When Fyre Festival survivor Andy King shared his now infamous Evian story with filmmaker Chris Smith, he didn’t expect the R-rated anecdote to actually be included in the Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.
“As you could see in the documentary, I hesitated when he asked me,” explained King, a respected event producer who is more accustomed to working behind-the-scenes. “Then, maybe out of my own naïveté, I said to Chris, ‘Well, I know you’re not going to use this. But I’ll tell you the story. . .’ Then I went on my way, and I thought nothing of it.”
But later, when King told colleagues about sharing the water story on-camera, they immediately reacted with alarm.
“They said, ‘Andy, you call Chris right now, and tell them they need to pull that piece. That cannot be in there,’” King told Vanity Fair on Friday. “So I called Chris, but he said, ‘Andy, you’re going to have to trust me on this one. . . . We need it, and your delivery is phenomenal.’’
“But you know what,” King continued, in his now-recognizable deadpan, “It was. It was just me telling a story and being very calm, and it wasn’t sensationalized. It was what happened.”
The story, for those who have not heard it by now, goes as follows: King flew to the Bahamas at the request of his 20-something protégé, Billy McFarland, in attempt to salvage McFarland’s first-ever “music festival.” As it became increasingly clear that Fyre was a fiasco, McFarland called King with an urgent request. Bahamian customs had detained four 18-wheeler trucks filled with Evian water —the festival’s entire water supply—since they had not been paid $175,000 in fees. According to King, McFarland told him, “You’re our wonderful gay leader and we need you to go down [to customs]. Will you suck dick to fix this water problem?” (McFarland has not responded to any allegations in the documentary, and is currently serving a six-year term in prison.)
This was the most ludicrous request King had received in his otherwise successful career. But King wanted to save the festival—for his young protégé; for the millennials who had paid for tickets; and most importantly, for the countless Fyre Festival employees who had worked without pay—and was willing to make a Hail Mary pass.
“I literally drove home, took a shower, I drank some mouthwash,” King says in the documentary. “I got into my car, to drive across the island to take one for the team. And I got to [the customs officer’s] office, fully prepared to suck his dick.” Fortunately, King did not have to. The customs officer, it turned out, “couldn’t have been nicer.”
King’s matter-of-fact delivery of this anecdote made him an instant Internet meme.
King told Vanity Fair that he first saw the completed documentary at a screening several days ahead of the film’s Netflix release. He recognized fellow Fyre Festival survivors in the audience—“wearing baseball caps and ski caps and sitting in the back in the dark.” Incognito is not Andy King’s style, however. “I was wearing a bright orange cashmere sweater, as I will do, and I couldn’t hide,” he laughed. “When my great cameo came up, everybody just started clapping and cheering. And I just shrunk down in my seat, thinking, ‘Oh my word, is this what I’m going to be famous for?’”
After the film began streaming on Netflix, King was shocked by the “immediate deluge of attention” he received. He has been criss-crossing the country—to Los Angeles to help plan a Global Green pre-Oscar party, and to the Hudson Valley in New York, where he has a home—and every other person seemed to recognize him. The night before this call, King said he walked into a restaurant where the maître d’ greeted him, surprisingly, by name and ushered him into a side room for privacy. This plan was all well and good until King had to cross the main floor to use the restroom. “It was like an Exorcist movie, because everyone’s heads were spinning around,” laughed King. Another day, “I was walking down Broadway in Manhattan and I had people say, ‘Hey Andy, great job in the movie.’ ‘Hey Andy, you were incredible.’ People want selfies with me. You can imagine that what the selfie people want the most is someone holding a water bottle.”
To be clear, though, celebrity is not what King was seeking when he agreed to participate in Netflix’s Fyre Festival documentary.
“To relive Fyre again—as you can imagine—is enough to kill you,” cracked King, explaining that his collaboration with Smith was motivated by their mutual desire to tell the true story of the Fyre Festival and “pay back as many people as possible. The original plan was to host a series of premieres and charge a little bit of money [per ticket] that would all go to the Bahamians.” But that rollout plan was eventually scratched. “With the [surprise] release of [a competing] Hulu doc, we didn’t have the luxury of planning out these premieres,” explained King, noting that GoFundMe pages were set up to benefit Fyre employees. Caterer Maryann Rolle, has already recouped the $50,000 in life savings she used to pay her employees working on the festival. Another GoFundMe page has since raised $22,000 of its $400,000 goal to pay back the event’s laborers.
“I’m really blessed people recognize that my story was not said as some horrible, sleazy thing,” said King, clarifying that his response to McFarland’s Evian-retrieval request was not indicative of his attitude toward workplace sexual misconduct. “I told it to explain just how crazy it was down there. I am a very conservative New Englander.”
King sees the Internet response to the Netflix documentary—the memes constructed in homage to his get-it-done attitude; the GoFundMe proceeds, etc.—as a way of closing the Fyre Festival circle.
“In the end, social media took down the festival,” said King. “To see the reaction now, it’s like the phoenix rising from the ashes.” He was never particularly interested in social media before his Netflix debut, but now, “I’m going to embrace it.” He’s hoping to keep the positive momentum going with Inward Point—the company he founded six years ago to produce sustainable, zero-waste events. “Large events and concerts are the most wasteful experiences, and I’ve been trying to break that by eliminating all paper and plastic at every event, and supporting local farmers and local artisans, and women and minority-[run] companies,” he explained. “If I am able to use this wonderful world of social media to drive positive change, then I will.”
He is, however, going to “have a little fun” with his newfound celebrity. He’s already heard from three different water companies, hoping to align themselves with the man willing to go to any length to get his hands on water. “I can’t talk about it too much,” King said coyly, “but they’re essentially, like, ‘Listen, we’re working on a new ad campaign . . . ’”
And that’s not all. “I had three TV show offers this week, from notable networks,” King said, before providing a few clues about his vision for a series. “You’re too young to remember this, but in the old world of TV it was The Carol Burnett Show and these fun, light-hearted shows that weren’t all crime-related,” King explained, hopeful that networks are opening back up to this kind of upbeat fare. “You see the attractiveness of HGTV today. People love Flip or Flop or Fixer Upper. Let’s just say it’s going to be a show about hosting crazy events—what it takes to make them happen. There will be cliff-hangers, and you’ll get to follow me around and see how I pull them off.”
King assured me, “You’re not going to see me launching a handbag line or makeup.” But he is upbeat about the future: “I think I’m being given a platform that a lot of people, at age 58 especially, don’t get the opportunity to have. And I’m kind of excited about it.”
This story was originally published by Vanity Fair
via USAHint.com
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