The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Review: Tchaikovsky Is Rolling In His Grave

Slow torture for kids and grownups alike, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms gives a bad name to the very concept of family entertainment. What went wrong? Where to begin?!? On the surface, this Disney debacle seems like a no-brainer for the holidays: Its an 1816 gothic fairytale by E.T.A. Hoffman and a ballet with music by Tchaikovsky. What we have here is simply a botch job with two directors Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog) for starters and Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III)for reshoots and absolutely no personality of its own. Dance fans can look forward to a pair of all-too-brief appearances, including one over the end credits, from ballet great Misty Copeland. After that, composer James Newton Howard smothers the sounds of this perennial seasonal favorite in aural swill.

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Its Christmas Eve in in Victorian London, and clever Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie Foy), the 14-year-old embodiment of female empowerment, is in a funk. Her mum has recently died (there goes Disney again with the dead parent thing) and neither Clara nor her siblings are in the mood to follow their mopey dad (Matthew Macfadyen) to a lavish Christmas ball. Not to mention that her father insists she wear dead mums dress creepy, right? Mum has left gifts behind for her children. Clara gets an egg-shaped box with no key to open it. Frustrating, yes? So is mums note: Everything you need is inside. At the party, the young woman seeks out her godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman in paycheck mode), a toymaker who zaps her into another dimension. If only he could zap audiences out of the multiplex.

Any hope that things will pick up are quickly dashed when Clara enters the four realms, where it turns out her mum was once queen. Hope you like headache-inducing vistas that can leave you in a digitally induced coma! And good luck figuring out why the leaders of the realms are at war with each other! Searching for answers, Clara teams up with a Nutcracker soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), and an animated mouse. It seems like Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren, reduced to mugging) is evil. Or maybe its flower-covered Hawthorne (Eugenio Derbez) or icy Shiver (Richard E. Grant)? Or how about Sugar Plum, who seems to be having a squeaky-voiced meltdown in the welcome distraction of Keira Knightleys helium-high portrayal of toxic cotton candy.

Any description of what follows, including a battle of tin soldiers, clowns on the attack and a swarm of killer mice, would only evoke other, much better films such as The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. What this Nutcracker offers is so overproduced, so mechanical and so indigestibly whimsical that it wont just be two-year-olds who want to puke it up. Clara is told that the four realms represent a parallel world where time moves faster. Not in this movie, which slows to a crawl in the act of boring you breathless.

The Kindergarten Teacher: Maggie Gyllenhaal Peaks in Poetry Prodigy Drama

The uncommonly adventurous Maggie Gyllenhaal hits a new career peak with The Kindergarten Teacher, compelling us to understand a woman who maybe doesnt understand herself. Thats an apt description of her Lisa Spinelli, a Staten Island wife and mother whos been teaching kindergarten for 20 years the kind of person whose soft voice barely disguises the fact that shes screaming inside. Lisa has dreams of being a poet, an artistic calling whose wheels have come off as the culture dives further into digital, short-attention-span freefall. She has a decent husband (Michael Chernus) who cares or pretends to that she takes an adult education course in poetry writing. Her two teenage children (Daisy Tahan, Sam Jules) are way too wrapped up in their own lives to make time for her. To make matter worse, Lisas flirty instructor, nicely done by Gael Garca Bernal, doesnt think her work is very good.

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Its at this point that you may be ready to write off the movie as one of those well-meaning exercises in midlife angst. Dont you dare. Gyllenhaal is not one to color inside the box, and neither is writer-director Sara Colangelo (Little Accidents). In shifting Israeli director Nadav Lapids 2014 drama into an American context, this English-language remake throws audiences to places they wont see coming. It may seem conventional when Lisa takes an interest in her student Jimmy (Parker Sevak), a quiet boy who unprompted will start reciting lines that read as poetry. She is dumbstruck. How can a child know so much of life? So the woman writes down Jimmys words and passes them off as her own in poetry class. Suddenly, her teacher is impressed. And theres Lisa pressing Jimmys neglectful nanny (Rosa Salazar) to transcribe anything the the boy says.

