you can check it out on YouTube If you type in city commercial Alicia Keys, and it opens with A sort of very milk toasty guy Getting dumped by his girlfriend The girlfriend says, you're boring You're boring, he says, I'm boring That's it, I'm getting my city pass And then he says, that's how I met Marilyn And he's at an art gallery looking at Marilyn Monroe And that's how I met Giada And he's at a tasting with Giada De Laurentiis, and he goes, and that's how I met Alicia And then at the end, she's singing This girl's on fire, and she walks backstage She passes him, she gives him a look And he gives her a look Now he feels special And that's, and then here we are
Sonny00:53:28It's like the classy Magnesis
Vic00:53:32Yeah, and then that's where we are Because they want to be a part They're not anything, and they want to be something We're going to the Bahamas It's
JVL00:53:41It's the greatest The greatest movie ever I will watch this movie No joke Dozens of times Over the next, over the coming year
Sonny00:53:52So at the end, so we can already pencil this in As number one on your top ten 100% It's a great documentary
JVL00:53:59Just pleasure Every pleasure center that I have In my body, because I am a natural born hater Is just Just tickled And Massaged and edged And it's, oh, it's amazing
Vic00:54:15You know, they say that Disney's Castaway Cay Island Also was formerly used for drug running Before, you know, back in the 80s But you don't see them bragging about that You know
JVL00:54:25The message they're bragging about is what cost them the island Because, do you remember the They didn't buy the island, they were just renting it And the owner of the island said Just don't say anything about Pablo Escobar It's like the first thing in the video
Sonny00:54:38The very first thing he does then is yank it
Vic00:54:40So they lose their Sight During the regatta Okay, do we have any final fire thoughts?
Sonny00:54:46I hope all those guys go to hell
Vic00:54:48I know, really, at the end of their life You say, what did you do? Well, I was an influencer You know, that's it
JVL00:54:53Who's the kid who, the blonde Influencer kid, who is asked Like, what is it you do? And he's like Well, I just, it's about positivity It's like what they all say It's like, I'm about positivity I'm just sort of, it's my brand And I'm living, and who is somebody That even talks about Like, what a sacrifice it is to be an influencer
Sonny00:55:13This is in the Hulu documentary That you're exposing your life to the
JVL00:55:17You are, because you're trying to Like, you know Show your positivity and share it You're sacrificing by Letting all of these people Into your own life I mean, if you think the influencers are the greatest Heroes of them all, it's amazing God, we should all die in a fire
Vic00:55:35Thank you Okay, corrections, additions Anything? I have one Thank you to listener Brendan Dunn Who corrected my reference to the essay form It's Montane, not Montesquieu I could have said Montezuma I could have said Montezuma Okay, that's all the time we're giving to this episode Questions, comments, compliments Tweet us At Victorino Matus, at Sonny Bunch At JVLast Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play Just type in SubBeacon under Podcasts We're there Leave a review, tell your friends Until next time
JVL00:56:10I have a little something for you boys Great I think I have something to share
Vic00:56:21I'm scared
JVL00:56:22That you don't know about me, Victorino
Vic00:56:25Well, I know a lot about you I know
JVL00:56:28It's been a long It's nice to know after all these years I can still surprise him That was in the card you gave me Okay, go ahead In my youth From a From about the age 17 through 22
Sonny00:56:45I was a concert guy
JVL00:56:47What do you mean a concert guy? I mean I went to like music I went to Lollapalooza You went to shows? No, I went to like Lollapalooza The first revival of the Like back in 94? Wow The revival of the music festival Lollapalooza was the first music festival revival Like, you know, there had been like 20 years without one And after it succeeded We got more like More Lollapaloozas There was Warped There was like Warped Which was for Woodstock 94 Woodstock 94 related Right This is all because of Perry Farrell's Lollapalooza And my buddy Chris and I went to I did not know this A giant You would not think that me With all of my little fistidious things Would be okay at a music festival
Sonny00:57:27With all these people With all these people Where did you go to the bathroom?
JVL00:57:32I held it all day Obviously I'm sorry
Sonny00:57:36What did you think I did? I forget that you don't really drink So you probably weren't like, you know
JVL00:57:41No, I was 17 My buddy Chris and I He had his license I don't know if I had my license yet And we got tickets to Lollapalooza In Scranton, Pennsylvania And we drove out We got a hotel room at a Red Roof Inn Like 20 miles away from the thing It was the first time that I ever like went away Quasi unsupervised As a like this is a thing we're gonna do I think I was Chris and I were literally the only people At Lollapalooza Not either drunk or stoned What? Did you get a contact high? Just being exposed to all that? No, but weirdly enough I enjoyed it This was back when I used to like Like being around What were the bands?
Vic00:58:20Yeah, yeah
JVL00:58:20So let's see Who was there? Primus was a headliner This is actually cool Pearl Jam was there And it was They were a mid-card act
Sonny00:58:28Because they were in the process of breaking big So they had So 10 had come out But it wasn't
JVL00:58:33They had just But it had come out like two months before And so Pearl Jam was In a weird They were playing at like 3 o'clock In the afternoon And everybody was there for it It was Ice Cube or Ice Tea Nice Either Ice Cube or Ice Tea Ice Cube would have been really good It's hard to tell them apart I like I'm kidding It was great It was really, really Les Claypool Watching Les Claypool play bass live Was pretty awesome He's like This is a song about a friend of mine He took a belt And he hung himself It was, you know It was great
Vic00:59:04I'm pretty sure
JVL00:59:05I was into that sort of thing back then That's amazing
Vic00:59:06And I knew you liked Primus But I didn't realize You never You never told me at the time That you had gone to those concerts I'm pretty sure That I got a contact high When I went to the Diana Ross concert In Central Park During the wilding Because the guy in front of me Was high as a kite And I thought he was just acting weird And we were there for like four hours And he was right in front of me Where you are And I was nine I'm sure I'm sure it's fine
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