Director’s Notes: Episode 271 - The Festival

At our last story meeting back at the end of May, I pitched Joseph and Jeffrey a “what if a big summer festival picked Night Vale as its host city and things went very badly” story. It seemed like a fun idea to me, though I have never been to this type of festival—not a Coachella nor a Woodstock, nary a Lollapalooza, ne'er a Burning Man. The idea of one of these events, even when things go well, sounds like hell on earth to me already. So without any real-world experience to draw from, I turned to the documentaries, and I admit, I ended up watching more festival content than strictly necessary for research purposes. Below is a roundup of the docs I watched during the writing process, along with my brief reviews. 

DESOLATION CENTER (2019, YouTube): This covers a little-known series of desert shows in Southern California in the 1980s punk art scene that was the precursor of fests that would come later, like Coachella, Burning Man, and Lollapalooza. It features a ton of film footage that was taken during these events and is an absolutely glorious depiction of a scene of misfits on the fringes creating something special together (and sometimes hazardous, I think there were exploding refrigerators at some point?), miles out in the middle of nowhere. FOUR STARS.

FYRE: THE GREATEST PARTY THAT NEVER HAPPENED (2019, Netflix) and FYRE FRAUD (2019, Hulu): To be honest, I watched these back to back and can no longer distinguish between them. But in sentiment, Fyre Festival seemed to be the polar opposite of Desolation Center as an event—a giant scam orchestrated to swindle money, organized by reckless social predators, leading to wet mattresses in FEMA tents, sad little sandwiches, lawsuits, and no bands. Four stars. 

WOODSTOCK ‘99: PEACE, LOVE, AND RAGE (2021, HBO): Somewhere in the Venn diagram of Desolation Center and Fyre Fest as far as intention versus outcome: an event that seemed to be conceived with at least a certain amount of idealism but immediately devolved into a deeply upsetting 3-day apocalypse of water shortages, assault, death, fires, and Limp Bizkit. Four stars, but content warning if you watch.   

So anyway, after consuming all these, I took my newly acquired knowledge about what festivals are (abject chaos under a burning hot sun with a high body count?) to write this very realistic episode. If you’ve been to a fest, please lmk in the comments if I nailed it.

-Brie

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