At this point, you might thinking the film is becoming a cautionary tale about appropriating someone elses work as your own. Wrong. Before long, Lisa is bringing Jimmy to a poetry reading in Manhattan (against the explicit orders of his divorced father), letting the audience and her teacher see what he can do. Jimmy, half scared and half exhilarated, does himself proud. But her deception gets her booted out of poetry class.

Does rejection destroy this would-be patron of the arts? Youd think. But no. Instead Lisa makes Jimmy her cause. She sneaks him out of kindergarten during nap time and into a rest room where she pushes him to create. Its no wonder his parents transfer him to a new school, an incident that brings his former teacher to the breaking point, as she kidnaps Jimmy from his new school and sweeps off her prodigy to a lake resort where they can share deep thoughts and a room.

Its hard not to think WTF?! as the film drifts into a creepy suspense thriller that makes us fear for the child. What is this grown woman doing with a five-year-old who barely speaks until he says, I have a poem? Is Lisa a professional or a predator? Luckily, Colangelo doesnt pursue the worst-case scenario. But she does take us to an unsettling place where her heroine has become unmoored from reality. The film doesnt offer literal answers, glib or profound. The art that The Kindergarten Teacher is scanning can be found in Gyllenhaals eyes, hungry for a life of the mind and one starved of meaning. Jimmy is not the only one who has something to say. For the filmmaker and her star, this movie is their poem.

Venom: Everything You Need to Know About the Marvel Antihero

Ah yes, a superhero story you can sink your teeth into. When Venom claws its way into theaters this weekend, itll mark the biggest moment yet for one of the most infamous villains that Marvels Spider-Man has ever faced. Tom Hardy is Eddie Brock, a down-on-his-luck journalist who fuses with a symbiotic alien entity to become the long-tongued, sharp-toothed, shape-shifting title character. Directed by Zombielands Ruben Fleischer, the movie is set outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe of which Spidey himself is now a part, giving the character a chance to slobber and shine as an ultraviolent vigilante on his own.

But long before he became the star of a blockbuster movie (his second after Sam Raimis Spider-Man 3), Venom began as an afterthought a living breathing backstory for Peter Parkers badass black costume. How did he go from these humble beginnings to holding down a franchise-approved solo film? (Albeit one that, shall we say, isnt getting the most favorable reviews.) Wrap your tendrils around our guide to the character for the answers.

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Before he was a character, Venom was a costume.
Imagine if the Joker started out as a clown outfit that Batman wore for circus-themed missions and youll have some idea of just how odd the path that this character took to antihero superstardom really was.

Back in 1982, comics reader Randy Schueller submitted an idea to Marvel for a storyline in which Spider-Man acquired a black costume (with a red spider logo, rather than the familiar white one) made of unstable molecules, i.e. the Marvel Universe material from which the Fantastic Fours Reed Richards made his teams uniforms. More than mere fabric, this outfit would be able to adjust to Peter Parkers needs, as well as enhance his powers. Controversial Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter bought the idea from Schueller for a cool $220.

It took a couple of years for the new white-on-black look to make its first chronological appearance in the pages of the company-wide crossover event comic Secret Wars #8, courtesy of a design by artist Mike Zeck and a script by Shooter that saw the Webslinger acquire the costume on an alien planet.

Though the issue came out in December 1984, the costume had popped up several months earlier first as a sketch in Marchs comic-length newsletter Marvel Age #12, then in a Spidey story set after the events of Secret Wars in Mays Amazing Spider-Man #252, plotted by Roger Stern, written by Tom DeFalco, and illustrated by Ron Frenz.

And also an alien parasite.
During their Amazing Spider-Man run, DeFalco and Frenz fleshed out the origin of the liquid-like black outfit, which would respond to Peter Parkers thoughts; it would even hijack him in his sleep for late-night crimefighting binges. Sure, it looks badass, but its not merely a futuristic crimefighting costume or the self-repairing clothes writer/artist John Byrne had devised for the martial-arts hero Iron Fist (an influence on Sterns concept for the costume). Its a sentient, symbiotic alien entity, one which bonds to a human host and bestows them with incredible powers while still maintaining a mind of its own.

