A vent, by Rick Lavoie
I spent a good part of this week watching competing documentaries on the same topic. No, I am not talking about watching episodes of Cops and LivePD. I am talking about two films that discussed the failed music festival of the century, Fyre Festival. For you noobs, here is their promo video:
This music festival was pitched as a luxury music festival for only those who could afford it. The douche who advertised it committed real fraud to bilk hundreds of rich millennial kids out of their mommy and daddy’s expense account. The dude worked with Ja Rule, but the whole thing turned belly up and a bunch of MAGA Douches’ were stranded at an airport in the Bahamas after eating cheese sandwiches.
Now, honestly, I laughed at these two documentaries more than I would at your typical Will Ferrill joint. The images of these pretty people struggling really excited my mirth. But after careful thought, I think it is crazy that two competing documentaries about something so insignificant were made. I am tired of this trend.
It is hard to remember the first time this phenomena hit me square in the face, but it might have been Armageddon and Deep Impact (1998). The next worst example that I can think of, at the moment, is Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down (2013). In each of these examples, one more had more popular success. Armageddon is actually fairly re-watchable, while Deep Impact left no lasting impression in my mind. Olympus Has Fallen was so successful, it spawned a shitty sequel set in England (think Hellboy).
I don’t necessarily care that there is more than one documentary about this festival that flopped. I am fairly confident that I watched more than one Woodstock ’99 video, but they didn’t come out days apart from each other. Hulu produced “Fyre Fraud” and released it on January 14th. The Netflix version came on January 18th. They both had different access points and both were interesting, but seriously four days??? WTF.
https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-or-hulu-which-fyre-festival-documentary-you-should-watch/
Feel free to read the above link for more info, but in the meantime, I am going to continue to vent.
Why can’t we forbid filmmakers from doing this type of thing. It happens a lot, but shouldn’t. I look at the whole thing as a form of copyright infringement. If I opened a chicken wing place called, “Peckers” and forced my male waiters to wear bright shorts with a woodpecker’s face painted on the crotch, I am pretty sure Buffalo Wild Wings would still fucking suck. Hooters, however, would probably sue me. If I invented a pair of sneakers that let me inflate little airsacks in my shoes, I’d probably get a lawsuit filed against me by Dee Brown. If I emulated my entire Presidency after that of Richard Milhouse Nixon, I would probably get sued by some Federal Prosecutor, right?
What if I did any of those things in the same year as the first example? I think I would lose more than those wealthy snobs who flew to the Bahama’s even though the experience was already falling apart in front of them. I don’t know how to become an Instagram Influencer, but I do know how to write a blog that Hollywood producers might pick-up.
What is the worst example of content double-dipping you can think of? I am interested to learn more.
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