‘It was an absolute Fyre Festival.’ Before Miami contestants were enlisted to save the world, another group signed up in Montreal. But where were the cameras?
That would be on a flight from Miami to Montreal in a year of Fyre Festival fever. Not Fyre Festival of any kind. Fyre Festival. The festival that everyone was talking about but no one ever attended; the festival that became the target of much publicity but no one bought tickets; the festival that was, for its organizers, a massive bust.
“In Miami, we didn’t talk about it at all,” says Michael Schwartz, the principal of a private school in North Miami-Dade. “We were like, ‘This is fine. We’re happy that you’re talking about it’. The kids went to a ton of events, but not an actual Fyre Festival. And the school ended up getting sued because the school was a party to the sale.” The suit was filed by a parent and two of the school’s teachers. The parents received a $11.6 million settlement.
Two years after that, Miami was a town of whispers, of whispers of whispers, and the whispers had only gotten louder.
On April Fool’s Day 2017, a plane heading to the festival was forced to ditch in the Gulf of Mexico.
As the plane flew in, no one knew where it was going. Nobody knew anything of anything.
“It was a complete and total surprise,” Michael Schwartz said of the April Fool’s Day incident. “And we’re still waiting on that $1 million check.”
“That is literally the biggest money you can get for a plane trip, is being in the news,” said Schwartz. “This is literally just like, ‘So, Fyre Festival’?”
A few weeks later, something was sold on the internet.
After the Internet, you had the media; after the media, you had the Fyre Festival. Now, all of a sudden, it was an actual reality festival and a reality Fyre Festival and you’re talking about it and you could see all the people in the audience that you would never have seen before. And it was real, but everybody knows everything they need to know about the festival from the news