That mind of its own thing is the rub. Though he digs the power-up, Parker quickly learns that this Symbiote wants to bond to his body permanently. By exploiting the aliens vulnerability to fire and sonic energy and with a little help from the Fantastic Four Spider-Man separates himself from the costume, which slithers off to find another host to inhabit.

Eddie Brock, the host with the most.
The entity that became known as Venom would go on to link itself to many Marvel characters, including Peters childhood bully Flash Thompson and the villain Mac The Scorpion Gargan in the main Marvel Universe and a T. Rex (!) in the post-apocalyptic Wolverine tale Old Man Logan.

But its most famous host is Eddie Brock, a journalist who blames Spider-Man for his failed career. His intense hatred of the Wall-Crawler, coupled with the symbiotes intimate knowledge of Spideys secret identity and immunity to his danger-detecting spider-sense, made their combination referred to collectively as Venom one of the superheros most dangerous enemies.

In the Extreme 1990s, Venom was an antihero for the times.
The Brock/symbiote Venom debuted in Amazing Spider-Mans 300th issue in May 1988, written by David Michelinie and illustrated by a young superstar-in-the-making named Todd McFarlane.

In some ways, the bad guy is a supervillain cut from the old-school cloth: an evil mirror image of the hero he fights, like Superman and Bizarro, or the Flash and, er, the Reverse Flash. But future Spawn creator McFarlanes wild style and penchant for horror-tinged aesthetics got punched up even further by his successor on the series, Erik Larsen, who emphasized those sharp teeth and that slobbering tongue, making him a very modern man-monster. With a ndesign that emphasized shape-shifting and sheer brute force, Venom was Spider-Man by way of Giger, Carpenter and Cronenberg.

But after Spider-Man rescued Brocks estranged ex-wife, Venom realized the man he thought responsible for all their collective woes was actually a pretty alright guy, and something changed. Beginning with the 1993 miniseries Venom: Lethal Protector, launched by Michelinie and legendary Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley, the character repented of his villainous ways though not his penchant for biting peoples heads off. So he became a vigilante.

Sharing both his murderous methods and his black-and-white look with another of the eras most popular characters, the Punisher, Venoms antihero incarnation sustained several solo series. He even teamed up with his one-time nemesis to take on one of several of the even more deranged symbiotes that the original Venom entity had spawned a blood-red monstrosity that bonded with a serial killer called Cletus Kasaday and called itself Carnage. (Keep your eyes peeled, moviegoers.)

And yes, he made Tobey Maguire do an evil dance routine.
Remember Sam Raimis Spider-Man films? From the 2018 vantage point its easy to forget, since the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy took pop-culture by storm while the Spider-Man franchise has been rebooted not once but twice. Still, the directors first two outings were considered the highwater mark of the superhero genre.

Until Spider-Man 3 came along, that is. Marking Venoms cinematic debut, the movie has a bad rap for being overstuffed and tonally inconsistent, which it deserves. Yes, the version of the character created when the symbiote bonds with Topher Graces Eddie Brock is pretty lackluster. But while its still attached to Tobey Maguires Parker, it turns him into a swaggering parody of emo coolness, which Raimi conveys with what can only be described as an evil dance routine.

Regardless, the movie stopped the Sony-owned Spidey series in its tracks. The Amazing Spider-Man reboot that followed in 2012 also ran out of juice after only two outings, but not before the Venom symbiote popped up in a brief cameo in the second installment. Plans for a solo outing set in that franchise went nowhere.

The Tom Hardy experiment.
After Sony inked their deal with Marvel to incorporate Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper, they maintained the rights to handle related characters more or less on their own. Whatever else it might be, Venom is a test case for this parallel universe. The casting of Tom Hardy, an actor whose turn as Bane in Nolans The Dark Knight Rises is either the best or worst thing about that whole series depending on whom you ask, indicates that the studio is willing to take some risks, while the edgy adolescent violence and humor align the project more with Deadpool and DCs Suicide Squad than the squeaky-clean MCU.

