时间:2019-03-04 作者:英语课 分类:2019年NPR美国国家公共电台1月


英语课

 


LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:


It was marketed as the party of a lifetime. The Fyre music festival - a two-weekend extravaganza in 2017. Hear top musical acts, party with supermodels, stay in luxe accommodations on a private island in the Bahamas once owned by Pablo Escobar. What could possibly go wrong? Well, instead, the people who paid more than $1,000 or more encountered complete chaos 1.


(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")


UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We see this sea of white, little tents.


UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: There was a disbelief on the bus. A lot of people thought that, oh, you know, maybe we're passing through this area. You know, our villas 2 are just on the other side.


UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And it was the bus driver who said, oh, no. That's where you're staying. It was like, oh, my God.


UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Look at the bed.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: The new Netflix documentary "Fyre" goes behind the scenes with people directly involved to find out what happened and how it all fell apart. And it is quite a tale. Director Chris Smith joins us now from NPR West.


Welcome.


CHRIS SMITH: Hey. Hello.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: I don't know where to begin.


SMITH: (Laughter).


GARCIA-NAVARRO: So much there - this documentary peels back the many layers of how an epic 3 fail like this happened. So let's start at the beginning about how this was marketed. A bunch of A-lister models go to an island. And they sell something that doesn't exist.


SMITH: In that sense, it was a huge success - the marketing 4 and the launch of the festival. I believe it was reported that it hit around 500 million people in 24 hours.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wow.


SMITH: And, you know, that part they did very well. It was just the actual execution of the festival that they started to run into problems.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. So many people bought into the dream that that video showed - right? - these models frolicking, having a great time, this kind of fantasy.


SMITH: One of the things Billy McFarland, who was the co-founder 5 of Fyre - one of the things that he was great at was selling the dream. And he did that very, very well.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: You had a lot of video because these guys taped everything for promotional purposes. I want to quote founder Billy McFarland, who said in your documentary, "we're selling a pipe dream to your average loser, your average guy in middle America." Do you think that's the way they saw things?


SMITH: You know, it's hard to say. I think that they really did want to deliver.


(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")


UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: We're expecting millions of people to come visit our site to see the video, showing people that for three or four days, you can escape reality and come experience Pablo Escobar's island.


SMITH: I don't think that they set out to try to scam people and that, like - just have them fly to an island and have it be a disaster. I think the idea was to try to deliver something that lived up to the marketing. It was just the reality of that proved to be incredibly impossible.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: May I ask how you came to this? What interested you in the Fyre Festival - other than the fact that it just was a huge scandal. But why did you want to make this documentary?


SMITH: You know, I had seen the news story when it broke and just the implosion 6 of the festival and how it was being reported. And it always felt very one-dimensional. And it was very - people focused on this idea of "Lord Of The Flies" with Instagram influencers and sort of rich kids that got stuck on an island. And to me, I was interested to see if there was a human story behind it. And hearing their stories, I realized that there was this incredibly smart, talented, thoughtful, compassionate 7 group of people that all, you know, were trying to help make this dream a reality.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: In the end, the people who bought tickets had a few bad days, right? But most of the Bahamians who worked on this for months - and the Bahamian government - never got paid. And this isn't a rich country.


SMITH: Yeah. To me, that was probably the biggest tragedy of it was the fallout that a few individuals are still dealing 8 with. There was a woman that had a restaurant in the Bahamas that ended up putting a lot of her own money up.


(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")


UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Personally, I don't even like to talk about the Fyre Festival. Just take it away. And just let me start a new beginning because they really, really, really hurt me.


SMITH: The perception of this was that it couldn't fail, you know, that there was an endless amount of money. This was well capitalized and all these, like, celebrities 9 and all this talent was coming down. And the government was supporting it. So I think that there was this belief that, you know, everyone was just too busy to deal with the logistics, like - and they were truly overwhelmed. But, you know, the tragedy was that she ended up putting up a lot of her own money and sort of also had to pay everyone that she had employed because she was stuck there. And she had to look at these people every day.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: Billy was recently sentenced to six years in prison for wire fraud charges related to the Fyre Festival. Did you try and reach out to him?


SMITH: We did. We had set up, I think, twice to film Billy. And then he would cancel at the last minute. And in the end, you know, it turned out that Billy wanted to get paid. We didn't feel comfortable that he would benefit when so many other people had suffered.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is a cautionary tale, right? What is the caution, though, for you? I mean, I've got my thoughts - a lot of them. But why do you think people found this story so compelling? And what should we take away?


