Just watched both back to back. They work well together, and focus on different things which is nice. I actually preferred the Hulu one mostly because I'm more interested in Billy's failures and the chaos he was creating rather than the effects, but the Netflix doc was great as well. Definitely feel bad for those that worked on the event, especially the locals, they got fucked the hardest. I have mixed feelings on the goers. I feel bad that it legitimately became a dangerous situation, but don't feel bad at all that the event was not what it was advertised to be and was just a disaster.
That audio of Ja Rule on the conference call with employees was pretty damning against him. "That wasn't fraud... It was false advertising!" I don't know how he didn't get into trouble for this
Well I'd say now that I've seen 2 god damn documentaries about this thing... I still have many questions. Like ja rules actual legal involvement in this. Did he have any of his own money in this or was he paid by mcfarlane
not sure how credible that is though haha. I still can't believe this shit show. How did they book all these bands? How the hell did they think it was ok to originally plan to put a music festival on an island with no electricity or plumbing? LOL.
Lmfao Ja just said everyone got paid except him? Tell that to the people in the Bahamas or Billy's friends whose Amex cards got maxed out lol
Just finished the Netflix doc (haven't seen the Hulu one yet). What a wild, insane, crazy event! Feel so bad for EVERYONE involved. I couldn't believe after he was convicted that he was still trying to scam people from his penthouse.
I’m currently watching the Netflix doc, at the part where Billy has his mentor “take one for the team” to get their water released. Holy fuckin shit.
I just think of how many situations like that they could have avoided had they just done things the right way. Collaborated with people who actually knew how to run a festival, set a realistic date for it, actually listen to people regarding the logistics of the location (maybe just throw the festival at an already established resort), etc. But instead, the first thing they did was shoot a commercial, collect people's money and set a date four months away. Like, they probably could have pulled this off (or something similar) if it had been a couple of years out. Though I guess the whole point of these documentaries is to show how Billy was constantly pulling scams to pay off existing debts or finance things so that was probably the biggest driving factor in the timeline. He needed that scam money ASAP.
I just watched the Netflix one and I knew it was a shit show, I just didn’t know it was that much of a shit show. Wow.
we watched the netflix one last night and will probably watch the hulu one later on tonight. it's hard to put into words how infuriating/baffling/crazy that whole ordeal seemed. i wasn't very in on the updates as it was happening, i just knew there was some festival gone awry that left a bunch of rich kids stranded in the bahamas. what a mess. <-- what an understatement.
I still can’t believe they allowed people to show up with nothing ready for them. And no way to get home!!! Were the artists there or on their way to perform? It didn’t look like or sound like they were ready. The Netflix doc didn’t mention what ever happened with the musical acts.
I don't think any of them even started to head there, as far as I know. I believe after blink canceled, all the rest of them bailed shortly after. I feel like the documentaries only talk about all of the celebrities and musical acts a minimal amount. The models and celebrities used to advertise for the festival didn't even seem to ever have any real intention of being there if you check their posts in the couple of days overlapping with the start of the festival (and never announced they were scrapping their plans to attend when things went south or anything like that). I feel like that's another huge part of how they scammed people into going (Netflix just showed a screenshot where they specifically said "Hang with your favorite celebrities") but they don't even mention that.