Which brings us to October, 2018. Indeed, if Venom takes off, a solo movie for the vampiric Spidey villain Morbius starring Jared The Joker Leto is in the works. Considering that Spider-Man himself is nowhere to be found in these side projects starring his rogues gallery, this is all pretty strange. But for a character that started off as a cool new color scheme for his archenemys wardrobe, strangeness has always been the status quo.

Apollo 11 Review: Immersive Doc on Moon Landing Is a Masterpiece

It is easy to think that theres nothing left to be said, and even less to be seen, about the flight that took place on July 16th, 1969 one that took three men hundreds of thousands of miles away from earth and let two of them step foot on the moon. The countdown to lift-off, that massive flaming metal ring that drops away and burns in the stratosphere, the mirror-helmeted figure planting a flag on the lunar surface, One small step for man : you dont have to been born before 1969 to have this mental flipbook flash before your minds eye. You dont have to have seen the Oscar-nominated For All Mankind (1989), or any other documentaries about the space race (or the Sixties or the 10 Greatest Moments in Our Species History), to recall the sight of our big blue marble as seen from the Apollo 11s passenger-side portal. You dont even need to have sat through last years biopic First Man to picture Neil Armstrong shuffling across the Sea of Tranquility. Some 50 years after that fact, these sounds and images are permanently burned into our collective consciousness. What can be gained by revisiting them for the gajillionth time?

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You cant be blamed for thinking any of this going into Apollo 11, filmmaker Todd Douglas Millers chronicle of the landmark event. By the time you leave the theater 93 minutes later, however, you will wonder how we were ever able to properly consider this historical occasion without his doc. An assemblage of recently discovered, near-pristine 65mm footage excavated from NASAs archives buffered by some 11,000 hours of previously unheard audio this extraordinary accomplishment doesnt just add to our shared knowledge of what happened in the nine days between take-off and splashdown. It greatly broadens, deepens and enhances every single aspect of the journey that the Apollo 11 embarked upon. It may or may not be the definitive recounting of that giant leap for mankind. But its undoubtedly the single most immersive portrait of how an army of technicians, flight-control teams, organizational bigwigs and, crucially, three brave men took us to stars and back. This doesnt just feel like a movie. It gives you the sensation that youve been transported right into the middle of history.

Credit the way Miller and his team handle this treasure chest of behind-the-scenes snippets and fly-on-the-wall flight footage and what they leave out. In the does-not-include column: talking-head stumping from NASA officials, academics, pundits, past and present astronauts; narration from a gravitas-providing actor over the age of 60; that-was-the-week-that-was clip reels or K-Tels Golden Hits to provide context. (The closest we get is an overheard news report that mentions Vietnam and Chappaquidick, the better to eavesdrop on Kennedy Space Center employees gossiping about Ted Kennedy.) As the Saturn V rocket is wheeled out, we get a Cronkite soliloquy about man fulfilling his destiny to reach the heavens. Nixon makes a cameo. (In a crowd shot!) But thats it for gap-filling particulars. We know what happened. Apollo 11 wants to show you the small moments in between the big steps, the God-is-in-the-details asides that add up to a cumulative, 360-degree portrait.

And my God, does that make all the difference. We get to hang out in the suit-up rooms T-minus 20 hours before launch, within the ship and among the sea of engineers in mission control during the journey, and briefly, the quarantine-to-fanfare period that happened immediately afterwards. We get to know Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin through rapid-fire montages of personal snapshots and pre-Apollo test flights. We see the crowds tailgating on the periphery, waiting to catch a glimpse of a threshold being crossed, and men in short-sleeve dress shirts stare at monitors and crunch stats numbers. We touch down on the surface of the big, grey rock in real-time. Even Armstongs famous moonwalk is witnessed from not from the remote camera the image that immediately pops in your head when anyone utters the 10 words that changed the world but from an alternate viewpoint through window of the lunar module. (The finds that the filmmakers have come across here are astonishing.) Hand-holding explanations are M.I.A. An almost experimental-cinema, you-are-there experiential aesthetic is the name of the game here.