SMITH: It's a reflection of this idea of just perception and reality. And I think, you know, we're looking at a world, you know, that's relatively 10 new in terms of social media and the way that people depict 11 their lives.


(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FYRE")


UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: We live in this influencer society. You know, everybody wants to have this online clout 12. You know, people want to have access. And they want exclusivity. Fyre was, basically, like Instagram come to life.


SMITH: And here you had something that was presented as the ultimate sort of festival experience. And the reality of it was so different. And I think that, you know, it feels like a - very much a reflection of the times that we're in right now.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: Chris Smith - his new documentary "Fyre" is out this week on Netflix. Thank you so much for coming on to the program.


SMITH: All right. Thanks.



n.混乱,无秩序
  • After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后,城市一片混乱。
  • The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。
别墅,公馆( villa的名词复数 ); (城郊)住宅
  • Magnificent villas are found throughout Italy. 在意大利到处可看到豪华的别墅。
  • Rich men came down from wealthy Rome to build sea-side villas. 有钱人从富有的罗马来到这儿建造海滨别墅。
n.史诗,叙事诗;adj.史诗般的,壮丽的
  • I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗,而写了这个小故事。
  • They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。
n.行销,在市场的买卖,买东西
  • They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
  • He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。
n.创始者,缔造者
  • He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
  • According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说,罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。
n.向内破裂,内爆
  • The population explosion is accompanied by a population implosion.人口爆炸还伴随着人口爆聚。
adj.有同情心的,表示同情的
  • She is a compassionate person.她是一个有同情心的人。
  • The compassionate judge gave the young offender a light sentence.慈悲的法官从轻判处了那个年轻罪犯。
n.经商方法,待人态度
  • This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
  • His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。
n.(尤指娱乐界的)名人( celebrity的名词复数 );名流;名声;名誉
  • He only invited A-list celebrities to his parties. 他只邀请头等名流参加他的聚会。
  • a TV chat show full of B-list celebrities 由众多二流人物参加的电视访谈节目
adv.比较...地,相对地
  • The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
  • The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。
vt.描画,描绘;描写,描述
  • I don't care to see plays or films that depict murders or violence.我不喜欢看描写谋杀或暴力的戏剧或电影。
  • Children's books often depict farmyard animals as gentle,lovable creatures.儿童图书常常把农场的动物描写得温和而可爱。
n.用手猛击;权力,影响力
  • The queen may have privilege but she has no real political clout.女王有特权,但无真正的政治影响力。
  • He gave the little boy a clout on the head.他在那小男孩的头部打了一下。
学英语单词
acrospiromas
analytic operator-valued function
area levelling
atomic oxygen fluence model
axial cut distance
azimuth compiler
bahorok
ballast draft condition
batch calculation
bellowed
causative factors of injury
cepalotribe
cobalt nitrate
commodity in warehouse
companion piece
completion message
concentration tracer
cu fts
despotic monarch
dextropropoxyphene
doubling course
dwarf grey willows
elbow-bone
ewan mcgregor
fakeness
flat-plate pressing machine
foot piece
free open textured sand
friction bezel ring
game-fishing
hecto-coulombs
henders
heterogenous catalysis
hog-nosed snake
hollow cathode aluminum ion laser
horsemeat
hungers
hydrophiling
ill-luck
in boundless enthusiasm
incident neutron energy
Indigosol Green IB
iner
katastates
keep your chin up
lavand
load-carrying winding
low-volume shipper
Macquarie Island
magson
Maskil
mason cities
master distance indicator
MCAIS
measurement pattern
mene, mene, tekel, upharsin
metasilicate
more significant bit
Murray State University
new productive capacity
nonoperating
numerical response
optimum capital stock
pachycholia
paramilitarisms
paratrygonica
pentapyrrolidinium
phobic layer
phrasemakings
pinos
power weight ratio
prolified
rageaholics
ravet
reactive termination
redirector
retrofittable
rookly
rotundatus
rugous
satyr plays
sea-cornet
Seckels
single-tub wagon tipper
special holder
spironolactone(anti-aldosterone)
spitball
standard money unit of account
state of permanent neutrality
statistic bit rate
steel hemp
suck at
suratenses
to service
tweer
underground gasification of coal
urcaryote
variable-duration
water regeneration technique
whip a fault out of sb.
wormly
yellowishness