Eddie Huang came to both bury and praise Vice at the opening night of the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday.
The author, chef and former host of the bankrupt media company’s show, “Huang’s World,” was on hand with his new documentary “Vice Is Broke.” The film serves as both an ode to Vice’s anarchic spirit and the generations of aggressive, barrier-pushing, break-shit journalists and filmmakers it employed, as well as a darker look at the greed and questionable ethics that helped send it into Chapter 11. And Huang, who says he got an NDA he had signed waived in return for unpaid residuals, made it clear that Vice, or what’s left of it, isn’t too happy with what he made.
“Their lawyers are still trying to fight us on this film,” Huang said during a question-and-answer session following the documentary’s premiere at TIFF Lightbox Cinema. He added that Shane Smith, the colorful and controversial Vice co-founder whose bad-boy reputation helped attract hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from media companies like Disney and Discovery, refused his requests for an interview. Huang made it clear that he doesn’t approve of Smith’s leadership style or his behavior after Vice went bankrupt and agreed to be acquired by Fortress Investment Group and a consortium of investors.
“He threatened legal action,” Huang said. “They’ve been sending legal letters. You know, Shane, in so many words, is a coward. He left all of his friends and co-workers out to dry.”
Huang said he spent $380,000 of his own money making the documentary, which celebrates Vice’s scrappy early days as a free magazine that offered sex tips and provocative photo shoots, as well as its evolution into a globe-trotting media organization, covering hotspots like Sierra Leone and Liberia (though Huang notes that Vice tended to dwell on the conflict and violence in those countries, instead of highlighting the positive parts of their cultures and the people who live there).
“Do I regret what happened to Vice?” Huang said. “Yeah, I think it’s really sad what happened to that company, because it was a really special place for young people to get their artistic work off.”
In addition to Smith, Huang also examines the role that Gavin McInnes, one of Vice’s co-founders, played in establishing the company’s subversive style, as well as the way that McInnes’ far-right views sometimes seeped into its coverage. McInnes left Vice in 2008 and went on to found the Proud Boys, an all-male, neo-facist organization. He did agree to be interviewed for the documentary, spending his time defending free speech, as well as making dick jokes and racist remarks.
“You can be a free speech guy, you can be a right to bear arms guy, but you have to also measure ultimate freedom and theoretical ideas of freedom with hurting people,” Huang said of McInnes. “What is the purpose of your art if you’re hurting people more than you’re uplifting them or teaching them?”