In his previous documentary Dinosaur 13 (2014), Miller took a somewhat straightforward approach to reporting about the discovery of the largest T. Rex fossil to date. (From the Mesozoic era to the Space Age, in two movies.) Blessed with carefully preserved, breathtaking visuals see this during its one-week IMAX run if you can and too many candid peeks behind the curtain to count, the director-editor simply cuts to the chase and brings folks along for the ride. You cant emphasize enough how his free-form approach to letting the images do the heavy lifting puts this a cut above most docs, any more than you can underestimate how composer Matt Mortons score lends a thumping, droning, roaring sense of awe to the more dramatic elements of the mission. All of this new 24-frames-per-second testimony makes something so indelibly familiar seem unexpectedly fresh to viewers.

But even more importantly, by giving equal time to the labor and love that went into the endeavor, the men and women who toiled in obscurity, the seconds spent with the spacesuited trio before they became the Space Races Holy Trinity, Apollo 11 humanizes this accomplishment as well. Thats what makes this time capsule feel like a miracle. It takes you right up past the stratosphere alongside these souls. Then it brings everything back down to Earth with equal agility and grace. It is a revelation.

Watch Judd Apatow Praise Garry Shandlings Mysterious Genius in HBO Doc

Judd Apatow talks about his relationship with his comic heroGarry Shandlingin the trailer for new HBO documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling. In over 25 years, he was the most important mentor that I had, says Apatow. But in a lot of ways, he was a mystery to me.

The four-hour project chronicles Shandlings career from a rising stand-up comic to a television star on The Larry Sanders Show, using his private journals kept from age 25 until his death at 66 as a mirror to view his life.

Garry was working on a project at one point where he was trying to figure out how to use his journals as a way to talk about his journey in comedy, Apatow told Entertainment Weekly. In the journals he talks about putting a book out called The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling. I felt like it was something he wanted to share with people.

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The trailer also features guest spots from several comedy giants, including Jim Carrey, Sarah Silverman and Jerry Seinfeld, who tease Shandlings stand-up finesse, career frustrations and late-life move into Buddhism. He turned to buddhism, but its not because hes zen, Silverman says.

Its because he was in desperate need of being zen. Elsewhere, in an appearance on Seinfelds web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, he outlines his pure comedic intentions: Your material is purely a vehicle for you to express your spirit, he says. It doesnt have any value beyond you expressing yourself in a very soulful, spiritual way. Its why youre on the planet.

Apatow who wrote for the groundbreaking Larry Sanders Show from 1993 to 1998 also recruited guest spots from Conan OBrien, Jay Leno, Jim Carrey and Sacha Baron Cohen, among others. The first installment of the doc premieres Monday, March 26th on HBO, followed by the second half on the 27th.

Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams Prove Theyre a Great Comedy Couple in Game Night

Farce is a beast to get right in movies. The fact that Game Night hits the mark more often than it hits a wall is cause for cheering. Hell, if you have Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams to play the game-loving marrieds heading a cast of merry pranksters, youre already ahead of the game. I wasnt thrilled that the rowdy Mark Perez script fell into the hands of directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein since they perpetrated the 2015 remake of Vacation on an unsuspecting public. But high spirits carry the day as Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) organize another night of charades, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Monopoly or any other game that allows them to show off their hyper-competitive, pop-culture smarts, mostly to duck the subject of child-bearing that Max fears. They sound obnoxious, but Batemans dazzling deadpan can raise tired zingers to raucous life with only a throwaway eyebrow lift. And McAdams takes to comedy with a natural actors grace and precision. Talk about fun company. Theyre it.

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And theyve lucked out with their comic cohorts. As Ryan, Billy Magnussen is cluelessly hilarious trading quips with his current date, Sarah (Sharon Horgan). As Kevin and Michelle, the other married couple, Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunburry use jokes to ease Kevins pain about Michelles alleged fling with a celebrity during a brief separation. Was it Denzel Washington? Morris impersonation is killer. And so are the games, especially when the gamers struggle to identify Ed Norton while mentioning every other actor from infinity to beyond who once played the Hulk. And did I mention Gary (Jesse Plemons), Max and Annies neighbor, a divorced cop so devoid of personality that the gamers invent any pretext not to invite him? Plemons damn near steals the movie with his sad-puppy eyes turning creepy as he suspiciously spots three bags of Tostitos in Max and Annies shopping bags. They lamely insist it was a 3-for-1 sale, to which Gary counters with statistics: How would that be good for the Frito-Lay company? If this kind of nonsense tickles your funny bone like it did mine, youre in the right place.

Its when the script tries to over complicate things that the movie hits a rough patches. The trouble starts when Kyle Chandler shows up as Brooks, the better-looking, more successful brother Max has resented for years. Its Brooks who invites the gang to his posh house to play a mystery game in which one of the group will be snatched by paid actors and the others will have to follow clues and figure out how to save the poor sucker. But as everyone struggles to figure out whats real and whats bogus, the movie loses traction. The elaborate plot slows down the movie with car chases, bar fights and guns with real bullets just when you want to hang with the characters and get to know them better. Dont worry, almost no one gets killed except for the bad guys. Danny Huston and Michael C. Hall have a blast playing two of the baddest. No worries. Even as Game Night spins out of control, you stick around for the inspired lunacy. Its party time.

Fyre Festival Doc Director Talks Fests Epic Failure, Employee PTSD

In 2017, director Chris Smith was wrapping up Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond, his documentary on Jim Carreys transformation into Andy Kaufman forMan on the Moon, when he added a simple line to a bunch of half-baked ideas he had written down: Fyre Festival. Organizers of the inaugural luxurious music festival, set to take place over two weekends in the Bahamas in 2017, promised attendees exquisite villas, hangs with supermodels and a lineup featuring Blink-182, Major Lazer, G.O.O.D. Music and Disclosure, among many high-profile acts.

There was only one problem: It was all a fraud and a byproduct of too much marketing and too little actual planning. When guests, some of whom paid tens of thousands of dollars for the once-in-a-lifetime experience, arrived, the villas were mostly FEMA disaster tents; the supermodels were either sequestered or not there at all; and the artists either hadnt been booked or had backed out of the festival. As confusion gave way to fury and guests were denied basic needs like food and water, social media lit up with Lord of the Fliesand Hunger Games comparisons. The rich millennials get screwed and are trapped on an island narrative quickly solidified as sun-baked schadenfreude warmed the souls of anyone who wasnt there. (Festival head Billy McFarland was eventuallysentenced to six years in jail for defrauding consumers and investors.)

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Smith hadread the headlines like everyone else. But he also noticed that many of the people involved in the festival never spoke publicly about their experience. A mutual friend led him to Gabrielle Bluestone, a Vice journalist who had extensively covered the festival and began walking Smith through all the hierarchy of Fyres major players. We filmed the Gabrielle interview andstarted pulling clips and information down off online, Smith tellsRolling Stone.The next thing you know, we had this 45-minute edit of a movie just a broad stroke of What is this story and who are the people? Little did we know that was barely anything. [Laughs]

The result, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,utilizes astonishing behind-the-scenes footage (Were selling a pipe dream to your average loser, McFarland admits during an early company outing to the Bahamas) and interviews with many of the principals to show what happens when you sell the sizzle, not the steak. Its equally a time capsule, a dark comedy and a horror movie that exposes McFarlands most selfish, hubristic instincts and the people, wittingly or otherwise, who were complicit in the most disastrous music festival since Woodstock 99. Smith spoke about how he got so much behind-the-scenes footage, why McFarland didnt agree to an interview and the one scene that he couldnt believe what I was hearing.

Fyre Festival made global headlines as it was imploding. Are you concerned people think they know everything already?
Its interesting you say that, because one of the concerns going into it was wondering if there actually was a movie there. When I started reading all the coverage, most of them just reprinted the same, few facts and there was very little actual information. But that didnt make me think that there was this great story hidden. It made me think the opposite: that there probably wasnt anything there. But you realized that there were a lot of people [who worked for the festival] that had never spoken publicly.

Were Fyre employees reluctant to speak on-camera, or were they immediately willing to open up?
Most of them didnt want to go back to Fyre, especially when we first approached them. One of the things that would be surprising to a lot of people is that it was actually a fairly traumatic experience for a lot of the people that worked on it.

One employee in the film talks about having PTSD.
Yeah, and I dont think thats a joke. It was a very traumatic experience to go through for a lot of the people involved.

That same employee admits Billy asked him to perform a sexual act on the Head of Customs to release a trove of bottled water for the festival.
Id never been in an interview and had that moment where I couldnt believe what I was hearing.

What was the closest in your career before that?
Nothing compares. Nothing.

Theres an astonishing amount of behind-the-scenes footage on the festival. How did you obtain that?
We connected with Matte Projects [the production company hired by Fyre]. At the time, Matte was about to start their own film on Fyre and obviously, they had all this footage from their experience of working with [the festival]. They gave us access to it; one of the Jerry Media partners [the agency hired by Fyre to promote the festival] had been doing a daily vlog and actually had footage of the first time that they met with the Fyre people. They also had documented their trip down to the festival. Even they didnt know what they were walking into, and they were supposedly one of the main contractors for the festival.

The teaser video feels like a horror film even though everyone knows how the movie ends. How conscious were you of setting up that tone?
Ive always felt like you have to react to the material as you get it. It was very easy as an outsider to look at [this] in hindsight and approach it like, Of course this was going to be a disaster. But before it fell apart, there was a lot of enthusiasm and optimism around the idea, especially at the launch. After the launch, you can start to see the cracks begin to appear. The core Fyre team was still trying to give the illusion that everything was okay because once you let that go, then it would have unraveled much quicker.

It was an interesting challenge to try to take the audience on that journey where instead of saying, Oh, this was just doomed from the start, you showed people that there were a lot of people that were sold a bill of goods that were pitched a version of what Fyre could be.

What they overlooked was the actual work that it would take to put on a festival.

A post-event conference call among employees finds one person outright calling Billys actions fraud. Did that feel like a smoking gun when you saw it?
It did seem like a smoking gun. Somebody had leaked [the footage] and what was most interesting to me about that was that I had read that quote in writing and it didnt have the resonance or impact that it has when you actually hear it in a conference call. What was most shocking to me was how this stuff came to light by actually being in the room.

Billy screwed over a lot of his employees. Did this feel like they wanted to get back at him by talking about how bad the event went?
Youd have to talk to the people that were involved, but my feeling was that they were not trying to get back at Billy. I really felt that people had realized that they had gone through this crazy experience, and I think there was something cathartic and adding closure to it by telling your story on film. People realize that this story was going to get out there in one way or another. But that said, most of the people that we interviewed were very hesitant to engage and it took a lot of hand-holding to get people to actually go on camera. I was hoping people would realize from the film that there was nothing to be ashamed of in terms of working for Fyre.

They may have thought theyd be connected to a toxic brand.
Yes. Saying that you had anything to do with Fyre, especially at the time of its implosion, had a very negative connotation and people wanted to just put this behind them. They also recognized that this was this crazy story, but a story worth telling.

What was your impression of Billy before you started this movie, and did that view change by the time youd finished this?
When we started, we didnt know who Billy McFarland was. He was very low-profile in media appearances surrounding Fyre. Obviously he recognized that the models were a much better image for this festival than he would be. It took a long time to really understand who was behind it and the genesis of who Billy McFarland was. That was a journey that continued for the entire year that we were making the movie. It ultimately became a character study on this individual who was a product of social media and to give the audience a window into his world.

Were you at all optimistic that he would speak for the film?
We actually had a camera and crew set up twice to film Billy. We were in talks to shoot him near the beginning, and then in the end, he wanted to get paid. We found it very difficult to pay Billy when so many people had had such hardships based on the festival.

Had you considered it or was it off the table immediately?
It was something we definitely talked about because we felt his interview would be very valuable, but in the end it was a decision that we didnt feel comfortable with. There was so much of Billy in news clips and archival footage and just people talking about him that he still felt like he had a voice.

One employee says in the film, These guys are either full of shit or theyre the smartest guys in the room. Where did you land at first?
I always thought of the Simpsons episode with the monorail. [Billy] was an incredible salesman. Time and again in interviews, people would talk about his charisma and ability to sell this dream. In the world were in today, you see the result of work; you see on Instagram people living a certain lifestyle. They focused on what they knew, which was how to market something. That part was the fun part. What they overlooked was the actual work that it would take to put on a festival. I would assume that a normal process would be to figure out a festival and then market what youre going to deliver. They did it backwards and ultimately paid the price.

The failure of this festival was built for Twitter.

What do you think of Billy now?
Hes a complicated character. I didnt see his charm and charisma from the news clips that I had seen. He seemed somewhat awkward, and it was only in working on the movie and hearing people talk about their interactions with Billy and his enthusiasm and how infectious it was, that I felt like I got a better understanding of who he was.

He actually has an incredible ability to see opportunity where others dont. Hes living in a social media world and realizing that everybody is aspiring to this lifestyle and then hes spending time in the Bahamas and puts it together that, Wow, I could sell this vision of what everyones seeing on Instagram. And it was successful. You cant deny that he was tuned into something, but theres more to having the idea than just having the idea.

One person says Billy went from thinking he was the entrepreneur of the decade to essentially being a massive viral disgrace and joke. Was there any part of you that felt sympathy for him?
Ultimately, I try to remain objective wherever possible. As the story unfolded and you see where Billy was going, he becomes a less sympathetic character. Talking to some of the people that are still dealing with the fallout of Fyre Festival makes it much harder to be sympathetic towards him. One guy I talked to this morning is still dealing with Fyre on a weekly basis. He was the one whose company brilliantly, against all odds, was able to build this state-of-the-art stage on an island. Hes still paying the price for that Herculean effort. Its been incredibly difficult for him.

As much as you want to say, Oh, this was just this rich kids that flew to an island, there were a lot of real-world consequences for professionals that are still going on today. At that point, you start to have very little sympathy. The fact that Billy was back in Manhattan living this lifestyle while there were a huge number of Bahamians that were not paid I dont know how you could live with yourself. To me, that was the part that made me feel much less sympathy for him. A lot of people didnt get paid, but theres a couple of people that actually put in significant amount of money that was very crucial to their livelihood, and those people are the ones that I feel for the most.

Lets talk about Ja Rule: He was the festivals highest-profile musician, but isnt in the film. Did you ask him to be in it?
He felt pretty present. I was interested in telling a story from the point of view of the people that were actually on the ground doing the work and I feel like Jas role was sort of this cheerleader. He pretty much disappears from the movie after the launch of the video. So, I really think when you look at the SEC indictment and everything, its like Billy with the assistance of a few other individuals were really at the heart of this fraud element. Ja just trusted that these guys were for real and in the end they werent. We felt like he was well-represented in the archival footage.

This idea of rich people battling each other in a Lord of the Fliesscenario became an overarching theme on social media that made it ripe for ridicule.
The failure of this festival was built for Twitter. You couldnt design anything better. For everyone that was envious of the people that were going or felt like they were going to miss out, for it to fail was a gleeful moment. The failure of the festival was very one-dimensional, yet the reality of the festival was very multi-faceted.

What surprised you the most in the course of making the film?
The thing that surprised me the most and it shouldnt have been a surprise but it was just the caliber of people that were working on Fyre. You assume that it would just be a bunch of idiots that were trying to pull off a music festival, but when you actually started talking to everyone that was working on it, they were incredibly earnest, smart, intelligent, hard-working, conscientious and thoughtful. They were people that were doing their best to keep this from being a bigger disaster than it was destined to be.

So what does the festival say about our culture and how social media now plays into the idea of how we experience events?
People are seeing a world around them and so much is being informed by that. Fyre was very much a product of showing the best parts of your life and created a fear-of-missing-out event. It was a lifestyle that a lot of people that are on Instagram would aspire to. So from a marketing perspective, it was brilliant and obviously very successful for that reason. They worked on the part that was what they knew best, which was creating the faade. But there was nothing beneath there. Once reality set in, you see the wheels start to fall off.